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THE   MYSTIC   WAY 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


THE   GREY   WORLD 

THE   LOST   WORD 

THE   COLUMN   OF   DUST 

THE  MIRACLES  OF  OUR  LADY 
SAINT  MARY 

IMMANENCE :  A  BOOK  OF  VERSES 

MYSTICISM  :  A  STUDY  IN  THE  NATURE 
AND  DEVELOPMENT  OF  MAN'S 
SPIRITUAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 


THE  MYSTIC   WAY 

A   PSYCHOLOGICAL   STUDY 
IN   CHRISTIAN   ORIGINS 


BY 

EVELYN    UNDERBILL 

AUTHOR  Of  "MYSTICISM,"  ETC. 


Sister,  1  hear  the  thunder  of  new  wings" 


J.  M.  DENT  &  SONS,  LTD. 
LONDON  AND  TORONTO.  1914 
NEW  YORK:  E.  P.  DUTTON  &  CO. 


First  Edition,  March 
Reprinted,  June  /?/j,  February  1914 


All  rights  reserved 


SEP    31998 


TO 

DOMINICA 

WITH  LOVE 


PREFACE 

IT  is  the  object  of  this  book  to  trace  out  that  type  of 
life,  that  peculiar  quality  of  consciousness,  which  is  called 
"  mystical,"  from  its  earliest  appearance  within  Christi 
anity;  to  estimate,  so  far  as  is  possible,  the  true  character 
and  origin  of  the  Christian  mystic,  and  define  the  qualities 
which  differentiate  him  from  those  other  mystics  who  have 
been  evolved  along  other  lines  of  spiritual  development, 
Oriental,  Neoplatonic,  or  Mahomedan.  It  is  now 
acknowledged  by  many  psychologists — amongst  whom 
Leuba  and  Delacroix  are  of  special  importance,  since  their 
conclusions  are  entirely  free  from  theological  bias — that 
the  Christian  mystic  does  possess  such  differentiating 
characters;  and  represents,  so  far  as  the  psychical  nature 
of  man  is  concerned,  a  genuine  species  apart.  Leuba, 
indeed,  does  not  hesitate  to  call  him  "  one  of  the  most 
amazing  and  profound  variations  of  which  the  human 
race  has  yet  been  witness."  This  being  so,  his  origin 
and  real  significance  have  surely  a  special  importance  for 
those  interested  in  the  spiritual  evolution  of  humanity. 

We  are  still  too  often  told  that  Christian  mysticism  is 
no  integral  part  of  Christianity :  sometimes,  even,  that 
it  represents  an  opposition  to  the  primitive  Christian 
ideal.  Sometimes  we  are  asked  to  believe  that  it  origin 
ated  from  Neoplatonic  influence;  that  Pagan  blood  runs 
in  its  veins,  and  that  its  genealogy  goes  back  to  Plotinus. 
Far  from  this  being  the  case,  all  the  doctrines  and  all  the 
experiences  characteristic  of  genuine  Christian  mysticism 
can  be  found  in  the  New  Testament;  and  I  believe  that 
its  emergence  as  a  definite  type  of  spiritual  life  coincides 
with  the  emergence  of  Christianity  itself,  in  the  person 
of  its  Founder. 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

The  examination  of  Christian  origins  from  the  psycho 
logical  point  of  view  suggests  that  Christianity  began  as  a 
mystical  movement  of  the  purest  kind;  that  its  Founder 
and  those  who  succeeded  Him  possessed  the  characteristic 
ally  mystical  consciousness,  and  passed  through  the  normal 
stages  of  mystical  growth.  Hence  its  nature  is  best 
understood  by  comparison  with  those  lesser  mystical 
movements  in  which  life  has  again  and  again  asserted  her 
unconquerable  instinct  for  transcendence;  and  the  heroic 
personalities  through  whom  the  Christian  vision  of  reality 
was  first  expressed,  are  most  likely  to  yield  up  the  secret 
of  their  "more  abundant  life"  when  studied  by  the  help 
of  those  psychological  principles  which  have  been  deduced 
from  the  general  investigation  of  the  mystical  type. 

The  great  Christians  of  the  primitive  time,  the  great 
mystics  in  whom  their  spirit  has  lived  on,  exhibit,  one 
and  all,  an  organic  growth,  pass  through  a  series  of 
profound  psychic  changes  and  readjustments,  by  which 
they  move  from  the  condition  of  that  which  we  like  to 
call  the  "  normal  man  "  to  that  state  of  spiritual  maturity, 
of  an  actually  heightened  correspondence  with  Reality, 
an  actually  enhanced  power  of  dealing  with  circumstance, 
which  they  sometimes  call  the  "  Unitive  Life."  This 
sequence  of  psychological  states  is  the  "  Mystic  Way," 
which  gives  its  title  to  my  book.  Its  existence  is  not  a 
pious  opinion,  but  a  fact,  which  is  attested  by  countless 
mystics  of  every  period  and  creed,  and  is  now  acknow 
ledged  by  most  students  of  religious  psychology;  yet  its 
primary  importance  for  the  understanding  of  our  earliest 
Christian  documents  has  been  generally  overlooked. 

Using,  then,  this  standard  diagram  of  man's  spiritual 
growth  as  a  clue,  I  have  tried  to  approach  these  documents 
—so  far  as  is  possible — without  dogmatic  presupposi 
tions:  to  examine  the  available  material  from  a  strictly 
psychological  standpoint.  I  know  that  by  acting  thus  in 
such  a  connection  I  invite  the  charge  of  irreverence,  which 


PREFACE  ix 

awaits  all  students  of  religious  origins  who  venture  to 
use  the  known  facts  of  experience  as  a  help  in  their 
investigations.  Fortunately,  those  who  adopt  this 
dangerous  course  can  claim  the  support  of  a  Doctor  of 
the  Church,  as  well  as  the  unsanctified  approval  of  common 
sense.  "  Interrogate  thyself,  O  man,"  said  St.  Augustine, 
"  and  make  of  thyself  a  step  to  the  things  that  be  above 
thee  " — surely  a  direct  invitation  to  approach  theological 
problems  along  psychological  lines. 

Nor  in  the  last  result  is  any  other  method  of  approach 
likely  to  prove  fruitful  for  us.  All  those  intuitions  and 
revelations  of  a  spiritual  world,  of  an  independent 
spiritual  life,  which  have  been  achieved  by  humanity, 
have  passed  through  some  human  consciousness  on  their 
way  to  concrete  expression.  Through  that  "  strait  gate  " 
alone  has  news  of  the  Eternal  entered  time.  Therefore 
the  laws  which  govern  this  consciousness,  the  machinery 
by  which  it  lays  hold  on  life,  must  influence  the  form 
in  which  the  message  has  reached  us.  The  river  adapts 
itself  to  the  banks  between  which  it  flows.  This  is  a 
law — a  fact  of  observation — which  applies  as  much  to  the 
greatest  as  to  the  least  of  the  prophets,  saints,  and  seers; 
and  it  is  by  an  appeal  to  this  law  that  I  justify  my 
fragmentary  attempt  towards  "  the  interpretation  of  life 
by  life." 

Though  the  method  here  employed  has  been  as  far  as 
possible  empirical,  and  the  ultimate  appeal  is  always  to 
particular  facts  rather  than  to  universal  principles,  some 
philosophic  thread  on  which  the  argument  might  be 
strung,  some  diagram  of  life  against  which  the  observed 
phenomena  might  be  exhibited,  was  found  to  be  a  neces 
sity.  Such  a  philosophic  diagram  is  sketched  in  the  first 
chapter ;  which  discusses  mysticism  in  relation  to  human 
life,  and  seeks  to  distinguish  the  two  main  forms  under 
which  it  has  appeared  in  the  history  of  the  race.  For  this 
philosophy  I  make  no  claims.  To  many  I  know  that  it 


x  PREFACE 

will  be  unacceptable.  It  is  but  a  symbolic  picture  of  the 
Universe,  useful  because  it  helps  us  to  find  a  place  for 
the  kind  of  life  called  "  mystic  "  within  the  framework  of 
that  great  and  universal  life  which  we  call  Reality. 

For  my  psychology,  however,  I  make  a  higher  claim; 
for  the  principles  upon  which  this  is  based  originate,  not 
in  the  guessing  games  of  the  professors,  but  in  the 
experience  of  the  saints.  In  this  department  the  state 
ments  that  are  made — though  sometimes  expressed  in  the 
picturesque  dialect  of  the  laboratory — can  yet  be  sub 
stantiated  from  the  first-hand  declarations  of  those  great 
lovers  of  the  Absolute,  the  specialists  of  the  spiritual  life. 

The  historic  limits  within  which  I  have  conducted  my 
investigation  into  the  character  of  this  "  life "  extend, 
roughly  speaking,  from  the  time  of  Christ  to  the  end  of 
the  fourth  century;  though — since  the  mode  of  demonstra 
tion  adopted  is  of  necessity  largely  comparative — persons 
and  events  outside  these  boundaries  have  been  freely  used 
for  illustrative  purposes.  The  three  main  sections  of  the 
book  discuss,  first  the  mystical  and  psychological  aspect 
of  the  life  and  teachings  of  Christ,  as  described  in  the 
Synoptic  gospels,  then  that  of  St.  Paul,  then  the 
mysticism  of  the  Fourth  Evangelist :  the  three  outstand 
ing  personalities  of  the  New  Testament.  By  the  three 
groups  of  documents  through  which  these  personalities 
are  revealed  to  us  the  principles  of  Christian  mysticism 
were  fixed,  its  psychological  imperatives  demonstrated. 
The  lives  of  later  mystics  merely  repeat,  and  seldom  in 
perfection,  the  pattern  curve  which  is  there  laid  down. 

The  succeeding  section,  which  deals  with  three  of  the 
special  forms  taken  by  the  mystical  impulse  in  the  early 
Church,  and  with  a  great  but  neglected  mystic  through 
whom  that  impulse  passed,  is  but  a  slight  sketch  of  a  great 
subject,  to  which  I  hope  to  return.  It  is  placed  here 
in  the  hope  that  it  may  help  the  inexperienced  student  to 
discern  some  of  the  links — not  always  obvious — which 


PREFACE  xi 

connect  the  superb  mysticism  of  primitive  Christianity 
with  its  better  known  developments  in  the  mediaeval 
world.  I  end  with  a  study  of  the  liturgy  of  the  Mass: 
the  characteristic  art-form  in  which  the  mystical  con 
sciousness  of  Christendom  has  expressed  itself. 

Biblical  quotations  have  been  made,  where  possible, 
from  the  Authorized  Version :  the  Revision  being  used 
only  where  it  gives  additional  clearness.  In  many  cases, 
however,  neither  version  seemed  to  bring  home  to  the 
modern  reader  the  exact  meaning  or  living  quality  of  the 
original;  and  here  I  have  used  Weymouth's  literal 
"  New  Testament  in  Modern  Speech."  References  to 
some  of  the  larger  works  of  Eucken,  Harnack,  Deissmann, 
and  Jiilicher,  are  to  the  English  translations,  the  latest 
edition  of  the  German  not  being  accessible  to  me. 

Such  as  it  is,  this  book  necessarily  owes  much  to  the 
help,  advice,  and  criticisms  of  others,  more  competent 
than  I  in  the  great  subjects  of  which  it  ventures  to  treat : 
friends,  fellow  students,  reviewers,  and  correspondents. 
Not  all  of  these  will  allow  a  public  expression  of  my 
gratitude :  I  can  but  offer  them,  collectively,  my  heartiest 
thanks  for  many  and  invaluable  services.  But  amongst 
those  to  whom  I  am  specially  indebted  for  skilled  and 
generous  help  in  various  departments,  I  should  like  to 
name  here  Mr.  W.  Scott  Palmer,  Miss  Ethel  Barker, 
Miss  Margaret  Robinson,  Mr.  H.  Stuart  Moore,  F.S.A., 
and  Mr.  David  Inward;  and  take  this  opportunity  of 
expressing  to  them  my  great  gratitude  for  their  kindness. 

A  considerable  part  of  the  chapter  entitled  "  St.  Paul 
and  the  Mystic  Way"  has  already  appeared  in  The 
Contemporary  Review.  It  is  now  reprinted  by  kind 
permission  of  the  Editor. 

E.  a. 

Candlemas,  1013* 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

PREFACE vii 

I    MYSTICISM  AND  HUMAN  LIFE 

I  The  Instinct  for  Transcendence 3 

II  The  Quest  of  a  Thoroughfare .                          ...  14 

III  The  Finding  of  the  Thoroughfare    .         .         .         .  35 

IV  The  Mystic  Way 47 

V    The  Christian  Mystic 58 

II     MYSTICISM  AND  CHRISTOLOGY 

I     The  Synoptic  Record       ...*>...  73 

II    The  Baptism  and  Temptation 83 

III  The  Illuminated  Life 96 

IV  The  Way  of  Sorrow 124 

V    The  Deified  Life      ........  143 

III    ST.  PAUL  AND  THE  MYSTIC  WAY 

I    The  Growth  of  the  New  Man         .....  157 

II  The  Laws  of  the  New  Life 193 

IV    THE  JOHANNINE  MYSTIC 

I    A  Gospel  of  Experience  .        .        .        .        .        .        .213 

II    The  Logos-life  in  Voice  and  Vision         .        .        .        .221 

III  The  Mystic  Way  in  the  Fourth  Gospel  .        .        .        .241 

V    THE  MYSTIC  LIFE  IN  THE  EARLY  CHURCH 

I    The  Age  of  Enthusiasm 261 

II    Alexandria  and  the  Art  of  Contemplation        .        .        .  278 

III  The  Monastic  Ideal          ...                 ...  303 

IV  A  Mystic  of  the  Desert 315 

xiii 


xiv  CONTENTS 


CHAP. 


VI    THE  WITNESS  OF  THE  LITURGY 

I     The  Outer  Mystery          .....  .     333 

II    The  Inner  Mystery  .......     351 

LIST  OF  AUTHORITIES  CITED  .......    373 

TABLE  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT  QUOTATIONS  .       ,       .       .383 
INDEX  .,,,*..,,„,.    387 


CHAPTER  I 
MYSTICISM   AND    HUMAN    LIFE 

".  .  .  Made  of  chance  and  all  a  labouring  strife, 

We  go  charged  with  a  strong  flame ; 
For  as  a  language  Love  hath  seized  on  life 
His  burning  heart  to  story. 

Yea,  Love,  we  are  thine,  the  liturgy  of  thee, 

Thy  thought's  golden  and  glad  name, 
The  mortal  conscience  of  immortal  glee, 
Love's  zeal  in  Love's  own  glory." 

(LASCELLES  ABERCROMBIE, 
Emblems  of  Love?) 

"  Change  is  the  nursery 
Of  music,  joy,  life,  and  eternity." 

(JOHN  DONNE.; 


THE    INSTINCT    FOR    TRANSCENDENCE 

FOR  nineteen  hundred  years  there  has  been  present  in 
the  world  a  definite  variation  of  human  life,  the  true 
significance  of  which  man,  as  a  whole,  has  been  slow  to 
understand.  With  anxious  intelligence  he  has  classified 
and  divided  those  kinds  of  life  which  he  calls  animal  and 
vegetable,  according  to  many  systems  ;  all  useful,  all 
artificial,  none  final  or  exact.  But  when  it  comes  to  the 
indexing  of  his  own  race,  the  discernment  of  its  veritable 
characteristics,  he  seems  unable  to  find  any  better  basis  of 
classification  than  racial  groupings  governed  by  measure 
ments  of  the  skull  and  coloration  of  the  skin. 

It  will  hardly  be  contended  that  life  exhibits  to  us 
anything  of  her  meaning  or  her  inwardness  in  such  varia 
tions  as  these;  mere  symptoms  and  results  as  they  are  of 
the  lower  aspects  of  her  everlasting  struggle  for  expression, 
of  spirit's  efforts  to  penetrate  matter  and  combine  with  it, 
to  get  and  keep  a  foothold  upon  the  physical  plane.  Life 
seen  as  a  whole — at  least  as  manifested  on  our  particular 
speck  of  stellar  dust — appears  to  be  one  great  stream  of 
Becoming,  the  mutual  thrust  and  effort,  the  perpetual 
interpenetration  of  the  two  forms  under  which  Reality 
is  known  to  us :  the  inelastic,  tangible  somewhat  called 
matter,  the  free,  creative,  impalpable  somewhat  called 
spirit.  This  struggle  is  one  huge  indivisible  act — "  from 
bottom  to  top  of  the  organised  world  one  great  continuous 
B  2  * 


4  THE   MYSTIC  WAY 

effort "  1 — from  the  emergence  of  the  amoeba  to  the  final 
flowering  of  human  consciousness;  and  it  is  to  genuinely 
new  combinations  and  reactions  of  the  two  powers 
involved  in  it  that  we  must  look,  if  we  would  discern 
the  "  meaning,"  the  central  reality  of  that  amazing  mystery 
which  we  so  easily  accept  as  "  life." 

Throughout  the  whole  course  of  this  struggle  we  observe 
on  the  side  of  spirit — or,  if  you  like  it  better,  on  the 
psychic  side  of  life — an  unmistakable  instinct  for  tran 
scendence :  "an  internal  push,  which  has  carried  life  by 
more  and  more  complex  forms  to  higher  and  higher 
destinies." 2  The  greater  the  vitality,  the  higher  the 
type,  the  more  obvious  becomes  the  fact  that  it  is  in  via. 
Life  appears  unwilling  merely  to  make  itself  at  home  in 
the  material  universe  ;  determined  rather  to  use  that 
material  universe  in  its  persistent  and  creative  effort 
towards  the  discovery  or  acquirement  of  something  else, 
of  "  a  new  kind  of  reality  over  against  all  mere  nature."  3 
All  its  proceedings  seem  to  support  the  strange  declaration 
of  the  Fourth  Evangelist :  "  it  is  not  yet  made  manifest 
what  we  shall  be." 4  It  seems  called  to  some  victory 
beyond  the  sphere  that  we  call  physical;  feels  within  itself 
cravings  and  intuitions  which  that  physical  environment 
cannot  satisfy,  a  capacity  for  freedom  which  its  own  highest 
physical  manifestations  are  unable  to  express.  Thus  it  is 
that  "  the  strongest  power  within  the  world  constitutes 
in  reality  the  conviction  of  an  over-world."  5 

In  our  moments  of  clear  sight,  those  moods  of  artistic 
innocence  which  are  freed  from  the  decomposing  action 
of  thought,  we  are  well  aware  of  this.  We  know  then  that 
the  wistful  eyes  of  Life  are  set  towards  a  vision  that  is 
also  a  Home — a  Home  from  which  news  can  reach  us 
now  and  again.  Thus  looking  out  from  ourselves  to  our 

1  Bergson,  Involution  creatrice,  p.  138.  a  Ibid.,  p.  in. 

8  Eucken,  The  Truth  of  Religion,  p.  87.  4  I  John  iii.  2  (R.V.). 

5  Eucken,  op.  cit.,  p.  4. 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN  LIFE          5 

Universe,  we  seem  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  something  behind 
that  great  pictorial  cosmos  of  "  suns  and  systems  of  suns," 
that  more  immediate  world  of  struggle,  growth,  decay, 
which  intellect  has  disentangled  from  the  Abyss.  We 
feel,  interpenetrating  and  supporting  us,  the  action  of  a 
surging,  creative  Spirit,  which  transcends  all  its  material 
manifestations :  something  which  the  least  dogmatic  may 
be  willing  to  describe  as  "  the  living  presence  of  an 
eternal  and  spiritual  Energy."  3  An  Immanent  Thought 
in  ceaseless  development  is  then  discerned  by  us  as  the 
Reality  manifested  in  all  existence :  an  artistic  inspiration 
which,  like  the  little  inspiration  of  men,  moulds  matter 
and  yet  is  conditioned  by  it.  Piercing  its  way  to  the  sur 
face  of  things,  engaged,  as  it  seems  to  us,  in  a  struggle  for 
expression,  it  yet  transcends  that  which  it  inhabits.  It  is 
a  Becoming,  yet  a  Being,  a  Growth,  yet  a  Consummation  : 
the  very  substance  of  Eternity  supporting  and  making 
actual  the  process  of  Time.  In  such  hours  of  lucidity  we 
sec,  in  fact,  the  faint  outline  of  the  great  paradox  of  Deity; 
as  it  has  been  perceived  by  the  mystics  of  every  age. 

"  For  Thou,"  said  Augustine,  speaking  for  all  of  them, 
"  art  nothing  else  than  supreme  Being,  supreme  Life.  For 
Thou  art  the  highest  and  changest  not,  nor  does  To-day 
run  out  its  hours  in  Thee ;  and  yet  in  Thee  its  hours  run 
out,  for  in  Thee  is  every  moment  of  time."  2 

So  far  as  our  small  knowledge  reaches,  man  seems  to 
be  Life's  best  effort  towards  the  exhibition  of  that  in 
dwelling  Spirit's  meaning  and  power.  In  him  her  imper 
fection  and  her  restlessness — the  groaning  and  travailing 
of  creation — are  all  too  clearly  expressed :  yet  in  spite,  or 
because,  of  this,  the  Immanent  Thought  has  found  in 
human  consciousness  its  least  faulty  thoroughfare. 

"  Man,  swinging-wicket  set 

Between 
The  unseen  and  the  seen" — 

1  Eucken,  The  'Truth  of  Religion,  p.  4.         *  Aug.,  Conf.,  Bk.  I.  cap.  6. 


6  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

appears  to  be  the  gate  through  which  the  elan  'vital  must 
pass  towards  the  fulfilment  of  its  highest  destinies;  for 
in  him  the  creative  spark  attains  consciousness  of  those 
destinies.  Here  it  no  longer  sleeps  or  dreams,  but  knows. 
Hence  he  is  able  to  link  spirit  immanent  with  spirit  tran 
scendent.  Whilst  all  Life's  other  creations  have  tended  to 
adapt  themselves  more  or  less  perfectly  to  the  physical, 
man  tends  to  adapt  himself  to  something  else.  A  divided 
aim  is  expressed  in  him :  he  hovers  uncertainly  between 
two  worlds.  He  is  "  in  this  world  like  a  balance,"  says 
Boehme.1  The  "  holy  spark  of  the  divine  nature  within 
him,"  says  Law,  "  has  a  natural,  strong,  and  almost 
infinite  tendency  or  reaching  after  that  eternal  Light  and 
Spirit  of  God  from  whence  it  came  forth.  It  came  forth 
from  God,  it  came  out  of  God,  it  partaketh  of  the  divine 
nature,  and  therefore  it  is  always  in  a  state  of  tendency 
and  return  to  God."  2  Here,  in  fact,  Life's  instinct  for 
transcendence  breaks  through  at  last :  "  Man  is  the 
meeting-point  of  various  stages  of  Reality."3 

If  this  be  so,  the  spiritual  evolution  of  humanity,  the 
unfolding  of  its  tendency  towards  the  Transcendental 
Order,  becomes  as  much  a  part  of  biology  as  the  evolu 
tion  of  its  stomach  or  its  sense.  In  vain  for  theology  to 
set  this  apart  as  alone  the  work  of  "  grace."  The  action 
of  "grace,"  the  spirit  of  love  leading  life  to  its  highest 
expression,  is  continuous  from  the  first  travail  of  creation 
even  until  now. 

As  the  appearance,  then,  of  man  the  tool-making  animal 
marks  a  true  stage  in  the  history  of  life,  so  the  appearance 
of  man  the  consciously  spiritual  animal  must  mark  a 
genuine  advance  in  the  race,  and  must  rank  as  its  most 
significant  achievement.  It  is  not  to  be  labelled  "  super 
natural,"  and  ring-fenced,  examined,  admired,  or  criticised, 

1  The  Threefold  Life  of  Man,  cap.  5,  §  30. 

2  William  Law,  The  Spirit  of  Prayer. 

3  Eucken,  Der  Sinn  und  Wert  des  Lebens,  p.  121. 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN  LIFE         7 

apart  from  the  general  aspects  of  that  flux  in  which  man 
finds  himself  immersed;  as  we  ring-fence  and  consider  the 
little  patches  labelled  philosophy,  mathematics,  or  physical 
science,  forgetting  the  fertile  and  measureless  jungle 
whence  we  have  subtracted  these  conceptual  worlds.  Such 
a  process  deprives  it  of  its  deepest  meaning,  and  our 
selves  of  all  hope  of  understanding  its  relation  to  the 
whole. 

The  spiritual  adventures  of  man,  in  so  far  as  they 
possess  significance  and  reality,  are  incidents,  one  and  all, 
in  the  great  epic  of  spirit;  and  can  only  be  understood 
by  those  who  will  take  account  of  the  whole  drift  of  that 
incomplete  poem,  as  it  pours  without  ceasing  from  the 
Mind  of  God.  The  path  on  which  he  travels  "  towards 
the  Father's  heart "  is  the  path  on  which  all  creation  is 
set :  he  gathers  up  and  expresses  the  effort  and  longing 
of  the  Whole;  and  his  attainment  will  be  the  attainment 
of  all  Life.  "  In  such  a  province  as  this,"  says  Eucken, 
"  the  individual's  own  nature  is  not  isolated,  but  is  in 
separably  interwoven  with  the  whole  of  the  All,  and  turns 
to  this  source  for  its  own  life-content.  Thus  there  is  no 
depth  in  the  individual  portions  if  they  do  not  exist  in 
the  Whole,  if  they  are  not  able  here  to  unfold  them 
selves.  In  each  separate  point  a  struggle  for  the  Whole 
takes  place;  and  this  struggle  brings  the  Whole  into 
activity."  * 

Moreover,  the  meaning  and  intention  of  the  Poem,  the 
beauty  of  its  rhythmic  life,  far  exceeds  the  achievement 
and  the  beauty  of  any  one  episode — even  the  greatest. 
In  each  of  these  we  find  it  expressing  itself  with  the  help 
of  matter,  and  suffering  of  necessity  the  retarding  and 
coarsening  influence  of  a  medium  which  it  can  and  must 
use,  but  cannot  wholly  subdue.  That  which  Bergson  has 
said  of  the  effort  and  thrust  of  physical  life  appears  in 
history  as  yet  more  profoundly  true  of  the  life  of  spirit. 
1  Eucken,  'The  Truth  of  Religion,  p.  159. 


8  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

"  Of  ten  enough,  this  effort  turns  on  itself;  sometimes 
paralysed  by  contrary  forces,  sometimes  distracted  from 
that  which  it  should  do  by  that  which  it  does,  captured, 
as  it  were,  by  the  very  form  which  it  is  engaged  in 
assuming,  hypnotised  by  it  as  by  a  mirror.  Even  in  its 
most  perfect  works,  when  it  seems  to  have  triumphed 
both  over  external  and  innate  resistance,  it  is  at  the  mercy 
of  the  material  form  which  it  has  been  forced  to  assume. 
Each  of  us  may  experience  this  in  himself.  Our  freedom, 
in  the  very  movements  in  which  it  asserts  itself,  creates 
budding  habits  which  will  stifle  it,  if  it  does  not  renew 
itself  by  a  constant  effort.  Automatism  dogs  it.  The 
most  vital  thought  may  freeze  itself  in  the  formula  which 
expresses  it.  The  word  turns  against  the  idea.  The  letter 
kills  the  spirit. 

"  The  profound  cause  of  these  disharmonies  lies  in  an 
incurable  difference  of  rhythm.  Life  as  a  whole  is  move 
ment  itself :  the  particular  manifestations  of  life  accept 
this  movement  unwillingly,  and  constantly  lag  behind.  It 
ever  goes  forward :  they  tend  to  mark  time.  .  .  .  Like 
eddies  of  dust  raised  by  the  passing  wind,  living  things 
turn  back  upon  themselves,  borne  up  by  the  great  current 
of  Life."1 

We  ask  ourselves,  What  seems  to  be  the  aim  of  this 
"  great  current  of  life,"  this  wind  of  God  blowing  where 
it  lists,  in  these  its  freest,  least  material  manifestations? 
We  have  seen  that  it  has  a  tendency  to  transcendence : 
that,  hampered  yet  served  by  matter,  dogged  by  auto 
matism,  it  seeks  a  spiritual  sphere.  Yet  what  sphere? 
To  what  state  of  reality  would  it  adjust  itself?  What 
are  the  "  free  acts"  which  it  struggles  to  perform? 
"Where  lies  the  land  to  which  the  ship  would  go?  " 

To  address  such  a  question  to  our  intellects  is  to  invite 
failure  in  the  reply;  for  the  careful  mosaic  of  neatly-fitted 
conceptions  which  those  intellects  will  offer  us  in  return 
1  Bergson,  U  Evolution  creatrice^  pp.  138,  139. 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN   LIFE          9 

will  have  none  of  the  peculiar  qualities  of  life :  it  will 
be  but  a  "  practical  simplification  of  reality  "  1  made  by 
that  well-trained  sorting-machine  in  the  interests  of  our 
daily  needs.  Only  by  direct  contact  with  life  in  its 
wholeness  can  we  hope  to  discern  its  drift,  to  feel  the 
pulsations  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  crystallising 
tendencies  of  thought  and  attained  an  immediate  if 
imperfect  communion  with  Reality — "  that  race  of  divine 
men  who  through  a  more  excellent  power  and  with 
piercing  eyes  acutely  perceive  the  supernal  light "  2 — 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. 
Thanks  to  their  disinterested  attitude  towards  life,  the 
fresh  note  of  adoration  which  is  struck  in  them  by  the 
impact  of  Beauty  or  of  Truth,  these  do  not  wear  the 
mental  blinkers  which  keep  the  attention  of  the  average 
man  focussed  on  one  narrow,  useful  path.  Hence  they 
are  capable — as  the  average  man  is  not — of  acts  of  pure 
perception,  of  an  enormous  dilatation  of  consciousness, 
in  which  they  appear  to  enter  into  immediate  communion 
with  some  aspect  of  Reality. 

The  greater,  then,  man's  mental  detachment  from  the 
mere  struggle  to  live,  which  forces  him  to  select,  label  and 
dwell  upon  the  useful  aspects  of  things,  the  more  chance 
there  is  that  we  may  obtain  from  him  some  account  of 
the  meaning  of  that  struggle,  and  the  aim  of  the  Spirit 
of  Life.  "Were  this  detachment  complete,"  says 
Bergson;  "did  the  soul  no  longer  cleave  to  action 
by  any  of  its  perceptions,  it  would  be  the  soul  of  an  artist 
such  as  the  world  has  never  yet  seen.  It  would  excel 
alike  in  every  art  at  the  same  time;  or  rather,  it  would 

1  Bergson,  Le  Rire,  p.  155.  *  Plotinus,  Ennead,  V.  n. 


10  THE  MYSTIC  WAY 

fuse  them  all  into  one.     It  would  perceive  all  things  in 
their  native  purity."  * 

In  one  rare  class  of  men,  and  that  alone,  it  seems 
as  though  this  detachment  were  indeed  complete.  We 
have  in  those  great  mystics  for  whom  "will  and  vision 
have  been  one "  the  perfect  development  of  the  artist 
type.  These  have  carried  the  passionate  art  of  contempla 
tion  to  that  consummation  in  which  the  mentis  dilatatio 
of  psychology  slips  the  leash  of  matter  to  become  the 
mentis  alienatio  of  the  soul;  and  have  expressed  the  result 
of  their  intuitions  in  the  actual  stuff  of  life.  Hence  there 
is  justice  in  their  claim  to  "  perceive  all  things  in  their 
native  purity";  or,  as  they  declare  in  lovelier  language, 
"  all  creatures  in  God  and  God  in  all  creatures."  2 

According  to  the  universal  testimony  of  such  mystics, 
the  drift  of  life,  the  effort  of  that  Creative  Seed  within 
the  world,  is  to  establish  itself  in  Eternity :  in  Boehme's 
words,  to  "  hide  itself  within  the  Heart  of  God  "  :  3  to 
attain,  in  pure  mystic  language,  "  union  with  the 
Absolute."  This  is  its  "  increasing  purpose,"  to  this 
it  is  in  via.  All  the  degrees  of  its  development — all  the 
inflorescences  of  beauty,  skill  and  strength — are  mile 
stones,  by-paths,  short  cuts,  false  starts  on  this  one  way. 
It  tends  to  the  actualisation  of  a  spiritual  existence  already 
intuitively  known :  to  find  its  way  to  a  Country,  "  non 
tantum  cernandam  sed  et  inhabitandam,"  4  which  the  very 
constitution  of  its  being  makes  a  promised  land. 

"  Movement  itself,"  this  spirit  life  of  man  has  tried, 
as  we  might  expect,  many  paths  towards  that  union 
with  the  Real,  that  transcendence  which  it  seeks.  All 
through  the  history  of  humanity  we  find  it  experimenting 
here  and  there,  sending  out  exploring  tentacles  into  the 

1  Bergson,  Le  Rire,  p.  158. 

2  Meister  Eckhart,  in  Wackernagel,  Altdeutsches  Lesebuch,  p.  891. 

3  Aurora,  Eng.  trans.  (1784  edition),  p.  237. 

4  Aug.,  Conf.,  Bk.  VII.  cap.  20. 


MYSTICISM  AND  HUMAN  LIFE         11 

unseen.  But  life  has  only  one  way  of  attaining  any  stage 
or  state :  she  must  grow  to  it.  Hence  the  history  of  the 
spirit  is  for  us  the  history  of  a  growth.  Here  we  see,  in 
fact,  creative  evolution  at  work ;  engaged  in  the  production 
of  species  as  sharply  marked  off  from  normal  humanity 
as  "  normal "  humanity  supposes  itself  to  be  marked 
off  from  the  higher  apes.  The  elan  vital  here  takes  a  new 
direction,  producing  profound  modifications  which, 
though  they  are  for  the  most  part  psychical  rather  than 
physical,  yet  also  entail  a  turning  of  the  physical  machinery 
of  thought  and  perception  to  fresh  uses — a  cutting  of 
fresh  paths  of  discharge,  a  modification  of  the  normal 
human  balance  of  intuition  and  intelligence. 

The  soul,  says  a  great  psychologist,  is  no  more  absolute 
and  unchangeable  than  the  body.  "  It,  too,  is  a  mobilised 
and  moving  equilibrium.  Much  once  central  is  now 
lapsed,  submerged,  instinctive,  or  even  reflex,  and  much 
once  latent  and  budding  is  now  potent  and  in  the  focus 
of  consciousness  for  our  multiplex,  compounded  and 
recompounded  personality."  1  We  know  that  this  soul, 
this  total  psychic  life  of  man,  is  something  much  greater 
than  the  little  patch  of  consciousness  which  most  of  us 
idly  identify  with  "  ourselves."  It  is  like  a  sword — the 
"  sword  of  the  spirit  " — only  the  point  of  which  pene 
trates  matter,  sets  up  relations  with  it,  and  cuts  the  path 
through  which  the  whole  of  life  shall  move.  But  behind 
that  point  of  conscious  mental  activity  is  the  whole  weight 
and  thrust  of  the  unseen  blade :  that  blade  which  is 
weapon  and  warrior  in  one.  Long  ages  of  evolution  have 
tempered  the  point  to  the  work  demanded  of  it  by  daily 
life.  In  its  ceaseless  onward  push  it  cuts  in  one  direction 
only :  through  that  concrete  "  world  of  things  "  in  which 
man  finds  himself,  and  with  which  he  is  forced  to  deal. 
The  brain,  through  which  it  acts,  with  which,  as  it  were, 
its  living  point  is  shod,  closes  it  in,  limits  and  defines 
1  Stanley  Hall,  Adolescence,  Vol.  II.  p.  58. 


12  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

its  operation :  is  on  one  hand  a  tool,  on  the  other  a  screen. 
Had  our  development  taken  another  path  than  that  which 
we  know  and  so  easily  accept,  then  much  now  latent  might 
have  budded,  much  now  patent  might  have  lapsed,  and  the 
matter  of  the  brain,  amenable  to  the  creative  touch  of  life, 
would  have  become  the  medium  by  which  we  orientated 
ourselves  to  another  world,  perceived  and  expressed  another 
order  of  reality,  now — and  perhaps  for  ever — unknown. 

In  the  mystics  we  seem  to  have  a  fortunate  variation 
of  the  race,  in  which  just  this  thing  has  come  about. 
Under  the  spur  of  their  vivid  faculty  of  intuition  they 
" gather  up  all  their  being  and  thrust  it  forward" — the 
whole  personality,  not  its  sharp,  intellectual  tip  alone— 
on  a  new,  free  path.  Hence  it  is  that  they  live  and  move 
in  worlds  to  us  unrealised;  see  other  aspects  of  the  many- 
levelled,  many-coloured  world  of  Reality.  Living  with 
an  intensity  which  is  beyond  the  scope  of  "  normal  "  men, 
deeper  and  deeper  layers  of  existence  are  revealed  to  them. 
As  a  result,  we  may  say  of  them  that  which  Eucken  has 
said  of  the  founders  of  the  great  historical  religions— 

"Nothing  gives  the  presence  of  an  over-world  within 
the  human  circle  more  convincing  energy  than  the 
unswerving  constancy  with  which  such  personalities  are 
rooted  in  the  Divine;  than  the  manner  in  which  they  are 
completely  rilled  by  the  thought  of  this  one  relation;  and 
than  the  simplicity  and  nearness  which  the  great  mystery 
has  acquired  for  them.  Hearts  have  never  been  won  and 
minds  have  never  been  swayed  without  the  presence  of 
a  regal  imagination  which  understands  how  to  win  visible 
forms  from  an  unseen  world  and  to  penetrate  through  all 
the  multiplicity  of  things  into  a  kingdom  of  fuller  life. 
Nothing  so  elevated  above  the  ordinary  everyday  exist 
ence  is  to  be  found  as  this,  and  nothing  has  governed 
in  so  compelling  a  manner  the  hearts  of  men  as  such  a 
secure  growth  and  such  a  presence  of  a  new  world."  1 
1  Tbt  Truth  of  Religion,  p.  8. 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN  LIFE         13 

Thus  it  is  that  when  Angela  of  Foligno  says,  "  I  had 
comprehension  of  the  whole  world,  both  here  and  beyond 
the  sea,  and  the  Abyss  and  all  things  else;  and  therein  I 
beheld  naught  save  the  divine  power  in  a  manner  which 
is  verily  indescribable,  so  that  through  greatness  of 
marvelling  the  soul  cried  with  a  loud  voice,  saying,  '  This 
whole  world  is  full  of  God  '  " l — when  we  read  this,  an 
intuition  deep  within  us  replies  that  it  can  here  recognise 
the  accent  of  truth.  Again,  when  St.  Augustine  makes 
the  confession — so  irrational  from  the  point  of  view  of 
common  sense — "Thou  hast  made  us  for  Thyself,  and 
our  hearts  shall  have  no  rest  apart  from  Thee,"  2  that 
same  remorseless  echo  sounds  within  the  soul.  Though 
we  may  live  at  levels  far  removed  from  those  at  which 
such  immediacy  of  perception  becomes  possible  for  our 
consciousness,  yet  we  understand  the  language  of  those 
who  cry  to  us  from  the  heights.  The  germ  of  their 
transcendent  being  is  latent  in  us,  for  "  whatsoever  God 
is  in  His  Nature,  the  spirit  of  man  is  in  itself."  3  There 
are  no  breaks  in  the  World  of  Becoming;  Life,  though 
it  be  instinct  with  spontaneity,  though  it  cut  new  paths 
for  its  branching  stream  in  fresh,  unimaginable  directions, 
behave  in  a  thousand  incalculable  ways,  ever  remains  one. 
As  the  past  history  of  the  whole  is  present  in  each 
streamlet,  so  in  each  streamlet  a  capacity  for  the  ocean 
lurks.  "  I  am  the  living  water,"  says  Life  :  "  Let  those 
who  thirst  for  knowledge  come  to  me  and  drink." 

1  B.  Angelae  de  Fulginio,  Fisionum  et  Instructionum  Liber,  cap.  22. 

*  Aug.,  Conf.,  Bk.  I.  cap.  I. 

3  Boehme,  7bt  Threefold  Life  of  Man,  cap.  5,  §  90. 


II 

THE    QUEST   OF    A    THOROUGHFARE 

"  THE  essence  of  a  tendency,"  says  Bergson,  in  one 
of  his  sudden  and  suggestive  images,  "  is  to  develop  like 
a  sheaf,  creating  by  the  very  fact  of  its  growth  divergent 
directions  amongst  which  its  impulse  is  shared."  * 

The  spiritual  tendency  in  man — or  perhaps  it  were 
better  to  say  the  spiritual  tendency  which  appears  to  be 
inherent  in  the  very  being  of  all  life — has  been  no  excep 
tion  to  this  rule.  Spreading  sheaf-like,  it  has  emerged 
in  what  seems  at  first  sight  to  be  a  myriad  diverse  forms. 
In  its  origin  a  vague  sense  of  direction,  a  dim  unformu- 
lated  desire  for  something  other  than  the  "given" 
world  of  sense,  and  in  its  later  growths  a  conscious, 
anxious  seeking,  its  history  forms,  of  course,  the  greater 
part  of  the  history  of  religion,  philosophy  and  magic. 
Confused  though  it  be  with  elements  of  fear,  and  of 
self-interest,  degraded  into  servitude  to  the  physical  will- 
to-live,  yet  all  veritable  expressions  of  this  tendency,  this 
passion  for  the  Absolute  and  the  Eternal,  have  as  their 
foundation  something  which  we  may  rightly  call  mystical. 
We  find  them  or  their  traces  wherever  man  has  emerged 
from  that  state  of  exclusive  attention  to  the  struggle  for 
life  which  limits  his  consciousness  to  the  physical  sphere. 
Then  at  once  the  attention  which  had  been  screwed  down 
to  the  concrete  business  of  existence  dilates,  and  sets  off 
in  one  of  a  million  directions  upon  some  adventure  of 
the  soul. 

1  Utvolution  crtatrice,  p.  108. 
14 


MYSTICISM  AND  HUMAN  LIFE         15 

There  are  certain  characteristics  which  seem  common 
to  all  such  adventures.  Their  point  of  departure  is  the 
same:  the  desire  of  spirit  for  the  spiritual,  the  soul's 
hunger  for  its  home.  Their  object  is  the  same:  the 
attainment  of  that  home,  the  achievement  of  Reality, 
union  with  God.  Their  very  definitions  of  that  God 
have  much  in  common;  and  behind  superficial  differences 
disclose  the  effort  of  an  exalted  intuition  to  describe  one 
indescribable  Fact.  He  is,  says  the  ancient  Hindu,  "  One 
Eternal  Thinker,  thinking  non-eternal  thoughts  ;  who, 
though  One,  fulfils  the  desires  of  many.  The  wise  who 
perceive  Him  within  their  self,  to  them  belongs  eternal 
peace."  And  again,  "They  who  see  but  One  in  all  the 
changing  manifoldness  of  this  universe,  unto  them 
belongs  eternal  truth :  unto  none  else,  unto  none  else."3 
"  Having  hearkened  not  unto  me  but  unto  the  Logos," 
says  the  Greek,  "it  is  wise  to  confess  that  all  things  are 
One." 2  "  One  God  and  Father  of  all,  who  is  above  all 
and  through  all  and  in  you  all,"  says  the  Christian.3 
"  For,  as  it  is  said,  God  is  not  external  to  any  one," 
says  the  Alexandrian  Neoplatonist  in  words  which  seem 
an  echo  of  St.  Paul,  "  but  He  is  present  with  all  things, 
though  they  are  ignorant  that  He  is  so."  *  So  the  Sufi 
poet — 

"  I  have  put  duality  away,  I  have  seen  that  the  two  worlds  are  one; 
One  I  seek,  One  I  know,  One  I  see,  One  I  call. 
He  is  the  first,  He  is  the  last,  He  is  the  outward,  He  is  the  inward."  5 

So,  too,  the  great  Indian  mystic  of  our  own  day,  who 
seems  to  have  caught  and  synthetised  the  vision  and 
ardour  of  Eastern  and  Western  faiths — 

"  Life  of  my  life,  I  shall  ever  try  to  keep  my  body  pure,  knowing  that 
thy  living  touch  is  upon  all  my  limbs  .  .  . 

1  Katha  Upanishad.  *  Heracleitus  :  Fragments. 

8  Ephesians  iv.  6.  4  Plotinus,  Ennead,  VI.  9. 

5  Jalalu  'ddin,  Divan  (Nicholson's  trans.),  p.  127. 


16  THE  MYSTIC  WAY 

Thou  art  the  sky  and  thou  art  the  nest  as  well  .  .  . 
Hidden  in  the  heart  of  things  thou  art  nourishing  seeds  into  sprouts, 
buds  into  blossoms,  and  ripening  flowers  into  fruitfulness."  l 

Yet,  when  we  pass  from  the  definition  of  Divine  Reality 
to  discussion  of  the  road  on  which  man's  spirit  shall  travel 
thereto,  we  find  that  in  spite  of  identity  of  aim — in  spite, 
too,  of  certain  remarkable  similarities  in  method- 
divergence  of  direction  soon  begins  to  show  itself. 

As  physical  life,  notwithstanding  its  countless 
varieties,  the  countless  paths  along  which  it  has  cut  its 
way,  yet  shows  one  great  line  of  cleavage,  so  that  each 
of  those  infinite  varieties  has  the  character  of  one  or 
other  of  two  divergent  forms — is,  as  we  say,  "animal" 
or  "vegetable" — so,  in  the  last  resort,  we  find  that  the 
many  paths  along  which  spirit  has  tried  to  force  an 
entrance  into  Reality  can  be  classed,  according  to  their 
tendencies,  in  two  great  families.  We  must,  however, 
say  of  them,  as  Bergson  has  said  of  animal  and  vegetable 
life,  that  "Every  effort  to  provide  a  rigorous  definition 
of  these  two  kingdoms  has  always  failed.  There  is  not 
one  single  property  of  vegetable  life  which  has  not  been 
found,  to  a  certain  degree,  in  certain  animals;  not  one 
single  characteristic  trait  of  the  animal  which  has  not 
been  observed  in  certain  species  or  at  certain  epochs  of 
the  vegetable  world."  None  the  less,  in  each  case  these 
tendencies  do  represent  "  divergent  directions  of  an 
activity  that  split  up  as  it  grew.  The  difference  between 
them  is  not  a  difference  or  intensity,  nor  more  generally 
of  degree,  but  of  nature."  ..."  Here  the  world  of 
plants  with  its  fixity  and  insensibility ;  there  the  animals 
with  their  mobility  and  consciousness."2 

As  the  plant  world  has  sacrificed  one  great  power 
inherent  in  living  things — mobility — in  order  that  it  may 
attain  to  a  more  intense  development  in  other  directions, 

1  Rabindranath  Tagore,  Gitanjali,  4,  67,  8 1. 

2  L' Evolution  crcatrice,  pp.  115,  146,  123. 


MYSTICISM  AND  HUMAN  LIFE        17 

so  one  great  branch  of  the  spreading  sheaf  of  spirit  tends 
to  forego  one  aspect  of  life's  heritage,  in  order  that  it 
may  participate  more  completely  in  that  other  aspect 
which  alone  it  accepts  as  real.  We  have  said  that  the 
paradox  of  Deity,  in  so  far  as  it  is  apprehended  by  human 
intuition  and  love,  appears  to  us  as  a  vast,  all-encompass 
ing,  all-penetrating  Reality,  which  is  both  transcendent 
and  immanent,  static  and  dynamic,  changeless  yet 
changeful,  ineffable  yet  personal,  "Eternal  Rest  and 
Eternal  Work"  in  respect  of  the  soul  and  of  the  per 
ceived  universe;  in  essence  the  still  and  unconditioned 
One,  in  action  the  unresting  and  conditioned  flux. 
"  Supreme  Being  and  Supreme  Life,"  said  Augustine. 
From  this  dual  manifestation  of  God,  which  demands 
for  its  full  apprehension  a  dual  movement  on  the  part 
of  man,  one  line  of  spiritual  life  selects  the  utterly  tran 
scendent  aspect — pure  Being — as  the  only  Reality,  the 
objective  towards  which  it  is  destined  to  return.  From 
the  rich  possibilities  of  human  nature  it  again  selects  one 
aspect — its  Being — as  real.  For  it,  the  true  Self  is  as 
unconditioned  as  the  Absolute;  it  does  not  struggle  for 
expression,  it  has  no  qualities,  it  merely  Is.  Hence  the 
soul  only  attains  to  reality  when  all  will  and  all  character 
have  been  eliminated.1  As  the  normal  man's  conscious 
ness  is  held  down,  by  his  attention  to  life,  to  the  narrow 
contemplation  of  the  concrete,  this  mystic's  spiritual  con 
sciousness  is  held  down  to  the  contemplation  of  an 
unconditioned  reality.  Refusing  all  else,  it  pours  itself 
out  in  a  single  state,  of  which  the  intensity  is  progressively 
enhanced  by  concentration,  by  the  cutting  off  of  all 
contacts  with  the  "  unreal "  world  of  things. 

This  proceeding  constitutes  that  Via  Negativa  which  is 

too  well  known  in  the  annals  of  mysticism :   the  attempt 

to  attain  Being  by  the  total  rejection  of  Becoming,  to 

perfect  Contemplation  by  the  refusal  of  Action.     Those 

1  Royce,  The  World  and  the  Individual,  Vol.  I.  p.  167. 


18  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

who  choose  this  road  to  transcendence  go  up  alone  to  meet 
God  on  the  mountain  ;  but  they  do  not  bring  back  any 
tidings  of  joy  for  the  race.  The  tendency  which  they 
represent  is,  of  course,  found  in  its  most  characteristic 
form  in  Hindu  mysticism  of  the  philosophic  type  ;  though 
pure — i.  e.  non-Christian — Neoplatonism,  and  the  exag 
gerated  forms  of  Quietism  which  have  troubled  the 
mystical  history  of  Europe,  belong  in  essence  to  the  same 
great  division  of  spiritual  life. 

As  the  fungi  were  called  by  Bergson  the  "  abortive 
children  of  the  vegetable  world,"  1  so  the  extreme  types 
produced  along  this  line  of  development  might  be  called 
the  abortive  children  of  the  spiritual  world.  Their 
different  varieties  are  "  so  many  blind  alleys  "  down  which 
Life  has  run  on  her  instinctive  quest  of  transcendence, 
only  to  find  an  impasse  where  she  looked  for  a  thorough 
fare.  If  we  wish  to  demonstrate  this,  we  need  but  look 
once  more  at  Life  in  its  wholeness — not  merely  natural, 
human,  or  intellectual  life,  but  the  whole  mighty  and 
indivisible  stream  of  which  these  things  are  manifesta 
tions,  the  totality  of  the  Flux — and  then  ask :  What 
relation  does  that  kind  of  life  which  is  the  ultimate  object 
of  pure  Indian,  or  even  of  Neoplatonic  mysticism,  bear 
to  this  totality?  Does  it  exhibit  the  character  of  life; 
does  it  carry  up  its  highest  powers  to  new  conquests? 
Does  it  grow,  create?  Can  it  be  called  "  movement 
itself "  ?  Does  it  tend  towards  the  production  of  free 
acts,  towards  ever-deepening  correspondence  with  rich 
and  varied  levels  of  reality? 

Consider  first  the  way  in  which  our  mental  life  proceeds. 

We  live  upon  the  physical  plane,  are  kept  in  touch 
with  the  outer  world,  by  means  of  that  faculty  in  us— 
not  always  consciously  exercised — which  we  call  our 
"  attention  to  life."  Attention  makes  the  bridge  between 
ourselves  and  that  "  somewhat "  not  ourselves,  which  we 
1  L 'Evolution  crtatrice,  p.  117. 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN  LIFE         19 

know  as  the  world  of  things.  A  rich,  thick  Universe, 
charged  like  a  Bank  Holiday  crowd  with  infinite  and 
unguessed  possibilities  of  sight,  sound  and  smell,  waits 
at  our  door;  and  waits  for  the  most  part  in  vain.  Atten 
tion  keeps  the  turnstile,  rejects  the  many  and  admits  the 
few.  The  direction  toward  which  the  turnstile  is  set 
conditions  the  aspect  of  the  world  which  we  are  to  know; 
the  pace  at  which  it  works  ensures  that  a  certain  number 
of  sense-impressions  shall  be  received  by  us,  deliver  their 
message,  and  set  up  responsive  movements  on  our  part. 
The  give-and-take  of  incoming  feeling  or  sense-impres 
sion,  and  outgoing  action  or  response — though  feeling, 
pure  perception,  has  passed  through  the  cerebral  sorting- 
house,  and  offers  us  only  a  selection  of  all  that  there  is 
to  feel — this,  broadly  speaking,  seems  to  be  the  process 
of  our  normal  mental  life,  in  so  far  as  it  consists  in  the 
maintenance  of  a  correspondence  with  the  physical  world.1 

So,  too,  with  the  life  of  spirit.  Though  lived  upon 
higher  levels,  it  is  not  further  removed  from  action  :  only 
the  form  of  its  action,  the  nature  of  its  correspondences, 
is  changed  with  that  change  of  rhythm  which  makes  us 
free  of  a  wider  universe.  Still  it  is  Life  that  is  at  work 
in  us;  and  Life,  though  here  she  seems  to  break  forth 
into  something  strangely  new,  exercising  to  the  full  her 
inherent  freedom  and  spontaneity,  remains  at  bottom  true 
to  her  own  methods.  Her  object  here  is  the  transcending 
of  the  merely  physical,  the  obtaining  of  a  foothold  in 
Eternity;  and  Attention,  Perception,  Response  must  still 
be  the  means  by  which  she  moves  towards  that  end. 

The  spiritual  life  of  man,  then,  if  it  be  a  real  life  lived, 
must  involve  not  only  a  deliberate  attentiveness  to  this 
aspect  of  Reality — not  only  the  reception  of  messages 
from  the  supernal  sphere — but  also  the  execution  of 
movements  in  response.  It  shall  be  the  soul  at  home 
in  the  spiritual  world,  swimming  in  the  "  Sea  Pacific " 
1  Compare  Bergson,  Matitre  et  mtmoire  (Eng.  trans.),  p.  178. 

C  2 


20  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

of  the  Godhead,1  moving  in  unison  with  its  tides;  not 
the  trained  and  clarified  consciousness  contemplating  a 
vision  of  "  That  which  Is  "  2  by  means  of  some  "  interior 
organ"  able  to  " receive  the  absolute  truth  of  the  tran 
scendental  world,  a  spiritual  faculty  which  cognises 
spiritual  objects."  3  Plainly  such  a  transcendence  involves 
a  total  growth  and  change  of  direction,  which  shall  make 
possible  of  accomplishment  the  new  responsive  move 
ments  of  the  soul.  The  spirit  is  "  touched  of  God,"  spurred 
to  a  new  quality  of  attention.  It  receives  a  message  from 
the  Transcendent,  and  moves,  is  changed,  in  response. 

This  receiving  of  something  given  on  the  part  of  the 
Spiritual,  and  the  giving  of  ourselves  back — this  divine 
osmosis  of  spirit  without  and  spirit  within — is  made 
possible  by  the  soul's  impassioned  attentiveness,  or  Love; 
the  primary  condition  of  our  spiritual  life.  The  vision 
of  Reality,  says  Plotinus,  is  the  work  of  one  who  is 
anxious  to  perceive  it;  who  is  possessed  by  an  "amatory 
passion "  which  "  causes  the  lover  to  rest  in  the  object 
of  his  love." 4  Such  love,  says  St.  Augustine,  is  the 
"weight  of  the  soul,"  5  the  spiritual  gravitation  which 
draws  all  things  to  their  place  in  God.  It  "  is  God,"  says 
the  author  of  The  Mirror  of  Simple  Souls:  demonstrates, 
that  is  to  say — since  we  can  only  "  behold  that  which 
we  are"  6 — the  interior  presence  of  a  Divine  Reality;  and 
man's  spirit  only  attains  reality  and  freedom  "by  con 
dition  of  Love."  7  Pure  love,  then,  which  is  tendency 
raised  to  its  highest  power  and  reinforced  by  passionate 
will,  an  ardent,  deliberate  attentiveness  to  a  Reality 

1  St.  Catherine  of  Siena,  Dialogo,  cap.  89. 

2  Aug.,  Conf.,  Bk.  VII.  cap.  17. 

3  Eckartshausen,  The  Cloud  upon  the  Sanctuary,  Letter  I. 

4  Plotinus,  Ennead,  VI.  9. 

'  Aug.,  Conf.,  Bk.  XIII.  cap.  9. 

6  Ruysbroeck,  De  Contemplation  (Hello,  p.  145). 

7  "  I  am  God,  says  Love ;  for  Love  is  God  and  God  is  Love.     And  this 
soul  is  God  by  condition  of  Love  "  (The  Mirror  of  Simple  Souls). 


MYSTICISM   AND   HUMAN   LIFE         21 

without — "  hidden  Bread  of  spirit,  mighty  Husband  of 
mind  "  1 — on  the  part  of  the  scrap  of  self-creative  Reality 
within;  this  is  the  only  driving  power  of  the  soul  on  its 
path  towards  the  Spiritual  Life.  It  is  the  mainspring  of 
all  its  responsive  acts,  its  growth  and  its  fecundity.  This 
is  the  fact  which  lies  at  the  root  of  all  activistic  mysticism. 

"  'Twere  better  that  the  spirit  which  wears  not  true  love  as  a  garment 
Had  not  been  :  its  being  is  but  shame. 
Be  thou  drunken  in  love,  for  love  is  all  that  exists."  2 

Thus  the  Sufi  mystic;  and  his  Christian  brother  answers, 
in  a  saying  of  which  few  can  hope  to  plumb  the  deeps, 
"He  that  loveth  not,  knoweth  not  God;  for  God  is 
love." 3 

We  shall  expect,  then,  that  life  going  forward  to  new 
levels  will  go  forward  in  a  spirit  or  love;  nor  can  a  con 
summation  in  which  such  love  is  transcended  have  any 
other  meaning  than  annihilation  for  human  conscious 
ness.  "  In  love,"  says  Aquinas,  "  the  whole  spiritual  life 
of  man  consists."  4  In  the  East,  however,  the  contem 
plative  and  world-renouncing  quest  of  the  Absolute,  the 
movement  from  Becoming  to  Being,  which  developed 
under  the  influence  of  Hindu  philosophy,  has  been  from 
the  first  divorced  from  the  warmly  vital  and  more  truly 
mystic,  outgoing  and  fruitful,  world-renewing  attitude  of 
Love.  The  two  movements  of  the  complete  spiritual 
life  have  here  been  dissociated  from  one  another;  with  a 
resulting  loss  of  wholeness  and  balance  in  each. 

The  search  for  transcendence,  as  we  see  it  in  orthodox 
Hinduism  and  Buddhism,  represents  in  its  general  ten 
dency,  not  a  movement  of  expansion,  not  the  generous 
industry  of  insatiable  love;  but  a  movement  of  withdrawal, 

1  Aug.,  Cm/.,  Bk.  I.  cap.  13. 

*  Jalalu  'ddin,  Divan  (Nicholson's  trans.),  p.  51. 

8  I  John  iv.  8. 

4  On  Perfection,  Opusculum  XVIII.  cap.  I. 


22  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

the  cultivation  of  an  exquisite  and  aristocratic  despair. 
Inspired  by  the  intellect  rather  than  by  the  heart,  the  great 
mystical  philosophy  of  the  Hindus  "  has  as  its  presupposi 
tion  a  strong  feeling  of  the  transitoriness  and  unreality  of 
existence."  1  It  demands  from  its  adepts,  as  a  condition 
of  their  attainment  of  God,  an  acknowledgment  of  the 
illusory  nature  of  the  Here-and-Now,  the  web  of  appear 
ance;  which,  though  sometimes  combined  with  a  belief  in 
Divine  Immanence,  robs  that  doctrine  of  all  practical 
bearing  on  diurnal  life. 

In  theory  orthodox  Hindu  religion  offers  three  paths 
to  its  disciples :  the  path  of  works — that  is  to  say,  not  the 
pursuit  of  virtue,  but  the  accurate  fulfilment  of  cere 
monial  obligations;  the  path  of  knowledge,  of  philosophic 
speculation — which  includes  in  its  higher  stages  the  trans 
cending  of  illusion,  the  "  mystical "  art  of  contemplating 
the  Being  of  God;  and  the  path  of  devotional  love,  or 
Bhakti.2  The  history  of  Bhakti  religion  is  a  curious  and 
significant  one.  It  arose  about  the  fourth  century  B.C., 
and  then  possessed  a  strongly  mystical  and  ethical  charac 
ter;  its  central  idea  being  the  impassioned  and  personal 
love  of  the  One  God,  who  was  called  by  His  worshippers 
"  the  Adorable,"  and  with  whom  they  believed  com 
munion  to  be  possible,  even  for  those  still  immersed  in 
the  temporal  world.  This  phase,  which  seems  to  represent 
a  true  outburst  of  natural  mysticism,  the  effort  of  life  to 
find  a  new  path  to  transcendence,  the  instinct  of  the  heart 
for  its  home  and  origin,  is  recorded  in  the  most  ancient 
parts  of  the  Bhagavad-gita.  "  Bhakti,"  however,  was  but 
one  of  Life's  "false  starts";  a  reaction  against  the  arid 
performances  of  the  religious  intellect,  a  premature  move 
ment  towards  levels  on  which  the  human  mind  was  still 
too  weak  to  dwell.  Thwarted  and  finally  captured  by  the 

1  Eucken,  The  Truth  of  Religion,  p.  7. 

•  Cf.  Hastings'  Dictionary  of  Religion   and  Ethics.   Vol.    II,   Article 
"  Bhakti  Marga." 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN  LIFE         23 

philosophising  tendency  of  Brahminism,  against  which  it 
was  in  origin  directed,  it  sank  to  a  static  and  intellectualis- 
ing  system  of  vaguely  pantheistic  piety. 

But  in  the  twelfth  and  fourteenth  centuries  the  deep- 
seated  instinct — the  profound  human  need — which  it  repre 
sents  again  broke  out  with  vigour.  As  if  in  revolt  against 
the  abstract  transcendentalism  of  the  philosophical  schools, 
a  wave  of  passionate  devotion,  demanding  as  its  object  a 
personal  and  attainable  God,  swept  over  the  land,  under 
the  influence  of  three  great  spiritual  teachers  and  their 
disciples.  Regarded  by  the  orthodox  Brahmins  as 
heretics,  these  reformers  split  off  from  the  main  body, 
and  formed  independent  sects  of  a  mystical  type;  which 
brought  back  into  prominence  the  original  and  long-lost 
idea  of  Bhakti,  as  a  communion  of  love  and  will  between 
the  human  spirit  and  an  attainable  and  personal  God.1 
From  them  descends  that  intensely  personal,  incarnational 
type  of  mystical  feeling  which  is  sometimes  called  "  Vaish- 
navite  religion,"  and  is  seen  in  its  purest  form  in  the 
poetry  of  Rabindranath  Tagore. 

The  really  mystical  element  in  the  teaching  of  these 
reformers  had,  however,  little  connection  with  native 
Hindu  Mysticism :  represented,  rather,  a  deliberate  oppo 
sition  to  it.  They  were  adventurers,  departing  from  the 
main  road  of  Brahmin  theology  in  search  of  more  abundant 
life;  of  closer  communion  with  the  substance  of  reality. 
The  first  of  them,  Ramanuja  (c.  1150),  had  been  brought 
up  in  immediate  contact  with  Indian  Christianity :  that 
ancient  Christian  church  of  Malabar  which  dates  from  the 
first  or  second  century  and  claims  to  have  been  founded 
by  the  Apostle  Thomas  himself.  It  is  probable  that  some 

1  The  fact  that  this  movement,  on  its  lower  and  popular  side,  gave 
support  to  the  most  erotic  and  least  desirable  aspects  of  the  Krishna  cult, 
ought  not  to  prejudice  our  judgment  of  its  higher  and  purer  aspect. 
The  wholesale  condemnation  of  a  faith  on  account  of  its  worst  by-products 
is  a  dangerous  principle  for  Christian  critics. 


24  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

of  the  new  inspiration  which  he  brought  to  the  antique 
and  moribund  science  of  the  Love  of  God  may  be  traced 
to  this  source.  An  uncompromising  monotheist,  he 
taught,  in  contradistinction  to  all  previous  theologians, 
the  thoroughly  foreign  doctrine  that  the  human  soul  is 
distinct  from  God,  and  that  the  "union"  which  is  its 
proper  end  is  not  an  annihilation,  but  a  satisfaction;  since 
it  retains  its  identity  and  separate  consciousness  even  when 
re-absorbed  in  Him — a  position  which  is  indistinguishable 
from  the  Christian  idea  of  the  Beatific  Vision.1 

By  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century  the  influence  of 
Ramanuja  had  faded.  Then  arose  the  great  Ramananda, 
and  his  greater  pupil,  the  weaver-poet  Kabir :  still  living 
forces  in  Indian  religion.  Under  the  influence  of  Rama- 

O 

nanda,  Bhakti — now  identified  with  the  "  incarnational " 
cult  of  Rama — was  transformed  into  a  system  which  has 
many  striking  correspondences  with  mystical  Christianity. 
Ramananda  was  familiar  with  the  Gospels  ;  and  his  life 
and  doctrine  are  full  of  deliberate  Christian  parallels. 
He  trained  and  sent  out  twelve  apostles,  and  taught  a 
Christian  system  of  ethics.  Like  Ramanuja,  he  insisted 
on  the  continued  separate  existence  of  the  soul  after  the 
consummation  of  its  union  with  the  Absolute  God.  Many 
of  the  doctrines  of  Sufiism  were  also  adopted  by  him, 
and  his  teaching  is  charged  with  the  ardent  personal 
emotion  which  we  find  in  the  Sufi  and  Christian  saints.2 
The  result  was  a  sort  of  cross-bred  mystical  religion  of 
Christian  feeling  on  a  basis  of  Hindu  theology,  which 
owed  its  driving  power  to  the  purity  and  enthusiasm  of 
the  soul  which  first  conceived  it.  To  this  type  of  Bhakti, 
which  expresses  itself  in  its  popular  form  in  a  personal 

1  Cf.  Oman,  The  Mystics,  Ascetics  and  Saints  of  India,  p.  116. 

2  The  influence  of  Sufiism  and  Hinduism  was  to  some  extent  mutual. 
There  seems  little  doubt  that  certain  aspects  of  the  Krishna  cult  provided 
the  model  for   many  of   the  favourite  Sufi  expressions  of   "spiritual 
love." 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN  LIFE         25 

devotion  to  the  God  Vishnu  under  one  or  other  of  his 
incarnations,  the  bulk  of  North  Indian  Hindus  still 
adhere;  but  it  can  hardly  be  claimed  as  evidence  of  the 
strength  and  splendour  of  true  Indian  mysticism. 

In  Ramananda's  disciple  Kabir,  poet  and  mystic,  a  great 
religious  genius  hardly  known  in  the  West,  the  Christian 
incarnational  element — dynamic  perfection  found  within 
the  Here-and-Now — appears  under  another  form.  Far  from 
encouraging  a  rejection  of  the  World  of  Becoming  in  order 
that  pure  Being  might  be  found,  Kabir — who  was  strongly 
influenced  by  Sufiism  and  shows  many  Christian  correspond 
ences — taught  that  man's  union  with  God,  the  conformity 
of  his  spirit  to  that  "rhythm  of  love  and  renunciation" 
which  sways  the  universe,  was  best  achieved  in  the  fret 
of  diurnal  existence.  He  praised  the  common  life  and 
strongly  discouraged  all  professional  asceticism,  all  negative 
contemplation.  Holding  that  the  Absolute  Godhead  was 
unknowable  save  by  intuitive  love,  he  found  the  Divine 
immanent  in  the  race  as  a  whole :  a  fragmentary  truth 
which  survives  in  the  sect  still  called  by  his  name. 

Thus  Brahminism  shows  a  perpetual  tendency,  on  the 
part  of  its  most  spiritual  members,  to  break  away  from 
the  negative  transcendentalism  which  is  its  inmost 
principle,  in  the  direction  of  a  more  human  and  fruitful 
reading  of  the  secret  of  life.  Even  of  those  who  have 
been  true  to  that  transcendentalism,  with  its  deliberate 
cultivation  of  the  ecstatic  consciousness,  its  solitary  and 
ineffable  experiences  of  the  Absolute,  some  of  the  greatest 
have  felt,  and  obeyed,  an  inconsistent  impulse  towards 
active  work  amongst  their  fellow-men;  so  true  is  it  that 
"  there  is  no  single  property  of  one  form  of  life  which  is 
not  found,  to  a  certain  degree,  in  the  other."  Unable  to 
solve  the  paradox  of  imago  e  cerchio,  the  tendency  towards 
the  real  and  eternal  which  is  inherent  in  Hinduism  splits 
into  two  streams,  representing  severally  the  search  for  a 
personal  and  an  impersonal  object  of  devotion — a  "way 


26  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

out "  in  the  direction  of  knowledge,  and  in  the  direction 
of  love. 

When  we  turn  to  Buddhism — particularly  that  esoteric 
Buddhism  of  which  the  mystical  quality  and  vast  superior 
ity  to  all  Western  religion  has  been  so  loudly  advertised  of 
recent  years — we  find  somewhat  similar  phenomena.  In 
essence  this  mysticism,  if  mysticism  it  can  be  called,  is 
definitely  self-regarding  and  definitely  negative.  It  is  a 
Way,  not  of  attainment,  but  of  escape.  The  "Noble 
Eightfold  Path "  of  high  moral  virtue  and  extreme 
detachment  on  which  its  disciples  are  set,  the  art  of 
contemplation  practised  by  its  higher  initiates,  are  both 
directed  towards  the  extinction  of  all  that  bears  the 
character  of  life;  that  which  its  Scriptures  call  the 
"  delusion  of  being  a  self."  The  strength  of  Buddhism 
lies  in  the  fact  that  personal  holiness  is  its  immediate 
aim  ;  but  this  is  not  sought  out  of  any  generous  motive 
of  self-donation,  any  longing  to  enter  more  deeply 
into  the  unspeakable  riches  of  the  universe,  any  passion 
for  God.  For  Buddhists  the  ultimate  fact  is  not  God,  but 
Law.  They  seek  the  elimination  of  selfhood  and  desire 
purely  as  a  means  of  transcending  "  Dukka " :  that  is 
to  say,  suffering,  pain,  misfortune,  unhappiness,  all  the 
illusions  and  distresses  of  conscious  existence.  Suffering 
is  felt  to  be  the  central  reality  of  such  conscious  exist 
ence  :  "all  things  are  impermanent  .  .  .  pain-engendering 
.  .  .  without  soul."  *  Therefore  the  Path  must  lead  to 
the  cessation  of  such  existence,  to  the  realm  of  simple 
Being,  Nirvana :  a  word  which  means  literally  "  the 
blowing  out  of  the  flame."  2  "  Just  this  have  I  taught 

1  Cf.  Mrs.  Rhys  Davids'  Buddhism  (Home  University  Library),  pp.  157 
et  seq.,  218,  234,  etc.     This  admirable  and  eminently  fair-minded  little 
book  is  the  best  of  all  introductions  to  Buddhism.     For  a  more  attractive 
and  less  judicial  view  of  the  Buddhist  spirit  at  its  best,  see  The  Creed  of 
Buddha. 

2  Cf.  Mrs.  Rhys  Davids,  op.  cit.,  p.  175;  also  Baldwin's  Dictionary  of 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN  LIFE         27 

and  do  I  teach,55  says  the  Buddha,  "  ill,  and  the  ending 
of  ill55; l  and  the  last  grade  of  sanctity  or  wisdom  is  that 
in  which  the  disciple  is  able  to  say,  "This  is  111;  this  is 
the  cause  of  111;  this  is  the  cessation  of  111;  this  is  the 
way  leading  to  the  cessation  of  111.55  2 

Yet,  as  though  some  intuition  of  the  soul  rebelled 
against  this  reading  of  life,  later  Buddhism,  in  defiance 
of  consistency,  began  to  exhibit  some  of  the  characters 
which  were  to  find  their  full  expression  in  Christianity. 
The  growth  towards  sanctity,  the  selection  and  training 
of  selves  capable  of  transcendence,  dynamic  movement 
and  change,  became  an  integral  part  of  it;  and  the  three 
grades  of  training  through  which  the  self  was  led  on  this 
"Pathway  to  Reality55 — Higher  Conduct,  Higher  Con 
sciousness,  Higher  Insight — present  the  closest  of 
parallels  with  the  Mystic  Way  described  by  the  Christian 
saints.  Moreover,  Buddhist  ethics  took  a  warmer  tone. 
A  "  sympathising  love  55  for  all  created  things,  not  far 
removed  from  Pauline  charity,  took  a  high  place  in  the 
scale  of  virtues;  and  this  love  soon  demanded  an  objective 
in  the  spiritual  sphere.  Hence,  as  the  Christian  focussed 
his  religious  emotions  on  Christ,  so  Gautama  himself,  at 
first  revered  only  as  the  teacher  of  this  sublime  but 
despairing  system  of  morality,  came  to  be  adored  as  an 
incarnation  of  the  Everlasting  but  Unknowable  God;  and 
the  immediate  aim  of  the  believer  was  directed  to  being 
a  "  partaker  of  his  nature  " — a  sharer  in  his  illumination 
and  freedom — though  still  with  the  cardinal  idea  of 
escaping  from  re-birth  in  the  dreaded  world  of  illusion, 
the  flux  of  life.3 

Philosophy  and  Psychology,  Vol.  II.  p.  231,  and  Hastings'  Dictionary  of 
Religion  and  Ethics,  Vol.  II,  article  "  Asceticism." 

1  Majjhima-Nikaya,  I.  140.  Quoted  by  Mrs.  Rhys  Davids,  op.  cit.t 
p.  159. 

•  Mrs.  Rhys  Davids,  op.  cit.,  p.  200. 

3  Baldwin,  op.  cit. 


28  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

Such  facts  as  these,  matched  by  the  presence  within 
the  Christian  fold  of  the  phenomena  of  "metaphysical" 
contemplation,  quietism,  and  holy  indifference,  and  the 
exaggerated  language  of  some  mystics  concerning  a  "  self- 
loss  in  the  desert  of  God  "  which  seems  indistinguishable 
from  complete  annihilation,  only  accentuate  those  diffi 
culties  of  definition  which  trouble  all  orderly  observers 
of  that  wayward,  lawless  thing,  the  Spirit  of  Life.  They 
warn  us  of  the  dangers  which  threaten  all  who  yield  to 
the  human  passion  for  classification;  suggesting  that  here 
too,  as  with  animal  and  vegetable  creation,  the  character 
istic  traits  of  one  class  are  found  "  to  a  certain  degree  " 
in  the  other.  The  angles  at  which  consciousness  is  set 
towards  Reality  are  infinite;  and  every  teacher  gives  us 
the  system  which  he  represents,  not  as  a  demonstration 
of  scientific  "  truth,"  but,  as  an  artist,  "  through  a 
temperament." 

Nevertheless,  reviewing  the  material  here  presented  to 
us,  we  can  truthfully  say  that  the  governing  emotional 
characteristic  of  unchristianised  Hindu  and  Buddhist 
mysticism  is  a  subtraction  from,  rather  than  an  addition 
to,  the  rich  multiplicity  of  life — a  distrust  and  dislike 
of  illusion,  the  craving  for  a  way  of  escape.  In  the  place 
of  that  humble  yet  romantic  note  of  adoration,  that 
ecstatic  and  energetic  passion  for  the  One  Reality  every 
where  discerned  by  the  eyes  of  love,  that  "  combined 
aptitude  for  intuition  and  action,"  *  which  inspires  the 
other  great  kingdom  of  spiritual  life,  the  Hindu,  and  after 
him  the  Neoplatonist,  puts  a  self-regarding  concentration 
on  contemplation  alone,  a  pathetic  trust  in  the  saving  power 
of  intellectual  knowledge  :  the  Buddhist,  a  severe  morality 
which,  though  inculcating  an  utter  selflessness,  is  yet 
pursued  for  personal  ends.  The  philosophy  on  which 
both  systems  rest  is  a  negative  monism  of  inconceivable 
harshness,  for  which  the  whole  World  of  Becoming,  the 
1  Delacroix,  Etudes  d'histoire  et  de  psychologic  du  mysticism*. 


MYSTICISM  AND  HUMAN  LIFE         29 

realm  of  the  Here-and-Now  is,  for  the  Hindu,  a  dream : 
for  the  Buddhist  a  cruel  wheel  of  misfortunes  from  which 
he  must  escape  if  he  can.  Pure  Being,  the  unconditioned 
and  absolute  God,  is  all  that  exists  ;  and  He,  though 
supreme  Knower,  must  be  in  truth  unconscious.1 

True  union  with  such  an  Absolute  really  involves  the 
shedding  of  every  human — more,  every  vital — character 
istic.  That  transcendence  which  is  the  aim  of  all  spirit 
it  accomplishes,  therefore,  not  by  a  true  regeneration,  an 
enriching  and  uplifting  of  the  elements  of  life,  that  they 
may  grow,  branch  out,  create  upon  higher,  more  complex 
levels  of  reality;  but  by  a  subtraction,  a  rejection  rather 
than  transmutation  of  the  World  of  Becoming,  which  has 
as  its  ideal  the  extinction  of  all  emotion  and  the  attain 
ment  of  untroubled  calm,  complete  indifference.  Its  last 
flower  is  a  concentration  upon  Pure  Being,  an  other 
worldly  specialism,  so  complete  as  to  inhibit  all  action, 
feeling,  thought :  a  condition  which  escapes  from  love  no 
less  than  from  hate,  from  joy  no  less  than  from  pain;  an 
absorption  into  the  Absolute  which  involves  the  oblitera 
tion  of  everything  that  we  know  as  personality.2 

"  It  follows,"  says  Royce  justly,  after  an  able  discussion 
of  Oriental  mystical  philosophy,  "  that  if  mysticism  is  to 
escape  from  its  own  finitude  and  really  is  to  mean  by 
its  Absolute  Being  anything  but  a  mere  nothing,  its 
account  of  Being  must  be  so  amended  as  to  involve  the 
assertion  that  our  finite  life  is  not  mere  illusion,  that  our 
ideas  are  not  merely  false,  and  that  we  are  already,  even 
as  finite,  in  touch  with  Reality."  3  As  in  the  vegetable 

1  Royce,  The  World  and  the  Individual,  Vol.  I.  p.  168. 

*  The  reference  here  is,  of  course,  to  the  last  stage  of  Hindu  contempla 
tion.  The  Neoplatonic  ecstacy,  at  any  rate  as  seen  in  that  true  mystic, 
Plotinus,  appears  to  have  been  a  state  of  consciously  exultant  com 
munion  with  the  One  (vide  Bigg,  Neoplatonism,  p.  286),  and  may  be 
regarded  as  an  intermediate  form  between  Eastern  and  Western  spiritual 
life. 

»  The  World  and  the  Individual,  Vol.  I.  p.  182. 


30  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

kingdom,  so  here,  life  has  made  the  fatal  mistake  of 
sacrificing  mobility;  and  with  it  that  capacity  for  new 
creative  acts  which  is  essential  if  the  whole  man  is  ever 
to  be  lifted  to  the  spiritual  sphere  and  develop  all  his 
latent  possibilities.  It  has  left  untapped  the  richest  layers 
of  human  nature :  its  power  of  self-donation,  its  passion 
for  romance,  that  immense  spiritual  fertility  which  has 
made  so  many  of  the  great  mystics  of  the  West  the 
creative  centres  of  widening  circles  of  life. 

Since  the  life  of  the  spirit  is  to  express  for  us  the 
inmost  and  energising  reality,  the  total  possibilities  of  our 
rich  and  many-levelled  universe,  we  shall  surely  ask  of 
such  a  true  spiritual  life  that  it  prove  itself  capable  of 
striking  not  one  but  all  the  notes  possible  to  humanity; 
and  this  with  a  greater  evocative  power  than  any  other 
way  of  life  can  attain.  We  shall  demand  of  it  the  passion, 
the  colour,  the  variety  of  music  ;  since  these  are  the 
earnests  of  abundant  life.1  We  shall  expect  it  to  compass 
the  full  span  of  human  nature,  and  extort  from  that  nature 
the  full  measure  alike  of  perception  and  of  act.  Its 
consciousness  must  go  from  the  still  and  rapturous  heights 
of  adoration  to  the  deeps  of  utter  self-knowledge;  from 
the  candid  simplicity  of  joy  to  the  complex  entanglements 
of  grief.  It  must  not  dissociate  action  from  contempla 
tion,  Becoming  from  Being,  knowledge  from  love.  He 
who  lived  this  veritable  life  of  spirit  would  be  alive  in  the 
deepest,  fullest  sense;  for  his  functions  of  reception  and 
response  would  be  raised  to  their  highest  pitch  of  develop 
ment.  Far  from  seeking  a  condition  of  static  calm,  he 
would  accept  emotion  for  that  which  it  is;  psychic  move 
ment,  evidence  of  life,  one  of  the  noblest  powers  of  the 
conscious  soul.  Those  superb  cravings  and  satisfactions 
which  are  produced  in  us  by  the  sacraments  of  natural 

1  "  A  beautiful,  breathing  instrument  of  music,  the  Lord  made  man," 
says  Clement  of  Alexandria,  whereon  the  spirit  of  Life  "  makes  melody  to 
God  "  (Cohortatio  ad  Gentes,  I.). 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN  LIFE         31 

beauty  or  of  human  love — true  out-going  movements  as 
they  are  in  the  direction  of  reality — such  an  one  would 
not  transcend,  but  would  lift  to  a  new  level  of  immediacy. 
Where  we  received  hints,  he  would  have  communion 
with  certainties.  The  freshness  of  eternal  springs  would 
speak  to  him  in  the  primrose  and  the  budding  tree.  Not 
blankness  but  beauty  would  characterise  his  ecstacy :  a 
beauty  including  in  some  inconceivable  union  all  the 
harmonies  and  contrasts  which  express  the  Thought  of 
God.  To  these  he  would  respond,  with  these  be  in  tune  : 
so  that  his  life  would  itself  be  musical. 

"  Is  it  beyond  thee  to  be  glad  with  the  gladness  of  this  rhythm  ;  to 
be  tossed  and  lost  and  broken  in  the  whirl  of  this  fearful  joy  ? 

All  things  rush  on,  they  stop  not,  they  look  not  behind,  no  power  can 
hold  them  back,  they  rush  on. 

Keeping  steps  with  that  restless,  rapid  music,  seasons  come  dancing 
and  pass  away — colours,  tunes,  and  perfumes  pour  in  endless  cascades  in 
the  abounding  joy  that  scatters  and  gives  up  and  dies  every  moment."  l 

To  "  be  glad  with  the  gladness  of  this  rhythm  "— - 
to  keep  step  with  the  music  of  Reality — this  is  the  aim, 
these  are  the  possibilities,  which  have  been  seized  and 
employed  by  that  current  of  life  which  has  chosen 
the  second  path  towards  the  transcendent  sphere :  the 
positive  and  activistic  mysticism  of  the  West.  Here  we 
find  inclusion  rather  than  subtraction  :  a  growing  intuitive 
conviction  that  the  One  shall  justify  rather  than  exclude 
the  many,  that  the  life  of  spirit  shall  involve  the  whole 
man  in  all  his  activities  and  correspondences.  The  mount 
ing  soul  carries  the  whole  world  with  it;  the  cosmic  cross- 
bearer  is  its  true  type.  It  does  not  abandon,  it  re-makes : 
declaring  that  the  "glory  of  the  lighted  mind,"  once  he 
has  attained  to  it,  will  flood  the  totality  of  man's  nature, 
lighting  up  the  World  of  Becoming,  and  exhibiting  not 
merely  the  unknowable  character  of  "  the  Origin  of  all 

1  Rabindranath  Tagore,  op.  cit.  70. 


32  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

that  Is,"  but  the  knowable  and  immediate  presence  of  that 
Immanent  Spirit  in  Whom  "  we  live  and  move  and  have 
our  being."  As  the  heightening  of  mental  life  reveals 
to  the  intellect  deeper  and  deeper  levels  of  reality,  so  with 
that  movement  towards  enhancement  of  the  life  of  spirit 
which  takes  place  along  this  path,  the  world  assumes  not 
the  character  of  illusion  but  the  character  of  sacrament ; 
and  spirit  finds  Spirit  in  the  lilies  of  the  field,  no  less  than 
in  the  Unknowable  Abyss.  True,  there  is  here  too  a 
certain  world-renouncing  element;  for  the  spiritual  life 
is  of  necessity  a  growth,  and  all  growth  represents  a 
renunciation  as  well  as  an  achievement.  Something,  if 
only  perambulator  and  feeding-bottle,  we  are  compelled 
to  leave  behind.  But  that  which  is  here  renounced  is 
merely  a  low  level  of  correspondences,  which  enslaves  and 
limits  the  mind,  confining  its  attention  to  its  own  physical 
needs  and  desires.  The  sometimes  sterile  principle  of 
"world-denial"  is  here  found  united  with  the  ever 
fruitful  principle  of  "  world  renewal " :  and  thus  the 
essential  quality  of  Life,  its  fecundity  and  spontaneity,  is 
safeguarded,  a  "  perennial  inner  movement "  is  assured.1 
This  kind  of  life,  this  distinct  variety  of  human  con 
sciousness,  is  found  fully  developed  in  those  mystics 
whom  we  call  Christian;  less  perfectly  expressed — since 
here  mingled  with  certain  Oriental  elements — in  their 
cousins  the  Sufis,  and  partially  present,  as  we  have  seen, 
in  those  Hindu  sects  which  have  affinities  with  Christi 
anity.  It  is  attained  by  them  as  the  result  of  a  life 
process,  a  kind  of  growth,  which  makes  of  those  who 
experience  it  a  genuine  psychic  species  apart;  which  tends 
to  the  winning  of  freedom,  the  establishment  of  that 
state  of  equilibrium,  "  that  eternal  outgoing  and  eternal 
life,  which  we  have  and  are  eternally  in  God."  2  These 
mystics  grow  through  a  constant  and  well-marked  series 

1  Cf.  Eucken,  The  Truth  of  Religion,  p.  14. 

2  Ruysbroeck,  VOrnement  des  Noces  Spirituelles,  Lib.  III.  cap.  5. 


MYSTICISM  AND  HUMAN  LIFE         33 

of  states  to  a  definite  consummation :  that  so-called 
"unitive  life"  of  enormously  enhanced  vitality,  of 
harmonious  correspondence  with  the  transcendental  order, 
in  which  each  becomes  a  self-creative  centre  of  spiritual 
no  less  than  of  physical  life. 

"Eternal  life  in  the  midst  of  Time,"  says  Harnack, 
is  the  secret  of  Christianity.1  "  For  all  ontological 
minnesingers  of  the  love  of  God,"  says  Stanley  Hall, 
"  it  is  eternal  life  to  know  Him."  2  But  the  power  of 
living  such  a  life  depends  upon  organic  adjustments, 
psychic  changes,  a  heightening  of  our  spiritual  tension  ; 
not  on  the  mere  acceptance  of  specific  beliefs.  Hence  the 
true  object  of  Christianity — hidden  though  it  be  beneath 
a  mass  of  credal  and  ritual  decorations — is  the  effecting 
of  the  changes  which  lead  to  the  production  of  such 
mystics,  such  "  free  souls  "  :  those  profound  psychic  and 
spiritual  adjustments,  which  are  called  in  their  totality 
"  Regeneration."  By  the  ancient  natural  modes  of  birth 
and  growth  it  seeks  the  induction  of  Man  in  his  wholeness 
into  the  life  of  Reality;  that  "Kingdom  of  God"  which, 
once  his  attention  is  given  to  it,  he  not  only  finds  without 
but  has  within.  It  is  less  a  "  faith  "  than  a  life-process. 
It  differs  from  all  other  religions  in  that  it  implies  and 
controls  actual  and  organic  psychological  growth.  That 
rare  thing,  the  real  Christian,  is  a  genuinely  new  creation  ; 
not  an  ordinary  man  with  a  new  and  inspiring  creed. 
"  If  any  man  be  in  Christ,  he  is  a  new  creature,"  said 
St.  Paul  ;  and  described  in  those  words  a  most  actual 
phenomenon,  the  perennial  puzzle  of  the  religious 
psychologist.3  The  re-birth  which  is  typified  by  the 
Church's  sacrament  of  initiation,  and  the  participation 
in  the  Divine  Life  which  is  dramatised  in  its  sacrament  of 

1  Das  Wesen  des  Christentums,  p.  5  (Eng.  trans.,  p.  8). 
1  Adolescence,  Vol.  II.  p.  128. 

3  2  Cor.  v.  17.  Cf.  the  sections  dealing  with  conversion  in  Starbuck,  The 
Psychology  of  Religion  ;  and  James,  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience. 


34  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

communion — "  the  food  of  the  full-grown  "  l — these  are 
facts,  these  are  things,  which  really  happen  to  Christian 
mystics  ;  to  all  those,  in  fact,  who  follow  this  path  of 
development,  whatsoever  their  theological  creed.  The 
authentic  documents  of  Christianity — those  produced  by 
minds  which  have  submitted  to  the  discipline  and  experi 
enced  the  growth — speak  with  no  uncertain  voice  as  to 
the  actual  and  unique  character  of  this  life.  Its  result, 
they  say,  is  no  splitting  up  of  personality,  no  isolation 
of  the  "  spiritual  sense  "  ;  but  the  lifting  of  the  whole 
man  to  new  levels  of  existence  "where  the  soul  has 
fulhead  of  perception  by  divine  fruition  " ; 2  where  he 
not  only  knows,  but  is,  not  only  is,  but  acts.  "  My  life," 
said  St.  Augustine,  looking  forward  to  that  existence  in 
God  which  he  recognised  as  his  destiny,  "  shall  be  a  real 
life,  being  wholly  full  of  Thee."  3  «  The  naked  will," 
says  Ruysbroeck  of  that  same  consummation,  "  is  trans 
formed  by  the  Eternal  Love,  as  fire  by  fire.  The  naked 
spirit  stands  erect,  it  feels  itself  to  be  wrapped  round, 
affirmed  and  affixed  by  the  formless  immensity  of  God," 
since  "  our  being,  without  losing  anything  of  its  per 
sonality,  is  united  with  the  Divine  Truth  which  respects 
all  diversity."  4  Here  is  the  authentic  voice  of  Western 
mysticism;  and  here  we  indeed  recognise  spirit  pressing 
forward  in  a  new  direction  towards  new  conquests,  bring 
ing  into  expression  deeper  and  deeper  levels  of  life. 

1  Clement  of  Alexandria,  Strom.,  V.  10. 

2  The  Mirror  of  Simple  Souls. 

3  Aug.,  Conf.,  Bk.  X.  cap.  28. 

4  Samuel  (Hello,  p.  201)  and  De  Contemplations  (Hello,  p.  145). 


Ill 

THE    FINDING    OF    THE    THOROUGHFARE 

THE  first  full  and  perfect  manifestation  of  this  life,  this 
peculiar  psychological  growth,  in  which  human  person 
ality  in  its  wholeness  moves  to  new  levels  and  lives  at  a 
tension  hitherto  unknown — establishes  itself  in  the  inde 
pendent  spiritual  sphere — seems  to  coincide  with  the 
historical  beginning  of  Christianity.  In  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
it  found  its  perfect  thoroughfare,  rose  at  once  to  its  classic 
expression;  and  the  movement  which  He  initiated,  the 
rare  human  type  which  He  created,  is  in  essence  a 
genuinely  biological  rather  than  a  merely  credal  or  intel 
lectual  development  of  the  race.  In  it,  we  see  life 
exercising  her  sovereign  power  of  spontaneous  creation : 
breaking  out  on  new  paths. 

Already,  it  is  true,  some  men — peculiarly  sensitive  per 
haps  to  the  first  movement  of  life  turning  in  a  fresh 
direction — had  run  ahead  of  the  common  experience  and 
stumbled  upon  the  gateway  to  those  paths ;  even  taken 
tentative  steps  along  the  way  in  which  mankind  was 
destined  to  be  "guided  and  enticed"1  by  the  indwelling 
Spirit  of  Love.  They  are  those  whom  we  call  "  natural 
mystics."  Their  intuitions  and  experiences  had  been 
variously,  but  always  incompletely  expressed;  in  creed 
and  ceremonial,  in  symbolic  acts  which  suggested  the  inner 
experience  that  they  sought — sometimes  in  prophecies 
understood  by  none  but  those  who  made  them.  Nor  is 
this  inconsistent  with  Life's  methods,  as  we  may  discern 

1  Tauler,  Sermon  on  the  Nativity  of  Our  Lady  (The  Inner  Way,  p.  168). 
D  2  35 


86  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

them  on  other  levels  of  activity.  The  elan  vital  of  the 
human  race  is  about  to  pour  itself  in  a  new  direction.  It 
tries  to  break  through,  first  here,  next  there;  pressing 
behind  the  barrier  of  the  brain. 

On  two  sides  especially  we  observe  this  preparation  on 
Life's  part  for  the  new  movement;  the  tendency  towards 
new  regions  intuitively  discerned.  We  have  first  the 
persistent  prophetic  and  poetical  element  in  Judaism — 
that  line  of  artist-seers  "  mad  with  the  Spirit  "  l  of  whom 
John  the  Baptist  is  the  last — proclaiming  passionately  and 
insistently,  though  most  often  under  racial  and  political 
symbols,  the  need  of  change,  regeneration;  trying  in  vain 
to  turn  the  attention  of  man  in  a  new  direction,  to  stem 
the  muddy  "  torrent  of  use  and  wont."  Here  the  mystical 
spirit,  the  untamed  instinct  for  God,  penetrates  to  the 
field  of  consciousness.  Over  and  over  again,  in  the  works 
of  the  prophets  and  psalmists,  that  strange  and  insatiable 
craving  for  Reality,  the  "  diadem  of  beauty,"  2  appears. 
The  primitive  Deity,  who  is  feared,  obeyed,  and  pro 
pitiated,  gradually  gives  place  to  the  Deity  who  is  loved 
and  longed  for — the  "  Very  Rest "  of  the  human  soul. 
"  As  the  hart  desires  the  water-brooks  "  these  pathfinders 
of  the  race  desire  and  foretell  the  attainment  of  this 
Deity;  and  with  it  a  coming  efflorescence  of  spirit,  an 
opening  up  of  human  faculty,  the  breaking  forth  of  new 
life  upon  high  levels  of  joy.  "  And  it  shall  come  to  pass 
afterward,  that  I  will  pour  out  my  Spirit  upon  all  flesh; 
and  your  sons  and  your  daughters  shall  prophesy,  your 
old  men  shall  dream  dreams,  your  young  men  shall  see 
visions :  and  also  upon  the  servants  and  the  handmaids 
in  those  days  will  I  pour  out  my  Spirit."  3 

True,  this  splendid  re-ordering  and  exaltation  of  things 

seems  to  them  something  peculiar  to  their  own  "  elect " 

race ;   they  picture  it  as  best   they  can,   with   the  poor 

materials  available  to  them,  and  within  the  narrow  limita- 

1  Hos.  ix.  7.  a  Isa.  xxviii.  5.  8  Joel  ii.  28,  29. 


MYSTICISM  AND  HUMAN  LIFE        87 

tions  of  a  tribal  consciousness.  But  the  important  matter 
is  the  original  intuition :  not  its  translation  into  the  con 
crete  terms  of  the  "  Apocalyptic  "  or  the  "  Messianic  " 
hope.  The  lovely  dreams  of  the  Isaianic  prophets,  the 
vision  of  divine  humanity  in  the  Book  of  Daniel,  the 
passion  for  an  unrealised  perfection  which  burns  in  many 
of  the  psalms;  all  these  tend  the  same  way.  "  For  as  the 
rain  cometh  down  and  the  snow  from  heaven,  and 
returneth  not  thither,  but  watereth  the  earth,  and  maketh 
it  bring  forth  and  bud,  and  giveth  seed  to  the  sower  and 
bread  to  the  eater;  so  shall  my  Word  be  that  goeth  forth 
out  of  my  mouth;  it  shall  not  return  unto  me  void,  but 
it  shall  accomplish  that  which  I  please,  and  it  shall  prosper 
in  the  thing  whereto  I  sent  it."  * 

With  the  passing  of  the  centuries,  the  conviction  of  this 
new  budding  and  bringing  forth  of  the  "  Word,"  the 
divine  idea  immanent  in  the  world,  grows  stronger  and 
stronger.2  All  the  prophets  feel  it,  all  agonise  for  it;  but 
they  do  not  attain  to  it.  We  watch  them  through  the 
ages,  ever  stretching  forward  to  something  that  they  shall 
not  live  to  see.  "  Like  as  a  woman  with  child,  that 
draweth  near  the  time  of  her  delivery,  is  in  pain  and  crieth 
out  in  her  pangs;  so  have  we  been  before  thee,  O  Lord. 
We  have  been  with  child,  we  have  been  in  pain,  we  have 
as  it  were  brought  forth  wind ;  we  have  not  wrought 
any  deliverance  in  the  earth,  neither  have  inhabitants 
of  the  world  been  born."  8  This  is  the  epitaph  of  Jewish 
prophecy. 

Opposed,  as  it  seems,  to  this  line  of  growth,  though 

1  Isa.  Iv.  10-12  (R.V.).  The  primitive,  and  never  wholly  forgotten 
concept  of  Jahveh  as  peculiarly  the  God  of  storm,  cloud,  rain,  and  dew  (cf. 
the  stories  of  Noah,  Sodom,  the  pillar  of  cloud,  Moses  on  Sinai,  Gideon, 
etc.),  gave  to  these  metaphors  a  peculiar  poignancy  in  Jewish  ears. 

1  Cf.  E.  G.  King  (Early  Religious  Poetry  of  the  Hebrews,  pp.  144  et  seq.} 
on  the  development  of  the  word  "  Tzemach  "  or  "  Outspring  "  in  Hebrew 
literature,  from  a  natural  to  a  Messianic  sense. 

3  Isa.  xxvi.  17,  18  (R.V.),  marginal  reading. 


38  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

actually  representing  another  of  life's  efforts  in  the  same 
direction,  we  have  the  so-called  "  enthusiastic  religions," 
the  mystery-cults  of  the  antique  world;  dramatising,  many 
of  them,  with  a  certain  crude  intensity,  that  actual  process 
of  re-birth  and  ascent  to  the  spiritual  sphere  already 
instinctively  discerned  by  the  spirit  of  life  as  the  path 
upon  which  man's  soul  was  destined  to  move.  But,  how 
ever  close  the  much-advertised  correspondences  between 
the  symbolic  ritual  of  the  Orphics,  or  of  later  and  more 
elaborate  mystery  cults,  and  the  interior  process  through 
which  the  human  soul  grows  to  conscious  union  with  God, 
these  sacramental  dramas  remain  the  picture  of  something 
perceived  and  longed  for,  rather  than  the  earnest  of  some 
thing  actually  done  to  the  participants.  To  "  him  whose 
initiation  was  recent "  1  they  may  have  given  a  vision 
of  the  Divine  World :  but  vision  alone  will  not  quicken 
that  "  seed  of  the  divine  life  .  .  .  that  has  all  the  riches  of 
eternity  in  it,  and  is  always  wanting  to  come  to  the  birth 
in  him  and  be  alive,"  2-— the  seed  which,  once  germinated, 
grows  steadily  through  the  seasons,  nourished  by  the 
whole  machinery  of  life,  to  a  perfect  correspondence  with 
Reality.  "  Salvation  and  the  New  Birth,"  says  Prof. 
Percy  Gardner,  "  did  not  attain  in  the  Pagan  mysteries 
more  than  a  small  part,  an  adumbration  of  the  meaning 
those  phrases  were  to  attain  in  developed  Christianity. 
They  only  furnished  the  body  wherein  the  soul  was  to 
dwell.  They  only  provided  organs  which  were  destined 
for  functions  as  yet  undeveloped."  3  No  doubt  there 
were  isolated  spirits  in  whom  the  teaching  and  ritual  of 
these  mysteries  really  quickened  the  "  spark  of  the  soul," 
initiated  a  life-movement;  as  there  were  others  who  rose, 
like  St.  Augustine,  through  the  sublime  speculations  of 
Greek  philosophy  to  a  brief  intellectual  vision  of  That 
Which  Is.4  But  evidence  of  this  spiritual  precocity  is 

1  Plato,  Phczdrus,  §  250.  «  W.  Law,  The  Spirit  of  Prayer. 

3  Exploratio  Evangelic^  p.  337.    4  Aug.,  Conf.,  Bk.  VII.  cap.  9. 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN   LIFE         39 

lost  to  us.  We  find  ample  record  of  the  craving,  little  of 
the  attainment.  The  Graeco-Roman  world,  which  has 
bequeathed  to  us  the  rich  results  of  its  genius  for  beauty 
and  for  abstract  thought,  even  for  ethics  of  the  loftiest 
kind,  and  the  life-history  of  its  many  heroic  men  of  action, 
gives  us  no  work  either  of  pure  literature  or  of  biography 
in  which  we  can  recognise — as  we  may  in  so  many  records 
of  the  Mahomedan  as  well  as  the  Christian  world — the 
presence  of  that  peculiar  spiritual  genius  which  we  call 
"  sanctity." 

Whilst  no  reasonable  student  of  mysticism  would  wish 
to  deny  the  debt  which  our  spiritual  culture  owes  to 
Greek  thought,  it  remains  true  that  the  gift  of  Hellenism 
here  has  often  been  misconstrued.  Hellenism  gave  to 
the  spirit  of  man,  not  an  experience,  but  a  reading  of 
experience.  In  the  mysteries,  the  natural  mystic  saw  a 
drama  of  his  soul's  adventures  upon  the  quest  of  God. 
In  Neoplatonism  he  found  a  philosophic  explanation  of 
his  most  invincible  desires,  his  most  sublime  perceptions : 
"  saw  from  a  wooded  height  the  land  of  peace,  but  not 
the  road  thereto."  l  Greece  taught  first  the  innately 
mystical,  and  afterwards  the  typically  Christian  soul,  how 
to  understand  itself;  produced  the  commentary,  but  not 
the  text.  Paul,  caught  up  to  the  third  heaven,  had  little 
to  learn  from  the  Platonic  ecstacy;  and  it  was  not  from 
Dionysus  or  Cybele  that  the  mystic  of  the  Fourth  Gospel 
learned  the  actual  nature  of  New  Birth. 

The  "mysteries,"  in  fact,  were  essentially  magical 
dramas  ;  which  stimulated  the  latent  spiritual  faculties  of 
man,  sometimes  in  a  noble,  but  sometimes  also  in  an 
ignoble  way.  Their  initiates  were  shown  the  symbols  of 
that  consummation  which  they  longed  for;  the  union  with 
God  which  is  the  object  of  all  mysticism.  They  passed, 
by  submission  to  ceremonial  obligations,  through  stages 
which  curiously  anticipated  the  actual  processes  of  life; 
1  Aug.,  Conf.,  Bk.  VII.  cap.  21. 


40  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

sometimes,  as  in  the  primitive  rites  of  the  Dionysus  cult, 
induced  in  themselves  an  artificial  state  of  ecstacy  by  the 
use  of  dancing,  music  and  perfumes.1  Antiquity  shows 
us  everywhere  these  dramas,  always  built  more  or  less 
according  to  the  same  pattern,  because  always  trying  to 
respond  to  the  same  need — the  craving  of  the  crescent 
soul  for  purity,  liberation,  reality  and  peace.  But  the 
focal  point  in  them  was  always  the  obtaining  of  personal 
safety  or  knowledge  by  the  performance  of  special  and 
sacred  acts :  at  the  utmost,  by  a  temporary  change  of  con 
sciousness  deliberately  induced,  as  in  ecstacy.2  They  im 
plied  the  existence  of  a  static,  ready-made  spiritual  world, 
into  which  the  initiate  could  be  inserted  by  appropriate 
disciplines;  thereby  escaping  from  the  tyranny  and  un 
reality  of  the  Here-and-Now.  Far  from  being  absorbed 
into  the  Christian  movement,  they  continued  side  by  side 
with  it.  The  true  descendants  of  the  Pagan  mystes  are 
not  the  Christian  mystics,  as  certain  modern  scholars 
would  pretend;  these  have  little  in  common  with  them 
but  an  unfortunate  confusion  of  name.  Their  posterity 
is  rather  to  be  sought  amongst  that  undying  family  of 
more  or  less  secret  associations  which  perpetuated  this  old 
drama  of  regeneration,  and  insisted  on  attributing  to  its 
merely  ritual  performance  an  awful  significance,  a  genuine 
value  for  life.  In  early  times  the  Manichaeans3  and  the 

1  Cf.  Erwin  Rohde,  Psyche,  Vol.  II.  p.  26. 

2  For  a  sane  and  scholarly  treatment  of  this  whole  subject  of  the  Pagan 
mysteries,    consult   Daremberg   et    Saglio,    Dictionnaire   des   Antiquites. 
Arts.  "  Eleusis,"  "  Isis,"  "  Mysteria,"  "  Orpheus."     For  the  thiasi  and 
syncretistic  mystery  cults  about   the  Christian  era,  see  P.  Gardner,  Ex- 
ploratio  Evangelica,  and  Glover,  The  Conflict  of  Religions  in  the  Early 
Roman  Empire. 

3  Harnack  (Augustins  Konfessionen,  p.  21)  expressly  compares  the  Mani- 
chasans  with  modern  Freemasons ;    and  says,   "  they  offered  to  their 
members  a  serious  way  of  life  in  which  one  mounted  step  by  step,  through 
ever  narrower  and  higher  circles,  until  one  found  one's  goal  in  a  society 
of  saints  and  saviours."     The  Third  Book  of  St.  Augustine's  Confessions 


MYSTICISM  AND  HUMAN  LIFE         41 

Gnostics,  with  their  elaborate  but  confused  systems  of 
mixed  Pagan  and  Christian  ideas,  later  the  Rosicrucians, 
the  Cabalists,  the  Freemasons,1  and  later  still  the  Martin- 
ists  and  other  existing  societies  of  "  initiates,"  which  lay 
claim  to  the  possession  of  jealously-guarded  secrets  of  a 
spiritual  kind,  have  continued  the  effort  to  find  a  "way 
out "  along  this  road :  but  in  vain.  Not  a  new  creation, 
but  at  best  a  protective  mimicry,  is  all  that  life  can  manage 
here. 

More  and  more  as  we  proceed  the  peculiar  originality 
of  the  true  Christian  mystic  becomes  clear  to  us.  We  are 
led  towards  the  conclusion — a  conclusion  which  rests 
on  historical  rather  than  religious  grounds — that  the  first 
person  to  exhibit  in  their  wholeness  the  spiritual  possi 
bilities  of  man  was  the  historic  Christ;  and  to  the  corol 
lary,  that  the  great  family  of  the  Christian  mystics — that 
is  to  say,  all  those  individuals  in  whom  an  equivalent  life- 
process  is  set  going  and  an  equivalent  growth  takes  place 
—represents  to  us  the  substance  of  things  hoped  for,  the 
evidence  of  things  not  seen,  in  respect  of  the  upward 
movement  of  the  racial  consciousness.  This  family  con 
stitutes  a  true  variation  of  the  human  species — in  Leuba's 
words,  "  one  of  the  most  amazing  and  profound  varia 
tions  which  have  yet  been  witnessed  " — producing,  as 
it  seems  to  other  men,  a  "  strange  and  extravagant "  and 
yet  a  "  heroic  "  type.2  There  is  in  them,  says  Delacroix, 
"a  vital  and  creative  power";  they  "have  found  a  new 
form  of  life,  and  have  justified  it."  3 

is  a  sufficient  commentary  on  these  lofty  pretensions.  "  The  Truth,  the 
Truth  !  they  were  always  saying,  and  often  said  to  me ;  but  it  was  not  in 
them  "  (Aug.,  Conf.,  Bk.  III.  cap.  6). 

1  It  is  well  known  that  the  ceremony  which  confers  the  Third  Degree 
of  Craft  Masonry  is  an  allegory  of  regeneration.  It  probably  represents 
far  more  accurately  than  many  of  the  inflated  and  imaginative  descriptions 
now  presented  to  us,  the  kind  of  "  secret  knowledge  "  which  was  com 
municated  to  the  pagan  initiate.  •  Revue  Pbilosopbique,  July  1902. 

8  Etudes  d'histoire  et  de  psychologic  du  mysticisme,  p.  iii. 


42  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

This  new  form  of  life,  as  it  is  lived  by  the  members 
of  this  species,  the  peculiar  psychic  changes  to  which  they 
must  all  submit,  whatsoever  the  historic  religion  to  which 
they  belong,  may  reasonably  be  called  Christian;  since  its 
classic  expression  is  seen  only  in  the  Founder  of  Christ 
ianity.  But  this  is  not  to  limit  it  to  those  who  have 
accepted  the  theological  system  called  by  His  name. 
"There  is,"  says  Law,  "  but  one  salvation  for  all  man 
kind,  and  that  is  the  Life  of  God  in  the  soul.  God  has 
but  one  design  or  intent  towards  all  Mankind,  and  that 
is  to  introduce  or  generate  His  own  Life,  Light,  and  Spirit 
in  them.  .  .  .  There  is  but  one  possible  way  for  Man 
to  attain  this  salvation,  or  Life  of  God  in  the  soul.  There 
is  not  one  for  the  Jew,  another  for  a  Christian,  and  a 
third  for  the  Heathen.  No  ;  God  is  one,  human  nature 
is  one,  salvation  is  one,  and  the  way  to  it  is  one."  I  We 
may,  then,  define  the  Christian  life  and  the  Christian 
growth  as  a  movement  towards  the  attainment  of  this 

o 

Life  of  Reality  ;  this  spiritual  consciousness.  It  is  a  phase 
of  the  cosmic  struggle  of  spirit  with  recalcitrant  matter, 
of  mind  with  the  conditions  that  hem  it  in.  More 
abundant  life,  said  the  great  mystic  of  the  Fourth  Gospel,  is 
its  goal ;  and  it  sums  up  and  makes  effective  all  the  isolated 
struggles  towards  such  life  and  such  liberty  which  earlier 
ages  had  produced. 

Christianity,  of  course,  has  often  been  described  as  a 
"life."  The  early  Christians  themselves  called  it  not  a 
belief,  but  a  "  way "  2 — a  significant  fact,  which  the 
Church  too  quickly  forgot;  and  the  realist  who  wrote  the 
Fourth  Gospel  called  its  Founder  both  the  life  and  the 
way.  But  these  terms  have  been  employed  by  all  later 
theologians  with  a  discreet  vagueness,  have  been  accepted 
in  an  artistic  rather  than  a  scientific  sense;  with  the  result 
that  Christianity  as  a  life  has  meant  almost  anything,  from 
obedience  to  a  moral  or  even  an  ecclesiastical  code  at  one 
1  W.  Law,  The  Spirit  of  Prayer.  *  Acts  ix.  2,  xix.  23. 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN   LIFE         43 

end  of  the  scale,  to  the  enjoyment  of  peculiar  spiritual 
sensations  at  the  other.  I  propose,  then,  to  define  and 
demonstrate  as  clearly  as  I  can,  by  the  help  of  the  only 
possible  authorities — those  who  have  lived  it — what  is 
really  meant  by  the  phrase  "  Christianity  is  a  life."  Nor 
is  this  done  by  way  of  apologetic,  but  rather  by  way  of 
exploration.  History  and  psychology  will  be  our  primary 
interests;  and  should  theological  conclusions  emerge,  this 
will  be  by  accident  rather  than  design. 

The  beginning  of  Christianity,  we  say,  seems  to  repre 
sent  the  first  definite  emergence  of  a  new  kind  of  life ; 
at  first — yes,  and  still,  for  nineteen  hundred  years  are  little 
in  the  deep  and  steady  flow  of  so  mighty  a  process  of 
becoming — a  small  beginning.  Very,  very  slowly,  the 
new  type  of  human  consciousness  emerged.  Here  one, 
and  there  another  possessed  it:  the  thin  bright  chain  of 
the  Christian  mystics  stretching  across  the  centuries.  We 
see  clearly,  when  we  have  cleansed  our  vision  of  obscuring 
prejudices,  that  Jesus,  from  the  moment  of  His  attainment 
of  full  spiritual  self-consciousness,  was  aware  that  life 
must  act  thus.  Loisy  is  doubtless  right  in  stating  that 
He  "  intended  to  found  no  religion."  1  In  His  own 
person  He  was  lifting  humanity  to  new  levels  ;  giving 
in  the  most  actual  and  concrete  sense  new  life,  a  new 
direction  of  movement,  to  "  the  world  " — the  world  for 
man  being,  of  course,,  no  more  and  no  less  than  the  total 
content  of  his  consciousness.  The  "revelation"  then 
made  was  not  merely  moral  or  religious :  it  was  in  the 
strictest  sense  biological.  "We  may  assume,"  says 
Harnack  most  justly, "  what  position  we  will  in  regard  to 
Him  and  His  message;  certain  it  is  that  thence  onward 
the  value  of  our  race  is  enhanced."  2 

But  such  a  gift  can  only  gradually  be  disclosed,  only 

1  Hibbert  Journal,  Oct.  1911. 

a  Das  Wesen  des  Christentums,  p.  45  (Eng.  trans.,  p.  70). 


44  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

gradually  be  appropriated.  Those  who  can  appropriate, 
who  can  move  in  this  fresh  direction,  grow  to  this  state 
of  high  tension,  develop  this  spiritual  consciousness— 
these  are  the  "  little  flock  "  to  whom  the  Kingdom,  the 
Realm  of  Reality,  is  given.  These,  not  the  strenuous 
altruist  nor  the  orthodox  believer,  are  the  few  chosen  out 
of  the  many  called;  actual  centres  of  creative  life,  agents 
of  divine  fecundity,  the  light,  the  salt,  the  leaven,  the 
pathfinders  of  the  race.  It  is  the  glory  of  Christianity 
that,  hidden  though  they  be  by  the  more  obvious  qualities 
of  the  superstitious  and  the  ecclesiastically  minded,  these 
vital  souls  have  never  failed  the  Church.  Thus  "by 
personal  channels — the  flame  of  the  human  and  human 
ising  Spirit  passing  from  soul  to  soul — there  has  come 
down  to  our  days,  along  with  a  great  mass  of  nominal 
or  corrupt  Christianity,  a  true  and  lineal  offspring  of  the 
Church  established  on  the  Rock." l 

It  is  true  that  mystical  Christianity  offers  infinitely 
graded  possibilities  of  attainment  to  the  infinitely  graded 
variations  of  human  temperament,  love  and  will.  But  all 
these  graded  paths  take  a  parallel  course.  All  run,  as 
Dante  saw,  towards  the  concentric  circles  of  the  same 
heaven;  a  heaven  which  has  many  mansions,  but  all  built 
upon  the  same  plan.  It  deals,  from  first  to  last,  with  the 
clear  and  victorious  emergence  of  the  spiritual  in  the 
Here-and-Now,  and  with  the  balanced  response  of  the 
total  spirit  of  man  to  that  declared  Reality.  Its  history 
purports  to  tell  us  how  this  revelation  and  response  hap 
pened  once  for  all  in  a  complete  and  perfect  sense;  how 
the  Divine  Life  nesting  within  the  world  broke  through 
and  expressed  itself,  thereby  revealing  new  directions 
along  which  human  life  could  cut  its  way.  Its  psy 
chology  tries  to  describe  how  life  has  attacked  those  new 
paths;  the  phenomena  which  attend  on  and  express  the 
evolution  of  the  Christian  soul,  the  state  of  equilibrium 
1  E.  A.  Abbott,  The  Son  of  Man,  p.  813. 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN   LIFE         45 

to  which  that  soul  attains.  It  demonstrates  over  and 
over  again  that  the  little  company  of  its  adepts — and 
those  other  born  lovers  of  reality  who  went  with  them 
"  not  knowing  what  they  sought " — have  all  passed  by 
the  same  landmarks  and  endured  the  same  adventures  in 
the  course  of  their  quest.  In  all,  the  same  essential  pro 
cess — the  steadfast  loving  attention  to  some  aspect  of 
Transcendent  Reality  perceived,  and  the  active  movement 
of  response — has  led  to  the  same  result :  growth  towards 
new  levels,  transmutation  of  character,  closer  and  closer 
identification  with  the  Divine  Life.  In  every  such  case 
the  individual  has  learned  "  to  transfer  himself  from  a 
centre  of  self-activity  into  an  organ  of  revelation  of 
universal  being,  to  live  a  life  of  affection  for,  and  oneness 
with,  the  larger  life  outside."  1 

The  proposition  that  this  quest  and  this  achievement 
constitute  an  egotistical  and  "  world  renouncing  religion  " 
suited  only  to  contemplatives,  is  only  less  ridiculous  than 
the  more  fashionable  delusion  which  makes  Christianity 
the  religion  of  social  amiability,  democratic  ideals  and 
"  practical  common  sense."  On  the  contrary,  the  true 
mystic  quest  may  as  well  be  fulfilled  in  the  market  as  in 
the  cloister;  by  Joan  of  Arc  on  the  battlefield  as  by  Simeon 
Stylites  on  his  pillar.  It  is  true  that  since  human  vitality 
and  human  will  are  finite,  many  of  the  great  mystics  have 
found  it  necessary  to  concentrate  their  love  and  their 
attention  on  this  one  supreme  aspect  of  the  "  will-to-live." 
Hence  the  cloistered  mystic  and  the  recluse  obeys  a  neces 
sity  of  his  own  nature :  the  necessity  which  has  produced 
specialists  in  every  art.  But  the  life  for  which  he  strives, 
if  he  achieves  it,  floods  the  totality  of  his  being;  the 
"  energetic  "  no  less  than  the  "  contemplative  "  powers. 
It  regenerates,  enriches,  lifts  to  new  heights  of  vision,  will 
and  love,  the  whole  man,  not  some  isolated  spiritual  part 
of  him;  and  sends  him  back  to  give,  according  to  his 
1  Starbuck,  The  Psychology  of  Religion,  p.  147. 


46  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

capability  as  teacher,  artist,  or  man  of  action,  "  more 
abundant  life "  to  the  surrounding  world.  The  real 
achievements  of  Christian  mysticism  are  more  clearly  seen 
in  Catherine  of  Siena  regenerating  her  native  city,  Joan 
of  Arc  leading  the  armies  of  France,  Ignatius  creating  the 
Society  of  Jesus,  Fox  giving  life  to  the  Society  of  Friends, 
than  in  all  the  ecstacies  and  austerities  of  the  Egyptian 
"  fathers  in  the  desert."  That  mysticism  is  an  exhibition 
of  the  higher  powers  of  love :  a  love  which  would  face  all 
obstacles,  endure  all  purifications,  and  cherish  and  strive 
for  the  whole  world.  In  all  its  variations,  it  demands  one 
quality — humble  and  heroic  effort  ;  and  points  with  a 
steady  finger  to  one  road  from  Appearance  to  Reality— 
the  Mystic  Way,  Transcendence. 


IV 

THE    MYSTIC    WAY 

As  in  those  who  pass  through  the  normal  stages  of 
bodily  and  mental  development,  so  in  those  who  tread  this 
Mystic  Way — though  the  outward  circumstances  of  their 
lives  may  differ  widely — we  always  see  the  same  thing 
happening,  the  same  sort  of  growth  taking  place.1 

The  American  psychologist,  Dr.  Stanley  Hall,  has 
pointed  out 2  that  as  the  human  embryo  was  said  by  the 
earlier  evolutionists  to  recapitulate  in  the  course  of  its 
development  the  history  of  ascending  life,  to  the  point  at 
which  it  touches  humanity — presenting  us,  as  it  were, 
month  by  month,  with  plastic  sketches  of  the  types  by 
which  it  had  passed — so  the  child  and  youth  do  really 
continue  that  history  ;  exhibiting  stage  by  stage  dim  and 
shadowy  pictures  of  the  progress  of  humanity  itself. 

Thus  the  vigorous  period  of  childhood  from  eight  to 
twelve  years  of  age,  with  its  practical  outdoor  interests 
and  instinct  for  adventure,  represents  a  distinct  stage  in 
human  evolution;  the  making  of  "primitive"  man,  a 
strong  intelligent  animal,  utterly  individualistic,  wholly 

1  I  have  discussed  the  stages  of  this  growth  in  detail  elsewhere  (Mystic 
ism  :  a  Study  in  the  Nature  and  Development  of  Man's  Spiritual  Conscious 
ness,  4th  edition,  1912,  Pt.  II.).  The  biographies  of  numerous  mystics 
exhibit  them  with  great  clearness;  particularly  the  Blessed  Angela  of 
Foligno,  Visionum  et  Instructionum  Liber  ;  Suso,  Leben  ;  St.  Catherine  of 
Genoa,  Vita  ;  St.  Teresa,  Vida  ;  Madame  Guyon,  Vie  par  Elle-meme ; 
and  other  records  to  which  reference  will  be  made  in  the  course  of  the 
present  work. 

•  In  Adolescence  :  its  Psychology,  etc.,  2  vols.     New  York,  1904. 

47 


48  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

concentrated  on  the  will-to-live.  In  the  formation  of  the 
next  type,  which  is  the  work  of  the  adolescent  period,  we 
see  reproduced  before  us  one  of  nature's  " fresh  starts"; 
the  spontaneous  development  of  a  new  species,  by  no 
means  logically  deducible  from  the  well-adapted '  animal 
which  preceded  it.  Much  that  characterised  the  child- 
species  is  now  destroyed;  new  qualities  develop  amidst 
psychic  and  physical  disturbance,  "  a  new  wave  of 
vitality  "  l  lifts  the  individual  to  fresh  levels,  a  veritable 
"  new  birth  "  takes  place. 

Normal  human  adolescence  is  thus  "an  age  of  all-sided 
and  saltatory  development,  when  new  traits,  powers, 
faculties  and  dimensions,  which  have  no  other  nascent 
period,  arise."  2  It  is  not  merely  deduced  from  the  child 
hood  which  preceded  it :  it  is  one  of  life's  creative  epochs, 
when  the  creature  finds  itself  re-endowed  with  energy  of 
a  new  and  higher  type,  and  the  Ego  acquires  a  fresh 
centre.  "  In  some  respects  early  adolescence  is  thus  the 
infancy  of  man's  higher  nature,  when  he  receives  from 
the  great  all-mother  his  last  capital  of  energy  and  evolu 
tionary  momentum."3  "Psychic  adolescence,"  says  this 
same  authority,  "  is  heralded  by  all-sided  mobilisation." 
As  the  child,  so  again  the  normal  adult  ;  each  represents 
a  terminal  stage  of  human  development.  Each  is  well 
adjusted  to  his  habitual  environment;  and  were  adaptation 
to  such  environment  indeed  the  "  object "  of  the  life- 
spirit,  the  experience  of  "  the  boy  who  never  grew  up  " 
might  well  be  the  experience  of  the  race.  But  ascending 
life  cannot  rest  in  old  victories.  "  At  dawning  adolescence 
this  old  unity  and  harmony  with  nature  is  broken  up; 
the  child  is  driven  from  his  paradise  and  must  enter  upon 
a  long  viaticum  of  ascent,  must  conquer  a  higher  kingdom 
of  man  for  himself,  break  out  a  new  sphere  and  evolve 
a  more  modern  storey  to  his  psycho-physical  nature. 

1  Adolescence  :  its  Psychology,  Vol.  I.  p.  308. 

•  Op.  dt.,  Vol.  I.  p.  47.  3  Op.  «>.,  Vol.  II.  p.  71. 


MYSTICISM  AND  HUMAN  LIFE         49 

Because  his  environment  is  to  be  far  more  complex,  the 
combinations  are  less  stable,  the  ascent  less  easy  and 
secure.  .  .  .  New  dangers  threaten  on  all  sides.  It  is 
the  most  critical  stage  of  life,  because  failure  to  mount 
almost  always  means  retrogression,  degeneracy,  or  fall."1 
In  the  making  of  spiritual  man,  that  "  new  creature," 
we  seem  to  see  this  process  again  repeated.  He  is  the 
"  third  race"  of  humanity;  as  the  Romans,  with  their 
instinct  for  realism,  called  in  fact  the  Christian  type  when 
first  it  arose  amongst  them.2  Another  wave  of  vitality 
now  rolls  up  from  the  deeps  with  its  "  dower  of  energy  "; 
another  stage  in  life's  ascent  is  attacked.  Mind  goes  back 
into  the  melting  pot,  that  fresh  powers  and  faculties  may 
be  born.  The  true  mystic,  indeed,  is  the  adolescent  of 
the  Infinite;  for  he  looks  forward  during  the  greater 
part  of  his  career — that  long  upward  climb  towards 
a  higher  kingdom — to  a  future  condition  of  maturity. 
From  first  to  last  he  exhibits  all  the  characteristics  of 
youth  ;  never  loses — as  that  arrested  thing,  the  normal 
adult  must — the  freshness  of  his  reactions  on  the  world. 
He  has  the  spontaneity,  the  responsiveness,  the  instability 
of  youth;  experiences  all  its  struggles  and  astonishments. 
He  is  swept  by  exalted  feeling,  is  capable  of  ideal  vision 
and  quixotic  adventure:  there  is  " colour  in  his  soul." 

As  with  the  adolescent  of  the  physical  order,  the  mystic's 
entrance  on  this  state,  this  new  life, — however  long  and 
carefully  prepared  by  the  steady  pressure  of  that  trans 
cendent  side  of  nature  we  call  "  grace,"  and  by  his  own 
interior  tendency  or  "  love," — yet  seems  when  it  happens 
to  be  cataclysmic  and  abrupt :  abrupt  as  birth,  since  it 
always  means  the  induction  of  consciousness  into  an  order 
previously  unknown.  The  elan  vital  is  orientated  in  a 
new  direction :  begins  the  hard  work  of  cutting  a  fresh 

1  Adolescence,  Vol.  II.  p.  71. 

a  Cf.  Harnack,  The  Expansion  of  Christianity,  Vol.  I.  pp.  300-352, 
where  numerous  examples  are  given. 
E 


50  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

path.  At  once,  with  its  first  movement,  new  levels  of 
reality  are  disclosed,  a  transformation  both  in  the  object 
and  in  the  intensity  of  feeling  takes  place.  The  self 
moves  in  both  an  inner  and  an  outer  "  world  unrealised." 
As  the  self-expression  of  the  Divine  Life  in  the  world 
conforms  to  a  rhythm  too  great  for  us  to  grasp,  so  that 
its  manifestation  appears  to  us  erratic  and  unprepared;  so 
is  it  with  the  self-expression,  the  emergence  into  the  field 
of  consciousness,  of  that  fontal  life  of  man  which  we  have 
called  the  soul's  spark  or  seed,  which  takes  place  in  the 
spiritual  adolescence.  This  emergence  is  seldom  under 
stood  by  the  self  in  relation  with  life  as  a  whole.  It 
seems  to  him  a  separate  gift  or  "  grace,"  infused  from 
without,  rather  than  developed  from  within.  It  startles 
him  by  its  suddenness;  the  gladness,  awe  and  exaltation 
which  it  brings :  an  emotional  inflorescence,  parallel  with 
that  which  announces  the  birth  of  perfect  human  love. 
This  moment  is  the  spiritual  spring-time.  It  comes,  like 
the  winds  of  March,  full  of  natural  wonder  ;  and  gives  to 
all  who  experience  it  a  participation  in  the  deathless  magic 
of  eternal  springs.  An  enhanced  vitality,  a  wonderful 
sense  of  power  and  joyful  apprehension  as  towards  worlds 
before  ignored  or  unknown,  floods  the  consciousness. 
Life  is  raised  to  a  higher  degree  of  tension  than  ever 
before;  and  therefore  to  a  higher  perception  of  Reality. 

"  O  glory  of  the  lighted  mind. 
How  dead  I'd  been,  how  dumb,  how  blind. 
The  station  brook,  to  my  new  eyes, 
Was  babbling  out  of  Paradise, 
The  waters  rushing  from  the  rain 
Were  singing  Christ  has  risen  again. 
I  thought  all  earthly  creatures  knelt 
From  rapture  of  the  joy  I  felt. 
The  narrow  station-wall's  brick  ledge, 
The  wild  hop  withering  in  the  hedge, 
The  lights  in  huntsman's  upper  storey, 
Were  parts  of  an  eternal  glory, 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN  LIFE         51 

Were  God's  eternal  garden  flowers. 
I  stood  in  bliss  at  this  for  hours."  * 

The  exaltation  of  Saul  Kane,  the  converted  poacher, 
here  breaks  into  an  expression  which  could  be  paralleled 
by  many  a  saint.  By  the  unknown  poet  of  the  "  Odes  of 
Solomon  "  crying,  "  Everything  became  like  a  relic  of 
Thyself,  and  a  memorial  for  ever  of  Thy  faithful  works.'5  2 
By  Angela  of  Foligno,  to  whom,  as  she  climbed  the 
narrow  pathway  from  the  vale  of  Spello  to  Assisi,  and 
looked  at  the  vineyards  on  either  hand,  the  Holy  Spirit 
perpetually  said,  "Look  and  see!  this  is  My  Creation"; 
so  that  suddenly  the  sight  of  these  natural  things  filled 
her  with  ineffable  delight.3  By  St.  Teresa,  who  was  much 
helped  in  the  beginning  of  her  spiritual  life  by  looking 
at  fields,  water  and  flowers;  for  "  In  them  I  saw  traces  of 
the  Creator — I  mean  that  the  sight  of  these  things  was 
as  a  book  unto  me."  4  By  George  Fox,  to  whom  at  the 
time  of  his  first  mystic  illuminations,  "  all  creation  gave 
another  smell  beyond  what  words  can  utter." 5  By 
Brother  Lawrence  receiving  from  the  leafless  tree  "  a  high 
view  of  the  providence  and  power  of  God."  6  By  the 
Sufi,  for  whom  "  when  the  mystery  of  the  essence  of 
being  has  been  revealed  to  him,  the  furnace  of  the  world 
becomes  transformed  into  a  garden  of  flowers,"  so  that 
"the  adept  sees  the  almond  through  the  envelope  of  its 
shell  ;  and,  no  longer  beholding  himself,  perceives  only 
his  Friend  ;  in  all  that  he  sees,  beholding  his  face,  in 
every  atom  perceiving  the  whole." 7  All  these  have 
experienced  an  abrupt  access  of  divine  vitality,  rolling  up 

1  Masefield,  The  Everlasting  Mercy,  p.  97. 
8  Ode  XI.  (Harris'  edition,  p.  105). 

3  Visionum  et  Instructionum  Liber,  cap.  20. 

4  Vida,  cap.  ix.  6. 

5  Journal,  Vol.  I.  cap.  2. 

6  The  Practice  of  the  Presence  of  God,  p.  9. 

7  'Attar,  The  Seven  Valleys. 

E  2 


52  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

they  know  not  whence;  breaking  old  barriers,  overflow 
ing  the  limits  of  old  conceptions,  changing  their  rhythm 
of  receptivity,  the  quality  of  their  attention  to  life.  They 
are  regenerate;  entinctured  and  fertilised  by  somewhat  not 
themselves.  Hence,  together  with  this  new  power  pour 
ing  in  on  them,  they  receive  new  messages  of  wonder 
and  beauty  from  the  external  world.  New  born,  they 
stand  here  at  the  threshold  of  illimitable  experiences,  in 
which  life's  powers  of  ecstacy  and  of  endurance,  of  love 
and  of  pain,  shall  be  exploited  to  the  full. 

This  change  of  consciousness,  this  conversion,  most 
often  happens  at  one  of  two  periods :  at  the  height  of 
normal  adolescence,  about  eighteen  years  of  age,  before 
the  crystallising  action  of  maturity  has  begun;  or,  in  the 
case  of  those  finer  spirits  who  have  carried  into  manhood 
the  adolescent  faculties  of  growth  and  response,  at  the 
attainment  of  full  maturity,  about  thirty  years  of  age.1 
It  may,  however,  happen  at  any  time;  for  it  is  but  an 
expression  of  that  life  which  is  "  movement  itself." 
During  epochs  of  great  mystical  activity,  such  as  that 
which  marked  the  "  apostolic  age  "  of  Christianity,  the 
diffused  impulse  to  transcendence — a  veritable  "  wind  of 
the  spirit," — stimulates  to  new  life  all  whom  it  finds  in 
its  way.  The  ordinary  laws  of  growth  are  then  sus 
pended;  and  minds  in  every  stage  of  development  are 
invaded  by  the  flooding  tide  of  the  spiritual  consciousness. 

The  stages  of  growth  which  follow  are  well  known  to 
mystical  and  ascetic  literature.  Here  conditions  of  stress 
and  of  attainment,  each  so  acutely  felt  as  to  constitute 

1  St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  Suso,  Madame  Guyon,  Richard  Jefferies,  are 
examples  of  the  first  class;  St.  Augustine,  Angela  of  Foligno,  St.  Ignatius, 
St.  Teresa,  Pascal,  of  the  second.  It  almost  seems  as  though  there 
were  mutation  periods  in  the  history  of  man  not  unlike  those  of  which 
de  Vries  claims  that  he  has  demonstrated  the  existence  in  the  history 
of  plants  (cf.  Die  Mutationstheorii).  After  a  period  of  stability  and 
rest,  the  unstable  "  tendency  to  variation  "  breaks  out  with  enormous 
force. 


MYSTICISM  AND  HUMAN  LIFE         53 

states  of  pain  and  of  pleasure,  alternate  with  one  another 
— sometimes  rapidly,  sometimes  in  long,  slow  rhythms — 
until  the  new  life  aimed  at  is  at  last  established  and  a  state 
of  equilibrium  assured.  First  after  the  joy  of  "  re-birth  " 
there  comes  a  period  of  difficult  growth  and  effort;  the 
hard  and  painful  readjustment  to  a  new  order,  the  disci 
plines  and  renunciations  in  which  the  developing  soul  re 
makes  its  inner  world.  All  that  helps  life  to  move  in  the 
new  direction  must  now  be  established.  The  angle  of  the 
mental  blinkers  must  be  altered,  attention  focussed  on  the 
new  outlook.  All  that  holds  the  self  back  to  a  racial 
past,  the  allurements  of  which  have  now  become  a  retard 
ing  influence  or  "  sin  "  must  be  renounced.  This  process, 
in  its  countless  forms,  is  Purgation.  Here  it  is  inevitable 
that  there  should  be  much  struggle,  difficulty,  actual  pain. 
Man,  hampered  by  strong  powers  and  instincts  well 
adapted  to  the  life  he  is  leaving,  is  candidate  for  a  new 
and  higher  career  to  which  he  is  not  fully  adapted  yet. 
Hence  the  need  for  that  asceticism,  the  training  of  the 
athlete,  which  every  race  and  creed  has  adopted  as  the 
necessary  preliminary  of  the  mystic  life.  The  period  of 
transition,  the  rearrangement  of  life,  must  include  some 
thing  equivalent  to  the  irksome  discipline  of  the  school 
room;  to  the  deliberate  curbing  of  wild  instincts  long 
enjoyed.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  period  of  education,  of  leading 
forth :  in  which  much  that  gave  zest  to  his  old  life  is 
taken  away,  and  much  that  is  necessary  to  the  new  life 
is  poured  upon  him  through  his  opening  faculties,  though 
in  a  form  which  he  cannot  yet  enjoy  or  understand. 

Next,  the  period  of  education  completed,  and  those 
new  powers  or  virtues  which  are  the  "  ornaments  of  the 
spiritual  marriage  "  put  on,  the  trained  and  purified  con 
sciousness  emerges  into  that  clear  view  of  the  Reality  in 
which  it  lives  and  moves,  which  is  known  sometimes  as 
the  "practice  of  the  Presence  of  God";  or,  more 
generally,  as  Illumination.  "Grace,"  the  transcendent 


54  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

life-force,  surges  up  ever  stronger  from  the  deeps — 
"wells  up  within,  like  a  fountain  of  the  Spirit,"3 
forming  new  habits  of  attention  and  response  in  respect 
of  the  supernal  world.  The  faculty  of  contemplation  may 
now  develop,  new  powers  are  born,  the  passion  of  love  is 
disciplined  and  enhanced.  Though  this  stage  of  growth 
is  called  by  the  old  writers  on  mysticism  "  the  state 
proper  to  those  that  be  in  progress,"  it  seems  in  the  com 
pleteness  of  its  adaptation  to  environment  to  mark  a 
"  terminal  point "  of  spiritual  development — one  of  the 
halts  in  the  upward  march  of  the  soul — and  does,  in  fact, 
mark  it  for  many  an  individual  life,  which  never  moves 
beyond  this  level  of  reality.  Yet  it  is  no  blind  alley,  but 
lies  upon  the  highway  of  life's  ascent  to  God.  In  the 
symbolic  language  of  the  Sufis,  it  is  the  Tavern,  where  the 
pilgrim  rests  and  is  refreshed  by  "  the  draught  of  Divine 
Love " :  storing  up  the  momentum  necessary  for  the 
next  "  saltatory  development  "  of  life. 

True  to  that  strange  principle  of  oscillation  and  insta 
bility,  keeping  the  growing  consciousness  swinging 
between  states  of  pleasure  and  states  of  pain — which 
seems,  so  far  as  our  perception  goes,  to  govern  the 
mystery  of  growth — this  development,  when  it  comes, 
destroys  the  state  which  preceded  it  as  completely  as  the 
ending  of  childhood  destroys  the  harmonious  universe 
of  the  child.  Strange  cravings  which  it  cannot  under 
stand  now  invade  the  growing  self :  the  languor  and 
gloom,  the  upheavals  and  loss  of  equilibrium,  which 
adolescents  know  so  well.  Like  the  young  of  civilised 
man,  here  spiritual  man  is  "reduced  back  to  a  state  of 
nature,  so  far  as  some  of  the  highest  faculties  are  con 
cerned,  again  helpless,  in  need  not  only  of  guidance,  but 
of  shelter  and  protection.  His  knowledge  of  self  is  less 
adequate,  and  he  must  slowly  work  out  his  salvation."  2 

1  Ruysbroeck,  UOrnement  des  Noces  Spiritutlles,  Lib.  II.  cap.  3. 
*  Stanley  Hall,  Adolescence  t  Vol.  II.  p.  71. 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN  LIFE         55 

This  is  the  period  of  spiritual  confusion  and  impotence, 
the  last  drastic  purification  of  the  whole  character,  the 
re-making  of  personality  in  accordance  with  the  demands 
of  the  transcendent  sphere,  which  is  called  by  some 
mystics  the  Dark  Night  of  the  Sow/,  by  others  the 
"  spiritual  death,"  or  "  purgation  of  the  will."  What 
ever  the  psychological  causes  which  produce  it,  all  mystics 
agree  that  this  state  constitutes  a  supreme  moral  crisis,  in 
which  the  soul  is  finally  cleansed  of  all  attachments  to  self 
hood,  and  utterly  surrendered  to  the  purposes  of  the 
Divine  Life.  Spiritual  man  is  driven  from  his  old 
paradise,  enters  on  a  new  period  of  struggle,  must  evolve 
"  another  storey  to  his  soul." 

The  result  of  this  pain  and  effort  is  the  introduction 
of  the  transmuted  self  into  that  state  of  Union,  or  com 
plete  harmony  with  the  divine,  towards  which  it  had 
tended  from  the  first :  a  state  of  equilibrium,  of 
enhanced  vitality  and  freedom,  in  which  the  spirit  is  at 
last  full-grown  and  capable  of  performing  the  supreme 
function  of  maturity — giving  birth  to  new  spiritual  life. 
Here  man  indeed  receives  his  last  and  greatest  "  dower 
of  vitality  and  momentum";  for  he  is  now  an  inheritor  of 
the  Universal  Life,  a  "  partaker  of  the  Divine  Nature."  l 
"  My  life  shall  be  a  real  life,  being  wholly  full  of  Thee." 

"  Mankind,  like  water  fowl,  are  sprung  from  the  sea — the  sea  of  the  soul; 
Risen  from  that  sea,  why  should  the  bird  make  here  his  home  ? 
Nay,  we  are  pearls  in  that  sea,  therein  we  all  abide ; 
Else,  why  does  wave  follow  wave  from  the  sea  of  soul  ? 
JTis  the  time  of  union's  attainment,  'tis  the  time  of  eternity's  beauty, 
'Tis  the  time  of  favour  and  largesse,  'tis  the  ocean  of  perfect  purity. 
The  billow  of  largesse  hath  appeared,  the  thunder  of  the  sea  hath 

arrived, 
The  morn  of  blessedness  hath  dawned.     Morn  ?     No,  'tis  the  light  of 

God."2 

Now  it  is  exactly  this  growth  in  vitality,  this  appro- 

1  2  Peter  i.  4. 

2  Jalalu  'ddin,  Divan  (Nicholson's  trans.,  p.  35). 


56  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

priation  of  the  "  billow  of  largesse," — called  by  her  theo 
logians  "  prevenient  grace," — which  Christianity  holds  out 
as  the  ideal  not  merely  of  the  religious  aristocrat,  but  of 
all  mankind.  It  is  a  growth  which  goes  the  whole  way 
from  "  earth"  to  "  heaven,"  from  the  human  to  the 
divine;  and  may  as  easily  be  demonstrated  by  the  pro 
cesses  of  psychology  as  by  the  doctrines  of  religion.  At 
once  "  natural "  and  "  supernatural,"  it  tends  as  much 
to  the  kind  of  energy  called  active  as  to  the  other,  rarer 
kind  of  energy  called  contemplative.  "  Primarily  a  life 
of  pure  inwardness,  its  conquests  are  in  the  invisible;  but 
since  it  represents  the  life  of  the  All,  so  far  as  man  is  able 
to  attain  that  Life,  it  must  show  results  in  the  All."  * 
Its  end  is  the  attainment  of  that  "  kingdom "  which  it 
is  the  one  business  of  Christianity  to  proclaim.  She 
enshrined  the  story  of  this  growth  in  her  liturgy,  she  has 
always  demanded  it  in  its  intensest  form  from  all  her 
saints,  she  trains  to  it  every  novice  in  her  religious  orders 
— more,  every  Christian  in  the  world  to  whom  his  faith 
means  more  than  assent  to  a  series  of  credal  definitions. 
As  we  shall  see,  when  she  asks  the  neophyte  to  "  imitate 
Christ "  she  is  implicitly  asking  him  to  set  in  hand  this 
organic  process  of  growth.  Whether  the  resultant 
character  tends  most  to  contemplation  or  to  action  will 
depend  upon  individual  temperament.  In  either  case  it 
will  be  a  character  of  the  mystical  type;  for  its  reaction 
upon  life  will  be  conditioned  by  the  fact  that  it  is  a 
^partaker  of  Reality. 

If  the  theory  which  is  here  outlined  be  accepted,  it  will 
follow  that  Christianity  cannot  be  understood  apart  from 
the  psychological  process  which  it  induces  in  those  who 
receive  it  in  its  fulness.  Hence  the  only  interpreters  of 
Christian  doctrine  to  whose  judgment  we  are  bound  to 
submit  will  be  those  in  whom  this  process  of  develop 
ment  has  taken  place  ;  who  are  proved  to  have  followed 
1  Eucken,  The  Truth  of  Religion,  p.  457. 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN  LIFE        57 

"  the  Mystic  Way,"  attained  that  consciousness,  that 
independent  spiritual  life,  which  alone  is  really  Christian, 
and  therefore  know  the  realities  of  which  they  speak. 
Thus-  not  only  St.  Paul  and  the  writer  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  but  also  St.  Macarius  or  St.  Augustine  will  be 
come  for  us  "inspired"  in  this  sense.  So  too  will  later 
interpreters,  later  exhibitors  of  this  new  direction  of  life : 
the  great  mystics  of  the  mediaeval  period.  Those  who 
lived  the  life  outside  the  fold  will  also  help  us — Plotinus, 
the  Sufis,  Blake.  "  My  teaching  is  not  mine,  but  His 
that  sent  me :  if  any  man  willeth  to  do  His  will,  he  shall 
know  of  the  teaching."  l 

"  Just  as  we  cannot  obtain,"  says  Harnack,  "  a  com 
plete  knowledge  of  a  tree  without  regarding  not  only 
its  root  and  its  stem,  but  also  its  bark,  its  branches,  and 
the  way  in  which  it  blooms,  so  we  cannot  form  any  right 
estimate  of  the  Christian  religion  unless  we  take  bur 
stand  upon  a  comprehensive  induction  that  shall  cover  all 
the  facts  of  its  history.  It  is  true  that  Christianity  has 
had  its  classical  epoch;  nay  more,  it  had  a  Founder  who 
Himself  was  what  He  taught — to  steep  ourselves  in  Him 
is  still  the  chief  matter;  but  to  restrict  ourselves  to  Him 
means  to  take  a  point  of  view  too  low  for  His  significance. 
.  .  .  He  had  His  eye  on  win,  in  whatever  external 
situation  he  might  be  found — upon  man,  who  funda 
mentally  always  remains  the  same."  2  Man,  the  thorough 
fare  of  Life  upon  her  upward  pilgrimage;  self -creative, 
susceptible  of  freedom,  able  to  breathe  the  atmosphere  of 
Reality,  to  attain  consciousness  here  and  now  of  the 
Spiritual  World. 

1  John  vii.  17. 

*  Harnack,  Das  Wescn  des  Ckristtntums,  pp.   7,  II   (Eng.  trans.,  pp. 
II,  17). 


THE    CHRISTIAN    MYSTIC 

OF  course,  those  who  adopt  the  hypothesis  which  is 
here  suggested  will  find  opposing  them  almost  every  view 
of  Christianity  which  is,  or  has  been,  fashionable  within 
the  last  half-century  or  more :  the  Ritschlian  view,  the 
Eschatological  view,  the  view  which  derives  Christianity 
from  an  admixture  of  Jewish  revivalism  and  the 
"  Mysteries,"  the  view  which  sees  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
either  an  essentially  unmystical  ethical  or  political 
reformer,  or  the  victim  of  prophetic  illuminism,  and  half 
a  hundred  other  ingenious  variations  upon  orthodoxy. 
Above  all,  we  shall  be  in  conflict  with  those  who  see  in 
the  teaching  of  St.  Paul  an  opposition  to  the  teaching  of 
Christ,  and  with  those  who  consider  the  mystical  element 
in  Christianity  to  be  fundamentally  unchristian  and 
ultimately  descended  from  the  Neoplatonists.1 

The  first  class  of  critics  will  be  dealt  with  in  a  later 
chapter;2  but  the  often  violently  expressed  views  of  the 
second  class  must  be  considered  before  we  pass  on.  Their 
position,  one  and  all,  seems  to  result  from  a  fundamental 
misunderstanding  of  mysticism;  defined  by  them  as  con 
sisting  solely  in  that  form  of  negative  contemplation, 
that  spiritual  mono-ideism,  often  tinctured  with  intense 

1  This  is  the  opinion  of  practically  the  whole  Ritschlian  group,  who 
inherited  their   master's   anti-mystical  bias.     The   most   complete   and 
extreme  statement  of  their  position  is  by  W.  Herrmann,  Der  Ferkehr  des 
Christen  mit  Gott. 

2  Fide  infra,  Cap.  III. 

58 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN  LIFE         59 

emotion  and  rising  to  an  unconditioned  ecstacy,  in  which 
the  mystic  claims  to  have  enjoyed  fruition  of  the  Absolute. 
This  art  of  contemplation,  practised  by  the  Neoplatonists 
and  inherited  from  them  by  the  Christian  Church,1  repre 
sents,  of  course,  but  one  aspect  of  the  mystic  life — its 
accident  indeed,  rather  than  its  substance — and,  when  it 
appears  divorced  from  the  rest  of  that  life,  is  an  aberration 
meriting  some  at  least  of  the  strictures  which  Ritschl, 
Herrmann  and  even  Harnack  shower  upon  it. 

Thus  Herrmann  says,  "  When  the  influence  of  God 
upon  the  soul  is  sought  and  found  solely  in  an  inward 
experience  of  the  individual;  when  certain  excitements  of 
the  emotions  are  taken,  with  no  further  question,  as 
evidence  that  the  soul  is  possessed  by  God;  when  at  the 
same  time  nothing  external  to  the  soul  is  consciously  and 
clearly  perceived  and  firmly  grasped;  when  no  thoughts 
that  elevate  the  spiritual  life  are  aroused  by  the  positive 
contents  of  an  idea  that  rules  the  soul — then  that  is  the 
piety  of  mysticism.  .  .  .  Mysticism  is  not  that  which  is 
common  to  all  religion,  but  a  particular  species  of  religion, 
namely,  a  piety  which  feels  that  which  is  historical  in  the 
positive  religion  to  be  burdensome  and  so  rejects  it." 
The  natural  corollaries  follow,  that  "  the  Christian  must 
pronounce  the  mystic's  experience  of  God  to  be  a 
delusion,"  and  that  "  in  the  narrow  experiences  into  which 
mysticism  dwindles  there  is  no  room  for  real  Christian 
life." 2  Granting  the  premisses,  so  thoroughgoing  a 
mystic  as  St.  John  of  the  Cross  himself  would  almost 
certainly  have  agreed  with  the  conclusion; 3  but  a  very 

*  Vide  infra,  Cap.  V,  §  II. 

1  W.  Herrmann,  Der  Verkehr  des  Christen  mit  Gott,  Bk.  I.  cap.  I,  §  4, 
7,  and  cap  2,  §  3 ;  and  Bk.  II.  cap.  6,  §  IO. 

3  "  It  is  a  most  perilous  thing,  and  much  more  so  than  I  can  tell,  to 
converse  with  God  by  these  supernatural  ways,  and  whosoever  is  thus 
disposed  cannot  but  fall  into  many  shameful  delusions."  "  The  humble 
soul  will  not  presume  to  converse  with  God  by  itself  .  .  .  God  will  not 
enlighten  him  who  is  alone,  nor  confirm  the  truth  in  his  heart :  such  a 


60  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

slight  acquaintance  with  the  works  of  the  Christian 
mystics  is  enough  to  show  how  perverse  is  the  whole 
argument,  how  inaccurate  its  statement  of  "  fact." 

Far  from  "feeling  the  historical  to  be  burdensome," 
true  Christian  mysticism  rejects  without  hesitation  all 
individual  revelations  which  do  not  accord  with  the 
teaching  and  narrative  of  the  canonical  Scriptures — its 
final  Court  of  Appeal.  Thus  Richard  of  St.  Victor, 
che  a  consider ar  fu  piu  che  viro,1  and  through  whose 
school  nearly  every  mediaeval  mystic  has  passed,  says  of 
the  soul  which  claims  to  have  enjoyed  an  ecstatic  vision 
of  God,  "  Even  if  you  think  that  you  see  Christ  trans 
figured,  be  not  too  ready  to  believe  aught  you  may  see 
or  hear  in  Him  unless  Moses  and  Elias  run  to  meet 
Him.  I  hold  in  suspicion  all  truth  which  the  authority 
of  Scripture  does  not  confirm;  nor  do  I  receive  Christ  in 
His  glory,  save  Moses  and  Elias  be  talking  with  Him."  2 
Many  other  masters  of  the  spiritual  life  have  spoken  to 
the  same  effect. 

The  "  discerning  of  spirits," — the  sorting  out,  that  is 
to  say,  of  real  from  false  spirituality — has  formed  from 
the  earliest  times  an  important  branch  of  Christian  mysti 
cism;  and  its  duties  have  generally  been  performed  with 
severity,  completeness  and  common  sense.  For  it  "  tradi 
tion"  and  "experience,"  "authority"  and  "revelation" 
—that  is  to  say,  the  individual  and  universal  movements 
of  life — must  go  hand  in  hand,  justifying  and  com 
pleting  one  another,  if  they  are  to  be  accepted  as  the 
veritable  pathway  of  the  soul. 

The  great  contemplative  and  astute  psychologist  who 
wrote  the  Cloud  of  Unknowing  has  left  a  letter — 
the  "  Epistle  of  Discretion  " — addressed  to  a  disciple 
"full  able  and  full  greatly  disposed  to  such  sudden 

one  will  be  weak  and  cold  "  (St.  John  of  the  Cross,  Subida  del  Monte 
Carmelo,  Lib.  II.  caps.  21,  22). 
1  Par.  X.  132.  •  Benjamin  Minor,  cap.  81. 


MYSTICISM  AND  HUMAN  LIFE        61 

stirrings  of  singular  doings,  and  full  fast  to  cleave  unto 
them  when  they  be  received,"  which  perfectly  represents 
the  point  of  view  of  the  best  schools  of  Christian 
mysticism.  Such  "  sudden  and  singular  stirrings,"  he 
says,  are  ever  perilous,  "  seem  they  never  so  likely,  so 
high  nor  so  holy";  unless  they  have  the  witness  and 
consent  of  spiritual  teachers  "  long  time  expert  in  singular 
living."  Moreover,  he  continues,  with  an  acid  wit  not 
rare  amongst  the  saints,  they  are  often  mere  monkey- 
tricks  of  the  soul.  "  As  touching  these  stirrings  of  the 
which  thou  askest,  ...  I  say  to  thee  that  I  conceive  of  them 
suspiciously,  that  is,  lest  they  should  be  conceived  on  the 
ape's  manner.  Men  say  commonly  that  the  ape  doth  as 
he  seeth  others  do;  forgive  me  if  I  err  in  my  suspicion, 
I  pray  thee.  .  .  .  Beware  and  prove  well  thy  stirrings,  and 
whence  they  come;  for  how  so  thou  art  stirred,  whether 
from  within  by  grace,  or  from  without  on  ape's  manner, 
God  wote,  and  I  not."  Neither  this  "greedy  disposi 
tion  "  to  spiritual  joys,  nor  the  ascetic  practices  of  "  strait 
silence,  singular  fasting,  lonely  dwelling  "  are  the  central 
facts  for  the  mystic.  Often  they  may  be  helps;  often 
hindrances.  Porro  unum  est  necessarium:  a  total  self- 
giving,  an  active,  loving  surrender  to  Reality,  an  orienta 
tion  of  the  whole  self  towards  the  spiritual  world— 
"lovely  and  listily  to  will  to  love  God."  "For  if  God 
be  thy  love  and  thy  meaning,  the  choice  and  the  point 
of  thine  heart,  it  sufficed!  to  thee  in  this  life."  l  Direction 
of  life,  transcendence,  rather  than  a  busy  searching  out  of 
deep  things  or  some  private  experience  of  the  Infinite,  is 
again  brought  home  to  us  as  the  primal  fact  for  the 
developing  soul. 

The  personal  revelation  or  "  stirring,"  then,  is  only 
esteemed  by  the  true  mystic  where  it  ministers  to  the 
fruitful  and  lofty  character  of  the  individual  life.  The 

1  "  A  very  necessary  Epistle  of  Discretion  in  Stirrings  of  the  Soul." 
Printed  by  E.  Gardner  in  The  Cell  of  Self -Knowledge,  pp.  95-115. 


62  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

real  glory  and  originality  of  the  Christian  mystics  does 
not  consist  in  the  fact  that  they  possess — and  that  often 
in  a  supreme  degree — those  special  intuitions  which 
Herrmann  so  unworthily  describes  as  "  beclouded  con 
ceptions  of  an  Infinite  Being,"  or,  in  Ritschl's  scornful 
phrase,  "  enjoy  an  imaginary  private  relationship  with 
God."  It  consists  rather,  according  to  Delacroix — an 
investigator  who  writes  without  theological  prejudice- 
in  their  great  constructive  and  synthetic  power,  their 
development  of  a  consciousness  which  can  embrace  both 
Being  and  Becoming  in  its  sweep,  giving  to  its  possessor 
an  unprecedented  wholeness  of  life.  "  They  move,"  he 
says,  "  from  the  Infinite  to  the  Definite :  they  aspire  to 
infinitise  life  and  to  define  infinity."  1  "By  one  of  love's 
secrets  which  is  only  known  to  those  who  have  experienced 
it,"  2  the  World  of  Becoming  is  disclosed  to  them  as  a 
sacrament  of  the  Thought  of  God;  and  this  is  why  the 
historical  and  the  actual,  instead  of  being  "  burdensome," 
as  they  so  often  prove  to  a  merely  metaphysical  religion, 
are  seen  by  all  true  mystics  to  possess  adorable  and 
inexhaustible  significance.  Here  they  perceive  "  the  foot 
steps  of  God,  presenting  some  one  or  other  perfection  of 
that  Infinite  Abyss."  3 

A  long  series  of  such  mystics,  capable  with  Angela  of 
Foligno  of  perceiving  that  "  the  whole  world  is  full  of 
God,"  have  helped  their  fellow  men  towards  the  great 
task  of  infinitising  life;  thanks  to  their  heightened  power 
of  "  consciously  and  clearly  perceiving "  the  wealth  of 
beauty,  truth  and  goodness  exterior  to  the  soul.  In 
particular,  the  historical  life  of  Christ  assumes  for  those 
who  are  Christians  a  capital  importance :  since  life  is  that 
which  they  seek,  and  here  they  find  it  raised  to  its  highest 

1  Etudes  d'bistoire  et  de  psycbologie  du  mysticisms,  p.  235. 

8  Malaval,  La  Pratique  de  la  vraye  theologie  mystique,  Vol.  I.  p.  342. 

8  John  of  Holy  Crosse,  Philothea's  Pilgrimage  to  Perfection,  p.  192. 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN  LIFE          63 

denomination  and  manifested  before  the  eyes  of  men. 
They  call  it  the  Book  of  Life  in  which  all  must  read 
and  meditate,1  the  Bridge  by  which  pilgrim  man  may 
travel  to  his  goal.2 

"  My  humanity  is  the  road  which  all  must  tread  who 
would  come  to  that  which  thou  seekest,"  said  the  Eternal 
Wisdom  to  Suso.3  "  I  see  clearly,"  says  St.  Teresa,  "  that 
if  we  are  to  please  God,  and  if  He  is  to  give  us  His  great 
graces,  everything  must  pass  through  the  hands  of  His 
most  sacred  humanity.  ...  I  know  this  by  repeated  experi 
ence.  I  see  clearly  that  this  is  the  door  by  which  we  are 
to  enter,  if  we  would  have  the  supreme  Majesty  reveal  to 
us  His  great  secrets."  *  This  humanity,  says  Ruysbroeck, 
mystic  of  the  mystics,  is  the  "rule  and  key" — ascending 
as  it  does  to  the  fruition  of  God,  without  losing  touch 
with  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  humanity — "which  shows 
all  men  how  they  should  live."  5  His  biting  description 
of  the  false  mystic  "  subtle  in  words,  expert  in  dealing 
with  sublime  things,  full  of  studies  and  observations  and 
subtle  events  upon  which  he  exercises  his  imagination," 
but  fundamentally  sterile  and  incapable  of  "  coming  forth 
from  himself  "  to  live  a  life  corresponding  with  the  inflow 
ing  Spirit  of  Reality,  seems  framed  for  the  condemnation 
of  all  these  peculiarities  which  Herrmann  imagines  to  be 
characteristic  of  mysticism  as  a  whole.6 

Such  a  view  as  this,  far  from  absolving  mysticism  from 
dependence  on  the  historical,  consolidates  the  link  between 
inward  experience  and  outward  event.  It  effectually 
checks  the  one-sided  and  quietistic  interpretation  of 
mysticism,  which  put  such  a  dangerous  weapon  of  attack 

1  B.  Angelas  de  Fulginio,  Visionum  et  Instructionum  Liber,  cap.  59. 

a  St.  Catherine  of  Siena,  Dialogo,  cap.  22. 

3  Buchlein  von  der  ewigen  Weisheit,  cap.  2. 

4  Fida,  cap.  ix.  9. 

5  UOrnement  des  Noces  Spirituelles,  Lib.  II.  cap.  77. 

6  Op.  cit.y  Lib.  II.  cap.  45. 


64  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

into  the  hands  of  the  Ritschlian  school;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  opposes  the  peculiar  and  limited  theory  of  the 
function  of  the  historical  Christ,  which  is  advocated  by 
that  school.  It  gives  back  to  the  human  soul  the  freedom 
of  the  Infinite,  yet  does  not  loose  hold  of  the  method  by 
which  that  freedom  in  its  fulness  was  first  made  available 
to  men.  The  Ritschlian  says  in  effect,  "  We  only  know 
Deity  as  we  see  it  expressed  in  Christ "  1  ;  a  statement 
which,  if  it  is  to  have  any  meaning  at  all,  seems  to  demand 
a  highly  developed  mystical  consciousness  in  those  who 
subscribe  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  following  in  the 
most  practical  and  concrete  sense  the  actual  method  of 
Christ." 

"  Christian  mysticism,"  says  Delacroix — almost  alone 
amongst  modern  psychologists  in  seizing  this  vital  fact— 
"  is  orientated  at  one  and  the  same  time  towards  the  in 
accessible  God,  where  all  determination  vanishes,  and 
towards  the  GoD-Locos,  the  c  Word  of  God,'  the  wisdom 
and  holiness  of  the  world.  In  spite  of  the  sometimes 
contradictory  appearance  of  absorption  in  the  Father,  it 
is,  at  bottom,  the  mysticism  of  the  Son.  Its  ambition 
is  to  make  of  the  soul  a  divine  instrument,  a  place  where 
the  divine  power  dwells  and  incarnates  itself:  the  equi 
valent  of  Christ"  2 

Such  growth  towards  the  Life  of  God  must  imply — so 
the  Christian   mystics  think — a  growth   in   the  godlike 

1  Herrmann  even  goes  to  the  length  of  saying,  "  We  do  not  merely 
come  through  Christ  to  God.     It  is  truer  to  say  that  we  find  in  God 
nothing  but  Christ"  (op.  cit.,  Bk.  I.  cap.  I,  §  u). 

2  fitudes  cFhistoire  et  de  psychologic  du  mysticisme,  p.  xiii. 


MYSTICISM  AND  HUMAN    LIFE         65 

power  of  self-expression  under  two  orders,  the  Eternal 
and  the  Temporal,  the  contemplative  and  the  active;  for 
"  Perfection  ever  moves  on  two  poles,  extremely  opposite; 
which  St.  Paul  calls  Height  and  Depth,  St.  Francis 
What  is  God,  and  what  am  I?"1  Thus  "the  truly 
illuminated  man,"  says  Ruysbroeck,  "  flows  out  in 
universal  charity  toward  heaven  and  upon  earth."  2  He 
is  "  the  intermediary  between  God  and  Creation."  3  His 
life  has  been  surrendered,  not  that  it  may  be  annihilated, 
but  only  that  it  may  be  made  more  active,  and  more 
real. 

"  What  then  is  wanted,"  says  Baron  von  Hiigel,  "  if  we 
would  really  cover  the  facts  of  the  case,  is  evidently  not 
a  conception  which  would  minimise  the  human  action,  and 
would  represent  the  latter  as  shrinking,  in  proportion  as 
God's  action  increases;  but  one  which,  on  the  contrary, 
fully  faces,  and  keeps  a  firm  hold  of,  the  mysterious 
paradox  which  pervades  all  true  life,  and  which  shows  us 
the  human  soul  as  self-active  in  proportion  to  God's  action 
within  it.  ...  Grace  and  the  Will  thus  rise  and  fall,  in 
their  degree  of  action,  together ;  and  man  will  never  be 
so  fully  active,  so  truly  and  intensely  himself,  as  when  he 
is  most  possessed  by  God."  * 

This  total  and  life-enhancing  surrender  to  the  Tran 
scendent  is  the  consummation  towards  which  the  Christian 
mystics  move.  Life  in  its  wholeness  is  their  aim;  a 
concrete  and  actual  existence  which  shall  include  both  God 
and  the  world,  and  shall  raise  to  their  highest  terms,  use 
for  their  highest  purposes,  that  power  of  receptivity,  that 
power  of  controlled  attention,  that  power  of  energetic 
response,  which  characterises  human  consciousness.  Their 
method  is  positive,  not  negative  :  they  reject  nothing,  but 

1  John  of  Holy  Crosse,  Pbilotbea's  Pilgrimage  to  Perfection,  p.  219. 

*  UOrnement  des  noces  spirituelles,  Lib.  II.  cap.  45. 

8  Op.  cit.,  Lib.  II.  cap.  44. 

4  The  Mystical  Element  of  Religion,  Vol.  I.  p.  80. 


66  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

re-order  all,  completing  human  nature  by  the  addition  of 
a  "  top  storey "  which  crowns  instead  of  crushing  the 
foundation  upon  which  it  is  raised.  By  a  process  which 
is  the  secret  of  the  mystic  consciousness,  and  which  finds 
its  classic  expression  in  the  historic  Christ,  they  achieve 
a  synthesis  of  those  "  completing  opposites  "  in  which 
St.  Augustine,  and  after  him  Ruysbroeck,  saw  revealed 
the  essential  character  of  Deity :  the  changeless  and  the 
changeful,  the  ceaseless  onward  push  of  the  elan  vital, 
and  the  Pure  Being  which  transcends  and  supports  the 
storm  of  life  and  change. 

In  this  paradoxical  union  of  Being  and  Becoming— 
"  Peace  according  to  His  essence,  activity  according  to 
His  nature :  absolute  stillness,  absolute  fecundity  " — 
Ruysbroeck  held  that  the  secret  of  Divine  Reality  was 
hid :  and  that  those  who  had  reached  the  supreme 
summit  of  the  inner  life  and  claimed  actual  participation 
in  the  "life  of  God,"  must  possess  an  equivalent  whole 
ness  of  experience  * — in  activity  and  contemplation,  in 
fruition  and  work,  "  swinging  between  the  unseen  and  the 
seen."  They  must  go,  he  says  of  them,  "  toward  God  by 
inward  love  in  eternal  work,  and  in  God  by  fruitive 
inclination  in  eternal  rest,"  2  running  by  His  side  upon 
the  Highway  of  Love : 3  and,  because  of  this  complete 
conformity  to  the  Universal  Rhythm,  harmonising  that 
interior  consciousness  of  perfect  rest  which  is  the  reward 
of  the  surrender  of  finite  to  Infinite  Life  with  the  cease 
less  activity  of  an  auxiliary  of  God,  who  desires  only  to 
"be  to  the  Eternal  Goodness  what  his  own  hand  is  to  a 
man."  4 

We  may  translate  all  this  to  our  reason-loving  minds, 
though  at  the  cost  of  much  beauty  and  significance,  as 

1  D€  Vera  Contemplatione  (Hello,  p.  175). 

*  UOrnement  des  noces  spirituelks,  Lib.  II.  cap.  73. 

3  Ibid.,  Samuel  (Hello,  p.  207). 

4  Theolegia  Germanica,  cap.  10. 


MYSTICISM   AND   HUMAN  LIFE        67 

the  achievement  of  an  abiding  sense  of  the  reality  and 
importance  of  the  flux  of  things,  and  of  Spirit's  veritable 
life  growth  and  work  within  that  flux,  united  with  a 
deeply  conscious  participation  in  that  transcendent,  all- 
embracing  Divine  Order — that  independent,  changeless, 
unfathomable  Life  of  God — within  which  the  striving 
world  of  Time  is  held  secure.  The  real  possessors  of 
that  "  new  creation,"  the  Christian  consciousness,  look 
towards  a  divine  synthesis  inconceivable  to  the  common 
mind,  wherein  this  Being  and  this  Becoming,  la  forma 
universal  di  questo  nodo,  are  reconciled  and  embraced  in 
the  transcendent  life  of  Reality.  "  For  the  intermittent 
and  alternating  mysticism  of  the  ecstatic,  they  substitute 
a  mysticism  which  is  continuous  and  homogeneous." * 
This  synthesis  is  prefigured  for  them,  the  way  to  its 
attainment  shown,  in  the  historic  life  of  Christ ;  where 
they  find  the  pure  character  of  God,  the  secret  tendency 
of  Spirit,  expressed  under  the  limitations  of  a  growing  and 
enduring  world.  Of  this  life,  they  know  themselves  to 
be  the  direct  inheritors.  Thus,  treading  as  well  as  they 
can  in  the  footsteps  of  their  pattern,  they  actually  "  bring 
the  Eternal  into  Time" ;  and  by  this  act  lift  the  process 
of  Time  into  the  light  of  Eternity. 

"  There  is  an  inward  sight,"  says  the  Theologia 
Germanica,  "  which  hath  power  to  perceive  the  One  true 
Good,  and  that  it  is  neither  this  nor  that,  but  that  of  which 
St.  Paul  saith;  *  When  that  which  is  perfect  is  come,  then 
that  which  is  in  part  shall  be  done  away.5  By  this  he 
meaneth,  that  the  Whole  and  Perfect  excelleth  all  the 
fragments,  and  that  all  which  is  in  part  and  imperfect  is 
as  nought  compared  to  the  Perfect.  .  .  .  Behold!  where 
there  is  this  inward  sight,  the  man  perceiveth  of  a  truth, 
that  Christ's  life  is  the  best  and  noblest  life,  and  therefore 
the  most  to  be  preferred,  and  he  willingly  accepteth  and 
endureth  it,  without  a  question  or  a  complaint,  whether 
1  Delacroix,  Etudes  tFbistoire  et  de  psychologie  du  mysticism*,  TV. 

F  2 


68  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

it  please  or  offend  nature  or  other  men,  whether  he  like 
or  dislike  it,  find  it  sweet  or  bitter  and  the  like.  And 
therefore  wherever  this  perfect  and  true  Good  is  known, 
there  also  the  life  of  Christ  must  be  led,  until  the  death 
of  the  body.  And  he  who  vainly  thinketh  otherwise  is 
deceived,  and  he  who  saith  otherwise,  lieth,  and  in  what 
man  the  life  of  Christ  is  not,  of  him  the  true  Good  and 
eternal  Truth  will  never  more  be  known."  * 

This  passage  undoubtedly  represents  the  norm  of 
Christian  mysticism — the  "  path  to  that  which  is  Best."  2 
Over  and  over  again  we  find  its  doctrine  repeated  and 
affirmed.  We  see,  when  we  examine  Christian  literature, 
that  to  all  its  greater  saints  and  most  of  its  greater  writers 
the  concrete  events  in  the  life  of  the  historical  Christ  have 
seemed  of  overwhelming  significance.  Vita  tua,  via  nostra, 
says  a  Kempis.  "  He  appeared  amongst  us,"  says  Angela 
of  Foligno,  "  in  order  that  we  might  be  instructed  by  means 
of  His  life,  His  death,  and  His  teaching.  .  .  .  His  life  is 
an  ensample  and  a  pattern  for  every  mortal  that  desireth 
to  be  saved."3  More,  these  events,  in  the  order  in  which 
they  are  reported  to  us,  have  always  been  for  them  the 
types  of  successive  events  in  the  inner  history  of  the 
ascending  soul.  They  speak  of  its  "  New  Birth," 
its  "  Temptation,"  "  Transfiguration,"  "  Gethsemane," 
"Crucifixion"  and  "Resurrection";  and  test  the 
healthiness  of  its  growth  by  its  conformity  to  this  pattern 
of  development.  Readers  of  ascetic  literature  are  so 
accustomed  to  this,  that  it  has  ceased  to  strike  them  as 
strange;  yet,  were  the  Ritschlians  right  in  their  theory  as 
to  the  non-Christian  nature  of  the  mystic  life,  it  would 
be  strange  indeed. 

St.  Ignatius  Loyola,  whose  Spiritual  Exercises  show  him 
to  have  been  possessed  of  a  knowledge  of  human  person 
ality  so  penetrating  and  exact  that  it  might  almost  be 
1  Theologia  Germanica,  cap.  18.  »  Ibid.,  cap.  23. 

3  B.  Angelas  de  Fulgiaio,  Fisionum  et  instructionum  liber ,  cap.  59. 


MYSTICISM  AND   HUMAN   LIFE          69 

called  inspired,  mapped  out  the  complex  whole  of  man's 
spiritual  career  into  "  three  degrees  of  humility."  The 
first  degree,  which  is  that  of  a  beginner,  brings  the  mind 
to  a  point  at  which  it  will  make  any  sacrifice  rather  than 
commit  a  "  mortal "  sin.  The  second  degree,  that  of 
"  proficient,"  educates  the  moral  sensibility  to  a  point  at 
which  it  will  make  any  sacrifice  rather  than  commit 
"venial"  sin.  This  would  appear  to  be  the  limit  of 
normal  ethical  transcendence  :  but  it  is  merely  the  prepara 
tion  of  the  third  degree,  that  of  the  "perfect."  Those 
who  have  risen  to  this  height  are  completely  set  upon  one 
object,  for  which  they  easily  abandon  everything  else— 
"  to  make  their  lives  harmonise  with  the  life  of  Christ." 
When  we  read  this,  we  suddenly  perceive  why  it  was 
that  the  author  of  the  Imitatio  Christi  called  his  book  the 
"Ecclesiastical  Music";  for  in  it  we  hear  the  melody  of 
the  Church's  inner  life. 

Observe  that  St.  Ignatius,  though  himself  a  great 
mystic,  wished  by  this  method  to  create  active  and  heroic 
rather  than  contemplative  Christians.  He  would  gladly 
have  subscribed  to  the  dictum  of  Recejac,  that  "  Mysticism 
ought  never  to  depart  from  the  formula  so  admirably 
adapted  to  it  by  Aristotle — c  to  play  the  man.5 "  *  Yet 
the  way  upon  which  he  sets  the  growing  soul  is  the  Mystic 
Way — the  life  it  is  to  follow  is  that  "  lovely  life  "  in 
which  "  it  can  be  said  of  a  truth  God  and  man  are  one."  2 
The  state  at  which  it  is  to  aim  is  not  the  state  supposed 
to  be  characteristic  of  "practical  Christianity";  but  the 
transfigured  life  of  the  unitive  mystic,  living  "  Eternal 
Life  in  the  midst  of  Time." 

1  Fondements  de  la  connaissance  mystique,  Pt.  I.  cap.  2,  §  6. 
1  Thfo.  Gtr.,  cap.  24. 


CHAPTER   II 
MYSTICISM    AND   CHRISTOLOGY 

"  From  Him  there  began  the  interweaving  of  divine  and  human  nature, 
in  order  that  the  human,  by  communion  with  the  divine,  might  rise  to 
be  divine  :  not  in  Jesus  alone,  but  in  all  those  who  not  only  believe, 
but  enter  upon  the  life  which  Jesus  taught." — (ORIGEN,  Contra  Celsum, 
III.  28.) 


THE     SYNOPTIC    RECORD 

WE  have  said  that  the  appearance  of  Christianity  marks 
the  discovery  by  man,  or  the  revelation  to  man — opposite 
poles  of  the  same  substantial  fact — of  a  genuinely  new 
form  of  life.  Already  discerned  by  certain  spirits  behind 
veils,  and  known  in  part,  it  is  now  exhibited  in  its  whole 
ness  ;  establishing  itself  upon  heights  which — since  they 
reach,  and  unite  with,  Reality — lay  claim  to  the  great 
title  "divine." 

Jesus  of  Nazareth,  the  historical  Christ,  was,  says  the 
Church,  "  divine  and  human " — fully  and  completely 
human,  "  of  reasonable  soul  and  human  flesh  subsisting.5 ' 
The  working,  then,  of  that  strange  principle  in  Him 
which  religious  speculation  calls  "  divine,"  which  marks 
His  profound  and  unsullied  participation  in  Reality,  will 
be  conditioned  by  the  ways  and  limitations  of  that  normal 
body  and  soul  which  we  call  "  human."  Here  is  a  com 
monplace  of  modern  theology;  the  root  idea  which  lies 
at  the  bottom  of  its  doctrine  of  "Kenosis";  one  of  the 
thin  places  in  the  dogmatic  fence,  through  which  it  is 
accustomed  to  escape  in  haste  from  untenable  positions. 

The  discussion  of  the  "  divine  nature  "  of  Christ  be 
longs,  of  course,  to  theology  and  metaphysics :  though 
even  here  it  is  possible  that  the  most  intense  experiences 
of  those  mystics  who  have  attained  to  the  Unitive — or, 
as  they  persistently  call  it,  the  Deified — state,  can  give  us 
hints  as  to  the  way  in  which  such  an  identity  with  the 
Transcendent  Order  is  likely  to  express  itself  within  the 

73 


74  THE   MYSTIC  WAY 

limitations  of  human  consciousness.  But  the  discussion 
of  His  human  nature,  of  the  "  reasonable  soul "  in  which 
that  consciousness  of  divine  sonship  developed,  is  in  part 
at  least  the  business  of  psychology. 

"If,"  says  Prof.  Gardner,  "we  began  by  making  as 
sumptions  as  to  what  the  divine  nature  must  be,  instead 
of  inquiring  how  it  is  revealed  to  us,  we  enter  on  a  fruit 
less  task."  1  It  is  plain  that  if  the  psychic  life,  the  human 
nature,  through  which  that  revelation  reached  us  were 
human  at  all,  it  must  have  been  deeply  and  completely  so. 
"  Not  as  not  being  man,  but  as  being  from  men,  He  was 
beyond  men,"  says  Dionysius  the  Areopagite;2  and  in 
the  same  spirit  a  very  different  theologian  has  observed 
that  the  expression  "  Son  of  Man "  means  "  one  who 
completely  fulfilled  the  idea  of  man,  and  as  such  was  in 
specially  close  relationship  to  the  Father."  3  The  study, 
then,  of  such  a  truly  human  nature,  which  accepts  and 
does  not  escape  the  machinery  and  the  limitations  which 
have  been  developed  by  the  evolution  of  the  race,  whilst 
"  exercising  for  us  a  certain  new  God-incarnate  energy,"  4 
cannot  be  undertaken  apart  from  the  general  study  of 
human  consciousness.  The  personality  of  Christ,  whilst 
itself  unique,  yet  touches  the  normal  personality  of  man 
at  every  point.  The  reverent  process  of  insulation  to 
which  it  is  too  often  subjected,  entirely  destroys  its 
meaning  for  life. 

The  existing  material,  then,  must  be  re-examined  in 
the  light  of  psychological  science;  and  in  the  light  of  the 
reports  of  those  who  declare  that  they  experienced  in  some 
measure  that  which  Jesus  claimed  in  full  measure — the 
union  of  the  Human  and  the  Real.  That  existing  material 
is  of  four  kinds,  (i)  The  scantily  reported  acts  of  Jesus 

1  Ex'ploratio  Evangelic  a,  p.  37. 

*  Fourth  Letter  to  Gains  TherapeuUs. 

3  Prof.  Driver,  in  Hastings'  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  Vol.  IV.  p.  581. 

4  Dionysius  the  Areofagite,  op.  cit. 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY        75 

as  preserved  in  the  Synoptic  gospels.  (2)  Such  of  His 
words  and  teachings  as  have  survived  in  these  same  col 
lections.  (3)  The  attitude  and  tradition  of  the  early 
Church,  which,  founded  on  experience  and  on  the  teach 
ings  of  two  supreme  mystics,  St.  Paul  and  the  writer  of 
the  Fourth  Gospel,  largely  conditioned  the  selection  of 
acts  and  teachings  which  have  been  preserved  for  us,  the 
development  of  the  rites  in  which  those  teachings  took 
dramatic  form.  (4)  The  lives  of  the  Christian  mystics, 
and  the  subsequent  history  of  the  Church;  the  direction 
of  its  secret  life — conscious  only  at  rare  intervals,  and  in 
the  personalities  of  its  greatest  mystics  and  saints — 
through  the  change  that  marks  its  steady  onward  sweep. 

If  these  materials  are  to  be  of  use  to  us,  it  is  imperative 
that  we  learn  to  look  at  them  with  "  innocence  of  eye  "  : 
that  the  concepts  of  popular  religion  or  the  equally  distort 
ing  imaginations  of  "  higher  critics  "  be  not  allowed  to 
intrude  themselves  between  our  vision  and  the  statements 
made  by  a  Mark  or  a  Paul,  the  evidence  afforded  by  the 
experience  of  a  Francis  or  a  Teresa.  Seen  with  such 
incorrupt  perceptions,  such  artistic  freshness,  they  begin 
once  more  to  live ;  and  the  quality  and  power  of  growth 
comes  home  to  us,  as  a  primal  element  of  the  revelation 
they  contain. 

If  we  look  at  the  acts  of  any  great  man,  we  invariably 
find  that  they  exhibit  development;  though  this  develop 
ment  may  be  of  very  various  kinds.  The  creative  genius 
disclosed  by  those  acts  may  be  spiritual,  ethical,  artistic, 
mechanical — what  you  will;  but  whatever  it  be,  it  grows, 
gradually  invading  and  subduing  more  and  more  of  the 
elements  of  conscious  life  to  its  dominion.  Such  a  growth 
is  an  essential  attribute  of  life  :  and  its  absence  makes,  not 
for  divinity,  but  for  unreality.  Now  the  character  of  Jesus, 
taken  alone  as  it  stands  revealed  in  the  canonical  gospels, 
and  without  any  theological  presuppositions,  certainly 
represents,  at  the  very  least,  a  personality  of  transcendent 


76  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

spiritual  genius;  towering  in  its  wholeness  high  above 
even  the  loftiest  levels  of  "  normal "  sanctity  or  power. 
This  much  the  reverent  agnostic  is  always  willing  to  allow. 
But  this  human  nature,  this  personality,  is  placed  in  Time  : 
is  immersed  in  the  stream  of  Becoming.  If,  then,  it  be 
really  human,  really  alive,  it  will  share — and  share  in  the 
most  intense  way  possible — the  regnant  characteristic  of 
all  living  things.  It  will  move  and  grow.  "  To  live  is 
to  change;  and  to  be  perfect  is  to  have  changed  often."  1 

Since  we  know  nothing  of  life  apart  from  movement, 
from  its  ceaseless  sweeping  curve  from  birth  to  death, 
theology  itself  cannot  afford  to  conceive  Christ's  life  as 
emancipated  from  the  law  of  growth.  This  would  make 
it  the  miraculous  emergence  of  the  ready-made  into  a 
world  of  which  creative  effort  is  the  soul ;  a  static  freak, 
absolved  from  that  obligation  of  enduring  through  inces 
sant  change  which  is  implicit  in  all  life.  Rather  should 
we  see  in  it  the  elan  'vital  "  energising  enthusiastically"; 
raised,  in  the  language  of  the  vitalists,  to  the  highest 
possible  tension,  but  none  the  less  retaining  its  specific 
character,  obeying  the  imperative  need  of  all  life,  divine 
and  human  alike,  to  push  on,  to  spread,  to  create — the 
passion  for  perfection,  the  instinct  for  transcendence. 
Perhaps,  when  we  have  learned  to  see  it  thus,  "  miracle 
will  no  longer  be  a  term  reserved  for  a  series  of  facts 
choicely  isolated  from  organic  connection  with  nature  or 
life;  but  will  be  best  seen  in  the  wonder  and  awe  felt  for 
all  nature,  and  perhaps  specially  for  growth."  2 

"The  essence  of  life  lies  in  the  movement  by  which 
it  is  transmitted."  What,  then,  was  the  movement  by 
which  this  "  more  abundant  life  "  was  transmitted  to  the 
race  ? 

The  answer  which  appears  to  result  from  a  careful  study 
of  the  Synoptics  is  this :  that  the  life  of  Jesus  exhibits  in 

1  J.  H.  Newman,  Essay  on  the  Development  of  Christian  Doctrine. 
1  Stanley  Hall,  Adolescence,  Vol.  II.  p.  127. 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY        77 

absolute  perfection — in  a  classic  example  ever  to  be  aimed 
at,  never  to  be  passed — that  psychological  growth  towards 
God,  that  movement  and  direction,  which  is  found  in 
varying  degrees  of  perfection  in  the  lives  of  the  great 
mystics.  All  the  characteristic  experiences  of  a  Paul,  a 
Suso,  a  Teresa,  are  found  in  a  heightened  form  in  the  life 
of  their  Master.  They  realise  this  fact;  and,  one  and  all, 
constantly  appeal  to  that  life  as  a  witness  to  the  reality 
and  naturalness  of  their  own  adventures.  The  life  of 
Christ,  in  fact,  exhibits  the  Independent  Spiritual  Life 
being  lived  in  perfection  by  the  use  of  machinery  which 
we  all  possess ;  in  a  way,  then,  in  which  we  can  live  it, 
not  in  some  miraculous  unnatural  way  in  which  we  cannot 
live  it.  His  self-chosen  title  of  Son  of  Man  suggests  that 
this,  and  not  theological  doctrine  or  ethical  rule,  forms  the 
heart  of  His  revelation. 

"  Apparve  in  questa  forma 
Per  dare  a  noi  la  norma." 

The  few  points  on  which  we  can  rely,  the  few  episodes 
which  did  certainly  occur  in  a  determined  order,  in  the 
historical  life  of  Jesus,  are  just  those  which  indicate  the 
kind  of  growth,  and  kind  of  experience,  most  characteristic 
of  the  mystic  life.  Religious  self-suggestion,  which  the 
amateur  psychologist  will  at  once  advance  as  the  cause  of 
this  phenomenon,  is  excluded  by  the  fact  that  mystics 
who  have  hardly  known  the  name  of  Christ  grow  in  this 
same  way,  conform  to  this  pattern :  and  "  Neoplatonic 
influence,"  so  often  claimed  as  the  sole  origin  of  the 
mystic  element  in  Christianity,  fails  to  explain  how  it  is 
that  each  of  the  Synoptic  gospels,  written  long  before 
the  Mystic  Way  had  been  codified  or  described — long 
before  the  diagrams  of  Neoplatonism  had  elucidated  the 
difficult  path  of  the  Cross — preserve  intact  amidst  many 
variations  and  inconsistencies  the  record  of  this  process 
of  transcendence. 


78  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

It  may  be  true,  as  many  critics  have  declared,  that 
adequate  materials  for  a  biography  of  Jesus  do  not  exist. 
But  materials  for  a  history  of  His  psychological  de 
velopment  do  undoubtedly  exist;  preserved  and  set  in 
order  by  the  best  of  all  witnesses,  those  who  did  riot 
know  the  bearing  of  the  facts  which  they  have  reported, 
or  the  significance  of  the  sequence  in  which  they  are 
placed. 

Since  the  Gospel  literature  was  formed  after  the  Church, 
and  not  the  Church  after  the  Gospel  literature — since  the 
Synoptics  are,  as  they  stand,  post-Pauline  books,  written 
to  supply  the  immediate  needs  of  Paul's  spiritual  families 
— we  may  expect  to  find  in  them  interpretation  as  well  as 
history;  perhaps,  on  the  whole,  more  interpretation  than 
history,  since  their  aim  is  to  prepare  the  mind  for  Life's 
amazing  future,  rather  than  to  preserve  the  record  of  the 
equally  amazing  past.  In  the  language  of  modern  criti 
cism,  they  are  "  eschatological  books."  They  look  for 
wards,  not  backwards ;  and  imply  in  every  line  the 
Parousia  which  shall  complete  the  revelation  that  they 
begin.  Moreover,  they  are  written  by  those  who  have 
actually,  practically  experienced,  not  merely  a  "  belief  " 
in  a  Messiah,  a  Saviour,  or  an  institution,  but  that  amaz 
ing  inflow  of  new  life,  that  "  New  Birth  "  which  Chris 
tianity  initiated,  in  the  thoroughness  and  violence  with 
which  it  appears  to  have  been  experienced  in  apostolic 
times.  We  may  expect,  then,  that  the  love  and  enthusi 
asm  of  the  convert  will  blaze  in  their  words,  and  illuminate 
the  events  of  which  they  treat :  and  as  a  result,  that  the 
finished  production  will  tend  to  be  a  great  work  of  art — 
a  musical  revelation  of  reality — rather  than  an  exact  work 
of  science,  an  analysis  of  "  observed  phenomena." 

The  three  Synoptic  gospels  are  at  bottom  three  such 
works  of  art :  in  each  we  see  the  Christian  "  revelation," 
and  the  life  which  expressed  it,  "  through  a  temperament." 
Of  these  three  temperaments  that  of  the  author  of 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY          79 

Matthew  seems  to  be  of  the  historical  and  traditionalist 
type,  with  the  unconscious  tendency  of  this  kind  of 
character  to  select  and  value  events  with  an  eye  to  their 
causal  relations  with  the  past;  to  the  fulfilment  of  pro 
phecies,  the  satisfaction  of  national  ideals.  Mark's 
document,  as  we  now  have  it,  is  like  the  work  of  a 
practical  missionary,  whose  whole  experience  has  led  him 
to  appreciate  the  value  of  the  sensational  and  miraculous. 
"Luke's"  character  is  more  interesting;1  and  its  result 
upon  his  work  in  some  respects  more  valuable.  His 
peculiar  insight  has  led  him  to  bring  out  certain  deeply 
significant  sides  of  the  primitive  revelation  which  the 
other  Synoptics  hardly  touch.  This  does  not  mean  that 
we  find  special  value  in  incidents  for  which  Luke  is  the 
only  witness.  All  the  essential  facts  are  found  in  either 
the  "  double  "  or  the  "  triple  "  tradition;  the  great  events 
in  all  three  gospels,  the  great  teachings  in  Matthew  and 
in  Luke.  But  many  of  these  facts  and  sayings  are  shown 
by  Luke  alone  in  a  light  which  reveals  their  true  import : 
not  as  isolated  maxims  or  marvels,  but  as  proclamations 
of  the  conditions  of  New  Life.  Those  who  accept  the 
traditional  authorship  of  the  Third  Gospel  or  the  docu 
ment  which  underlies  it,  will  naturally  connect  this  quality 
in  Luke  partly  with  his  Greek  nationality  and  possible 
Hellenistic  education,  but  chiefly  with  the  fact  that  he 
was  the  friend  and  pupil  of  the  deeply  mystical  Paul,  and 
had  learned  to  understand  Christianity  as  Paul  understood 
and  lived  it — as  an  actual  and  new  kind  of  life.  Hence 
the  traditional  biography,  which  both  he  and  Matthew 

1  The  authorship  of  the  Third  Gospel  is  still  a  matter  of  controversy. 
Harnack,  Sir  W.  Ramsay,  and  other  recent  critics  ascribe  its  substance  to 
St.  Luke  himself.  Cf.  Harnack,  Lukas  der  Arzt ;  Ramsay,  Luke  the 
Physician.  Against  this  must  be  placed  ^the  fact  that  the  most  fearless 
and  acute  of  living  scholars,  Loisy,  Les  Evangiles  synoptiques,  is  strongly 
opposed  to  the  traditional  view.  No  final  settlement  of  the  problem  is 
yet  in  sight,  and  all  who  base  arguments  on  the  peculiarities  of  this  gospel 
are  bound  to  take  into  consideration  the  uncertainties  surrounding  it. 


80  THE   MYSTIC  WAY 

probably  took  from  Mark — who  is  now  regarded  as  the 
source  of  the  Synoptic  narratives — is  here  seen  in  a  new 
proportion  and  invested  with  a  fresh  significance.1 

Amongst  the  things  upon  which  Luke  lays  deliberate 
stress,  are  all  the  ascetic  and  "  other-worldly  "  elements 
in  the  teaching  of  Christ.  He  it  is  who  has  preserved 
the  commendation  of  Mary,  type  of  the  contemplative 
soul.2  Had  his  gospel  alone  survived,  many  incidents,  it 
is  true,  wouM  have  been  known  to  us  only  in  a  twisted  and 
poetic  form.  But  the  rules  of  the  real  Christian  life,  the 
primal  laws  which  govern  the  emergence  of  the  spiritual 
consciousness,  and  the  sequence  of  states  which  mark 
its  establishment,  would  have  been  preserved  intact. 
Poverty,  Asceticism,  Detachment,  Vocation,  mystical 
Charity — these  watchwords  of  the  mystics  are  all  found 
in  his  work,  stated  with  far  greater  emphasis  than  in  either 
of  the  other  Synoptics.  The  term  "  grace,"  regnant  in 
the  works  of  St.  Paul,  is  found  eight  times  in  this  gospel; 
though  never  used  by  Matthew  and  Mark.  "  We  are 
struck,"  says  Jiilicher,  "  by  the  unworldliness  of  his  tone, 
by  his  aversion  to  property  and  enjoyment,  by  his  glori 
fication  of  poverty,  his  accentuation  of  the  duty  of  self- 
sacrifice  and  especially  of  almsgiving.  One  need  merely 
read  Luke  xiv.  26-32  beside  Matthew  x.  37  in  order 
to  feel  the  sternness  of  Luke's  demands ;  one  almost  has 
the  impression  that  the  boundless  charity  towards  sinners 
shown  by  this  gospel  was  to  be  compensated  for  by  the 
equally  exalted  character  of  the  demands  made  on  the 
disciple."  3  Yet  this  austere  moralist,  this  counsellor  of 

1  The  so-called  "  Pauline "  elements  in  Mark,  detected  by  Loisy 
(op.  cit.},  appear  to  rest  on  very  slender  foundations,  and  refer  rather  to 
the  Paul  of  theological  imagination  than  to  the  living  genius  who  speaks 
in  the  epistles.  *  Luke  x.  42. 

3  Introduction  to  the  New  Testament,  p.  335.  Liberal  Protestant 
theology  has  tried  to  discredit  this  ascetic  tendency,  so  difficult  to  reconcile 
with  its  favourite  theories,  by  detecting  "  Ebionite  influence  "  in  Luke, 
but  has  not  yet  produced  any  valid  evidence  in  support  of  this  hypothesis. 


MYSTICISM  AND  CHRISTOLOGY        81 

perfection,  is  in  a  high  degree  an  artist  and  a  poet.  From 
him  come  the  matchless  scenes  of  the  Annunciation  and 
Nativity.  He  is  our  authority  for  that  exquisite  cento  of 
Old  Testament  phrases,  the  Magnificat;  and  with  him 
"  imaginative  wonder  "  first  takes  its  place  side  by  side 
with  historic  belief. 

True,  the  essence  of  these  things — the  austerity  and 
the  romance — underlies  the  descriptions  of  Matthew  and 
Mark.  They  have  of  necessity  a  place  in  every  gospel,  and 
cannot  be  eliminated  in  the,  interests  of  merely  "  ethical"  or 
"  healthy-minded  "  Christianity.  But  Matthew  and  Mark 
do  not  perceive  their  essential  character  with  such  clear 
ness  as  this  Evangelist :  a  clearness  we  might  naturally 
expect  from  the  companion  and  pupil  of  St.  Paul.  One 
gives  us  the  Messiah  who  is  a  bridge  between  the  prophets 
and  the  Church;  the  other  gives  us  the  marvellous  Divine 
Man.  Luke,  reviewing  the  material  in  the  light  of  a 
richer  experience — perhaps  his  own,  perhaps  that  of  Paul 
—accepts  both;  but  he  gives  us  chiefly  the  Revealer  of 
a  New  Life,  who  "  saves  "  mer  by  Himself  living  that 
life,  and  so  putting  them  upon  the  road  by  which  it  may 
be  obtained :  exhibiting  "  that  mysterious  evolution  of 
the  divine  out  of  the  human  to  which  we  give  the  name 
of  redemption."  1  The  three  gospels,  then,  represent  the 
temperamental  tendencies  of  ecclesiastic,  missionary, 
ascetic:  and  the  effect  of  their  cumulative  testimony  is 
to  establish  the  fact  that  the  new  life  which  informed  all 
these  aspects  of  the  Church's  energies  was  primarily  and 
fundamentally  Mystic. 

We  may  probably  accept  the  conclusion  of  Julicher8 
as  broadly  true,  that  the  life  of  Jesus  did,  in  its  general 
outline,  unfold  itself  in  the  order  given  by  Mark.  The 
first  significant  moment  of  His  life  was  an  experience  of 
profound  personal  illumination;  followed  by  a  withdrawal 

1  E.  A.  Abbott,  The  Son  of  Man,  p.  xii. 
*  Introduction  to  the  New  Testament,  p.  318. 
G 


82  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

into  solitude — the  "  cell  of  self-knowledge "  of  the 
mystics — where  the  divine  elements  of  His  human  nature 
were  harmonised  and  adjusted  to  His  supreme  destiny. 
Then  the  public  appearance;  the  preaching,  "as  one  who 
had  authority,"  the  announcement  of  that  apocalyptic 
coming  of  "  new  things  "  of  which  He  felt  Himself  to  be 
the  pioneer.  At  first  an  object  of  wonder,  He  gradually 
provoked  the  opposition  of  the  world — and  particularly  of 
the  prosperous,  orthodox,  and  self-satisfied — by  His  suc 
cessful  preaching  of  an  uncompromising  moral  transcend 
ence.  Having  provoked  the  enmity  of  the  upper  classes 
— and,  we  might  add,  having  proved  the  impossibility  of 
communicating  His  message  of  new  life  to  humanity  as 
a  whole — He  withdrew,  and  limited  His  teachings  to  the 
"  little  flock  "  destined  to  be  the  thoroughfare  through 
which  that  life  should  pass.  When  the  "  time  was  accom 
plished,"  the  human  frame  spent  by  the  violence  of  the 
spiritual  life  which  it  expressed,  the  forces  of  destruction 
had  their  way.  The  bitter  mental  accompaniments  of  the 
Passion — the  Agony  in  the  Garden,  the  Eloi,  eloi  of  the 
Cross — testify  to  the  presence  of  that  darkness  through 
which  the  soul  of  every  mystic  must  pass  to  the  condition 
of  complete  identification  with  the  Transcendental  Order 
which  they  so  often  call  the  "  Resurrection-life."  Mark, 
the  least  mystical  of  evangelists,  yet  preserves  intact  the 
story  of  this  psychological  development,  beneath  the  series 
of  marvellous  and  astonishing  minor  incidents  which  were 
to  him  the  earnest  of  its  existence  and  truth. 


II 

THE    BAPTISM    AND    TEMPTATION 

THE  first  events  which  all  three  Synoptists  report,  as 
at  once  historical  and  significant,  are  of  course  the  preach 
ing  of  John  the  Baptist,  his  baptism  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
and  the  phenomena  which  attended  it.  Though  it  is  at 
least  highly  probable  that  the  youth  of  Jesus  exhibited  the 
presence  and  growth  of  those  qualities  which  controlled 
His  public  career,  here  it  is  that  these  qualities  first 
declared  themselves  in  their  splendour  and  power.  Here, 
definitely  and  visibly,  for  the  first  generation  of  Christians, 
the  new  era  began.  This,  they  said,  was  the  Epiphany, 
the  revelation  of  God;  and  they  gave  to  it  an  honour, 
invested  it  with  a  crucial  meaning,  which  was  afterwards 
transferred  to  the  story  of  the  Nativity.1 

John  the  Baptist  is  a  figure  not  difficult  to  realise  or 
understand,  when  we  have  learnt  to  shift  our  point  of 
view  from  the  conceptual  and  edifying  categories  of 
tradition  to  the  rich  actualities  of  life.  He  is  the  supreme 
example  of  a  general  law  :  of  the  fact  that  all  great  changes 
in  the  worlds  of  spirit  and  of  thought  have  their  fore 
runners;  minds  which  perceive  the  first  significant  move 
ment,  the  sword  of  the  spirit  stirring  in  its  sheath,  long 
before  the  new  direction  is  generally  perceived  or  under 
stood.  John  was  a  "  prophet " — that  is  to  say,  a  spiritual 
genius — with  that  intuitive  knowledge  of  the  immediate 
tendencies  of  life  often  found  in  those  who  are  possessed 
of  an  instinct  for  Transcendent  Reality.  The  span  of  a 
great  mind,  a  great  personality,  gathers  up  into  its 

1  Cf.  Loisy,  Lfs  fcvangilts  synoptiqves,  Vol.  I.  pp.  405-7. 
02  83 


84  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

"  Now,"  and  experiences  "  all  at  once,"  a  number  of 
smaller  rhythms  or  moments  which  are  separate  experi 
ences  for  lesser  men.  As  we,  in  our  wide  rhythm  of 
perception,  gather  up  the  countless  small  and  swift  vibra 
tions  of  the  physical  world  and  weld  them  into  sound 
or  light ;  so  the  spiritual  genius  gathers  up  into  his 
consciousness  of  a  wide  present,  countless  little  tendencies 
and  events.  By  this  synthetic  act  he  transcends  the  storm 
of  succession,  and  attains  a  prophetic  vision,  which  seems 
to  embrace  future  as  well  as  past.  He  is  plunged  in  the 
stream  of  life,  and  feels  the  way  in  which  it  tends  to 
move.  Such  a  mind  discerns,  though  he  may  not  under 
stand,  the  coming  of  a  change  long  before  it  can  be  known 
by  other  men;  and,  trying  to  communicate  his  certitude, 
becomes  a  "prophet"  or  a  ". seer." 

John  the  Baptist,  then,  that  strange  figure  watching  and 
waiting  in  the  desert  for  some  mighty  event  which  his 
heightened  powers  could  feel  in  its  approach  but  could  not 
see,  is  the  real  link  between  two  levels  of  humanity. 
Freed  by  his  ascetic  life  from  the  fetters  of  the  obvious, 
his  intuitive  faculties  nourished  by  the  splendid  dreams 
of  Hebrew  prophecy,  and  by  a  life  at  once  wild  and  holy, 
which  kept  him  closer  than  other  men  to  the  natural  and 
the  supernatural  worlds,  he  felt  the  new  movement,  the 
new  direction  of  life.  Though  its  meaning  might  be 
hidden,  its  actuality  was  undeniable.  Something  was 
coming.  This  conviction  flooded  his  consciousness, 
"  inspired  "  him  ;  became  the  dominant  fact  of  his  exist 
ence.  "  A  message  from  God  came  upon  John,"  1  speak 
ing  without  utterance  in  the  deeps  of  his  soul.  He  was 
driven  to  proclaim  it  as  best  he  could;  naturally  under  the 
traditional  and  deeply  significant  images  of  the  Jewish 
Scriptures  and  apocalyptic  books.  Hence  he  was  really 
its  Forerunner,  the  preparer  of  the  Way. 

The  Synoptics  are  agreed  as  to  the  form  which  the 
Baptist's  preaching  took.  His  message  was  simple  and  yet 
1  Luke  iii.  2  (Weymouth's  trans.). 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY        85 

startling.  He  said  perpetually,  "  Change  your  minds,  for 
the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  close  at  hand."  l  "  A  new 
form  of  life  is  imminent — there  is  One  coming  after  me 
mightier  than  I — therefore  prepare  its  thoroughfare,  make 
its  highway  straight,  lest  it  crush  those  things  it  finds 
upon  its  path.  It  will  not  travel  along  the  old,  easy  paths 
of  perception.  The  crooked  places  shall  be  turned  into 
straight  roads,  and  the  rugged  ways  into  smooth.  .  .  .  Live 
lives  which  shall  prove  your  change  of  heart."2 

For  John,  whatever  the  apocalyptic  form  which  his 
religious  education  caused  him  to  give  to  these  intuitions, 
it  is  plain  that  there  was  newness  in  the  air.  This, 
after  all,  is  the  important  matter ;  this  intuitive  grasp 
of  novelty.  Here  consciousness  lays  hold  on  life.  The 
unimportant  matter  is  the  symbolic  picture  into  which 
the  brain  translates  it.  "The  baptism  of  the  Spirit  and 
of  Fire " — the  vitalising  wind,  the  fierce  and  purging 
flame — he  cries  in  the  strange,  poetic,  infinitely  suggestive 
language  of  prophecy.  If  he  is  to  be  taken  as  a  true 
harbinger,  as  an  earnest  of  the  quality  of  the  Christian  life; 
then,  how  romantic,  how  sacramental — above  all,  how 
predominantly  ascetic — that  life  must  seem!  Nothing 
here  forecasts  the  platitudinous  ethics  of  modern  theology. 
Deliberate  choice,  deep-seated  change,  stern  detachment, 
a  humble  preparation  for  the  great  re-making  of  things : 
no  comfortable  compromise,  or  agreeable  trust  in  a 
vicarious  salvation.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  the  lives  of 
that  small  handful  in  whom  the  peculiar  Christian  con 
sciousness  has  been  developed,  the  demands  of  John  the 
Baptist  were  always  fulfilled  before  the  results  promised 
by  Jesus  were  experienced.  Asceticism  was  the  gateway 
to  mysticism ;  and  the  secret  of  the  Kingdom  was  only 
understood  by  those  who  had  "  changed  their  minds." 

1  Matt.  iii.  2.  This  is  the  literal  meaning  of  the  Greek,  obscured  by 
the  A.V.  "  Repent  "  and  the  Vulgate  "  Poenitentiam  agite  !  "  Cf. 
Weymouth,  New  Testament  in  Modern  Speech,  p.  7. 

•  Luke  iii.  16,  5,  8  (paraphrase). 


86  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

It  was  clear  to  John,  contrasting  the  austere  splendour 
of  his  vision  with  the  mean  curiosity  and  fear  of  the 
crowds  who  ran  to  his  preaching,  that  this  imminent 
newness  which  overshadowed  and  "  inspired  "  him,  was 
destined  to  make  a  sharp  division  in  the  world  of  life. 
Some  would  ascend  to  the  new  levels  now  made  plain; 
others,  incapable  of  the  necessary  struggle  and  readjust 
ment,  would  fall  back.  A  new  sorting-house  was  here 
set  up;  a  new  test  was  established  of  the  spirit's  fitness  to 
survive.  "  His  fan  is  in  his  hand,  thoroughly  to  cleanse 
his  threshing-floor,  and  to  gather  the  wheat  to  his  garner ; 
but  the  chaff  he  will  burn  up  with  unquenchable  fire."  l 
Tame  words  to  us,  dulled  by  long  use;  but  terrible 
upon  the  lips  of  a  man  who  had  given  up  everything 
which  we  think  desirable  in  order  that  he  might  speak 
them. 

Yet,  according  to  Mark  and  Luke — who  here  represent 
the  most  trustworthy  tradition — when  the  new  life  actually 
approached  him,  came  within  his  field  of  perception,  John, 
tuned  up  to  the  expectation  of  some  amazing  event,  did 
not  recognise  it :  so  complete  was  its  identification  with 
that  great  stream  of  Becoming  which  it  was  destined  to 
infect  and  control.  The  Forerunner  turns  on  his  own 
tracks,  to  become  the  unconscious  initiator  of  Him  whose 
Way  he  had  prepared  ;  for  the  baptism  of  Jesus  marks 
the  definite  emergence  of  His  consciousness  of  a  unique 
destiny,  a  unique  relation  to  Reality.  It  revealed  Him 
to  Himself,  and  paralleled  upon  transcendent  levels  the 
psychological  crisis  of  "  mystical  awakening "  or  con 
version  ;  the  change  of  mind  which  is  experienced  in 
various  degrees  of  completeness  by  all  those  who  are 
destined  to  follow  the  Mystic  Way  and  reach  the  levels 
of  consciousness  known  as  "  union  with  God." 

"Now  when  all  the  people  had  been  baptised,"  says 
Luke,  "  and  Jesus  also  had  been  baptised  and  was  praying, 
the  sky  opened  and  the  Holy  Spirit  came  down  in  bodily 
1  Luke  iii.  17  (R.V.). 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY        87 

shape  like  a  dove  upon  Him,  and  a  voice  from  Heaven 
which  said,  Thou  art  My  Son,  dearly  loved :  in  Thee  is 
My  delight."  l 

Matthew  and  Mark  make  clear  the  subjective  nature  of 
this  vision  by  saying,  "  He  saw  the  Spirit  of  God 
descending,"  and  "  He  saw  an  opening  in  the  sky."2 
Moreover,  the  words  of  the  message  are  compounded  of 
two  texts  from  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  suddenly  heard 
within  the  mind  and  invested  with  a  special  meaning  and 
authority.  They  are  instances  of  audition,  of  the  "  distinct 
interior  words  "  whereby  the  spiritual  genius  commonly 
translates  his  intense  intuition  of  the  transcendent  into  a 
form  with  which  his  surface  mind  can  deal.  The 
machinery  of  this  whole  experience  is  in  fact  natural  and 
human  machinery,  which  has  been  used  over  and  over 
again  in  the  course  of  the  spiritual  history  of  mankind. 

A  crucial  moment  had  come.  The  strange,  new  life 
latent  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  suddenly  flooded  His  human 
consciousness.  That  consciousness  was  abruptly  lifted  to 
new  levels  ;  suddenly  became  aware  of  Reality,  and  of  its 
own  complete  participation  in  Reality.  Such  a  realisa 
tion,  so  vast  an  intuition,  transcended  all  the  resources  of 
that  mental  apparatus  with  which  our  incarnate  spirits  are 
fettered  and  equipped.  Yet  it  must  be  seized,  and  crushed 
into  some  limiting  concept,  if  it  were  ever  to  be  expressed. 
Artistic  symbols,  the  image  of  the  dove — a  type  for 
Semitic  thought  of  the  creative,  fertilising  power  brooding 
upon  the  surface  of  life3 — the  fragment  of  poetry  heard 

1  Luke  iii.  21  (Weymouth's  trans.). 

«  Matt.  iii.  16,  and  Mark  i.  10  (Weymouth's  trans.).  The  form  "'1Us 
is  my  beloved  Son"  in  Matthew  suggests  that  the  spiritual  experience 
was  already  developing  into  the  external  miracle.  Cf.  Carpenter,  The 
First  Three  Gospels,  2nd  ed.,  p.  165. 

3  "  This  comparison  of  the  Spirit  of  God  to  a  dove  was  the  property  of 
the  scribal  erudition  of  that  day  :  for  instance,  it  compared  the  Spirit  of 
God  brooding  over  the  waters  of  chaos  in  Gen.  i.  2  to  Noah's  dove  flutter 
ing  over  the  waters  of  the  deluge  in  Gen.  viii.  8  "  (O.  Holtzmann,  Leben 
Jesu,  p.  105). 


88  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

with  the  inward  ear  and  now  invested  with  a  new  and 
intense  significance,  the  "  vision  "  and  "  audition  "  which 
form  the  links  between  spiritual  and  sensuous  experience : 
these  came  into  play.  To  acknowledge  this  is  only  to 
acknowledge  the  completeness  of  the  humanity  of  Christ; 
who  "  came,  not  to  destroy  but  to  fulfil "  the  slow- 
budding  potentialities  of  the  race. 

Yet  in  this  case  even  more  than  in  all  other  cases,  the 
cerebral  pantomime  of  voice  and  vision,  the  vivid  light 
which  is  nearly  always  the  brain's  crude  symbol  of  that 
expansion  and  illumination  of  consciousness  in  which 
Reality  breaks  in  upon  it,  or  it  breaks  in  upon  Reality — 
these  things  could  but  represent  a  fraction  of  the  whole, 
real  experience  of  the  mind  :  as  a  poem  tells  but  a  fraction 
of  the  ecstatic  adventure  of  the  poet.  "  The  brain  state," 
says  Bergson,  "  indicates  only  a  very  small  part  of  the 
mental  state;  that  part  which  is  capable  of  translating  itself 
into  movements  of  locomotion."  1  Behind  this  lies  a  vast 
region  of  perceptions  and  correspondences  which  elude 
the  image-making  powers  of  the  surface  consciousness. 
Pure  perception  must  be  translated  into  such  images  by 
the  brain,  if  thought  is  to  lay  hold  of  it ;  but  the  more 
transcendent  the  perception,  the  less  of  it  the  image  will 
contrive  to  represent.  This  is  the  explanation  of  the 
obvious  discrepancy  between  such  events  as  the  baptismal 
vision  of  Jesus,  the  conversion  vision  of  St.  Paul,  the 
"  Tolle,  lege  "  of  St.  Augustine,  the  voices  heard  by  Joan 
of  Arc,  and  the  immense  effects  which  appear  to  flow  from 
them.  Such  visions  are  true  sacraments,  crude  outward 
signs  of  inward  grace,  of  a  veritable  contact  between  the 
soul  and  its  Source.  In  the  case  of  Jesus,  the  outward 
expression  accompanies  a  sudden  and  irrevocable  know 
ledge  of  identity  with  that  Source ;  so  complete,  that  only 
the  human  metaphor  of  sonship  can  express  it.1 

1  Matter  and  Memory,  xiii. 

*  Though  the  expression  "  Son  of  God  "  is  never  used  by  Jesus  of 
Himself,  the  idea  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  as  experienced  by  Him  in  a 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY        89 

Thisdifficult  idea  of  "  Fatherhood,5 'central  for  Christian 
mysticism,  yet  so  easily  degraded  into  anthropomorphism 
of  the  most  sentimental  kind,  has  been  beautifully  treated 
by  the  great  nameless  mystic  of  the  Theologia  Germanica. 
"  Christ  hath  also  said  :  c  No  man  cometh  unto  Me,  except 
the  Father,  which  hath  sent  Me,  draw  him.'  Now  mark : 
by  the  Father,  I  understand  the  Perfect,  Simple  Good, 
which  is  All  and  above  All,  and  without  which  and  besides 
which  there  is  no  true  Substance,  nor  true  Good,  and 
without  which  no  good  work  ever  was  or  will  be  done. 
And  in  that  it  is  All,  it  must  be  in  All  and  above  All.  .  .  . 
Now  behold,  when  this  Perfect  Good,  which  is  unname- 
able,  floweth  into  a  Person  able  to  bring  forth,  and 
bringeth  forth  the  Only-begotten  Son  in  that  Person,  and 
itself  in  Him,  we  call  it  the  Father."  * 

There  is  one  deeply  significant  difference  between  this 
psychological  crisis  in  the  life  of  Jesus  and  its  lesser 
equivalent  in  the  lives  of  Christian  and  other  mystics.  I 
mean  the  total  absence  of  the  "  sense  of  sin."  2  In  such 
rare  moments  of  illumination  the  normal  self  becomes 
conscious  of  Divine  Perfection  :  a  perfection  transcending 
not  merely  all  that  it  may  be,  but  all  that  it  may  dream. 
This  consciousness  is  always  and  inevitably  balanced  by 

special  manner,  is  notoriously  a  central  fact  of  the  Gospel.  He  adopted 
this  term  for  God  from  the  popular  usage  of  the  time,  whilst  giving  to  it 
a  fresh  and  personal  significance.  Cf.  Dalman,  The  Words  of  Jesus,  pp. 
188-280. 

1  Theologia  Germanica,  cap.  53. 

•  The  inconsistency  of  one  in  whom  there  was  no  sense  of  sin  seeking 
the  baptism  of  John,  which  was  "  for  the  remission  of  sins,"  has  been 
dwelt  on  by  modern  critics.  See  A:  Reville,  Jesus  de  Nazareth,  Vol.  II.  p.  8, 
and  Carpenter,  The  First  Three  Gospels,  p.  118.  This  paradox  was  felt  as 
a  difficulty  in  early  times ;  and  the  apocryphal  Gospel  of  the  Hebrews 
attempts  a  feeble  explanation  of  it.  But  the  correct  view  would  seem  to 
be,  that  freedom  from  sin  was  but  one  condition  of  the  complete  "  change 
of  mind"  which  John  preached  and  Jesus  actually  brought  in.  This 
"  change  "  it  was  which  was  offered  to  the  candidates  for  baptism ;  and 
which  Jesus  experienced  in  its  fullest  splendour  in  the  symbolic  drama 
recorded  by  the  Synoptists. 


90  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

a  terrible  consciousness  of  personal  imperfection :  of  dis 
harmony  with  that  which  is  beheld.  Thus  the  seeing  self 
is  torn  between  adoration  and  contrition  ;  the  joy  of 
discovered  Reality  soon  fades  before  the  sense  of  some 
thing  frustrated  and  unachieved,  which  results  from  the 
first  collision  between  temporal  actualities  and  eternal 
possibilities  in  man's  soul.  "  For  whilst  the  true  lover 
with  strong  and  fervent  desire  into  God  is  borne,  all 
things  him  displease  that  from  the  sight  of  God  with 
draw."  1  He  is,  to  use  once  more  Augustine's  image, 
caught  up  by  Perfect  Beauty  and  dragged  back  by  his 
own  weight.  In  the  case  of  Jesus,  the  exact  opposite  is 
reported  to  us.  Here  there  is  no  collision :  only  a 
discovery.  His  predominant  conviction,  expressed  by  the 
inward  voice,  is  of  identity  with  that  which  He  sees :  of 
a  complete  harmony,  a  "sonship"  never  to  be  lost  or 
broken,  which  normal  man  can  only  win  in  a  partial  degree 
by  long  efforts  towards  readjustment.  "  God  is  the  only 
Reality,  and  we  are  real  only  so  far  as  we  are  in  His 
order  and  He  is  in  us."  2  The  declaration  of  sonship,  the 
descent  of  the  dove,  imaged  this  truth,  and  revealed  to  the 
surface  consciousness  of  Jesus  His  unique  reality  among 
the  sons  of  men. 

Yet  this  reality,  since  it  was  expressed  through  and  by 
human  nature,  could  not  without  conflict  grow  and  declare 
itself.  Body  and  mind  must  be  adjusted  to  it.  Elements, 
not  evil  yet  recalcitrant,  must  be  subdued.  Even  here, 
there  are  paths  to  be  made  straight.  Consciousness  must 
face  this  new  situation,  this  immense  increase  of  power, 
must  unify  itself  about  this  centre  now  declared.  "At 
once  the  Spirit  impelled  Him  to  go  out  into  the  desert,"  3 
forsaking  for  a  time  the  world  He  was  destined  to  renew. 
The  swing  of  ascending  consciousness  between  amrma- 

1  Rolle,  The  Fire  of  Love,  Bk.  I.  cap.  23. 

*  Coventry  Patmore,   The  Rod,   the  Root  and  the  Flower,  "  Magna 
Moralia,"  XXII. 
3  Mark  i.  12  (Weymouth's  trans.). 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY        91 

tion  and  negation  had  begun.  "  The  road  to  a  Yea  lies 
through  a  Nay,  we  must  separate  in  order  again  to  unite, 
and  must  depart  from  our  ordinary  state  in  order  again 
to  return  to  it.  There  enters  thus  a  negative  element  into 
the  work  of  life;  all  definite  departure  on  the  new  road 
follows  through  toil  and  struggle,  doubt  and  pain." * 
Thus,  though  much  that  the  mystics  include  in  the  Way 
of  Purgation — the  difficult  struggle  with  vices,  the  stress 
and  turmoil,  misery  and  despair  in  which  their  conscious 
ness  is  re-made  in  the  interests  of  new  life — seems  to  have 
been  absent  from  the  experience  of  Jesus,  yet  He  neces 
sarily  trod  that  Way.  Solitude,  mortification,  the  crucial 
and  deliberate  choice  between  Power  and  Love,  both 
within  the  reach  of  those  who  possess  a  genius  for  reality  : 
these  are  the  outstanding  features  of  the  "  temptation  " 
as  recorded  by  Matthew  and  Luke.  The  psychological 
accuracy  of  their  report  is  evidence  that,  though  obviously 
expressed  in  symbolic  and  poetic  language,  it  is  founded 
upon  fact  rather  than  upon  pious  tradition. 

It  is  a  natural  instinct  in  those  who  have  received  a 
revelation  of  Reality,  under  whatever  form  it  may  have 
disclosed  itself,  to  retreat  from  the  turmoil  and  incessant 
changes  of  daily  life,  and  commune  alone  with  the  treasure 
that  they  have  found.  A  love  which  is  both  shy  and 
ecstatic,  a  deep  new  seriousness  which  conflicts  with  the 
incorrigible  frivolity  of  the  world,  has  awoke  in  them. 
They  long  to  go  away  and  be  alone  with  it :  to  develop, 
in  a  rapt  communion  where  wonder  and  intimacy  dwell 
side  by  side,  their  new  consciousness  of  Spirit,  Beauty,  or 
Love.  Though  men  may  distract,  here  it  seems  that 
nature  helps  them;  so  they  go  with  the  Hindu  ascetic  to 
the  jungle,  with  the  Sufi  to  a  preparatory  life  of  seclusion. 
With  St.  Francis  they  love  the  solitude  of  La  Verna,  with 
St.  Ignatius  they  solve  their  problems  best  whilst  gazing 
alone  at  the  flowing  stream.  So  the  artist,  the  lover,  the 
poet  in  the  time  of  inspiration,  is  notoriously  unsocial. 
1  Eucken,  The  Truth  of  Religion,  p.  93. 


92  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

Still  more  the  soul  which  has  received  a  direct  revelation 
of  the  Divine.  "  Abandon  life  and  the  world  that  you 
may  behold  the  Life  of  the  World,"  says  the  great  Persian 
mystic.1  "  Just  as  some  one  waiting  to  hear  a  voice  that 
he  loves,"  says  Plotinus,  "  should  separate  himself  from 
other  voices,  and  prepare  his  ear  for  the  hearing  of  the 
more  excellent  sound  when  it  comes  near;  so  here  it  is 
necessary  to  neglect  sensible  sounds,  so  far  as  we  can,  and 
keep  the  soul's  powers  of  attention  pure,  and  ready  for 
the  reception  of  supernal  sounds."  2 

"  In  the  wilderness,"  says  Rolle,  u  speaks  the  loved  to 
the  heart  of  the  lover :  as  it  were  a  bashful  lover,  that  his 
sweetheart  before  men  entreats  not,  nor  friendly-wise,  but 
commonly  and  as  a  stranger  he  kisses."  3  Need  we  feel 
surprised  that  one  in  whom  such  a  consciousness  of 
heavenly  intimacy  assumed  its  intensest  form,  whilst  the 
human  elements  of  character  also  assumed  their  intensest 
form,  felt  impelled  by  this  same  necessity?  Moreover, 
knowledge  of  self,  says  Richard  of  St.  Victor,  is  the  Holy 
Mountain,  up  which  man  must  first  climb  on  his  way 
towards  union  with  God :  and  knowledge  of  ourselves, 
which  we  too  easily  confuse  with  knowledge  of  our  sins, 
means  accurate  consciousness  of  our  powers  as  well  as  of 
our  deficiencies.  It  means  the  bringing  of  all  the  levels 
of  our  nature  into  the  field  of  consciousness :  a  complete 
review  of  the  available  material.  Such  a  self-investigation 
is  the  equivalent  of  a  "  temptation  ";  that  is  to  say,  it  is 
a  testing,  a  proving,  an  opportunity  of  choice,  a  revela 
tion  of  various  ways  in  which  we  may  lay  hold  of  life, 
various  paths  on  which  we  are  able  to  move.  "  We  live 
and  are  in  God,"  says  Boehme,  "  we  are  of  His  substance, 
we  have  heaven  and  hell  in  ourselves;  what  we  make  of 
ourselves,  that  we  are."  4  If  this  is  so  for  the  little  normal 

1  Jalalu  'ddin,  Divan  (Nicholson's  trans.),  p.  64. 
*  Ennead,  VI.  9. 

3  Rolle,  The  Fire  of  Love,  Bk.  II.  cap.  7. 

4  Jacob  Boehme,  The  Threefold  Life  of  Man,  cap.  14,  §  72. 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY        93 

human  creature,  how  much  more  for  the  spirit  in  which 
the  utmost  possibilities  of  humanity,  reinforced  by  a 
"  something  other  "  which  we  call  an  immediate  contact 
with  Divine  Reality,  are  present  in  their  fulness,  untainted 
and  unwarped? 

"Perfect  man"  means  something  very  different  from 
"sinless  man";  something  richer,  deeper,  more  positive, 
blazing  with  colour  and  light — "  so  unspeakably  rich  and 
yet  so  simple,  so  sublime  and  yet  so  homely,  so  divinely 
above  us  precisely  in  being  so  divinely  near."  1  It  means 
a  deep  and  accurate  instinct  for  an  infinite  number  of 
possible  paths  on  which  life  can  move,  an  infinite  number 
of  possible  attainments,  and  the  power  of  free  choice 
between  them;  for  human  and  spiritual  perfection  is  never 
mechanical,  will  and  love  are  the  essence  of  its  life.  It 
means  a  synthesis  of  opposites :  patience  and  passion, 
austerity  and  gentleness,  the  properties  of  dew  and  fire. 
It  means  high  romantic  qualities,  daring  vision,  the  spirit 
of  adventure,  the  capacity  for  splendid  suffering,  and  for 
enjoyments  of  the  best  and  deepest  kind;  for  only  those 
capable  of  Life  are  also  capable  of  God,  only  those  capable 
of  romance  are  capable  of  holiness. 

Such  complete  and  deeply  vital  spirits  cannot  but  see 
before  them  many  and  different  possibilities  of  greatness. 
They  feel  within  themselves  the  power  of  transcending 
and  subduing  to  their  use  the  intractable  physical  world — 
yet  their  destiny  is  towards  supra-sensible  conquests :  the 
power  of  dominating  and  governing  men,  "  the  kingdoms 
of  the  world,  and  the  glory  of  them," — yet  surrender  is  to 
be  their  highest  good.  They  feel  themselves  to  be  freed 
from  the  anxieties  and  limitations  of  humanity;  so  central 
is  the  Invisible  for  their  consciousness,  so  securely  is  their 
life  founded  in  Reality,  that  anything  might  happen,  yet 
all  would  be  well.  But  their  destiny  is  to  accept  in  their 
fulness  the  burdens  and  limitations  of  the  race.  Not  self- 
cultivation  aloof  on  super-human  levels,  but  self-donation 
1  Von  Hiigel,  The  Mystical  Element  of  Religion,  Vol.  I.  p.  26. 


94  THE   MYSTIC    WAY 

in  the  interests  of  the  All  is  their  vocation.  The  greatest 
mystic  is  not  he  who  "  keeps  his  secret  to  himself," 
"  pouring  himself  out  towards  God  in  a  single  state  of 
enormous  intensity";  but  he  who  most  perfectly  realises 
the  ideal  of  the  "  leaven  which  leaveneth  the  lump." 

This  fact  is  the  very  heart  of  Christian  mysticism :  and 
Christian  mysticism  was  born  in  the  wilderness,  when  its 
Author  and  Finisher,  "alone  with  the  wild  beasts,"  faced 
the  unique  and  stupendous  possibilities  of  His  own  nature. 
The  world-renouncing  ascent  to  Pure  Being,  which  Indian 
and  Platonic  mysticism  attempts  and  sometimes  perhaps 
attains,  was  within  His  reach;  as  it  has  never  been  within 
the  reach  of  any  other  of  the  sons  of  men.  Yet  this 
refusal  of  the  temporal  in  the  supposed  interests  of  Eternal 
Life,  this  satisfaction  of  the  spirit's  hunger  for  its  home, 
He  decisively  rejected.  In  the  full  tide  of  illumination, 
knowing  Himself,  and  knowing  that  Transcendent  Order 
in  which  He  stood,  He  turned  His  back  upon  that  solitude 
in  which,  "  alone  with  the  Alone,"  He  might  have  enjoyed 
in  a  unique  degree  the  perpetual  and  undisturbed  fruition 
of  Reality.  The  whole  man  raised  to  heroic  levels,  "  his 
head  in  Eternity,  his  feet  in  Time,"  never  losing  grasp 
of  the  totality  of  the  human,  but  never  ceasing  to  breathe 
the  atmosphere  of  the  divine;  this  is  the  ideal  held  out 
to  us. 

It  is  this  attitude,  this  handling  of  the  stuff  of  life, 
which  is  new  in  the  spiritual  history  of  the  race :  this 
which  marks  Christian  mysticism  as  a  thing  totally 
different  in  kind  from  the  mysticism  of  India  or  of  the 
Neoplatonists.  That  power  which  is  the  human  crown,  yet 
seems  the  super-human  gift :  that  quality  of  wholeness, 
whereby  man  participates  at  once  in  the  worlds  of 
Becoming  and  of  Being — "  Eternal  Life  in  the  midst  of 
Time" — this  it  is  that  Jesus  unfolded  to  the  world;  and 
in  this  the  "  Gospel  of  the  Kingdom  "  consists.  Under 
the  imagery  in  which  the  Temptation  in  the  Wilderness  is 
described  by  Luke  and  Matthew,  we  may  see  the  story  of 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY        95 

a  crucial  choice  in  which  life  turned  in  a  new  direction, 
chose  a  new  path;  resisting  those  impulses  towards  the 
development  and  satisfaction  of  one  aspect  of  personality 
alone  which  must  beset  every  great  spirit  conscious  of  its 
freedom  and  its  power.  Nor  is  there  any  "  irreverence  " 
in  this  view;  since  the  strength  of  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  the  Incarnation — even  when  understood  in  its  most 
orthodox  form — lies  not  in  human  necessities  shirked,  but 
in  human  necessities  fulfilled. 

Yet  see  the  pace  at  which  that  flaming  thing  which  was 
the  soul  of  Jesus  burned  its  way  to  full  expression. 
Compare  with  the  forty  days  of  solitary  communion  from 
which  He  came  out  "  in  the  power  of  the  Spirit,"  speaking 
"  as  one  who  had  authority,"  the  three  years'  solitude  or 
St.  Paul  or  St.  Catherine  of  Siena,  the  sixteen  years' 
struggle  of  Suso,  the  thirty  years'  war  of  St.  Teresa;  all 
destined  to  that  same  end  of  the  unification  of  character 
about  this  centre  of  life.  Thus  may  we  gain  some 
measure  of  the  difference  in  power  resulting  from  their 
partial  yet  ever  growing  participation  in  the  Infinite — that 
"  divine  spark  "  whose  possession  they  claimed — and  the 
fulness  of  life,  the  overpowering  strength,  of  the  spirit 
which  so  quickly  subdued  to  its  uses  the  whole  mechanism 
of  thought  and  sense,  and  set  up  in  that  physical  frame 
which  was  the  agent  of  its  expression  the  requisite  "  paths 
of  discharge." 


Ill 

THE    ILLUMINATED    LIFE 

JESUS,  says  Luke,  returned  to  Galilee  from  the  wilder 
ness  "  in  the  power  of  the  Spirit,  and  a  fame  went  out 
concerning  Him  "  * — strong  and  definite  words.  Already, 
if  we  may  trust  a  tradition  preserved  by  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  the  intuitive  mind  of  John  the  Baptist  had  per 
ceived  in  His  baptismal  ecstacy  the  marks  of  a  spiritual 
greatness;  of  a  creative  personality,  far  transcending  the 
merely  prophetic  type.2  That  prophetic  type — looking 
forward,  rather  than  living  forward — can  be  no  more  than 
the  sign-post  on  the  way,  the  humble  servant  of  ascending 
Life.  Now,  that  very  Life  was  to  declare  itself.  "  The 
Bridge  which  goes  from  heaven  to  earth"  and  links  "  the 
earth  of  humanity  with  the  greatness  of  Deity  "  was  com 
plete.3  The  mind  and  character  of  Jesus,  permanently 
subdued  to  the  use  of  His  transcendental  consciousness, 
became  media  whereby  that  consciousness  could  be  ex 
pressed  :  "  His  word  was  with  power."  We  see,  then, 
the  "  Forerunner  of  the  Race  "  entering  upon  the  stage 
which  was  destined  to  be  called,  in  the  experience  of  those 
who  inherited  His  life,  the  "  Illuminative  State."  That 
state,  however  manifested,  is  in  essence  a  condition  of 
stability,  of  enhanced  and  adjusted  life,  interposed  between 
two  periods  of  pain  and  unrest ;  the  purifications,  as  the 
mystics  often  call  them,  of  senses  and  of  soul.  So  we 
find  in  the  life  of  Jesus  two  such  painful  periods  of  read- 

*  Luke  iv.  14  (R.V.). 

8  John  i.  29-34.     Cf.  Salmon,  The  Human  Element  in  the  Gospels,  p.  76. 
3  St.  Catherine  of  Siena,  Diakgo,  cap.  22. 

96 


MYSTICISM  AND  CHRISTOLOGY        97 

justment,  struggle  and  effort — the  Temptation  and  the 
Agony — at  the  opening  and  the  close  of  His  public  career. 

In  that  career,  all  those  peculiar  characteristics  of  the 
illuminated  mystic  which  we  have  already  considered — the 
deep  and  vivid  consciousness  of  the  Presence  of  God,  the 
lucid  understanding,  the  enhanced  power,  the  supreme 
peace,  the  sacramental  vision  of  the  world — were  for  once 
exhibited  in  their  completeness.  More,  from  the  time  of 
the  beginning  of  the  Ministry  we  see  the  rapid  emergence, 
the  swift,  resistless  growth  of  many  of  those  traits  which 
even  the  greatest  of  mystics  were  only  to  show  in  their 
last  and  most  perfect  stage :  the  characters,  that  is  to  say, 
of  the  Unitive  Way,  or  Deified  Life,  the  life  which  has 
completed  the  course  of  its  transcendence  and  perfected 
its  correspondences  with  Reality. 

Whatsoever  its  circumstances,  the  method  and  result 
of  such  a  life  is  always  the  same.  Its  method  is  the  sur 
render  of  the  part  to  the  whole;  its  result  is  a  veritable 
participation  in  the  life  of  God.  For  it,  "  in  the  midst 
of  the  visible,  an  invisible  but  more  actual  kingdom  is  set 
up;  which  sees  more  and  more  in  the  visible,  and  which 
enables  the  visible  to  produce  new  effects."  It  founds,  in 
fact,  "  the  whole  of  reality  on  a  cosmic  inner  life  "  l — the 
life  of  God — and  has  learned  the  delicate  balance  which 
keeps  consciousness  poised  between  Eternity  and  Time. 
Hence  there  is  for  it  no  gap  between  sacramentalism  and 
upure  spirituality";  no  opposition  between  the  tran 
scendence  and  the  immanence  of  Divinity,  or  between  the 
contemplative  and  active  ideals  of  humanity.  It  knows 
that  "  the  creating  and  sanctifying  God  is  the  principle  at 
once  of  natural  and  of  supernatural  life " :  hence  "  the 
ineffable  God  of  Neoplatonic  metaphysics — the  God  of 
ecstacy — is  at  the  same  time  the  God  of  life,"  2  and  work 
and  contemplation  are  but  two  aspects  of  the  one  great  act 
of  communion  with  Reality. 

1  Eucken,  The  Truth  of  Religion,  p.  510. 

*  Delacroix,  Etudes  d'histoire  et  de  psychologic  du  mysticisme,  p.  xii. 


98  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

The  traces  of  this  dual  character  of  intuition  and  action, 
work  and  rest,  as  they  were  exhibited  in  their  perfection 
in  the  life  of  Jesus,  are  easily  discoverable  in  the  Synoptics. 
Works  of  pity,  works  of  healing,  harmonising,  correcting, 
teaching,  the  free  giving  under  forms  both  lowly  and 
exalted  of  u  more  abundant  life,"  together  with  unwearied 
self-spending  in  the  efforts  to  initiate  humanity  into  the 
actual  new  order  in  which  it  stood — His  blazing  apocalyp 
tic  vision  of  a  Kingdom  both  here  and  to  come — were 
balanced  by  long  hours  of  solitary  prayer  and  contempla 
tion,  of  intense  and  direct  correspondence  with  the 
Absolute  l :  which,  could  we  but  penetrate  their  secret, 
would  teach  us  all  we  want  to  know  of  the  link  between 
man's  spirit  and  the  Spirit  of  God. 

The  destiny  to  which  that  human  spirit  tends  is  "  free 
dom  "  :  that  high  level  of  being,  upon  which  life  achieves 
reality  and  becomes  the  self-creative  auxiliary  of  the 
divine.  In  Jesus  of  Nazareth  we  may  see,  for  the  first 
time,  this  freedom  fully  achieved.  In  Him,  defying  the 
limitations  and  automatisms  which  dog  the  race,  it 
"  ascends  like  a  flame,"  exhibiting  its  two-fold  character 
of  perfect  correspondence  with  the  Many  and  with  the 
One. 

"  Freedom,"  says  Ruysbroeck,  "  the  conqueror  of  the 
world  and  of  the  evil  one,  ever  ascends.  It  rises  up  in 
adoration  towards  the  Eternity  of  its  Lord  and  God.  It 
possesses  the  divine  union  and  shall  never  lose  it.  But  a 
heavenly  impulse  comes :  and  it  turns  again  towards  men, 
it  has  pity  on  all  their  needs,  it  stoops  to  all  their  miseries, 
for  it  must  sorrow,  and  it  must  bring  forth.  Freedom 
gives  light,  like  fire;  like  fire  it  burns;  like  fire  it  absorbs 
and  devours,  and  lifts  up  to  heaven  that  which  it  has 
devoured.  And  when  it  has  accomplished  its  work  below, 
it  ascends  and  takes  once  more,  ardent  with  its  own  fire, 
the  path  which  leads  towards  the  heights."2 

1  Matt.  xiv.  23  ;  Mark  i.  35  and  vi.  46 ;  Luke  vi.  12. 
8  Ruysbroeck,  Regnum  amantium  Deum  (Hello,  p.  224). 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY        99 

This  character  of  freedom,  moving  easily  between  two 
worlds,  becomes  apparent  from  the  very  beginning  of  the 
public  life  of  Christ.  It  is  unconsciously  revealed  to  us 
wherever  a  connected  section  seems  to  describe  that  life 
as  it  was  really  lived.  Consider,  for  instance,  the  amazing 
first  Sabbath  in  Capernaum,  after  the  definite  "call"  of 
Peter,  Andrew,  James  and  John.1  Here,  in  the  consecu 
tive  events  of  a  typical  day  and  night,  we  have  a  classic 
description  of  the  kind  of  power  exhibited,  the  kind  of 
life  lived,  by  the  illuminative  mystic :  the  swaying  to  and 
fro  of  an  enormously  enhanced  consciousness  between  the 
human  and  the  spiritual  worlds.  Vividly  impressed  in  its 
newness  and  strangeness  upon  the  mind  of  Peter,  this 
forms  a  specially  valuable,  because  realistic,  portion  of  his 
reminiscences  as  recorded  by  Mark. 

The  day  begins  with  teaching  in  the  synagogue :  and  at 
once  the  sense  of  power  and  of  novelty  is  felt.  "  He 
taught  as  one  having  authority;  "  with  a  lucid  under 
standing,  a  flaming  conviction,  a  sureness  of  touch  in 
respect  of  the  spiritual  world,  which  astonished  all  who 
heard.  Next,  the  overflowing  sympathy  and  healing 
power:  the  sick  restored  to  health,  the  unstable  and  ill- 
adjusted  brought  back  to  their  true  poise  by  contact  with 
this  perfectly  adjusted  consciousness,  serenity  and  effici 
ency — more  life,  more  light — irradiated  as  it  were,  freely 
poured  out,  on  all  within  the  field  of  its  influence.  It  is 
as  if  the  resources  of  the  Universal  Life  had  here  been 
tapped — and  this,  not  in  the  exclusive  interests  of  one 
rare  soul,  but  in  order  that  the  vivifying  streams  might 
be  poured  out  on  other  men,  who  should  receive  according 
to  their  measure  an  enhancement  of  life  for  the  bodily 
frame  or  for  the  energising  mind.2  This  vast  new  life 
surging  up,  this  "extra  dower"  of  vitality,  may  well 
empower  its  possessors  for  acts  which  are  beyond  the  reach 
of  common  men;  yet  are  veritable  results  of  the  spirit  of 
life  overflowing  the  petty  barriers  of  "  use  and  wont." 

1  Mark  i.  16-38.  a  Mark  ii.  9-12. 

H  2 


100  THE  MYSTIC   WAY 

But  after  this  free  self-giving,  this  perfection  of  service, 
the  other  side  of  the  true  mystic  life  asserts  itself  with 
imperative  power.  This  passionate,  ardent  spirit  owes 
His  strength  to  other  contacts  than  that  of  the  world  of 
men.  The  irresistible  passion  for  God,  the  hunger  for 
direct  and  profound  communion  with  Reality — the  tend 
ency  of  like  for  like — seizes  upon  His  consciousness. 
"And  in  the  morning,  rising  up  a  great  while  before 
day,  He  went  out,  and  departed  into  a  solitary  place, 
and  there  prayed :  "  1  renewing  those  supernal  contacts, 
absorbed  in  that  deep  intimacy,  which  was  the  necessary 
source  of  life,  the  final  secret,  of  that  Personality  which 
claimed  at  once  identity  with  the  human  and  with  the 
divine. 

In  the  lives  of  the  great  Christian  mystics,  we  see- 
though  doubtless  upon  far  lower  levels — this  duality  of 
experience  repeated  over  and  over  again.  These  share 
to  some  extent  their  Master's  profound  participation  in 
two  orders :  they  are  "  in  this  world  like  a  balance,' ' 
rejecting  nothing  of  the  "  given,"  but  moving  to  and  fro 
between  Appearance  and  Reality.  Thus  only  can  they 
solve  the  paradox  of  Being  and  Becoming;  and  truly  "  live 
Eternal  Life  in  the  midst  of  Time."  We  see  this  in  St. 
Francis  of  Assisi,  whose  active  love  ran  up  to  the  supreme 
and  solitary  experience  of  La  Verna,  and  out  to  the  untir 
ing  industries  of  missionary  and  healer;  to  the  humblest 
works  of  service  to  men  and  beasts,  the  loving  discovery 
of  the  Divine  in  birds  and  flowers.  In  St.  Catherine  of 
Siena,  profound  ecstatic,  yet  wise  politician,  active  teacher 
and  philanthropist.  In  Ruysbroeck,  with  his  continual 
insistence  on  man's  necessary  movement  between  loving 
work  and  restful  fruition,  the  ascent  and  descent  of  the 
ladder  of  love.  In  St.  Catherine  of  Genoa,  balancing 
those  deep  and  solitary  contemplations  and  ecstacies  from 
which  she  came  forth  "  joyous  and  rosy-faced,"  with  the 
hard  work  and  generous  self-spending  of  her  active  career 

1  Mark  i.  35. 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      101 

in  hospital  and  slum.1  In  St.  Teresa,  who  declared  both 
in  word  and  action  that  the  "  combination  of  Martha  and 
Mary  "  is  necessary  to  the  perfect  life.2  These,  far  better 
than  any  reverent  process  of  insulation,  may  help  us  to 
know  something  of  the  nature  of  that  "  new  life  "  which, 
flashing  upon  the  world  in  its  highest  possible  expression, 
was  exhibited  to  men  during  the  short  ministry  of  Jesus. 

It  is  clear  from  every  line  of  the  canonical  records  that 
"newness"  was  indeed  of  its  essence;  as  seen  both  by 
the  loving  and  intimate  vision  of  disciples,  and  by  the 
curious  and  astonished  crowd.  Actual  novelty  was  felt 
here  if  ever,  breaking  out  through  the  world  of  things. 

"  If,"  says  Gamble,  "  we  try  to  determine  the  first  and 
most  general  impression  which  the  person  of  Jesus  made 
on  His  followers,  we  have  no  great  difficulty  in  reaching 
it.  They  were  deeply  penetrated  by  the  sense  of  His 
unlikeness  to  ordinary  men.  This  feeling  is  apparent  on 
every  page  of  the  Synoptic  gospels.  It  excites  among 
the  disciples  sometimes  astonishment,  sometimes  selr- 
surrender,  sometimes  terror.  .  .  .  We  shall  find  the  most 
marked  characteristic  of  Jesus  to  be  a  certain  collectedness, 
composure,  or  serenity  of  mind  under  the  utmost  stress 
of  circumstance.  We  are  made  aware  of  this  trait  in  all 
the  various  situations  into  which  the  narrative  brings  us. 
We  feel  throughout  that  we  are  in  the  company  of  One 
who  is  equal  to  the  many  demands  which  life  makes  upon 
Him,  and  who  is  in  possession  of  a  peace  which  nothing 
can  disturb."  8 

This  newness  and  strangeness,  though  none  could  be 
expected  to  comprehend  it  in  its  fulness — much  less 
express  it  in  the  crude  and  limited  symbols  of  speech — 
some  at  least  could  recognise ;  far  though  it  w.as  from  all 
Messianic  conceptions  and  hopes.  This  it  is,  forced  into 
correspondence  with  the  formulae  of  Jewish  prophecy, 

1  Von  Hiigel,  The  Mystical  Element  of  Religion,  Vol.  I.  p.  139 
*  El  Castillo  Interior,  Moradas  Setimas,  iv. 
8  J.  Gamble,  Christ  and  Criticism,  p.  59. 


102  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

which  finds  expression  in  the  confession  of  Peter,1  and  in 
the  "  Messianic  claims "  and  much  of  the  apocalyptic 
prophecy  of  Jesus  Himself.  "  From  the  parables  of  the 
garment  and  of  the  wine  bottles,"  says  Dobschiitz,  "we 
learn  that  He  looks  on  Himself  and  His  surroundings  as 
something  quite  new.  .  .  .  The  prophets  all  announced 
a  time  of  fulfilment  to  come.  Jesus  knew  that  He  was 
bringing  this  time."  2 

But  the  emergence  of  Novelty,  the  real  movement  of 
life  in  a  direction  that  is  truly  new,  must  mean  for  the 
human  mind  which  experiences  it — has  had  as  it  were 
for  a  moment  its  blinkers  snatched  away,  but  cannot 
focus  the  fresh  worlds  disclosed — a  sense  of  strangeness, 
of  immeasurable  possibilities.  For  such  a  mind  the  world, 
abruptly  perceived  from  a  new  standpoint,  seems  full  of 
portents :  moves  to  some  fresh  definite  consummation 
which,  because  inwardly  felt,  must  be  outwardly  dis 
closed.  There  are  "signs  in  the  sun  and  the  moon" — 
yes,  signs  in  every  springing  leaf,  in  every  sudden  breeze. 
The  strangeness  of  a  Parousia  truly  imminent,  in  a  sense 
actually  present  for  consciousness,  flings  its  shadow  upon 
the  World  of  Appearance.  A  mind  ever  stretched  towards 
Eternity  tinctures  with  its  own  peculiar  essence  the  stream 
of  perceptions  as  they  flow  in  from  the  "  world  of  sense." 
The  result  of  such  factors  will  be  something  not  far  differ 
ent  from  that  which  is  called  the  "  apocalyptic  element " 
in  the  teaching  of  Jesus. 

Such  an  "  apocalyptic  element "  is  seldom  wholly 
absent  from  the  declarations  of  those  mystics  whose  ascent 
towards  Reality  is  conditioned  by  the  sense  of  a 
"  mediatorship  "  laid  upon  them  :  whose  vision  of  Infinite 
Perfection  brings  with  it  the  impulse  to  communicate  the 
implications  of  that  vision  to  the  race.  A  necessary  per 
fecting  of  all  life,  individual  and  racial,  as  part  of  the 
Divine  Plan,  is  then  made  clear  to  them.  Deeply  merged 
in  the  stream  of  Becoming,  they  feel  the  tendencies  of  its 

1  Mark  viii.  29.         a  The  Eschatokgy  of  the  Gospels,  pp.  19  and  172. 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      103 

movement;  become  aware  of  its  inexorable  laws.  As 
best  they  can,  they  condense  the  substance  of  those  intui 
tions — the  plot  of  the  Drama  of  God — into  the  shorter 
rhythms  of  human  thinking.  A  great  certitude  burns  in 
their  symbolic  language.  Because  the  supernatural  side 
of  history  is  so  widely  unrolled  before  them,  they  acceler 
ate  the  pace  of  its  great  processes,  and  feel  the  inevitable 
end  as  already  near.  It  is  all  part  of  the  supreme  human 
business  of  "  bringing  the  Eternal  into  Time."  Thus 
Joachim  of  Flora,  St.  Hildegarde,  and  the  crowd  of 
mystical  seers  down  to  our  own  apocalyptic  prophetess 
Jane  Lead,  all  come  back  from  their  communion  with 
Reality  to  cry  like  John  the  Baptist,  "  Change  your  minds, 
for  the  Kingdom  is  at  hand." 

Alike  the  mediaeval  seers  and  their  forbears  the  Jewish 
prophets,  were  violent  in  their  declarations,  vivid  and 
definite  in  the  pictures  which  they  made  of  the  changes 
that  must  come.  But  Jesus,  towering  to  greater  certitudes, 
embracing  a  wider  horizon,  was  more  violent,  more  vivid 
than  them  all.  A  sharper  pencil  than  theirs,  a  more 
impassioned  poetry,  was  needed  if  He  were  to  communi 
cate  a  tithe  of  His  great  vision,  of  His  interior  sense  of 
power  and  newness,  to  the  world. 

Thus  "  apocalyptic  language" — lyrical  and  pictorial 
speech — is  seen  to  have  been  inevitable  for  Him.  Its 
relics  survive  in  the  gospels,  though  emptied  now  of  all 
their  fire  and  light.  Each  successive  redaction  of  those 
gospels  removed  them  a  little  further  from  that  shin 
ing  world  of  wonder  in  which  they  had  their  origin,  to 
deposit  them  at  last  in  the  anatomical  museums  where 
the  dead  fancies  of  faith  are  preserved.  As  the  living 
Personality  slowly  stiffened  into  the  "  deified  hero  " — as 
Christianity  developed  from  a  life  to  a  cult — so  more  and 
more  the  ecstatic  and  poetic  quality  of  such  utterances 
was  obscured  by  an  insistence  on  those  features  which 
appeared  to  ratify  the  ancient  prophecies  of  Israel,  or  fore 
cast  definite  events  on  the  physical  plane.  These  fore- 


104  THE   MYSTIC  WAY 

castSj  unfulfilled,  were  but  the  construction  put  by  the 
intellect — limited  on  all  sides  by  tradition,  education,  race 
— on  that  amazing  vision  of  novelty  and  change,  worlds 
of  the  spirit  indeed  brought  to  judgment  and  re-made, 
which  was  perceived  by  an  intuition  so  exalted  that  it 
touched  and  experienced  the  creative  sphere. 

Thus  the  vivid  poetic  description  of  the  preaching  of 
the  Gospel *  seems  to  foretell,  as  Schweitzer  points  out, 
an  immediate  appearance  of  the  Glorified  Messiah.  But 
that  which  it  really  does  describe  is  the  threefold  interior 
process  of  the  coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  Reality,  as  it  is 
experienced  by  the  growing  human  soul.  First  the 
natural  resistance  of  normal  life,  ever  tending  to  lag 
behind,  to  oppose  the  forward  march  of  spirit,  to  trouble 
it  and  struggle  with  it,  old  habits  fighting  against  new : 
the  dreadful  obstinacy  of  the  respectable  when  faced  by 
the  romantic,  of  the  ethical  as  opposed  to  the  religious 
sense.  "  Beware  of  men,  for  they  will  deliver  you  up 
to  the  Councils  ...  ye  shall  be  hated  of  all  men  for  my 
name's  sake."  2  Then  the  first  victory  of  the  inflowing 
tide  of  life,  far  stronger  than  the  individuals  who  are  its 
instruments — "  it  is  not  ye  that  speak,  but  the  Spirit  of 
your  father  which  speaketh  in  you."  Then,  in  spite  of 
struggles  ever  renewed  on  the  part  of  the  recalcitrant  lower 
nature,  the  gradual  growth  and  final  establishment  of  divine 
humanity — the  "Son  of  Man,"  who  is  also  the  son  of 
God.  Chandler  observes  that  these  prophecies  describe, 
in  a  foreshortened  form,  the  actual  events  which  attended 
upon  the  establishment  of  the  Christian  Church  as  "a 
supernatural  and  spiritual  society."  3  They  also  describe 
the  inward  events  which  attend  upon  the  growth  towards 
reality — in  Christian  language  the  "entrance  into  the 
Kingdom  " — of  the  individual  soul. 

This  "  Kingdom  " — its  nature  and  its  nearness,  its  pro 
found  significance  for  life — is  the  theme  of  all  the  preach 
ing  of  Jesus,  during  the  period  of  His  public  activity. 

1  Matt.  i.  16-23.      *  Matt.  x.  17,  22.      8  Faith  and  Experience,  p.  59. 


MYSTICISM  AND  CHRISTOLOGY      105 

Its  "  mystery  "  is  the  "  good  news  "  which  the  Twelve 
were  sent  out  to  proclaim.  Its  announcement,  rather 
than  any  moral  law,  any  "  scheme  of  salvation,"  is  recog 
nised  by  the  Synoptics  as  His  typical  utterance.  "  From 
that  time  Jesus  began  to  preach  and  to  say,  c  Change  your 
minds !  for  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  at  hand.'  "  "  Jesus 
came  into  Galilee  preaching  the  good  news  of  the  King 
dom  of  God,  and  saying,  '  The  time  is  fulfilled  and  the 
Kingdom  of  God  is  at  hand.'  "  "  And  he  said  unto 
them,  I  must  preach  the  Kingdom  of  God  to  other  cities 
also :  for  therefore  am  I  sent."  l 

As  Christians  of  a  later  date  took  the  language  of  the 
old  mysteries  and  gave  to  it  a  new  and  vital  significance, 
so  their  Founder,  in  His  effort  to  convey  His  transcendent 
intuitions  to  the  race,  took  a  phrase  which  was  on  every 
one's  lips,  although  generally  understood  either  in  a 
national  and  political  or  in  an  apocalyptic  sense — the 
Kingdom  of  God — and  lifted  it  into  a  new  region  of 
beauty  and  of  truth.  The  "  Kingdom  "  is  an  artistic  and 
poetic  transfiguration  of  a  well-known  figure  of  speech : 
one  of  those  great  suggestive  metaphors,  without  which 
the  creative  mind  can  never  communicate  its  message  to 
men.  It  represents  a  world  and  a  consciousness  dominated 
by  the  joyful  awareness  of  Divine  Reality — "  the  key  that 
first  unlocks  the  meaning  and  aim  of  life."  2  The  estab 
lishment  of  such  a  consciousness  is  the  goal  to  which  that 
life's  unresting  travail  is  directed.  The  spark  from  which 
it  springs  is  deep  buried  in  the  soul.  It  is  like  a  grain 
of  mustard  seed;  the  germ  which  seems  the  least  of  things, 
yet  bears  within  itself  the  divine  secret  of  self -creation. 
It  is  a  hidden  treasure  awaiting  discovery.  Again,  it  is 
like  leaven;  an  invisible  organism  which,  once  introduced 
into  the  field  of  consciousness,  will  entincture  and  trans 
mute  the  whole  of  life.3  There  is  about  it,  as  it  exists  in 

1  Matt.  iv.  17 ;  Mark  i.  14 ;  Luke  iv.  43. 

2  Harnack,  Das  Wesen  des  Christentums,  p.  40. 

3  Matt.  xiii.  31-33. 


106  THE   MYSTIC  WAY 

human  nature,  something  rudimentary,  embryonic,  yet 
powerful.  It  is  not  inserted  ready-made.  Those  who 
desire  its  possession  must  acquiesce  in  the  necessity  of 
beginning  over  again;  of  re-birth.  "Unless  you  change 
your  minds  and  become  as  little  children  ye  shall  not  enter 
into  the  Kingdom." *  Over  and  over  again,  by  a  multitude 
of  fluid  images,  we  are  brought  back  from  soaring  visions 
to  the  homely  and  direct  implications  of  life  and  of  growth. 

The  truth  which  these  parables  and  teachings  conceal  is 
therefore  as  much  a  truth  of  psychology  as  of  religion. 
It  is  the  fact,  and  the  law,  of  the  mystic  life;  now  made 
central  for  the  race.  "The  law  and  the  prophets  were 
until  John :  from  that  time  the  good  news  of  the  King 
dom  of  God  is  preached."  2  "  O  thou  bright  Crown  of 
Pearl,"  says  Boehme  of  this  mystic  seed  or  thing  revealed 
to  man,  "  art  thou  not  brighter  than  the  sun  ?  There  is 
nothing  like  thee;  thou  art  so  very  manifest,  and  yet  so 
very  secret,  that  among  many  thousand  in  this  world,  thou 
art  scarcely  rightly  known  of  any  one;  and  yet  thou  art 
carried  about  in  many  that  know  thee  not."  3 

Reality,  and  man's  relation  to  it — his  implicit  posses 
sion  of  it — is,  then,  the  subject  of  the  good  news.  This 
is  the  omnipresent  and  eternal  mystery  which  is  neither 
"Here"  nor  "There,"  but  "Lo!  everywhere."  This 
Reality  and  this  relation,  as  perceived  by  the  human  soul 
in  its  hours  of  greatest  lucidity,  are  double-edged.  Each 
has  for  consciousness  a  personal  and  an  impersonal  aspect. 
Jesus  called  the  first  of  these  the  "  Fatherhood  of  God," 
and  the  second  the  "  Mystery  of  the  Kingdom."  They 
must  be  regarded  as  the  completing  opposites  of  a  truth 
which  is  one. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God  involves,  of 
course,  the  corresponding  doctrine  of  man's  "sonship"; 
his  implicitly  real  or  divine  character,  a  seed  or  spark,  an 
inherited  divine  quality  latent  in  him,  which  makes  possible 

1  Matt,  xviii.  3.  2  Luke  xvi.  1 6. 

8  The  Threefold  Life  of  Man,  cap.  6,  §  99. 


MYSTICISM  AND  CHRISTOLOGY      107 

the  filial  relation.  It  is  the  basis  alike  of  all  passionate 
seeking,  all  intimate  and  loving  communion  with  God, 
and  of  that  claim  to  "  deification,"  to  final  union  with 
Divine  Reality,  which  all  the  great  mystics  make.1  The 
love  and  dependence  felt  as  towards  Deity  by  every 
awakened  religious  consciousness,  here  receive  their  justi 
fication.  Yet,  since  no  one  definition  of  Reality  can 
exhaust  the  resources  of  an  All  which  transcends  the 
totality  of  its  manifestations,  this  declaration  of  Divine 
Personality,  and  man's  close  and  loving  relationship  with 
it,  is  balanced  by  another  declaration  :  that  of  the  Godhead 
considered  as  a  place  or  state — St.  Augustine's  "  country 
of  the  soul."  This  is  the  "Kingdom"  in  which  Jesus 
Himself  lives,  and  into  which  it  is  His  mission  to  intro 
duce  the  consciousness  of  other  men.  It  is  this  awareness 
of  our  true  position  that  we  are  to  seek  first :  this  firm 
hold  upon  a  Reality,  loved  and  possessed,  though  never 
understood.  Through  it  all  other  things,  then  seen  in 
their  true  proportion,  will  be  "  added  unto  us."  2 

The  two  ideas  taken  together  as  we  find  them  in  the 
gospels,  with  all  their  living  interchange  of  fire  and  light, 
presented  by  a  Personality  to  whom  they  were  not  terms 
of  thought  but  facts  of  life,  represent  therefore  the 
obverse  and  reverse  of  man's  most  sublime  vision  of 
Deity:  the  cerchio  and  imago  of  Dante's  dream.3  The 
completeness  and  perfection  of  balance  with  which  Jesus 
possesses  this  dual  vision,  is  the  secret  of  His  unique 
freshness  and  reality :  His  power  of  infecting  other  men 
with  that  "more  abundant  life." 

Yet  the  mass  of  words  and  actions  in  which  this  new 
direction  of  life  is  indicated  to  us,  the  attention  orientated 

1  It  is  a  mistake  to  credit  Neoplatonism  with  the  introduction  of 
"  deification  "  into  Christianity.  True,  the  expression  itself  is  Hellenic, 
and  was  first  used  in  a  Christian  sense  by  Clement  of  Alexandria  :  but 
the  experience  which  it  describes  is  indistinguishable  from  the  "  divine 
sonship  "  of  Paul  and  the  Fourth  Evangelist. 

»  Matt.  vi.  33.  3  Par.,  XXXIII.  136. 


108  THE   MYSTIC  WAY 

toward  this  immanent  yet  transcendent  Kingdom  of  God, 
cannot  be  forced  into  any  rigid  scientific  system  of 
doctrine.  It  is  itself  alive;  an  essentially  artistic  and  direct 
revelation,  which  plays  over  the  whole  field  of  human 
activity  and  hope.  "  Contemplative  theology,  the  off 
spring  of  doubt,5'  was,  says  Deissmann,  completely  out 
side  the  sphere  of  Christ's  nature,  "because  He  was  in 
daily  personal  intercourse  with  the  higher  world,  and  the 
living  God  was  in  Him.  ...  To  this  latter  fact  His  con 
fessions,  His  words  of  controversy,  consolation  and 
reproof,  bear  witness.  It  is  impossible  to  unite  all  these 
sayings  into  the  artistic  mosaic  of  an  evangelical  system : 
they  are  the  reflections  of  an  inner  life  full  of  unbroken 
strength."  * 

In  His  teachings  He  had  His  eye  on  two  things,  two 
states :  obverse  and  reverse  of  one  whole.  First,  on  the 
immediate  and  largely  ascetic  and  world-renouncing 
"  struggle  for  good,  that  is  to  say  for  true  life  "  which 
all  infected  by  His  transcendent  vitality,  and  found 
capable  of  the  new  movement,  must  set  in  hand;  the  quest 
of  personal  perfection,  which  is  for  every  mystic  the  inevit 
able  corollary  of  his  vision  of  Perfect  Love.  Secondly,  on 
the  end  and  aim  of  that  struggle — the  "  final  flowering  of 
man's  true  being  "  2  as  He  saw  it  in  apocalyptic  vision — 
the  conscious  attainment  of  the  "  Kingdom,"  the  appro 
priation  of  Divine  Sonship,  the  deified  life  of  the  mystic 
soul.  He  taught  that  there  was  no  limit  to  the  power  of 
the  spiritual  life  in  man.  The  "  grain  of  mustard  seed  " 
hidden  in  the  ground  of  his  nature  was  a  mighty  dynamic 
agent  for  those  who  understood  the  divine  secret  of 
growth.  As  the  fine  rootlets  of  the  baby  plant  press 
resistless  through  the  heavy  and  recalcitrant  soil,  so  this 
embryo  of  a  transcendent  vitality  can  dominate  matter, 
"  move  mountains,"  and  by  a  magic  transmutation  of  the 
inorganic  build  up  the  Tree  of  Life.  Thus  the  whole 

1  Deissmann,  Light  from  the  Ancient  East,  p.  386. 
«  A.  Rdville,  J/sus  de  Nazareth,  Vol.  II.  p.  5. 


MYSTICISM  AND  CHRISTOLOGY      109 

mystery  of  the  kingdom  is  already  manifested  in  the  latent 
possibilities  of  the  little  child;  and  this,  rather  than  the 
clever  but  crystallised  adult,  is  the  raw  material  of  the 
New  Race. 

From  a  profound  consciousness  of  this  indwelling  spark 
of  perfection,  there  flowed  that  sense  of  the  sacredness 
and  limitless  possibilities  of  life  which  governed  the  ethical 
teaching  of  Jesus.  Here  is  the  source  of  that  undying 
magic,  that  creative  touch,  which  evoked  from  all  the 
common  things  of  our  diurnal  existence  the  august  quality 
of  romance ;  and  found  in  the  deep  passional  life  of  the 
Magdalene  the  clue  to  her  reconciliation  with  the  Fontal 
Life  of  men.  For  Him  the  lawless  vitality  of  the  sinner 
held  more  promise  than  the  careful  piety  of  the  ecclesi 
astic.  Realness  was  His  first  demand  :  "  Woe  unto  you, 
play-actors,"  His  bitterest  reproach.  The  everlasting 
miracle  of  growth,  the  strange  shimmer  in  our  restless 
World  of  Appearance  which  seems  to  shake  from  out  the 
folds  of  all  created  things  a  faery  and  enticing  light,  dis 
cerned  in  our  moments  of  freedom  as  a  veritable  message 
from  our  home — this  He  gathered  up  and  made  a  heritage 
for  us.  Fulfilled  by  a  profound  consciousness  of  union, 
with  the  fundamental  reality  of  All  that  Is — a  "  deep, 
graduated  glow  of  love  for  the  graduated  realities  of  our 
real  world  "  1 — He  disclosed  to  us  the  glory  of  that  One 
Reality  ablaze  in  the  humblest  growing  things :  "  Con 
sider  the  lilies  of  the  field  how  they  grow;  .  .  .  even 
Solomon  in  all  his  glory  was  not  arrayed  like  one  of 
these."  2 

Twelve  hundred  years  passed  before  this  characteristic 
ally  Christian  saying  was  really  understood,  and  entered 
through  the  life  and  example  of  Francis  of  Assisi  into  the 

1  Von  Hiigel,  Eternal  Life,  p.  281. 

1  Matt.  vi.  28,  29 ;  Luke  xii.  27.  "  Of  all  Christ's  sayings,"  saya 
Abbott,  "  this  is  the  most  original :  no  parallel  to  it  can  be  discovered  in 
ancient  literature.  To  us  it  is  a  truism ;  in  the  first  century  it  must  have 
seemed  a  paradox  of  paradoxes  "  (E.  A.  Abbott,  The  Son  of  Man,  3565  b 
and  d). 


110  THE  MYSTIC  WAY 

main  stream  of  Christian  consciousness.  "As  of  old  the 
three  children  placed  in  the  burning  fiery  furnace  invited 
all  the  elements  to  praise  and  glorify  God,  so  this  man 
also,  full  of  the  Spirit  of  God,  ceased  not  to  glorify,  praise 
and  bless  in  all  the  elements  and  creatures  the  Creator 
and  Governor  of  them  all.  What  gladness  thinkest  thou 
the  beauty  of  flowers  afforded  to  his  mind  as  he  observed 
the  grace  of  their  form  and  perceived  the  sweetness  of 
their  perfume  ?  .  .  .  When  he  came  upon  a  great  quantity 
of  flowers  he  would  preach  to  them  and  invite  them  to 
praise  the  Lord,  just  as  if  they  had  been  gifted  with 
reason.  So  also  cornfields  and  vineyards,  stones,  woods, 
and  all  the  beauties  of  the  field,  fountains  of  waters,  all 
the  verdure  of  gardens,  earth  and  fire,  air  and  wind  would 
he,  with  sincerest  purity,  exhort  to  the  love  and  willing 
service  of  God.  In  short,  he  called  all  creatures  by  the 
name  of  brother ;  and  in  a  surpassing  manner,  of  which 
other  men  had  no  experience^  he  discerned  the  hidden 
things  of  creation  with  the  eye  of  the  heart,  as  one  who 
had  already  escaped  into  the  glorious  liberty  of  the  children 
of  God."  1 

The  imparting  and  making  central  for  other  men  of 
this  new  inner  life,  the  building  of  this  top  storey  to  the 
spirit  of  man,  is  the  art  or  secret  with  which,  at  bottom, 
the  whole  of  Christ's  preaching  is  concerned.  By  the 
completeness  of  His  union  with  God,  He  is  bringing  it 
in;  making  it  for  ever  after  an  integral  part  of  the  stream 
of  human  life.  Possessing  it  in  the  fullest  measure,  He 
spends  Himself  in  the  effort  to  impart  it;  and,  as  a  fact, 
He  does  so  impart  it  to  the  inner  circle  of  followers  capable 
of  that  divine  infection.  We  here  touch  the  secret  upon 
which,  ultimately,  the  whole  history  of  the  Christian  type 
depends — the  characteristic  quality  of  infectiousness  pos 
sessed  by  the  mystic  life.  This  fact,  which  makes  every 
great  mystic  in  the  Unitive  Way  a  real  centre  of  that 

1  Thomas  of  Celano,  Legenda  prima,  cap.  29. 


MYSTICISM  AND  CHRISTOLOGY      111 

which  has  been  called  "  Divine  Fecundity  "  * — the  founder 
of  a  family  in  the  Transcendental  Order — of  course 
received  its  supreme  manifestation  in  Jesus  Himself. 
The  mystic  life  springs  up  as  it  were,  flowering  in  the 
most  sterile  places,  beneath  the  feet  of  a  Paul,  a  Francis, 
an  Ignatius,  a  Teresa;  each  possesses  the  power  of  stinging 
to  activity  the  dormant  spark  in  the  souls  of  those  whom 
they  meet.  But  the  superabundant  divine  life  in  Jesus, 
the  life  which  it  communicates  to  others,  the  "new 
birth"  which  it  operated  in  the  immediate  circle  of  dis 
ciples  living  within  the  field  of  its  influence,  is  the  fount 
and  origin  of  the  whole  Christian  Church. 

All  the  "  ethical "  teaching  of  Jesus  is  concerned  with 
the  way  in  which  this  new  life,  once  it  has  germinated, 
may  best  grow,  be  nurtured,  move  towards  its  destined 
goal.  Those  in  whom  it  has  sprung  up  are  a  race  apart : 
they  are  "  My  brother,  and  sister,  and  mother."  a  They 
belong  to  an  inner  circle,  the  "children  of  the  bride 
groom,"  the  great  family  of  the  secret  sons  of  God.  More 
is  demanded  of  them  than  of  other  men.  Since  they  are 
capable  of  another  vision,  live  at  a  higher  tension,  are 
quickened  to  a  more  intimate  and  impassioned  love,  total 
self-donation  is  asked  of  them;  complete  concentration  on 
the  new  transcendent  life.3  The  collection  of  sayings  put 
together  in  Matthew  v.,  vi.  and  vii.,  with  others  scattered 
through  the  Synoptics,  tend  to  establish  an  ideal  of 
character  of  which  the  outstanding  qualities  are  Humility, 
Detachment,  Poverty,  Charity,  Purity,  Courage :  the 
marks,  in  fact,  of  the  Christian  saint.  Amongst  the  many 
psychological  necessities  which  these  sayings  bring  into 
prominence,  are  the  completeness  with  which  the  new 
transcendent  life  must  be  established  if  it  is  to  succeed — ye 

1  Richard  of  St.  Victor,  De  quatuor  gradibus  violentce  charitatis  (Migne, 
Pat.  Lat.,  T.  CXCVI.). 

1  Matt.  xii.  50  and  Mark  iii.  35. 

3  Matt.  viii.  19-23,  xvi.  24,  xix.  16-21 ;  Mark  viii.  34,  x.  17-22; 
Luke  ix.  23,  xiv.  25-33,  xviii.  18-23. 


112  THE   MYSTIC  WAY 

cannot  serve  God  and  Mammon :  1  the  need  of  purity  if 
one  is  to  keep  the  power  of  perceiving  Reality :  2  the 
courage  and  endurance  with  which  the  logical  results  of 
conversion  must  be  faced : 3  the  dynamic  power  of  the 
fervent  will :  4  the  fact  that  "  entrance  into  the  Kingdom" 
is  not  a  belief,  but  an  act.5 

This  ideal  in  its  totality  became,  and  remains — not  at 
all  the  standard  of  social  Christianity,  which  is  always 
trying  to  whittle  it  down,  and  prove  its  impracticable 
character,  but — the  ideal  towards  which  the  disciplines  of 
Christian  asceticism  are  set.  Read  first  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount,  and  then  side  by  side  the  Imitatio  Christi 
and  any  work  of  edification  proceeding  from  the  Ritschlian 
school ;  and  you  will  be  left  in  no  doubt  as  to  which  is 
the  more  "  evangelical."  Fulfilment  of  this  ideal  is  the 
standard  aimed  at  by  all  those  heroic  mortifications  which 
constitute  the  mystic's  Way  of  Purgation,  or  on  a  lower 
plane  the  novitiate  of  the  religious  life ;  directed  as  they 
are  towards  "  self-naughting,"  the  acquirement  of  that 
radiant  charity  which  sees  all  things  in  the  light  of  God, 
that  evangelical  poverty  which  Jacopone  da  Todi  called 
"  highest  wisdom,"  the  harmonious  rearrangement  of 
character  round  a  new  and  higher  centre  of  life;  though 
neither  mystic  nor  monastic  postulant  may  recognise  the 
origin  of  that  pattern  to  which  his  growing  intuition  of 
reality  urges  him  to  conform.  Over  and  over  again  its 
principles  have  been  given  practical  expression :  by 
Francis,  embracing  Poverty  and  receiving  with  it  a  joyous 
participation  in  the  Kingdom  of  God;  by  Suso,  blessed 
when  men  said  all  manner  of  evil  against  him;  by  Teresa 
in  her  convent  taking  no  thought  for  the  morrow,  or 
denying  herself  social  intercourse  in  the  effort  towards 
singleness  of  eye — a  pure  and  untainted  vision  of  Reality. 

The  violent  other-worldliness  of  this  ideal,  its  para 
doxical  combination  of  charity  and  austerity,  of  intensest 

1  Matt.  vi.  24.  a  Matt.  v.  8,  vi.  22.  '  Matt.  vii.  13. 

4  Matt.  v.  6.  5  Matt.  vii.  21. 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      113 

joy  and  pain,  its  "  unpracticalness  "  as  a  guide  for  those 
whom  we  consider  normal  men  leading  that  which  we 
like  to  think  a  normal  life,  is  notorious.  But  it  was  the 
rule  of  a  new  life,  a  new  man,  whose  standard  must  tran 
scend  that  of  the  respectable  citizen;  and  is  the  inevitable 
condition  of  his  appropriation  of  the  vision  and  secret 
called  the  "  Kingdom  of  God  "  :  "  Except  your  righteous 
ness  shall  exceed  the  righteousness  of  the  scribes  and 
pharisees,  ye  shall  in  no  case  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven."  l  Unendurably  hard  for  those  who  "  loved  the 
world,"  the  others,  breathing  the  crisp  air  of  Reality, 
found  that  its  yoke  was  easy  and  its  burden  light. 

Participation  in  this  Kingdom  was  at  first  freely  offered 
to  the  whole  race.  So  great,  so  compelling  was  the  new 
vision  of  Reality,  that  it  seemed  impossible  that  any  to 
whom  it  was  declared  could  disbelieve.  We  see  this  same 
convinced  optimism  even  in  the  preaching  of  St.  Francis, 
of  Tauler,  of  Fox :  the  clear  triumphant  certitude  of 
an  Eternal  Life  attainable  by  all  men  who  turn  towards 
it,  who  chose  to  knock,  to  ask,  to  seek,2  slowly  work 
ing  itself  out  to  the  same  tragic  conclusion  in  con 
flict  with  the  deadly  inertia  of  the  crowd — the  "  unbeliev 
ing  and  crooked-minded  generation," 3  with  its  exas 
perating  tendency  to  degrade  all  spiritual  power  to  its 
own  purposes,  make  it  useful,  exploit  in  the  interests 
of  present  comfort  the  marvellous  and  the  occult.  In 
one  who  lived  in  the  full  blaze  of  the  Divine  Presence, 
to  whom  the  atmosphere  of  Reality  was  native  air,  such 
an  attitude  of  hope  and  expectation  was  inevitable.  As 
with  the  man  who  made  the  great  supper,  it  seemed 
enough  to  say,  "  Come,  for  all  things  are  now  ready."  4 
The  few  sarcastic  sentences  in  which  that  most  ironic  of 
parables  is  completed  show  the  cruel  disappointment  of 
the  result. 

It  soon  became  plain  that  only  a  few  were  capable  of  the 

1  Matt.  v.  20.  «  Matt.  vii.  7. 

*  Matt.  rvii.  17  (Weymouth's  trans.).  4  Luke  xiv.  17. 

I 


114  THE  MYSTIC  WAY 

new  movement  of  life :  possessed  the  courage  and  sim 
plicity  needed  for  its  fundamental  sacrifices  and  readjust 
ments.  "  For  narrow  is  the  gate,  and  straitened  the  way, 
that  leadeth  unto  life,  and  few  be  they  that  find  it."  l 
Hence  in  the  end  the  secrets  of  the  "  Kingdom  "  were  de 
liberately  confined  to  a  handful  of  men;  the  "  little  flock," 
temperamentally  able  to  slip  the  leash  of  old  illusions  and 
"  live  the  life."  There  came  a  point  at  which,  the  dis 
tinction  between  those  susceptible  of  this  new  birth  and 
those  incapable  of  moving  in  the  new  direction  became 
so  clear  to  Jesus,  that  the  inner  circle  of  initiates  even 
received  the  stern  warning  to  avoid  "  giving  that  which 
is  holy  to  the  dogs,  and  casting  pearls  before  swine."  2 
The  whole  race,  it  is  true,  are  called  to  the  Kingdom;  but 
in  the  event  few  are  chosen.  These  few  His  unerring 
intuition  detects — a  man  here,  a  man  there,  in  the  least 
likely  situations.  They  are  the  natural  mystics,  the  "  salt 
of  the  earth,"  the  "  light  of  the  world,"  the  finders  of 
the  treasure,  of  the  pearl,  the  wise  who  build  their  lives 
on  a  foundation  of  Eternity  3 — those  in  fact  who  are 
capable  of  the  recognition  of  Reality,  and  are  destined  to 
live  the  new  Transcendent  Life;  or  become,  in  Johannine 
language,  "  branches  of  the  Vine." 

The  swift  growth  of  Jesus  in  the  Illuminated  Life  is 
reflected  for  us  in  the  impression  made  by  Him  on  this 
inner  circle,  this  spiritual  aristocracy.  It  is  an  impression 
which  culminates  in  the  confession  of  Peter,  and  in  the 
parallel  story  of  the  Transfiguration,4  where  voice  and 
vision  do  but  drive  home  the  same  conviction  which 
breaks  out  irresistibly  in  Peter's  words — the  conviction  of 
a  unique  transcendence  experienced  here  and  now,  and 
making  a  link  for  man  with  the  spiritual  sphere. 

The  Transfiguration  belongs  to  a  group  of  incidents 
prominent  in  the  Synoptics,  which  we  can  hardly  dismiss, 

1  Matt.  vii.  14  (R.V.).  2  Matt.  vii.  6. 

3  Matt.  v.  13-16,  xiii.  44-46,  vii.  24. 

4  Matt.  rvi.  16  and  xvii.  1-8 ;  Mark  viii.  29  and  ix.  2-8 ;  Luke  ix.  20, 
28-36. 


MYSTICISM  AND  CHRISTOLOGY      115 

but  must  treat  with  a  certain  reserve.  They  are  incidents 
which  find  many  reported  parallels  throughout  Christian 
history  in  the  lives  of  the  saints;  and,  indeed,  of  other 
abnormal  psychic  subjects  who  cannot  be  ranked  as  saints. 
They  include — to  give  them  their  modern  pseudo-scientific 
names — instances  of  foreknowledge  of  events,  such  as 
the  announcements  of  the  Passion,  of  the  betrayal  of 
Judas  and  the  denial  of  Peter:  of  clairvoyance — " Jesus 
perceived  in  His  spirit  that  they  so  reasoned  within  them 
selves  :  "  l  of  levitation — the  walking  on  the  sea.  Such 
incidents  are  viewed  with  dislike  by  the  modern  mind, 
which,  far  from  regarding  them  as  "  helps  to  faith,"  makes 
haste  to  drape  them  in  the  decent  vestments  of  "  symbol  " 
and  "myth."2  They  seem  to  us  bizarre  and  startling; 
largely  because  the  closed  system  of  "  natural  law  "  with 
which  the  nineteenth  century  endowed  us,  has  blunted  our 
perception  of  the  immense  possibilities  lurking  in  the 
deeps  of  that  universe  of  which  we  have  only  explored 
the  outward  and  visible  signs.  Losing  the  humble  sense 
of  wonder,  we  only  find  queerness  in  the  phenomena  which 
our  conceptual  systems  refuse  to  accommodate.  But  it 
is  our  own  brains  which  supply  the  "  queerness  ";  always 
their  first  reaction  to  the  encounter  with  novelty.  Yet 
there  is  a  great  body  of  evidence,  difficult  to  set  aside, 
that  those  in  whom  that  organic  development  which  we 
have  called  the  "  Mystic  Way "  takes  place,  do  often 
exhibit  powers  and  qualities  outside  the  range  of  more 
"  normal  "  experience.  Nor  are  such  peculiarities  limited 
to  the  voices,  visions,  and  ecstatic  intuitions  which  are  the 
recognised  media  of  exalted  religious  perception.  The 
faculty  by  which  St.  Francis  of  Assisi  read  the  minds  of 
others ; 3  the  telepathic  communications,  collective  audi- 

1  Mark  ii.  8. 

2  Instances  in  almost  any  modern  work  on  the  Synoptics :  the  Lives  of 
Jesus  by  A.  Re>ille,  and  O.  Holtzmann ;  Carpenter,  The  First  Three  Gospels, 
and  Loisy,  Les  fivangiles  synoptiques. 

8  Sptculum,  §  V. 

I  2 


116  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

tions  of  a  "  Divine  Voice  "  speaking  to  them,  and  other 
psychic  powers  developed  in  the  fourteenth  century 
amongst  the  mystical  society  of  the  "  Friends  of  God  ";  * 
St.  Francis,2  St.  Catherine  of  Siena,3  St.  Teresa,4  St.  Philip 
Neri,5  St.  Francis  Xavier,6  and  many  other  mystics  of  all 
creeds,7  reported  by  contemporary  witnesses  as  lifted 
above  the  earth  when  absorbed  in  prayer  ;  the  predic 
tion  of  her  own  martyrdom  by  Joan  of  Arc  ;  even  the 
wide  range  of  psychic  powers  observed  in  that  unstable 
and  sentimental  mystic,  Madame  Guyon  —  all  these  are 
hints  which  may  at  least  help  us  to  read  with  more  open 
rninds  the  stories  of  "  marvellous  "  psychic  phenomena 
incorporated  in  the  gospels.  If  the  dynamic  power  of 
mind,  its  control  of  many  of  the  conditions  called 
"  material,"  be  indeed  a  fact,  here  if  anywhere  we  may 
expect  that  power  to  show  itself.  Spirit  is  cutting  a 
new  path  to  transcendence  —  life  is  making  the  greatest 
of  its  "  saltatory  ascents  "  —  hence,  its  energising  touch 
may  sting  to  new  activities  tracts  which  it  never 
reached  before.  Moreover,  the  very  disharmonies  which 
must  result  from  such  abrupt  and  uneven  developments 
will  encourage  the  production  of  bizarre  phenomena. 
Hence  in  the  present  state  of  the  evidence,  a  definite 
rejection  of  these  narratives  is  as  unscientific  as  the  worst 
performances  of  pious  credulity. 

True,  it  is  impossible  as  yet  to  draw  any  certain  con 
clusions  from  them.  We  are  but  at  the  beginning  of 
our  study  of  the  human  mind  and  its  true  relations  with 
the  flesh.  But  when  the  psychic  nature  of  man  is  better 
understood,  it  may  well  be  that  much  now  regarded  by 
New  Testament  critics  as  myth  or  allegory  will  be  recog 
nised  as  a  description  —  sometimes  indeed  exaggerated 

1  Rufus  Jones,  Studies  in  Mystical  Religion,  p.  257. 

2  St.  Bonaventura,  Vita,  cap.  10. 


3  Dialogo,  cap.  79. 

5  Acta  SS.,  T.  19,  May  26.  6  Bonhours,  Fie,  Lib.  6,  p.  557. 

7  Good  Japanese  examples  in  Harrison,  The  Fighting  Spirit  of  Japan. 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      117 

or  misrepresented,  but  sometimes  also  soberly  realistic— 
of  the  rare  but  natural  phenomena  which  accompany  the 
breaking  out  of  new  paths  by  the  Spirit  of  Life.  The 
quiet  change  of  attitude  which  has  taken  place  amongst 
rationalistic  scholars  during  the  last  twenty  years  in  regard 
to  the  stigmatisation  of  the  saints — once  a  pious  fairy 
tale,  now  "  only  a  blush  in  a  certain  limited  area  "  * — is  a 
warning  against  premature  judgment  in  such  matters  as 
"  levitation,"  fore-knowledge,  or  the  curious  self -radiance 
said  to  be  observed  in  ecstatics  of  a  certain  type. 

Those  who  take  the  view  here  suggested,  and  who  are 
willing  to  allow  the  propriety  of  using  the  indirect  evi 
dence  afforded  by  the  lives  of  those  saints  who  are  the 
closest  imitators  and  greatest  followers  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  in  the  effort  to  understand  our  confused  and 
scanty  records  of  His  life,  have  ready  to  their  hand  much 
material  which  seems  to  bear  on  the  story  of  the  Trans 
figuration.  The  kernel  of  this  story — no  doubt  elabor 
ated  by  successive  editors,  possessed  by  that  passion  for 
the  marvellous  which  Jesus  unsparingly  condemned— 
seems  to  be  the  account  of  a  great  ecstacy  experienced  by 
Him  in  one  of  those  wild  and  solitary  mountain  places 
where  the  soul  of  the  mystic  is  so  easily  snatched  up  to 
communion  with  supreme  Reality.2  Such  a  profound 
and  exclusive  experience  of  Eternal  Life,  a  total  con 
centration  on  the  Transcendental  Order,  in  which  the 
intuition  of  Reality  floods  consciousness  and  blots  out  all 
knowledge  of  the  temporal  world  is,  as  we  know,  an  almost 
invariable  incident  in  the  career  of  great  contemplatives. 
Then  "the  spring  of  Divine  Love  flows  out  of  the 
soul,  and  draws  her  out  of  herself  into  the  nameless 
Being,  into  her  origin,  which  is  God  alone."  3  Hence 
it  is  at  least  probable  that  such  ecstacies  were  a  frequent 

1  Cutten,  Psychological  Phenomena  of  Christianity,  p.  84. 
*  In  such  lonely  spots,  said  Francis  of  Assisi,  the  Holy  Spirit  vouchsafed 
itself  much  more  intimately  to  him  (St.  Bonaventura,  Vita,  cap.  10). 
8  Meister  Eckhart,  On  the  Steps  of  the  Soul  (Pfeiffer,  p.  153). 


118  THE   MYSTIC  WAY 

feature  of  those  nights  of  prayer  which  supported  the 
active  life  of  Jesus;  that  this  was  the  way  in  which  His 
communion  with  the  Father  expressed  itself.  But  those 
ecstacies,  if  experienced  at  all,  were  experienced  in  soli 
tude;  this  was  witnessed  by  Peter,  James  and  John, 
admitted  to  new  intimacy  since  their  realisation  of  His 
Messiahship. 

"And  while  He  was  praying,  the  appearance  of  His 
face  underwent  a  change,"  l  says  Luke ;  he  alone  preserv 
ing  for  us  this  vital  fact  of  "  prayer,"  of  profound  and 
deliberate  absorption  in  the  Divine  Life,  as  the  immediate 
cause  of  the  transfigured  bodily  state.  This  change,  this 
radiance  seemed  to  the  astonished  onlookers  to  spread  to 
the  whole  personality;  conferring  upon  it  an  enhancement 
and  a  splendour  which  the  limited  brains  of  those  who 
saw  could  only  translate  into  terms  of  light — "  His  cloth 
ing  became  white,  and  like  the  flashing  lightning "  2— 
whiter,  says  Mark,  with  a  touch  of  convincing  realism, 
than  any  fuller  can  bleach  it.3  Bound  together  by  a  com 
munity  of  expectation  and  personal  devotion,  and  now  in 
that  state  upon  the  verge  of  sleep  4  in  which  the  mind  is 
peculiarly  open  to  suggestion,  it  is  not  marvellous  that 
this,  to  them  conclusive  and  almost  terrible  testimony  of 
Messiahship,  should  produce  strange  effects  upon  those 
who  were  looking  on.  In  an  atmosphere  so  highly  charged 
with  wonder  and  enthusiasm,  the  human  brain  is  at  a 
hopeless  disadvantage.  Such  concepts  as  it  is  able  to 
manufacture  from  the  amazing  material  poured  in  on  it, 
will  take  of  necessity  a  symbolic  form.  In  minds  domin 
ated  by  the  influence  of  a  personality  of  unique  spiritual 
greatness,  and  full  of  images  of  those  Old  Testament 
prophecies  which  seemed  to  be  in  course  of  actual  fulfil 
ment  before  their  eyes,  all  the  conditions  were  present 

1  Luke  ix.  29  (Wey mouth's  trans:).  *  Loc.  cit. 

3  Mark  ix.  3. 

4  Luke  ix.  31.     The  quick  intelligence  of  Luke  perceives  the  importance 
of  this  detail,  and  incorporates  it  from  some  unknown  source. 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      119 

for  the  production  of  a  collective  vision  in  which  such 
images  played  a  prominent  part;  bodying  forth  the  ideas 
evoked  in  them  by  the  spectacle  of  their  Master's  ecstacy. 
That  Master,  whose  deep  humanity  had  never  failed  them 
yet,  whose  strangest  powers  had  always  been  evoked  in 
response  to  the  necessities  of  men,  was  now  seen  removed 
from  them  by  a  vast  distance.  Unconscious  of  their  very 
existence,  His  whole  being  appeared  to  be  absorbed  in 
communion  with  another  order,  by  them  unseen.  With 
whom  was  He  talking  in  that  radiant  world,  of  which  they 
saw  upon  His  face  the  reflected  glory?  The  mind  that 
asked  the  question  answered  it.  As  the  devout  Catholic 
is  sure  that  the  saint  in  ecstacy  talks  with  Christ  and  the 
Virgin,  so  these  devout  Jews  are  sure  that  their  Master 
talks  with  the  supreme  law-giver  and  supreme  seer  of 
the  race — "  There  appeared  to  them  Elijah  accompanied 
by  Moses,  and  the  two  were  conversing  with  Jesus."  1 
We  observe  that  there  is  no  suggestion  that  Jesus  Him 
self  saw  the  patriarch  or  the  prophet.  His  veritable 
experience  remains  unknown. 

After  the  vision,  the  audition  :  the  voice  which  explains 
the  meaning  of  the  picture  that  has  been  seen,  and  brings 
the  whole  experience  to  an  end.  This  voice  tells  them 
nothing  new:  it  simply  affirms,  in  almost  identical 
language,  that  fact  of  "divine  sonship"  which  Jesus 
Himself  had  experienced  at  His  baptism,  and  no  doubt 
communicated  to  His  friends.  Given  the  fact  of  a  collec 
tive  consciousness,  developed  in  its  lowest  form  in  all 
crowds,  and  often  appearing  upon  higher  intellectual  and 
moral  levels  in  mystical  and  religious  societies,2  this 
episode  should  offer  no  difficulty  to  the  psychologist;  and 
those  critics  who  have  so  hastily  dismissed  it  as  legend 
would  do  well  to  reconsider  their  position.  It  is  a 
thoroughly  characteristic  event  in  the  career  of  a  mighty 

1  Mark  ix.  4  (Weymouth's  trans.). 

2  For  instance,  amongst  the  Friends  of  God.     Cf.  Rufus  Jones,  loc. 
cit.    Curious  modern  examples  in  H.  Bois,  Le  Rtveil  au  Pays  de  Galles. 


120  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

Personality  of  the  mystical  type;  and  of  the  disciples  to 
whom  He  has  communicated  something  of  His  over 
flowing  spiritual  consciousness. 

In  all  records  which  have  been  preserved  for  us  of  the 
ecstacies  of  the  great  mystics,  there  appears  the  same  note 
of  amazement — the  sense  of  an  actual  change  in  them,  the 
consciousness  of  a  profound  separation  in  those  who  look 
on — which  we  notice  in  the  story  of  the  Transfiguration. 
In  these  too  the  alteration  of  personality  which  takes 
place  when  the  life  is  withdrawn  from  sensual  experience, 
and  concentrated  on  the  spiritual  world — "  at  home  with 
the  Lord,"  in  Paul's  vivid  phrase  1 — is  perceived  by  the 
lookers-on  as  a  transfiguring  radiance,  which  often  endures 
after  the  ecstacy  is  at  an  end.  It  is  possible  that  this 
radiance  may  be  related  to  the  so-called  aura,  which  the 
abnormally  extended  vision  of  many  "  psychics  "  perceives 
as  a  luminous  cloud  of  greater  or  less  brilliance  surround 
ing  the  human  body;  which  varies  in  extent  and  intensity 
with  the  vitality  of  the  individual,  and  which  they  often 
report  as  shining  with  a  white  or  golden  glory  about  those 
who  live  an  exceptionally  holy  life.  This  phenomenon, 
once  dismissed  as  a  patent  absurdity  by  all  "  rational " 
persons,  is  now  receiving  the  serious  attention  of  physicians 
and  psychologists;  and  it  is  well  within  the  range  of  possi 
bilities  that  the  next  generation  of  scholars  will  find  it  no 
more  "  supernatural "  than  radio-activity  or  the  wireless 
telegraph.2  It  is  one  of  the  best  attested  of  the  abnormal 
phenomena  connected  with  the  mystic  type :  the  lives  of 
the  saints  providing  us  with  examples  of  it  which  range 
from  the  great  and  luminous  glory  to  a  slight  enhance 
ment  of  personality  under  the  stress  of  spiritual  joy. 

Thus  we  are  told  that  Francis  of  Assisi,  when  absorbed 
in  prayer,  "  became  changed  almost  into  another  man  "  : 

1  2  Cor.  v.  8. 

2  Cf.  Walter  J.  Kilner,  The  Human  Atmosphere  (London,  1911),  where 
the  examination  and  measurement  of  the  aura  by  the  use  of  chemical 
screens  is  fully  described. 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      121 

and  once  at  least  was  "  beheld  praying  by  night,  his 
hands  stretched  out  after  the  manner  of  a  cross,  his  whole 
body  uplifted  from  the  earth  and  wrapt  in  a  shining  cloud 
as  though  the  wondrous  illumination  of  the  body  were  a 
witness  to  the  wondrous  enlightenment  of  his  mind."  1 
Thus  the  sympathetic  vision  of  her  closest  companions 
saw  Teresa's  personality,  when  she  was  writing  her  great 
mystical  works,  so  changed  and  exalted  that  it  seemed  to 
them  that  her  countenance  shone  with  a  supernatural 
light.  "Ana  de  la  Encarnacion,  sometime  prioress  of 
Granada,  affirmed  in  her  evidence  for  Teresa's  beatification 
that  whilst  she  was  writing  the  Moradas  in  her  convent 
of  Segovia,  she  (Sor  Ana),  stationed  at  the  door  of  Teresa's 
cell  in  case  she  wanted  anything,  had  seen  her  face  illu 
mined  by  a  glorious  light,  which  gave  forth  a  splendour 
like  rays  of  gold,  and  lasted  for  an  hour ;  until  twelve  at 
night,  at  which  time  Teresa  ceased  to  write  and  the 
resplendence  faded  away,  leaving  her  in  what,  in  com 
parison  with  it,  seemed  darkness."  2  Again,  St.  Catherine 
of  Bologna,  always  pale  on  account  of  her  chronic  ill- 
health,  was  seen  by  her  sisters  in  choir  with  a  "  shining, 
rosy  countenance  radiant  like  light  "  :  3  and  we  are  told  of 
St.  Catherine  of  Genoa,  that  when  she  came  forth  from 
her  hiding-place  after  ecstacy  "  her  face  was  rosy  as  it 
might  be  a  cherub's :  and  it  seemed  as  if  she  might  have 
said,  Who  shall  separate  me  from  the  love  of  God  ?  "  4 
In  such  reports  we  seem  to  see  the  germ  of  that  experience 
which  lies  at  the  root  of  the  story  of  the  Transfiguration 
of  Christ.  As  Moses  came  down  with  shining  face  from 
the  mountain,  so  these  turn  towards  the  temporal  order 
a  countenance  that  is  irradiated  by  the  reflection  of  the 
Uncreated  Light. 
In  another  respect  the  experience  of  the  mystics  justifies 

1  St.  Bonaventura,  Vita,  loc.  cit. 

*  G.  Cunninghame  Graham,  Santa  Teresa,  Vol.  I.  p.  203. 

3  J.  Grasset,  Vita  (A eta  SS.,  T.  8,  March  pth). 

4  Vita  e  dottrina  di  S.  Caterina  da  Geneva,  cap.  5. 


122  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

the  veracity  of  the  gospels.  Mark,  dependent  according 
to  tradition  upon  Peter's  memory,  tells  us  that  when 
Jesus  came  down  from  the  mountain  there  was  a  strange 
ness  still  about  Him — "  all  the  people,  when  they  beheld 
Him,  were  greatly  amazed."  1  Something  of  the  glory 
of  His  rapture  hung  about  Him  yet :  and  expressed  itself 
in  a  physical  enhancement,  an  "  otherness  "  so  marked  as 
to  impress  the  imagination  of  the  crowd.  Such  an  altera 
tion  is  often  recorded  as  the  result  of  the  ecstacies  of  the 
saints ;  for  "  something  great,"  as  Teresa  says,  is  then 
given  to  the  soul,2  its  condition  of  abnormal  receptivity 
permits  the  inflow  of  new  life.  St.  Francis,  whom  ecstatic 
prayer  "  changed  almost  into  another  man,"  found  it 
necessary  to  "  endeavour  with  all  diligence  to  make  him 
self  like  unto  others  "  when  he  returned  to  active  life.3 
St.  Catherine  of  Genoa  came  with  the  face  of  a  cherub 
from  her  encounter  with  love.  The  pilgrim  in  the 
" Vision  of  Nine  Rocks"  returned  from  his  ecstatic 
vision  of  God  "  inundated  with  life  and  joy  ";  even  "  his 
physical  nature  transfigured  "  by  this  short  immersion  in 
the  One  Reality.4  "  God  poureth  into  the  soul,"  says 
Angela  of  Foligno  of  her  own  ecstacies,  "an  exceeding 
great  sweetness,  in  a  measure  so  abundant  that  it  can  ask 
nothing  more — yea,  verily,  it  would  be  a  Paradise  if  this 
should  endure,  its  joy  being  so  great  that  it  filleth  the 
whole  body  .  .  .  because  of  this  change  in  my  body 
therefore,  I  was  not  always  able  to  conceal  my  state  from 
my  companion,  or  from  the  other  persons  with  whom  I 
consorted;  because  at  times  my  countenance  was  all 
resplendent  and  rosy,  and  my  eyes  shone  like  candles."  5 
That  steady  and  organic  process  of  transcendence,  that 
re-making  of  spiritual  man  on  new  and  higher  levels  of 
vitality,  which  is  the  mystic  life,  since  it  affects  the  spirit, 
affects  almost  of  necessity  the  body  which  that  spirit 

1  Mark  ix.  15.  *  Vida,  cap.  xx.  §  29. 

51  St.  Bonaventura,  loc.  cit.  4  Jundt,  Rulman  Merswin,  p.  27. 

5  B.  Angelae  de  Fulginio,  Visionum  et  instructionum  liber,  cap.  52. 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      123 

animates.  In  the  story  of  the  Transfiguration — in  form 
poetic,  but  in  substance  true — we  have  the  record  of  the 
dramatic  moment  in  which  this  fact  was  brought  home 
to  the  companions  of  Jesus.  It  marks  the  completion  of 
one  phase  in  that  "  new  movement "  which  He  was 
bringing  in — in  psychological  terms,  the  full  attainment 
by  His  human  consciousness  of  the  powers  of  the 
Illuminative  Way, 


IV 

THE    WAY    OF     SORROW 

THE  Transfiguration,  we  have  said,  marks  in  Jesus 
the  climax  of  the  "illuminated"  life  ;  the  full  flowering 
of  the  separated  spiritual  consciousness.  It  marks  the 
achievement  in  Him,  under  conditions  completely  human, 
of  a  Transcendent  Life,  so  unique  and  so  clearly  exhibited 
as  to  call  forth  Peter's  great  confession  that  here  was  no 
prophet  but  a  new  creation — Divine  Humanity,  the 
"  son  "  of  the  Living  God. 

But  the  Mystic  Way  is  no  steady  unhindered  progress, 
no  merely  joyful  and  unchecked  appropriation  of  more 
abundant  life.  Wherever  it  is  developed  in  connection 
with  human  nature,  the  limits  and  oppositions  of  human 
nature  will  make  themselves  felt.  Already  the  first  sign 
of  that  great  reaction,  that  bitter  period  of  suffering  and 
apparent  failure  which  is  experienced  by  every  soul  in  its 
growth  towards  Reality,  had  shown  itself  within  this 
pattern  life.  The  declaration  of  that  " Kingdom"  not 
found  "  here "  nor  "  there,"  but  nesting  in  the  very 
heart  of  existence,  its  triumphant  establishment  for  the 
inner  circle  of  initiates,  the  "  Children  of  the  Bridegroom," 
living  upon  high  levels  of  joy  and  breathing  the  very 
atmosphere  of  God — this  steady  growth  of  power  had 
nearly  reached  its  term.  There  ensued  a  period  of  tran 
sition,  of  quick  alternations  between  the  exultant  con 
sciousness  of  Reality  and  the  depressed  consciousness  of 
coming  failure;  that  swinging  pendulum  of  the  unstable, 
growing  self,  moving  to  new  levels,  which  the  Christian 
mystics  often  call  "  the  Game  of  Love." 

124 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      125 

It  is  certain  that  psycho-physical  conditions  have  their 
part  in  this  process,  significant  though  it  be  for  the  heroic 
education  of  the  soul.  The  exhaustion  of  an  organism 
whose  powers  of  reception,  of  attention,  of  response  have 
been  strained  to  the  uttermost  counts  for  something  in 
the  confusion,  the  impotence,  the  loss  of  vision  which 
now  affects  the  adolescent  spirit.  So  closely  are  spiritual 
and  psychological  necessities  here  plaited  together,  that  it 
is  impossible  to  separate  them  with  a  sure  hand :  nor  is  it 
necessary  to  do  so,  since  that  which  we  are  watching  is  a 
creative  process,  wherein  the  whole  stuff  of  human  nature 
is  involved — not  the  sublimation  of  some  rare  and  secret 
element,  but  the  entincturing  of  humanity  with  reality, 
the  transmuting  of  "  salt,  sulphur  and  mercury "  into 
alchemic  gold.  "  Accessit  ergo  homo  ad  illas  omnes 
passiones,  quae  in  illo  nihil  valerent,  nisi  esset  homo.  Sed 
si  ille  non  esset  homo,  non  liberaretur  homo."  * 

The  great  ecstacy  of  the  Transfiguration  seems  itself  to 
have  been  experienced  between  two  onsets  of  gloom, 
moments  of  bitter  disillusion  in  respect  of  the  "  faithless 
and  sinful  age,"  2  in  which  the  inevitable  necessity  of 
suffering,  even  of  death,  was  clearly  foreseen  as  never 
before  by  Jesus :  not  as  an  accident,  but  as  an  implicit  of 
the  new  life.  Now  for  the  first  time  He  told  His  followers 
that  "  the  Son  of  Man  must  endure  much  suffering."  3 
Life  pressing  forward  on  new  paths  was  bound,  as  He 
now  saw  it,  to  encounter  obstacles  which  would  call  forth 
all  that  it  possessed  of  heroic  courage.  Thus  alone  could 
it  justify  its  inherent  divinity.  Nor  was  that  dreadful 
revelation  for  Him  alone;  but  for  all  others  who  would 
follow  in  this  Way.  The  depressed  certitude  of  His  own 

1  "  So  there  drew  near  a  Man  to  all  those  sufferings  which  in  him  would 
have  been  of  no  avail,  except  he  were  a  man ;  since  if  he  were  not  man, 
there  would  not  have  been  deliverance  for  man."  (St.  Augustine  Supfr 
Psalmos.  In  Ps.  63.) 

a  Mark  viii.  38  and  ix.  19. 

8  Mark  viii.  31  (Weymouth) ;  also  Matt.  xvi.  21. 


126  THE  MYSTIC  WAY 

approaching  passion — though  it  may  not  have  been 
experienced  in  the  detail  which  tradition  suggests — was 
linked  with  the  knowledge  that  this  way  of  suffering  and 
endurance  was  the  "  strait  and  narrow  way  "  that  led  to  all 
real  life.  The  Kingdom  must  be  taken  by  violence;  by 
all  that  is  best,  strongest,  most  heroic  in  the  nature  of 
man  ;  by  a  romantic  and  self -giving  courage.  "  For 
whoever  is  bent  on  securing  his  life  will  lose  it,  but  he  who 
loses  his  life  for  my  sake,  and  for  the  sake  of  the  Good 
News,  will  secure  it."  1  This  is  no  call  to  a  meticulous 
sanctity;  but  to  the  quixotic  knight-errantry  of  the  Cross. 
"  In  the  religious  and  moral  order  which  is  identical  for 
Jesus  with  the  Supreme  Will,"  says  Reville,  "  to  wish  to 
save  at  any  price  one's  earthly  life,  from  prudence  or  selfish 
fear,  is  to  lose  the  true  life,  that  which  realises  itself  in 
duty  and  self-sacrifice.  To  give  this  inferior  life  in  order 
to  live  the  superior  life  of  complete  surrender  to  a  great 
and  holy  cause,  this  is  indeed  to  live;  it  is  to  thrust  oneself 
into  that  Eternal  Life  of  which  the  present  is  but  the  point 
of  departure  and  the  opening  scene."  2 

We  still  see  in  the  Synoptics'  account  of  Peter's  recep 
tion  of  the  prophecy  of  the  Passion — "  Master,  God  forbid ! 
this  shall  not  be  your  lot " — a  reflection  of  the  disagreeable 
impression  which  this  new  and  startling  doctrine  produced 
on  those  "  children  of  the  Bridegroom  "  who  had  looked 
for  a  participation  in  joy  rather  than  grief.  The  stern, 
uncompromising  reply  of  Jesus,  "  Your  thoughts  are  not 
God's  thoughts,  but  men's,"  3  suddenly  shows  Him  aware 
now  of  the  deeply  tragic  under-notes  of  life :  aware  too 
of  His  own  lonely  and  supreme  position,  lifted  to  a  vast 
height  above  the  comfort-loving  crowd  and  perceiving 
with  a  new  and  terrible  lucidity  the  place  of  suffering  in 
the  cosmic  plan.  That  this  perception  should  have  taken 
within  His  mind  the  form  of  a  self-identification  with 

1  Mark  viii.  35  (Weymouth). 

2  A.  R<?ville,  Jesus  de  Nazareth,  Vol.  II.  p.  211. 
8  Matt.  xvi.  22,  23  (Weymouth). 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      127 

the  "  Suffering  Servant " — that  "  Saviour  of  Israel "  who 
helps  others  by  himself  enduring  all — of  whom  Isaiah 
sang,  does  not  affect  the  psychological  aspect  of  the  situa 
tion.  It  was  in  fact  inevitable,  since  the  self-consciousness 
of  Jesus  expressed  itself  as  naturally  in  Hebrew  forms  as  the 
self-consciousness  of  His  followers  expressed  itself  in  the 
symbolism  of  the  Cross.  "  The  Son  of  Man  must  suffer," 
says  Jesus.  "  Gloriari  in  tribulatione  non  estgraveamanti," 
says  the  author  of  the  "  Imitation  "  of  Christ.1  That  is 
the  inward  conviction  of  the  travailling  spirit  of  Life :  a 
conviction  which  the  total  history  of  the  mystics  has  but 
confirmed. 

Selfless  endurance  of  pain  and  failure,  the  destruction 
of  one's  old  universe,  the  brave  treading  of  "  deep,  gloomy 
and  miserable  paths  "  2 — all  this  is  as  essential  to  the 
growth  of  man's  "  top  storey,"  as  the  joyous  consciousness 
of  the  Presence  of  God.  The  breaking  down  of  the  state 
in  which  that  consciousness  had  been  a  dominant  factor 
is  a  psychological  necessity,  if  a  new  and  higher  state  is 
to  be  attained.  Living  along  the  path  which  He  was 
opening  to  humanity,  His  every  outward  act  a  pure  and 
sincere  expression  of  inward  growth,  Jesus  went,  in 
Rutherford's  vivid  phrase,  "  with  the  storm  and  wind  on 
His  face  "  :  amenable  to  the  natural  human  law  of  develop 
ment  through  stress.  "  He  learned  obedience  by  the 
things  which  He  suffered,"  says  the  author  of  Hebrews,3 
writing  at  a  time  before  the  primitive  vision  of  life  and 
growth  had  been  exchanged  for  the  orthodox  cult  of  a 
ready-made  perfection.  Moreover,  outward  events  soon 
began  to  corroborate  the  inward  conviction  that  suffering 
was  the  gateway  of  the  "Kingdom";  that  apparent  life 
must  be  lost,  if  real  life  were  ever  to  be  gained.  The 
enthusiasm  of  the  people,  fed  by  the  "  miracles  "  of  heal 
ing,  had  reached  its  highest  point,  and  now  began  to 
decline.  The  opposition  of  the  correct  and  tidy-minded 

1  De  Imit.  Christi,  Bk.  II.  cap.  6. 
*  Tauler,  The  Inner  Way,  p.  204.  3  Heb.  v.  8. 


128  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

Pharisees  increased.  External  failure  was  plainly  now 
His  lot — the  "  Kingdom  "  was  not  to  be  of  this  world. 
Everything  went  wrong :  a  state  of  things  familiar  to 
the  mystics,  for  whom,  when  the  Dark  Night  of  the  Soul 
draws  near,  inward  exhaustion  and  chaos — and  perhaps  the 
slackened  will  and  attention  that  go  with  them — often 
precipitate  external  trials  and  griefs.1 

But  where  many  of  the  greatest  mystics  have  shown 
natural  dread  of  the  trials  confronting  them — inclined  to 
cry  with  Suso,  "  Oh,  Lord,  Thy  tournaments  last  a  very 
long  time!  "  2 — Jesus  seems  to  run  almost  eagerly  to  His 
fate.  The  surrender  for  which  they  fought,  sometimes 
through  years  of  anguish,  is  already  His.  The  instinct 
for  self-donation  rules  Him  :  it  needs  but  opportunity  for 
expression.  Once  the  necessary  course  of  life  is  clear  to 
Him,  He  goes  deliberately  to  the  encounter  of  danger 
and  persecution.  With  an  ever  clearer  premonition  of  the 
result.  He  abandoned  the  wandering  missionary  life  amongst 
the  country  towns  of  Galilee,  and  set  His  face  towards 
Jerusalem :  plainly  warning  His  disciples  that  those  who 
followed  now  did  so  at  their  personal  risk;  and  adopted  a 
course  which  must  separate  them  from  family  and  friends. 
They  were  come  to  the  parting  of  the  ways.  Life  was 
going  forward  to  new  and  difficult  levels,  and  those  who 
would  go  with  it  must  go  in  full  consciousness  of  danger, 
inviting  not  shirking  the  opposition  of  the  sensual  world. 
This  is  the  idea  which  is  paraphrased  by  the  Synoptics  as 
the  "  bearing  of  one's  own  cross  "  3 :  a  metaphor  which 
has  become  charged  for  us  with  a  deeply  pathetic  signi 
ficance,  but  was  in  its  origin  exactly  equivalent  to  the 
homely  English  proverb  about  "  putting  a  rope  round  one's 
own  neck  " — a  plain  invitation  to  loyalty  and  courage. 

All  through  the  record  of  this  journey,  and  of  the  days 
spent  in  teaching  in  Jerusalem,  we  find  a  sharp  alternation 
of  tragic  foresight  with  the  assured  spiritual  strength,  the 

1  Cf.  Suso,  Ltben,  cap.  22,  23.  2  Loc.  cit. 

3  Matt.  ivi.  24  ;  Mark  viii.  34 ;  Luke  ix.  23. 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      129 

healing  power,  the  outflowing  radiance  of  the  developed 
illuminated  mind.  So  strong,  so  perfectly  established,  is 
that  consciousness,  so  complete  are  its  adjustments  to  the 
outer  world,  that  only  in  some  great  crisis  can  it  be  dis 
possessed.  The  state  of  confusion,  impotence,  and  fatigue, 
so  often  observed  in  contemplatives  as  the  shadow  of  the 
Dark  Night  draws  near,  is  absent.  Clear  and  growing 
knowledge  of  approaching  death  does  nothing  to  impair 
the  brilliant  intellect  which  can  dispute  with  Pharisees, 
Sadducees  and  Scribes  ;  *  the  sense  of  direct  contact  with 
Reality,  and  of  a  spiritual  force  within  the  human  self, 
which  declares  that  "  whatsoever  ye  shall  ask  in  prayer 
believing,  ye  shall  receive";2  the  calm  and  regnant  will 
that  can  control  the  jealous  bickerings  and  selfish  fears  of 
the  apostles,  already  vaguely  uneasy  lest  they  have  risked 
too  much  for  a  kingdom  which  is  so  clearly  "  not  of  this 
world."  3 

The  "triumphal  entry"  into  Jerusalem  is  the  act  of  a 
personality  living  at  such  high  romantic  levels  of  self- 
devotion,  that  the  Via  Dolorosa  has  become  for  it  the 
Highway  of  the  King.  That  strange  glamorous  dream 
in  which  Jesus  lived,  which  held  and  expressed  for  Him 
the  secret  of  His  unique  significance  for  the  race,  went 
with  Him  still.  It  pervaded  His  consciousness,  coloured 
His  every  reading  of  events.  For  such  a  consciousness, 
death  and  victory  are  merged  in  one;  and  apparent  failure 
is  seen,  in  one  great  blazing  vision  of  Reality,  as  the 
instrument  of  an  unmeasured  success.  Hence  in  its 

feneral  outlines  the  great  "  Parousia "  discourse,4  placed 
y  all  three  Synoptics — though  with  many  obvious 
additions  and  variations  of  detail — in  the  interval  between 
the  entry  into  Jerusalem  and  the  Passion,  is  a  psychological 
probability.  It  is  a  pictorial  expression,  conceived  in  the 
terms  of  Hebrew  prophecy,  of  the  paradoxical  conviction 

1  Matt.  xxii.  15-40;  Mark  xii.  13-34;  Luke  x-  25~37  anc*  xx-  20-38. 

2  Matt.  xxi.  22.  s  Matt.  xx.  20-28 ;  Mark  x.  35-45. 
4  Matt,  xxiv ;  Mark  xiii ;  Luke  xxi. 

K 


180  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

felt  by  a  mind  which  knows  itself  to  be  at  "  the  beginning 
of  sorrows,"  that  though  these  things  indeed  must  come 
to  pass,  though  struggle,  torment  and  loss  must  be  faced 
by  the  individual,  yet  these  do  but  form  a  period  of  trial 
and  preparation.  The  Son  of  Man,  the  forward-marching 
spirit  of  humanity,  must  be  victorious.  The  "  Kingdom  " 
so  real  and  deeply  known  is  bound  to  triumph.  It  shall 
"come  in  glory,"  overflowing  the  barriers  of  life;  and  all 
in  the  end  must  be  well.  Oppressed  yet  exalted  by  a 
consciousness  of  the  huge  significance  of  the  events  now 
felt  to  be  imminent,  His  surface  intellect  projected  the 
shadow  of  those  events  against  a  universal  and  historical 
background :  and  thus  provided  the  general  fluid  outline 
of  that  "  apocalyptic  "  picture — that  "  Second  Coming  " — 
which  the  desire,  the  imagination  and  the  experience  of 
succeeding  generations  elaborated  and  defined. 

Over  and  over  again  the  story  of  the  days  immediately 
preceding  the  Passion  reveals  to  us  the  mental  states  of 
Jesus :  the  steady  oncoming  of  the  spiritual  night,  the 
rapid  growth  in  Him  of  the  mystic  state  of  pain.  Even 
in  the  one  great  public  act  of  that  period,  the  access  of 
prophetic  indignation  called  the  "  Cleansing  of  the 
Temple  " — so  opposed  in  its  violence  and  suddenness  to 
the  general  tendency  of  His  ethics — we  seem  to  detect  a 
certain  human  element  of  instability,  suggesting  that  there 
was  present  an  abnormal  inclination  to  abrupt  and 
passionate  action.  Such  an  impulse  is  characteristic  of 
a  consciousness  which  has  entered  on  the  transitional  state; 
and  in  which  the  old  combinations,  adjustments  and 
restraints  are  breaking  down.  Strange  tendencies  may 
then  assert  themselves,  self-expression  may  take  new  and 
startling  forms.  Elsewhere,  in  the  steadily-growing  sense 
of  danger,  in  the  bitter  disillusion  caused  by  the  coldness 
of  His  reception  in  Jerusalem,  the  national  centre  of 
all  racial  and  religious  hope — in  the  knowledge  of  weak 
ness,  self-interest  and  disloyalty  within  the  ranks  of  the 
apostles  themselves,  the  dull,  hopeless  resistance,  the 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      181 

horrible  lack  of  elasticity  displayed  by  things  unreal  yet 
established,  their  apathetic  demeanour  towards  that  new 
and  splendid  life  of  freedom  which  He  knew  and  lived, 
yet  seemed  unable  to  communicate — there  are  present  all 
those  elements  of  suffering  and  destitution  which  are  felt 
as  peculiar  distresses  by  souls  in  the  Dark  Night. 

Perhaps  few  things  bring  home  more  clearly  to  us  the 
loneliness  and  depression  of  that  state,  in  which  the  spirit 
growing  to  the  Transcendent  must  break  one  by  one  with 
all  its  earthly  hopes,  than  the  little  scene  at  Bethany,  in 
the  house  of  Simon  the  Leper.1  A  nameless  woman,2  more 
deeply  perceptive  than  those  about  Him,  and  aware  even 
in  this  unfavourable  moment  of  some  newness  of  life,  of 
a  unique  and  powerful  personality,  in  the  Teacher  from 
Galilee,  came  to  Him  as  He  sat  with  His  friends  at  supper, 
and  poured  upon  His  head  the  contents  of  a  jar  of  very 
precious  ointment:  thus  silently  proclaiming  her  recog 
nition  of  Him  as  the  "  anointed  "  Messiah.  The  vulgar 
irritation  of  the  apostles  at  the  "  waste  "  involved  in  this 
beautiful  and  significant  act — those  very  apostles  from 
whom  had  come  Peter's  confession  and  who  had  seen  the 
Transfiguration  ecstacy — gives  us  the  measure  of  the  dis 
harmony,  the  utter  want  of  comprehension,  the  creeping 
conviction  of  failure,  now  existing  amongst  them. 
Romantic  enthusiasm  has  been  transformed  into  prudence 
and  "common  sense":  perhaps  the  worst  form  of 
degeneration  with  which  any  leader  of  men  has  to  contend. 
Through  their  unworthy  and  unloving  criticisms  strikes 
the  solemn  and  tragic  comment  of  Jesus  on  this,  probably 
the  greatest  spontaneous  acknowledgment  of  Messiahship 
which  He  received — "  She  hath  done  what  she  could.  She 
is  come  aforehand  to  anoint  my  body  to  the  burying." 
They  are  the  loneliest  words  in  literature.  Removing 
their  speaker  by  a  vast  distance  from  the  common  prudent 

1  Matt.  xxvi.  6-13,  and  Mark  xiv.  3-9. 

2  Her  identification  with  Mary  Magdalene  (John  xii.  4)  is  plainly  an 
error,  and  results  from  a  confusion  of  two  separate  incidents. 

K  2 


132  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

life  of  men,  from  all  human  ideals  and  hopes,  they  bear 
within  themselves  the  whole  mystery  of  the  Cross,  the 
"  King  reigning  from  the  Tree." 

There  is  little  need  to  consider  in  detail  the  difficult 
and  confused  narrative  of  the  concrete  events  through 
which  that  mystery  was  developed :  since  here  our  only 
concern  is  with  interior  experience.  But  in  three  places 
at  least,  that  experience  breaks  through;  expressing  itself 
by  means  of  outward  actions  so  strange,  so  unlike  those 
adventures  with  which  human  imagination  tends  to  credit 
its  religious  heroes,  that  they  bear  within  themselves  the 
evidence  of  their  authenticity.  I  mean  the  Last  Supper, 
the  Agony  of  Gethsemane,  and  the  final  scene  upon  the 
Cross. 

The  scene  of  the  Last  Supper  has  been  the  subject  of 
much  destructive  criticism  in  recent  years.  Loisy,  espe 
cially,1  has  dwelt  upon  the  contradictions  in  the  received 
accounts :  and  particularly  upon  the  apparent  opposition 
between  the  sacramental  "  words  of  institution,"  with 
their  clear  reference  to  approaching  death,  and  that 
Messianic  expectation  of  an  immediate  Second  Coming 
which  is  implicit  in  the  declaration  made  by  Jesus  in 
giving  the  first  chalice  :  "  I  will  not  drink  from  henceforth 
of  the  fruit  of  the  vine,  until  the  Kingdom  of  God  shall 
come."  2  But  in  the  three  profound  and  highly  import 
ant  articles  on  Loisy's  great  work,  L'abate  Loisy  e  il 
problema  del  Vangeli  Sinottici,  which  appeared  in  1909  in 
//  Rinnovamento  over  the  signature  "  H,"  it  is  pointed 
out  that  the  very  great  length  of  the  Paschal  meal,  with  its 
numerous  blessings  of  separate  cups,  and  elaborate  rites, 
allows  time  for  even  greater  changes  of  mood  than  is 
implied  in  this  alternation  between  consciousness  of  an 
immediate  tragic  parting — which  might  well  inspire  one 
last  great  effort  to  impart  the  elusive  secret  of  new  life 
— and  the  eschatological  hope  of  a  swift  return  in  glory 
which  was  bound  up  with  the  Messianic  self-consciousness 

1  Les  Evangiles  synoptiques,  Vol.  II.  pp.  528  et  seq. 
»  Luke  xxii.  18  (R.V.). 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      133 

of  Jesus.  Moreover,  such  a  flux  and  reflux  of  the  mystical 
and  Messianic  readings  of  life  is  one  of  His  most  strongly 
marked  characteristics. 

What,  then,  did  the  words  and  acts  in  which  the 
Eucharist  originated  mean  for  those  who  heard  them; 
before  the  genius  of  St.  Paul  had  "  received  of  the  Lord  " 
their  secret,  and  found  in  them  the  Mysterium  Fidei,  the 
mystical  focus  of  the  Christian  life?  We  shall  never 
know :  yet  that  they  were  felt  by  the  earliest  Christians 
to  be  of  unique  significance  is  plain  from  the  careful 
report  of  all  three  Synoptics.  This  much  is  clear :  the 
essence  of  the  rite,  as  it  now  appears  in  the  gospels,  is  a 
drama  of  utmost  self-donation,  a  sacramental  imparting, 
a  sharing,  of  Life.1  The  new  life,  the  more  abundant 
vitality,  which  Jesus  knew  Himself  to  possess,  in  virtue 
of  which  He  dwelt  in  the  Spiritual  Kingdom,  and  with 
which  He  had  struggled  as  the  true  Messiah  or  Liberator 
to  infect  other  men,  is  here  presented  under  the  most 
solemn  symbolic  forms,  as  the  "  secret  "  of  that  Kingdom. 
It  is,  as  Clement  and  Augustine  afterwards  called  it, 
"  the  food  of  the  full-grown"  :  a  divine  sustenance  which 
is  given  in  the  Here-and-Now,  and  yet  is  a  foretaste  of 
that  "  Messianic  banquet "  in  which  man's  spirit,  wholly 
lifted  up  into  the  Eternal  Order,  shall  at  last  have  full 
fruition  of  the  Divine  Life.  Though  the  Eucharist  was 
almost  certainly  understood  by  the  first  generation  of 
Christians  in  the  eschatological  sense  alone,  as  the  earnest 
of  a  transfigured  life  to  come,  the  Synoptic  writers — 
reading  history  in  the  light  of  experience — are  probably  far 

1  The  words  "  this  is  my  blood  "  simply  meant  for  hearers  of  that  time 
and  place,  "  this  is  my  life  "  :  since  for  Hebrew  thought  the  essence  of 
life  resided  in  the  blood.  Cf.  Gen.  ix.  4,  "  Flesh  with  the  life  thereof, 
which  is  the  blood  thereof,  shall  ye  not  eat ";  and  Lev.  xvii.  II,  "  The  life 
of  the  flesh  is  in  the  blood :  and  I  have  given  it  to  you  upon  the  altar 
to  make  an  atonement  for  your  souls :  for  it  is  the  blood  that  maketh 
an  atonement  for  the  soul."  All  New  Testament  imagery  concerning 
the  "  blood  of  Christ "  or  of  the  "  Lamb  "  must  be  interpreted  with 
reference  to  this  idea. 


134  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

nearer  than  modern  critics  will  allow  to  the  true  meaning 
which  the  rite  of  the  Last  Supper  bore  for  Jesus  Himself. 
That  "  meaning  "  may  well  have  been  paradoxical,  poetic, 
suggestive,  rather  than  dogmatically  exact;  the  sudden 
intuition  of  a  great  prophetic  mind,  an  ardent  and  self- 
giving  heart.  It  has  proved  itself  eternally  fertile, 
inexhaustibly  true>  in  the  experience  of  growing  souls. 

In  these  few  simple  words,  in  the  commonplace  actions 
which  accompanied  them — actions  which  were  a  part  of 
the  normal  ritual  of  the  Paschal  meal — two  orders  of 
Reality  were  suddenly  knit  up  into  a  union  never  to  be 
broken  again.  The  material  and  impermanent  stuff  of 
things  was  propounded  as  the  actual  "  body  "  of  immortal 
Spirit.  To  the  obvious  dependence  of  our  physical  life 
upon  food  was  fastened  the  dependence  of  all  spiritual 
life  upon  such  Spirit  absorbed  and  appropriated ;  upon 
"  grace."  *  More,  the  fundamental  kinship  of  humanity 
with  that  Divine  Spirit — body  and  soul  alike  outbirths 
and  expressions  of  the  All — this  mystery  was  for  once 
exhibited  in  its  perfection.  Hoc  est  corpus  meum.  There 
are  no  limits  to  the  life  that  has  become  merged  in  the 
Divine  Life.  It  is  "  made  one  with  nature,"  like  the 
poet's  soul :  a  veritable  bridge  between  two  worlds. 

Finally,  Divine  Fecundity,  the  actually  creative  quality 
of  this  new  transcendent  life  upspringing  in  humanity,  its 
concrete  and  practical  donation  and  reception,  was  here 
dramatised  and  insisted  upon.  An  outward,  unforgettable 
sign  of  the  communication  of  an  "  extra  dower  of  vitality," 
operated  not  by  any  vicarious  sacrifice,  nor  by  the  accept 
ance  of  any  system  of  ethics,  but  by  direct  communication 
from  Person  to  person,  was  set  up  under  the  shadow  of 
approaching  separation :  left  as  a  heritage  which,  rightly 
understood,  should  go  before  life  in  her  new  ascents  as  a 
pillar  of  cloud  and  of  fire. 

1  "  Bread,"  says  Eckartshausen,  "  means  literally  the  substance  which 
contains  all ;  wine  the  substance  which  vitalises  everything  "  (The  Cloud 
upon  the  Sanctuary,  Letter  V.). 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      135 

This  was  the  last  constructive  act  of  the  ministry  of 
Jesus.  The  high  emotional  stress  under  which  it  was 
performed,  the  high  passionate  act  of  faith  which  it 
demanded — sealing  as  it  did  to  an  eternal  success  a  work 
about  to  be  destroyed  before  the  eyes  of  men — is  vividly 
reflected  in  the  reaction  which  follows  so  quickly  upon  it ; 
the  agony  in  the  garden  of  Gethsemane.  In  that  dis 
concerting  episode,  so  far  from  the  myths  with  which  a 
reverent  imagination  clothes  the  figure  of  its  incarnate 
God,  we  see  the  Dark  Night  of  the  Soul  fully  established, 
and  reigning  in  a  consciousness  of  unequalled  sensibility 
and  power.  Here  we  have  the  report  of  a  soul's  adven 
tures  in  the  hour  of  its  most  dreadful  conflict;  recognised 
and  reported  by  other  souls  following  this  same  way  to 
transcendence,  as  necessary  and  determining  factors  in  its 
growth.  This  new  life,  this  new  relation  to  Reality,  with 
its  all-round  heightening  of  tension,  endowed  those  who 
received  it  with  a  new  capacity  for  pain  as  well  as  joy.1 
Hence  the  sufferings  of  the  great  mystic  must  and  do 
necessarily  exceed  the  sufferings  of  other  men :  a  fact 
which  gives  us  the  measure  of  the  anguish  which  was 
possible  to  the  uniquely  vital  personality  of  Jesus. 

All  such  mystics  have  found  in  the  scene  of  Gethsemane, 
with  its  desperate  struggle  towards  an  acceptance  of  failure, 
a  total  self-surrender  to  the  Divine  Will,  a  picture  of  their 
own  sufferings  in  that  "dark  ecstacy,"  that  "pain  of 
God,"  which  obliterates  their  triumphant  vision  of  a  world 
and  a  life  illuminated  by  Goodness,  Truth  and  Beauty,  and 
offers  to  self-forgetful  heroism  the  hardest  of  all  possible 
tests.  By  this  path  the  growing  spirit  sweeps  life  up 
and  outwards  into  the  darkness :  whilst  the  lower  nature 
struggles  vainly  to  turn  again  on  its  own  tracks — is 
sorrowful  unto  death,  for  indeed  this  is  its  death;  begs 

1  Paul,  that  great  psychologist,  soon  learned  this :  "  Just  as  we  have 
more  than  our  share  of  suffering  for  the  Christ,  so  also  through  the  Christ 
we  have  more  than  our  share  of  comfort " — the  two  facts  are  inter 
dependent  (2  Cor.  i.  5,  Weymouth's  trans.). 


136  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

that  the  cup  may  pass,  so  terrible  is  the  wine  within  it ; 
"  the  spirit  indeed  is  willing,  but  the  flesh  is  weak."  1  The 
anguish  of  this  trial  for  the  active  spirit  of  the  great  mystic, 
full  of  "  industrious  and  courageous  love,"  lies  in  the 
fact  that  here  consciousness  is  brought  to  a  point  where  it 
can  do  nothing :  total  surrender  is  demanded  of  it,  an 
acceptance  of  its  own  helplessness.  No  wonder  that  the 
old  theologians  spoke  of  souls  whom  the  elan  'vital  had 
pushed  on  to  this  terrible  path  to  transcendence,  as  being 
"  led  by  supernatural  ways."  It  is  a  "  ghostly  travail," 
says  Hilton,2  an  "extraordinary  solitude,"  says  Teresa:3 
the  final  sorting-house  of  spirit,  a  testing  and  purgation 
of  the  whole  character  as  it  is  centred  in  the  energising 
will. 

"  What,"  says  Reville  of  the  scene  in  Gethsemane, 
"  was  that  Cup  of  Bitterness  at  the  approach  of  which  He 
trembled?  It  was  not  merely  death,  it  was  above  all  the 
crumbling  away  of  all  that  He  had  loved,  all  that  He  had 
believed,  all  that  He  had  undertaken,  radiant  of  heart,  in 
the  name  of  the  heavenly  Father.  It  was  as  if  reality  had 
suddenly  replied  to  that  intoxicating  dream  with  a  peal 
of  diabolic  laughter."  4  It  is  this,  not  merely  Calvary,  not 
merely  the  exalted  destiny  of  the  Suffering  Servant,  which 
Jesus  accepts.  It  is  this  terrible  destitution,  this  ironic 
failure  that  He  conquers  by  the  great  act  of  self-surrender, 
"  not  my  will  but  Thine  be  done  " — Thy  unexpected  will, 
which  chooses  to  destroy  all  that  it  has  been  my  vocation 
to  upbuild. 

Over  and  over  again  the  Christian  mystics — always  with 
astonishment  and  dread — have  found  themselves  led  to 
this  position;  have  fallen  from  the  splendours  of  illumina 
tion  to  the  horrors  of  Gethsemane,  and  discovered  in  the 

1  As  Reville  has  pointed  out  (Jesus  de  Nazareth,  Vol.  II.  p.  370),  these 
revealing  words,  so  exactly  descriptive  of  the  torments  He  was  enduring, 
were  obviously  spoken  by  Jesus  of  Himself,  and  did  not  merely  refer  to  the 
sleeping  condition  of  the  apostles. 

2  The  Scale  of  Perfection,  Bk.  X.  cap.  4. 

3  El  Castillo  Interior,  Moradas  Sextas,  ii.  4  Op.  cit.,  p.  371. 


MYSTICISM   AND   CHRISTOLOGY      137 

self-naughting  which  they  believed  to  be  a  joy,  a  torture 
almost  beyond  their  powers  of  endurance.  "  It  is  impos 
sible,"  says  St.  Teresa,  "  to  describe  the  sufferings  of  the 
soul  in  this  state."  1  "  In  this  upper  school,"  said  his 
Heavenly  Visitor  to  Suso,  "  they  teach  the  science  of 
Perfect  Self -Abandonment;  that  is  to  say,  a  man  is  here 
taught  to  renounce  himself  so  utterly  that  in  all  those 
circumstances  in  which  God  is  manifested,  either  by 
Himself  or  in  His  creatures,  the  man  applies  himself  only 
to  remaining  calm  and  unmoved,  renouncing  so  far  as  is 
possible  all  human  frailty." 2  By  this  alone,  says  William 
Law,  is  the  true  Kingdom  of  God  opened  in  the  soul.3 
It  is  the  final  disestablishment  and  "  naughting  "  of  the 
separate  will,  however  pure  and  holy;  its  surrender  to  the 
great,  dark,  incomprehensible  movements  of  the  All— 
the  necessary  crisis  which  prepares  that  identification  with 
the  All,  that  self-mergence  in  the  mighty  rhythms  of 
Reality  which  we  call  the  Unitive  Life. 

Anzi  £  formale  ad  esto  beato  esse 
tenersi  dentro  alia  divina  voglia, 
per  ch'una  fansi  nostre  voglie  stesse.4 

All  the  great  Christian  mystics  are  sure  that  a  final  desti 
tution,  a  self-surrender  which  sacrifices  all  personal  con 
sciousness  of  God,  all  hope,  all  joy,  is  a  necessary  part  of 
the  path  on  which  life  must  grow  to  its  goal :  and  here  of 
course  they  are  but  following  their  Master  from  the 
agony  of  Gethsemane  to  the  Eloi  of  the  Cross.  "  These 
men,"  says  Tauler  of  those  in  whom  the  "  new  birth  "  has 
taken  place,  "  have  a  most  consuming  thirst  for  suffering. 
They  desire  that  it  may  come  to  them  in  the  most  ignomi 
nious  and  painful  manner  in  which  it  can  be  borne.  They 
thirst  for  the  Cross.  .  .  .  The  holy  martyrs  have  attained 
to  this  inheritance  by  their  great  love.  They  think  they  are 
only  just  beginning  life :  they  feel  like  men  who  are 

1  Vida,  cap.  ix.  14.  2  Suso,  Lelen,  cap.  21. 

3  W.  Law,  The  Grounds  and  Reasons  of  Christian  Regeneration. 
*  Par.,  III.  79. 


138  THE   MYSTIC  WAY 

beginning  to  grow."  "  We  must  be  born  again,"  he  says 
in  another  place,  "  through  the  Cross  into  the  true 
nobility.  ...  In  the  truest  death  of  all  created  things, 
the  sweetest  and  most  natural  life  lies  hidden."  1 

This  solemn  submission  to  the  Universal  Will,  this 
carrying  out  into  action  of  the  fiat  voluntas  tua,  is  the  real 
"  atonement,"  the  real  return  to  the  Divine  Order  made 
sooner  or  later  by  every  evolving  spirit.  Once  that  spirit 
has  reached  a  certain  stage  of  growth,  to  this  it  is  inevitably 
impelled.  "  The  love  of  God,"  says  Angela  of  Foligno  of 
the  souls  in  which  that  supernal  instinct  is  engendered,  "  is 
never  idle;  for  it  constrains  us  to  follow  in  the  way  of  the 
Cross;  and  the  sign  of  the  working  of  true  love  is,  that  it 
suggesteth  unto  the  soul  the  way  of  the  Cross."  2  That 
way,  with  its  misery  and  injustice,  its  human  mortifica 
tions,  its  falls  and  struggles,  its  helplessness,  is,  said 
a  Kempis  finely,  "  the  king's  high  road  "  :  the  royal  path 
way  to  reality.  "  In  the  Cross  doth  all  consist,  and  all 
lieth  in  our  dying  thereon;  and  there  is  none  other  way  to 
life  and  very  inward  peace  but  the  Way  of  the  Holy  Cross 
and  daily  dying.  .  .  .  Walk  where  thou  wilt,  seek  whatso 
ever  thou  wilt;  and  thou  shalt  find  no  higher  way  above, 
nor  surer  way  below  than  the  Way  of  Holy  Cross.  .  .  .  Turn 
to  the  heights,  turn  to  the  deeps,  turn  within,  turn  with 
out  :  everywhere  thou  shalt  find  the  Cross."8  This, which 
sounds  like  the  expression  of  creed,  is  really  the  report  of 
experience  cast  into  a  credal  form :  the  experience  of  a 
mind  which  finds  everywhere  in  the  universe  intimations 
of  the  method  of  Life — that  process  of  losing  to  find,  of 
difficult  transcendence  through  effort  and  failure,  the  total 
submission  of  the  separated  individual  life  to  the  dark 
purposes  of  the  spiritual  sphere,  which  is  the  form  under 
which  transition  to  a  new  order  is  most  often  apprehended 
by  human  consciousness. 

1  Tauler :    Sermons  on  Our  Lady,  the  Holy  Cross  and  St.  Paul  (The 
Inner  Way,  pp.  126,  175,  114). 

2  Visionum  et  instructionum  liber,  'cap.  83. 

3  De  Imit.  Christi,  Bk.  II.  cap.  12. 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      139 

It  has  been  usual  to  quote  the  great  cry  from  the  Cross, 
"  My  God,  my  God!  why  hast  thou  forsaken  me?"  as 
conclusive  evidence  that  the  awful  and  complete  spiritual 
destitution — the  withdrawal  of  all  sense  of  divine  reality 
— experienced  by  many  great  Christians  as  the  culminating 
trial  of  the  Dark  Night,  was  experienced  in  its  most 
unrelieved  and  agonising  form  by  Jesus  Himself :  with  the 
implication  that  He  died  a  prey  to  all  the  horrors  of  that 
state  of  consciousness  which  the  mystics  call  the  "  loss  of 
God"  and  sometimes  the  "Crucifixion  and  Entomb 
ment  "  of  the  soul.  "  The  divine  excess,"  says  St.  John 
of  the  Cross  of  this  most  terrible  experience,  "  so  breaks 
and  bruises  the  soul,  swallowing  it  up  in  profound  dark 
ness,  that  the  soul,  at  the  sight  of  its  own  wretchedness, 
seems  to  perish  and  waste  away  by  a  cruel  spiritual  death 
.  .  .  for  it  must  lie  buried  in  the  grave  of  a  gloomy  death 
that  it  may  attain  to  the  spiritual  resurrection  for  which  it 
hopes.  David  describes  this  kind  of  pain  and  suffering 
— though  it  really  baffles  description — when  he  says, 
4  The  sorrows  of  death  have  compassed  me.  ...  In  my 
tribulation  I  have  called  upon  our  Lord  and  have  cried 
to  my  God.'  But  the  greatest  affliction  of  the  sorrowful 
soul  in  this  state  is  the  thought  that  God  has  abandoned 
it,  of  which  it  has  no  doubt;  that  He  has  cast  it  away  into 
darkness  as  an  abominable  thing."  l 

But,  as  several  critics  have  pointed  out,2  this  terrible 
conclusion  has  only  been  arrived  at  by  tearing  the  words 
reported  to  us  from  their  natural  context.  That  report 
states  that  those  who  "  stood  afar  off "  at  the  hour  of 
the  Crucifixion  heard  Jesus  "  cry  with  a  loud  voice,  E/oi, 
eloi,  lama  sabachthani? "  3  the  opening  phrase  of  that 
twenty-second  psalm  which  seemed  to  Judeo-Christian 
imagination  like  an  inspired  prophecy  of  the  Passion.  But 
if  this  phrase  did  really  come  to  the  lips  of  Jesus  in  His 

1  St.  John  of  the  Cross,  Noche  escura  del  alma,  Lib.  II.  cap.  6. 

2  Cf.  Carpenter,  The  First  Three  Gospels,  p.  378. 

3  Mark  xv.  34. 


140  THE  MYSTIC  WAY 

agony,  it  came  not  as  an  isolated  cry  of  utter  despair,  but 
charged  with  the  meaning  of  the  whole  poem  from  which 
it  is  taken.  That  poem,  necessarily  familiar  to  Him  from 
childhood,  may  well  have  surged  up  into  a  consciousness 
which  was  steeped,  as  many  indications  prove,  in  Hebrew 
poetry.  Remembered  in  such  an  hour,  it  would  seem  a 
vivid  and  veritable  expression  of  the  great  spiritual  process 
then  being  wrought  in  Him — the  actual  Passover,  the 
passage  through  darkness  to  light.  Its  presence  here  at 
least  suggests  to  us  that  the  outward  crucifixion  was  early 
felt  or  known  to  coincide  with  some  infinitely  more 
significant  interior  event :  that  Paul,  when  he  "  gloried 
in  the  Cross,"  saw  beyond  the  external  sacrifice  on  Calvary 
into  the  very  heart  of  life.  It  suggests  that  Jesus  passed 
upon  the  Cross  through  a  mighty  spiritual  crisis :  that 
here  His  human  nature  touched  the  deeps  of  desolation, 
tasted  to  the  full  the  horrors  of  the  Dark  Night,  and 
emerged  with  a  renewed  and  exalted  consciousness  of 
Reality,  a  joyful  vision  of  the  invincible  purposes  of  Life. 
The  "  state  of  pain"  came  to  an  end:  perhaps  in  an 
access  of  utter  misery  which  gave  to  the  cry  of  Eloi  a 
momentary  and  terrible  reality.  But  in  His  death  and 
surrender  He  took  possession  as  never  before  of  the  great 
heritage  always  intuitively  known  by  Him.  Spirit, 
triumphing  over  the  matter  which  dogs  and  limits  it,  cut 
a  sudden  path  to  freedom,  gave  itself  back  into  the  hands 
of  the  Divine  Life.  At  this  hour,  says  the  Triple 
Tradition,  the  veil  of  the  Temple  was  rent  in  twain— 
poetic  language,  yet  exact :  for  here  we  are  admitted  as  it 
were  into  the  holy  of  holies  of  Creation,  assist  at  the 
drama  of  surrender  and  its  result,  the  consummation  of 
union,  the  outbirth  of  undying  life. 

This  profound  interior  process  the  twenty-second  psalm 
presents  to  us,  as  it  may  well  have  presented  it  to  Him 
who  is  said  to  have  taken  its  phrases  on  His  lips.  The 
movement  and  the  travail  of  ascending  life  are  in  it :  in 
its  recital  of  sufferings  endured,  its  accent  of  unflinching 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY       141 

trust  in  an  hour  of  darkness,  its  superb  and  triumphant 
close — the  clear  vision  of  a  germinal  life,  a  "  seed  that  shall 
serve  Him"  springing  from  the  deeps  of  torment  and 
death. 

"  All  they  that  see  me  laugh  me  to  scorn  : 
They  shoot  out  the  lip,  they  shake  the  head,  saying, 
Commit  thyself  unto  the  Lord ;  let  him  deliver  him : 
Let  him  deliver  him,  seeing  he  delighteth  in  him. 
But  thou  art  he  that  took  me  out  of  the  womb  : 
Thou  didst  make  me  trust  when  I  was  upon  my  mother's  breasts. 

The  assembly  of  evil-doers  have  inclosed  me; 

They  pierced  my  hands  and  my  feet. 

I  may  tell  all  my  bones; 

They  look  and  stare  upon  me  : 

They  part  my  garments  among  them, 

And  upon  my  vesture  do  they  cast  lots. 

But  be  not  thou  far  off,  O  Lord : 

O  thou  my  succour,  haste  thee  to  help  me. 

All  the  ends  of  the  earth  shall  remember  and  turn  unto  the  Lord  : 
And  all  the  kindreds  of  the  nations  shall  worship  before  thee. 
For  the  Kingdom  is  the  Lord's  : 
And  He  is  the  ruler  over  the  nations. 

A  seed  shall  serve  him ; 

It  shall  be  told  of  the  Lord  unto  the  next  generation. 

They  shall  come  and  shall  declare  his  righteousness 

Unto  a  people  that  shall  be  born,  that  he  hath  done  it."  1 

Life  out  of  death  and  anguish — a  triumphant  divine  life, 
immortal,  contagious — this  is  the  theme  of  that  poem 
which  the  Synoptists  associate  with  Jesus'  death.  Whether 
its  introduction  is  indeed  based  upon  actual  words  spoken 
by  Him,  or  is  a  part  of  their  generally  artistic  method  of 
presentation,  we  cannot  tell.  In  either  case  the  cry  from 
the  Cross  becomes  no  isolated  cry  of  unendurable  despair : 
but  the  first  phrase  in  the  great  song  of  the  ascending  soul. 
It  is  the  victorious  announcement  of  a  divine-human  life 
seen  clearly  through  the  mists  of  bodily  torment  by  the 

1  Ps.  xxii.  7-9, 16-19,  27,  28, 30, 31  (R.V.). 


142  THE   MYSTIC  WAY 

transfigured  consciousness  of  Jesus :  the  sowing  of  a 
seed,  the  seed  of  Divine  Humanity,  to  be  raised  in 
incorruption  to  a  people  that  shall  be  born.  It  marks  the 
veritable  establishment  of  the  Kingdom  of  Reality :  the 
"  new  way  "  made  clear,  emerging  from  human  ruin  and 
darkness  in  the  hour  of  physical  death. 

"  Mors  et  vita,  duello  conflixere  mirando : 
Dux  vitas  mortuus,  regnat  vivus." 


THE    DEIFIED    LIFE 

THERE  is  a  fifth  act  in  the  Christian  drama,  both  as  it  is 
put  before  us  by  the  Synoptic  writers,  and  as  it  is  re-lived 
in  the  experience  of  the  mystical  saints :  nor  can  we  with 
out  loss  dissociate  those  two  presentations  of  supreme 
human  attainment.  For  neither  does  that  idyll  or  new 
life  and  steady  growth  end  in  the  hidden  and  paradoxical 
triumph  of  the  Cross.  Here,  say  the  mystics  who  inherited 
the  "  secret  of  the  Kingdom,"  another  and  more  wondrous 
life  begins.  Si  trova  una  rubrica,  la  quale  dice;  Incipit 
vita  nova. 

The  surrendered  consciousness  of  pilgrim  man,  which 
has  been  impelled  to  abandon  its  separate  existence — 
willingly  merging  itself,  as  it  were,  in  the  universal  flot 
qui  monte — is  carried  up  by  that  swift-moving  and  irre 
sistible  tide  to  fresh  high  levels  of  being;  and  lives 
again  " by  some  unspeakable  transmutation  "  "in  another 
beauty,  a  higher  power,  a  greater  glory."  *  It  has,  in 

1  St.  Bernard,  De  Diligendo  Deo,  cap.  10.  Suso,  glossing  this  passage, 
says,  "  The  true  renunciation  and  veritable  abandonment  of  a  man  to  the 
Divine  Will  in  the  temporal  world  is  an  imitation  and  reduction  of  that 
self-abandonment  of  the  blessed  of  which  Scripture  speaks  :  and  this 
imitation  approaches  its  model  more  or  less,  according  as  men  are  more  or 
less  united  with  God.  Remark  well  that  which  is  said  of  the  blessed. 
They  are  stripped  of  their  personal  initiative  and  changed  into  [another 
form,  another  glory,  another  power.  What  then  is  this  other  form,  if  it 
be  not  the  Divine  Nature  and  the  Divine  Being  whereinto  they  pour 
themselves,  and  which  pours  itself  into  them  and  becomes  one  thing  with 
them  ?  And  what  is  that  other  glory,  if  it  be  not  to  be  illuminated  and 
made  shining  in  the  Inaccessible  Light  ?  What  is  that  other  power,  if  it 
be  not  that  by  means  of  his  union  with  the  Divine  Personality,  there  is 

143 


144  THE   MYSTIC  WAY 

mystical  language  "  died  to  live "  :  a  phrase  which  the 
superhuman  activities  of  the  great  unitive  mystics  invest 
with  an  intense  reality.  In  that  everlasting  give-and- 
take,  that  unearthly  osmosis,  between  the  human  and 
the  spiritual  spheres,  which  constitutes  the  true  interior 
life  of  man,  the  complete  surrender  of  individual  self 
hood  seems  to  invoke  the  inflow  of  a  new  vitality;  so 
all-transfusing,  so  all-possessing,  that  he  who  has  it  is 
indeed  "  re-made  in  God."  "  All  that  we  have,  He  takes 
—all  that  He  is,  He  gives,"  says  Ruysbroeck,  expressing 
a  great  "  natural  "  law  under  the  religious  forms  of  a  vivid 
personal  experience.  When  this  happens,  the  Dark  Night 
is  seen  to  be,  not  a  climax  and  conclusion,  but  a  fresh 
start.  It  represents  the  pain  and  confusion  attendant  on 
the  transition  of  consciousness  to  a  new  order,  long  known 
and  loved,  only  now  in  its  totality  received  :  the  agonising 
thrust  of  spirit  as  it  cuts  new  channels  through  the  brain. 
The  little  wavering  candle  of  the  spiritual  consciousness 
has  been  put  out,  only  in  order  that  the  effulgence  of  the 
Inaccessible  Light  may  more  clearly  be  seen. 

History  has  proved  that  the  attainment  of  such  a  per 
manent  condition  of  equilibrium — an  "  unbroken  union  " 
as  the  mystics  call  it  themselves — a  new  status,  "  never 
to  be  lost  or  broken,"  is  the  end  of  that  process  of  growth 
which  we  have  called  the  "  Mystic  Way."  A  splendid 
maturity  crowns  the  long  adolescence  of  the  soul.  Though 
work  has  been  from  the  beginning  the  natural  expression 
of  its  love,  now  only  does  it  enter  on  its  true  creative 
period,  become  an  agent  of  the  direct  transmission  of  new 
life.  Fire  and  cruciole  have  transmuted  the  raw  stuff  of 
human  nature  into  the  "  Philosopher's  Stone,"  which 
turns  all  that  it  touches  into  gold.  Since  this  law  is 
found  to  be  operative  in  the  normal  life  of  the  great 

given  to  man  a  divine  strength  and  a  divine  power  that  he  may  accomplish 
all  which  pertains  to  his  blessedness  and  omit  all  which  is  contrary 
thereto?  "  (Bucblein  von  der  Wahrheit,  cap.  5.) 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      145 

mystics,  since  it  is  thus  and  only  thus  that  they  attain 
the  perfect  union  with  Reality  which  is  their  goal,  we 
look  naturally  for  its  presence  in  the  life  of  that  Person 
ality  which  first  brought  this  experience  in  its  wholeness 
into  the  stream  of  human  evolution.  What  form,  then, 
did  this  achievement  take  in  the  historical  life  of  Jesus? 
How  was  His  possession  of  it  communicated  to  other 
men? 

Now  it  is  true,  as  we  have  seen,  that  the  life  of  Jesus 
exhibited  in  a  unique  degree,  and  throughout  its  course, 
many  of  the  characters  of  the  Unitive  Life :  that  His 
growth  in  the  Transcendent  Order  was  of  an  unequalled 
swiftness,  that  a  personal  and  impassioned  consciousness 
of  unbroken  union  with  Reality  was  from  the  first  the 
centre  of  His  secret  life.  Throughout  His  career  He 
seems  to  us  as  was  none  other  "  a  live  coal  burned  up 
by  God  on  the  hearth  of  His  Infinite  Love."  *  From 
first  to  last,  then,  "  the  interweaving  of  divine  and  human 
nature  "  was  exhibited  in  a  vital  natural  sense  within  the 
limits  of  His  personality.  At  almost  any  moment  of  the 
ministry,  that  personality  seems  to  manifest  it  in  its  com 
pleteness.  So  perfect  was  the  manifestation,  that  it  appears 
at  first  sight  to  run  counter  to  the  general  process  of 
growth :  here,  we  say,  there  is  no  more  that  needs  to  be 
done.  The  pulls  and  oppositions  of  the  natural  man  are 
overpassed;  life  seems  to  have  completed  its  course  and 
spirit  attained  to  equilibrium  without  the  crisis  and 
destitution,  the  swing-back  into  pain  and  effort,  the 
heart-searching  act  of  surrender  of  the  Dark  Night  of 
the  Soul.  Yet  we  know  that  this  act  of  surrender  was 
made,  that  the  Dark  Night  was  endured  in  all  its  terrors : 
and  we  are  assured  that  here  as  elsewhere  it  was  the  pre 
lude  to  a  new  and  higher  state.  "Another  beauty,  a 
higher  power,  a  greater  glory  "  awaited  the  pioneer  of 
the  race. 

Though  we  might  feel  tempted  to  mistrust  the  oblique 

1  Ruysbroeck,  DC  Septem  gradibus  amoris,  cap.  14. 
L 


146  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

and  artistic  language  of  our  authorities,  the  mere  neces 
sities  of  history  would  compel  us  to  admit  a  substantial 
truth  in  this  claim.  Had  the  physical  death  on  Calvary, 
with  its  crushing  manifestation  of  an  ignominious  defeat, 
brought  to  an  end  the  personal  relation  of  Christ  with 
His  followers,  whence  are  we  to  deduce  the  enthusiasm 
and  certainty  which  inspired  the  primitive  Church  ?  True, 
He  had  infected  these  followers  with  His  spirit :  so  that 
whilst  under  the  immediate  spell  of  His  regnant  person 
ality,  they  too  lived  within  the  precincts  of  the  Kingdom, 
upon  those  new  high  levels  of  clarity  and  selfless  joy. 
But  the  external  horror  of  the  Passion  plainly  annulled 
for  them  all  that  went  before  it;  killed  all  the  dreams  of 
apocalyptic  glory,  and  swept  them  back  from  communion 
with  the  Transcendent  Order  into  the  depths  of  disillu 
sion  and  fear.  Another  and  a  stronger  infusion  of  vitality 
was  needed,  if  they  were  to  become  the  thoroughfares 
of  ascending  spirit,  carry  on  the  "  new  movement "  of 
the  race. 

The  essence  of  life,  as  we  know  it,  lies  in  its  transmissive 
power.  By  their  possession  of  this  quality  all  its  outbirths 
and  expressions  are  tested :  by  its  absence  they  are  con 
demned.  No  closed  creations — no  full  stops — have  a 
claim  upon  the  great  title  of  Being.  The  river  of  the 
Flowing  Light  pours  through,  not  into,  its  appointed 
instruments;  its  union  with  them,  its  supreme  gift  to 
them,  is  fundamentally  creative,  as  is  the  union  and  self- 
giving  of  love.  It  is  the  last  perfection  of  a  thing,  says 
Aquinas,  that  it  should  become  the  cause  of  other  things.1 
When  the  soul  is  perfected  in  love,  says  Richard  of  St. 
Victor,  it  brings  forth  spiritual  children.2  The  lives  of 
the  great  unitive  mystics  have  demonstrated  the  truth  of 
this  law.  Paul,  Augustine,  Bernard,  Francis,  Catherine, 
Ignatius,  Teresa — each  is  the  fountain-head  of  a  spiritual 

1  Summa  contra  Gentiles,  Bk.  III.  cap.  21. 

2  De  Quatuor  gradibus  violent^  Cbaritatis  (Migne,  Pat.  Lat.t  T.  CXCVI. 
col.  1216). 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      147 

renaissance,  each  a  thoroughfare  whereby  the  sheaf-like 
spread  of  spirit  is  helped  on.  Each  has  left  the  world 
other  than  he  found  it;  has  been  the  parent  of  a  spiritual 
family,  the  initiator  of  a  new  movement  on  the  part  of 
the  spirit  of  life. 

But  from  Jesus  of  Nazareth  descends  that  whole 
spiritual  race,  that  fresh  creation,  within  which  the 
Christian  mystics  stand  as  it  were  as  the  heads  of  great 
houses;  the  originators  of  those  variations  whereby  the 
infinite  richness  and  variety  of  the  parent  type  has  been 
expressed.  Hence  the  "  last  perfection  "  of  that  parent 
type  is  proved  by  implication  to  be  a  condition  of  divine 
fecundity,  over-passing  all  that  we  find  in  its  descendants; 
and  difficult  to  identify  with  the  lonely  triumph  of  the 
Cross.  The  interior  victory  there  won  by  His  complete 
surrender  was — still  is — known  to  none  but  Himself. 
It  belongs  to  that  secret  and  unsharable  life  of  utmost 
sacrifice  and  joy  which  all  great  spiritual  personalities  must 
live  towards  God  in  the  interests  of  the  race.  True,  the 
experience  of  lesser  personalities — the  mystics  and  the 
saints,  even  some  little  children  of  the  Kingdom  who  have 
been  initiated  into  the  "  Upper  School  of  Self-abandon 
ment  " — at  least  suggests  to  us  that  the  close  union  with 
Divine  Reality,  the  unique  sense  of  sonship,  in  which 
Jesus  had  always  stood,  here  received  its  seal  and  its  con 
summation.  It  was  the  wounded  hand  of  a  heroic  failure 
which  struck  down  the  barriers  that  had  ring-fenced  the 
spirit  of  man;  made  plain  the  path,  and  reformed  the  road, 
upon  which  that  spirit  was  to  move  towards  its  goal. 
Poverty,  says  Dante,  leapt  to  the  Cross.  She  was  not 
alone :  life  was  there  before  her,  here  making  the  greatest 
of  her  "  saltatory  ascents,"  attaining  to  new  levels  of  being. 

Were  this,  then,  the  end  of  our  human  revelation  of 
Reality,  we  need  not  doubt  that  end  celestial.  But  we 
should  be  confronted,  on  the  plane  of  actual  existence, 
with  a  series  of  unintelligible  historical  events :  unintel 
ligible,  because  the  link  which  connects  the  whole  pageant 


L  2 


148  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

of  mystical  Christianity  with  its  source  has  been  snatched 
away,  because  the  final  flowering  of  Divine  Humanity- 
its    "  deified    life " — was    never    exhibited    within    the 
temporal  order,  never  communicated  to  the  race. 

What  that  final  flowering  is,  what  it  was  felt  to  be  for 
the  One  who  first  and  completely  attained  to  it,  the  great 
confused  poem  of  the  Resurrection  tries  to  tell  us.  Hence 
the  facts  which  lie  behind  that  poem  are  crucial  facts  for 
the  spirit  of  man.  On  them  the  whole  structure  of  the 
mystic  life  is  built;  from  them  the  whole  history  of  the 
Christian  Church  descends.  What,  then,  are  the  facts? 
Few  problems  offer  greater  difficulties.  The  "  rational 
ist"  is  confronted  by  enormous  historical  consequences, 
impossible  of  denial,  which  appear  to  spring  from  an 
utterly  inconceivable  event :  but,  without  that  event,  are 
themselves  inconceivable.  The  Christian  who  accepts 
that  event,  is  driven  at  last  to  justify  his  belief  by  an 
appeal  to  results.  His  best  documents  contradict  one 
another;  his  most  violent  convictions  seem  in  the  end  to 
rest  on  nothing  that  he  can  name  ;  wherever  he  would 
tread,  the  ground  breaks  beneath  his  feet.  True,  the  Yea 
or  Nay  of  the  human  mind,  in  the  face  of  a  Universe  of 
infinite  possibilities,  instinct  with  novelty,  charged  with 
wonder,  is  here  of  little  interest  and  no  authority.  We 
know  not  yet  what  life  can  accomplish,  or  spirit.  We 
know  nothing  of  the  laws  which  govern  that  mysterious 
art  by  which  spirit  weaves  up  a  body  from  recalcitrant 
matter :  nor  dare  we  call  such  a  body  "  necessary"  to  the 
intercourse  of  soul  with  soul.  It  were  dogmatism  indeed 
to  assert,  out  of  our  present  darkness,  that  radiant  Life 
is  not  greater  than  its  raiment,  cannot  go  on  to  higher 
levels  of  creative  freedom,  once  it  has  "  shaken  its  wings 
and  feathers,  and  broken  from  its  cage." 

Our  ridiculous  phrase  "  supernatural "  is  but  an  adver 
tisement  of  this  our  ignorance  and  awe;  and  nowhere 
more  than  in  the  consideration  of  the  strange  beginning 
of  that  strange  thing  the  Christian  consciousness  does 


MYSTICISM   AND   CHRISTOLOGY      149 

this  ignorance  and  awe  make  itself  felt.  Out  of  these 
confused  yet  poignantly  suggestive  records  of  Christo- 
phanies — charged  even  now  with  a  love  and  wonder  hard 
to  match  elsewhere — out  of  the  passionate  conviction 
which  burns  in  them,  the  high  poetry  in  which  they  are 
expressed,  one  fact  only  emerges  clear.  A  personal  and 
continuous  life  was  veritably  recognised  and  experienced : 
recognised  as  belonging  to  Jesus,  though  raised  to 
"  another  beauty,  power,  glory ,"  experienced  as  a  vivify 
ing  force  of  enormous  potency  which  played  upon  those 
still  "  in  the  flesh." 

"  He  was  all  gold  when  he  lay  down,  but  rose 
All  tincture  " — 

says  Donne,  with  the  true  poetic  instinct  for  the  essence 
of  a  situation.  This  fact  of  an  experienced  and  entinctur- 
ing  personal  life  was  the  initial  fact  for  the  "little  flock  " 
destined  to  transmit  the  secret  of  the  Kingdom;  nor  can 
we  reasonably  account  for  it — whatever  be  our  view  of  the 
way  in  which  it  showed  itself — upon  merely  subjective 
lines.  To  do  so  were  indeed  to  introduce  the  dreaded 
element  of  "miracle":  for  never  before  or  since  has 
hallucination  produced  such  mighty  effects. 

The  presentation  of  this  fact,  as  we  now  have  it,  is  admit 
tedly  poetic.  But  the  whole  life  of  Jesus,  since  it  was 
lived  in  a  unique  relation  with  Reality,  necessarily  took 
upon  itself  a  poetic  form.  Not  otherwise  could  it  have 
effected  a  link  between  the  "  Kingdom  "  in  its  wholeness 
and  the  distorted,  patchy  world  of  normal  men.  It  is  the 
function  of  the  great  artist  to  dignify  humanity  by  his 
presentation  of  it;  by  the  high  seriousness  of  his  percep 
tions,  by  his  intense  power  of  perceiving  it  in  the  light 
of  the  Real.  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  the  supreme  pattern  of 
the  artist-type,  was  in  His  own  person  that  which  His 
exalted  vision  perceived.  He  exhibited  Reality  by  being 
it.  He  is  Himself  the  poem,  the  symphony,  which  ex 
presses  His  unique  vision  of  truth. 


150  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

It  was  His  peculiar  province  to  exhibit  human  life  at 
its  height  and  fulness,  as  the  perfect  fusion  of  the 
"  natural "  and  the  "  divine."  Whether  in  or  out  of 
the  body,  whether  with  or  without  the  helps  and  hin 
drances  of  matter,  that  revelation  had  to  be  completed ; 
the  soul's  implicit  "  deification  "  established,  the  whole  of 
life's  new  movement  expressed.  Not  the  "  thing  seen  " 
— seen  of  necessity,  as  we  see  all  things,  under  the  limiting 
conditions  of  the  mind — but  the  action  that  evoked  the 
vision :  here  is  the  essential,  and  here  alone  can  we  lay 
hands  upon  the  skirts  of  swiftly  moving  life.  "  There  are 
no  things,"  says  Bergson,  "  there  are  but  actions."  1  The 
image  received  by  consciousness  is  little :  the  energising 
fact  is  all.  In  the  movement  by  which  that  fact  is  trans 
mitted,  we  must  seek  the  true  meaning  of  the  whole. 
"  The  movement  of  a  current  is  distinct  from  the  banks 
through  which  it  passes,  although  it  may  adapt  itself  to 
their  curves."  2 

All  that  we  know  about  this  movement  is  contained  in 
the  Synoptic  records  of  the  Resurrection ;  and  in  the  mighty 
wave  of  vitality  which  arose  from  it,  and  bore  upon  its 
crest  the  Christian  Church.  We  cannot  now  disentangle 
with  certitude  those  artistic  elements  which  belonged  to 
the  original  revelation  from  those  which  are  due  to  the 
efforts  of  the  Evangelists  to  bring  home  its  sharp  homeli 
ness  and  high  romantic  beauty  to  those  selves  which  had 
not  known  Jesus  "  after  the  flesh."  All  is  fused  into  one 
great  work  of  art,  all  forms  part  of  one  living  whole.  The 
instinct  of  the  first  Christian  communities,  the  spiritual 
children  of  Paul,  in  whom  the  flame  of  the  new  life  still 
burned  clear,  naturally  seized  upon  and  preserved — perhaps 
elaborated — those  things  which  fed  it  best.  That  which 
this  instinct  discerned,  as  the  very  heart  of  the  secret  it 
had  won  and  was  making  actual,  was  the  indestructibility 
and  completeness  of  the  new,  transfigured  humanity;  the 
finished  citizen  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  That  this  should 
1  Ufivolution  cr&atrice,  p.  270.  2  Ibid.,  p.  292. 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      151 

fade  into  something  merely  ghostly  and  intangible,  that  it 
should  drop  any  of  its  richly  vital  attributes  in  the  course 
of  its  ascent — such  a  consummation  was  intuitively  felt 
by  it  to  be  a  loss.  This  derogated  from  the  majesty  and 
completeness  of  that  human  nature  of  which  the  mighty 
possibilities  had  been  exhibited  in  Christ.  It  collided, 
too,  with  the  convert's  direct  experience  of  new  life- 
its  simplicity  and  actualness :  its  acceptance  and  trans 
mutation  of  the  here-and-now  conditions  of  the  world. 

The  vision,  then,  which  these  primitive  Christians  saw, 
as  at  once  their  companion  and  their  goal,  was  the  vision 
of  a  whole  man ;  body,  soul  and  spirit  transmuted  and 
glorified — a  veritable  "  New  Adam  "  who  came  from 
heaven.  Hence  we  see  in  all  the  records  of  the  Resurrec 
tion-appearances  a  tendency,  perhaps  a  progressive  ten 
dency,  to  emphasise  and  describe  the  most  natural,  homely 
aspects  under  which  this  enhanced,  continuing  and  inspir 
ing  life  of  Jesus  was  felt :  to  clothe  the  primal  experience 
in  an  ever  more  concrete  and  detailed  form.  The  strong 
contrast  between  St.  Paul's  terse  statement,  "  He  was  seen 
of  Peter  "  * — more  than  enough  for  the  mystic,  who  him 
self  has  seen — and  the  romantic  beauty  of  the  narratives 
in  Matthew  and  Luke  has  often  been  noticed.  In  these 
a  life,  a  presence  and  a  friendship  are  presented  to  us  under 
dramatic  forms  of  unequalled  simplicity  and  loveliness; 
invested  with  a  glamour  which  only  a  "  higher  critic"  could 
resist.2  In  the  dew-drenched  garden,  at  the  lake-side,  on 

1  i  Cor.  iv.  5. 

2  This   resistance  sometimes  takes  peculiar   forms.     Weizs'a*cker,   ap 
parently  inspired  by  the  unevangelical  conviction  that  only  the  strictly 
useful  has  a  place  in  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  discredits  the  story  of  the 
appearances  at  the  Sepulchre  because  these  would  have  been  "  empty 
and  meaningless  ...  a  mere  piece  of  display  "  (The  Apostolic  Age^  Vol.  I . 
p.  6).     Yet,  taking  into  account  the  character  of  Jesus,  are  we  justified  in 
assuming  that  an  experience  which  comforted  and  reaffirmed  even  one 
desolate  'heart  would  have  seemed  to  Him  "  empty  and  meaningless  "  ? 
And  is  it  not  at  least  a  psychological  probability  that  the  loyal  and  passion 
ate  heart  of  Mary  should  outstrip  the  disconcerted  affection  of  the  Twelve, 


152  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

the  mountain,  in  the  still  assembly,  at  the  evening  meal, 
in  all  the  sweet  and  natural  circumstances  of  daily  life,  the 
eyes  of  love  are  suddenly  made  clear.  A  new  transcendent 
life  floods  those  who  had  once  tasted  but  since  lost  it; 
catches  them  again  to  its  high  rhythm.  They  are  swept 
up  once  more  into  the  mystic  Kingdom,  made  free  of  its 
unimaginable  possibilities,  breathe  again  its  vivifying  air. 
They  feel  once  more  the  strong  assurance  of  a  regnant 
and  creative  Personality  inspiring  and  upholding  them : 
the  mysterious  joy  and  clarity  proper  to  "  children  of  the 
Bridegroom  " :  the  release  from  all  confusion  and  littleness 
— now  doubly  mysterious,  because  doubly  joyous,  "  so 
divinely  above,  precisely  in  being  so  divinely  near." 

This  experience  runs  counter  to  the  intellect :  refuses 
to  be  accommodated  within  its  categories :  puzzles  and 
eludes  the  snapshot  apparatus  of  the  brain.  It  is  "  here  " 
and  yet  "  not  here  "  for  the  senses.  It  feeds  and  blesses 
them,  yet  as  it  were  out  of  another  dimension.  They 
"  think  it  is  a  spirit " — and  even  as  its  deep  humanity  is 
made  clear  to  them,  it  vanishes  from  their  sight.  It 
comes  from  the  very  heart  of  life :  an  earnest  of  the  new 
"  Way  "  now  made  available  to  the  race.  By  intuition 
rather  than  by  vision  they  know  it;  though  all  the 
machinery  of  the  senses  may  and  does  combine  to  provide 
the  medium  by  which  it  is  actualised  and  expressed.  Nor 
is  this  to  belittle,  but  rather  to  exalt  the  experience :  for 
intuition,  when  it  moves  upon  these  levels  of  reality,  is 
but  another  name  for  that  closest  and  surest  of  all  intim 
acies,  knowledge  by  union — the  mystics'  "  Vision  of  the 
Heart."  A  smouldering  spark,  deep-buried  beneath  our 
crude  image-making  consciousness,  that  intuition  moves 
step  by  step  with  ascending  life,  and  blazes  up  into  action 
"whenever  a  vital  interest  is  at  stake."1  It  is,  then,  the 
most  valid  of  those  instruments  by  which  we  receive  news 

and  leap  to  the  heights  at  which  spirit's  encounter  with  spirit  becomes  a 
possibility  ? 

1  Bergson,  L 'Evolution  crtatrice,  p.  2oxx 


MYSTICISM  AND   CHRISTOLOGY      153 

concerning  life — the  " gospel"  of  the  kingdom  of  reality 
and  our  union  with  it;  the  close  interweaving  of  the 
individual  spirit  with  the  All. 

Under  forms  personal  and  impersonal — first  by  the 
clear  impact  of  the  Christophanies,  then  by  the  great 
dramatic  experience  of  Pentecost — this  knowledge  was 
brought  home  to  those  minds  which  had  been  prepared 
for  it ;  was  thrust  through  them  into  the  stream  of  human 
life.  A  growth  to  be  set  in  hand,  a  new  way  to  be 
followed,  an  Independent  Spiritual  Life  capable  of  attain 
ment  :  this  fact  was  revealed  to  them,  or  found  by  them, 
first  in  One  who  had  accomplished  it;  next  in  that  con 
viction  of  a  new  order,  a  new  level  of  life  awaiting  them, 
which  they  translated  into  the  imminent  reordering  of  all 
things,  the  Second  Coming  of  the  Messiah;  last  in  a 
peculiar  psychological  ferment,  an  actual  new  dower  of 
vitality,  an  immense  inebriation  of  the  Infinite  felt  by 
them — the  "rushing  mighty  wind,  and  tongues  of  flame." 
As  in  every  human  act  or  knowing,  the  Something  external 
to  the  mind,  and  the  something  within  it,  here  melted 
and  merged  to  form  a  concept  with  which  it  could  deal. 
The  "interior  intimacy  and  exterior  activity"  which  are 
the  soul's  two  ways  of  laying  hold  upon  reality,1  were 
inextricably  entwined.  The  sudden  triumphant  uprush 
of  a  contagious  vitality  from  the  deeps,  the  sudden  joyful 
conviction  of  indestructible  Life,  received  their  counter 
sign  from  without:  in  communion  with  a  transcendent 
Personality,  and  in  the  "  coming  of  the  Spirit,"  the  inflow 
of  immanent  "  grace."  "  In  some  unspeakable  way," 
says  St.  Leo,  "  He  began  to  be  more  present  as  touching 
His  Godhead,  when  He  removed  Himself  farther  from 
us  as  touching  His  manhood."  2 

But  only  that  which  has  a  foothold  within  the  spiritual 
order  can  have  contact  with  the  spiritual  personality,  or 

1  Ruysbroeck,  L'Ornement  des  noces  spirituelles,  Lib.  II.  cap.  57. 

2  Second  Sermon  on  the  Ascension  (Roman  Breviary,  Saturday  after  the 
Feast  of  the  Ascension,  fourth  lesson). 


154  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

intuitive  knowledge  of  the  spiritual  fact.  Man's  implicit 
realness  is  once  again  the  basis  on  which  all  is  built;  his 
latent  goldness  is  the  reason  why  the  Tincture  can  take 
effect.  "  This,"  says  Ruysbroeck — and  his  words  seem  to 
reflect  back  to  that  first  vivid  and  mysterious  reception  of 
the  image  of  Divine  Humanity,  that  enormous  enhance 
ment  of  life — "  this  is  why  the  soul  receives,  in  the 
highest,  most  secret  part  of  its  being,  the  impress  of  its 
Eternal  Image,  and  the  uninterrupted  effulgence  of  the 
divine  light,  and  is  the  eternal  dwelling-place  of  God : 
wherein  He  abides  as  in  a  perpetual  habitation,  and  yet 
which  He  perpetually  visits  with  the  new  coming  and 
new  radiance  and  new  splendour  of  His  eternal  birth. 
For  where  He  comes,  He  is :  and  where  He  is,  He 
comes."  l 

The  which  is  but  to  say,  in  other  and  more  elusive 
language,  that  the  mystical  doctrine  of  Incarnation,  rightly 
understood,  is  the  corner-stone  of  the  mystic  life  in  man. 

1  UQrnement  des  noces  spirituflles,  loc.  cit. 


CHAPTER   III 
ST.    PAUL   AND   THE    MYSTIC    WAY 

"  The  great  Fact  of  Existence  is  great  to  him.  Fly  as  he  will,  he 
cannot  get  out  of  the  awful  presence  of  this  Reality.  His  mind  is  so 
made  ;  he  is  great  by  that  first  of  all.  Fearful  and  wonderful,  real  as 
Life,  real  as  Death,  is  this  Universe  to  him.  Though  all  men  should 
forget  its  truth  and  walk  in  a  vain  show,  he  cannot.  At  all  moments, 
the  Flame-image  glares  in  on  him.  .  .  .  Direct  from  the  Inner  Fact  of 
things  ;  he  lives,  and  has  to  live,  in  daily  communion  with  that." 
(THOMAS  CARLYLE  :  The  Hero  as  Prophet.) 


THE    GROWTH    OF    THE    NEW    MAN 

THE  second  stage  of  any  great  movement  has  often  a 
significance  as  great  as,  if  not  greater  than,  the  first.  Then 
it  is  that  we  begin  to  know  whether  life's  initial  effort  is 
destined  to  success,  whether  it  is  indeed  upon  its  way  to 
new  creations  and  new  levels;  or  whether  this  new  move 
ment,  this  saltatory  ascent  that  seemed  so  full  of  possi 
bilities,  is  only  a  passing  freak,  a  variation  which  cannot 
be  transmitted — another  eddy  of  dust  in  the  wind. 

Had  it  been  left  to  the  original  apostles  to  carry  forward 
the  Christian  impulse  of  new  life — to  repeat  the  "  for 
tunate  variation"  which  flamed  out  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
and  fix  it — we  can  feel  little  doubt  that  this  fresh  creation 
would  have  twisted  on  its  tracks,  have  wavered,  sunk  and 
died,  when  the  stimulus  of  His  great  presence  was  with 
drawn  and  the  generation  which  knew  Him  in  the  flesh 
had  passed  away.  Our  earnest  of  the  fact  that  the  life  of 
Jesus  was  no  sporadic  freak,  but  a  genuine  phase  in 
cosmic  evolution,  a  part  of  the  great  movement  of  things 
—that  here  life's  mightiest,  most  significant  ascent  was 
caught  in  progress — is  the  further  fact  that  this  did  not 
happen :  that  a  stranger,  who  "  knew  Him  not  after  the 
flesh,"  yet  takes  up  the  forward  push  where  He  left  it, 
picked  out  as  it  were  by  the  wind  of  the  Spirit  to  live 
and  grow  in  the  new  way. 

Paul,  who  was  the  first  to  declare  that  the  essence  of 
the  Christian  mystery  was  growth  and  transmutation,  and 
that  the  only  Christian  life  was  that  which  followed  the 
curve  of  the  human  life  of  Christ,1  was  himself,  so  far  as 
we  know,  the  first  to  exhibit  this  organic  process  of 

1  "  Be  imitators  of  me,  in  so  far  as  I  in  turn  am  an  imitator  of  Christ.  .  .  . 
All  of  us,  with  unveiled  faces,  reflecting  like  bright  mirrors  the  glory  of 

157 


158  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

development  in  its  fulness;  and  grow  "from  glory  to 
glory  "  to  man's  full  stature  along  the  path  which  Jesus 
had  cut  for  the  race.  "It  is  the  leading  thought  of  the 
New  Testament,' '  says  Dr.  Matheson,  "  and  it  is  the 
specially  prominent  thought  in  the  writings  of  St.  Paul, 
that  the  life  of  the  Christian  Founder  is  repeated  in  the 
lives  of  His  followers;  that  the  stages  of  each  Christian's 
experience  are  designed  to  be  a  reproduction  of  those 
stages  by  which  the  Son  of  Man  passed  from  Bethlehem 
to  Calvary.  Paul  has  himself  declared  that  the  process  of 
Christian  development  is  a  process  whereby  the  follower  of 
Christ  is  'transformed  into  the  same  image  from  glory 
to  glory.'  No  words  can  more  adequately  express  his 
view  of  the  nature  of  this  new  spiritual  order.  It  is  a 
transformation  not  only  into  the  image  of  the  master,  but 
into  that  progressive  form  in  which  the  image  of  the 
master  unfolded  itself.  The  Christian  is  to  ascend  by  the 
steps  of  the  same  ladder  on  which  the  life  of  the  Son  of 
Man  climbed  to  its  goal;  he  is  to  proceed  from  'glory  to 
glory '  ...  no  man  can  read  Paul's  epistles  without  being 
impressed  on  every  page  with  the  predominance  of  this 
thought."  * 

It  is  no  new  thing  to  claim  St.  Paul  as  a  mystic;  or  at 
least  as  an  exponent,  amongst  other  things,  of  what  are 
called  "  mystical  "  ideas.  The  problem  of  the  part  which 
such  ideas  play  in  his  message  has  often  been  attacked;  in 
various  ways,  leading,  as  one  might  expect,  to  contradictory 
conclusions.2  The  other  and  more  fundamental  problem, 

the  Lord,  are  being  transformed  into  the  same  likeness  .  .  .  that  in  this 
mortal  nature  of  ours  it  may  also  be  clearly  shown  that  Jesus  lives  .  .  . 
For  those  whom  He  has  known  beforehand,  He  has  also  predestined  to  bear 
the  likeness  of  His  son,  that  He  might  be  the  eldest  in  a  vast  family  of 
brothers  "  (i  Cor.  xi.  I ;  2  Cor.  iii.  1 8  and  iv.  II ;  Rom.  viii.  29.  Wey- 
mouth's  trans.). 

1  Matheson,  Spiritual  Development  of  St.  Paul,  p.  6. 

2  For  instance,  by  Inge  in  Christian  Mysticism  ;  A.  Sabatier  in  UApStre 
Paul ;   Wernle  in  The  Beginnings  of  Christianity,  Vol.  I ;   Wienel  in  St. 
Paul ;  }.  M.  Campbell  in  Paul  the  Mystic  ;  P.  Gardner  in  The  Religious 


ST.   PAUL  AND  THE   MYSTIC   WAY     159 

however,  of  his  relation  to  the  mystic  life,  the  Mystic 
Way — the  history,  that  is  to  say,  of  his  inward  growth,  his 
slow  development  of  the  transcendental  consciousness — 
has  been  almost  entirely  neglected;  and  those  who  have 
come  nearest  to  solving  it,  notably  Matheson  in  The 
Spiritual  Development  of  St.  Paul,  and  Deissmann  in 
St.  Paul,  have  failed  to  see,  or  to  set  out,  the  many 
close  and  significant  parallels  which  his  life  presents  with 
the  experiences  of  the  Christian  Founder  and  the  Christian 
saints. 

It  might  be  thought  that  the  confused  and  scanty  records 
which  we  possess  of  the  life  of  St.  Paul  were  not  sufficient 
to  allow  us  to  compare  his  psychological  development  with 
the  standard  diagram  of  man's  spiritual  growth.  But  by 
a  comparison  of  the  authentic  epistles  with  the  fragments 
of  biography  embedded  in  Acts,  more  can  be  made  out 
than  might  at  first  be  supposed.1  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he 
is  the  supreme  example  of  the  Christian  mystic :  of  a 
"  change  of  mind "  resulting  in  an  enormous  dower  of 
vitality :  of  a  career  of  impassioned  activity,  of  "  divine 
fecundity "  second  only  to  that  of  Jesus  Himself.  In 
him,  the  new  life  breaks  out,  shows  itself  in  its  dual  aspect; 
the  deep  consciousness  of  Spiritual  Reality  which  is 
characteristic  of  the  contemplative  nature,  supporting  a 
practical  genius  for  concrete  things.  The  Teresian  prin 
ciple,  that  the  object  of  the  Spiritual  Marriage  is  the 
incessant  production  of  work,  received  in  him  its  most 

Experience  of  St.  Paul,  and — with  considerable  insight — by  A.  Deissmann 
in  St.  Paul :  a  Study  in  Social  and  Religious  History. 

1  Following  the  example  of  the  majority  of  recent  critics,  I  reckon 
Colossians  and  Ephesians  as  being  in  all  probability  genuine  Pauline 
letters ;  but  do  not  make  use  of  the  epistles  to  Timothy  and  Titus,  the 
authenticity  of  which  is  open  to  grave  suspicion.  Cf.  Gardner,  The 
Religious  Experience  of  St.  Paul ;  W.  Wrede,  Paul ;  and  Deissmann,  St. 
Paul.  As  to  the  use  of  Acts,  this  last  authority  says  that  St.  Luke's 
representation  is  "  indispensable  in  supplementing  the  letters  of  St.  Paul ; 
it  may  be  corrected  occasionally  in  some  details  by  the  letters,  but  in 
many  others  it  rests  on  good  tradition  "  (Deissmann,  op.  cit.,  p.  24). 


160  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

striking  illustration :  he  was  indeed  "  to  the  Eternal 
Goodness  what  his  own  hand  is  to  a  man."  Paul's  great 
family  of  spiritual  children,  the  train  of  churches  ablaze 
with  his  spirit  which  he  left  in  his  wake,  are  alone  enough 
to  demonstrate  that  he  lived  upon  high  levels  the  mystic 
life. 

The  stages  through  which  this  great  active  moved 
to  perfect  harmony  with  the  Life  of  God,  are  plainly 
marked  in  the  story  of  his  life.  His  conversion,  the 
experience  which  lies  behind  the  three  rather  dissimilar 
accounts  given  in  Acts,1  was  of  course  characteristically 
mystical.  Those  prudent  scholars  who  would  explain 
away  the  light,  the  voice,  the  blindness,  the  vivid  con 
sciousness  of  a  personal  and  crucial  encounter  with  the 
spiritual  world,  as  picturesque  exaggerations  due  to 
Luke's  "  literary  and  unscientific"  attitude  of  mind,2  will 
find  little  support  for  their  view  in  the  annals  of  religious 
psychology.  When  spiritual  intuitions — more,  spiritual 
imperatives — long  submerged  and  working  below  the 
threshold,  break  their  way  into  the  field  of  consciousness 
and  capture  the  centres  of  feeling  and  of  will,  the  change 
effected  has  nothing  in  common  with  the  mild  intellectual 
acquiescence  in  new  ideas,  the  sober  and  judicious  weigh 
ing  of  evidence,  which  may  be  at  the  bottom  of  any  less 
momentous  "  change  of  mind."  That  which  happens  is  a 
veritable  psychic  storm,  abrupt  and  ungovernable ;  of 
greater  or  less  fury,  according  to  the  strength  of  the  nature 
in  which  it  takes  place.  When  that  nature  is  destined  to 
the  career  of  a  great  mystic,  the  volitional  element  is  certain 
to  preponderate.  It  will  oppose,  perhaps  till  the  last 
moment,  in  growing  agony  of  mind — yet  with  a  fierceness 
that  has  in  it  the  germ  of  the  heroic — the  steady,  remorse 
less  pressure  of  the  transcendental  sense  ;  thus  inflicting 
upon  itself  all  the  tortures  of  a  hopeless  resistance.  "  How 
hard  it  is  for  thee  to  kick  against  the  goad!  "  Hence, 

1  ix.  1-9,  xxii.  6-1 1,  xxvi.  1 2-1 8. 

2  P.  Gardner,  The  Religious  Experience  of  St.  Paul,  p.  29. 


ST.    PAUL   AND   THE   MYSTIC   WAY     161 

warded  off  as  it  were  to  the  last,  the  change,  when  it 
comes,  comes  with  a  catastrophic  violence  :  tearing  the  old 
world  to  pieces,  smashing  to  fragments  the  old  state  of 
consciousness,  instantly  establishing  the  new.  The  sword 
of  the  spirit  is  about  to  cut  its  way  through  fresh  levels 
of  reality ;  and,  turning  sharply  in  the  new  direction, 
crushes  and  wounds  the  hard  tissues  of  selfhood  which 
have  grown  closely  around  it,  held  it  down  to  its  business 
of  serving  the  individual  life. 

All  those  incidents  which  Luke  reports  of  Paul's  con 
version — and  we  must  look  upon  them  as  fragments 
remembered  and  set  down,  from  Paul's  own  efforts  to  de 
scribe  indescribable  events — find  many  parallels  in  the  his 
tory  of  the  mystics.  The  violence  and  unexpectedness,  the 
irrevocable  certitude  and  prompt  submission — "  I  was  not 
disobedient  unto  the  heavenly  vision"1 — the  accompany 
ing  sensation  of  intense  light,  the  revelation  of  transcendent 
Personality  conveyed  under  the  forms  of  vision  and  voice 
as  the  "  triumphing  spiritual  power  "  floods  and  conquers 
a  strong  and  resistant  consciousness :  all  this  is  a  part  of 
the  usual  machinery  by  which  a  change  in  the  direction 
of  life  is  brought  home  to  the  surface  intelligence. 
Normal,  too,  is  the  direct  connection  between  this  abrupt 
change  of  mind  and  a  profound  and  permanent  change  of 
life :  that  sense  of  the  influx  of  novelty,  which  never  left 
him,  and  which  breaks  out  again  and  again  in  his  works. 
Every  great  mystic  who  has  passed  through  this  crisis 
knows  himself  to  be  thus  "  a  new  creature,"  dead  to  his 
old  universe,  old  interests,  and  old  fears.  For  him,  in  this 
sudden  moment  of  readjustment,  all  values  are  trans- 
valuated  :  "  old  things  are  passed  away;  behold,  all  things 
are  become  new."  2 

Thus   St.   Francis   of  Assisi,    "  smitten   by   unwonted 

visitations  "  in  the  church  of  S.  Damiano,  "  finds  himself 

another  man"  than  the  creature  whom  he  had  known  as  his 

"  self"  before.     For  him  too,  as  for  St.  Paul,  the  new  and 

1  Acts  xxvi.  19.  2  2  Cor.  v.  17. 


162  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

overwhelming  apprehension  of  Reality  is  at  once  crystallised 
in  vision  and  audition — the  speaking  crucifix — and  in  a 
direct  command,  an  appeal  to  the  active  will.1  Thus  St. 
Catherine  of  Genoa,  when  the  moment  of  her  spiritual  ado 
lescence  was  come,  "  suddenly  received  in  her  heart  the 
wound  of  the  unmeasured  love  of  God,"  with  so  clear  an 
intuition  of  her  own  relation  to  the  spiritual  world,  now 
laid  bare  to  her  lucid  vision,  that  "  she  almost  fell  upon  the 
ground."  At  this  point  "  if  she  had  possessed  a  thousand 
worlds,  she  would  have  thrown  all  of  them  away." 2  Rulman 
Merswin,  the  merchant  of  Strassburg,  bred  in  orthodox 
piety  like  Saul  of  Tarsus  himself,  was  as  suddenly  turned 
from  it  to  the  Mystic  Way.  "  A  brilliant  light  shone  around 
him ;  he  heard  in  his  ears  a  divine  voice  of  adorable  sweet 
ness;  he  felt  as  if  he  were  lifted  from  the  ground  and  carried 
several  times  round  the  garden." 3  Pascal,  caught  to  his  two 
hours'  ecstatic  vision  or  the  Fire,  obtains  like  Paul  from 
this  abrupt  illumination  an  overwhelming  revelation  of 
personality — "  not  the  God  of  philosophers  and  of 
scholars" — and  a  "  certitude"  which  demands  and  receives 
the  "total  surrender"  of  his  heart,  intellect,  and  will.4 

The  reverberations,  too,  of  such  an  upheaval  are  often 
felt  through  the  whole  psycho-physical  organism  :  showing 
themselves  in  disharmonies  of  many  different  kinds. 
Thus  Suso  in  his  conversion  "  suffered  so  greatly  that  it 
seemed  to  him  that  none,  even  dying,  could  suffer  so 
greatly  in  so  short  a  time." 5  "A  deep,  rich  age  of 
growth,"  says  Baron  von  Hiigel,  "is  then  compressed 
into  some  minutes  of  poor  clock- time " 6 — with  the 
resultant  wear  and  tear  of  a  physical  body  adapted  to 
another,  slower  rhythm.  So  it  may  well  be  that  Paul  was 

1  Cf.  Thomas  of  Celano,  Legenda  Secunda,V,  and  P.  Sabatier's  Life,  cap.  2. 

2  Vita  e  dottrina  di  S.  Caterina  da  Genova,  cap.  2. 

3  Jundt,  Rulman  Merszoin,  p.  19. 

4  Penstes,  fragments  et  lettres  de  Pascal,  T.  I.  p.  269. 

5  Leben,  cap.  3. 

•  The  Mystical  Element  of  Religion,  Vol.  I.  p.  107. 


ST.   PAUL   AND   THE   MYSTIC   WAY     163 

struck  with  a  physical  blindness  by  the  splendour  of  the 
Uncreated  Light,  and  "  was  three  days  without  sight,  and 
neither  did  eat  nor  drink."  1 

There  is,  then,  at  any  rate  the  strongest  of  probabilities 
that  his  experience  "  when  it  pleased  God  to  reveal  His 
Son  in  me"  did  conform  in  its  general  outlines  to  the 
account  which  is  given  in  Acts.  Here  there  was  not,  as 
in  the  case  of  Jesus,  an  easy  thoroughfare  for  the  inflowing 
spirit  of  life.  "  As  the  lightning  cometh  out  of  the  east 
and  shineth  even  unto  the  west,"  a  flash  that  rends  asunder 
the  spiritual  sky,  it  came  tearing  apart  the  very  substance 
of  personality,  breaking  down  the  old  adjustments,  and 
cutting  with  violence  the  path  of  its  discharge.  How  wide 
the  difference  between  two  natures  which  could  dramatise 
the  same  experience,  one  as  "  Thou  art  My  beloved  Son," 
the  other  as  "  Saul,  Saul!  why  persecutest  thou  Me? "  Yet 
how  close  the  identity  between  the  two  lines  of  growth 
which  led  one  to  the  surrender  of  Gethsemane,  and  the 
other  to  "  I  live,  yet  not  I!  "  Only  this  can  explain  the 
paradox  of  Paul's  career :  the  fact  that  although  he  "  never 
knew  Jesus  during  His  lifetime,  nevertheless  it  was  he 
who  understood  Him  best."  2 

St.  Paul's  proceedings  after  his  conversion  are  no  less 
characteristic  of  the  peculiar  mystic  type.  His  first  instinct 
was  an  instinct  of  retreat.  "  Immediately  I  conferred 
not  with  flesh  and  blood;  neither  went  I  up  to  Jerusalem 
to  them  which  were  apostles  before  me."  The  tran 
scendent  fact  which  had  torn  his  being  asunder  did  not 
need  to  be  supported  by  the  reminiscences  of  those  who  had 
known  Jesus  in  the  flesh.  "  But  I  went  into  Arabia  "  3 
— alone  into  a  desert  country :  a  proceeding  which  at 
once  reminds  us  of  the  retreat  of  Jesus  into  the  wilder 
ness.  This  phase  in  Paul's  career  of  course  corresponds 
with  that  period  of  solitude  and  withdrawal  from  the  world 
which  nearly  every  great  mystic  has  felt  to  be  the  essential 

1  Acts  ix.  9. 

2  Wernle,  The  Beginnings  of  Christianity,  Vol.  I.  p.  159.     8  Gal.  i.  1 6, 17. 

M  2 


164  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

sequel  of  that  mighty  upheaval  in  which  their  tran 
scendental  faculties  emerge.  The  soul  then  retreats  into 
the  "  cell  of  self-knowledge,"  "  cleansing  its  interior 
mirror/'  says  Richard  of  St.  Victor,  from  the  earth  stains 
which  distort  its  reflections  of  the  Real :  a  slow  and  difficult 
process  which  cannot  be  undertaken  in  the  bustle  of  the 
world  of  things.  We  have  seen  how  generally  the  need 
of  such  a  time  of  seclusion  is  felt l :  as  in  St.  Anthony's 
twenty  years  of  self-imprisonment  in  the  ruined  fort, 
St.  Catherine  of  Siena's  three  years  of  hermit-like  solitude, 
which  initiated  her  missionary  career,  Suso's  sixteen  years 
of  monastic  enclosure,  the  retreat  of  St.  Ignatius  at 
Manresa,  St.  Teresa's  struggle  to  withdraw  from  the  social 
intercourse  she  loved,  the  three  years  of  lonely  wandering 
and  inward  struggles  which  prepared  the  great  missionary 
career  of  George  Fox.  Paul,  alone  in  the  Arabian  desert, 
"  in  weariness  and  painfulness,  in  watchings  often,  in 
hunger  and  thirst,  in  fastings  often,"  2  orientating  his 
whole  nature  to  the  new  universe  disclosed  to  him,  "  when 
he  had  seen  Christ  lighten  in  that  dawn,"  did  but  submit, 
like  his  brothers  and  sisters,  to  a  necessary  phase  of  all 
spiritual  growth.  It  was  from  this  long  period  of  self- 
discipline  and  self-adjustment,  from  deep  brooding  on 
the  revelation  of  Damascus,  not  from  any  apostolic  state 
ment  about  the  human  career  of  Jesus,  that  the  Pauline 
gospel  emerged.  It  was  the  " good  news"  of  a  new  kind 
of  life  experienced,  not  of  a  prophecy  fulfilled.  "  Grace 
and  faith  and  power  .  .  .  this  I  knew  experimentally,"  says 
Fox.  So  Paul :  "  Neither  did  I  receive  it  from  man,  nor 
was  I  taught  it,  but  it  came  to  me  through  revelation 
of  Jesus  Christ."  3 

The  whole  preparatory  experience  of  Fox,  whose  char 
acter  provides  so  many  Pauline  parallels,  may  help  us  to 
understand  something  of  this  phase  in  Paul's  life — the 
difficult  changes  which  prepared  him  for  the  emergence 
of  the  "  illuminated  consciousness,"  the  personal  interior 

1  Cf.  supra,  Cap.  II.  §  II.        2  2  Cor.  xi.  27.        8  Gal.  i.  12  (R.V.). 


ST.   PAUL  AND   THE   MYSTIC   WAY     165 

"  showing  "  or  revelation  which  became  the  central  fact  of 
his  new  career. 

"  I  cannot,"  he  says,  "  declare  the  great  misery  I  was 
in,  it  was  so  great  and  heavy  upon  me,  so  neither  can  1  set 
forth  the  mercies  of  God  unto  me  in  all  my  misery  .  .  . 
when  all  my  hope  in  them  and  in  all  men  was  gone  so 
that  I  had  nothing  outwardly  to  help  me,  nor  could  I  tell 
what  to  do;  then  O!  then  I  heard  a  voice  which  said: 
c  There  is  one,  even  Christ  Jesus  that  can  speak  to  thy 
condition,'  and  when  I  heard  it,  my  heart  did  leap  for 
joy  .  .  .  though  I  read  the  Scriptures  that  spake  of  Christ 
and  of  God,  yet  I  knew  Him  riot  but  by  revelation."  l 

Dating  his  conversion  A.D.  33,2  and  the  retreat  in  Arabia 
and  return  to  Damascus  A.D.  34—35,  St.  Paul's  first  visit  as 
a  Christian  to  Jerusalem  took  place  c.  36.3  There,  pray 
ing  in  the  Temple — a  spot  charged  for  his  racial  and 
religious  consciousness  with  countless  memories  and  sug 
gestions — he  experienced  his  first  ecstacy;  a  characteristic 
ally  mystic  combination  of  vision,  audition,  and  trance,  in 
which  the  ferment  of  his  inner  life,  its  paradoxical  sense 
of  unworthiness  and  greatness,  swaying  between  pain- 
negation  and  joy-affirmation,  found  artistic  expression. 
The  agony  of  contrition  for  the  past — "  Lord,  they  know 
that  I  imprisoned  and  beat  in  every  synagogue  them  that 
believed  on  Thee" — is  balanced  by  prophetic  knowledge 
of  the  future,  an  abrupt  intuition  of  his  amazing  destiny 
— "  I  will  send  thee  far  hence  unto  the  Gentiles."  4 

This  vision  seems  to  correspond  in  time  with  the  ecstacy 
described  in  2  Cor.  xii.  2,  4 ;  in  which  Paul,  caught  up 
to  the  third  heaven,  "heard  unspeakable  words."  Com 
parison  with  the  lives  of  the  mystics  shows  how 
frequently  such  ecstatic  perception — such  abrupt  and 

1  Fox's  Journal,  Vol.  I.  pp.  80,  83. 

2  I  adopt  Ramsay's  chronology,  excepting  his  theory  as  to  the  early 
date  of  Galatians.     Sabatier  and  others  place  the  chief  events  about  a 
year  and  a  half  later,  but  this  does  not  affect  my  argument. 

3  Gal.  i.  1 8.  4  Acts  xxii.  17-22. 


166  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

temporary  emergence  of  the  growing  transcendental 
powers,  lifting  the  consciousness  to  levels  of  Eternal  Life 
— breaks  out  in  the  early  part  of  the  "  Purgative  Way." 
"  Whilst  I  was  wrestling  and  battling,"  says  Jacob 
Boehme,  "  being  aided  by  God,  a  wonderful  light  arose 
in  my  soul.  It  was  a  light  entirely  foreign  to  my  unruly 
nature;  but  in  it  I  recognised  the  true  nature  of  God  and 
man,  and  the  relation  existing  between  them,  a  thing  which 
heretofore  I  had  never  understood,  and  for  which  I  would 
never  have  sought."  *  "  One  day,"  says  Fox,  "  when  I 
had  been  walking  solitarily  abroad  and  was  come  home,  I 
was  taken  up  in  the  love  of  God  so  that  I  could  not  but 
admire  the  greatness  of  His  love;  and  while  I  was  in  that 
condition,  it  was  opened  unto  me  by  the  Eternal  light  and 
power."  2  So  too  Henry  Suso  tells  us  that  "  in  the  first 
days  after  his  conversion,"  being  alone  in  the  choir,  his 
soul  was  rapt  "  in  his  body  or  out  of  his  body,"  and  he 
saw  and  heard  ineffable  things,  by  which  his  prayers  and 
hopes  were  all  fulfilled.  He  saw  a  "  Shining  Brightness, 
a  manifestation  of  the  sweetness  of  Eternal  Life  in  the 
sensations  of  silence  and  rest."  The  ecstacy  lasted  nearly 
an  hour;  and  "when  he  came  to  his  senses,  it  seemed  to 
him  that  he  returned  from  another  world."  3 

There  followed  upon  this  first  visit  to  Jerusalem  a  period 
of  ten  or  twelve  years,  in  which  Paul  seems  to  have  been 
occupied  in  useful  but  inconspicuous  work  in  the  Christian 
cause :  a  long,  quiet  time  of  growth,  which  is  often  over 
looked  by  those  who  are  dazzled  by  the  dash  and  splendour 
of  his  missionary  career.  But  the  powers  which  marked 
that  career  were  not  yet  developed.  The  interior  instinct 
which  became  vocative  in  his  ecstacy,  and  told  him  that  he 
was  "  called  to  the  Gentiles,"  had  to  conquer  many  opposi 
tions  in  his  individual  and  national  consciousness  before  it 
could  become  effective  for  life.  During  this  time  Paul's 
rank  was  that  of  an  ordinary  teacher ;  not  even  that  of  a 

1  Hartmann,  Jacob  Boelme,  p.  50.          2  Fox's  Journal,  Vol.  I.   p.  85. 
3  Suso,  Lebtn,  cap.  3. 


ST.   PAUL  AND   THE   MYSTIC   WAY     167 

"  prophet,"  much  less  an  "  apostle,"  a  word  to  which 
great  and  definite  meaning  was  attached  by  the  early 
Church.  He  went  to  Antioch  in  43  merely  as  the  assistant 
of  Barnabas,1  who  had  befriended  him  when  his  past 
record  as  an  agent  of  persecution  made  him  an  object  of 
suspicion  to  the  Church.  This  long  period,  then,  forms 
part  of  the  "Purgative  Way";  the  transmuting  of  char 
acter  in  the  interests  of  new  life,  the  slow,  hard  growth 
and  education  of  the  transcendental  consciousness.  In  St. 
Teresa's  case,  the  equivalent  period,  to  the  point  at  which 
she  was  impelled  to  leave  her  convent  and  begin  her 
independent  career  of  reform,  lasted  thirty  years  ;  and 
included,  as  with  Paul,  visionary  and  ecstatic  phenomena.2 

When  we  consider  what  Paul's  position  must  have  been 
within  the  Christian  community — that  small,  strait  body, 
not  perhaps  very  bright-minded,  living  upon  the  "  Spirit" 
which  a  regnant  personality  had  left  behind — we  begin  to 
realise  how  great  an  education  in  the  characteristically 
mystic  qualities  of  humility,  charity,  mortification,  and 
detachment  the  long  period  of  subordinate  work  at  Antioch 
may  have  involved.  Twelve  years'  submission  to  one's 
spiritual  and  intellectual  inferiors,  obeying  orders  upon 
which  one  could  easily  improve :  twelve  years  of  loyal 
service,  subject  all  the  while  to  a  certain  doubt  and 
suspicion,  yet  inwardly  conscious  of  huge  latent  powers, 
of  a  vocation  divinely  ordained — this  is  no  small  test  of 
character.  It  transformed  the  arrogant  and  brilliant 
Pharisee  into  a  person  who  had  discovered  that  long- 
suffering  and  gentleness  were  amongst  the  primary  fruits 
of  the  Spirit  of  God.  Perhaps  we  may  trace  back  to  this 
period  the  origin  of  his  recognition  of  the  supremacy  of 
the  "  love  that  seeketh  not  its  own,  suffereth  long,  and  is 
kind,"  as  transcending  in  importance  even  the  burning 
faith  and  hope  on  which  he  lived. 

The  entrance  of  St.  Paul  on  the  "Way  of  Illumina 
tion" — the  point,  that  is  to  say,  at  which  his  transcen- 

1  Acts  xi.  25,  26.         *  Cf.  G.  Cunninghame  Graham.  Santa  Teresa. 


168  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

dental  powers  definitely  captured  the  centres  of  conscious 
ness,  and  pain  and  struggle  gave  way  before  the  triumphant 
inflow  of  a  new  vitality — seems  to  coincide  with  the  begin 
ning  of  his  first  missionary  journey,  c.  47-48.  More,  this 
change,  this  access  of  power  in  him,  appears  to  have  been 
felt  intuitively,  either  by  the  whole  community — still  living 
at  those  high  levels  of  close  sympathy  and  spiritual  fervour 
on  which  such  collective  intuitions  can  be  experienced — or 
by  one  of  those  prophetic  spirits  in  whom  its  consciousness 
was  summed  up  and  expressed.  Whether  or  no  Paul  had 
communicated  to  these  his  interior  knowledge  of  vocation, 
now  at  any  rate  they  realised  that  the  hour  for  him  had 
struck.  "  While  they  were  worshipping  the  Lord  and 
fasting,  the  Holy  Spirit  said,  4  Set  apart  for  me  now,  at 
once,  Barnabas  and  Saul  for  the  work  to  which  I  have 
called  them.5  "  l 

As  his  Master  "  went  forth  in  the  power  of  the  Spirit," 
so  now  this  "  firstfruits  of  new  life."  We  see  by  the 
language  of  Acts  from  this  point  onwards  that,  in  its 
writer's  opinion,  the  Paul  thus  separated  for  a  great  career 
was  a  very  different  personality  from  the  obscure  and 
industrious  teacher  Saul,  the  protege  of  Barnabas ;  whose 
unfortunate  past  was  doubtless  remembered  by  his  fellow- 
Christians,  if  generously  overlooked.  No  sooner  is  the 
work  begun  than  this  change  becomes  obvious.  Paul 
starts  upon  his  travels  as  the  subordinate — at  best  the 
equal — of  Barnabas,  "  with  John  to  their  minister."  But 
by  the  time  that  they  reach  Cyprus  his  transfigured  per 
sonality  has  taken  command.  In  primitive  Christian  lan 
guage,  he  is  "  filled  with  the  Holy  Ghost."  The  "  spark 
of  the  soul,"  the  growing  spiritual  man,  now  irradiates  his 
whole  character  and  inspires  his  speech.2 

Soon  psychic  automatism  manifests  itself :  not  only  in 
the  " visions  and  revelations  of  the  Lord"  which  from 

1  Acts  xiii.  2  (Weymouth's  trans.).  By  "  the  Holy  Spirit  said  "  we  may 
probably  understand  an  ecstatic  or  prophetic  utterance  on  the  part  of 
some  member  of  the  congregation.  2  Acts  xiii.  9. 


ST.   PAUL  AND   THE   MYSTIC   WAY     169 

this  time  onwards  accompanied  and  directed  his  whole 
career,1  but  in  the  inspired  and  ecstatic  utterance  in  which 
he  excelled  all  his  fellow-Christians,2  in  gifts  of  sugges 
tion  s  and  healing.4  The  "  secondary  personality  of  a 
superior  type  "  is  making  ever  more  successful  incursions 
into  the  field  of  consciousness.  It  fills  Paul  with  a  sense 
of  fresh  power,  "  opens  doors  "  on  new  spheres  of  activity, 
overrules  his  most  considered  plans,  and  compels  him  to 
declare  to  others  the  new-found  Reality  in  which  he  lives 
and  moves  and  has  his  being.  This  sense  of  an  irresistible 
vocation,  of  being  a  tool  in  the  hands  of  "  the  Spirit,"  is 
stamped  on  all  his  work.  "  Though  I  preach  the  gospel," 
he  says  to  the  Corinthians,  "  I  have  nothing  to  glory  of, 
for  necessity  is  laid  upon  me  :  for  woe  is  unto  me  if  I  preach 
not  the  gospel."  5  It  is  no  common  "  creed  "  but  a  direct 
intimation  of  the  Transcendent,  a  life,  by  which  he  is 
possessed;  and  whose  secret  he  struggles  to  communicate. 
"  By  the  grace  of  God  I  am  what  I  am."  .  .  .  "  I  make 
known  to  you,  brethren,  as  touching  the  gospel  which  was 
preached  by  me,  that  it  is  not  after  man.  For  neither  did 
I  receive  it  from  man,  nor  was  I  taught  it,  but  it  came 
to  me  through  revelation  of  Jesus  Christ."  * 

The  way  that  this  inflow  of  novelty  worked  in  the 
mind  of  Paul  is  peculiarly  significant  for  the  subsequent 

1  2  Cor.  xii.  I.     Cf.  also  Gal.  ii.  2  ;  Acts  xvi.  9,  xviii.  9. 

2  "  I  thank  my  God  I  speak  with  tongues  more  than  ye  all  "  (i  Cor.  xiv. 
18). 

8  "  But  Saul,  who  also  is  called  Paul,  filled  with  the  Holy  Ghost,  fastened 
his  eyes  on  him,  and  said,  O  full  of  all  guile  and  all  villany  .  .  .  behold, 
the  hand  of  the  Lord  is  upon  thce,  and  thou  shalt  be  blind,  not  seeing 
the  sun  for  a  season.  And  immediately  there  fell  on  him  a  mist  and  a 
darkness ;  and  he  went  about  seeking  some  to  lead  him  by  the  hand  " 
(Acts  xiii.  9-11,  R.V.). 

4  As  at  Lystra,  Philippi,  Corinth  and  Troas  (Acts  xiv.  10,  xvi.  18, 
xix.  n,  12).  6  i  Cor.  ix.  i6(R.V.). 

0  i  Cor.  xv.  10 ;  Gal.  i.  12  (R.V.).  So  Fox,  "These  things  I  did  not 
see  by  the  help  of  man  nor  by  the  letter  (though  they  are  written  in  the 
letter)  but  I  saw  them  by  the  light  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  by  His 
immediate  Spirit  and  power  "  (Journal,  Vol.  I.  p.  101). 


170  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

history  of  the  Christian  type.  This  new  life  that  he  had, 
that  he  felt  and  experienced,  seemed  to  him  so  strange,  so 
remote  from  life  as  he  had  known  it,  that  he  could  not 
call  it  his  own.  "  I  live,  yet  not  I  "  :  something  else, 
something  distinct  from  mere  human  selfhood,  has  taken 
the  reins.  He  is  "  possessed  "  and  driven,  his  whole  being 
enhanced,  by  somewhat  not  himself :  "  by  the  grace  of 
God  I  am  what  I  am."  From  a  mingling  of  this  experi 
ence  with  tradition,  the  two  fused  together  within  an 
intellect  of  strongly  poetic  and  creative  cast,  he  elaborated 
his  marvellous  dream  of  a  mystical  and  exalted  Christ, 
spiritual  yet  actual,  personal  yet  omnipresent,  of  whose 
body  all  who  shared  His  life  were  "Members";  of  the 
believers'  existence  in  Him  and  His  existence  in  the  trans 
muted  soul l — the  report  of  concrete  fact  under  the 
beautiful  veils  of  religious  imagination.  This  presence, 
this  supernal  comradeship,  was  to  him  so  actual  that  it 
made  all  investigation  of  the  records  or  memories  of  the 
life  of  Jesus  seem  superfluous.  As  we  do  not  interrogate 
the  past  of  our  friends  in  order  to  make  sure  that 
they  exist  in  the  present,  so  the  immediacy  of  Paul's 
apprehension  obscured  for  him  the  interest  of  historical 
facts. 

More  and  more,  as  growth  went  on  in  him,  he  lived 
under  the  direction  of  that  swiftly  growing  mystic  con 
sciousness.  The  "  Spirit"  which  dwelt  in  his  body  as  a 
Presence  in  a  shrine  declared  itself  to  be  in  touch  with 
another  plane  of  being,  controlled  all  his  actions,  directed 
the  very  route  by  which  he  must  travel,  and  spoke  with 
an  authoritative  voice.  "  They  went  through  the  region 
of  Phrygia  and  Galatia,  having  been  forbidden  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  to  speak  the  word  in  Asia  .  .  .  they  assayed  to  go 
into  Bithynia ;  and  the  Spirit  of  Jesus  suffered  them  not 
.  .  .  Paul  was  constrained  by  the  Word."  2  Even  so  has 
many  a  mystic  placed  on  record  the  involuntary  nature  of 
his  most  successful  activities.  Teresa's  foundations  were 
1  Gal.  ii.  20.  2  Acts  xvi.  6,  7,  and  xviii.  5  (R.V.). 


ST.   PAUL   AND   THE   MYSTIC   WAY     171 

most  often  made,  in  defiance  of  common  sense,  in  obedi 
ence  to  the  mandates  of  an  interior  voice ;  nor  had  she 
ever  cause  to  regret  her  obedience  to  it.1  "  Then  was  I 
moved  of  the  Lord  to  go  up  unto  them,"  says  Fox  of  one 
of  his  least  discreet  adventures,  "  and  when  they  had 
done  I  spake  to  them  what  the  Lord  commanded  to  me, 
and  they  were  pretty  quiet  .  .  .  they  asked  me  why  we 
came  thither;  I  said,  God  moved  us  so  to  do."  2  In  such 
cases  as  these  we  see  again  the  action  of  the  same  directive 
consciousness  which  "opened  doors"  before  Paul  the 
traveller  and  the  seer. 

Yet  deliberate  mortification,  incessant  self-discipline, 
that  "  wise  and  noble,  warm  because  ever  love-impelled, 
asceticism,"  3  which  is  the  gymnastic  of  the  adolescent 
soul,  persists  during  the  whole  of  this  stage  in  Paul's 
development.  As  the  athletes  who  run  in  the  games,  so  this 
great  runner  runs  on  the  highway  of  new  life  :  with  a  clear 
consciousness  of  the  need  for  perpetual  self-control,  of  a 
latent  antagonism  between  the  "  flesh  "  and  the  "  spirit," 
the  old  levels  of  existence  and  the  new.  The  secret,  cease 
less  work  of  growing,  stretching,  testing,  training,  is  the 
background  of  his  marvellous  career.  "  Every  com 
petitor  in  an  athletic  contest,"  he  says,  "  practises  abstemi 
ousness  in  all  directions.  They  indeed  do  this  for  the 
sake  of  securing  a  perishable  wreath;  but  we,  for  the  sake 
of  securing  one  that  will  not  perish.  That  is  how  I  run, 
not  being  in  any  doubt  as  to  my  goal.  I  am  a  boxer  who 
does  not  inflict  blows  on  the  air,  but  I  hit  hard  and 
straight  at  my  own  body  and  lead  it  ofF  into  slavery,  lest 
possibly  after  I  have  been  a  herald  to  others  I  should 
myself  be  rejected."  4 

Here  we  look  deep  into  Paul's  interior  life :  to  find  it 
governed,  like  the  life  of  all  great  mystics  during  their 
period  of  development,  by  the  sense  of  unresolved  dis- 

1  Cf.  Thf  Book  of  the  Foundations.  2  Journal,  Vol.  I.  p.  112. 

3  Von  Hugel,  Eternal  Life,  p.  65. 

4  i  Cor.  ix.  25-27  (Weymouth's  trans.). 


172  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

harmonies,  the  alternate  and  conflicting  consciousness  of 
perfect  spirit  and  imperfect  man.  "  We  have,"  he  says— 
and  a  personal  conviction,  a  personal  experience,  shines  in 
the  words — "  this  treasure  in  earthen  vessels,  that  the 
exceeding  greatness  of  the  power  may  be  of  God  and  not 
from  ourselves.  We  are  pressed  on  every  side,  yet  not 
straitened;  perplexed  yet  not  unto  despair;  pursued,  yet 
not  forsaken ;  smitten  down,  yet  not  destroyed."  1 

Once  more  we  see  the  enormous  difference  in  quality 
between  the  nature  of  Jesus  and  that  of  His  first  and 
greatest  successor.  With  Him,  the  stress  and  effort  which 
is  felt  behind  all  Paul's  attainments  are  concentrated  into 
the  two  swift  and  furious  battles  of  the  wilderness  and  of 
Gethsemane.  These  were  enough  to  make  straight  the 
thoroughfare  of  His  ascending  life.  The  consciousness 
which  won  each  battle  and  became  dominant  for  the 
succeeding  phase  of  growth,  was  untainted  by  that  sense 
of  unresolved  discords  or  "  sin  "  somewhere  latent — the 
perpetual  possibility  of  degeneration — which  haunts  Paul, 
and  after  him  the  greatest  of  the  Christian  mystics;  some 
times  impelling  them  to  an  exaggerated  practice  of 
mortification. 

As  with  most  illuminatives,  however,  so  with  Paul,  it 
is  the  joyful  awareness  of  enhanced  life  which  prevails : 
the  consciousness  of  new  power  and  freedom,  of  adoption 
into  the  Kingdom  of  Real  Things.  "  Am  I  not  an 
apostle?  am  I  not  free?"  he  asks,  writing  to  the 
Corinthians;  and  claims  that  on  his  visit  to  them  (A.D. 
53—54)  "  the  signs  of  an  apostle  were  wrought  among  you 
in  all  patience,  in  signs  and  wonders  and  mighty  deeds."  2 
Taken  literally — and  there  is  really  no  ground  for  refusing 
so  to  take  it — this  is  a  stupendous  statement;  especially 
when  it  is  compared  with  the  twelve  years  of  subordinate, 
inconspicuous  work  in  a  provincial  church  which  had  pre 
ceded  it.  When  we  compare  this  state  of  things  with 
the  careers  of  other  mystics,  we  find  such  a  growth  of  the 
1  2  Cor.  iv.  7-9  (R.V.),  2  I  Cor.  ix.  I  and  2  Cor.  xii.  12. 


ST    PAUL   AND   THE   MYSTIC   WAY     173 

automatic  powers,  such  an  enhancement  of  personality  and 
genius  for  success,  together  with  the  claim  of  living  by 
"revelation" — profound  and  life-giving  ecstacies  uphold 
ing  the  active  career — and  the  experience  of  the  "  pressure 
of  the  Spirit,"  to  be  highly  characteristic  of  the  period  of 
illumination.  The  self  has  attained  to  a  state  of  equi 
librium,  a  condition  of  interior  harmony  with,  and  joyful 
response  to,  the  constant  sense  of  a  Divine  Presence  which 
accompanies  it,  and  floods  the  consciousness  with  a  cer 
tainty  of  attainment,  authority  and  power :  in  Eucken's 
phrase,  a  "  triumphing  spiritual  life." 

This  enabling  presence  Paul  of  course  identifies  with 
the  exalted  Christ.  He  speaks  of  the  "power  of  Christ " 
which  can  be  "  put  on,"  and  in  many  oblique  phrases  refers 
to  the  experience  of  a  supernal  companionship — "  Christ 
in  me  " — as  the  source  of  his  certitude  and  strength.  So, 
too,  his  brothers  and  sisters  in  the  Spirit :  "  When  the 
soul  doth  feel  the  presence  of  God  more  deeply  than  is 
customary,"  says  Angela  of  Foligno,  "  then  doth  it  certify 
unto  itself  that  He  is  within  it.  It  doth  feel  it,  I  say, 
with  an  understanding  so  marvellous  and  so  profound,  and 
with  such  great  love  and  divine  fire,  that  it  loseth  all  love 
for  itself  and  for  the  body,  and  it  speaketh  and  knoweth 
and  understandeth  those  things  of  which  it  hath  never 
heard  from  any  mortal  whatsoever.  And  it  understandeth 
with  great  illumination,  and  with  much  difficulty  doth 
hold  its  peace.  .  .  .  Thus  doth  the  soul  feel  that  God  is 
mingled  with  it,  and  hath  made  companionship  with  it."  l 
"  Not  to  believe  that  He  was  present  was  not  in  my 
power,"  says  Teresa  of  her  own  experience  in  this  kind, 
"  for  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  felt  His  presence." 2  "  The 
Lord's  power  brake  forth;  and  I  had  great  openings  and 
prophecies,"  says  Fox.3  The  spiritual  man  is  growing 
and  stretching  himself,  finding  ever  new  and  amazing 
correspondences  with  Reality;  correspondences  which  he 

1  B.  Angelas  de  Fulginio,  Visionum  et  Instructionum  Liber,  cap.  52. 

2  Vida,  cap.  xviii.  20.  8  Journal,  VoL  I.  p.  90. 


174  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

expresses  to  himself  by  vision,  voice,  or  overpowering  intui 
tion,  and  which  condition  him  in  practical  as  in  spiritual 
affairs :  as  when  Brother  Lawrence  was  helped  by  this 
inward  presence  in  the  business  of  buying  wine  for  his  con 
vent,  a  matter  in  which  his  native  ignorance  was  complete.1 
A  more  human  mark  of  St.  Paul's  thoroughly  mystical 
temperament  can  be  referred  to  this  period,  though  its 
first  appearance  may  date  from  an  earlier  time;  namely,  the 
"  thorn  in  the  flesh  " 2  which  has  taxed  the  ingenuity  of 
so  many  commentators,  and  provided  critics  of  the  patho 
logical  school  with  a  sufficient  explanation  of  all  the 
abnormal  elements  in  his  experience.  Epilepsy,  malaria, 
and  other  diseases  have  been  suggested  as  the  true  names 
of  this  malady.3  St.  Paul,  however,  links  it  directly  with 
his  mystical  powers;  ulest  I  should  be  exalted  above 
measure  by  the  abundance  of  revelation,  there  was  given 
unto  me  a  thorn  in  the  flesh.''  Here,  again,  lives  of  later 
mystics  justify  Paul  as  against  his  biographers :  showing 
that  there  is  a  definite  type  of  ill  health  which  dogs  the 
possessors  of  great  mystical  genius,  resulting  from  the 
enormous  strain  which  they  put  upon  an  organism  evolved 
for  very  different  purposes  than  that  of  correspondence 
with  Transcendent  Reality.  The  psychic  pain  and  insta 
bility  which  accompany  growth  to  new  levels  have  their 
reverberations  in  the  bodily  frame.  The  life  which  found 

1  Brother  Lawrence,  The  Practice  of  the  Presence  of  God,  p.  13. 

2  Gal.  iv.  13  ;  2  Cor.  xii.  7. 

3  Ramsay's  argument  in  favour  of  malaria  (cf.  St.  Paul,  the  Traveller 
and  the  Roman  Citizen)  has  gained  ground  of  recent  years.     There  seems, 
however,  more  probability  in  Dr.  Matheson's  suggestion  that  the  "  thorn  " 
on  its  physical  side  was  a  severe  affection  of  the  eyes,  connected  perhaps 
with  the  results  of  the  temporary  blindness  which  accompanied  Paul's 
conversion  (Acts  ix.  8),  when  "  new  light  shone  for  him  out  of  the  dark 
ness."     Hence  the  description  of  the  sympathy  shown  him  by  the  Gala- 
tians,  who,  "  if  it  had  been  possible,  would  have  plucked  out  their  own  eyes 
and  given  them  to  him  "  ;   hence  the  "  large  letters  "  in  which  he  traces 
the  few  words  of  the  epistle  "  written  with  his  own  hand  "  (Gal.  iv.  14, 
15,  and  vi.   Ii).    Cf.  Matheson,  The  Spiritual  Dei'elopment  of  St.  Paul, 
pp.  54-64. 


ST.   PAUL  AND   THE   MYSTIC   WAY     175 

its  perfect  thoroughfare  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth  had  to  break 
its  way  into  expression  in  lesser  men.  His  radiant 
efficiency,  and  perfect  co-ordination  of  soul  and  body,  are 
seldom  repeated  in  the  inheritors  of  His  life  ;  and  the 
making  of  successive  stages  of  that  new  creation  is  a 
matter  of  turmoil  and  stress.  "  Mystic  ill  health,"  then, 
is  the  natural  result,  and  not  the  pathological  cause,  of  the 
characteristic  activities  of  the  mystics.  Baron  von  Hiigel, 
who  has  analysed  it  in  connection  with  St.  Catherine  of 
Genoa,  has  clearly  exhibited  this;  and  successfully  defended 
its  victims  from  the  common  charge  of  hysteria.1  The 
lives  of  Suso,  Rulman  Merswin,  Angela  of  Foligno,  St. 
Catherine  of  Siena,  St.  Teresa  and  others,  provide  well- 
known  examples  of  this  bodily  rebellion  against  growing 
spiritual  stress  ;  which  mystical  writers  accept  as  an 
inevitable  part  of  the  "Way."  "Believe  me,  children," 
says  Tauler,  "  one  who  would  know  much  about  these 
high  matters  would  often  have  to  keep  to  his  bed;  for  his 
bodily  frame  could  not  support  it."  2  "In  order  that  I 
might  not  feel  myself  exalted  by  the  magnitude  and  the 
number  of  the  revelations,  visions,  and  conversings  with 
God,"  says  Angela  of  Foligno,  obviously  adapting  Paul's 
own  words  to  her  not  dissimilar  case,  "  and  that  I  might 
not  be  puffed  up  with  the  delight  thereof,  the  great 
tempter  was  sent  unto  me,  who  did  afflict  me  with  many 
and  diverse  temptations;  wherefore  I  was  afflicted  both  in 
soul  and  body.  The  bodily  torments  were  indeed  number 
less,  and  were  administered  by  many  demons  in  divers 
ways;  so  that  I  scarce  believe  the  suffering  and  infirmity 
of  my  body  could  be  written  down.  There  was  not  one 
of  my  members  which  was  not  grievously  tormented,  nor 
was  I  ever  without  pain,  infirmity  or  weariness.  Always 
I  was  weak,  feeble  and  full  of  pain,  so  that  I  was  com 
pelled  to  be  almost  continually  lying  down.  All  my  limbs 

1  The  Mystical  Element  of  Religion,  Vol.  II.  pp.  14-47. 

2  Sermon  for  the  First  Sunday  after  Easter  (Winkworth,  p.  302). 


176  THE  MYSTIC   WAY 

were  as  though  beaten,  and  with  many  troubles  did  the 
demons  afflict  me."  l 

Paul's  "  infirmities  "  and  "  bufferings  of  Satan,"  then, 
are  amply  accounted  for  as  the  price  paid  by  this  type  of 
genius  for  the  mental  and  physical  wear  and  tear  involved 
in  its  superhuman  activities.  For  the  ordinary  animal, 
transcendence  is  a  dangerous  trade ;  and  the  cutting  of 
new  paths  must  mean  the  infliction  of  new  wounds.  The 
mystical  temperament,  like  that  of  most  creative  artists, 
is  nervously  unstable.  Hypersensitiveness  is  a  condition 
of  its  power  of  receiving  the  high  rhythms  of  reality ; 
hence  it  swings  easily  between  pain  and  pleasure,  and  also 
between  supernormal  energy  and  the  psycho-physical 
exhaustion  and  ill-health  which  the  free  spending  of  such 
energy  implies.  "  One  law,"  says  Chandler,  "  seems 
fairly  clear;  namely,  that  bodily  suffering  is  a  condition 
of  the  highest  exaltation  of  the  spirit.  .  .  .  The  powers, 
mental  and  physical,  of  our  organisation  have  come  to  be 
so  highly  specialised,  have  been,  that  is,  so  exclusively 
directed  to  the  external  visible  world,  that  they  are  'out 
of  practice'  with  spiritual  work,  and  suffer  pain  and  dis 
comfort  in  attempting  to  perform  it.  The  organism  that 
can  respond  at  all  readily  to  spiritual  forces  will  be  an 
4 abnormal'  one;  nerves  and  fibres  which  heredity  has 
made  slack,  will  throb  with  pain  when  they  are,  in  these 
abnormal  cases,  brought  into  tune  with  heavenly  melodies; 
and  again  the  abnormality  and  tension  and  pain  will 
increase  as  they  are  used  in  this  unearthly  music."  2 

The  usual  dates  given  for  St.  Paul's  visits  to  Galatia 
and  Corinth — according  to  Ramsay  A.D.  50,  according  to 
Sabatier  and  others  A.D.  52 — suggest  that  the  great  visita 
tion  of  his  malady  occurred  a  few  years  after  his  full 
attainment  of  the  Illuminative  state ;  a  likely  period  for 
psycho-physical  reaction  of  this  kind  to  make  itself  felt.8 

1  B.  Angela  de  Fulginio,  Visionum  et  Instructionum  Liber,  cap.  19. 

2  A.  Chandler,  Faith  and  Experience,  p.  106. 

8  It  is  impossible,  however,  to  come  to  any  certain  conclusion  on  this 


ST.   PAUL  AND   THE    MYSTIC   WAY     177 

"Ye  know,"  he  says  to  the  Galatians,  "  how  through 
infirmity  of  the  flesh  I  preached  the  Gospel  unto  you  at 
the  first."  *  Signs,  however,  of  the  fret  of  physical  dis 
ability  may  be  discerned  in  all  the  epistles  of  the  first 
group,  and  the  check  which  such  weakness  put  upon  his 
activities  was  one  of  the  greatest  of  his  trials.  Yet  his 
inner,  deeper  mind  knew  that  physical  suffering  also  had 
its  place  in  the  growth  towards  new  liberty  which  was 
taking  place  in  him;  that  the  new  vitality  poured  in  on 
him  was  little  hindered  in  its  operations  by  the  weakness 
and  rebellion  of  the  flesh.  "  I  besought  the  Lord  thrice 
that  it  might  depart  from  me.  And  He  said  unto  me, 
My  grace  is  sufficient  for  thee ;  for  My  strength  is  made 
perfect  in  weakness.  Most  gladly  therefore  will  I  rather 
glory  in  my  infirmities  that  the  power  of  Christ  may  rest 
upon  me.  .  .  .  For  when  I  am  weak,  then  am  I  strong."2 
Here  we  see  Paul  dramatising  his  correspondence  with  the 
divine;  and  presenting  his  deep  intuitions  to  the  surface 
consciousness,  as  nearly  all  great  mystics  have  done,  in 
the  form  of  "  interior  words."  3 


point.  The  researches  and  deductions  of  the  best  Pauline  scholars  have 
but  led  to  contradictory  results.  Thus  Ramsay,  who  considers  the 
"  thorn  in  the  flesh  "  to  be  a  severe  and  chronic  form  of  malaria,  thinks 
that  the  worst  attack  is  connected  with  the  visit  to  Galatia  (St.  Paul  the 
Traveller  and  the  Roman  Citizen).  Baron  von  Hiigel  (The  Mystical 
Element  of  Religion,  Vol.  II.  p.  44)  and  Matheson  (Spiritual  Development 
of  St.  Paul,  caps.  4,  6  and  7)  detect  the  records  of  three  distinct  visitations 
of  the  malady,  "  I  besought  the  Lord  thrice  that  it  might  depart."  But, 
whilst  the  first  of  these  authorities  recognises  the  intimate  connection 
between  the  illness  and  Paul's  visionary  experiences,  identifying  the  three 
attacks  (a)  with  the  vision  of  the  third  heaven,  (£)  with  the  Galatian 
mission,  (c)  with  the  period  of  creative  activity  in  which  the  first  group  of 
epistles  were  composed,  Dr.  Matheson — who  believes  the  "  thorn  "  to 
have  involved  some  recurrent  affection  of  the  eyes — places  the  three 
crises  in  which  Paul  besought  that  it  might  depart  from  him  (a)  in  Arabia, 
(£)  in  Antioch,  (c)  in  Galatia. 

1  Gal.  iv.  13.  2  2  Cor.  xii.  8-10. 

3  Cf.  Suso,  Leben  ;  St.  Teresa,  Vida  ;  Angela  of  Foligno,  op.  cit.  ;  St. 
John  of  the  Cross,  Subida  del  Monte  Carmelo. 


178  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

"  My  strength  is  made  perfect  in  weakness."  Here  is 
the  first  appearance  in  Christian  history  of  that  amazing 
fact  which  the  lives  of  the  saints  demonstrate  again  and 
again;  the  fact  that  the  enormous  activities  of  the  mystics 
are  little  hindered,  their  mental  lucidity  seldom  impaired, 
by  the  physical  suffering  which  dogs  their  steps.  St. 
Paul,  so  frail  in  body,  so  much  opposed  by  circumstance — 
stoned,  beaten  with  rods,  imprisoned,  incessantly  exposed 
to  cold,  fatigue  and  famine,  the  countless  dangers  and 
discomforts  of  a  traveller  in  the  antique  world  l — yet 
created,  during  years  of  hard  and  unresting  labour  in  the 
teeth  of  every  obstacle  and  danger,  the  nucleus  of  the 
Catholic  Church.  Not  many  of  the  most  stalwart  men 
of  action  have  endured  such  bitter  hardships,  achieved 
such  great  results;  and  Paul  is  here  but  the  first  of  an 
undying  family,  who  have  proved  that  no  physical  con 
ditions  can  successfully  oppose  those  whose  transfigured 
wills  are  "  with  God."  St.  Teresa,  racked  by  ill-health, 
yet  travelling  through  Spain  under  circumstances  of  dis 
comfort  which  few  healthy  women  would  willingly  face, 
founding  convents,  dealing  with  property,  directing  the 
spiritual  life  of  her  many  "  families "  of  nuns ;  St. 
Catherine  of  Siena  and  St.  Catherine  of  Genoa,  full  of 
bodily  sufferings,  yet  strong  and  unwearied  in  philan 
thropic,  political  and  literary  work;  St.  Francis,  often  sick 
yet  never  sad,  who  rejuvenates  by  the  transmission  of  his 
abounding  vitality  the  life  of  the  mediaeval  Church ;  St. 
Ignatius,  that  little  lame  man,  yet  most  formidable 
soldier  of  Christ — all  these  and  many  others  "  strong  in 
their  weakness,"  might  well  "glory  in  their  infirmities," 
mere  signs  of  the  stress  endured  by  that  earthen  vessel  in 
which  they  had  received  the  treasure  of  more  abundant 
life. 

We  have  now  come  to  the  period  in  Paul's  career  in 

1  "  In  journeyings  often,  in  perils  of  rivers,  in  perils  of  robbers,  in  perils 
from  my  countrymen,  in  perils  from  the  Gentiles,  in  perils  in  the  city,  in 
perils  in  the  wilderness,  in  perils  in  the  sea  "  (2  Cor.  xi.  26,  R.V.). 


ST.    PAUL   AND   THE   MYSTIC   WAY     179 

which  the  earliest  of  his  extant  letters,  ist  and  2nd  Thes- 
salonians,  were  written.  From  this  point  onwards,  then, 
his  surviving  correspondence  takes  its  place  with — or 
rather  above — our  scanty  knowledge  of  his  outward  acts, 
as  evidence  of  his  inward  development.  These  letters, 
by  reason  of  their  very  characteristics,  their  technical 
peculiarities,  are  strong  and  precious  evidence  of  the 
mystical  quality  of  their  writer's  mind.  "Each,"  says 
Deissmann  most  justly,  "  is  a  portrait  of  St.  Paul,  and 
therein  lies  the  unique  value  of  St.  Paul's  letters  as 
materials  for  an  historical  account  of  their  writer.  There 
is  probably  not  a  single  Christian  of  any  importance  in 
later  times  from  whom  we  have  received  such  absolutely 
honest  materials  to  enable  us  to  realise  what  his  inner  life 
was  like."  l  Thanks  to  the  sudden  transitions  of  thought 
which  these  epistles  exhibit,  the  wide  field  over  which 
they  play,  they  have  always  baffled — always  will  baffle — 
those  who  attempt  to  extract  from  them  an  orderly  and 
watertight  system  of  dogmatic  "  truth."  But  approached 
from  the  standpoint  of  a  student  of  mystical  literature, 
able  to  recognise  the  presence  of  a  mind  "  drunk  with 
intellectual  vision  "  and  seeking  to  express  itself  under 
the  crude  symbols  of  speech,  they  are  not  hard  to  under 
stand.  These  letters  are  the  impassioned  self-revelations 
of  a  great  and  growing  spirit,  intensely  conscious  on  the 
one  hand  of  his  communion  with  Transcendent  Reality, 
on  the  other  of  the  duty  laid  upon  him  to  infect  others 
with  his  vision  if  he  can.  Hence  the  constant  rapid 
alternation  of  the  practical  and  the  poetic ;  the  superb 
lyrical  outbursts,  the  detailed  instructions  in  church  dis 
cipline  and  morality.  There  is  in  Paul's  rhythmic  utter 
ances  that  strongly  marked  automatic  character,  as  of  an 
inspiration  surging  up  from  the  deeps  and  overpowering 
the  surface  mind,  which  we  find,  for  instance,  in  the  most 
exalted  portions  of  the  Canticle  of  St.  John  of  the 
Cross,  or  of  the  Divine  Dialogue  of  St.  Catherine  of 

1  A.  Deissmann,  St.  Paul,  p.  23. 
N  a 


180  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

Siena :  a  book  of  which  many  parts  are  said  to  have  been 
dictated  in  the  ecstatic  state,  and  which  reproduces  his 
balanced  combination  of  stern  practical  teaching  and 
exalted  vision.1 

There  is  a  marked  development  in  the  Pauline  epistles, 
which  also  throws  light  upon  their  writer's  growth  in  the 
new  life.  The  series  of  letters  from  ist  Thessalonians 
to  Philippians — from  A.D.  50  to  A.D.  60 — clearly  reflects 
the  changes  taking  place  in  the  mind  which  composed 
them :  its  steady  process  of  transcendence,  its  movement 
on  the  Mystic  Way.  This  is  shown,  curiously  enough, 
by  the  analysis  of  Lightfoot ; 2  an  analysis  made  without 
any  reference  to  a  possible  connection  between  St.  Paul 
and  the  doctrines  of  mysticism.  ist  and  2nd  Thes 
salonians,  he  says,  are  dominated  by  the  idea  of  "  Christ 
the  Judge  " — of  penance;  the  next  group  in  time,  ist 
and  2nd  Corinthians,  Galatians,  and  Romans,  by  that 
of  Christ  as  the  Saviour-God;  the  last  group — Philip 
pians,  Philemon,  and  the  disputed  but  probably  authentic 
pair,  Ephesians  and  Colossians — by  the  concept  of  Christ 
as  the  Indwelling  Word.  Thus  the  first  group  represents 
the  kind  of  consciousness  peculiar  to  the  Purgative  Way, 
the  sense  of  imperfection  "  judged  "  in  the  light  of  newly 
perceived  Perfection.  The  next  is  governed  by  that 
growing  dependence  on  the  power  and  companionship  of 
Divine  Personality,  which  is  felt  during  Illumination; 
"  Not  I,  but  the  grace  of  God  which  was  with  me ; "  3 

1  I  Thess.  v.  5-10;   Rom.  viii.  31-39;   Eph.  ii.  4-10  and  vi.  10-17  are 
good  examples  of  Paul's  lyrical  outbursts.     So  marked  is  their  rhythmic 
structure  that  Arthur  Way  (The  Letters  of  St.  Paul,  3rd  edition,  pp.  xii- 
xiv)  regards  these  and  many  other  similar  passages  as  true  hymns,  which 
may  have  been  in  use  in  the  early  Church.    The  frequent  and  spontaneous 
appearance,  however,  of  such  abrupt  poetic  passages  in  the  writings  of  the 
great  mystics  makes  this  hypothesis  entirely  unnecessary.     Compare  the 
alternate  prose  and  poetry  in  Mechthild  of  Magdeburg,  Das  ftiessende 
Licht  der  Gottkeit,  and  the  mingling  of  lyrics  with  the  sternest  ascetic 
teaching  in  the  writings  of  St.  John  of  the  Cross. 

2  Biblical  Essays,  p.  232.  3  I  Cor.  xv.  10. 


ST.   PAUL  AND   THE   MYSTIC   WAY     181 

the  last,  by  the  state  of  "  divine  union "  between  the 
Logos  and  the  soul,  the  condition  of  equilibrium  and 
fruition,  which  is  the  goal  of  the  process  of  transcendence. 
A  comparison  of  dates  shows  that  this  "  doctrinal "  result 
of  experience  crystallizes  into  literary  form — as  we  might 
expect — a  little  later  than  it  appears  in  the  life. 

The  epistles  to  the  Galatians  and  the  Corinthians, 
though  certainly  their  general  attitude  reflects  experience 
obtained  during  the  Illuminative  Way,  contain  statements 
which  suggest  that  at  the  time  of  their  composition, 
c.  55—57,  the  inevitable  break-up  of  this  state  of  con 
sciousness  was  already  in  progress.  With  Paul,  as  with 
other  great  mystics,  psychic  disturbances,  the  emergence 
of  old,  unresolved  disharmonies,  moods  of  deep  depres 
sion,  a  sense  of  conflict  between  two  natures  in  him, 
"warring  in  his  members,"  accompanied  this  movement 
towards  new  levels  of  consciousness;  this  "  fresh  start" 
upon  the  way.  Reading  side  by  side  the  story  given  in 
Acts,  and  the  self -revealing  touches  in  his  writings,  we 
gather  that  he  lived  for  several  years — perhaps  from 
c.  52,  the  period  of  his  visit  to  Athens,  to  c.  57,  a  little 
before  the  epistle  to  the  Romans  was  written — in  a  state 
of  psychic  disequilibrium,  swaying  between  a  growing 
ecstatic  consciousness  of  supernal  freedom,  a  veritable  if 
intermittent  "  union  "  with  the  exalted  spirit  of  Christ, 
and  the  misery  and  depression  which  are  characteristic  of 
the  "  Dark  Night  of  the  Soul."  l  It  is  probable  that  the 
active  and  volitional  cast  of  his  mind  saved  him  from 
some  at  least  of  the  worst  destitutions  of  that  state :  from 
the  dull  impotence  felt  by  more  passive  natures,  and  from 
the  acute  emotional  despair  of  such  born  romantics  as 
Suso  and  Teresa.  Yet  that  he  suffered,  and  suffered 
intensely,  in  the  "  Upper  School  of  Perfect  Self-abandon- 

1  Cf.  Acts  xviii.  5-11,  where  his  rejection  by  the  Jews  is  immediately 
counterbalanced  by  a  mystical  experience,  renewing  under  the  forms  of 
voice  and  vision  his  consciousness  of  the  inspiring  and  supporting  presence 
of  God. 


182  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

ment,"  there  can  be  little  doubt.  As  Jesus  Himself  paid 
for  His  ascent  to  the  Mount  of  Transfiguration  by  cruel 
reactions,  so  Paul  in  his  turn  endured  weariness,  humilia 
tion,  and  despair.  As  with  so  many  of  the  mystics,1  inner 
and  outer  events  combined  to  oppress  him :  the  turmoil 
of  his  interior  life,  the  natural  result  of  spiritual  fatigue, 
lowering  his  power  of  dealing  with  circumstance.  "  When 
we  were  come  into  Macedonia,  our  flesh  had  no  relief, 
but  we  were  afflicted  on  every  side  :  without  were  fightings, 
within  were  fears."2  The  loss  of  friends,  the  bitter  dis 
appointment  of  his  failure  to  win  intellectual  Athens  for 
Christ,  poverty,  persecution,  ill-health,  the  sharp  and 
growing  contrast  between  his  sublime  vision  of  the  Per 
fect  and  its  partial,  wavering  realisation  in  the  Church  ; 
all  this  went  step  by  step  with  his  deep  inward  miseries 
and  struggles.  Paul's  nature  had  gone  back  into  the  melt 
ing-pot,  to  be  re-born  on  higher  levels ;  re-grouped  about 
those  centres  of  Love  and  Humility  which  dominate  the 
transfigured  mystical  consciousness  in  its  last  and  highest 
stage. 

Through  the  shifting  moods,  the  poetic  rhapsodies  of 
the  early  epistles  we  catch  a  glimpse  now  and  then  of  the 
struggle  that  was  in  progress  in  this  most  storm-tossed 
and  most  powerful  of  the  saints  :  that  recrudescence  of  the 
disharmonies  and  "  sinful  "  tendencies  against  which  the 
mortifications  of  the  Purgative  Way  are  directed,  and 
which  so  often  re-emerge  during  these  periods  of  dis 
equilibrium,  and  torment  even  the  greatest  of  mystics :  3 
the  weary  hopelessness  and  humiliations  endured  by  a 
highly  strung  nature,  whose  destiny  seems  to  overpass 
its  powers.  "  In  distress  and  affliction,"  he  wrote  about 

1  For  instance,  Suso  (Leben,  cap.  22),  Madame  Guyon  (Fie,  Pt.  I.  cap. 
20-23),  St.  Teresa  (Vida,  cap.  30). 

2  2  Cor.  vii.  5  (R.V.). 

3  Cf.  E.  Gardner,  St.  Catherine  of  Siena,  p.  20;    Angela  of  Foligno, 
op.cit.,  cap.  19;  St.  Teresa,  Fida,  cap.  30;  Madame  Guyon,  Fie,  Pt.  I. 
cap.  25. 


ST.    PAUL  AND   THE   MYSTIC   WAY     183 

A.D.  52  to  the  Thessalonians.1  He  went  to  the  Corinthians 
at  that  same  period  "  in  weakness  and  in  fear  and  in  much 
trembling. " 2  Five  years  later  his  letters  to  those 
Corinthians  still  betray  affliction  and  "  anguish  of  heart"  ;s 
signs,  too,  that  he  was  bitterly  conscious  of  the  contempt 
with  which  his  intellectual  equals  regarded  his  new  faith. 
"  We  are  made  as  the  filth  of  the  world,  the  off- scouring 
of  all  things;  "  4  hardest  of  trials  for  a  proud  and  sensitive 
personality.  Yet,  though  "  we  that  are  in  this  tabernacle 
do  groan,  being  burdened,"  5  the  conviction  of  a  triumph 
ing  spiritual  force  working  in  him,  an  exultant  life  greater 
than  that  of  other  men,  persists  through  his  bitterest 
pain.  "Dying,  and  behold!  we  live;  chastened,  and  not 
killed."  6  "I  have  been  crucified  with  Christ  " — a  phrase 
which  still  implied  intense  humiliation  as  well  as  agony— 
"  yet  I  live,  yet  no  longer  I,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me."  7 
"Always  bearing  about  in  the  body  the  dying  of  Jesus, 
that  the  life  also  of  Jesus  may  be  manifested  in  our 
body." 8  These,  and  many  other  equivalent  phrases 
imply  clear  identification  on  Paul's  part  of  his  own  neces 
sary  sufferings  with  the  passion  endured  by  Jesus.  So, 
too,  we  can  trace  a  convinced  consciousness  of  that  slow 
transmutation  of  personality,  that  process  of  fresh  creation 
which  the  mystics  call  "  New  Birth."  "  If  any  man  be 
in  Christ,  he  is  a  new  creature."9 

The  epistle  to  the  Romans  appears  to  be  the  literary 
expression  of  the  last  phase  in  Paul's  long  struggle  for 
transcendence.  In  the  seventh  and  eighth  chapters  of 
that  most  wonderful  of  letters,  we  seem  to  see  the  travail 
of  his  interior  life  coming  to  its  term,  the  new  state 
towards  which  his  growth  was  directed  established  at  last. 
The  helpless  consciousness  of  disharmony,  the  terrible 
conviction  of  sin  and  impotence,  here  rises  to  its  height; 
the  upward,  outward  push  of  the  growing  spirit  warring 

1  i  Thess.  iii.  7  (R.V.).  8  I  Cor.  ii.  3  (R.V.).  »  2  Cor.  ii.  4  (R.V.). 
4  i  Cor.  iv.  13  (R.V.),  &  2  Cor.  v.  4  (R.V.).  «  2  Cor.  vi.  9  (R.V.). 
7  Gal.  ii.  20  (R.V.),  «  2  Cor.  iv.  10  (R.V.).  »  2  Cor.  v.  17  (R.V.). 


184  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

with  the  old  established  habits  of  life,  which  "  ever  tends 
to  turn  on  its  tracks  and  lag  behind."  "  I  am  carnal,  sold 
under  sin.  For  that  which  I  do  I  know  not :  for  not  what 
I  would,  that  do  I  practise;  but  what  I  hate,  that  I  do. 
.  .  .  For  I  know  that  in  me,  that  is,  in  my  flesh,  dwelleth 
no  good  thing :  for  to  will  is  present  with  me,  but  to  do 
that  which  is  good  is  not.  For  the  good  which  I  would 
I  do  not :  but  the  evil  which  I  would  not,  that  I  practise. 
.  .  .  For  I  delight  in  the  law  of  God  after  the  inward 

O 

man :  but  I  see  a  different  law  in  my  members,  warring 
against  the  law  of  my  mind,  and  bringing  me  into  captivity 
under  the  law  of  sin  which  is  in  my  members.  O  wretched 
man  that  I  am!  who  shall  deliver  me  out  of  the  body  of 
this  death?"1 

In  all  the  annals  of  religious  psychology  we  shall  find 
no  more  vivid  presentation  than  this  of  the  stress  and 
misery  which  accompanies  the  last  purification  of  person 
ality  :  when  "  the  sensual  part  is  purified  in  aridities,  the 
faculties  in  emptiness  of  their  powers,  and  the  spirit  in 
thick  darkness."  2  We  stand  here  with  St.  Paul  at  the 
very  frontier  of  new  life,  and  with  the  opening  of  the 
next  section  of  his  letter,  that  frontier  is  passed. 

u  The  law  of  the  Spirit  of  Life  .  .  .  made  me  free."3 
The  terrible  effort  to  live  according  to  something  seen 
has  given  way  before  the  advent  of  something  at  last 
possessed.  "  The  billow  of  largesse  hath  appeared,  the 
thunder  of  the  sea  hath  arrived."  A  new  dower  of 
vitality — the  Spirit  of  Life  which  was  brought  into  time 
by  Jesus — floods  his  nature,  and  suddenly  transmutes  it 
to  the  condition  of  the  "  children  of  God,"  the  citizens 
of  the  Kingdom  of  Reality:  the  Unitive  Life.  Before 
this  inflow  of  joy,  certainty  and  power,  the  miseries  and 
efforts  of  the  past  fade  into  the  background ;  and  are 

1  Rom.  vii.  14,  15,  18,  19,  22-24  (R-V.). 

2  St.  John  of  the  Cross,  Nocbe  Escura  del  Alma,  Lib.  II.  cap.  6.    Cf. 
Poulain,  Graces  d'Oraison,  pp.  433  et  seq. 

3  Rom.  viii.  2. 


ST.   PAUL   AND   THE   MYSTIC   WAY     185 

seen  in  their  true  light  as  a  part  of  that  process  of  growth 
in  the  likeness  of  Divine  Humanity  which  is  the  privilege 
of  those  who  are  "joint  heirs  with  Christ."  "If  so  be 
that  we  suffer  with  him,  that  we  may  be  also  glorified 
with  him."1 

In  this  moment  of  supreme  attainment,  Paul  seems  for 
the  first  time  to  penetrate  to  the  very  heart  of  the  secret 
of  Jesus,  the  "Mystery  of  the  Kingdom";  and  applies 
it,  with  the  sublime  optimism  of  his  Master,  to  the  col 
lective  consciousness  of  the  Christian  Church.  "  Ye  have 
received  the  spirit  of  adoption,  whereby  we  cry,  Abba, 
Father.  The  Spirit  himself  beareth  witness  with  our 
spirit,  that  we  are  children  of  God :  and  if  children,  then 
heirs;  heirs  of  God,  and  joint-heirs  with  Christ."2 

"The  glorious  liberty  of  the  children  of  God!  "8  he 
exclaims  in  a  very  passion  of  joy,  intoxicated  as  it  seems 
by  his  new  and  wondrous  consciousness  of  freedom — the 
freedom  of  a  great  swimmer  "amidst  the  wild  billows  of, 
the  Sea  Divine."  "  If  God  is  for  us,  who  is  against  us? 
...  I  am  persuaded,  that  neither  death,  nor  life,  nor 
angels,  nor  principalities,  nor  things  present,  nor  things 
to  come,  nor  powers,  nor  height,  nor  depth,  nor  any  other 
creature,  shall  be  able  to  separate  us  from  the  love  of 
God."4  The  sudden  wild  happiness  of  the  spirit  caught 
up  to  supreme  communion  with  the  Absolute  has  seldom 
found  finer  expression  than  this :  here  another  personality 
seems  to  speak  from  the  heart-broken  prisoner  who  had 
cried  but  a  page  or  two  earlier,  "  Who  shall  deliver  me 
from  the  body  of  this  death  ?  " 

About  three  or  four  years  separate  the  composition  of 
Romans — the  characteristic  epistle  of  transition — from 
that  of  the  last  group :  Philemon,  Colossians,  Ephesians, 
and  Philippians.  This  period,  of  course,  includes  Paul's 
arrest  at  Jerusalem,  his  long  imprisonment  at  Caesarea  and 
voyage  to  Rome.5  During  that  interval  of  outward 

1  Rom.  viii.  17  (R.V.).       2  Rom.  viii.  15-17  (R.V.).      3  Rom.  viii.  21. 
4  Rom.  viii.  31,  38-39.  5  Acts  xxiii.-xxviii. 


186  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

inactivity,  with  its  opportunity  for  those  long  contem 
plations  on  which  the  growing  spirit  of  the  mystic  feeds, 
his  interior  life  seems  to  have  come  to  perfect  maturity. 
Whereas  Corinthians  and  Galatians  provide  us  with  many 
evidences  of  the  state  of  mental  disequilibrium  which 
mystical  writers  know  by  that  curious  term,  the  "  Game 
of  Love " — the  alternate  onset  and  withdrawal  of  the 
transcendental  consciousness — and  we  can  detect  behind 
the  argument  of  Romans  the  struggle  of  a  strong  nature 
against  heavy  gloom,  its  abrupt  emergence  into  light;  we 
see  in  Ephesians  and  Philippians  the  reflection  of  a  spirit 
which  has  come  to  live  naturally  and  permanently  in  that 
state  to  which  the  writer  of  Galatians,  Corinthians  and 
Romans  ascended  in  ecstatic  moments;  and  of  which  he 
could  only  speak  in  terms  of  wonder  and  awe. 

Philippians,  says  Lightfoot,  is  the  mystical  and  contem 
plative  epistle;  which  is  exactly  what  we  might  expect  it 
to  be,  if  our  diagram  of  its  author's  spiritual  growth  be 
correct.  Both  in  subject  and  in  temper,  this  and  the  con 
temporary  letters  to  the  Colossians  and  Ephesians1  are  in 
close  and  peculiar  harmony  with  the  attitude  of  all  the 
great  unitive  mystics :  the  mighty  and  creative  person 
alities  in  whom  life's  "  new  direction "  has  come  to 
its  own,  and  whose  correspondence  with  Transcendent 
Reality  is  not  that  of  "  servants,"  but  of  "  sons."  Not 
something  believed,  but  something  veritably  and  securely 
possessed,  is  the  governing  idea  of  these  letters :  a  trans 
muting  power,  a  supernal  life,  established  in  Paul's  spirit 
after  long  grief  and  pain,  and  seen  by  him  as  the  central 
secret  of  creation,  "  the  fulness  of  Him  that  filleth  all  in 
all."2  This  new  consciousness  of  his  he  continues  to 
translate,  on  the  one  hand  as  an  inflow  of  fresh  life  from 

1  The  attribution  of  these  two  epistles  to  St.  Paul  has  been  much 
disputed,  but  the  tendency  of  recent  criticism  is  to  restore  them  to  him. 
Cf.  P.  Gardner,  Tke  Religious  Experience  of  St.  Paul,  pp.  13-15.    For  those 
who  accept  the  psychological  theory  here  advocated,  the  developed  mystic 
ism  of  these  writings  will  be  strong  evidence  of  their  Pauline  authorship. 

2  Eph.  i.  23. 


ST.   PAUL   AND   THE  MYSTIC   WAY     187 

without — the  presence  of  an  indwelling  and  energising 
Divine  Spirit,  "  something  which  is  not  himself  " — on 
the  other,  as  a  growth  from  within. 

The  Spirit  is  identified,  as  always  in  Paul's  mind,  with 
the  personal  and  glorified  Christ;  like  his  follower,  the 
Fourth  Evangelist,  he  makes  no  distinction  between  those 
two  manifestations  of  God  which  theology  afterwards 
described  as  "  Son  "  and  "  Spirit.'5  The  true  mystery, 
he  says,  is  "  Christ  in  you  ...  it  is  God  which  worketh 
in  you.  ...  I  labour  also,  striving  according  to  his 
working,  which  worketh  in  me  mightily  .  .  .  for  me  to 
live  is  Christ."  l  All  mystics  in  the  unitive  state  make 
equivalent  declarations.  They  feel  themselves  to  be  God- 
possessed;  are  agents  of  the  divine  activity.  Thus  Gerlac 
Petersen  :  "  Thou  art  in  me,  and  I  in  Thee,  glued  together 
as  one  and  the  selfsame  thing,  which  shall  never  be  lost 
nor  broken,"  2  and  St.  Catherine  of  Genoa :  "  My  me  is 
God,  nor  do  I  know  my  selfhood  save  in  Him."  3  These 
are  plainly  reports  of  that  same  condition  of  conscious 
ness,  often  called  by  the  dangerous  name  of  "  deification," 
to  which  Paul  was  now  come ;  the  transmuted  self's 
awareness  that  it  participates  in,  and  is  upheld  by,  the 
great  life  of  the  All.  On  the  other  hand,  Paul  never 
loses  hold  of  his  central  idea  of  growth  and  change,  as  the 
secret  of  all  true  and  healthy  life.  The  goal  he  sets  before 
his  converts  is  the  attainment  of  perfected  humanity,  "  a 
full-grown  man  .  .  .  the  measure  of  the  stature  of  the 
fulness  of  Christ  .  .  .  grow  up  in  all  things  into  Him 
.  .  .  and  put  on  the  new  man."  4 

There  are  other  peculiarities  of  these  epistles  which 
indicate  the  high  levels  of  spirituality  on  which  their 
author  moved,  the  exultant  life  which  now  possessed  him. 
Humility,  the  "  full  true  sister  of  truth  "  and  paradoxical 
mark  of  supreme  mystical  attainment,  dominates  their 

1  Col.  i.  27 ;  Phil.  ii.  13  ;  Col.  i.  29 ;  Phil.  i.  21  (R.V.). 

2  The  Fiery  Soliloquy  with  God,  cap.  15. 

8  Vita  e  Dottrina,  cap.  14.  4  Eph.  iv.  13,  15,  24  (R.V.). 


188  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

intellectual  attitude :  for  his  smallness  in  the  Kingdom  of 
Real  Things  has  now  obscured  for  Paul  all  sense  of  his 
greatness  and  unique  vocation  in  the  world  of  men.  His 
deep  intuitive  vision  of  perfection  discloses  to  him  the 
unspeakable  heights  of  wisdom  and  love :  and  it  is 
against  those  everlasting  hills  that  the  child  of  the  Infinite 
must  measure  himself.  The  note  of  assurance  and 
authority  so  marked  in  2  Cor.  xi.  and  xii.  and  other 
passages  of  the  earlier  letters  is  gone.  Instead,  "  Brethren, 
I  count  not  myself  yet  to  have  apprehended;  but  one  thing 
I  do  ...  I  press  on  toward  the  goal,  unto  the  prize  of 
the  upward-calling  of  God,"  "  unto  me,  who  am  less  than 
the  least  of  all  saints,  was  this  grace  given."  *  Further, 
written  from  captivity  in  a  time  of  much  anxiety,  not 
the  austere  acceptance  of  suffering,  but  simple  joy,  is  their 
emotional  note.  "  I  now  rejoice  in  my  sufferings  for  you 
.  .  .  making  request  with  joy.  .  .  .  Christ  is  preached 
and  I  therein  do  rejoice,  yea,  and  will  rejoice  .  .  .  that 
your  rejoicing  may  be  more  abundant.  ...  I  joy,  and 
rejoice  with  you  all ;  for  the  same  cause  do  ye  joy,  and 
rejoice  with  me."  Moreover,  this  rejoicing,  this  gladness 
of  heart,  is  dependent  on  the  mystic  fact  of  the  mergence 
of  the  human  consciousness  with  the  Divine  Nature ;  it  is 
the  feeling-state  proper  to  one  dwelling  "  in  God." 
"  Finally,  my  brethren,  rejoice  in  the  Lord  .  .  .  rejoice 
in  the  Lord  alway,  and  again  I  say,  Rejoice."  2 

In  every  mystic  who  has  attained  that  perfect  harmony 
with  the  supernal  order,  that  high  state  of  transcendence 
called  "  union  with  God,"  we  find  this  accent  of  eager 
gaiety  overpowering  the  difficulties,  sufferings  and 
responsibilities  of  his  active  life;  this  joy,  "proper  to  the 
children  of  the  Bridegroom,"  which  seems  to  have  been 
shed  by  Jesus  on  that  little  company  of  adepts  who  had 
learned  the  secret  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  The  glad 
heart  exults  in  its  own  surrender :  the  little  child  of  the 

1  Phil.  iii.  13,  14;  Eph.  iii.  8  (R.V.). 

2  Col.  i.  24;  Phil.  i.  4,  1 8,  26;  ii.  17;   iii.  I ;  iv.  4. 


ST.   PAUL  AND  THE   MYSTIC   WAY     189 

Infinite  laughs  as  it  runs  to  its  father's  arms.  "  I  must 
rejoice  without  ceasing,"  said  Ruysbroeck,  "  although  the 
world  shudder  at  my  joy." *  St.  Catherine  of  Siena,  pros- 

I  trate  in  illness,  was  "  full  of  laughter  in  the  Lord." 2    The 

true  lover,  says  Richard  Rolle  of  the  soul  which  has 
attained  its  full  stature,  "  Joy  of  its  Maker  endlessly  doth 

i  use."  3     "  Good  and  gamesome  play,  as  father  doth  with 

child,"  says  the  author  of  The  Cloud  of  Unknowing,  is 
the  reward  of  the  true  contemplative.4  Even  the  self- 
tormenting  soul  of  Pascal  was  flooded  with  simplest  joy 
by  his  short  and  vivid  vision  of  Reality  :  "  Joie,  joie,  joie, 
pleurs  de  joie!  " 

So  St.  Paul's  injunction  to  his  converts  in  Colossians 
and  Ephesians,  that  they  should  use  "  psalms  and  hymns 
and  spiritual  songs,  singing  and  making  melody  in  your 
heart  to  the  Lord  "5  finds  many  a  parallel  in  the  lives  of 
the  mystics;  for  whom  music  is  ever  a  spiritual  thing,  an 
apt  symbol  of  the  harmonies  which  fill  the  universe.  "  As 
the  work  of  the  husbandman  is  the  ploughshare :  and  the 
work  of  the  steersman  is  the  guidance  of  the  ship,"  says 
the  early  Christian  poet,  "  so  also  my  work  is  the  psalm  of 
the  Lord.  .  .  .  For  my  love  is  the  Lord,  and  therefore  will 
I  sing  unto  him."6  The  servants  of  the  Lord  are  His 
minstrels,  said  Francis  of  Assisi,  and  the  ideal  Franciscan 
is  the  lark.  The  "  sweet  melody  of  spirit"  often  possessed 
him  and  he  urged  the  duty  of  song  on  all  the  world.7 
Rose  of  Lima  sang  duets  with  the  birds,8  Teresa  sang  of 
her  love  as  she  swept  the  convent  corridors,9  Rolle  found 
mystic  truth  a  "  sweet  ghostly  song  "  and  declared  that 
the  souls  of  the  perfect  no  longer  pray  but  sing.10  Nor 

f1  Canticle  I.  2  E.  Gardner,  St.  Catherine  of  Siena,  p.  48. 

3  The  Fire  of  Love,  Bk.  II.  cap.  7.     4  The  Cloud  of  Unknowing,  cap.  47. 
5  Eph.  v.  19 ;  Col.  iii.  16. 

6  The  Odes  and  Psalms  of  Solomon,  Ode  xvi. 

7  Speculum,  cap.  113  and  100. 

8  De  Bussierre,  Le  Perou  et  Ste.  Rose  de  Lime,  p.  415. 

9  G.  Cunninghame  Graham,  Santa  Teresa,  Vol.  I.  p.  304. 

10  The  Fire  of  Love,  Book  I.  cap.  23. 


190  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

is  this  concept  of  divine  melody,  and  the  soul's  necessary 
participation  in  it,  confined  to  Christian  mysticism.  It 
seems  to  be  one  of  the  primal  forms  assumed  by  spirit's 
tendency  to  Spirit,  the  self's  passion  for  its  Source,  Home, 
and  Love;  and  is  found  as  well  in  the  East  as  in  the  West, 
in  the  modern  as  in  the  ancient  world. 

"  When  thou  commandest  me  to  sing  it  seems  that  my  heart    would 

break  with  pride;    and   I  look    to    thy  face  and  tears   come    to 

my  eyes. 
All  that  is  harsh  and  dissonant  in  my  life  melts  into  one  sweet  harmony 

— and  my  adoration  spreads  wings  like  a  glad  bird  on  its  flight 

across  the  sea. 
I  know  thou  takest    pleasure  in  my  singing.     I  know  that  only  as  a 

singer  I  come  before  thy  presence. 
I  touch  by  the  edge  of  the  far-spreading  wing  of  my  song  thy  feet  which 

I  could  never  aspire  to  reach. 
Drunk  with  the  joy  of  singing  I  forget  myself,  I  call  thee  friend  who  art 

my  lord."  1 

We  have  seen  that  the  great  theopathetic  mystics,  the 
real  inheritors  of  the  "  new  direction  of  life,"  have  always 
been  concerned  not  only  with  "  highness  of  love  in  con 
templation,"  but  with  hard  and  active  work.  They  swing 
between  Time  and  Eternity :  between  fruition  of  God  and 
charity  toward  men.  "  These  two  lives,"  says  the  Cloud 
of  Unknowing,  "  be  so  coupled  together  that,  although 
they  be  divers  in  some  part,  yet  neither  of  them  may  be 
had  fully  without  some  part  of  the  other  ...  so  that  a 
man  may  not  be  fully  active,  but  if  he  be  in  part  contem 
plative;  nor  yet  fully  contemplative,  as  it  may  be  here,  but 
if  he  be  in  part  active."2  This  is  the  pure  doctrine  of 
mysticism;  and  here,  of  course,  St.  Paul  is  emphatically 
true  to  type.  The  splendid  mystic  balance  of  ecstacy  and 
practical  ability,  of  outgoings  in  charity  toward  God  and 
man,  "  the  ascent  and  descent  of  the  ladder  of  love  "  is 
early  manifested  in  him.  Inspiring  spirit  and  industrious 
will,  he  thinks,  are  not  opposite,  but  complementary  ex- 

1  Rabindranath  Tagore,  Gitanfali,  2. 
*  The  Cloud  of  Unknowing,  cap.  8. 


ST.   PAUL  AND  THE   MYSTIC   WAY     191 

pressions  of  life ;  and  man's  will  and  work  are  themselves 
a  part  of  the  divine  energy.  "  I  laboured  more  abund 
antly  than  they  all,"  he  says,  "  yet  not  I,  but  the  grace  of 
God  which  was  with  me."1  Prayerful  communion  and 
practical  work — to  be  "at  home  in  the  body,"  or  "  at 
home  with  the  Lord  " — is  equally  a  part  of  the  business 
of  man.2  "  Whether  we  be  beside  ourselves  it  is  to  God, 
or  whether  we  be  of  sober  mind,  it  is  unto  you." 3 

Despite  his  great  contemplative  gifts,  he  was  no  en- 
courager  of  dreamy  "  mysticality  "  :  his  passion  for  all- 
round  efficiency  sometimes  made  demands  which  faulty 
human  nature  can  hardly  meet.  "  Work  out  your  own 
salvation;  "  "  Whatsoever  ye  do,  work  heartily  as  unto  the 
Lord,  and  not  unto  men."  4  Philippians  and  Philemon 
reinforce  our  knowledge  of  his  Teresian  grasp  of  detail, 
his  interest  in  ordinary  affairs.  Here  we  see  the  busy 
missionary  who  had  not  urun  and  laboured  in  vain" 
side  by  side  with  the  peaceful  mystic,  to  whom  "  to  live 
is  Christ,  and  to  die  is  gain."  5  Paul  has  put  on  that 
"dual  character  of  action  and  fruition,"  of  joy  and  work, 
which  is  the  peculiar  mark  of  "  the  fulness  of  the  stature  " 
of  Jesus;  and  is  found  again  in  every  man  who  has  attained 
"  the  supreme  summit  of  the  inner  life."  He  possesses, 
too,  its  paradoxical  and  Christ-like  combination  of  exalta 
tion  and  humility — "  the  mind  which  was  also  in  Christ 
Jesus."6  "  I  can  do  all  things  in  Him  that  strengtheneth 
me :  "  but  "  Not  that  I  have  already  obtained,  or  am 
already  made  perfect.  ...  I  count  not  myself  yet  to  have 
apprehended."7 

This  is  the  psychological  state  exhibited  in  St.  Paul's 
last  writings;  "  being  such  an  one  as  Paul  the  aged,"  8  yet 
the  ever  young.  An  ambassador  in  bonds  from  Life  to 

1  i  Cor.  xv.  10  (R.V.).     Cf.  Phil.  ii.  13,  "  it  is  God  which  worketh  in 
you  both  to  will  and  to  work." 

2  2  Cor.  v.  6-8.       3  2  Cor.  v.  13.       4  Phil.  ii.  12 ;  Col.  iii.  23  (R.V.). 
5  Phil.  ii.  16  and  i.  21.  6  Phil.  ii.  5. 

7  Phil.  iv.  13  and  iii.  12,  13  (R.V.).  8  Philemon  9. 


192  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

life,  "reflecting  as  in  a  glass  the  glory  of  the  Lord,"  he 
has  indeed  been  "  transformed  into  the  same  image  from 
glory  to  glory,  even  from  the  Lord,  the  Spirit,"  l  yet 
according  to  the  primal,  sacred  laws  of  growth.  It  is 
paralleled  in  the  self-revelations  of  such  mystics  of  genius 
as  St.  Francis,  St.  Ignatius,  St.  Catherine  of  Genoa,  St. 
Teresa,  George  Fox.  Those  who  attain  to  it  have 
developed,  not  merely  their  receptive,  but  their  creative 
powers;  are  directly  responsible  for  the  emergence  of  new 
life,  new  out-births  of  Reality,  into  the  world.  It  is  the 
condition  of  "  divine  fecundity  "  which  Richard  of  St. 
Victor  describes  as  the  consummation  of  the  mystic  life : 
the  perfect  state,  to  which  the  Christian  mystic  tends. 
"  My  little  children  of  whom  I  travail  in  birth  .  .  .  my 
joy  and  crown,"  said  St.  Paul  of  those  whom  he  had 
endowed  with  his  own  overpowering  spiritual  vitality. 
"  My  son,  whom  I  have  begotten  in  my  bonds,"  of  the 
runaway  slave  Onesimus,  converted  in  prison,  for  whom 
he  intercedes.2  These  "  children,"  this  trail  of  Christian 
Churches  marking  the  path  of  one  poor  missionary,  whose 
"  bodily  presence  was  weak  and  his  speech  of  no 
account  "  3 — who  started  his  career  under  a  cloud,  and  was 
dogged  by  ill-health — are  the  best  of  all  evidence  that 
Paul  had  indeed  inherited  the  "  mystery  "  of  that  king 
dom  which  is  not  in  "word,"  but  in  "  power,"  4  was  a 
thoroughfare  through  which  its  life  was  transmitted,  and 
followed,  on  high  levels,  the  organic  process  of  transcend 
ence  which  is  called  the  "  Mystic  Way." 

1  2  Cor.  iii.  1 8.  2  Gal.  iv.  19;  Phil.  iv.  I  ;   Philemon  10. 

3  2  Cor.  x.  10  (R.V.).  4  I  Cor.  iv.  20. 


II 

THE    LAWS    OF    THE    NEW    LIFE 

IT  is  now  clear  that  for  Paul,  as  for  Jesus,  the  good 
news  of  the  mystery  of  the  "Kingdom"  consists,  not  in 
a  body  of  doctrines,  a  closed  system  of  beliefs,  but  in  a 
new  and  amazing  series  of  profound  experiences;  in  the 
" lift-up"  of  his  nature,  and  therefore  potentially  of  all 
human  nature,  to  new  levels  of  life.  This  lift-up  in  the 
wake  of  Jesus,  from  the  psychic  to  the  spiritual,  is  made 
possible  for  the  Self  by  a  change  in  its  lire,  the  setting  in 
hand  of  a  new  kind  of  organic  growth.  It  is  a  practical 
mysticism,  the  turning  of  the  vital  human  powers  of  atten 
tion,  reception,  and  response,  in  the  direction  of  Reality; 
and  can  only  be  understood  or  transmitted  by  those  who 
are  living  it,  the  members  of  the  "  New  Race."  Hence, 
the  living,  growing  creature  Paul,  as  he  reveals  himself 
to  us  "  in  process  of  being  saved,"  is  a  more  valuable 
subject  of  investigation  than  the  intellectual  formulae 
under  which  he  tried  and  often  failed  to  communicate 
his  intuitions  of  the  independent  spiritual  world. 

Yet,  as  in  the  case  of  Jesus,  so  in  that  of  Paul,  a  con 
sideration  of  his  most  characteristic  teachings  does  but 
exhibit  the  more  clearly  the  fundamentally  mystical 
quality  of  that  consciousness  in  which  they  arose.  Only, 
of  course,  by  the  study  of  such  a  consciousness,  and  of 
the  laws  which  govern  its  activity,  can  we  hope  to  under 
stand  his  so-called  "  doctrines  "  ;  or  resolve  the  apparent 
inconsistencies  of  a  thought  which  derives  its  worst 
obscurities  from  his  attempts  to  pour  the  new  wine  of 
an  intense  personal  revelation  into  the  old  bottles  of 
o  193 


194  THE   MYSTIC    WAY 

u  Rabbinic,"  "  apocalyptic  "  or  "  Hellenistic "  ideas. 
Paul's  theology  is  an  artistic  and  intellectual  embodiment 
—the  reduction  to  terms  which  try  to  be  logical  and 
always  succeed  in  being  suggestive — of  the  stream  of  new 
life  by  which  he  was  possessed.  It  is  a  poem  in  which 
he  celebrates  the  adventures  of  his  soul.  His  analytic  yet 
poetic  mind  plays  perpetually  over  an  experience  and  a 
life  which  he  understands  from  within,  because  he  is 
himself  in  process  of  living  it :  understands  so  well  that 
he  often  forgets  how  hard  it  will  be  for  his  readers  to 
understand  it  at  all.  Many  a  phrase  which  has  provided 
a  handle  or  an  obstacle  for  critics,  is  but  the  hopeless 
attempt  of  the  mystic  to  communicate  by  means  of  artistic 
symbols  his  actual  and  supernal  experience  to  unmystical 
men.  Perpetually  we  notice  that  even  his  most  dogmatic 
arguments  are  simply  the  reflection  of  his  own  psycho 
logical  adventures :  that  he  always  proceeds  upon  the 
assumption  that  the  process  "  wrought"  in  him  will  be 
wrought  in  all  other  minds  that  are  "  chosen,"  and  that 
the  new  world  on  which  he  looks  is  indeed  the  one  and 
only  Kingdom  of  Reality. 

What,  then,  was  Paul's  universe?  It  was  a  universe 
soaked  through  and  through  by  the  Presence  of  God : 
that  transcendent-immanent  Reality,  "  above  all,  and 
through  all,  and  in  you  all "  as  fontal  "  Father,"  energis 
ing  "  Son,"  indwelling  "  Spirit,"  in  whom  every  mystic, 
Christian  or  non-Christian,  is  sharply  aware  that  "  we  live 
and  move  and  have  our  being."  l  To  his  extended  con 
sciousness,  as  first  to  that  of  Jesus,  this  Reality  was  more 
actual  than  anything  else — "  God  is  all  in  all."  2  For  him, 
as  long  after  for  Julian  of  Norwich — often  so  Pauline  in 
her  thought — "  as  the  body  is  clad  in  the  cloth  and  the 
flesh  in  the  skin,  and  the  bones  in  the  flesh,  and  the  heart 
in  the  whole,  so  are  we,  soul  and  body,  clad  in  the 
Goodness  of  God,  and  enclosed."  s 

1  Eph.  iv.  6 ;  Acts  xvii.  28.  2  I  Cor.  xv.  28. 

8  Revelations  of  Divine  Love,  cap.  6. 


ST.   PAUL  AND   THE   MYSTIC   WAY     195 

The  one  great  Pauline  principle,  says  Ramsay,  is  this — 
"  only  the  Divine  is  real,  all  else  is  error."  L  Hence,  man 
only  attains  reality  in  so  far  as  the  rhythm  of  his  being 
accords  with  the  great  rhythm  of  God;  in  so  far  as  he  is 
"  in  the  Lord  "  ;  and  in  this  attainment  his  "  salvation  " 
consists.  The  perpetually  recurring  oppositions  between 
"psychic"  and  "spiritual"  existence,  "flesh"  and 
"spirit,"  the  "old  man"  and  the  "new,"  are  Paul's 
ways  of  expressing  the  fundamental  difference  between 
these  two  levels  of  life,  two  qualities  of  consciousness.2 

This  doctrine  is  simply  the  "  Mystery  of  the  Kingdom  " 
as  declared  by  Jesus,  seen  through  another  temperament 
and  re-stated  in  a  form  which  could  be  assimilated  by  the 
Hellenistic  mind.  It  is  the  primal  truth  upon  which  the 
whole  of  Christian  mysticism  is  built.  "  Do  not,"  says 
Paul  to  his  converts,  "  walk  as  the  Gentiles  in  the  vanity 
of  their  mind,  alienated  from  the  life  of  God."  3  Partici 
pation  in  that  life  is  your  one  business,  and  is  achieved 
by  those  for  whom  the  Eternal  Order  is  the  central  fact 
of  life  ;  who  "  walk  not  after  the  flesh  but  after  the 
spirit." 4  Thus,  when  Patmore  wrote,  "  God  is  the 
only  Reality,  and  we  are  real  only  as  far  as  we  are  in 
His  order  and  He  is  in  us,"  5  he  condensed  the  frame 
work  of  Paul's  theology — or  rather  biology — into  one 
vivid  phrase. 

The  conscious  attainment  of  this  reality,  this  intensified 
and  completed  life — this  "  dynamic  growth  in  grace  "— 
is  for  Paul  the  essence  of  Christianity.  It  is  to  be  done 
individually,  by  living  and  growing  along  the  lines  of 
mystical  development  exhibited  by  Jesus — the  "  putting 
on  of  the  New  Man  "  and  slow  attainment  of  full  man 
hood,  the  "  stature  of  Christ " — and  collectively,  by  the 
Church,  in  which  Paul,  with  the  passionate  optimism  of 

1  The  Cities  of  St.  Paul,  p.  12. 

2  Gal.  v.  16  and  vi.  8  ;   I  Cor.  ii.  14,  15  and  rv.  46-49;  Rom.  viii.  4-9. 

3  Eph.  iv.  1 8.  4  Rom.  viii.  4. 

5  The  Rod,  the  Root  and  the  Flower,  "  Magna  Moralia,"  XXII. 

O  2 


196  THE    MYSTIC   WAY 

those  who  see  "  all  creatures  in  God  and  God  in  all 
creatures,"  finds  as  it  were  the  bodying  forth  of  that  new 
ardent  spirit  of  life  which  emerged  in  the  historic  Christ; 
a  vast  new  creation  of  many  members,  serving,  and  con 
trolled  by,  that  head.  This  mystic  church  built  up  of 
mystic  souls,  is  the  crown  of  creation;  the  expression  in 
time  and  space  of  that  new  spiritual  world  which  man 
is  bringing  into  existence.  It  is  the  "  new  thing  "  which 
apocalyptic  writers  saw  in  vision  ;  the  answer  to  the 
riddle  of  life. 

For  Paul,  who  has  himself  a  strong  tendency  to  apoca 
lyptic  speculation,  the  whole  world  of  things — a  world 
which  he  perceives  as  fundamentally  dynamic — is  grow 
ing  and  striving  towards  Perfection.  It  is  vital  through 
and  through  :  vital,  and  therefore  free.  "  Becoming  " 
is  its  primal  attribute  :  there  is  in  it  nothing  static,  nothing 
complete.  Even  the  spirit  of  the  Christian  is  ever  in 
process  of  being  saved.1  The  sacramental  magic  of  a 
later  day,  the  "  One  Act  "  which  transferred  man  from 
the  world  of  nature  to  the  world  of  grace,  has  no  part 
in  the  Pauline  scheme  of  things.  That  outward  going, 
eager,  endless  push  of  life,  "from  lowest  to  highest  a 
mounting  flood  " — God  working  and  willing  within  His 
own  creation  2 — which  opposes  the  downward  falling  tend 
ency  of  matter 3  is  felt  and  known  as  a  fundamental  part  of 
Reality  by  this  great  mystic,  in  whom  it  energised  enthusi 
astically  to  the  bringing  forth  of  "  the  perfection  of  the 
sons  of  God."  Man  and  all  else  in  this  world  is  free 
to  grow,  and  move,  in  either  direction :  up  toward 
Spirit,  Transcendence,  Reality,  a  participation  in  the 
Divine  Order;  which  is  "salvation":  or  down  towards 
Matter,  Degeneracy,  Unreality;  which  is  "  sin  and 
death."  4  All  depends  upon  the  direction  of  his  move 
ment,  the  attitude  of  his  mind;  whether  his  life  be  centred 
about  the  higher  or  the  lower  consciousness — the  "  spirit  " 

1  i  Cor.  i.  1 8  (R.V.).  2  I  Cor.  xv.  10. 

?  Bergson,  U Evolution  creatrice,  p.  292.  4  Rom.  vi.  23. 


ST.   PAUL  AND   THE   MYSTIC   WAY     197 

or  the  "  flesh."  "  For  the  mind  of  the  flesh  is  death  ;  but 
the  mind  of  the  spirit  is  life."  l  There  is  no  third  choice. 
Nothing  stands  still  in  the  Pauline  universe.  Everything 
is  moving,  swiftly  as  the  stars,  either  to  perfection  or 
from  it — is  either  "  perishing  "  or  "  being  saved."  2 

Now,  according  to  the  deep  intuitive  vision  of  Paul — 
a  vision  reinforced  by  his  own  amazing  experience — man, 
in  whom  creation  comes  to  self-consciousness,  and  who 
may,  if  he  will,  participate  in  the  Eternal  Order,  is 
destined,  because  of  that  very  fact,  to  lead  the  Cosmos 
back  again  to  its  bourne.  From  the  Godhead,  "  fount  and 
origin  of  all  Is,"  it  sprang :  thither  it  must  return,  though 
"  with  groaning  and  travailling,"  with  all  the  effort  that 
attends  on  the  process  of  life  and  growth.  The  way  man 
does  this  is  by  growing  in  the  way  that  Jesus  grew,  into  a 
more  complete  maturity,  a  deeper,  richer,  more  profoundly 
active  life :  by  putting  on  "  Divine  Humanity."  Jesus 
was  the  beginning  of  a  new  race,  says  Paul  again  and 
again — a  "fresh  creation,"  "  the  new  Adam,"  "  firstborn 
amongst  many  brethren."  3  He  was  significant  not  only 
in  Himself,  but  as  making  possible,  by  a  sharing  of  His 
mighty  impetus,  the  forward  leap  of  life — "  the  last  Adam 
became  a  Y\iz- giving  spirit "  4 — and  demonstrating  the 
meaning  of  the  whole.  "  For  the  earnest  expectation  of  the 
creation  waiteth  for  the  revealing  of  the  sons  of  God.  For 
the  creation  was  subjected  to  vanity,  not  of  its  own  will, 
but  by  reason  of  him  who  subjected  it,  in  hope  that  the 
creation  itself  also  shall  be  delivered  from  the  bondage  of 
corruption  into  the  liberty  of  the  glory  of  the  children  of 
God.  For  we  know  that  the  whole  creation  groaneth  and 
travailleth  in  pain  together  until  now."  5 

Within  this  dynamic  world,  perpetually  urged  up 
towards  perfection,  yet  always  by  the  process  of  growth — 
"  one  unique  impulse,  contrary  to  the  movement  of 

1  Rom.  viii.  6  (R.V.).  2  i  Cor.  i.  18  (R.V.). 

8  Rom.  viii.  29  (R.V.).  4  I  Cor.  xv.  45. 

5  Rom.- viii.  19-21  (R.V.). 


198  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

matter  and  itself  indivisible  "  1 — the  soul  of  man  is  seen 
by  Paul  as  a  thing  uniquely  susceptible  of  the  divine 
infection  of  reality.  It  can  appropriate  "  grace  "  :  that 
regnant  word  of  the  Pauline  theology,  which  is  but 
another  name  for  the  inflow  of  transcendent  vitality,  the 
action  of  creative  love;  the  "  triumphing  spiritual  power" 
which  all  mystics  feel  and  acknowledge  as  the  source  of 
their  true  being.  "It  is  God  which  worketh  in  you." 
"  By  the  grace  of  God  I  am  what  I  am." 2  Two  centuries 
before  Plotinus,  Paul  knew  as  surely  as  that  great  ecstatic 
that  "  the  Supplier  of  true  life  was  present "  to  those 
whose  attention  was  turned  towards  the  Real,  and  that 
appropriation  of  this  life  had  "  made  him  free."  3 

From  this  consciousness  of  "  grace,"  of  a  veritable 
inflow  from  the  spiritual  order,  and  its  supremacy  for  the 
spirit-life  of  man,  comes  his  favourite  antithesis  between 
those  two  things,  or  qualities  of  consciousness,  which  he 
symbolises,  in  his  poetic  and  suggestive  way,  as  "  the 
law"  and  "Christ."  The  first — "law" — is  an  ethical 
compulsion  laid  upon  the  Self  and  acting  from  without 
inwards.  It  is  a  deliberate  artifice;  the  sign  of  a  dis 
harmony  unresolved,  and  so  a  bondage.  The  second — 
"  Christ  " — is  a  mystical  impulsion.  It  springs  from  the 
very  heart  of  life;  and  is  a  quickening  spirit,  the  sign  of 
a  "  New  Creature,"  4  a  true  change  of  personality,  not 
merely  of  conduct  or  belief.  To  be  "  in  Christ"  is  to  be 
lifted  up  into  harmony  with  the  divine  nature,  by  close 
union  with  that  Transcendent  Personality  who  was  the 
comrade  and  inspiration  of  Paul's  career.  It  is  the  doing 
away  of  that  flame  of  separation  which  keeps  the  human 
spirit  from  its  home.  To  be  under  "  the  law  "  is  to  live 
solitary  behind  the  ramparts  of  personality,  obsessed  by 
the  ceaseless  effort  to  conform  to  a  life  which  is  seen 
but  not  shared. 

"  Justification  by  faith,"  that  most  perverted,  least  com- 
1  Bergson,  op.  cit.y  p.  293.  2  Phil.  ii.  13  ;   I  Cor.  xv.  TO. 

3  Rom.  viii.  2.  4  Gal.  vi.  17. 


ST.   PAUL  AND   THE   MYSTIC   WAY     199 

prehended  of  all  dogmas,  is  an  idea  closely  related  to 
this  vision  of  the  world.  Harsh  and  unreasonable  though 
it  sound  in  our  ears,  it  is  really  an  artistic  image,  half 
poetic  and  half  practical,  by  which  Paul  strove  to  com 
municate  one  of  his  deepest  intuitions,  and  which  springs 
from  the  very  heart  of  his  inner  life.  It  is  the  intellectual 
expression  of  another  inward  experience,  and  represents 
his  sudden  flashing  comprehension  that  the  world  a  man 
lives  in — the  universe  which  he  accepts — is  the  central  fact 
of  his  existence  and  the  best  of  all  indications  of  character. 
It  shows  the  direction  in  which  he  is  moving,  the  sort  of 
creature  he  is  going  to  be;  and  so  infinitely  transcends  in 
importance  and  value  for  life  his  deliberate  and  self- 
chosen  activities  or  "works."  As  "law"  to  "Christ," 
so  "  works  "  to  "  faith  "  :  a  dead  and  limiting  convention, 
set  over  against  participation  in  the  freedom  of  Reality. 

By  "  faith  "  man  centres  himself  in  the  spiritual  order, 
identifies  himself  with  its  interests,  and  thus  justifies 
himself  as  a  spiritual  creation;  for  the  essence  of  Pauline 
faith  is  not  "  belief,"  but  awareness  o/,  surrender  to,  union 
with  the  "  Kingdom " — convinced  consciousness  of  a 
life  lived  in  the  atmosphere  of  God.  Such  faith  as  this 
is  the  test  of  a  man's  wholeness  and  sanity :  it  proves 
that  he  "walks  in  the  Spirit,"  that  there  is  sunshine  in 
his  soul.  It  implies  the  nature  of  his  total  reaction  to 
the  universe,  and  actually  conditions  his  communion  with 
reality — "  We  have  access  by  faith  into  the  grace  wherein 
we  stand."  1  Thus  it  justifies  him  as  a  spiritual  being  in  a 
way  that  no  mere  "  works  "  of  a  deliberate  morality,  no 
obedience  to  a  human  code,  can  ever  do.  This  is  a 
doctrine  which  comes  naturally  to  the  mystic,  whose  tran 
scendent  experience  has  indeed  acquitted,  enlarged  and 
made  him  free : 2  and  wears  for  him — though  for 

1  Rom.  v.  2. 

2  "  Acquittal "  or  "  release  "  is  perhaps  the  most  exact  translation  of  the 
Pauline  "  justification."    For  an  excellent  discussion  of  the  whole  subject 
cf.  Deissmann,  St.  Paul,  p.  145. 


200  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

few  others  —  an  air  of  obviousness,  of  concrete 
certainty. 

Superhuman  aspiration,  then,  "  the  blind  intent  stretch 
ing  towards  God,"  as  the  Cloud  of  Unknowing  says — 
in  fact,  steadfast  attention  to  Reality — Paul  regards  as 
the  primal  necessity.  Slackening  of  such  attention,  con 
cessions  made  to  the  indolence  of  the  lower  nature,  ever 
tending  to  lag  behind  :  this  is  a  betrayal  of  that  holy  Spirit 
of  Life  which  has  the  body  for  its  temple,  a  check  on 
the  process  of  growth;  and  implies  degeneration  or  "  sin." 
All  creation,  he  says  in  Romans,  is  "  gazing  eagerly  as 
if  with  outstretched  neck "  *  towards  that  ultimate  Per 
fection  which  is,  in  respect  of  our  tentative  and  faltering 
consciousness,  "  present  yet  absent,  near  yet  far."  When 
this  Perfection  comes  in  its  wholeness,  and  the  "  King 
dom"  is  established,  then  "all  that  which  is  in  part  shall 
be  done  away."  2 

As  in  the  case  of  Jesus,  Paul's  deep  prophetic  vision  of 
this  Perfection,  his  intuitive  sympathy  with  the  movement 
of  life  towards  some  rapturous  consummation  in  God, 
inevitably  took  an  apocalyptic  form.  With  the  mystics,  he 
looked  forward  to  a  permanent  condition  of  harmony  with 
the  Divine  Life,  the  "  rose-garden  of  union,"  as  the 
necessary  end  of  the  Way;  with  the  prophets,  he  objecti- 
vised  as  a  universal  transformation,  a  sudden  and  imminent 
"coming  with  power,"  the  slow  and  steadfast  change 
which  he  felt  taking  place  at  the  very  heart  of  his  lire. 
The  Pauline  eschatology  is  the  fruit  of  a  collision  between 
this  profound  intuitive  conviction,  and  its  imperfect 
earthly  realisation :  a  collision  taking  place  in  a  mind  of 
strongly  artistic  cast,  which  was  saturated  with  the  myriad 
apocalyptic  fancies  born  of  the  political  miseries  and 


1  Rom.  viii.  19  (Weymouth). 

*  I  Cor.  xiii.  10.  u  But  when,"  says  Tbeologia  Germanica,  "  doth  it 
come  ?  I  say,  when  as  much  as  may  be  it  is  known,  felt  and  tasted  of  the 
soul "  (Tb/o.  Gfr.,  cap.  i). 


ST.   PAUL  AND   THE   MYSTIC   WAY    201 

religious  restlessness  of  the  Jews.1  The  triumph  of  Divine 
Humanity,  he  thought,  was  near.  So  sure  was  he  of  the 
steady  march  of  life  towards  transcendence,  that  he  did 
not  realise  the  slowness  of  the  pace.  That  figure  of  the 
glorified  Jesus,  the  New  Man,  in  whom  all  his  spiritual 
apprehensions  found  their  focus,  must  emerge  soon  into 
the  Time-world,  which  was  waiting  for  "  the  manifesta 
tion  of  the  sons  of  God."  "  Maran  aiha  I  "  "  Our  Lord, 
come!"  he  cries  in  the  language  of  primitive  Christen 
dom,  at  the  end  of  the  first  letter  to  the  Corinthians.2 

But  as  the  years  pass,  with  Paul's  own  growth  in  the 
Mystic  Way  a  change  comes  over  his  eschatology.  As 
the  deified  life  to  which  he  looked  as  the  only  satis 
faction  of  desire,  was  established  within  his  own  spirit; 
as  the  Triumphing  Spiritual  Power  which  "  cometh  not 
with  observation  "  slid  into  the  very  centre  of  his  life, 
and  became  for  him  so  close  a  comrade  that  he  could 
say  of  it,  "  I  live,  yet  not  I,"  he  felt  less  and  less  the  need 
of  any  merely  external  readjustment,  of  a  Liberator  who 
should  "  descend  from  heaven  with  a  shout,  with  the 
voice  of  the  archangel,  and  with  the  trump  of  God."  3 
That  cataclysmic  vision  is  the  fruit  of  a  mind  which  has 
not  yet  unified  itself,  and  looks  for  a  consummation,  a 
reconciling  of  the  world's  disharmonies,  which  it  feels  to 
be  a  part  of  the  Divine  Plan,  yet  cannot  find  within  the 
framework  of  the  Here-and-Now.  It  is  characteristic  of 
Paul's  illuminative  period,  as  it  has  been  since  of  many  a 
mystical  genius  struggling  to  reconcile  the  discordant 
worlds  of  Appearance  and  of  Reality. 

As. he  approaches  the  unitive  life,  Paul  learns — though 
he  never  wholly  abandoned  the  Messianic  hope — that  the 
true  Parousia  is  an  inward  coming  of  the  Spirit : 4  that  the 
rose-garden  of  joy,  the  one  and  only  kingdom  of  Reality, 
is  waiting  at  the  door  of  every  heart.  Gradually,  then, 

1  Cf.  I  Cor.  xv.  20-28,  where  current  "  Messianic  "  ideas  concerning 
the  setting  up  of  the  Kingdom  are  incorporated  into  the  Christian  hope. 

2  I  Cor.  xvi.  22.  3  I  Thess.  iv.  16.  4  Col.  i.  27. 


202  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

the  idea  of  the  uParousia"  gives  way  before  the  idea 
of  the  "  Mystery,"  that  revelation  which  "  hath  been 
kept  in  silence  through  times  eternal,  but  now  is 
manifested5':1  and  the  work  of  the  Christian  missionary 
— which  had  been,  like  that  of  John  the  Baptist,  a  pre 
paring  of  the  way  of  the  Lord — changes  to  something  far 
nearer  the  ideals  of  Jesus  Himself.  Paul  becomes  a 
"steward  of  the  mysteries":2  an  initiator  into  the  new 
direction  of  life,  the  new  state  of  consciousness  prepared 
ufor  them  that  love  Him"  who  are  "sealed  with  the 
Spirit  " — "  the  unsearchable  riches  of  Christ  "  3 — rather 
than  a  forewarner  of  the  imminent  and  apocalyptic 
re-making  of  the  external  world.4 

The  "  Mystery  "  appears  early  in  Paul's  writings  ;  a 
translation  of  his  own  concrete  and  positive  knowledge 
that  the  change  of  mind  and  life  which  he  had  suffered, 
the  purifications  he  had  endured,  had  initiated  him — as 
some  neophyte  at  Eleusis — into  secrets  closed  to  the 
eyes  of  other  men  :  had  effected,  in  a  vital  sense,  the 
regeneration  promised  to  the  adepts  of  the  ancient  cults. 
In  those  cults  he  saw  foreshadowed  the  vital  experiences 
of  the  soul  "in  process  of  being  saved":  the  re-birth, 
the  heightened  perception  of  reality,  even  the  sacramental 
feeding  on  the  Divine  Substance  disclosed  in  the  common 
things  of  sense.  Hence,  with  the  instinct  of  the  mis 
sionary  for  any  image  that  might  bring  his  meaning  home 
to  other  minds,  he  snatched  at  the  language  of  the 
"  Mysteries,"  and  salted  it  with  the  salt  of  Christ.  "  I 
came  unto  you,"  he  says  to  the  Corinthians  in  c.  57, 
"  proclaiming  the  mystery  of  God  "  .  .  .  "  God's  wisdom 
in  a  mystery,  even  the  wisdom  that  hath  been  hidden, 
which  God  foreordained  before  the  worlds  unto  our  glory, 
which  none  of  the  rulers  of  this  world  knoweth  .  .  .  but 

i  Rom.  xvi.  25,  26  (R.V.).  2  i  Cor.  iv.  I.  3  Eph.  iii.  8. 

4  The  Pauline  "  Mystery  "  has  been  studied  in  detail  by  Prof.  P.  Gardner 
in  The  Religious  Experience  of  St.  Paul ;  though  with  more  attention  to 
its  Hellenistic  than  to  its  mystical  aspects. 


ST.   PAUL  AND   THE   MYSTIC  WAY     203 

as  it  is  written,  Things  which  eye  saw  not  and  ear  heard 
not,  and  which  entered  not  into  the  heart  of  man,  what 
soever  God  prepared  for  them  that  love  him.  But  unto 
us  God  revealed  them  through  the  Spirit :  for  the  Spirit 
searcheth  all  things,  yea,  the  deep  things  of  God.  .  .  . 
We  received  not  the  spirit  of  the  world,  but  the  spirit 
which  is  of  God;  that  we  might  know  the  things  which 
are  freely  given  to  us  by  God.  .  .  .  Now  the  natural 
[literally,  psychic]  man  receiveth  not  the  things  of  the 
Spirit  of  God :  for  they  are  foolishness  unto  him :  and 
he  cannot  know  them,  because  they  are  spiritually  judged. 
But  he  that  is  spiritual  judgeth  all  things  and  he  himself 
is  judged  of  no  man.  For,  c  who  hath  known  the  mind 
of  the  Lord  that  he  should  instruct  Him?  '  (Is.  xl.  13). 
But  we  have  the  mind  of  Christ."  l 

"  The  mind  of  Christ "  :  that  new,  peculiar  quality  of 
consciousness  developed  in  Jesus,  whereby  He  had  direct 
and  intuitive  apprehension  of  the  spiritual  world.  Attain 
ment  of  that  mind,  re-birth  into  that  order  of  perception, 
is  the  Pauline  "  Mystery."  All  his  "  doctrine,"  all  his 
arguments,  all  his  high  impassioned  poetry,  are  but  the 
variously  successful  efforts  of  the  artist  in  him  to  dis 
cover  a  medium  whereby  he  may  communicate  this  one 
supremely  actual  thing.  He  has  it  in  virtue  of  his  growth 
in  it :  and  the  one  passion  which  supports  his  strenuous 
career  is  the  desire  and  determination  to  initiate  others, 
that  they  too  may  see  face  to  face.  The  "  Mystery," 
then,  is  but  another  name  for  the  "  secret  of  the  King 
dom  " — the  participation  of  the  "  human "  in  the 
"  divine "  life.  It  is  an  invitation  to  transcendence, 
"  that  we  might  know  the  things  which  are  freely  given 

1  I  Cor.  ii.  I,  7-12,  14-16  (R.V.).  Swete  (The  Holy  Spirit  in  the  New 
Testament,  p.  179)  reads,  "  The  psychic  man  does  not  receive  the  things  of 
the  Spirit  of  God,  for  they  are  folly  to  him  and  he  cannot  take  cognisance 
of  them,  because  they  are  scrutinised  by  spiritual  methods.  But  the 
spiritual  man,  whilst  he  scrutinises  everything,  is  himself  scrutinised 
by  none" — a  translation  which  has  the  advantage  of  elucidating  the 
mystical  character  of  the  passage. 


204  THE  MYSTIC  WAY 

to  us  by  God  "  :  things  obvious  to  the  mystic,  but  which 
purblind  man,  his  eyes  shut  to  Reality,  never  contrives 
to  see.  This  divine  life  Paul,  owing  to  his  bent  of  mind 
and  the  special  visionary  circumstances  connected  with 
his  conversion,  objectified  as  the  continuing,  diffused, 
mystic  life  of  the  historic  but  "  pre-existent "  Christ : 
as,  later,  the  Johannine  mystic  identified  it  alternately 
with  the  Logos  and  the  "  Spirit."  "  Christ-Spirit,"  says 
Baron  von  Hiigel,  "  is  here  the  element  by  which  the 
human  spirit  is  surrounded  and  penetrated,  as  man  is  by 
the  air  which  he  breathes  and  by  which  he  lives."  l  Paul's 
"  Christology  "  is  one  long  attempt  to  convey  something 
of  the  secret  of  this  inward  companionship,  sometimes 
by  personal,  sometimes  by  spatial  imagery :  a  com 
panionship  which  finds  many  a  parallel  in  the  records  of 
religious  genius,  both  within  and  without  the  Christian 
Church.  Union  with  this  supernal  Life — which,  dwelling 
in  him,  constituted  his  true  being,  and  yet  within  which 
his  life  was  hid — he  knew,  as  innumerable  contemplatives 
have  done,  as  the  result  of  putting  in  hand  the  process 
of  mystic  growth.  The  name  which  he  gave  to  it  matters 
little :  the  experience  which  lies  behind  that  impassioned 
and  artistic  language  is  all. 

His  strange  doctrine  of  "  conditional  immortality" — 
for  it  is  clear  that  according  to  the  Pauline  ideas  only 
Christians  will  live  again  "  in  Christ,"  who  is  the  fount 
of  all  spiritual  vitality 2 — is  an  intellectual  deduction  from 
the  fact,  which  he  knows  by  experience,  that  real  Christians 
have  already  that  new  kind  of  life  which  he  calls 
"  pneumatic,"  and  which  is  different  in  kind  from  the 
natural  or  "  psychic  "  life  of  other  men.  It  is  a  vivid, 
crescent,  unconquerable  life,  "  capable  de  culbuter  toutes 
les  resistances,  et  de  franchir  bien  des  obstacles,  meme  peut- 
etre  la  mort."  3  "  Or  life  or  death  or  things  present  or 

1  Eternal  Life,  p.  69. 

2  Rom.  viii.  1 2-14  and  other  passages.     Cf.  P.  Gardner,  op.  cit.,  p.  136. 

3  Bergson,  V Evolution  creatrice,  p.  294. 


ST.  PAUL   AND   THE   MYSTIC   WAY      205 

things  to  come,"  he  says  to  the  Christian  initiate,  "all 
are  yours."  1  Jesus  of  Nazareth  was  the  "  first  fruits  " 
of  this  new  direction  of  life,  the  "new"  Adam,  the 
"  heavenly"  man2:  and  those  who  really  receive  His 
"  gospel,"  turning  to  follow  in  His  tracks,  grow  by  a 
process  at  once  biological  and  spiritual  into  the  heritage 
of  its  powers. 

This  life  it  is,  not  the  seed  whence  grew  the  thorny 
plant  of  ecclesiasticism,  which  Paul  "plants  and  waters" 
in  the  hope  that  God  may  "  give  increase."  3  Never 
theless,  though  he  limits  "  salvation,"  the  attainment  of 
complete  and  permanent  vitality,  to  those  who  are  initi 
ated  into  this  "  mystery  "  of  the  Kingdom,  incorporated 
into  the  "mystical  body"  of  the  New  Man,  he  never 
dwells  upon  the  idea  of  the  "lostness"  of  those  who  are 
"  not  called."  He  lives,  as  do  all  the  great  mystics,  in 
a  positive  world;  all  his  attention  set  upon  Reality,  all 
his  life  a  series  of  responses  to  it.  There  lies  his  interest : 
in  discovering  and  declaring  how  men  grow  in  and 
towards  the  Real — what  the  criterion  whereby  we  may 
judge  of  their  participation  in  the  divine  life.  This 
problem  he  solves — once  more  by  an  appeal  to  pure  ex 
perience — in  the  great  rhapsody  on  Charity  :  *  there  declar 
ing  the  conditions,  and  setting  the  standard,  to  which  the 
whole  of  Christian  mysticism  has  since  striven  to  conform. 

In  the  poem  of  Charity  we  hear  a  music  which  has 
been  beaten  out  in  pain  and  effort  upon  the  anvil  of  Paul's 
own  heart.  The  high  conviction  which  fills  it,  the  lucid 
knowledge  which  it  represents,  had  been  won  at  the  cost 
of  many  battles  with  arrogant  intellect  and  dominant  will. 
He  never  had  the  crystalline  simplicity  of  Jesus.  The 
diversities  of  gifts  which  besiege  the  awakened  conscious 
ness  and  amongst  which  his  travailling  personality  moved, 
the  many  blind  alleys  down  which  life  may  run  on  her 
quest  of  Reality;  these  were  for  him  true  opportunities 

1  i  Cor.  iii.  22.  2  I  Cor.  xv.  46-49. 

3  i  Cor.  iii.  6.  4  I  Cor.  xiii. 


206  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

of  error.  One  feels  that  Paul  had  at  least  considered,  if 
he  had  not  tried,  the  claims  of  all  those  kinds  of  spirit 
uality  which  he  here  contrasts  with  the  one  all-conquering 
claim  of  Heavenly  Love.  Inspired  utterance,  phophetic 
genius,  the  abnormal  powers  which  are  often  exhibited 
by  selves  which  have  attained  to  the  illuminated  state, 
we  know  that  he  possessed.  He  was  naturally  inclined 
to  that  deep  brooding  upon  supernal  mysteries  which  is 
so  attractive  to  the  speculative  intellect.  Practical 
altruism,  untiring  industry,  high  courage  in  bitter  persecu 
tion,  he  had  shown  abundantly.  One  after  another  he 
reviews  them.  Prophet,  ecstatic,  philosopher,  philan 
thropist,  even  martyr — every  "  way  out "  towards  the 
Absolute  which  seems  to  the  self-deluded  human  creature 
to  be  full  of  interest  and  promise,  every  type  of  deliberate 
spirituality — Paul  tests  and  throws  away.  They  are  well 
enough  in  themselves,  gifts  which  may  indeed  be  "  desired 
earnestly  "  :  he  was  no  advocate  of  a  pious  stupidity,  still 
less  of  a  tame  or  indolent  religion.  But  it  is  not  by  such 
means  that  Life  makes  her  great  saltatory  ascents  to 
freedom.  "  A  still  more  excellent  way  show  I  unto  you." 
Radiant  Charity,  that  exquisite,  outflowing  attitude  of 
mind  and  heart,  at  once  so  gentle  and  so  ardent,  which 
is  characteristic  of  the  "  self-naughted  soul " — the  perfect 
state  of  balanced  response  to  God  and  to  Creation  which 
appears  when  the  "remora  of  desire"  is  done  away — 
this  and  this  only  is  to  be  the  test  of  the  mystic  con 
sciousness,  the  condition  of  all  real  spiritual  experience. 
All  else  partakes  of  the  character  of  illusion :  "we  know 
in  part,  and  we  prophesy  in  part."  Only  by  heavenly  love 
can  man  enter  into  direct  communion  with  Reality;  only 
by  its  dynamic  power  will  he  raise  up  the  temple  in  which 
that  Reality  can  make  its  home.  "Knowledge  puffeth 
Up — love  buildeth  up,"  l  says  Paul  the  craftsman,  with 
the  craftsman's  eye  for  the  difference  between  shoddy  and 
solid  work:  and  here  all  the  great  mystics  agree  with 

1  I  Cor.  viii.  I. 


ST.   PAUL   AND   THE  MYSTIC   WAY     207 

him.  "  Whoso  then  will  hear  angel's  song,"  says  Hilton, 
"and  not  be  deceived  by  feigning  of  himself  nor  by 
imagination,  nor  by  the  illusion  of  the  enemy,  him 
behoveth  for  to  have  perfect  Charity,  and  that  is  when  all 
vain  love  and  dread,  vain  joy  and  sorrow,  is  cast  out  of 
the  heart,  so  that  it  love  nothing  but  God,  nor  joyeth  nor 
sorroweth  nothing  but  in  God,  or  for  God.  Whoso  might 
by  the  grace  of  God  go  this  way,  he  should  not  err."  l 

Amidst  the  confusions  and  disappointments  of  a  know 
ledge  and  a  prophecy  that  is  "  in  part,"  the  betrayals  of 
an  intellect  struggling  with  something  that  it  cannot 
grasp,  the  steady  onward  push  of  self-surrendered  love 
"  never  faileth "  :  and  progress  in  it  is  the  only  trust 
worthy  sign  that  man  the  spiritual  creature  is  "  growing 
straight."  Even  hope,  the  convinced  and  rapturous 
expectation  of  the  Perfect,  even  the  wide  clear  vision  of 
faith,  gives  place  to  this  living  spirit  of  communion;  this 
humble  and  glad  self-mergence  in  the  mighty  stream  of 
life.  "  Now  abideth  faith,  hope  and  charity,  these  three, 
but  the  greatest  of  these  is  charity." 

The  "  new  creature,"  in  virtue  of  his  change  of  mind, 
is  to  find  all  things  in  God,  and  God  in  all  things.  He 
is  there  too,  within  that  divine  atmosphere — for  him,  the 
primal  reality — and,  sharing  it,  seeing  all  things  transfused 
by  it,  must  necessarily  reflect  and  impart  the  celestial 
sunshine  which  he  has  received. 

Paul  put  this  truth  in  the  forefront  of  his  teaching. 
From  him  it  has  descended  through  the  lives  and  works 
of  the  great  mystics  ;  which  do  but  gloss  this  one 
declaration  of  the  mighty  genius  who  claimed— not 
without  reason — participation  in  "  the  mind  of  Christ." 
To  all  of  them  the  difficult  way  of  their  growth  is  a 
discipline  of  love;  an  education  and  advancement  in  it. 
Love,  says  Augustine,  is  the  weight  of  the  soul,  which 
draws  it  to  its  home  in  God.  The  angels  who  are  nearest 

1  Walter  Hilton,  The  Song  of  Angels.  Printed  in  The  Cell  of  Self- 
knowledge,  edited  by  E.  Gardner,  p.  68. 


208  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

to  the  One,  says  Dionysius  the  Areopagite,  are  the 
seraphim,  aflame  with  perfect  love.  By  the  four  degrees 
of  burning  charity,  says  Richard  of  St.  Victor,  the  soul 
moves  to  that  Spiritual  Marriage  in  which  it  gives  new 
life  to  the  world.  For  St.  Bernard,  and  for  the  author  of 
the  Cloud  of  Unknowing,  the  love  of  God,  truly  com 
prehended,  embraces  the  whole  activity  of  man.  By  the 
seven  steps  of  ever-growing  love,  says  Ruysbroeck,  we 
mount  up  to  that  consummation  in  which  we  are  burned 
up  like  live  coals  on  the  hearth  of  His  infinite  charity — 
that  Fire  of  Love  which  transmuted  Richard  Rolle  to 
the  state  of  "  heavenly  song.55  For  Julian  of  Norwich  the 
revelation  of  Reality  was  a  "  revelation  of  divine  love  "  : 
for  St.  John  of  the  Cross,  a  rapt  absorption  in  love  is 
the  goal  of  spirit's  transcendence.1  "  Oh,  dear  Charity!  " 
says  Rolle,  "  he  that  on  earth,  whatever  else  he  may  have, 
has  thee  not,  is  made  naught.  He  truly  that  in  thee  is 
busy,  to  joy  is  soon  lift  above  earthly  things.  Thou 
enterest  boldly  the  bed-chamber  of  the  Everlasting  King; 
thou  only  art  not  ashamed  to  take  of  Christ.  .  .  .  Oh,  merry 
love,  strong,  ravishing,  burning,  wilful,  stalwart,  un- 
quenched,  that  brings  all  my  soul  to  thy  service  and  suffers 
it  to  think  of  nothing  but  thee.  Thou  claimest  for  thyself 
all  our  life,  all  that  we  savour,  all  that  we  are."  2 

Not  only  those  who  "  call  themselves  Christians,"  but 
others  who  have  submitted  to  this  growth,  from  Plotinus 
the  metaphysician  to  Blake  the  artist-seer,  share  Paul's 
conviction  that  Love  is  enough.3  "  Every  moment  the 
voice  of  Love  is  coming  from  left  and  right,"  says  the 
Sufi.  "  'Tis  Love  and  the  lover  that  live  to  all  eternity; 
set  not  thy  heart  on  aught  else :  'tis  only  borrowed." 4 
"  They  come  with  their  laws  and  their  codes  to  bind  me 
fast,"  says  the  Indian  mystic,  echoing  the  Pauline  vindica- 

1  Canticle.     Stanza  26. 

2  Richard  Rolle,  The  Mending  of  Life,  cap.  II. 

3  Cf.  supra,  Cap.  I,  §  I. 

4  Jalalu  'ddin,  Divan  (Nicholson's  trans.,  pp.  33,  151). 


ST.   PAUL   AND  THE   MYSTIC   WAY    209 

tion  of  the  supremacy  of  "  faith  "  over  "  works,"  "  but 
I  evade  them  ever;  for  I  am  only  waiting  for  Love  to 
give  myself  up  at  last  into  his  hands."  * 

All  these  have  felt  life's  new  direction  and  responded 
to  it;  and  like  Paul,  who  received  that  new  dower  of 
vitality  under  forms  of  intensest  radiance,  have  learned 
to  pass  it  on  to  the  world  which  "  earnestly  expects  "  its 
manifestation,  as  the  Love  which  seeketh  not  its  own. 

1  Rabindra  nath  Tagore,  Gitanjali,  17. 


CHAPTER   IV 
THE   JOHANNINE    MYSTIC 

"  What  I  tell  you  in  darkness,  that  speak  ye  in  light :  and  what  ye  hear 
in  the  ear,  that  preach  ye  upon  the  house-tops." — Matt.  x.  27. 

Sed  quid  hujusmodi  secreta  colloquia  proferimus  in  publicum  ?  cur 
ineffabiles  et  inenarrabiles  affectus  verbis  communibus  conamur  exprimere? 
Inexpert!  talia  non  intelligunt,  nisi  ea  expressius  legant  in  libro  experientiae, 
quos  ipsa  doceat  unctio. — Scala  Claustralium,  cap.  6. 

"  As  the  vintages  of  earth 
Taste  of  the  sun  that  riped  their  birth, 
We  know  what  never  cadent  Sun 
Thy  lamped  clusters  throbbed  upon, 
What  plumed  feet  the  winepress  trod; 
Thy  wine  is  flavorous  of  God." 

(FRANCIS  THOMPSON.) 


P  ? 


A    GOSPEL    OF    EXPERIENCE 

THE  new  kind  of  life,  new  form  of  consciousness  which 
blazed  into  perfect  expression  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and 
found  another  thoroughfare  in  Paul,  can  still  be  studied 
in  both  these  great  examples  under  the  all-revealing  cir 
cumstances  of  growth.  There  we  see  it  germinate  and 
develop.  Differing  enormously  in  power,  in  circum 
stances  and  temperament,  each  of  these  shows  to  us  as  in 
a  mirror  a  steady  process  of  organic  change  taking  place; 
a  steady  approximation  of  the  human  consciousness  to 
perfect  union  with  Spiritual  Reality.  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
from  the  first  uniquely  aware  of  huge  changes  and  ascents 
now  begun  for  the  race,  and  of  His  own  great  part  in 
them,  objectivised  some  at  least  of  these  changes  as 
external  and  catastrophic  transformations  about  to  take 
place  in  the  world  of  things.  In  the  course  of  His 
passionate  efforts  to  express  and  make  plain  His  un 
equalled  intuition  of  the  Eternal  Order,  He  poured  the 
new  wine  of  perfect  experience  of  God  into  the  old  bottles 
of  Jewish  apocalyptic.  Paul,  His  direct  descendant — 
inheritor  too  of  those  current  apocalyptic  and  eschato- 
logical  ideas,  the  feverish  expectations  of  the  time — 
came  before  his  earthly  life  was  ended  to  another  reading 
of  this  new  movement  of  life.  He  saw  it  at  last,  not  as  a 
passionate  river  rushing  quickly  to  the  sea ;  but  as  a  steady, 
growing,  branching  stream  that  should  water  and  fertilise 
all  the  earth.  The  Christian  missionary  became  for  Paul 
not  a  herald  of  the  Last  Things,  but  an  initiator  into  the 
Mystic  Way,  the  parent  of  a  new  life.  His  churches  were 
his  spiritual  family,  for  which  he  "  travailed  in  birth  "  ; 
that  they  might  be  re-born,  as  he  hoped,  into  the  Kingdom 

213 


214  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

of  Reality.  He  is  the  typical  Christian  mystic  of  the 
second  generation,  and  performed  the  necessary  function 
of  "  spreading  the  news,"  scattering  the  seed,  that  it 
might  reach  those  capable  of  receiving  it. 

Plainly,  even  from  the  days  of  Jesus,  that  seed  had 
most  often  fallen  upon  sterile  ground.  Amongst  the  first 
disciples  only  a  "  little  flock  "  were  found  able  to  inherit 
the  mystical  "  Kingdom  "  :  and  these  were  held  within 
its  atmosphere  rather  by  the  superabundant  vitality  of 
their  Master,  the  infection  of  His  transcendental  con 
sciousness,  than  by  their  own  inherent  power  of  response 
to  those  high  rhythms  of  Reality  which  He  declared  to 
them.  Paul's  wide  net  swept  into  his  churches,  along 
with  those  rare  selves  truly  and  temperamentally  "  called 
to  be  saints,"  a  host  of  spiritual  parasites,  hearers  and  not 
doers  of  the  "Word";  who  lacked  the  vitality,  the 
peculiar  psychic  organisation,  the  power  of  receptivity, 
which  is  necessary  to  mystical  growth.  The  energising 
Spirit  of  Life  cannot  be  communicated  in  a  sermon. 
Hence  the  greater  number  of  Paul's  converts  quickly 
degenerated  into  mere  formal  believers,  once  the  stimulus 
of  his  great  personality  was  withdrawn.1  Thus  the  dis 
tinction  between  the  "  inner  and  the  outer  church,"  so 

1  This  is  a  situation  constantly  repeated  in  the  history  of  Christian 
mysticism.  The  great  mystic,  always  an  imparter  of  more  abundant 
life,  is  generally  surrounded  by  a  group  of  spiritual  children,  in  whom  he 
seems  able  to  evoke  something  of  his  own  peculiar  consciousness  of 
Reality.  We  see  this  in  St.  Francis,  St.  Catherine  of  Siena,  the  Friends 
of  God,  St.  Ignatius,  St.  Teresa.  But  when  his  immediate  influence  is 
removed,  this  consciousness  soon  lapses ;  except  in  the  case  of  those  who 
themselves  possess  the  "  genius  for  transcendence  "  and  are  willing  to 
endure  the  pain  and  stress  incidental  to  its  development.  Thus  the 
early  Franciscans,  differing  widely  in  temperament,  were  "  fragrant " 
one  and  all  with  the  exquisite  spirituality  of  Francis,  so  long  as  they 
remained  within  the  field  of  his  personal  power ;  but  quickly  lost  it  after 
his  death.  Thus  in  Teresa's  lifetime  her  convents  were  full  of  true 
contemplatives,  but  soon  degenerated  to  the  common  level  of  contem 
porary  religion  after  their  founder's  death.  Yet  each  great  wave,  though 
it  ebbs,  has  carried  the  mounting  flood  a  little  higher  up  the  shore. 


THE   JOHANNINE  MYSTIC  215 

strongly  marked  in  the  Synoptic  gospels,  was,  if  not 
acknowledged,  at  once  established;  the  outer  church  of 
new  creed,  the  inner  church  of  new  creatures,  of  organic 
change  and  growth.  We  who  are  studying,  not  a 
"  system,"  but  a  new  movement  of  the  free  spirit  of  life 
toward  the  transcendence  that  it  seeks,  must — even  in 
this  first  eager  period  of  its  emergence — sharply  distinguish 
"  Christian  Mysticism,"  the  transcendental  yet  biological 
secret  of  Jesus,  from  the  compromise  which  is  commonly 
called  "  Christianity."  Within  the  formal  system,  the 
quickly-deposited  outer  shell,  that  "New  Race,"  the 
inheritors  of  the  secret,  never  failed :  though  often  un 
noticed  and  always  misunderstood.  The  thoroughfare  of 
the  spiritual  life  was  tortuous  and  narrow,  but  the  living 
water  never  ceased  to  flow.  No  doubt  many,  perhaps 
most,  of  those  through  whom  it  passed  are  unknown  to 
us.  But  enough  are  known,  through  their  lives  and  their 
writings,  to  enable  us  to  establish  the  continuance  and  ever 
richer,  deeper  growth  of  the  mystical  life-force  at  work 
within  humanity :  the  development  of  the  new  "  seed  " 
within  the  world,  destined  to  serve  the  interests  of  the 
Divine  Plan. 

The  ideal  of  "  New  Life  "  was  always  present,  always 
ready  to  break  out  wherever  it  could  cut  its  way.  The 
Christian  prophet  had  it  in  his  blood :  and  the  prophetic 
type  dominated  the  early  Church.  Even  for  the  violently 
eschatological  imagination  of  the  writer  who  composed 
the  Christian  parts  of  the  "  Apocalypse  of  St.  John,"  the 
real  Parousia,  the  consummation  to  which  all  must  tend, 
is  the  free  appropriation  of  more  abundant  life.  To  this 
the  Spiritual  Order  and  its  "  bride,"  the  new  Christian 
society,  is  calling  the  race.  "  And  he  showed  me  a  river 
of  water  of  life,  proceeding  out  of  the  throne  of  God. 
.  .  .  And  the  Spirit  and  the  Bride  say,  Come.  And  he  that 
heareth,  let  him  say  Come.  And  he  that  is  athirst,  let  him 
come :  he  that  will,  let  him  take  the  water  of  life  freely."1 
1  Rev.  xxii.  i,  17  (R.V.). 


216  THE  MYSTIC  WAY 

This,  says  Harnack  most  truly,  and  not  the  warlike 
operations  of  the  Conquering  Messiah,  is  the  "  last  word  " 
of  Christian  apocalyptic.1 

Plainly,  from  the  time  of  St.  Paul's  last  writings  the 
power  of  that  apocalyptic,  its  credibility  as  a  definite  fore 
cast  of  immediate  events,  was  waning.  It  began  to  be 
clear  as  the  years  passed  that  the  "  Kingdom  "  was  not 
destined  to  come  with  the  swiftness  and  violence  which 
formed  part  of  the  old  crude  Messianic  dream.  If  the 
"  water  of  life  "  were  free  indeed,  it  must  be  outpoured 
in  its  fulness  within  the  Here-and-Now.  Not  some  crisis 
in  the  external  world,  but  a  readjustment  within  the  indi 
vidual  consciousness,  must  forge  the  missing  link  between 
Appearance  and  Reality.  In  the  letters  of  his  last  period 
Paul  taught  this  as  well  as  he  could.  Thirty  or  forty 
years  after  his  death,  when  the  Synoptic  gospels,  with  their 
emphasis  on  the  local  and  eschatological  side  of  the  vision 
of  Jesus,  were  already  in  circulation,  a  book  appeared  in 
which  the  deepest  and  richest  experience  of  the  Christian 
mystic  found  once  for  all  their  supreme  literary  expression, 
and  established  themselves  as  the  central  facts  of  the 
Christian  "  revelation."  That  book  is  the  Fourth  Gospel 
of  the  New  Testament  canon,  traditionally  attributed  to 
the  Apostle  St.  John ;  and  depending  from  it,  and  com 
pleting  its  doctrine,  is  the  short  letter  called  his  "  First 
Epistle." 

This  is  no  place  for  a  discussion  of  the  so-called  "  Johan- 
nine  Problem  "  :  that  is  to  say,  the  question  of  the  author 
ship  and  provenance  of  these  powerful  and  mysterious 
writings.  It  is  unlikely  that  this  problem  will  ever  be 
solved.  But  there  is  a  consensus  of  opinion  amongst  the 
best  critics  to  the  effect  that  the  Fourth  Evangelist  must 
have  been  a  Christian  Jew  familiar  with  Alexandrian 
religious  idealism : 2  that  he  probably  lived  at  Ephesus  in 

1  Harnack,  Militia  Chris ti,  p.  1 1. 

2  The  relations  of  the  Fourth  Evangelist  to  Alexandrian  thought  have 
been    worked    out    in  great   detail    by  Holtzmann,    NeuUstamentlichg 
Tbeologie,  Vol.  II.  pp.  409  et  seq. 


THE  JOHANNINE  MYSTIC  217 

the  first  years  of  the  second  century :  and  that  his  gospel 
is  in  no  sense  a  historical,  but  a  poetic  and  devotional 
book.  It,  more  than  any  other  writing  in  the  New  Testa 
ment,  bears  the  mark  of  prophetic  inspiration :  but  the 
many  proved  inaccuracies  and  impossibilities  of  its  narra 
tives,  the  wide  difference  between  its  portrait  of  Jesus  and 
that  given  by  the  Synoptics,  the  curiously  unearthly 
atmosphere  which  pervades  it,  all  tend  to  contradict  the 
tradition  that  it  was  composed  by  a  personal  friend  of  the 
historic  Christ.1  The  First  Epistle,  if  not  written  by  the 
author  of  the  Gospel,  was  certainly  the  work  of  a  pupil 
saturated  with  his  spirit.  It  may  then  be  regarded  as 
immediately  dependent  on  his  teaching,  and  ultimately 
upon  the  inner  experience  whence  that  teaching  arose. 

The  fine  crop  of  contradictory  theories  as  to  the  mean 
ing  and  aim  of  this  most  difficult  and  fascinating  of  books 
tend  not  to  enlightenment,  but  to  mutual  destruction.2 

1  Cf.  H.  J.  Holtzmann,  Neutestamentliche  Theologie,  2nd  ed.,Vol.  II.;  A. 
Julicher,  Introduction  to  the  New  Testament;  A.^Loisy,  Le  Quatridme 
fcvangile  (Paris,  1903)  ;  J.  Reville,  Le  Quatrieme  Evangile  (Paris,  1901) ; 
F.  C.  Burkitt,  The  Gospel  History  and  its  Transmission  (Edinburgh,  1906) ; 
Baron  F.  von  Hiigel  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannic tf,Vol.  XV.  pp.  452-457, 
and  the  same  writer's  Eternal  Life  (1912),  pp.  73-80.     The  best  defence 
of  the  traditional  view  is  Dr.  Drummond's  brilliant  Enquiry  into  the 
Character  and  Authorship  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  (London,  1903) ;  but  even 
here,  though  the  Apostolic  authorship  of  the  book  is  considered  probable, 
the  unhistorical  character  of  the  narrative  and  discourses  is  taken  for 
granted,  a  paradox  not  easy  to  accept.     It  must  be  remembered  that  the 
attribution  of  this  book  to  the  Apostle  St.  John  involves  not  merely 
his  removal  from  Jerusalem  to  Ephesus  in  extreme  old  age,  which  is 
possible  though  unauthenticated;  but  a  complete  and  incredible  change 
of  mind  at  the  same  advanced  period  of  life,  from  those  narrow  Jewish- 
Christian  ideas  and  crude  apocalyptic  hopes  which  are  attributed  to  him 
in  the  Synoptics  and  in  Acts,  to  that  Pauline  universalism  which  he  had 
always  opposed.   For  John  the  Apostle,  as  Paul  and  the  writer  of  Acts 
knew  him,  the  Christian  Church  was  a  Jewish  sect  expecting  the  imminent 
return  of  the  national  Messiah.     For  the  author  of  the  Fourth  Gospel 
it  was  a  community  of  "  twice-born  "  souls,  regenerated  by  the  touch  of 
a  metaphysical  Reality. 

2  For  instance,  Weizsacker  thinks  that  it  was  written  to  uphold  the 
authority  of  St.  John  as  against  that  of  St.  Peter ;  Wernle,  as  a  "  tract 


218  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

From  their  wreck,  and  from  an  unprejudiced  examination 
of  the  book  itself,  one  fact  seems  to  emerge :  that  its 
power,  its  daring  originality,  and  its  unique  characteristics 
can  only  be  explained  as  the  fruit  of  a  profound  inward 
experience,  an  experience  so  intense  as  to  seem  to  the  self 
who  had  it  far  more  deeply  true  than  any  merely  external 
event.  It  is  not  a  tract,  it  is  not  a  biography,  it  is  not  a 
controversial  document.  Its  author,  though  his  mind 
was  steeped  in  the  theology  of  St.  Paul,  and  perfectly 
familiar  with  the  Jewish-Hellenistic  philosophy  popular 
in  his  day,  was  primarily  a  mystic  seer.  Incident  is  only 
valuable  to  him  in  so  far  as  it  is  the  expression  of  super- 
sensual  truth;  the  past  is  sacred  to  him  because  it  fore 
shadows  the  present  fruition  of  Reality.  That  which  he 
gives  to  us  is  no  historical  "  tradition  " — Johannine  or 
other — though  sometimes  he  expresses  it  by  means  of 
traditional  forms.  It  is  the  record  of  a  new  kind  of  life 
breaking  out  into  the  empirical  order :  a  life  which  this 
Evangelist  knows  because  he  has  received  it  in  its  fulness, 
has  been  "  born  again  "  to  a  new  growth  and  a  new  world. 
In  him  we  see  the  reaction  of  a  new  kind  of  temperament 
to  that  same  stimulus  which  put  St.  Paul  on  the  Mystic 
Way;  the  first  appearance  of  certain  phenomena  destined 
to  be  common  in  the  mystical  experience  of  Christendom, 
but  characteristic  of  the  kind  of  response  made  by  artistic 
and  prophetic  natures,  rather  than  those  of  the  active  and 
volitional  type,  to  the  impact  of  spiritual  reality. 

Paul  showed  step  by  step,  almost  year  by  year,  the 
growth  that  was  taking  place  within  his  consciousness : 
the  inpouring  dower  of  new  vitality  received  by  him,  the 
building  of  that  "  top  storey  "  of  human  personality  which 
touches  the  transcendent  sphere.  His  letters  are  revela- 

for  the  times  "  against  Gnosticism ;  Jiilicher,  as  a  Christian  apologetic 
against  the  anti-Christian  propaganda  of  the  Jews ;  Pfleiderer,  to  mediate 
between  Catholic  and  Gnostic  theology;  Brandt,  to  oppose  the  narrow 
ecclesiasticism  of  the  Petrine  Church ;  Abbott,  as  a  deliberate  attempt  at 
"  indirect  biography." 


THE   JOHANNINE   MYSTIC  219 

tions  of  interior  activity;  the  difficult  cutting  of  fresh 
paths,  the  ecstatic  contemplation  of  fresh  landscapes,  the 
breakdown  of  the  old  order,  the  establishment  of  the  new. 
In  the  Fourth  Gospel  we  see  nothing  of  this  "process 
of  becoming,"  though  the  life  presented  is  the  Pauline  life 
mirrored  in  a  different  temperament.1  This  book  is  written 
from  the  standpoint  of  one  in  whom  the  "  great  work  " 
of  readjustment  is  already  accomplished;  who  has  "  entered 
the  Kingdom  "  and  knows  himself  the  member  of  a  new 
order,  inhabited  by  a  new  life.  "  Of  His  fulness  we  have 
all  received,"  says  John,2  addressing  his  ideal  audience 
of  fellow-mystics :  of  those  who  have  been  re-born  "  of 
the  Spirit "  into  the  Kingdom  of  Reality.  Here  we  have 
in  fact  not  the  historical,  but  the  eternal  "  Gospel,"  seen 
in  vision  by  a  great  spiritual  genius  who  had  realised  in 
its  deepest  completest  sense — as  the  Synoptics  had  not — 
the  meaning  of  Christianity.  This  meaning,  this  secret, 
he  knew — as  men  know  the  secrets  of  love — with  a  com 
pleteness  far  beyond  the  fragmentary  resources  of  speech. 
Only  by  oblique  suggestion  could  he  convey  them  to  us : 
by  evoking  in  us  something  of  his  own  intuitive  power. 
In  the  fact  that  he  is  able  to  do  this,  in  a  degree  unique  in 
literature,  lies  the  source  of  his  immortal  power  and  charm. 
Behind  all  his  artistic  imagery,  all  his  prophetic  rhapsodies, 
as  behind  the  music  of  the  poet,  we  can  discern  the  "  pres 
sure  of  the  Spirit "  ;  the  deeper  mind  struggling  to  give 
utterance  to  its  perception  of  Reality.  His  work  is  not 
allegorical,  as  some  critics  have  maintained,  but  sacra 
mental  :  raising  to  its  highest  power  an  essential  character 
of  all  great  art.  The  difficulty  of  criticising  such  a 
document  is  the  old  difficulty  which  is  inherent  in  all 

1  "  The  greatest  monument  of  most  genuine  appreciation  of  St.  Paul's 
mysticism,"  says  Deissmann,  "  is  the  Gospel  and  the  Epistles  of  St.  John  " 
(St.  Paul,  p.  133). 

2  I  retain  for  convenience'  sake  this  traditional  name,  which  may  \*ell 
be  that  of  the  actual  author.     "  John  "  was  a  common  name  in  Christian 
circles. 


220  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

mystical  literature.  The  sword  of  John's  spirit  is  cutting 
through  experience  in  a  new  direction;  and  he  is  trying 
to  describe  some  of  its  operations,  the  new  tracts  of  reality 
it  lays  bare,  in  the  language  which  we  have  invented  to 
serve  the  ordinary  jog-trot  piety  of  the  normal  man. 
Worse,  since  he  wrote  generations  of  sentimentalists  have 
degraded  his  vivid  phrases  to  the  purposes  of  their  own 
religion.  Hence,  few  of  us  can  now  come  near  any 
accurate  conception  of  the  nature  of  John's  passionate 
communion  with  that  Reality  which  he  called  the  "  Logos- 
Christ,"  or  guess  the  richness  and  colour  of  the  universe 
in  which  such  a  consciousness  as  his  is  immersed.  Every 
phrase  that  he  uses,  every  scene  which  he  chooses  to  repre 
sent,  is  to  him  a  little  human  symbol  which  conveys  the 
substance  of  some  divine  and  eternal  fact.  Men,  fighting 
over  the  tendency  or  historicity  of  the  incidents  in  this 
book,  have  but  fought  over  the  form  of  the  chalice,  the 
composition  of  the  bread,  whereby  John  was  concerned  to 
communicate  the  Body  and  Vitality  of  his  God. 

This  he  could  do  only  in  so  far  as  he  had  himself 
partaken  of  it :  as  the  priest  at  the  Christian  altar  must 
first  be  fed  before  he  gives  the  Divine  Mysteries  to  other 
men.  Hence,  as  behind  the  little  vivid  tract  of  conscious 
ness  there  lies  the  immense  region  of  our  psychic  life,  so 
behind  the  words  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  there  seems  to  lie 
one  of  the  most  complete  of  all  experiences  of  the  limit 
less  u  Kingdom  of  Heaven  "  :  an  experience  not  only  of 
new  birth,  of  struggle,  of  attainment,  but  of  that  high 
permanent  life  of  union,  that  impassioned  and  loving  self- 
mergence  in  the  universal  life,  in  which  the  "  new 
creature  "  feels  himself  to  be  a  "  branch  "  of  the  great 
tree  which  Life  is  building  up:  humble,  yet  exalted; 
though  finite,  a  partaker  of  the  Infinite;  energised,  not  by 
his  own  separate  strength,  but  by  the  sap  which  flows 
through  the  Whole. 


n 

THE    LOGOS-LIFE    IN    VOICE    AND    VISION 

THE  theme  of  John's  book,  then,  is  the  real  meaning 
of  the  career  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  as  felt  and  known  by 
a  soul  in  closest  sympathy  with  Him.  He  saw  in  that 
career  the  clear  emergence  in  the  Here-and-Now  of  the 
Divine  Nature  ;  the  sudden  and  perfect  self-expression 
of  the  creative  Spirit  of  God,  in  and  through  humanity; 
the  path  of  intensest  life  mapped  out  for  the  race.  For 
Mark,  Jesus  represented  a  national  fulfilment;  for  John, 
the  triumph  of  an  eternal  principle,  latent  in  the  Universe, 
and  now  manifested  before  the  eyes  of  men.  As  he  puts 
it  in  the  language  of  the  current  religious  idealism- 
language  which  his  intellectual  equals  were  bound  to 
understand — "  The  Logos  was  made  flesh  and  dwelt 
among  us." 

The  fluid  and  poetic  notion  of  the  "  Logos  "  which  he 
shared  with  contemporary  philosophy,  enabled  John  to 
present  it  in  his  gospel  as  something  which  is  at  once 
"  cosmic  "  and  "  personal."  For  him  it  is  the  Creative 
Principle  itself :  "  all  things  were  made  by  Him,  and 
without  Him  was  not  anything  made  that  was  made."  1 
Yet  in  the  historic  Christ  this  Spirit  of  Life  is  seen 
"  in  a  point "  :  as  Julian  of  Norwich  saw  God.  Hence 
the  Johannine  Logos  meets  the  two  great  demands  of  the 
mystical  consciousness :  which  must,  as  we  have  seen,  find 
in  its  Deity  both  cerchio  and  imago,  the  infinite  and  the 
definite ;  an  opportunity  for  intimate  and  loving  com 
munion,  and  for  limitless  outgoing  expansion — complete 
self-loss  in  the  All. 

The  Logos,  which  is  in  essence  the  energetic  expression 


1  John  i.  3. 

221 


222  THE   MYSTIC  WAY 

of  the  Divine  Nature,  creative  Spirit  ever  seeking  to 
penetrate  and  mould  the  material  world,  he  describes  as 
Light  struggling  with  darkness,  as  the  "  Life  of  men," 
pouring  itself  out  from  the  fountain  of  Godhead  like 
"  living  water."  It  is  the  Bread  which  feeds  man,  the 
Paraclete  which  perpetually  helps  and  enlightens  him,  the 
Door  through  which  finite  returns  to  infinite;  the  living, 
growing  Vine  of  which  men  are  but  the  branches ;  and  at 
the  same  time  the  personal  Son  of  God,  the  Saviour 
and  Shepherd  of  Souls.  This  richly-various  manifesta 
tion  of  Eternal  Reality,  he  says,  broke  out  through  man 
kind  in  its  perfect  and  "  saving  "  form  in  the  person  of 
Jesus  of  Nazareth.  There  the  divine  energy  found  its 
perfect  thoroughfare,  and  appeared  "  in  the  flesh."  1 

But  the  Logos-doctrine  which  John  bequeathed  to  the 
Christian  family  is  not,  like  that  of  Philo,  philosophic  and 
speculative.  It  has  its  origin  in  profound  experience, 
rather  than  in  dialectic :  represents  knowledge  won  in 
those  sudden  moments  of  lucidity  which  are  the  reward 
of  the  mystic's  steadfast  attention  to  God.  It  has,  then, 
the  quality  of  a  mystical,  rather  than  a  metaphysical, 
diagram  of  Reality :  comes  to  us  highly  charged  with 
feeling,  full  of  melody,  radiant  with  colour  and  light. 

1  This  multiple  view  of  the  Logos  is  found  in  Philo,  and  was  common 
in  and  before  his  day.  The  Rev.  C.  Martindale,  S.J.  (in  The  Month, 
Jan.  and  Feb.  1912)  has  collected  a  number  of  examples  showing 
how  fluid  was  the  notion  which  lay  behind  this  term.  Zeus,  Pan, 
Eros,  Heracles,  "  the  incarnation  of  effort,"  Hermes,  "  the  messenger  of 
God  to  man  "  were  all,  at  one  time  or  another,  regarded  as  personi 
fications  of  the  Logos.  For  Philo,  the  Logos  is  manifested  in  the  flesh 
in  Moses  and  Elijah.  He  is  also  Truth,  Conscience,  the  Inspirer  of  all 
Good,  the  heavenly  Food  and  Drink,  the  Initiator  into  the  higher  life, 
the  Pneuma  or  Divine  Spirit.  More,  the  personal  Shepherd  of  Souls, 
and  the  Firstborn  of  the  Sons  of  God  (cf.  Reville,  Le  Quatrieme  Evangilc, 
p.  92,  where  all  the  references  are  given).  For  Plutarch,  who  was 
probably  contemporary  with  the  Fourth  Evangelist,  God  gives  matter 
life  and  meaning  by  impressing  it  with  His  own  Logos  (Martindale, 
op.  cit.f  p.  26).  Thus  John  found  ready  to  his  hand  a  mass  of  poetic 
symbolism  which  he  "  baptised  into  Christ "  and  used  almost  without 
alteration  as  a  medium  wherewith  to  tell  his  message  to  the  world. 


THE   JOHANNINE   MYSTIC  223 

For  John,  as  for  Clement  after  him,  the  Logos  is  a 
principle  of  gladness,  a  "  new  song."  *  Hence,  the  heart 
of  his  mighty  vision  is  the  idea,  not  of  impersonal  Divine 
Energy,  but  of  personal  Divine  Love,  the  eager,  generous 
outflowing  of  the  Spiritual  Order  towards  man. 

Paul  knew  that  love,  and  responded  to  it.  But  John, 
pioneer  of  Christian  contemplatives,  was  the  first  amongst 
men  to  display  it  in  its  full  grandeur,  as  the  very  Name 
of  God;  the  "word  of  power,"  operative  in  all  things 
from  the  greatest  to  the  least,  linking  the  Transcendent 
Godhead  with  His  creative  spirit,  creature  with  creator, 
and  man  with  man.  A  century  or  more  before  Plotinus, 
he  knew  that  only  this  ardent  passion  of  like  for  like 
could  lead  man  from  the  prison  of  illusion  into  all  Truth, 
and  "  cause  the  lover  to  rest  in  the  object  of  his  love."  2 
"  He  that  loveth  not,  knoweth  not  God,  for  God  is  love. 
Herein  was  the  love  of  God  manifested  in  us,  that  God 
hath  sent  His  only  begotten  Son  into  the  world,  that  we 
might  live  through  Him.  .  .  .  He  that  abideth  in  love 
abideth  in  God,  and  God  abideth  in  him.  .  .  .  We  love, 
because  He  first  loved  us."3 

With  this  vision  of  all-penetrating  love  as  the  sub 
stance  of  Reality,  the  key  to  the  spiritual  world  and  man's 
relation  with  it,  John  transmutes  idealism  into  mysticism, 
and  lays  the  foundations  of  Christian  philosophy.  Hardly 
a  mystic  who  comes  after  him  has  escaped  the  influence 
of  his  mighty  spirit :  and  Christendom  as  a  whole,  incap 
able  of  his  deep  intuitive  communion  with  Reality,  has 
lived  for  eighteen  centuries  on  the  vision  which  it  inherited 
from  this  unknown  seer.  He  it  was  who  bridged  the 
dreadful  gap  between  history  and  actuality :  who  wove 
together  Paul's  direct  spiritual  experience  and  the  tradi 
tions  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  into  a  great  poem  at  once  truly 
human  and  truly  divine. 

1  Clement  of  Alexandria,  Cohort.  I. 

2  Ennead,  VI.  9.     Fide  supra,  Cap.  I.  §  II. 

3  i  John  iv.  8,  9,  16,  19  (R.V.). 


224  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

As  the  Synoptics  are  the  "  good  news  "  of  the  new  kind 
of  life  emerging  on  the  historical  plane,  the  Fourth  Gospel 
is  the  good  news  of  its  eternal  existence  in  God,  and  its 
continual  emergence  in  the  human  soul.  This  idea  of 
life  controls  the  whole  book :  the  new,  vivid,  indestruct 
ible  "  Eternal  Life  which  was  with  the  Father,  and  was 
manifested  unto  us  "  1 — not  merely  hoped  for  as  the  result 
of  some  Parousia,  but  actually  enjoyed  by  the  members 
of  the  New  Race.2  As  the  primitive  psalmist  says  in 
purely  Johannine  language,  "  The  dwelling-place  of  the 
Logos  is  man,  and  its  truth  is  Love."  3 

This  Life — the  divine  elan  vital — is  an  energetic  spirit, 
thrusting  itself  to  expression  in  and  through  the  world. 
John  has  himself  experienced  it  in  the  strange  fresh  dower 
of  energy,  the  "  more  abundant  life  "  invading  the  con 
verted  self  and  lifting  it  in  its  wholeness  to  fresh  levels 
of  insight  and  of  creative  power;  a  definite  psychic  fact 
for  the  primitive  Christians,  and  called  by  them  the 
"reception  of  the  Holy  Spirit."  "  Ye  have  an  anointing 
from  the  Holy  One,"  he  says  to  those  for  whom  he 
writes.  "  Hereby  know  we  that  we  abide  in  Him  and 
He  in  us,  because  He  hath  given  us  of  His  Spirit."  * 

His  possession  of  this  spirit,  this  grace  which  makes 
the  soul  aware  of  truth,  is  directly  connected  for  John  with 
its  first  and  only  perfect  appearance  in  Jesus :  whose 
actual  career  he  sees  as  a  brief,  supreme  revelation  of 
Reality  and  man's  kinship  to  it,  the  "gift"  of  eternal 
life  to  the  race.  Hence,  and  because  for  the  born  mystic 
all  outward  events  tend  to  become  symbols  without 
ceasing  to  be  facts — seem  to  the  contemplative  mind  to 
be  charged  with  an  infinite  significance — he  finds  in  the 
historic  tradition  concerning  Jesus  the  foreshadowing  of 
all  those  things  which  he  and  all  other  initiates  of  Reality 
experience  in  their  own  persons  as  a  result  of  setting  in 
hand  the  mystical  process  of  transcendence.  He  reviews 

1  i  John  i.  2.  2  Cf.  Von  Hiigel,  Eternal  Life,  p.  75. 

3  Odes  of  Solomon  XII.        4  i  John  ii.  20  and  iv.  13  (R.V.). 


THE   JOHANNINE   MYSTIC  225 

the  historical  life,  its  fixed  outlines  and  legendary 
accretions,  as  it  was  known  to  Ephesian  Christians  at  the 
end  of  the  first  century;  not  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  historian  concerned  for  outward  truth,  but  from  that 
of  the  mystic  concerned  for  inward  significance.  "  There 
was  the  true  light,  even  the  light  which  lighteth  every 
man  coming  into  the  world."  1  As  he  broods  upon  it,  it 
shines  ever  brighter  ;  and  the  biography  of  the  Nazarene 
is  transmuted  into  the  eternal  drama  of  God's  wisdom 
and  love. 

Absolutely  uncritical  in  his  use  of  material,  he  is 
naturally  attracted  to  those  things  through  and  by  which 
he  can  communicate  the  living  secret  which  he  knows  "  not 
by  the  flesh  but  by  the  spirit."  This  does  not  mean  that 
the  events  described  by  John  are  merely  symbols.  For 
us  they  are  of  varying  degrees  of  credibility,  but  for  him 
they  were  doubtless  facts  and  symbols;  as  they  became 
later  for  the  patristic  commentators.  They  had  been  the 
material  of  his  meditation  before  they  became  the 
material  of  his  gospel :  and  even  those  least  practised  in 
that  difficult  art  know  what  treasure  of  significance  and 
beauty  the  simplest  image  will  yield  up  when  subjected 
to  this  still  and  brooding  attentiveness  of  mind.  Thus 
it  is  that  whereas  the  comparatively  impersonal  narrative 
of  the  Synoptics  has  kept  for  us  the  priceless  record  of  a 
real  Person  who  lives  and  grows  within  the  world  of 
time;  here  it  is  a  being  at  once  personal  and  metaphysical 
— mysterious  and  remote,  yet  intimate  and  dear — whom 
the  genius  of  John  puts  before  us.  It  is  the  fruit  of  his 
own  vision  and  meditation,  his  own  first-hand  experi 
ence  of  the  divine  which  he  pours  into  the  evangelical 
mould. 

The  watchword  of  the  Johannine  Christ  is  "  I  am." 

He  is  static,  because  for  the  Johannine  writer  He  belongs 

not  to  the  past,  but  to  the  present;  not  to  the  swift  world 

of  Becoming,  but  to  the  timeless  world  of  mystical  con- 

1  John  i.  9  (R.V.). 


226  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

templation.  In  this  sublime  conception,  for  the  first  time 
in  the  history  of  religion,  the  two  great  aspects  of  spiritual 
Reality  are  merged  in  one  ;  and  the  eternal,  unchanging 
Source  of  light  and  life  is  seen  to  be  the  beloved  com 
panion  of  man's  soul,  the  energetic  spirit  of  ascending 
life,  "loving  His  own  to  the  end,"  and  incarnate  in  the 
race. 

The  drama  of  the  entry  of  this  Logos  from  Eternity 
into  Time,  His  fight  witK  "  darkness  " — the  oppositions 
of  matter — and  triumphant  return  to  His  natural  habita 
tion  in  God,  whither  He  is  to  be  followed  by  all  who, 
having  inherited  His  life,  are  in  union  with  Him,  con 
stitutes  therefore  the  "plot"  of  the  Fourth  Gospel. 
This  subject  is  developed  partly  by  means  of  episodes 
chosen  from  the  current  biographies  of  Jesus,  apparently 
as  illustrative  of  different  aspects  of  the  main  theme,  and 
partly  by  the  wonderful  discourses  which  are  the  fruit 
and  expression  of  John's  ecstatic  contemplation  of  God 
in  Christ. 

As  with  other  mystics,  his  intuitive  communion  with 
the  Spiritual  Order,  in  itself  "  above  all  feeling  and  above 
all  thought,"  had  somehow  to  be  interpreted  to  the 
surface-consciousness :  and  here  we  may  take  it  as 
axiomatic  that,  however  great  his  inspiration,  it  would 
act  through,  not  against,  the  normal  process  of  our  mental 
life.  Only  by  means  of  image  and  symbol,  by  casting  it 
into  artistic  shape,  retranslating  it  into  terms  of  sensual 
perception,  can  the  contemplative  reduce  his  apprehension 
of  Truth  to  a  form  with  which  his  intellect  is  able  to  deal. 
Such  a  retranslation  on  the  mystic's  part  is  more  often 
involuntary  than  voluntary.  His  creative  powers  seize  on 
the  new  universe  disclosed  to  them  and  deal  with  it  as 
well  as  they  can  ;  giving  it  back  to  him  in  the  "  voice  " 
or  the  "  vision,"  which  seems  to  "  come  into  the  body 
by  the  windows  of  the  wits,"  but  has  really  been  made  at 
home. 

Mystical  literature  abounds  in  examples  of  this  proceed- 


THE   JOHANNINE  MYSTIC  227 

ing;  of  the  infinitely  various  ways  in  which  the  human 
mind  adapts  the  rough-and-ready  machinery  of  sense  to  the 
purposes  of  its  spiritual  intuitions.  In  one  case  at  least 
we  see  it  at  work  in  a  form  which  is  not  without  bearing 
on  the  problems  which  lie  behind  the  Gospel  of  John. 
Julian  of  Norwich,  more  apt  than  many  contemplatives 
at  analysis  of  her  own  states,  has  told  us  that  her  "  revela 
tions  "  came  to  her  in  a  three-fold  form :  inwardly,  as  a 
vivid  but  ineffable  apprehension  of  Divine  Reality;  out 
wardly,  as  a  concrete  and  detailed  vision;  and — linking 
together  the  image  and  the  intuition — as  a  voice  which 
answered  her  questions  and  declared  to  her  in  language 
at  once  homely  and  exalted  the  hidden  mysteries  of  the 
Love  of  God.  In  the  language  of  later  mysticism, 
Julian's  revelation  was  received  by  her  under  the  forms 
of  Intellectual  Vision,  Corporeal  Vision,  and  Distinct 
Interior  Words?  "  All  this  was  showed  me  by  three 
ways,"  she  says :  "  that  is  to  say,  by  bodily  sight,  and 
by  word  formed  in  mine  understanding,  and  by  ghostly 
sight.  But  the  ghostly  sight  I  cannot  nor  may  not  show 
it,  as  openly  nor  as  fully  as  I  would."  2 

Here  we  have,  described  by  a  natural  mystic,  a  simple 
woman  unversed  in  religious  psychology,  the  complex 
effort  of  human  consciousness  to  lay  hold  of  an  experi 
ence  which  transcends  the  normal  machinery  of  perception. 
The  "ghostly  sight,"  says  Julian — the  direct  intuition 
of  Reality — was  ineffable,  and  thwarts  all  her  descriptive 
efforts.  She  "  cannot  nor  may  not  show  it."  But  that 
tendency  to  visualisation  which  plays  so  large  a  part  in 
our  mental  life,  and  is  specially  powerful  in  minds  of 
artistic  or  creative  cast,  here  came  into  play  ;  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that,  in  common  with  most  real  mystics, 
she  had  no  desire  for  visionary  experiences — "  I  desired 
never  bodily  sight,  nor  showing  of  God."  It  put  before 

1  For  a  full  and  careful  study  of  all  these  automatisms,  see  St.  John  of 
the  Cross,  Subida  del  Monte  Carmek,  Lib.  II.  cap.  19-31. 

2  Revelations  of  Divine  Love,  cap.  8. 

0,2 


228  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

her  eyes  a  vividly  realistic  picture  of  the  Passion  of 
Christ :  for  Christians  the  ultimate  symbol  of  love. 
"  Suddenly  I  saw  the  red  blood  trickle  down  from  under 
the  garland  hot  and  freshly  and  right  plenteously,  as  it 
were  in  the  time  of  His  Passion."  1  This  external  vision 
continued  side  by  side  with  the  "  ghostly  showing  "  or 
interior  lucidity;  and  the  triple  experience  was  completed 
by  a  voice  "formed"  as  she  says,  "in  the  understand 
ing,"  which  was  yet  accepted  without  question  by  Julian 
as  the  veritable  voice  of  Christ.2 

In  the  Fourth  Gospel  we  seem  to  trace  the  artistic 
results  of  such  a  complex  experience  as  this,  taking  place 
in  a  mind  of  great  delicacy  and  power.  Many  of  its 
peculiarities  may  well  have  arisen  from  the  "visionary" 
and  "  auditive  "  form — the  picture  seen  and  the  discourse 
heard — into  which  John's  creative  imagination  crystal 
lised  those  imageless  facts  of  the  spiritual  universe 
which  were  apprehended  by  his  deeper  mind,  giving 
human  words  to  the  voice  of  that  Companion  who  "  spoke 
without  utterance "  in  his  soul.  The  sense  of  intimate 
communion  with  a  transcendent  Personality — usually 
identified  with  the  exalted  Christ — is  one  of  the  best 
attested  phenomena  of  Christian  mysticism.  This  vivid 
"  consciousness  of  the  Presence  "  exists  as  a  rule  quite 
independently  of  vision,  save  that  "  intellectual "  vision 
which  is  only  another  name  for  intuition  itself :  though  it 
often  finds  expression  in  those  "  divine  locutions  "  and 
dialogues  between  God  and  the  soul,  reported  by  Julian, 
Catherine  of  Siena,  and  many  others,  in  which  the  con 
templative — involuntarily  translating  his  direct  intuitions 
into  symbolic  speech — seems  to  hear  with  his  inward  ear 

1  Revelations  of  Divine  Love,  caps.  3  and  4. 

2  "  Then  said  our  good  Lord  Jesus  Christ :  '  Art  thou  well  pleased 
that  I  suffered  for  thee  ?  '    I  said  :  '  Yea,  good  Lord,  I  thank  Thee ;  yea, 
good  Lord,  blessed  mayst  Thou  be/    Then  said  Jesus,  our  kind  Lord  :  '  If 
thou  art  pleased,  I  am  pleased :  it  is  a  joy,  a  bliss,  an  endless  satisfying 
to  Me  that  ever  suffered  I  passion  for  thee ;  and  if  I  might  suffer  more, 
1  would  suffer  more '  "  (Ibid.,  cap.  22). 


THE   JOHANNINE   MYSTIC  229 

the  very  voice  of  the  Beloved.1  "  Often,"  says  St.  Teresa, 
"  when  the  soul  least  expects  it,  and  is  not  even  thinking 
of  God,  our  Lord  awakes  it,  swiftly  as  a  comet  or  a 
thunderbolt.  It  hears  no  sound,  but  distinctly  under 
stands  that  its  God  calls  it.  ...  On  one  side,  the  Beloved 
clearly  shows  the  soul  He  is  with  it  ;  on  the  other,  He 
calls  it."  2 

I  believe  that  such  an  acute  "  sense  of  the  Presence  " 
is  the  fundamental  fact  for  the  writer  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel :  that  upon  it  his  whole  superstructure  of  picture 
and  poetry  is  built.  It  is  not  the  memory  of  the  disciple 
— even  the  "  beloved  "  disciple  whose  reminiscences,  if 
he  be  not  a  purely  symbolic  figure,  may  well  have  coloured 
the  Ephesian  traditions  of  Jesus'  death — but  the  vivid 
first-hand  knowledge,  the  immovable  certitude  of  the 
mystic  "  in  union "  with  the  Object  of  his  adoration, 
which  supplies  material  for  this  unearthly  picture  of  the 
earthly  life  of  Jesus.  Such  experiences  of  vivid  personal 
communion  with  Transcendent  Life,  such  first-fruits  of 
a  regenerate  consciousness  steadfastly  focussed  on  Reality, 
had  already  been  described  by  Paul  ;  and  are  repeated 
again  and  again  in  the  lives  of  later  contemplatives,  who 
declare  to  us — often,  it  is  true,  under  symbols  which  are 
hard  to  understand — the  responses  made  by  the  supernal 
order  to  the  impassioned  attentiveness  of  man.  It  is 
by  the  comparison  and  study  of  such  examples  that  we 
shall  best  understand  the  spiritual  adventures  reported 
in  the  New  Testament. 

1  The  sense  of  intimate  communion  with  Divine  Personality  is  not 
of  course  peculiar  to  Christianity,  though  there  seen  in  its  full  beauty 
and  power.  A  personal  object  of  devotion,  linking  human  with  divine 
reality,  seems  to  be  a  permanent  need  of  the  religious  consciousness. 
Hence  in  India  the  worship  of  Krishna,  in  Japan  that  of  Amida,  reproduce 
many  of  the  characteristics  of  the  romantic  and  personal  adoration  and 
love  felt  by  Christian  mystics  for  the  person  of  Jesus :  whilst  the  Sufis 
have  been  driven  by  the  same  temperamental  necessity  to  apply  the  lan- 
guage  of  human  passion  to  their  communion  with  the  Absolute  God  of 
Islam.  2  El  Castillo  Interior,  Moradas  Sextas,  ii. 


230  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

Such  a  comparison  suggests  to  us  that  we  owe  to  these 
adventures  the  beautiful  discourses  of  the  Johannine 
Christ :  discourses  couched  in  that  exalted  and  rhythmical 
language  which  is  characteristic  of  all  "automatic" 
activity,  all  involuntary  or  inspired  weaving  up  of  intui 
tions  into  words.  Poles  asunder  from  the  directness  and 
simplicity  of  the  Synoptics,  these  musical  and  solemn 
phrases,  this  fluid  symbolism,  this  oblique  suggestive 
language — giving,  as  St.  Teresa  says,  "  in  few  words  that 
which  our  mind  could  only  express  in  many  "  1 — alone 
suggests  to  us  the  presence  of  prophetic  or  poetic  inspira 
tion  of  a  high  type.2  These  heavenly  rhapsodies  are  not 
the  fruits  of  any  personal  or  traditional  memory  of  the 
teachings  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth :  nor  are  they  deliberately 
composed  for  purposes  of  edification.  We  hear  in  them 
the  voice  of  an  immediate  transcendental  Presence  ; 
addressing  itself,  by  means  of  a  sensory  automatism 
familiar  to  religious  psychology,  to  the  consciousness  of 
a  great  mystic,  member  of  a  formed  spiritual  society,  for 
whom  utterances  which  would  have  been  unintelligible 
to  the  followers  of  the  Synoptic  Jesus,  present  no  diffi 
culty.  "  I  am  the  Bread  of  Life  ...  I  am  the  Door 
...  I  and  my  Father  are  one  " — these  are  statements 
which  John's  own  high  and  intimate  experience  has  proved 
to  be  true :  and  it  is  as  immediate  truth,  not  merely  as 
poetry  or  history  that  he  puts  them  before  us.  "  No  pro 
phet,"  says  Tyrrell,  "  allows  or  would  feel  that  his  utter 
ances  are  merely  poetical  or  allegorical;  he  feels  that  they 
are  not  less  but  more  truly  representative  of  reality,  as  repre 
sentative  of  a  truer  and  deeper  reality,  than  the  prose  lan 
guage  of  historical  narrative  or  philosophical  affirmation.3  " 

1  El  Castillo  Interior,  Moradas  Sextas,  iii. 

2  Loisy  (Le  Quatrieme  Evangile,  p.   762)   and  others  have  remarked 
on  their  close  resemblance  to  Jewish  prophecy ;  and  their  chief  peculi 
arities   are    found   again  in  the   "  divine  dialogues  "  of  the  mediaeval 
mystics.     For   the   rhythmic   character   of   mystical   locutions  see  von 
Htigel,  The  Mystical  Element  in  Religion,  Vol.  I.  p.  189. 

8  Tyrrell,  Through  Scylla  and  Cbarybdis,  p.  230. 


THE   JOHANNINE   MYSTIC  231 

Not  otherwise,  indeed,  can  we  reconcile  the  intense 
conviction  of  a  first-hand  experience,  "  we  speak  that  we 
do  know,  and  testify  that  we  have  seen,"  1  the  sharp 
definition  of  each  pictured  scene,  with  reports  of  sayings 
which  could  have  had  no  meaning  as  addressed  to  the 
primitive  group  of  apostles,  but  which  presuppose  the 
outward  conditions  and  developed  sacramental  doctrines 
of  the  Church  at  the  beginning  of  the  second  century : 
the  advanced  mystical  status  of  the  mind  which  received 
them.  Thus,  "  Other  men  laboured,  and  ye  are  entered 
into  their  labours  "  :  true  enough  of  those  who  followed 
St.  Paul,  not  of  those  who  preceded  him.  "Except  ye 
eat  the  flesh  of  the  Son  of  Man  and  drink  His  blood,  ye 
have  no  life  in  you  " — incredible  upon  the  lips  of  the 
human  Jesus.  "  If  the  world  hate  you,  ye  know  that  it 
hated  Me  before  it  hated  you"  :  a  direct  reference  to  the 
first  persecutions  of  the  Church.  "  I  am  in  my  Father, 
and  ye  in  Me,  and  I  in  you  "  :  the  deeply  mystical  formula 
of  John's  own  experience  and  belief.2  Even  Resch,  who 
upholds  the  traditional  authorship  of  the  Fourth  Gospel, 
is  driven  to  the  conclusion  that  it  must  have  been  written 
in  a  sort  of  ecstacy,  which  caused  the  author  to  confuse  his 
visions  and  his  memories.3 

Moreover,  comparison  with  such  known  masterpieces 
of  ecstatic  composition  as  the  Divine  Dialogue  of  St. 
Catherine  of  Siena,  the  Consolations  of  Angela  of  Foligno, 
or  the  Revelations  of  Divine  Love  of  Julian  of  Norwich, 
establish  the  strong  parallels  which  exist  between  the 
sublime  discourses  of  the  Johannine  Christ  and  the 
"  divine  locutions "  in  which  these,  and  many  other 
mystics,  heard  with  the  inward  ear  the  revelations  which 
they  attributed  to  the  direct  communications  of  that  same 
enduring  Presence.  These  chapters  have  in  a  high  degree 

1  John  iii.  n.  2  John  iv.  38,  vi.  53,  xv.  18,  xiv.  20. 

3  Ausserkanonische  Paralldtexte  zu  d.  Evangelicn ;  IV.  Paralleltexte 
zu  Johannes.  1896. 


232  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

the  three  qualities  which,  according  to  St.  Teresa,  mark 
the  locutions  which  really  "  come  from  God " — i.  e. 
represent  a  genuine  intuition  of  the  Transcendent — the 
accent  of  power,  the  atmosphere  of  intense  peace,  the  un 
forgettable  character.1  Did  the  discourses  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel  cdme  fresh  into  our  hands  without  history,  I 
cannot  think  that  any  religious  psychologist  would  hesitate 
to  put  them  amongst  literature  of  this  class.  There  we 
find  the  same  air  of  authority,  the  same  certitude  that 
the  words  reported  were  spoken  by  a  Presence  at  once 
intimate  yet  divine.  All  have  to  a  marked  degree  that 
quality  of  timelessness,  that  sense  of  an  Eternal  Now, 
which  is  a  peculiarity  of  the  ecstatic  consciousness.  In 
such  experiences  the  human  spirit  seems  to  be  lifted  up 
above  the  flux  of  becoming,  and  tastes  the  "  eternal " 
aspect  of  the  Divine  Life  in  which  it  is  immersed. 

Here  it  is  that  we  find  repeated  again  and  again  the 
solemn  /  am  of  the  Johannine  Christ :  the  dramatic  ex 
pression  of  the  mystic's  certainty.  "  Thou  didst  cry  from 
afar,"  says  Augustine,  "I  AM  THAT  I  AM.  And  I 
heard  as  the  heart  heareth,  and  there  was  left  no  room 
for  doubt."  2  "1  am  Fire,  the  Accepter  of  Sacrifice," 
says  the  same  Presence  to  St.  Catherine  of  Siena.  "  Our 
Lord  Jesus  oftentimes  said,"  says  Julian  of  Norwich,  "  I 
it  am,  I  it  am;  I  it  am  that  is  highest,  I  it  am  that  thou 
lovest,  I  it  am  that  thou  enjoyest,  I  it  am  that  thou 
servest,  I  it  am  that  thou  longest  for,  I  it  am  that  thou 
desirest,  I  it  am  that  thou  meanest,  I  it  am  that  is  all."3 
As  Angela  of  Foligno  walks  between  the  vineyards  "  on 
the  narrow  road  which  leadeth  upward  to  Assisi,  and  is 
beyond  Spello,"  it  is  "  said  "  to  her — "  1  am  the  Holy 
Spirit,  who  am  come  unto  thee  to  bring  thee  such  con 
solation  as  thou  hast  never  before  tasted.  ...  I  will 
bear  thee  company  and  speak  with  thee  all  the  way;  I  will 

1  El  Castillo  Interior,  loc.  cit. 

2  Aug.,  Conf.,  Bk.  VII.  cap.  10. 

3  Revelations  of  Divine  Love,  cap.  26. 


THE   JOHANNINE   MYSTIC  233 

make  no  end  to  my  speaking  and  thou  wilt  not  be  able 
to  attend  unto  any  save  unto  Me.  ...  I  have  been 
with  the  apostles,  who  did  behold  Me  with  their  bodily 
eyes,  but  they  did  not  feel  Me  as  thou  feelest  Me.  .  .  . 
And  He  did  expound  to  me  His  Passion  and  the  other 
things  which  He  did  for  our  sake;  then  He  did  add, 
'  Behold  now  if  there  be  aught  in  Me  save  love.' "  1 

"Happy,"  says  Hilton  of  such  experiences  as  these, 
"  is  that  soul  which  is  ever  fed  with  feeling  of  love  in 
His  presence  .  .  .  how  that  presence  is  felt  may  better 
be  known  by  experience  than  by  any  writing,  for  it  is  the 
life  and  the  love,  the  might  and  the  light  of  a  chosen 
soul."3 

The  rationalist  will  naturally  attribute  all  these  state 
ments  to  the  direct  operation  of  those  heavenly  twins, 
Hysteria  and  Hallucination.  But  even  so,  they  are 
reports  of  veritable  and  normal  occurrences  within 
the  mystical  field  of  consciousness;  and  must  therefore 
be  taken  into  account  in  the  effort  to  understand  the 
origin  and  meaning  of  the  literature  by  which  that  con 
sciousness  seeks  to  communicate  to  us  its  intuitions  of 
Reality.  Moreover,  for  those  who  profess  a  belief  in  the 
immortality  of  the  soul,  the  idea  that  an  influence  emanat 
ing  from  the  exalted  and  discarnate  spirit  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  might  be  experienced  by  those — and  perhaps 
only  those — who  shared  in  some  degree  His  transcend 
ental  consciousness  and  had  entered  into  the  Kingdom 
of  new  life,  does  not  seem  outside  the  bounds  of  the 
reasonable.  Nor  on  the  other  hand  is  it  unnatural  that 
those  deep  intuitions  of  an  Infinite  Life  and  Love  com 
panioning  and  upholding  the  finite  human  creature,  which 
are  a  constant  feature  of  the  mystical  vision  of  God, 

1  B.  Angelas  de    Fulginio,  Visionum  ft   Instructionum   Liber,  cap.  20 
(Eng.  trans.,  p.  160).     It  is  interesting  to  notice  that  Angela,  the  orthodox 
mediaeval  Catholic,  identifies  in  experience  the  Holy  Spirit  with  the 
exalted  Christ,  as  Paul  and  the  Fourth  Evangelist  had  done  before  her. 

2  The  Scale  of  Perfection,  Bk.  III.  cap.  2. 


284  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

should  be  objectivised  by  the  Christian  as  due  to  the 
abiding  companionship  of  the  "  author  and  finisher  of  his 
faith."  John's  bold  identification  of  the  historic  Jesus 
with  the  metaphysical  Logos,  or  self-expression  of  Deity, 
made  this  divine-human  concept  possible  to  all  later  con- 
templatives.  Hence  students  of  Christian  mysticism  are 
faced  by  the  fact  that  nearly  all  the  great  Christian  mystics 
claim  to  have  experienced  such  personal  and  intimate 
communications  from  the  spiritual  order;  and  that  most 
of  them,  from  St.  Paul  downwards,  somehow  identify  that 
Transcendent  Personality  of  whom  they  are  directly  con 
scious  with  the  "  exalted  Christ."  It  is  this  fact  which 
makes  Christian  mysticism  so  human  and  so  complete : 
the  abstract  and  static  contemplation  of  the  Godhead  as 
Eternal  Rest,  to  which  mystics  of  every  creed  naturally 
tend,  being  balanced,  enriched  and  brought  back  into 
immediate  relation  with  life  and  growth,  by  that  sense 
of  a  personal  presence  for  which  the  doctrine  of  the 
Incarnation  allows  them  to  find  a  place. 

It  is  this  "  sense  of  the  Presence  "  which  is  regnant  in 
the  Fourth  Gospel,  as  it  is  in  the  later  Epistles  of  St. 
Paul.  But,  whilst  it  seems  to  have  induced  in  Paul  a 

Profound  indifference  to  the  historical  life  of  the  human 
esus — which  formed  for  that  great  mystic  only  one 
short  episode  in  the  intensely  actual  and  eternal  life  of 
the  spiritual  "  Christ " — it  induced  in  the  more  Hellen 
istic  and  philosophical  mind  of  John  a  conviction  that 
somehow  the  human  and  the  supernal  life  must  be  one. 
So,  he  projected  the  Divine  Companion  whom  he  knew, 
in  common  with  all  other  contemplatives,  by  direct 
experience,  on  to  the  temporal  background  of  the  historic 
life :  he  selected  from  the  huge  and  quickly-growing 
Christian  legend,  those  events  which  seemed  to  him  like 
the  types,  the  dramatic  representations  of  the  great 
wonders  and  changes  which  had  been  wrought  within 
his  soul.  For  him  all  was  fused  together  in  one  poignant 
and  dramatic  vision  of  new  life. 


THE   JOHANNINE   MYSTIC  235 

Now,  as  the  discourses  in  which  the  Divine  Nature 
discloses  itself  in  its  relation  to  man  seem  to  reflect  back 
to  "auditive"  experiences  on  the  part  of  the  Evangelist; 
so  these  incidents — so  sharp  and  realistic  in  their  detail, 
yet  so  transfigured  by  the  writer's  peculiar  point  of  view 
— suggest  to  us  that  another  form  of  automatic  activity 
had  its  part  in  the  composition  of  his  gospel.  As  we 
read  them,  we  are  reminded  again  and  again  of  those 
visionary  scenes,  formed  from  traditional  or  historical 
materials,  but  enriched  by  the  creative  imagination,  the 
deep  intuition  of  the  seer,  in  which  the  fruit  of  the 
mystic's  meditation  takes  an  artistic  or  dramatic  instead 
of  a  rhetorical  form.  The  lives  of  the  later  mystics  show 
to  us  the  astonishing  air  of  realism,  the  bewildering 
intermixture  of  history  with  dream,  which  may  be  achieved 
in  visionary  experience  of  this  kind;  and  which  can  hardly 
be  understood  save  by  those  who  realise  the  creative  power 
of  the  mystical  imagination,  the  solidarity  which  exists 
for  the  mystic's  consciousness  between  his  intensely  actual 
present  and  the  historical  past  of  his  faith.  In  his  medita 
tions,  he  really  lives  again  through  the  scenes  which 
history  has  reported  to  him :  since  they  are  ever-present 
realities  in  that  Mind  of  God  to  which  his  mind  aspires. 
He  has  a  personal  interest  in  doing  this,  in  learning  as  it 
were  the  curve  of  the  life  of  Christ;  for  vita  tua,  via  nostra 
is  his  motto — uhe  that  saith  he  abideth  in  Him  ought 
himself  also  so  to  walk  even  as  He  walked."  * 

Further,  his  vivid  sense  of  actuality,  the  artistic  powers 
which  are  part  of  his  psychic  constitution,  help  to  build  up 
and  elaborate  the  picture  of  the  events  upon  which  he 
broods.  He  sees  this  picture,  in  that  strong  light  and 
with  that  sharp  definition  which  is  peculiar  to  visionary 
states.  He  has  not  produced  it  by  any  voluntary  process  : 
it  surges  up  from  his  deeper  mind,  as  do  the  concepts  of 
the  artist,  invading  that  field  of  consciousness  which  his 
state  of  meditation  has  kept  in  a  mood  of  tense  yet 

1  I  John  ii.  6. 


236  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

passive  receptivity.  So  real  it  is  to  him,  so  authoritative, 
so  independent  of  his  deliberate  efforts,  that  the  transi 
tion  is  easy  from  "  thus  it  must  have  been  "  to  "  thus  it 
was."  Those  critics  who  claim  that  the  homely  and 
realistic  details  in  the  incidents  reported  by  John  are  proof 
of  their  historical  character,  will  find  it  hard  to  defend 
their  position  in  the  face  of  the  many  visions  of  a  similar 
kind  reported  by  the  Christian  visionaries  and  saints. 
There  we  find  repeated  the  peculiar  Johannine  fusion  of 
poetry  and  actuality :  the  minute  and  homely  detail,  and 
the  sense  of  eternal  significance.1  This  proposition  might 
be  illustrated  from  many  sources.  From  St.  Bernard,  who 
received  in  vision  and  audition  the  Virgin's  own  account 
of  her  life :  from  Angela  of  Foligno  and  Julian  of 
Norwich,  spectators  of  the  Passion  of  Christ :  from  St. 
Teresa,  who  saw  Him  "  as  He  was  on  the  morning  of  the 
Resurrection."  In  all  these  cases,  and  probably  in  that  of 
the  Fourth  Evangelist  also,  deep  meditation  on  the  life 
of  Christ  or  of  Mary  seems  to  have  passed  over  into 
visualisation  so  vivid  as  to  impose  itself  on  the  mystic's 
mind  as  a  veritable  " revelation  from  God"  rather  than 
a  pictured  dream.  The  narrative  parts  of  the  little  book 
called  the  Meditations  of  St.  Bonaventura,  which  so 
strongly  influenced  the  poetry  and  art  of  the  later  Middle 
Ages,  may  well  have  originated  in  experience  of  this  kind  : 
so  sharp  is  the  author's  visualisation  of  the  scenes  that  he 
describes.  I  choose,  however,  instead  of  these  well-known 
examples,  the  astonishing  and  well-attested  visions  of  the 
poor  German  nun  Anne-Catherine  Emmerich,  who  died 
in  i824.2 
This  woman,  whose  literary  knowledge  of  Christianity 

1  Such  dramatic  reconstructions  of  gospel  history,  often  adorned  with 
original  details  of  great  beauty,  are  common  in  the  mediaeval  mystics. 
See    especially    Mechthild    of   Magdeburg,    Das   Fliessende   Licbt   der 
Gottheit  and  Angela  of  Foligno,  Visionum  et  Instructionum  Liber. 

2  The  best  account  of  her  life  and  visions  is  contained  in  the  French 
edition,  Visions  £  Anne-Catherine  Emmerich,  coordonntes  en  un  seul  tout, 


THE   JOHANNINE   MYSTIC  237 

was  confined  to  the  liturgic  gospels,  the  Church  cate 
chism,  the  imagery  of  current  books  of  devotion  and  the 
legendary  history  of  the  Madonna  and  Christ,  exhibited 
in  profusion  all  the  physical  and  psychical  peculiarities  of 
a  mystic  of  the  visionary  and  ecstatic  type.  During  the 
last  years  of  her  life,  her  automatic — particularly  her 
visionary — powers  became  so  highly  developed  that  she 
would  pass  involuntarily  from  meditation  on  any  incident 
in  the  life  of  Christ  or  the  Blessed  Virgin  to  a  state  of 
intense  dramatic  vision,  in  which  she  saw  the  incident 
which  she  had  placed  before  her  mind,  re-enacted  with 
every  circumstance  of  realism,  and  with  the  addition  of 
countless  vivid  details  unknown  either  to  the  gospels  or 
to  the  legends  of  the  Virgin  and  of  Christ.  The  impres 
sion  given,  as  we  read  the  reports  of  these  experiences, 
is  that  they  are  the  first-hand  accounts  of  a  spectator, 
possessed  of  abnormal  powers  of  observation,  who  was 
actually  present  at  the  event  which  she  relates.  The  dress 
of  each  personage,  the  movement  of  crowds,  the  land 
scape,  the  state  of  the  weather,  innumerable  little  human 
details — only  significant  because  they  seem  so  real — are 
incorporated  into  the  picture  that  she  describes,  side  by 
side  with  ideal  and  mystical  elements. 

She  sees  the  Virgin  arriving  at  Bethlehem,  and  stop 
ping  to  rearrange  her  dress  as  she  alights  from  the  ass : 
Joseph  running  his  eye  down  the  genealogical  table 
exhibited  at  the  census,  that  he  may  find  his  family 
and  tribe  on  them,  and  then  noticing  for  the  first  time 
that  Mary  is  of  the  house  of  David.  She  goes  with  the 
Magi  on  their  pilgrimage :  "  the  camels  moving  very 
quietly,  with  long  strides,  and  placing  their  feet  so  care 
fully  that  one  would  think  they  were  trying  to  avoid 
crushing  something."  She  sees  Joseph  busy  preparing 
the  stable  at  Bethlehem  for  his  distinguished  guests;  and 
the  gift  of  fresh  roses  which  St.  Anne  sends  to  her 

selon  Fordre  des  faits,  par  le  R.  Pere  Fr.  Joseph  Alvas  Dulay,  traduits  par 
M.  Charles  d'Ebeling.  3  tomes,  Paris,  1864. 


238  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

daughter — "  not  all  the  same  colour :  some  pale,  the 
colour  of  flesh,  some  yellow  and  some  white."  l  She 
watches  St.  Anne,  the  Virgin,  and  Mary  Cleophas  playing 
with  the  Holy  Child — "  I  said  to  myself  as  I  watched 
them,"  says  Anne-Catherine  simply,  "  Why,  women  with 
children  are  always  the  same!  " 

Sometimes  this  sense  of  actuality  reaches  an  extra 
ordinarily  high  pitch.  "The  night  had  been  extremely 
cold,"  she  says,  in  her  narrative  of  the  trial  of  Jesus,  "  and 
the  morning  was  dark  and  cloudy.  A  little  hail  had  fallen, 
which  surprised  every  one,  but  towards  twelve  o'clock 
the  day  became  brighter  .  .  .  and  when  Jesus  after  the 
scourging  fell  at  the  foot  of  the  pillar,  I  saw  Claudia 
Proclus  send  to  the  Mother  of  God  a  bundle  of  linen. 
I  do  not  know  whether  she  thought  that  Jesus  would  be 
acquitted,  and  therefore  would  give  His  mother  some 
thing  to  bind  up  His  wounds,  or  whether  this  compassion 
ate  pagan  had  a  presentiment  of  that  which  the  blessed 
Virgin  would  do  with  her  gift."  2 

Well  may  Anne-Catherine's  biographer  say  that  "  her 
descriptions  are  like  a  photograph  of  the  mysteries  of 
salvation."  Had  she  been  that  which  the  world  calls  a 
poet  or  an  artist — had  she  given  these  same  visions 
rhythmic  or  plastic  form — the  high  quality  of  her  imagina 
tive  powers  would  have  received  general  recognition. 
The  point  of  interest  for  us — and  the  point  which  may 
possibly  throw  light  on  the  composition  of  older  and  more 
sacred  literature — is  just  this  dramatic  quality  of  her 
creative  genius :  this  profound  sense  of  actuality.  She 
saw  the  things  which  she  set  down :  saw  them  with  a 
precision  and  a  vividness  which  no  memory  of  real  events 
could  come  near.  This  is  true,  not  only  of  those  scenes 
for  which  Scripture,  human  life,  or  religious  pictures 
might — and  probably  did — provide  much  of  the  raw 
material :  but  also  of  those  which  seem  to  originate  in  an 

1  Op  cit.  Tome  I.  pp.  131-141.        2  Op.  cit.,  Tome  III.  pp.  337-339. 


THE   JOHANNINE   MYSTIC  239 

act  of  pure  creation,  such  as  her  vision  of  the  Nativity  of 
Christ. 

"  I  saw  the  light  which  surrounded  Mary  become  ever 
more  dazzling :  the  radiance  of  the  lamps  lighted  by 
Joseph  was  eclipsed.  And  when  midnight  was  nearly  come 
the  Most  Holy  Virgin  entered  into  ecstacy,  and  I  saw  her 
raised  up  above  the  earth.  Her  hands  were  crossed  upon 
her  breast,  her  robe  floated  about  her  in  billowy  folds  ; 
the  splendour  which  surrounded  her  grew  without 
ceasing.  The  vault,  the  walls  and  the  floor  of  the  grotto, 
as  if  vivified  by  the  divine  light,  seemed  themselves  to 
feel  joy.  But  soon  the  vault  disappeared  from  my  sight : 
a  torrent  of  light  which  grew  in  splendour  spread  from 
Mary  to  the  heights  of  heaven.  In  the  midst  of  a  wonder 
ful  movement  of  celestial  glories,  I  saw  the  choirs  of 
angels  descending,  and  taking  as  they  drew  near  ever 
greater  distinctness  of  form.  The  Holy  Virgin,  lifted  up 
in  the  air  in  her  ecstacy,  looked  down  upon  her  God, 
adoring  Him  of  Whom  she  had  become  the  Mother,  and 
Who  under  the  aspect  of  a  fragile,  new-born  babe,  was 
lying  upon  the  earth  before  her."  * 

"  And  he  that  saw  it  bare  record,  and  his  record  is  true  : 
and  he  knoweth  that  he  saith  true,  that  ye  might 
believe."  2  These  words,  in  which  the  Fourth  Evangelist 
endorses  his  sublime  vision  of  Life  and  Purification  flowing 
from  the  heart  of  the  crucified  Christ,  this  woman  might 
have  taken,  with  no  sense  of  incongruity,  on  her  lips. 
Though  he  was  the  greatest  of  Christian  seers,  and  she  but 
a  humble  and  obscure  visionary,  lacking  his  philosophic 
insight,  his  high  poetic  genius,  his  wide  imaginative  grasp, 
they  speak  the  same  language,  for  they  are  of  the  same  race. 
The  Fourth  Gospel,  then,  when  it  is  compared  with  the 
writings  of  other  mystics,  discloses  itself  as  a  profoundly 
subjective  book,  which  tells  us  far  more  of  the  direct  experi 
ences  and  deep  religious  passions  of  its  writer  than  it  does 
of  the  history  of  Jesus,  or  even  of  the  position  of  the 
1  Op.  cit.,  Tome  I.  p.  112.  2  John  xix.  35. 


240  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

second-century  Church.  John,  poet,  prophet,  artist,  but 
above  all  mystic  and  lover,  here  gives  us  the  substance  of 
his  ecstatic  communion  with  the  Divine  Life :  his  real  yet 
romantic  vision  of  the  Man  who  was — is — the  veritable 
expression  of  that  Divine  Life  thrust  into  the  temporal 
world. 

For  his  ardent  and  synthetic  vision,  there  was  no  sharp 
line    of    cleavage    between    the    inward    miracle    which 
he  had  experienced  and  attributed  to  the  touch  of  the 
exalted   Christ,   and   the  wonderful   stories   of  new  life 
flowing  from  that  same  contact,  which  were  already  fixed 
in  the  Christian  tradition.     He  could  not  but  accept  the 
fact  of  a  transmutation,  which  he  had  known  in  intensest 
form  in  his  own  person;  the  miracle  of  the  "  best  wine" 
in  the  end  ministered  to  him  by  the  divine  and  all-enrich 
ing  touch  upon  the  common  things  of  sense.    He  knew  it 
all :  the  mysterious  power  given  to  his  paralysed  nature, 
the  illumination  poured  on  one  blind  from  birth,  the  new 
life  conferred  on  one  long  buried  in  the  sepulchre  of 
sense.     He  clothed  with  lovely  and  suggestive  language, 
and  transferred  to  this  strange  epic  of  the  soul  the  heavenly 
declarations  which  he  had  heard  with  his  inward  ear,  in 
those  hours  of  deep  absorption,  of  profound  attention  to 
Reality,  when  he  knew  of  a  Divine  Presence,  a  brooding 
personal  love,  that  was  to  him  Food  and  Light,  Way, 
Truth  and  Life — Christ,  Paraclete  and  Logos — a  Door  by 
which  he  had  entered  on  the  fruition  of  Eternity,  a  Shep 
herd  in  whose  care  he  was  safe.    The  Fourth  Gospel,  says 
Loisy,  "  is  above  all  a  personal  work,  which  bears  from 
one  end  to  the  other  the  mark  of  the  powerful  genius  who 
conceived  it  ...  all  the  materials  which  the  author  has 
used  have  passed  through  the  crucible  of  his  powerful 
intellect  and  his  mystical  soul;  and  they  have  come  forth 
from  it  metamorphosed,  intimately  penetrated  and  fused 
together,  by  the  idea  of  the  eternal  Christ,  the  divine  source 
of  light  and  life."  * 

1  A.  Loisy,  Le  Quatrieme  Evangile,  p.  55. 


Ill 

THE  MYSTIC  WAY  IN  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL 

ALTHOUGH  it  is  unlikely  that  so  subjective  and  poetic 
— so  "  inspired  " — a  book  was  systematically  planned,  yet 
the  idea  by  which  its  writer  was  possessed,  his  one  deep 
vision  and  conviction,  does  unfold  itself  in  a  certain  order. 

The  main  section,  from  the  first  to  the  twelfth  chapters, 
exhibits  the  incarnate  "Logos"  as  the  eternal  and  ener 
getic  Principle  of  life  and  the  Light  of  life;  breaking  out 
into  the  temporal  world  in  the  human  form  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  that  man  might  be  entinctured  with  a  new  reality. 
"As  many  as  received  Him,  to  them  He  gave  power  to 
become  the  sons  of  God."  l  This  great  vision  of  a  Divine 
Humanity,  achieved  in  One  and  possible  for  all,  which 
is  the  underlying  motive  of  the  whole  poem,  is  expressed 
in  the  language  of  Hellenistic  thought  in  the  prologue; 
and  illustrated  from  different  points  of  view  in  the 
incidents  and  discourses  which  follow  it.  First  Hebrew 
prophecy,  in  the  person  of  the  Baptist,  is  made  to  acknow 
ledge  that  the  Christ-Logos  represents  the  fulfilment  of 
its  dreams.  Next,  in  the  historical  "call"  of  the  first 
disciples,  the  immense  attractiveness  of  the  Divine  Life  is 
shown  ;  drawing  those  capable  of  transcendence,  living 
"  eternal  life  in  the  midst  of  time,"  from  the  ranks  of 
common  men.  "  And  they  said  unto  Him  .  .  .  where 
abidest  thou?  He  saith  unto  them,  Come,  and  ye  shall 


see."  2 


By   means   of   the   story   of   the   Marriage   at   Cana,3 
there   is  suggested  to   us  the   newness,   splendour  and 
intensity   of  this   life :    which   is   not   abstract,    far-off, 
1  John  i.  12.  2  John  i.  15-40.  8  John  iii.  l-il. 

R  241 


242  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

divorced  from  human  interests,  but  comes  into  the  very 
midst  of  ordinary  existence,  to  transmute  by  its  touch  the 
commonest  things  of  sense,  making  of  them  the  media 
of  spiritual  communion.  Wine,  which  the  mystical  king 
Melchisedec  ministered  to  Abraham,  is  the  antique  symbol 
of  divine  inebriation.1  For  John,  the  mystical  Christ  is 
supremely  the  giver  of  such  spiritual  ecstacy:  it  is  a 
part  and  an  expression  of  the  dower  of  "  grace  and  truth  " 
which  the  Logos  has  brought  into  time  for  the  deepening 
and  enriching  of  human  experience.  Those  into  whose 
lives  this  new  force  finds  its  way  are  to  be  "  God-intoxi 
cated  men."  "  The  Logos,"  says  Philo,  "  is  master  of 
the  spiritual  drinking  feast."  2  So  too  the  Synoptics  had 
already  compared  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  the  "  Mystery  of 
the  Kingdom,"  with  new  wine. 

From  these  attempts  to  suggest  the  power  and 
splendour  of  the  new  life,  surging  up  through  humanity, 
the  Johannine  writer  passes  to  a  series  of  linked  incidents 
symbolic  of  the  action  of  that  inflowing  life  upon  the 
self  which  has  received  it;  the  purification  and  illumina 
tion  of  the  character  which  is  regenerated  by  its  touch. 

First,  the  terrible  purging  away  of  all  impurities,  the 
setting  in  order  of  that  "  house  "  which  is  to  be,  as  Paul 
had  said,  the  actual  dwelling  place  of  God.3  All  which 
splits  the  attention  of  the  Self,  all  the  fussy  surface 
interests,  everything  which  distracts  it  from  the  supreme 
business  of  response  to  Reality,  is  driven  out  with  a 
"  scourge  of  cords,"  the  harsh  symbol  of  intensest  penance 

1  It  is  so  explained  by  Philo.     (See  Reville,  Le  Quatritme  Evangile> 
p.  134.)     Compare  the  Sufi  poet — 

"  The  beauteous  Cup-bearer,  pitcher  in  hand, 
Stepped  forth  from  a  recess  and  placed  it  in  the  middle. 
He  filled  the  first  cup  with  that  sparkling  wine — 
Didst  thou  ever  see  water  set  on  fire  ?  " 

Jalalu  'ddin,  Divan  (Nicholson's  trans.,  p.  163). 

2  De  Somn.,  II,  37. 

3  The  cleansing  of  the   Temple   (John  ii.   14-16),   here  put  out  of 
all  chronological  order  owing  to  the  exigencies  of  the  spiritual  "  plot." 


THE   JOHANNINE   MYSTIC  243 

and  mortification,  that  the  sanctuary  of  man's  being  may 
be  fitted  for  the  reception  of  the  incoming  guest.  The 
long  struggles  and  readjustments  of  the  Purgative  Way 
are  here  condensed  into  one  vivid  scene :  and  poverty 
and  detachment,  the  virtues  of  preparation,  are  exhibited 
as  the  necessary  preliminaries  of  the  new  life. 
"  Dio  non  alberga  en  core  strecto 

"  povertate  ha  si  gran  pecto 
che  ci  alberga  deitate."  x 

At  once  we  pass  to  the  positive  experiences  of  that  new 
life :  the  adventures  which  mark  the  growth  of  the  new 
consciousness  as  John  has  known  it.  In  the  story  of 
Nicodemus,  the  necessary  beginning  of  the  "  Way  "  is 
insisted  on  ;  in  language  perhaps  drawn  from  the  heathen 
mysteries,  but  now  charged  with  the  Christian  reading 
of  life.  This  "  New  Birth  "  is  no  voluntary  or  magical 
process  of  initiation,2  but  a  deep-seated  psychological 
change  ;  a  "  fresh  start "  operated  by  the  Spirit  of  Life, 
which  inducts  the  self  into  another  order  of  Reality, 
another  plane  of  consciousness.  "  That  which  is  born  of 
the  flesh  is  flesh  ;  and  that  which  is  born  of  the  Spirit 
is  spirit,"  says  John :  it  is  St.  Paul's  distinction  between 
"  psychic  "  and  "  pneumatic  "  men — the  fundamental 
Christian  line  of  cleavage — re-stated  in  sacramental  terms. 
Hence  the  difference  between  the  boundless  universe  of 
the  mystic,  free  as  air,  no  more  the  helpless  slave  of  "  use 
and  wont,"  and  the  cramped  universe  of  the  una wakened 
man,  who  has  not  "  changed  his  mind "  :  who  is,  as 
Macarius  said  in  a  vivid  image,  on  the  wrong  side  of 
the  partition  wall.  "  Except  a  man  be  born  again  he 
cannot  see  the  Kingdom  .  .  .  cannot  enter  the  Kingdom." 

John  next  proceeds  to  exhibit  the  implications  of  this 

1  God  will  not  lodge  in  the  narrow  heart.  .  .  .  Poverty  hath  so  ample 
a  bosom  that  Deity  itself  may  lodge  therein. — Jacopone  da  Todi,  Lauda 
LIX. 

2  John  i.  13.  8  John  iii.  6,  3,  5,  vii.  38. 

K  2 


244  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

new  life,  its  needs  and  powers.  The  new  birth,  the 
ascent  to  fresh  levels  of  consciousness,  has  made  man 
receptive  of  Reality :  the  "  living  water  "  of  the  universal 
Divine  Spirit,1  pouring  out  from  God,  the  Fountain  of 
all  life.  This  inflowing  life,  once  received,  becomes  a 
source  of  new  vitality,  refreshment  and  peace  ;  welling  up 
without  ceasing  from  the  depths  of  the  soul  "  unto  eternal 
life."  "  Whosoever  drinketh  of  the  water  that  I  shall 
give  him  shall  never  thirst."  2 

Then,  the  gifts  received  by  those  in  whom  the  new 
life  is  manifest;  shown,  in  the  allegorical  manner  common 
to  Alexandrian  piety,  in  a  series  of  episodes  chosen  from 
the  current  "  lives  "  of  Jesus.  New  strength  given  to 
the  weak  and  impotent :  new  vision  given  to  the  spirit 
ually  blind :  actual  life  given  to  the  spiritually  dead — 
manifestations,  one  and  all,  of  the  new  dower  of  vitality 
now  made  available  for  men  by  the  direct  action  of  the 
"  Energetic  Word."  8  There  are,  in  all,  seven  of  these 
symbol-miracles,  each  given  as  the  "  outward  and  visible 
sign"  of  a  real  and  eternal  fact.  Nor  does  the  writer 
leave  us  in  doubt  as  to  the  purely  transcendental  signifi 
cance  which  these  stories  bear  for  him,  as  demonstrations 
of  the  Divine  Life.  "  My  Father  works  unceasingly,  and 
so  do  I,"  says  the  Johannine  Logos :  "  As  the  Father 
awakens  the  dead  and  gives  them  life,  so  the  Son  also  gives 
life  to  whom  He  wills."  "  For  judgment  I  am  come  into 
the  world,  that  they  which  see  not  might  see;  and  that 
they  which  see  might  be  made  blind."  *  Most  striking 
of  all  is  the  declaration  which  marks  the  crowning  miracle 
of  Lazarus  brought  from  the  grave :  u  /  am  the  resurrec 
tion,  and  the  lire:  he  that  believeth  in  Me,  though  he 
were  dead,  yet  shall  he  live :  and  whosoever  liveth  and 

1  See  Jer.  ii.  13. 

J  John  iv.  10-14.  So,  too,  the  newly  baptised  in  the  primitive 
Christian  hymn — "  I  drank  and  was  inebriated  with  the  living  water  that 
does  not  die  "  (Odes  of  Solomon,  XL). 

8  John  v.  2-9;  ix.  1-7;  and  xi.  38—46. 

4  John  v.  17,  21  (Weymouth's  trans.);  John  ix.  39. 


THE   JOHANNINE  MYSTIC  245 

believeth  in  Me  shall  never  die."  l  This  is  the  Pauline 
doctrine  of  conditional  immortality — of  the  growing  up 
of  the  New  Man  into  the  spiritual  or  eternal  order — cast 
into  a  prophetic  form. 

Interwoven  with  these  significant  incidents,  and  com 
pleting  the  picture  of  the  dependence  of  the  illuminated 
soul  on  the  spiritual  order  which  strengthens,  feeds  and 
enlightens  it,  are  the  two  long  and  beautiful  discourses 
in  which  the  Logos-Christ  of  John's  mystic  vision  declares 
Himself  under  the  Philonic  titles  of  Bread  of  Life  and 
Shepherd  of  Souls.2 

The  great  poetic  description  of  Christ  as  the  Bread  of 
Life  is  linked  with  the  story  of  the  "feeding  of  the 
multitude,"  its  expression  on  the  material  and  historical 
plane :  but  it  presupposes  as  its  background  the  Christian 
sacrament  of  the  Eucharist,  which  had  already  developed 
under  the  influence  of  St.  Paul  a  definitely  mystical  char 
acter.  In  this  sacrament  Catholic  mystics  of  every  period 
have  found  a  focus  both  for  their  rapturous  contempla 
tion  of  God,  and  for  their  consciousness  of  His  inflowing 
life  veritably  received  by  them.  The  "  communion " 
of  which  it  is  the  external  sign  has  then  that  double 
aspect  of  personal  intercourse  with  a  Person  and  of  the 
reception  of  an  impersonal  spiritual  power  or  food,  a 
definite  access  of  vitality — grace — which  is  one  of  the 
paradoxes  of  the  Christian  apprehension  of  the  spiritual 
order;  a  paradox  constantly  repeated,  though  never  ex 
plained,  in  the  lives  of  the  great  contemplatives.  In  the 
wonderful  discourse  on  the  Bread  of  Life,  which  the 
Fourth  Evangelist  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Christ,  this 
paradox  receives  its  classical  expression.  The  whole  range 
of  its  author's  highest  mystical  experiences,  in  contempla 
tion,  in  the  "prayer  of  union,"  in  those  hours  of  still 
waiting  upon  the  spiritual  world  in  which  the  mystic 
seems  to  hear  the  very  voice  of  Wisdom  and  Truth  and 

1  John  xi.  25.  a  Caps.  vi.  and  z, 


246  THE   MYSTIC  WAY 

to  feel  the  inflow  of  a  new  enabling  life,  are  drawn  upon.1 
The  apparently  contradictory  concepts  of  the  separate  soul 
fed  by  the  substance  of  God :  of  the  complete  union  of 
that  soul  with  God :  of  indwelling,  of  the  "  Spirit,"  and 
the  partaking  of  the  "  flesh  and  blood  " — the  identifica 
tion  of  the  personal  Christ  with  His  impersonal  self- 
donation  as  "  grace  " — all  these  represent  the  writer's 
effort  to  expound  the  historical  incarnation  of  the  Logos 
in  the  light  of  his  own  consciousness  of  an  enor 
mously  enhanced  vitality :  of  a  new  spirit,  power  and 
life  within  him,  directly  dependent  upon  another  Life 
whose  emergence  on  the  material  plane  represented  the 
beginning  of  "  new  things  "  for  the  human  race. 

John  knows  himself  to  be  a  "partaker  of  the  divine 
nature";  hence  for  him,  as  for  Paul  and  the  Synoptics,  it 
is  always  a  higher  kind  of  vitality,  the  "  Spirit  that 
quickeneth  "  flowing  out  as  "Logos"  from  the  Absolute 
Source  of  life,  which  is  in  question.  "As  the  living 
Father  hath  sent  Me,  and  I  live  by  the  Father :  so  he  that 
eateth  Me,  even  he  shall  live  by  Me  ...  he  that  eateth 
of  this  bread  shall  live  for  ever."  2  Finally,  the  supreme 
expression  of  the  Christian  secret  as  John  had  understood 
and  experienced  it,  "I  am  come  that  they  might  have  life, 
and  that  they  might  have  it  more  abundantly " : 3  the 
unitive  life  of  divine  fecundity,  of  conscious  participa 
tion  in  the  Eternal  Order,  which  is  the  supreme  object 
of  mystical  growth  and  endeavour,  the  culmination  of  the 
Mystic  Way.  These  words,  which  sum  up  the  whole 
Johannine  gospel,  are  a  proof  that  their  writer  was  not 
a  theologian  or  a  controversialist  ;  but  a  practical  mystic, 
who  had  experienced  in  his  own  person  the  Christian  secret 
of  growth. 

The  discourse  of  the  tenth  chapter,  with  its  "  historical  " 

1  For  the  mystical  aspect  of  the   Eucharist   compare  Dionysius  the 
Areopagite,  De  Eccles.  Hier.,  cap.  3 ;  Thomas  a  Kempis,  De  Imitations 
Christi,  Bk.  IV. ;  Jacob  Boehme,  The  Threefold  Life  of  Man,  cap.  13. 

2  John  vi.  57-58.  8  John  x.  10. 


THE   JOHANNINE   MYSTIC  247 

illustration,  the  bringing  of  Lazarus  from  death  to  life, 
completes  the  first  part  of  John's  great  epic  of  the  soul. 
It  has  shown  the  movement  of  the  " converted"  spirit 
through  purification  to  "  new  birth,"  its  gradual  entrance 
into  those  powers  which  are  characteristic  of  the  illumin 
ative  state :  the  reception  of  new  strength  and  new  vision, 
the  inflow  of  grace,  the  deeper  and  deeper  apprehension 
of  the  secrets  of  Reality  disclosed  in  the  Here-and-Now. 
It  has  brought  the  ideal  Christian  to  the  point  at  which 
the  supreme  mystery  of  union  with  the  Divine  Source 
of  life  and  light  is  to  be  declared  to  him.  Lazarus  comes 
from  the  dark  grave  in  which  he  has  been  four  days 
buried,  to  the  light  of  day  and  to  a  face-to-face  encounter 
with  the  Presence  who  declares  Himself  as  "  Resur 
rection  and  Life":  and  here  perhaps  it  is  not  wholly 
fantastic  to  trace  a  hint  of  the  Evangelist's  recognition, 
possibly  his  remembrance,  of  that  period  of  gloom,  desti 
tution  and  "  spiritual  death  "  through  which  the  human 
consciousness  must  pass  on  its  way  to  supreme  spiritual 
attainment. 

Nearly  all  critics  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  have  recognised 
that  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  chapter  marks  a  new 
section  of  the  work,  a  change  of  tone  and  subject.1  Out 
wardly  the  change  is  from  the  narrative  of  the  ministry 
of  Jesus  to  that  of  His  Passion  ;  and  from  acts  and  teach 
ings  performed  in  public,  to  deeper  and  more  intimate 
discourses  given  within  the  circle  of  the  "little  flock." 
But  in  the  scheme  of  spiritual  growth  which  underlies 
this  book,  the  change  is  from  an  objective  to  a  subjective 
view  of  the  revelation  of  Reality,  the  history  of  the 
"  Logos  made  flesh."  Whilst  the  first  twelve  chapters 
of  the  gospel  exhibit  Christ  as  the  Principle  of  Life  and 
the  Light  of  Life,  energising  and  illuminating  the  self 
which  is  turned  in  the  new  direction  of  growth,  the 
thirteenth  to  the  eighteenth  chapters  describe  the  intimate 
union  and  personal  love  which  does  or  may  subsist 
1  Cf.  Loisy,  Le  Quatrtime  Evangile,  p.  140. 


248  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

between  this  Principle  of  Life  and  the  spirits  of  men : 
the  joy  and  the  creative  power  which  springs  from  it. 
Here  the  figure  of  Jesus  as  all-revealing  is  balanced  by 
the  figure  of  the  Beloved  Disciple  ;  the  mystic  soul,  friend 
and  companion  of  the  Logos,  to  whom  the  supremest 
mysteries  of  love  and  suffering  are  revealed. 

When  we  understand  the  underlying  principle  of  the 
book,  we  perceive  why  it  is  that  this  character  now  makes 
his  first  appearance.  All  that  has  gone  before  has  been 
a  preparation  for  him,  a  history  of  the  process  by  which 
the  Christian  mystic  is  made.  The  change,  then,  which 
now  takes  place,  is  exactly  analogous  to  the  change  from 
the  Illuminative  to  the  Unitive  state  of  consciousness:  a 
transition  which  John  further  illustrates,  in  accordance 
with  his  general  method,  by  two  significant  events — the 
solemn  anointing  of  one  destined  to  suffer,  and  the  Entry 
into  Jerusalem  of  one  destined  to  reign  1 — and  by  the 
announcement  of  that  great  central  principle  of  self- 
naughting,  "  dying  to  live  and  losing  to  find "  which 
every  mystic  who  has  come  up  to  these  levels  of  tran 
scendence  has  been  forced  to  accept.  This  is  here  pre 
sented  to  us,  not  as  a  "  religious  "  act,  but  as  an  essential 
part  of  the  process  of  all  life,  a  necessary  stage  in 
the  growth  of  every  self  who  aspires  to  the  "Kingdom 
of  Reality."  The  Pauline  law  of  imitatio  Christi  is  here 
fused  with  the  Logos-doctrine  peculiar  to  John. 

The  experiences  of  the  Saints  who  have  passed  through 
the  "  dark  night  "  of  surrender  suggest  to  us  something  of 
the  suffering  and  destitution  of  spirit  which  lies  behind 
this  profound  declaration,  that  utmost  agony  and  utmost 
glory  are  the  obverse  and  reverse  of  the  "  salvation " 
offered  to  men.  "  Jesus  answered  them,  saying,  The  hour 
is  come,  that  the  Son  of  Man  should  be  glorified.  Verily, 
verily,  I  say  unto  you,  Except  a  corn  of  wheat  fall  into  the 
ground  and  die,  it  abideth  alone :  but  if  it  die,  it  bringeth 
forth  much  fruit.  He  that  loveth  his  life  shall  lose  it; 

1  John  xii. 


THE   JOHANNINE   MYSTIC  249 

and  he  that  hateth  his  life  in  this  world  shall  keep  it  unto 
life  eternal.  If  any  man  serve  Me,  let  him  follow  Me; 
and  where  I  am,  there  shall  also  My  servant  be :  if  any 
man  serve  Me,  him  will  my  Father  honour."  1 

This  passage,  and  the  comments  which  follow  on  it, 
form  as  it  were  the  introduction  to  the  last  section  of 
the  gospel  ;  in  which  the  unitive  life  of  complete  and 
loving  surrender  to  that  Creative  Will  with  which  the 
Logos  or  Life-Spirit  is  "  one,"  is  first  expounded 
in  the  discourses  which  Jesus  is  described  as  giving  to 
"  His  own" — those  natural  mystics, the  re-born,  the  elect, 
who  had  received  His  message  and  "  changed  their 
minds  " 2 — and  then  exhibited  in  action  in  the  events  of 
the  Passion  and  Resurrection. 

These  discourses  constitute  our  final  evidence  that  the 
Fourth  Evangelist  was  no  theoretic  Christian,  but  truly 
possessed  of  that  actual  mighty,  inflowing  life — rich, 
deep,  and  many-graded — which  Jesus  of  Nazareth  had 
exhibited  in  all  its  splendour  and  power.  It  is  not 
memory  or  tradition,  it  is  profound  experience,  first-hand 
knowledge,  which  speaks  here.  "Whither  I  go  ye  know, 
and  the  Way  ye  know,"  says  the  Johannine  Christ  to  the 
members  of  the  New  Race;  those  who  are  "  given  Him  by 
the  Father."  "  I  have  called  you  friends,  for  all  things 
that  I  have  heard  of  My  Father  I  have  made  known  unto 
you."  3  Nowhere  in  the  New  Testament  is  the  sense 
of  separation  between  the  children  of  the  new  order  and 
the  mass  of  mankind  more  strongly  marked  than  in  these 
chapters.  "  I  pray  not  for  the  world,"  says  the  Johan 
nine  Christ,  "  but  for  them  which  Thou  hast  given  me, 
for  they  are  Thine."  4  "  In  My  Father's  house  are  many 

•     !  John  xii.  23-26. 

2  "  I  speak  not  of  you  all :  I  know  whom  I  have  chosen  (xiii.  18). 
'  Ye  have  not  chosen  Me,  but  I  have  chosen  you  "  (xv.  16).     By  the 
time  that  this  gospel  came  to  be  written  it  had  become  clear  that  few 
indeed  were  "  chosen  "  though  many  "  called." 

3  John  xiv.  4,  xyji.  6  and  xv.  15.  4  John  xvii.  9. 


250  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

mansions";  in  the  Spiritual  Order  there  are  degrees  of 
transcendence  as  innumerable  as  the  shaded  degrees  of 
life  ;  but  "I  go  to  prepare  a  place  for  you  " — for  those 
capable  of  the  supreme  ascent  in  the  wake  of  this  pattern 
— "  that  where  I  am  there  ye  may  be  also,"  i.  e.  in  perfect 
union  with  the  Being  of  God,  the  goal  of  the  mystic 
quest.  The  way  thereto  is  along  the  path  of  growth 
now  declared  and  exhibited.  "  I  am  the  way,  the  truth, 
and  the  life,"  l  says  that  awful  yet  intimate  Voice  which 
speaks  in  the  deeps  of  John's  soul. 

Moreover,  the  mystic's  certitude  of  the  unity  of  all 
spirit ;  the  immanence  of  God  in  man  and  man  in  God— 
and  of  love,  "  the  ghostly  bond  which  knits  up  the 
universe  "  as  the  clue  to  the  meaning  of  the  whole — finds 
expression  over  and  over  again  in  these  chapters.  In  them, 
all  mystics  of  later  generations  have  found  their  mightiest 
discoveries  forestalled.  John  here  speaks  to  us  indeed 
from  "  the  summit  of  the  inner  life."  Far  more  valuable 
to  us  than  the  reports  of  historical  "  witnesses  "  who  did 
not  understand,  is  this  sublime  and  ecstatic  statement  of 
experience,  by  one  who  lived  within  the  new  Kingdom 
of  Heaven.  First  under  one  image,  then  under  another, 
he  struggles  to  express  the  essence  of  that  Kingdom, 
which  he  possesses  and  by  which  he  is  possessed : 
the  indwelling  of  Divine  Reality  in  the  individual  soul 
and  of  the  individual  soul  in  Divine  Reality  ;  the  doing 
away  of  the  barriers  of  self-hood  ;  the  conscious,  loving 
and  sustained  communion  of  the  awakened  consciousness 
with  the  Source  of  its  life.  "I  am  in  the  Father,  and  the 
Father  is  in  Me :  .  .  .  the  Father  that  dwelleth  in  Me, 
He  doeth  the  works."2  This  clear  declaration  of  a  tran 
scendent  yet  immanent  Reality,  Origin  of  all  that  is  ;  and 
of  the  identity  of  the  Logos,  the  growing  dynamic 
Spirit  of  Life,  with  the  Absolute  God,  is  thrice  repeated. 
It  is  the  kernel  of  John's  message :  for  him,  the  whole 
great  continuous  effort  is  divine.  In  the  fact  that  this 
1  John  xiv.  2,  3,  6.  2  John  xiv.  10. 


THE   JOHANNINE   MYSTIC  251 

Spirit  of  Life  emerged  in  the  historical  Jesus,  and  that 
those  who  follow  in  His  wake  are  caught  in  that  great 
stream  of  transcendence,  filled  by  its  power,  he  finds  the 
bridge  which  links  this  theological  expression  with  the 
practical  life  of  man;  "  I  am  in  My  Father,  and  ye  in  Me, 
and  I  in  you."  In  the  soul  made  real,  Reality  itself  is 
present  and  at  work.  "  I  will  not  leave  you  desolate,  1 
come  unto  you.  .  .  .  We  will  come,  and  make  our  abode — 
the  Paraclete,  even  the  Holy  Spirit,  shall  teach  you  all 
things " 1 — desperate  efforts,  one  and  all,  to  reduce 
supernal  knowledge  to  concrete  human  speech.  Tran 
scendent  Father,  Creative  Logos,  indwelling  Spirit,  are 
for  John  not  scientific  terms,  but  aspects  of  the  unique 
and  abounding  life  of  God  ;  fluid  symbols  of  man's  varied 
ways  of  laying  hold  on  that  One  Reality.  The  "  promise 
of  the  Paraclete,"  the  "  coming  "  of  the  Exalted  Christ, 
the  eucharistic  discourses,  are  so  many  artistic  presenta 
tions  of  this  same  thing :  the  participation  of  the 
regenerate  human  consciousness  in  Eternal  Life.  John 
knew  this  by  practical  experience;  and  trying  to  express 
it,  sometimes  resorted  to  one  image  and  sometimes  to 
another.  It  is  impossible  to  extract  a  consistent  dogmatic 
system  from  his  utterances,  for  though  he  sometimes  tries 
to  be  a  theologian,  he  remains  at  heart  a  realist  and  a 
poet. 

In  the  end,  all  philosophic  language  came  to  seem  to 
him  inadequate  :  and  he  resorted,  as  so  many  mystics  after 
him,  to  the  heart's  intuition  of  its  Home  and  Father, 
"  that  dim  silence  where  lovers  lose  themselves  "  as  the 
only  definition  of  God  which  did  not  defeat  its  own  end. 
"  We  have  known  and  believed  the  love  that  God  hath 
to  us.  God  is  love;  and  he  that  dwelleth  in  love  dwelleth 
in  God,  and  God  in  him."  2  This,  which  was  destined 
to  be  one  of  the  fundamental  ideas  of  Christian  mysticism; 
which  fought  and  conquered  the  Neoplatonic  concept  of 
God  as  the  supreme  object  of  knowledge,  and  contempla- 
1  John  xiv.  2<v  1 8,  23,  26  (R.V.).  *  I  John  iv.  16. 


252  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

tion  as  a  u  gnostic"  act  ;  was  John's  most  characteristic 
contribution  to  the  interpretation  of  the  Christian  life. 
His  was  that  piercing  vision  which  discovered  that  the 
Spirit  of  Love  is  one  with  the  Spirit  of  Truth,  and  that 
only  those  who  love  will  ever  understand.  It  was  this 
which  definitely  established  the  essentially  mystic  char 
acter  of  Christian  faith. 

Mysticism,  both  Christian  and  other,  has  often  been 
called  the  science  of  divine  love.  Mystics  of  every  period 
have  held  its  essence  to  consist  in  the  "  spiritual  marriage," 
the  rapturous  reunion  of  the  soul  with  its  Origin :  and 
have  laid  down  the  fundamental  law  that  "  by  love  He 
may  be  gotten  and  holden,  but  by  thought  never."  * 
"  I  desired  oftentimes,"  says  Julian  of  Norwich,  medi 
tating  on  her  vision  of  Reality,  "  to  wit  what  was  our 
Lord's  meaning.  And  fifteen  years  after,  and  more,  I  was 
answered  in  ghostly  understanding,  saying  thus :  Wouldst 
thou  wit  thy  Lord's  meaning  in  this  thing?  Learn  it 
well :  Love  was  His  meaning.  Who  showed  it  thee  ? 
Love.  What  showed  He  thee?  Love.  Wherefore 
showed  it  He?  For  Love.  Hold  thee  therein  and  thou 
shalt  learn  and  know  more  in  the  same.  But  thou  shalt 
never  know  nor  learn  therein  other  thing  without  end."  2 

This  side  of  the  mystic  experience — this  reading  of  the 
riddle  of  life — is  found  in  its  highest  development  in  the 
writings  of  the  Fourth  Evangelist.  He  is  indeed  "  the 
eagle  that  flies  high,  so  right  high  and  yet  more  high  than 
does  any  other  bird,  because  he  is  feathered  with  fine  love, 
and  beholds  above  other  the  beauty  of  the  Sun,  and  the 
beams  and  the  brightness  of  the  Sun."  3  In  the  great 
discourse  of  the  fifteenth  chapter  he  gives  artistic  expres 
sion  to  this,  his  deepest  intuition  of  truth.  It  is  the 
Charter  of  the  New  Race  ;  the  classical  description  of 
Christian  mysticism.  Here  the  two  great  aspects  of  man's 

1  The  Cloud  of  Unknowing,  cap.  6. 

2  Revelations  of  Divine  Love,  cap.  86. 

3  The  Mirror  of  Simple  Souls. 


THE   JOHANNINE  MYSTIC  253 

relation  to  Reality — fruition  and  creation — are  fused  in 
a  living  whole.  Human  personality  is  shown  as  a  growing 
thing  because  it  is  part  of  a  growing  system  ;  a  branch 
of  the  Living  Vine.  The  Logos-life  is  flowing  through 
it,  and  is  the  source  of  that  power  by  which  it  buds  and 
blossoms,  becomes  itself  the  parent  of  new  life. 

The  characteristic  notes  of  a  sane  and  complete  spiritu 
ality — joyous  self-mergence  in  the  life  of  the  Whole, 
and  the  creative  fertility  of  a  truly  living  thing — 
are  placed  in  the  foreground  as  the  signs  whereby  may 
be  recognised  that  "  new  man  "  in  whom  the  entincturing 
Spirit  of  Life  dwells  and  works,  as  sap  within  the  branches 
of  the  living,  growing  Vine.  John's  dream  of  the  Vine 
is  the  exact  equivalent  of  Paul's  dream  of  the  Mystic 
Body  of  Christ.  Both  are  inspired  by  the  same  three-fold 
experience :  of  a  power  by  which  they  are  possessed,  a 
growing  life  pouring  itself  out  through  them,  a  greater 
life  whose  interests  they  must  serve.  Moreover  fruits, 
results — in  a  word  "  fertility  " — are  for  both  the  earnests 
of  the  fact  that  this  mysterious  union  between  God  and 
the  soul  has  indeed  taken  place :  of  the  mystic's  participa 
tion  in  the  life  of  Eternity.  The  "  deified "  man, 
"  partaker  of  the  divine  nature,"  must  exhibit  something 
of  the  divine  fecundity  of  God.  He  must  "  flow  out," 
as  Ruysbroeck  said,  in  works  of  charity  towards  men. 
Creative  power,  the  bringing  forth  of  new  life,  of  "  fresh 
children  of  the  infinite,"  say  these  primitive  Christian 
mystics,  is  the  one  reliable  sign  of  "  Christ  in  you  " — of 
the  achievement  of  the  full  stature  of  Divine  Humanity. 
Not  something  self-contained  and  complete,  but  some 
thing  which  entinctured,  changed,  enhanced,  the  environ 
ment  in  which  it  found  itself — light,  salt,  leaven,  a  path, 
not  a  blind  alley  for  the  Spirit  of  Life — was  the  ideal  of 
Jesus  for  His  little  flock :  and  John,  like  Paul,  has  realised 
this  as  central  for  the  "gospel"  of  new  life.  "Every 
branch  in  Me  that  beareth  not  fruit  He  taketh  away  .  .  . 
as  the  branch  cannot  bear  fruit  of  itself,  except  it  abide 


254  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

in  the  vine,  no  more  can  ye,  except  ye  abide  in  Me.  1  am 
the  vine,  ye  are  the  branches.  He  that  abideth  in  Me 
and  I  in  him,  the  same  bringeth  forth  much  fruit :  for 
without  Me  ye  can  do  nothing.  .  .  .  Herein  is  My  Father 
glorified,  that  ye  bear  much  fruit  ;  so  shall  ye  be  My 
disciples.  .  .  .  These  things  have  I  spoken  unto  you,  that 
My  joy  might  remain  in  you,  and  that  your  joy  might 
be  full."  l 

Christian  mysticism  is  the  history  of  this  law  in  action : 
its  initiates  have  demonstrated  again  and  again  in  their 
lives  and  works  the  strange  creative  power,  the  amazing 
control  over  circumstance,  of  that  spirit  of  more  abundant 
life  which  transfuses  their  whole  being,  infects  those  who 
come  within  the  sphere  of  their  influence,  and,  in  the 
higher  stages  of  the  Mystic  Way,  directs  their  actions. 
They  are  definitely  conscious  of  some  "  power  not 
themselves" — in  the  words  of  modern  psychology,  a 
"  secondary  personality  of  a  superior  and  powerful  type  " 
—which  energises  them  anew,  and  drives  them  on  to  the 
mighty  careers  of  a  Paul,  a  Francis,  a  Joan  of  Arc,  an 
Ignatius,  a  Teresa  ;  helps  and  inspires  the  impassioned 
contemplations  of  a  Julian  or  a  St.  John  of  the  Cross.2 
Right  down  the  course  of  history,  we  can  trace  the 
emergence  of  this  spiritual  life,  which  "  is  not  a  mani 
festation  of  mere  man,  but  of  an  independent  reality,  and 
.  .  .  through  a  communication  of  this  reality,  gains  a  new 
and  cosmic  nature  for  man."  3 

This  spirit,  the  "  sap "  of  the  Mystic  Vine  and  the 
indwelling  Logos-life,  is  presented  by  John  under  another 
image  as  the  "Paraclete":  a  word  which  means,  not 
"comforter"  but  "auxiliary,"  and  was  one  of  Philo's 

1  John  xv.  2,  4,  5,  8,  11. 

2  St.  Paul  is  of  course,  as  we  have  seen,  one  of  the  best  examples  of 
this  "  compulsion  of  the  spirit  "  (cf.  supra,  Cap.  III.  §  I).     See  also  the 
Testament  of  St.  Ignatius  ;  St.  Teresa's  Life  and  Book  of  the  Foundations  ; 
Fox's  Journal ;  and,  for  an  example  of  the  same  type  of  experience  in  a 
mystical  soul  of  our  time,  General  Gordon's  Letters  to  his  Sister. 

3  Eucken,  The  Truth  of  Religion,  p.  544. 


THE    JOHANNINE    MYSTIC  255 

names  for  the  Logos.  The  impact  of  its  "  more  abundant 
life  "  upon  the  human  consciousness  was  a  fact  of  experi 
ence  for  the  primitive  Christian — "  Ye  know  Him,  for 
He  dwelleth  in  you,"  says  John  to  those  who  had  received 
the  " fulness"  of  the  new  life.1  In  the  "Paraclete," 
which  is  but  another  aspect  of  the  Logos-life,  he  finds 
the  connecting  link  between  the  history  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  and  the  experience  of  those  twice-born  spirits 
who  "  walk  even  as  He  walked,"  2  grow  as  He  grew 
towards  the  perfect  fruition  of  God  ;  and  share  His 
power  of  evoking  a  new  and  more  vivid  life  in  other 
men.  The  continued  experience  of  this  divine  energy 
welling  up  within  them  is  to  be  for  them,  as  it  was  for 
Paul,  the  guarantee  of  their  participation  in  "  eternal 
life":3  and  the  tests  of  their  possession  of  it  are  to  be 
the  Pauline  tests  of  character  and  of  work.  Paul  and 
John,  so  different  in  temperament,  are  identical  in  their 
conclusions  ;  identical  in  the  "  Kingdom "  which  they 
describe.  Love  and  humility,  which  together  include 
every  aspect  of  the  response  of  the  awakened  self  to  God 
and  to  the  world  of  other  men,  are  here  presented  as  the 
sum  of  virtue.  It  is  of  these  twin  qualities  that  the 
author  of  The  Cloud  of  Unknowing  remarks  that  he  who 
hath  them  hath  all :  for  they  represent  knowledge  of  self 
and  knowledge  of  God,  the  perfect  adjustment  of  the 
individual  to  the  universal  life. 

In  his  history  of  the  Passion  of  Jesus,  John  shows  to 
us  the  deepest  humility,  the  highest,  purest  love  in 
action :  declares  them  as  the  final  attributes  of  the  divine 
nature  here  revealed  to  men.  The  Logos-Christ, 
humbling  Himself  and  giving  Himself  out  of  love  for 
the  world,  is  to  be  the  pattern,  the  norm  of  the  New 
Race.  That  John  here  describes  no  historical  and  vicarious 
act  of  salvation,  but  something  which  is  intimately  con- 

1  John  xiv.  17.  2  I  John  ii.  6. 

3  "  The  Spirit  itself  beareth  witness  with  our  spirit  that  we  are  the 
children  of  God." — Rom.  viii.  16. 


256  THE   MYSTIC  WAY 

nected  with  the  life  and  growth  of  man,  and  which 
involves  a  demand  made  on  every  lover  of  Reality,  is 
proved  by  the  stern  declaration  in  the  fifteenth  chapter, 
of  the  conditions  of  utter  disinterestedness  and  self- 
donation  on  which  alone  man  may  be  accepted  as  the 
"friend"  of  the  divine  Spirit  of  Life.  uThis  is  my 
commandment,  that  ye  love  one  another,  as  I  have  loved 
you.  Greater  love  hath  no  man  than  this,  that  a  man 
lay  down  his  life  for  his  friends :  ye  are  my  friends  if 
ye  do  whatsoever  I  command  you." *  Here  we  have 
again  that  call  to  surrender,  to  self-naughting,  which  lies 
at  the  heart  of  Christian  mysticism,  and  which  finds  its 
perfect  symbol  in  the  Christian  cross. 

John's  epic  of  "  salvation"  completes  itself  naturally 
by  a  description  of  the  Resurrection  —  the  supreme 
mystery  of  Christianity,  the  final  guarantee  of  Eternal  Life 
given  to  the  world.  In  these  lovely  scenes,  the  vivid 
definition  and  high  poetry  which  mark  all  the  narrative 
passages  of  his  book  reach  their  fullest  development. 
John  himself,  in  the  person  of  the  "  Beloved  Disciple," 
seems  to  act,  to  suffer,  and  to  hope,  within  the  frame 
of  the  events  he  is  describing :  as  so  many  mystics  after 
him  have  declared  that  they  have  stood  in  dramatic  vision 
beneath  the  Cross,  and  shared  the  agony  of  Mary,  or  seen 
at  first  hand  the  beauty  and  the  wonder  of  the  "  strong 
and  immortal "  Christ.  Yet  these  sections  too  are 
animated  by  the  writer's  passionate  vision  of  unity,  of 
Jesus  as  the  pathfinder,  cutting  a  thoroughfare  for  the 
race.  "  I  ascend  to  My  Father  and  your  Father,  and  to 
My  God  and  your  God."  "  As  My  Father  hath  sent  Me, 
even  so  send  I  you."  2  John,  like  his  Master,  has  his 
eye  upon  Man;  "these  things  are  written  .  .  .  that  ye 
might  have  life,  through  His  name."  3 

1  John  xv.  12-14.  a  John  xx.  17,  21,  31. 

3  i.e.  through  His  qualities;  the  "Name,"  for  Hebrew  thought, 
being  the  ultimate  expression  of  being  and  personality.  Hence  the 
unknowable  character  of  the  "Name"  of  God,  and  the  importance 


THE   JOHANNINE   MYSTIC  257 

The  Fourth  Gospel  is,  then,  the  poetic  description  by 
a  great  mystic,  who  was  also  a  great  artist,  of  that 
new  life,  that  new  outbirth  of  Reality,  which  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  made  available  for  the  race.  From  the  rhythmic 
and  oracular  Prologue,  to  the  heavenly  vision  of  the  risen 
and  eternal  Christ — companion  of  the  daily  life  of  man— 
with  which  it  ends,  it  bears  the  mark  of  the  exalted  state 
of  consciousness  in  which  it  was  composed.  For  that 
consciousness  Christianity  was  a  vital  fact,  not  a  belief : 
it  was  the  joyous,  free  participation  in  the  Eternal  Order, 
the  steady  growing  up  of  man,  energised  by  the  more 
abundant  life  of  the  Spirit,  into  that  condition  whereby 
he  became  "  not  a  servant,  but  a  son."  More,  it  was  the 
beginning  of  an  organic  transmutation  in  which  adolescent 
spirit  grows  to  a  supernal  maturity  foreseen  but  not  yet 
attained.  John's  Parousia  is  the  achievement  of  that 
completed  life.  "  Behold,"  he  says  in  his  epistle,  "what 
manner  of  love  the  Father  hath  bestowed  on  us,  that  we 
should  be  called  children  of  God :  and  such  we  are.  For 
this  cause  the  world  knoweth  us  not,  because  it  knew 
Him  not.  Beloved,  now  are  we  children  of  God,  and 
it  is  not  yet  made  manifest  what  we  shall  be.  We  know 
that  if  it  shall  be  manifested,  we  shall  be  like  Him  .  .  . 
and  every  one  that  hath  this  hope  purifieth  himself,  even 
as  He  is  pure."  l 

attached  in  folklore  to  the  discovery  of  "  true  "  names.     Cf.  E.  Clodd, 
Tom-tit-tot :  Savage  Philosophy  in  Folk-tale. 

1  I  John  iii.  1-3  (R.V.). 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    MYSTIC    LIFE    IN    THE    EARLY 
CHURCH 

"  Agnosce,  O  Christiana,  dignitatem  tuam  :  et  divins  censors  factus 
naturae,  noli  in  veterem  vilitatem  degeneri  conversatione  redire.  Memento 
cujus  capitis,  et  cujus  corporis  sis  membrum.  Reminiscere,  quia  erutus 
de  potestate  tenebrarum,  translatus  es  in  Dei  lumen  et  regnum." — (ST. 
LEO,  De  nativitate  Domini?) 

"  Christianity  for  the  first  time  reveals  a  complete  knowledge  of  divine 
being;  a  deification  of  man." — (RUDOLPH  EUCKEN.) 


THE    AGE    OF    ENTHUSIASM 

THE  tendency  of  life,  to  "  spread  sheaf-like  "  from  each 
new  point  of  vantage  gained  ;  to  fritter  its  first  great 
dower  of  momentum  amongst  innumerable  variations  of 
the  original  type,  to  turn  upon  itself,  break  down  and  fall 
back  from  the  first,  spontaneous  impulse  to  easy  and 
quickly-crystallising  habits,  is  nowhere  better  seen  than 
in  the  primitive  history  of  the  Christian  Church.  So  quick 
was  this  development  that  Harnack  is  able  to  enumerate 
eight  independent  factors  of  the  primitive  religion  as 
preached  in  the  second  century,  each  one  of  which  was 
responsible  for  a  certain  number  of  conversions,  and  was 
accepted  by  a  certain  group  as  the  "  essence  "  of  Chris 
tianity.1  Though  several  of  these  factors — the  "  gospel 
of  salvation,"  the  idea  of  a  New  People,  or  "  Third  Race," 
and  the  cult  of  the  Christian  mysteries — have  their  origin 
in  the  mystical  consciousness,  only  one,  the  gift  of  the 
"  Spirit  and  Power,"  really  represents  that  consciousness ; 
and  this  was  already  by  no  means  the  most  prominent 
aspect  of  the  Christian  "  Way." 

The  origin  of  that  Way — the  outbreak  of  life  in  a  new 
direction,  its  saltatory  ascent  to  freedom — was  rooted  in  the 
unique  personality  of  Jesus,  the  balance  and  wholeness  of 
His  spirit,  His  perfect  fruition  of  Reality.  We  have 
seen  that  this  exalted  life  was  inherited  to  a  less  extent, 
yet  still  under  forms  of  great  richness  and  power,  by  Paul 
and  John;  that  it  was  known,  according  to  their  measure, 
by  many  of  the  first  generation  of  converts,  who,  orientat- 

1  The  Mission  and  Expansion  of  Christianity,  Vol.  I.  p.  84. 
261 


262  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

ing  themselves  anew  to  the  Transcendent  Order,  "  chang 
ing  their  minds,"  became  conscious  of  that  strange 
enhancement  of  vitality,  that  alteration  in  the  rhythm  and 
meaning  of  life,  that  inflowing  power  and  peace  which 
they  called  "  the  gift  of  the  Spirit."  x  Soon,  however,  this 
very  gift  became  itself  amenable  to  the  inexorable  law  of 
movement,  variation,  and  change  :  for  it  was  a  living  thing. 
Under  the  pressure  of  environment,  and  under  the  spur 
of  altered  conditions  which  brought  fresh  opportunities, 
limitations,  and  necessities  in  their  wake,  it  tended  to  the 
production  of  new  species,  clothed  itself  in  many  different 
forms.  Primitive  characters  became  atrophied  and  dis 
appeared.  New  features  were  called  into  existence.  The 
wholeness  of  the  original  type  split  up,  and  was  recaptured 
only  in  isolated  individuals,  whose  deep  reality,  and  virile 
power  of  transcending  circumstance,  allowed  them  to 
repeat  the  curve  of  the  life  of  Christ. 

So  far  as  the  totality  of  the  Christian  body  is  concerned, 
the  mystical  impulse  which  was  inherent  in  its  origin 
appeared  in  the  four  centuries  generally  called  primitive 
under  four  chief  forms. 

First,  in  the  claim  to  the  possession  of  "  more  abundant 
life,"  which  showed  itself  both  in  prophetic  and  ecstatic 
phenomena,  and  in  the  spontaneous  exhibition  of  power 
and  newness :  the  poetic  inspiration  of  prophets,  the 
God-intoxicated  courage  of  martyrs.  This  was  a  direct 
development  and  continuance  of  the  "  charismatic "  or 
enthusiastic  period. 

Secondly,  as  that  fresh  period  of  youthfulness  passed 
away,  in  the  selection  from  the  Christian  body  of  an  inner 
circle  capable  of  living  the  "Higher"  or  mystical  life; 
and  in  the  art  of  contemplation,  as  taught  by  the  Fathers 
of  the  third  and  fourth  centuries  and  practised  by  these 

1  The  temper  of  Paul's  later  epistles  and  the  first  letter  of  John  shows 
that  these  mystics  did  not  feel  themselves  to  be  the  solitary  possessors 
of  the  secret  of  new  life,  but  wrote  in  full  confidence  that  some  at  least 
of  those  whom  they  addressed  would  be  able  to  understand. 


MYSTIC  LIFE   IN  EARLY   CHURCH    263 

spiritual  Christians.  This  phase  made  of  mysticism  pre 
eminently  the  quest  of  the  Vision  of  God :  an  unbalanced 
development  of  one  side  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  its  outward 
swing  towards  fruition  of  the  Absolute. 

Thirdly,  in  the  birth  of  monasticism,  the  complementary 
quest  of  personal  sanctity  asserted  itself  :  the  love-impelled 
struggle  to  rebuild  character  in  conformity  with  the  Divine 
World.  This,  a  new  and  genuine  effort  of  spirit  to  cut 
a  thoroughfare  to  its  home,  descends  from  the  ethical 
and  psychological  side  of  the  Christian  gospel,  with  its 
emphasis  on  the  need  of  regeneration. 

Fourthly,  the  mystic  tendency  expressed  itself  in  the 
drama  of  the  Sacraments,  which  tended  as  they  developed 
to  recapitulate  the  interior  facts  of  the  Mystic  Way,  and 
to  give  the  secret  laws  of  spirit  a  symbolic  and  artistic 
form. 

These  four  streams  of  development — the  inspirational, 
the  contemplative,  the  ascetic,  the  sacramental — though 
they  arose  in  the  order  in  which  I  have  given  them,  are 
but  the  various  manifestations  of  one  tendency :  the 
mystical  tendency  to  transcendence  inherent  in  humanity. 
They  originate,  one  and  all,  in  the  spiritual  consciousness; 
in  Pauline  language,  are  the  "  fruits  "  of  one  Spirit — the 
urgent,  unresting  Spirit  of  Life.  Often  they  interpene 
trated  each  other,  as  happened  especially  with  the  ascetic 
and  contemplative  ideals.  Often  they  reacted  upon  each 
other.  Sometimes  one  seems  to  disappear,  as  happened 
frequently  with  the  prophetic  and  inspirational  type;  but 
it  always  breaks  out  again  when  circumstances  open  a  door. 
In  the  great  and  perfect  mystic — St.  Paul,  St.  Francis, 
St.  Teresa,  Boehme,  Fox — all  four  strands  are  plaited  to 
gether;  the  eager,  romantic,  spontaneous  impulse,  the  dis 
ciplined  power  of  attending  to  Reality,  the  passion  for 
holiness,  the  sacramental  vision  of  the  world.  Each  con 
tributes  its  part  to  the  "fulness  of  the  stature  of  Christ." 

These  four  strands  then — these  four  paths  cut  by  the 
new  tendency  of  life — I  propose  to  consider  in  order,  as 


264  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

they  appeared  during  the  first  four  Christian  centuries. 
In  each  of  these  centuries,  we  see  that  though  one  may 
be  dominant,  yet  all  are  present.  Prophecy,  contempla 
tion,  asceticism,  sacramentalism,  are  permanent  characters 
of  the  Christian  type.  First  of  them  in  time  comes  that 
great,  uplifting  sense  of  novelty  which  expressed  itself 
under  the  forms  of  charismatic  gifts  and  prophetic  enthusi 
asm,  and  which  inspired  the  idea  of  Christians  as  a  "  new  " 
or  "  third  "  race. 

One  of  the  strongest  marks  of  the  primitive  Church  is 
the  steady  conviction,  founded  on  experience,  that  some 
unknown  powerful  life  transcending  the  known  natural 
order  energised  humanity;  especially  that  section  of 
humanity — that  "  New  Race,"  as  it  was  not  afraid  to  call 
itself — which  had  accepted  the  Christian  "  revelation  " 
and  set  in  hand  the  Christian  process  of  growth.  This 
conviction,  already  prominent  in  the  writer  of  Acts,  at  last 
crystallised  in  the  "  belief  in  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  Lord 
and  Giver  of  Life,"  which  found  a  place  in  the  Nicene 
Creed :  but  this  formula  is  merely  a  memorial  raised  over 
the  sepulchre  of  vital  experiences — experiences  in  which 
that  which  we  should  now  call  the  elan  vital  in  its  highest 
form  of  expression  was  felt  and  known,  energising  the 
"  little  flock,"  breaking  out  sheaf-like  into  the  "  many 
fruits  "  of  the  "  one  Spirit,"  and  producing  fresh  effects 
within  the  temporal  world. 

This  "  Spirit,"  this  new,  abundant,  enthusiastic  life,  took 
in  experience  a  two-fold  form.  As  turned  towards  Trans 
cendent  Reality,  in  its  purely  religious  aspect,  it  expressed 
itself  in  a  deep,  permanent,  inward  conviction  of  mystical 
union  with  God,  a  "  sonship,"  which  included  the 
brotherly  relation  of  charity  with  all  other  twice-born  men. 
These,  the  "New  Race,"  were  the  members  of  a  divine 
family,  already  living  Eternal  Life  :  and  their  elder  brother 
was  the  exalted  Christ.  As  a  secondary  condition  of  con 
sciousness,  possession  of  the  "  Spirit "  showed  itself  in 
new  strange  powers,  those  alterations  and  enhancements 


MYSTIC   LIFE   IN   EARLY   CHURCH     265 

of  personality  and  often  bizarre  psychic  phenomena  which 
mark  all  great  epochs  of  spiritual  vitality.  These  pheno 
mena  represent,  as  it  were,  the  lowest  common  measure 
of  mystical  consciousness  existing  in  the  primitive  com 
munities  :  the  extent  to  which  the  contagious  quality  of 
that  fresh  life,  enjoyed  and  freely  imparted  by  the  Chris 
tian  leaders,  was  felt  by  the  crowd,  dragged  up  in  the 
wake  of  these  stronger  spirits  to  fresh  levels  of  experience, 
and  made  to  move  in  "  worlds  not  realised.'' 

In  the  fourteenth  century,  during  the  mystical  revival 
of  the  Friends  of  God,1  in  the  fifteenth  amongst  the 
Anabaptists,2  and  in  the  seventeenth,  when  the  Quaker 
movement  was  in  its  first  enthusiastic  stage,3  such  collec 
tive  experiences  of  mystic  phenomena,  and  such  general, 
sometimes  disorderly  exhibitions  of  psychic  "  gifts,"  under 
the  influence  of  leaders  of  great  spiritual  genius,  were 
common;  and  help  us  to  understand  the  conditions  which 
brought  about  the  "  charismatic "  period  in  the  Early 
Church.  A  social  life  of  close  sympathy  and  enthusiasm 
then  welded  the  small  communities  together;  a  common 
passion  and  belief,  a  common  concentration  upon  spiritual 
interests,  created  an  atmosphere  peculiarly  favourable  to 
the  development  of  the  transcendental  sense.  Each  little 
Christian  church,  in  so  far  as  it  remained  true  to  its 
mission,  was  a  forcing-house  for  the  latent  mystic  faculty 
in  man.  The  principles  which  govern  the  psychology  of 
crowds  apply  as  well  to  religious  as  to  secular  assemblies  :  4 
but  here  it  is  the  buried  craving  for  supersensual  satis 
faction,  the  instinct  for  Eternity,  the  stifled  sense  of  a 
duty  towards  an  Appellant  Love,  rather  than  the  primitive 
and  savage  aspects  of  human  personality,  which  emerge  in 
response  to  the  changed  rhythm  of  the  surrounding  life 
and  impose  themselves  upon  the  general  consciousness. 

1  Rufus  Jones,  Studies  in  Mystical  Religion,  p.  257. 

2  J.  O.  Hannay,  The  Spirit  and  Origin  of  Christian  Monasticism,  p.  14. 

3  Many  examples  in  Fox's  Journal. 

*  Cf.  Le  Bon,  Psychologie  des  Foules. 


266  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

A  corporate  condition  of  receptivity,  of  eager  and  con 
vinced  attentiveness  to  Reality,  may  thus  be  produced, 
which  stings  to  a  temporary  alertness  the  spiritual  "  spark" 
that  is  present  in  every  soul.  Thus  in  the  early  Christian 
gatherings  profound  alterations  of  tension  were  felt,  result 
ing  in  abnormal  and  sometimes  undisciplined  outbursts 
of  psychic  energy.  Men  were  suddenly  caught  up  to  new 
levels  of  life,  filled  with  celestial  enthusiasm,  and  dis 
cerned  powers  in  themselves  which  they  did  not  know  that 
they  possessed.  Thoroughfares — though  seldom  perfect 
thoroughfares — were  opened  for  that  strange  inspiring 
power  which  Paul  and  John  learned  by  long  discipline  to 
exhibit  in  orderly  splendour;  but  which  often  broke  out 
in  crude  psychic  automatisms  in  those  whose  "  conver 
sion  "  had  not  passed  on  from  the  enthusiastic  to  the  pur 
gative  and  educative  stage,  and  who  remained — as  Paul 
indeed  names  them — "  children  in  mind."1  Paul's  letters 
and  the  book  of  Acts  show  how  violently  and  frequently 
such  collective  "  manifestations  of  the  Spirit "  were  felt 
in  the  primitive  congregations  of  the  first  century :  up- 
rushes  of  supernal  enthusiasm,  abrupt  dilatations  of  con 
sciousness  resulting  sometimes  in  prophetic  utterance, 
sometimes  in  ecstatic  but  unintelligible  speech,  sometimes 
experienced  as  a  sudden,  exultant  consciousness  of  the 
Presence  of  God,  when  "  the  Spirit  fell  on  them."2 

That  they  were  a  "  new  people,"  a  Third  Race,  a  special 
variation  of  the  human  species  destined  to  "  inherit  eternal 
life  "  and  possessing  as  none  others  did  the  seed  of  im 
mortality — this  notion,  interwoven  with  crudely  realistic 
expectations  of  a  Second  Coming,  when  there  should  be 
"a  resurrection  of  the  dead  but  not  of  <?//,"  3  was  central 

1  i  Cor.  xiv.  20. 

2  I  Cor.  xiv. ;  Acts  viii.  15-20,  x.  44,  xi.  15,  xiii.  2  and  52,  xix.  6. 

3  The  Didache,  or   Teaching  of  the  Apostles,  §  16  (good  translation 
in  Lightfoot's  Apostolic  Fathers,  pp.  216-253).     The  date  and  provenance 
of  this  treatise  are  still  a  matter  of  controversy ;  but  it  undoubtedly  re 
presents  a  tone  of  mind  common  in  the  primitive  period. 


MYSTIC  LIFE   IN   EARLY   CHURCH     267 

for  the  Christian  consciousness.    This  sense  of  special  life 
at  work  in  them  and  a  special  destiny  at  hand — of  a  true 
difference  in  kind  between  the  "  new  creature  "  and  the 
normal  man — shown  in  the  steady  persistence  of  visions, 
ecstacies  and  apocalyptic  writings,  also  inspires  the  peculiar 
reverence  felt  for  the  prophet,  the  mystical  teacher,  the 
God-intoxicated  man,  as  being  of  special  value  to  the  com 
munity.     These  prophets  seem  to  have  gone  to  and  fro 
amongst  the  earlier  churches  like  knights-errant,  wrapped 
round  with  their  romantic  visions  of  a  wider  universe,  a 
more  exalted  life.     Veritable  "  minnesingers  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,"  they  kept  alive  the  wild,  free  poetic  quality  of 
the  Christian  revelation;  were  a  perpetual  check  on  life's 
tendency  to  lag  behind.    They  were  received  everywhere 
with  respect;  a  respect  which  soon  created  the  need  of 
some  standard  whereby  the  false  prophet  might  be  separ 
ated   from    the    true.      We    see   the   beginning   of    this 
development   even   in   the   Johannine   period.1      In   that 
enigmatic  book  the  Teaching  of  the  Apostles ,  the  false 
prophet — the  imitation  mystic — has  become  a  recognised 
danger;  though  the  true  prophet,  who  is  evidently  still 
looked  upon  as  a  permanent  and  not  uncommon  feature 
of  Christian  life,  has  lost  none  of  his  prestige.     His  acts 
and  utterances  are  sacred;  he  is  not  amenable  to  ordinary 
rules.     "  Any  prophet  speaking  in  the  Spirit  ye  shall  not 
try,  neither  discern;  for  every  sin  shall  be  forgiven,  but 
this  sin  shall  not  be  forgiven."     One  rule  only,  and  that 
the  hardest,  may  be  enforced  against  him :  his  life  must 
tally  with  the  vision  he  proclaims.    "  Every  prophet  teach 
ing  the  truth,  if  he  doeth  not  what  he  teacheth,  is  a  false 
prophet."  2 

The  "  prophet "  was  the  man  in  whom  the  "  Spirit," 
the  new  dower  of  vitality,  the  higher  consciousness,  which 
animated  in  theory  the  whole  Church,  broke  out  with  special 
power.  But  the  essentially  mystical  hope  of  a  new  life,  which 

1  I  John  iv.  I.  2  1 'be  Teaching  of  the  A-postles,  §  u. 


268  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

the  Epistle  of  Barnabas  calls  "  the  beginning  and  end  of 
our  faith,"  *  was  the  hope  held  out  to  every  initiate  of 
the  primitive  time.  This  profound  conviction  of  novelty  it 
is  which  inspires  the  first  mission  preaching.  It  runs  like 
a  thread  of  fire  through  the  Christian  Apocalypse.  "  Him 
that  overcometh  ...  I  will  write  upon  him  my  new 
name,"  "  they  sung  a  new  song,"  "  I  saw  a  new  heaven 
and  a  new  earth,"  and  so  to  the  last  awful  declaration, 
"  He  that  sat  upon  the  throne  said,  Behold!  I  make  all 
things  new."2  The  Pauline  conviction  "  to  every  one  of 
us  is  given  grace"3 — a  dower  of  transcendent  vitality- 
was  the  official  belief,  if  not  the  universal  experience.  It 
has  left  its  mark  upon  the  ceremonies  and  sacraments  of 
the  Church;  it  crops  up  constantly  in  the  writings  of  the 
early  Apologists.  It  made  of  the  real  Christian  some  one 
set  apart,  not  by  his  creed — one  amongst  the  myriad  beliefs 
of  the  later  Empire — but  by  the  tendency  of  his  life,  the 
depth,  richness,  and  infinite  possibilities  of  the  universe  in 
which  he  lived.  "  Christians,"  says  Swete,  "  were  readily 
distinguished  by  it,  not  only  from  their  heathen  neigh 
bours,  but  from  the  Jews,  with  whom  they  had  been  at 
first  confused.  They  were  seen  to  form  a  third  class  or 
type  (tertium  genus)  living  amongst  Pagans  and  Jews,  but 
incapable  of  mingling  with  either,  or  losing  their  iden 
tity."4 

This  strong  corporate  consciousness  of  power  and  new 
ness,  the  persistent  exhibition  of  "  charismatic  "  gifts,  the 
exultant  courage  of  the  martyrs,  the  sense  of  separation 
from  the  world,  continued  to  a  certain  extent — though  with 
ever-decreasing  radiance — through  the  first  three  centuries 
of  the  Christian  era.  At  first  these  characters  were  so 
common  as  to  be  taken  for  granted  :  the  normal  marks  of 
the  "  new  "  or  "  peculiar  "  people,5  the  "  God-loving  and 

1  The  Epistle  of  Barnabas,  cap.  I  (Migne,  Pat.  Grac.  T.  I).     Translation 
in  Lightfoot's  Apostolic  Fathers,  pp.  239-288. 

2  Rev.  ifi.  12,  v.  9,  xxi.  I  and  5.  3  Eph.  iv.  7. 

4  The  Holy  Spirit  in  the  Ancient  Church,  p.  401.          5  i  Clement,  Iviii. 


MYSTIC   LIFE   IN   EARLY   CHURCH     269 

God-fearing  Race."  *  Thus  Irenaeus  says,  writing  in  the 
second  century,  "  We  hear  many  brethren  in  the  Church 
who  possess  prophetic  gifts,  and  through  the  Spirit  speak 
all  kinds  of  languages,  and  bring  to  light  for  the  general 
benefit  the  hidden  things  of  men,  and  declare  the  mysteries 
of  God."  2  With  the  passing  of  time,  however,  these 
"gifts"  died  out  amongst  the  laity;  though  they  long 
survived  in  the  professionally  religious  class,  to  which  the 
more  ardent  and  spiritual  natures — possessed  of  an  instinct 
for  reality,  and  capable  of  discipline  and  growth — inevit 
ably  tended  to  belong. 

The  primitive  idea  of  Christianity  as  a  supra-normal 
life,  the  achievement  of  a  complete  humanity  "  in  Christ," 
an  appropriation  of  the  "  Spirit "  and  of  "  power,"  the 
acquirement  of  perfect  freedom,  was  never  wholly  lost. 
It  appeared  in  all  its  old  strength  in  sporadic  outbursts  of 
enthusiasm,  such  as  that  which  is  known  as  the  "  Mon- 
tanist  "  movement  of  the  second  century.  This  Montanist 
movement,  which  seems  to  have  originated  in  the  strong 
but  undisciplined  mystical  power  of  Montanus  and  his 
prophetess  daughters,  and  attracted  many  of  his  most 
spiritually  minded  contemporaries,  was  really  an  attempt 
to  check  the  rapid  toning-down  and  secularisation  of 
Christianity,  the  rapid  disappearance  of  mystical  ideals, 
and  give  practical  expression  to  the  Johannine  doctrine  of 
the  "Paraclete,"  the  actual,  divine  life  dwelling  in  and 
energising  the  Christian  Church.  It  was  founded  on  a 
clear  personal  recognition  of  an  inspiring  spirit — a  trans 
cendent  life-force — working  like  leaven  in  human  per 
sonality;  changing  it,  leading  it  on  and  up,  and  some 
times  breaking  through  into  the  field  of  consciousness  in 
ecstatic  intuitions  of  spiritual  things.  It  restored  to  their 
primitive  position  the  old  romantic  fervour,  the  Pauline 
sense  of  being  "  God-possessed."  For  Montanus,  as  for 
the  poet  of  the  Odes  of  Solomon,  the  mind  of  the  Christian 
prophet  is  a  lyre,  and  the  Spirit  is  the  plectrum  which  plays 
1  Martyrdom  of  Polycarp,  III.  2  Contra  H&r.,  V.  6. 


270  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

thereon.1  The  aim  of  the  Montanists  was  the  establish 
ment  of  a  "  spiritual  church  of  spiritual  men  "  :  and  they 
did,  as  a  fact,  revive  for  a  time  in  their  communities  the 
chief  charismatic  phenomena  of  the  Pauline  churches. 
Ecstatics  of  various  grades — prophets,  visionaries,  and 
clairvoyants — were  common  in  the  Montanist  church.2 
Tertullian,  its  greatest  convert,  often  refers  to  them :  and 
composed  a  long  treatise,  now  lost,  upon  ecstacy. 

Nor  did  the  manifestation  of  abnormal  power,  the 
instinct  for  a  great  spiritual  destiny,  die  with  the  fall  of 
the  Montanists.  It  represented  one  of  the  fundamental 
principles  of  the  Christian  family;  though  as  that  family 
enlarged  its  boundaries  and  psychological  conversion  was 
more  and  more  often  replaced  by  mere  formal  belief,  it 
tended  inevitably  to  become  an  unrealised  dream  for  the 
average  Christian,  who  had  changed  his  religion  indeed 
but  not  his  mind.  Tormented  by  the  vision  of  a  "  more 
abundant  life  "  needed  but  not  attained,  the  promise  of 
renewal  was  soon  identified  by  such  Christians,  not  with 
any  present  possession  of  vitality  and  joy,  any  first-hand 
adjustment  to  a  Perfection  awaiting  them  in  the  Here- 
and-Now,  but  with  the  old  eschatological  hope  of  a  coming 
"  millenium  and  resurrection  of  the  flesh  " — the  mystery 
of  the  Kingdom  and  of  New  Creatures  reduced  to  crudest 
and  most  concrete  terms.  It  was  easy  to  find  authority 
for  such  doctrines  in  the  Synoptic  gospels,  which  presented 
the  apocalyptic  vision  of  Jesus  on  its  most  definitely 
eschatological  side,  and  in  the  swarm  of  Jewish  and 
Christian  prophetic  writings,  many  of  which  possessed 
almost  canonical  authority.  We  have  in  the  New  Testa 
ment  canon  a  superb  example  of  such  literature  at  its  best : 
its  passion,  vividness,  and  rugged  splendour,  its  impres 
sive  power.  So  popular  were  these  ideas,  says  Harnack, 

1  Epiphanius,  Panarion  (Migne,  Pat  Gr&c.,  T.  XLI). 

*  Cf.  Swete,  op.  cit.,  pp.  77-83 ;  Hannay,  The  Spirit  and  Origin  of 
Christian  Monasticism,  pp.  60-70;  and  Rufus  Jones,  Studies  in  Mystical 
Religion,  pp.  39-49.  For  another  view  Harnack,  History  of  Dogma,  Vol. 
II.  pp.  95-100. 


MYSTIC  LIFE   IN   EARLY   CHURCH     271 

that  "  they  soon  appeared  to  the  pagans  to  be  the  distin 
guishing  features  of  this  silly  religion!  "  1 

Yet  behind  this  popular  travesty  of  the  secret  of  tran 
scendence,  this  vulgar  and  materialistic  eschatology,  the 
deep  human  instinct  for  a  consummation  of  all  things  in 
God,  some  final  attainment  of  Absolute  Life,  which  is  the 
motive  power  of  all  apocalyptic  speculation,  persisted. 
The  "  little  secret  love  "  went  on,  and  with  it,  the  secret, 
powerful  growth ;  the  deeply-hidden  leaven  did  not  fail. 
In  the  steady  stiffening  of  the  Christian  body,  the  growth 
of  theology  and  ceremonial,  the  "  organisation  of  the 
Church,"  the  branching  coral  soon  begins  to  seem  more 
important  than  the  scrap  of  Eternal  Life  which  it  hides : 
but  that  life  is  there,  and  those  who  know  where  to  look 
may  trace  its  operations,  its  passionate  attention  to  Reality, 
its  steady  onward  push  towards  expression.  Here  and 
there  a  phrase  in  the  writings  of  the  Fathers,  a  signifi 
cant  detail  in  some  rite,  hints  at  the  presence  below  the 
threshold  of  the  vital  spirit  of  growth. 

Though  the  Church  as  it  developed  showed  ever  more 
strongly  the  tendency  of  all  organised  groups  to  fall  back 
from  the  spontaneous  to  the  mechanical,  the  instinct  for 
novelty,  for  regeneration  and  growth,  the  sense  of  move 
ment  towards  a  more  complete  life — a  higher  level  of 
being — never  ceased.  In  the  few,  it  continued  to  produce 
the  original  "  charismatic "  effects,  though  this  became 
more  and  more  the  rarely-observed  mark  of  a  peculiar 
sanctity.  "  There  are  still  preserved  amongst  Christians," 
says  Origen,  writing  in  the  third  century,  "  traces  of  that 
holy  Spirit  which  appeared  in  the  form  of  a  dove.  They 
expel  evil  spirits  and  foresee  certain  events,  according  to 
the  will  of  the  Logos."2  A  century  later,  however,  when 
Christianity  had  become  the  State  religion  and  a  comfort 
able  security  had  taken  the  place  of  the  sufferings  and 
enthusiasm  of  the  past,  Theodore  of  Antioch3  observes 

1  Harnack,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I.  p.  92.  *  Contra  Celsum,  I.  46. 

*  A.D.  350-428. 


272  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

that  these  special  gifts  "  have  ceased  long  ago  to  find  a 
place  amongst  us.  If  you  insist  that  they  have  not  ceased, 
because  there  are  persons  who  can  do  wonders  by  the  power 
of  prayer  (though  this  does  not  often  happen)  I  reply,  that 
in  this  sense  wonders  will  never  cease,  for  the  saints  can 
never  wholly  fail  us." * 

Thanks  to  this  unfailing  family  of  saints,  the  Interior 
Church  of  mystic  souls,  who  acted  within  the  Christian 
body  as  the  intuitive  faculty  acts  within  the  individual 
man,  the  central  features  of  the  gospel  of  New  Life  were 
given  ceremonial  expression  in  the  organised  cult ;  and 
remain  to  us  as  memorials  of  the  life  which  was  destined 
to  be  the  "  light  of  men."  A  more  detailed  consideration 
of  the  Christian  liturgy2  will  make  it  clear  that  the  ritual 
and  sacramental  life  of  the  Church,  as  we  now  possess 
it,  is  a  drama  of  the  deification  of  the  soul :  of  the 
"  making  of  Christs,"  to  use  the  strong  blunt  language  of 
Methodius.  The  twin  mystic  facts  of  re-birth  and  of 
union — the  emergence  of  the  separated  spirit  into  the 
transcendental  world,  and  a  growth  conditioned  by  its  feed 
ing  on  the  substance  of  Reality — are  the  focal  points  of 
the  developed  cuit :  and  the  beginnings  of  this  develop 
ment — most  clearly  seen,  perhaps,  in  regard  to  baptism — 
are  discernible  in  the  primitive  times. 

Already  in  the  Fourth  Gospel  we  see  the  germ  of  an 
identification  of  the  biological  fact  of  "  new  birth  "  with 
baptism,  the  sacramental  rite  of  initiation :  the  coupling 
together  of  "water"  and  "  spirit."3  In  all  probability 
this  idea  reflects  back  to  the  baptismal  experience  of  Jesus 
Himself,  which  was  recognised  in  the  earliest  times  as  a 
vital  condition  of  His  career.  Certainly  it  indicates  the 
direction  in  which  the  "  Mind  of  the  Church  "  was  to 
move.  For  the  earliest  converts,  living  in  a  world  familiar 
with  the  idea  of  initiatory  rites,  and  particularly  of  cere 
monial  washing  or  purification  as  a  preliminary  to  being 

1  Com.  on  i  Thess.  v.  ip,  and  2  Thess.  ii.  6.      2  Vide  infra,  Cap.  VI. 
8  John  iii.  5. 


MYSTIC   LIFE   IN   EARLY   CHURCH     273 

"  saved," *  it  must  often  have  happened  that  the  deeply 
significant  drama  which  admitted  them  to  membership  of 
the  "  new  race  "  did  coincide  with  a  certain  enhancement 
of  consciousness,  a  flooding  of  the  personality  with  a  con 
viction  of  new  life  and  light.  There  is  every  probability 
that  the  psychological  phenomena  of  conversion  were  often 
witnessed.  It  is  at  any  rate  certain  that  in  the  primitive 
time  the  baptised  Christian  was  looked  upon,  not  as  a 
person  who  had  changed  his  belie fs,  but  as  a  person  who 
was  definitely  re-born:  thrust  into  another  universe.  The 
Johannine  figure  of  "new  birth,"  the  Pauline  language 
about  "  new  creation  "  was  accepted  in  its  literal  sense, 
because  it  was  still  a  description  of  experience  for  many 
of  the  neophytes.  The  so-called  "  Odes  >r  of  Solomon, 
probably  our  oldest  collection  of  Christian  hymns,  bears 
abundant  witness  to  this  point  of  view.2  Many  of  these 
odes  seem  to  have  been  composed  for  use  at  baptismal 
ceremonies ;  and  the  sense  of  regeneration,  of  an  actual 
change  and  newness,  is  their  constant  theme. 

"  The  Spirit  brought  me  forth  before  the  face  of  the  Lord. 
And  although  a  son  of  man,  I  was  named  the  Illuminate,  the  son  of 

God.3 

For  according  to  the  Greatness  of  the  Most  High,  so  He  made  me,  and 
like  His   own  newness,  He  renewed  me.     And  He  anointed  me 
for  His  own  perfection,  and  I  became  one  of  His  neighbours.4 
Again : 

"  I  received  the  face  and  the  fashion  of  a  new  person,  and  I  walked  in 
it  and  was  saved.  .  .  . 

1  Cf.  Clement  of  Alexandria,  Strom.,  V.  II.  "It  is  not  without 
reason  that  in  the  mysteries  which  obtain  amongst  the  Greeks,  purifi 
cations  hold  the  first  place ;  as  also  the  laver  amongst  the  Barbarians." 

*  The  Odes  and  Psalms  of  Solomon,  edited  by  J.  Rendel  Harris.  It 
seems  to  me  clear  that  many  of  these  odes,  which  Mr.  Harris  supposes 
to  be  Messianic  declarations  put  into  the  mouth  of  Christ,  are  really 
the  birth-songs  of  the  Christian  neophyte. 

8  The  "  illuminate  "  was  one  of  the  commonest  of  all  names  for  the 
neophyte.  Cf.  Justin  Martyr,  Apology,  I.  6l ;  Fortescue,  The  Mass, 
p.  29.  As  to  the  "  son  of  God,"  St.  Paul  and  the  Johannine  mystic 
are  sufficient  evidence  of  its  propriety  as  a  description  of  the  Christian 
soul.  *  Op.  cit.t  Ode  xxxvi. 

T 


274  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

And  all  that  have  seen  me  were  amazed,  and  I  was  regarded  by  them 

as  a  new  person.  .  .  . 
Nothing  appeared  closed  to  me,  because  I  was  the  door  of  everything."  * 

The  most  ancient  baptismal  frescoes  of  the  catacombs 
express  this  same  idea  of  a  veritable  renovation,  or  new 
birth.  The  giving  of  new  power  to  the  paralytic  in  the 
pool  of  Bethesda,  and  of  light  to  the  man  blind  from 
birth,  are  here  the  common  symbols  of  baptism.  In  the 
rare  pictures  which  represent  the  actual  administration  of 
the  sacrament,  the  catechumen  appears  as  a  little  child: 
whilst  in  the  inscriptions  the  newly  baptised  are  called 
infants  and  re-born — renati,  neophyti,  pueri,  puell*.2 
They  were  called  "  infants,"  says  St.  Augustine,  who  must 
often  have  seen  the  catacomb  frescoes,  "  because  they  were 
regenerate,  had  entered  on  a  new  life,  and  were  re-born  into 
Eternal  Life  "  :  and  this  language  persisted  till  his  own 
day.  "  That  aged  man,"  he  says,  describing  the  conver 
sion  and  baptism  of  Victorinus,  "  did  not  blush  to  become 
the  child  of  Thy  Christ— the  babe  of  Thy  font."  3 

The  early  liturgies  tell  the  same  tale.  In  the  Gothic 
rite,  the  priest  prays  that  the  baptised  be  "  regenerate,  to 
grow  and  be  strengthened  evermore  in  the  inner  man." 
In  the  Mozarabic,  that  they  may  be  "  restored  to  a  new 
infancy."4  The  mass  for  the  newly  baptised  in  the 
Gelasian  sacramentary  invokes  the  Deity  as  "Thou  who 
dost  receive  into  the  heavenly  kingdom  only  those 
re-born."5  Further,  in  this  respect  the  belief  of  the  cata 
combs  remains  the  belief  of  the  living  Church.  The 
sublime  invocation  for  the  blessing  of  the  waters  of  the 
font  in  the  Roman  Missal  gathers  up  into  one  great  prayer 
the  whole  cycle  of  mystical  ideas  connected  with  new  birth. 

1  Op.  cit.,  Ode  xvii. 

2  Cf.   Wilpert,   Le  Pitture  delle   Catacombe  Romam,    1910,  Vol.   II. 
pp.  235-240,  where  a  full  description  of  all  known  examples  will  be  found. 

8  Augustine,  Serm.  266,  and  Conf.,  Bk.  VIII.  cap.  2. 
4  Smith  and  Cheetham,  Dictionary   of   Christian  Antiquities^  articles 
"  Baptism  "  and  "  Neophyte." 
6  Wilpert,  op.  cit.,  p.  236. 


MYSTIC  LIFE   IN  EARLY   CHURCH    275 

"  May  the  Holy  Spirit,  by  the  secret  intermingling  of 
His  divine  power,  make  fruitful  this  water,  prepared  for 
the  regeneration  of  men;  that,  holiness  having  been  con 
ceived  from  the  immaculate  womb  of  the  Divine  Fountain, 
a  celestial  offspring  may  come  forth,  born  again,  trans 
formed  into  a  new  creature.  And  may  all  those  distin 
guished  either  by  sex  in  the  body,  or  by  age  in  time,  be 
brought  forth  into  one  infancy  by  Grace,  their  mother."  l 

Moreover,  throughout  the  primitive  time — as  if  to 
emphasise  the  reality  of  this  fresh  start,  this  spiritual 
infancy — after  his  baptism  milk  and  honey  were  given  to 
the  neophyte,  as  they  were  in  the  antique  world  to  new 
born  infants :  honey  to  quicken  and  milk  to  feed.3 
"  What,  then,"  says  the  second-century  writer  of  the 
Epistle  of  Barnabas,  "  mean  the  milk  and  honey?  This : 
that  as  the  infant  is  kept  alive  first  by  honey,  and  then 
by  milk,  so  also  we,  being  quickened  and  kept  alive  by 
the  faith  of  the  promise,  and  by  the  Word,  shall  live  ruling 
over  the  earth."8 

As  experience  stiffened  into  creed,  and  the  little  con 
centrated  Church  of  the  Saints  became  the  great  diluted 
Church  of  the  State,  there  was  an  inevitable  transference 
of  emphasis  from  interior  fact  to  dramatic  expression. 
Magic,  which  everywhere  dogs  the  footsteps  of  religion 

1  Missale  Romanum :  Benedict™  fontis.    The  idea  of  Grace,  or  of  iti 
personification  the  Holy  Spirit,  as  the  "  Mother  "  of  the  new  creature 
is  of  great  antiquity,  and  is  found  amongst  other  places  in  the  writings 
of  St.  Macarius  the  Great  of  Egypt. 

2  Cf.  Cabrol,  Origines  liturgiques,  p.  66,  and  Duchesne,  Origines  du  culu 
chrhien,  3rd  edition,  pp.  183,  535.    The  Leonine  Sacramentary  gives  the 
prayer  with  which  the  milk  and  honey  were  blessed — "  Benedic,  Domine, 
et  has  tuas  creaturas  fontis  mellis,  et  lactis,  et  pota  famulos  tuos  ex  hoc 
fonte  aquae  vitae  perennis  qui  est  Spiritus  veritatis,  et  enutri  eos  de  hoc 
lacte  et  melle."    Cf.  Duchesne,  op.  cit.y  p.  183.     On  the  image  of  milk  as 
a  spiritual  food  of  the  "  babes  in  Christ,"  cf.  Clement  of  Alexandria, 
Paed.,  I.  6;  the  Odes  of  Solomon,  Ode  xix;  Tertullian,  De  Corona,  cap.  3. 
The  pail  of  milk,  no  doubt  with  this  same  significance,  appears  amongst 
the  frescoes  of  the  catacombs.     Cf.  Wilpert,  op.  cit. 

8  Epistle  of  Barnabas,  cap.  6. 
T  2 


276  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

as  automatism  dogs  the  footsteps  of  life,  seized  on  the 
Christian  sacraments,  and  identified  the  exterior  rite  of 
baptism  with  the  interior  and  psychological  fact  of  "re 
generation."  The  springing  up  of  the  divine  seed  in  the 
soul,  the  change  of  consciousness,  the  emergence  of  the 
tendency  to  Reality  which  begins  the  Mystic  Way,  was 
at  last  supposed  to  be  conditioned  by  the  external  sign : 
as  the  interior  feeding  upon  the  Divine  Nature  was  sup 
posed  to  be  conditioned  by  Eucharistic  communion.  As 
the  exterior  Church  grew  in  numbers  and  popularity  the 
collective  vision  became  dim,  and  the  mystical  experience 
rare :  the  majority  of  those  swept  into  the  Christian  net 
were  capable  at  most  of  a  temporary  exaltation  of  con 
sciousness,  under  the  influence  of  those  dramatic  cere 
monies  which  are  like  poignant  and  suggestive  pictures 
of  the  private  adventures  of  the  soul.  These  ceremonies 
did,  and  do,  snatch  up  the  attentive  mind  to  heightened 
rhythms  of  being.  They  make  it  aware,  according  to  its 
measure,  of  the  supernal  world;  as  the  antique  mysteries 
conferred  on  their  initiates  a  temporary  exaltation  of  con 
sciousness.  Hence  they  soon  imposed  themselves  upon 
the  crowd,  as  a  part  of  the  actual  body,  instead  of  the  out 
ward  vesture  of  the  "  Bride."  Yet  their  value,  as  fixing 
and  making  objective  the  meaning  of  the  Christian  life — 
dramatising  it  as  a  birth  into,  and  a  growth  within  a.  new 
and  higher  order  of  Reality,  a  treading  of  the  Mystic  Way 
—cannot  be  over-rated.  The  whole  biological  secret  of 
Jesus,  the  ascent  of  human  personality  to  complete  fruition 
of  the  Eternal  Order — the  progressive  deification  of  the 
soul,  by  the  dual  action  of  an  inflowing  energy  from 
without,  and  organic  growth  from  within — is  still  implied 
in  the  two  sacraments  of  Baptism  and  the  Eucharist ; 
though  hidden  beneath  an  elaborate  magical  apparatus  of 
exorcism,  lustration,  and  invocation,  occult  gestures  and 
"  Words  of  Power." 

Moreover,  these  sacraments  were  often  from  the  first 
veritable  "  means  of  grace,"  bridges  flung  out  towards 


MYSTIC  LIFE   IN  EARLY   CHURCH    277 

the  Spiritual  Order,  for  selves  capable  of  receiving  the 
messages  of  Reality.  By  their  interweaving  of  the  sensual 
with  the  super  sensual,  they  brought  the  Eternal  into  time, 
translated  the  Song  of  Angels  into  a  dialect  that  man  could 
understand.  They  focussed,  as  great  rituals  can,  the  atten 
tive  will  in  the  new  direction  ;  and  conditioned  a  true 
change  in  the  quality  of  consciousness.  Thus  St.  Cyprian 
says  of  his  own  baptism :  "  After  the  stain  of  my  early 
life  had  been  washed  away  by  the  birth-wave,  and  a  light 
from  above  poured  into  my  purified  and  reconciled  breast, 
and  after  I  had  drunk  the  Spirit  from  heaven  and  a  second 
birth  had  restored  and  made  me  a  new  man — at  once  in 
a  marvellous  fashion  my  doubts  began  to  be  set  at  rest, 
doors  which  had  been  shut  against  me  were  thrown  open, 
dark  places  grew  light,  what  had  seemed  hard  before  was 
now  easy  of  accomplishment,  and  what  I  had  thought 
impossible  was  now  seen  to  be  within  my  power.  So  that 
I  could  now  recognise  that  .  .  .  that  thing  in  me  which 
the  Holy  Spirit  was  quickening  had  begun  to  be  of  God." l 
This  is  a  real  conversion  :  not  a  magical  act  but  a  veritable 
"  change  of  mind,"  a  quickening  of  the  higher  centres, 
which  begins,  as  Cyprian  himself  recognises,  a  new  growth 
towards  Reality.  So  too  the  martyr  Methodius,  though 
in  common  with  the  whole  church  of  his  day  he  identifies 
initiation  into  the  spiritual  life  with  the  sacramental  act, 
says  that  those  who  so  participate  in  the  Divine  Order  are 
"  made  Christs  "  ;  and  adds  that  in  the  experience  of  each 
such  re-born  soul,  the  growth  of  Christ,  the  essential  mystic 
movement  from  incarnation  to  passion,  must  repeat  itself.2 

1  Cyprian,  Ad  Donat.,  iv.     Given  by  Swete,  Tht  Holy  Spirit  in  the 
Ancient  Church,  p.  115. 

2  Cf.  Swete,  op.  cit.y  p.  148. 


II 

ALEXANDRIA    AND    THE    ART    OF    CONTEMPLATION 

IT  was  no  doubt  the  continued,  and  genuinely  deep 
and  fertile,  experience  of  Novelty — change,  conversion, 
growth  into  a  fresh  order  of  reality — in  selves  of  power 
and  enthusiasm,  the  occasional  attainment  of  the  Unitive 
Life  in  those  of  an  exceptional  sanctity,  which  kept  alive 
the  idea  of  a  new  life  enjoyed  by  the  "  twice  born  "  soul : 
a  life  of  which  the  essence  was  participation  in  the  Life  of 
God.  We  find  this  idea  in  most  of  the  earlier  Fathers; 
and  not  only  in  those  who  have  been  subjected  to  that 
Neoplatonic  influence  which  is  supposed  to  condition  all 
Christian  mysticism.  "  Ye  are  imitators  of  God,"  says 
Ignatius  to  his  fellow  Christians.1  Union  and  com 
munion  with  Him,  says  Irenaeus  of  Lyons,  still  more 
strongly,  is  the  object  of  the  inflowing  "  Spirit "  and  the 
enhanced  consciousness  that  it  brings.  Men  are  to  be 
"  lifted  up  into  the  Divine  Life  " :  2  and  Jesus,  born  of 
a  woman  and  ascending  to  the  Father,  "recapitulates" 
the  history  of  the  race,  "  uniting  man  to  the  Spirit,  and 
causing  the  Spirit  to  dwell  in  man."  3  These  statements 
are  in  the  direct  line  of  descent  from  St.  Paul  and  the 
Fourth  Evangelist,  and  represent  the  steady  continuance 
of  the  thin  bright  stream  of  Christian  mysticism. 

Especially  by  the  three  great  Egyptians,  Clement  of 
Alexandria,  his  pupil  Origen,  and  that  almost  forgotten 
genius,  St.  Macarius  the  Great,4 — though  only  to  one  of 

1  ^  Epb.,  cap.  I         a  Contra  Har.,  I.  2,  and  IX.  I.      *  Op.  cit.,  V.  20. 
4  Clement,  t.  150-60 — c.  220.    Origen,  c.  185-253.     St.  Macarius,  c, 
295-386. 

278 


MYSTIC  LIFE  IN  EARLY  CHURCH    279 

them,  and  that  the  last,  can  we  ascribe  with  certainty  a 
pre-eminently  mystic  consciousness,  a  true  and  organic 
re-making  on  the  levels  of  Eternal  Life — the  primitive 
secret  of  transcendence  was  preserved,  and  carried  over 
the  three  dangerous  centuries  in  which  the  temporal  and 
intellectual  bulwarks  of  the  exterior  Church  were  build 
ing:  the  time,  stretching  from  the  Apostolic  Fathers  to 
St.  Augustine,  during  which  the  full  flood  of  Hellenistic 
thought  was  poured  into  the  Christian  stream.  It  is 
largely  owing  to  these  three  writers  that,  in  this  epoch 
of  fluid  and  abounding  theologies,  of  ceaseless  speculation, 
of  bewilderingly  various  expressions  of  life,  we  yet  seem 
able  to  discern  the  survival  of  the  genuine  mystic  type  ; 
the  awakened  human  spirit,  the  member  of  the  "New 
Race,"  still  pressing  on  towards  a  veritable  participation 
in  Reality,  still  trying  to  understand  and  to  describe  its 
felt  experiences. 

Those  felt  experiences,  those  first-hand  communications 
from  the  Transcendent  Order,  those  searching  readjust 
ments  towards  the  Universal  Life,  were  soon  observed  to 
be  the  privilege  of  the  few.  Psychological  fact  refused  to 
accommodate  itself  to  magical  theories  of  "baptismal 
grace"  which  linked  the  actuality  of  new  birth  with  the 
symbolic  drama  of  the  font.  Of  those  who  changed  their 
faith,  only  a  few  were  found  to  have  changed  their  minds. 
Hence,  that  primary  cleavage  of  men  into  two  orders 
which  we  find  in  the  Synoptics,  St.  Paul  and  the  Fourth 
Gospel — those  who  were  susceptible  of  true  organic 
regeneration,  and  those  who  could  but  receive  at  second 
hand  the  message  of  Eternal  Life — reasserted  itself 
vigorously.  This  distinction,  which  is  rooted  in  life  and 
not  in  philosophy,  had  forced  itself  in  turn  upon  Jesus, 
Paul,  and  the  Johannine  mystic :  each  compelled  by  bitter 
experience  to  distinguish  between  the  "  little  flock  "  who 
could  receive  the  "Kingdom,"  respond  to  the  vital 
impulse  which  led  them  into  Truth,  and  the  throng  of 
"believers"  to  whom  that  inner  family  mediated  a 


280  THE   MYSTIC  WAY 

certain  measure  of  happiness  and  spiritual  health,  a 
fugitive  experience  of  Reality.  Hence  the  so-called 
"  Gnostic  "  element  in  the  New  Testament.1 

This  element  it  is,  disguised  by  its  Hellenistic  dress, 
and  somewhat  adulterated  by  the  new  wine  of  Neo- 
platonism,  which  inspires  Clement  of  Alexandria's  division 
of  Christendom  into  those  who  live  the  higher  life  of 
spiritual  Christianity  or  "  knowledge,"  and  those  who 
live  the  lower  life  of  popular  or  "  somatic  "  Christianity, 
conditioned  by  "  obedience  and  faith."  2  The  unfortunate 
word  "gnostic,"  chosen  by  Clement  to  describe  the  true 
Christian  initiate,  and  the  fact  that  he  appeals  to  the 
authority  not  only  of  St.  Paul,  but  of  Plato,  Aristotle, 
the  Stoics  and  Philo,  in  support  of  his  theory  that  a  lower 
and  a  higher  form  of  spiritual  life  is  a  part  of  the  necessity 
of  things,  have  obscured  the  fact  that  his  "  gnostic  "  is 
really  a  "  mystic  "  ;  the  lineal  descendant  of  the  "  Beloved 
Disciple  "  of  the  Fourth  Evangelist,  the  portrait  of  the 
New  Man  seen  through  another  temperament.3  The 
"higher  life,"  in  fact,  which  Clement  describes,  is  in 
essence  the  mystic  life :  the  free  transfigured  existence  of 
the  "  children  of  the  bridegroom  "  as  lived  and  preached 
by  Jesus  and  Paul.  In  him  the  stream  of  spirit  has  found 
a  fresh  channel :  changed  somewhat  in  appearance  by  the 
banks  between  which  it  flows,  but  still  the  same  "  mount 
ing  flood"  which  tends  to  freedom  and  reality,  to  the 
establishment  of  the  regnant  human  personality  within  the 
framework  of  Time.  The  double  tendency  of  the  mystic 
— towards  an  outgoing  search  o£  Absolute  Perfection, 
and  towards  an  interior  moral  transformation  or  sanctifi- 
cation,  which  shall  adjust  the  self  to  the  goodness,  truth 
and  beauty  of  the  Reality  that  it  desires — so  strongly 

1  On  this  New  Testament  "  Gnosticism,"  see  H.  J.  Holtzmann, 
Neutestamentliche  Theologie,  Vol.  II.  pp.  437  et  seq. 

*  Bigg,  Christian  Platonists  of  Alexandria,  pp.  85-97,  has  an  admirable 
account  of  the  "  two  lives  "  in  Clement. 

3  Cf.  Baron  Ton  Hiigel  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannicat  Vol.  XV.  pp. 
452-457- 


MYSTIC  LIFE  IN  EARLY   CHURCH    281 

marked  in  the  ethical  and  apocalyptic  sides  of  the  preach 
ing  of  Jesus1  is  discovered  again  in  Clement's  "gnostic," 
for  whom  Faith,  Hope  and  Charity  are  the  steps  of  the 
upward  way.  Nor  is  there  any  real  difference  between 
the  "  spiritual  man "  whom  Paul  describes  as  "  able  to 
scrutinise  all  things  "  2  because  his  new  life  "in"  God 
has  given  him  a  span  wider  than  that  of  the  "psychic 
man,"  and  the  gnostic  who  owes  his  lucid  vision  of,  and 
perfect  adaptation  to,  Reality,  to  the  fact  that  he  "is  the 
pupil  of  that  holy  spirit  dispensed  by  God,  which  is  the 
mind  of  Christ."  3 

In  contradistinction  to  the  heretical  "  gnostic "  sects, 
and  in  strict  accordance  with  the  teaching  of  Paul  and 
John,  the  knowledge  of  this  "true  gnostic"  is  the  work, 
not  of  intellect  but  of  love;  of  the  whole  self's  tendency 
and  desire.  Where  the  eyes  of  the  mind  are  vanquished, 
this  outgoing  passion,  this  intuition  of  the  heart,  suc 
ceeds :  Cor  ad  cor  loquitur.  "God,  who  is  known  to 
those  who  love,  is  love,"  says  Clement,  echoing  the 
Fourth  Gospel ;  and  proceeds  "  and  we  must  be  allied  to 
Him  by  divine  love,  so  that  by  like  we  may  see  like. 
.  .  .  The  transcendentally  clear  and  absolutely  pure  in 
satiable  vision,  which  is  the  privilege  of  intensely  loving 
souls  .  .  .  such  is  the  vision  attainable  by  the  pure  in 
heart."  4 

For  Clement,  as  for  Paul  and  the  Fourth  Evangelist, 
the  state  of  "  divine  sonship,"  a  union  which  depends  on 
the  upgrowth  of  a  realness,  a  being,  latent  in  man,  is  the 
aim  of  the  spiritual  life.  To  this  condition  the  Logos, 
the  "  Instructor  "  or  "  hidden  Steersman  "  of  the  soul,  is 
training  adolescent  humanity.5  It  is  achieved  by  different 

1  Cf.  H.   J.  Holtzmann,  Nfutestamentliche  Tbeologie,  Vol.  I.  pp.  284- 
295  ;  and  von  Hiigel,  Eternal  Life,  p.  59. 

2  I  Cor.  ii.  15.         s  Strom.,  V.  4.  4  Strom.,  V.  I  and  VII.  3. 

5  Paed.9  I.  7.  Compare  also  the  beautiful  Clementine  hymn,  where 
the  Logos  is  addressed  as  "  Bridle  of  untamed  colts,  Wing  of  unwander- 
ing  birds,  sure  Helm  of  babes,  and  Shepherd  of  royal  lambs."  Given 
in  Warren,  The  Liturgy  and  Ritual  of  the  Ante-Nicene  Church,  p.  182. 


282  THE   MYSTIC  WAY 

selves  in  different  degrees.  The  "gnostic,"  he  says,  is 
"  made  like  the  Lord  up  to  the  measure  of  his  capacity  "  ; 
he  "  forms  and  creates  himself."  It  is  his  destiny  to  be 
come  "  a  divine  image,  resembling  God  "  :  for  the  Logos, 
impressing  upon  him  the  seal  of  "  perfect  contemplation" 
— the  permanent  consciousness  of  spiritual  realities — 
makes  him,  as  far  as  possible,  "like  the  Essential  Life 
through  which  we  live  the  true  life."  1 

Clement  introduces  into  Christian  literature  the  term 
"deification"  to  describe  this  central  fact  of  the  uplifting 
of  human  life  into  freedom  and  reality.  In  him,  too,  we 
find  first  the  "  threefold  way "  of  ascent,  the  threefold 
division  of  men  into  the  "  slaves,  the  servants,  and  the 
sons "  of  the  Transcendent  Order.2  This  classification, 
probably  borrowed  from  the  language  of  the  mysteries, 
corresponds  closely  with  the  purgative,  illuminative  and 
unitive  states  of  consciousness  successively  experienced 
by  the  growing  self;  and  became,  during  the  patristic  and 
mediaeval  periods,  a  part  of  the  technical  language  of 
Christian  mysticism.  The  believer,  he  says  in  one  place 
in  profoundly  mystical  language,  ascends  through  the 
stages  of  faith  and  of  hope  to  that  of  love ;  in  which  he 
is  made  like  to  the  Well-beloved  in  striving  to  become 
that  which  is  the  object  of  his  love.3 

This  idea  of  a  growth,  an  advance,  a  progressive  initia 
tion,  as  an  integral  part  of  Christianity,  is  deeply  planted 
in  Clement's  mind.  Though  his  witness  to  the  mystical 
life-process  is  rather  that  of  a  looker-on  than  of  one  who 
has  indeed  participated  in  the  fulness  of  the  transcen 
dental  life,  yet  he  leaves  us  in  no  doubt  that  the  vision 
which  inspires  his  language  is  the  true  mystical  vision  of 
an  organic  growth  up  into  Reality.  He  sees  it,  too,  in 
its  well-marked  psychological  stages  of  ascent:  and  finds 
in  the  mystery-dramas  which  expressed  the  religious 
longings  of  the  Hellenistic  world,  an  apt  image  of  the 
Christian  mystery  of  transcendence — an  unfortunate  fact 

1  Strom.,  VII.  3.  *  Strom.,  I.  27.  •  Strom.,  V.  3. 


MYSTIC   LIFE   IN   EARLY   CHURCH     283 

which  has  greatly  confused  the  subsequent  history  of 
mysticism. 

"It  is  not  without  reason,"  he  says,  "  that  in  the 
mysteries  that  obtain  amongst  the  Greeks,  purification 
holds  the  first  place;  as  also  does  the  laver  amongst  the 
Barbarians.  After  these  come  the  Lesser  Mysteries,  which 
have  some  foundation  of  instruction  and  preparation  for 
that  which  is  to  come  after;  and  then  the  Great  Mysteries, 
in  which  nothing  remains  to  be  learned  of  the  universe, 
but  only  to  contemplate,  to  apprehend  with  the  eye  of  the 
soul,  the  nature  and  being  of  things."  1 

Here  the  drama  of  the  Pagan  mysteries  provides 
Clement  with  a  double  image :  first,  of  the  discipline  of 
the  external  Church,  moving  from  penance  and  baptism 
through  instruction  to  participation  in  the  "  Great 
Mystery "  of  the  Eucharist :  secondly,  and  perhaps 
specially,  of  the  interior  life  of  the  growing  soul,  the 
gradual  purification  and  enhancement  of  its  consciousness 
as  it  passes  along  the  purgative  and  illuminative  ways  to 
the  heights  of  unitive  contemplation.  Such  contemplation 
is  to  him  the  spiritual  equivalent  of  the  Eucharist.  "  The 
food  of  the  full-grown  ...  is  mystic  contemplation :  for 
this  is  the  flesh  and  the  blood  of  the  Logos,  that  is,  the 
laying  hold  of  the  divine  power  and  essence."  2 

But  it  is  just  here,  in  his  way  of  conceiving  of  the  last 
phase  in  Spirit's  transcendence,  that  we  touch  the  weak 
point  in  Clement's  doctrine.  Though  for  him  the  true 
gnosis  is  still,  and  definitely,  something  into  which  man 
must  grow,  which  demands  the  vigorous  purgation  of  his 
character,  its  re-making  on  higher  levels,  and  is  the  reward 
of  a  "union  of  hearts";  yet  the  fact  that  he  holds  out  to 
the  neophyte  the  promise  of  a  more  abundant  knowledge 
rather  than  a  more  abundant  life,  shows  him  to  be  already 
affected  by  the  oncoming  tide  of  Neoplatonic  thought. 
Here  and  elsewhere  in  his  writings,  he  makes  it  clear  that 

1  Strom.,  V.  2. 

8  Strom.,  V.  10.    Cf.  St.  Augustine,  C*»/.,  Bk.  VII.  cap.  10. 


284  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

ecstatic  contemplation,  the  still  vision  and  fruition  of 
Reality,  is  for  him  the  supreme  summit  of  the  "  higher 
life,"  the  end  and  aim  of  transcendence ; 1  that  he  looks 
forward  at  last,  not  to  the  lifting  up  of  man  in  his  whole 
ness  to  ever  deeper,  richer,  more  various  and  creative 
activities,  but  to  the  freeing  of  some  spiritual  principle 
in  him  from  the  limitations  of  the  flesh.  This,  rather 
than  the  all-round  training  of  the  true  athlete,  is  the  object 
of  his  ascetic  discipline.  It  is  to  be  attained  through  the 
gradual  acquirement  of  a  "holy  indifference,"  or  apathy, 
a  steady  progressive  rejection  of  sensual  images,  a  flight 
from  the  world.  In  all  this,  Clement  is  anticipating  the 
mighty  though  one-sided  genius  of  Plotinus,  and  turning 
his  back  on  the  rich  and  fertile  ideal  of  Christian 
mysticism,  at  once  "  world-denying  "  and  "  world-renew 
ing,"  with  its  perpetual  movement  between  contemplation 
and  action,  vision  and  service  ;  its  dual  discovery  of  God 
in  Becoming  and  Being,  in  rest  and  in  work. 

This  dissociation  of  the  two  compensating  elements  of 
the  mystical  life,  and  total  concentration  on  the  tran 
scendent  aspect  of  Divine  Reality,  becomes  yet  more 
exaggerated  in  Clement's  greatest  disciple;  the  saintly 
scholar  Origen.  Origen,  who  was  the  fellow  pupil  of 
Plotinus  in  the  Neoplatonic  school  of  Ammonius  Saccus,2 

1  Dr.  Bigg  (Christian  Platonists  of  Alexandria,  p.  98)  insists  that  there 
is  no  trace  of  "  ecstacy  "  in  Clement :  adding  some  confused  remarks 
about  the  identity  of  "  ecstacy  "  with  the  "  prayer  of  quiet,"  with  which  it 
has  little  in  common.  It  is  true  that  Clement's  descriptions  of  the  gnostic's 
vision  lack  the  passionate  realism  of  Plotinus ;  the  whole  temper  of  his 
work  is  that  of  the  mystically-minded  man  who  sees  the  summits  that  he 
cannot  reach.  But  he  leaves  us  in  no  doubt  that  the  consummation  to 
which  he  looks  is  that  state  of  impassioned  attention  to  Transcendent 
Reality  in  which  the  soul  forgets  all  earthly  things  and  "  has  fulhead  of 
fruition  in  the  life  of  peace."  Whether  this  fruition  does  or  does  not 
entail  bodily  trance,  depends  wholly  on  the  psycho-physical  organisation 
of  the  contemplative,  whose  concentration  on  the  Supernal  Order  may 
or  may  not  inhibit  his  consciousness  of,  and  response  to,  the  sensual 
world. 

8  Harnack,  History  of  Dogma,  Vol.  I.  p.  348. 


MYSTIC   LIFE   IN  EARLY   CHURCH    285 

has  been  called  the  ancestor  of  the  mediaeval  mystics; l 
but  this  is  only  true  in  a  literary  and  intellectual  sense. 
Though  his  life  was  marked  by  a  profound  asceticism,  he 
was,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  less  truly  mystical  than  his  master. 
Love  is  still  with  him  the  means  by  which  the  soul  is 
united  to  its  Source,  and  sternest  purification  the  condition 
of  all  heavenly  intimacy;  but  it  is  again  the  passion  for 
knowledge,  not  the  humble  and  generous  instinct  of  self- 
surrender  which  drives  man's  spirit  to  the  heights.     We 
cannot  deny  that  for  Origen,  in  spite  of  the  ardour  which 
often  inspires  his  words,  the  Christian  "  gnostic  "  is  essen 
tially  a  "  superior  person  ";  a  spiritual  individualist,  more 
interested  in  getting  light  for  himself  than  in  giving  it 
back  to  the  world.     There  is  some  truth  in  Harnack's 
description  of  his  ideal  as  that  of  "  a  self-sufficient  sage  " 
who  has  transcended  the  evils  and  oppositions  of  the 
world,  and  lives  in  a  state  of  supersensual  contentment.2 
Yet   his  powerful  mind,  perpetually  working   on   the 
substance  of  the  Christian  "  revelation  "  seized  and  gave 
expression  to  aspects  of  that  "revelation"  which  might 
otherwise  have  perished.     Porphyry  said  of  him  that  he 
"lived   like   a  Christian,    but   thought   like   a  Greek." 
Hence,  emancipated  from  the  narrow  sectarianism  which 
already  obsessed  the  great  mass  of  believers,  he  saw  the 
"  new  life  "  in  its  universal  aspect :  and  came  nearer  than 
any  other  writer  of  the  Patristic  time — with  the  single 
exception  of  St.  Macarius  of  Egypt — to  an  understanding 
of  Christianity  as  the  invasion  and  exhibition  of  super- 
sensual  forces,  an  outbirth  of  Reality,  a  fresh  manifesta 
tion  of  the  ascending  Spirit  of  Life.    The  action  of  this 
Spirit,  he  says,  presses  all  rational  creatures  towards  the 
state  of  perfection,  that  they  may  finally  attain  to  the 
Vision  of  God.     But  the  work  of  the  Spirit  is  confined 
to  those  who  are  "  turned  towards  the  Best "  :  those,  that 
is  to  say,  who  are  orientated  in  the  right  direction,  whose 
"  attention  to  life  "  is  concentrated  upon  the  higher,  not 
1  Bigg,  op.  cit.y  p.  188.  *  Harnack,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  II.  p.  337. 


286  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

the  lower,  levels  of  existence.1  Moreover,  the  career  of 
Jesus  is  for  him,  as  for  Paul,  the  classic  exhibition  of 
human  possibilities  ;  an  earnest  of  the  life  attainable  by 
all  men.  The  interweaving  of  divine  and  human  nature, 
the  participation  in  Reality,  begun  in  Him,  is  continued 
in  all  those  who  live  His  life  and  grow  as  He  grew :  and 
hence  it  is  the  duty  of  all  Christians  to  "  imitate  Christ." 
This,  the  central  truth  of  Christian  mysticism,  is  stated 
by  Origen  in  uncompromising  terms.  "  From  Him  there 
began  the  interweaving  of  divine  and  human  nature,  in 
order  that  the  human,  by  communion  with  the  divine, 
might  rise  to  be  divine;  not  in  Jesus  alone,  but  in  all  those 
who  not  only  believe  but  enter  upon  the  life  which  Jesus 
taught."  2 

"  To  Origen,"  says  Harnack,  "  the  highest  value  of 
Christ's  person  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  Deity  has  here 
condescended  to  reveal  to  us  the  whole  fulness  of  His 
essence,  in  the  person  of  a  man,  as  well  as  in  the  fact  that 
a  man  is  given  to  us  who  shows  that  the  human  spirit  is 
capable  of  becoming  entirely  God's.  ...  As  in  Christ's 
case  His  human  soul  gradually  united  itself  with  the  Logos 
in  proportion  as  it  voluntarily  subjected  its  will  to  God,  so 
also  every  man  receives  grace  according  to  his  prayers."  3 

Had  the  substance  of  Origen's  spirituality  always  been 
consistent  with  this  sublime  intuition,  he  might  indeed 
have  been  called  the  father  of  the  Christian  mystics.  But 
the  idea  of  God  as  the  utterly  transcendent  and  unknow 
able  Absolute,  only  attainable  by  the  via  negativa  of  a 
total  rejection  of  the  sensual  world,  which  he  had  learned 
from  the  Neoplatonists,  coloured  too  much  of  his  thought; 
and  led  to  that  harsh  separation  of  the  active  from  the 
contemplative  life  and  of  the  temporal  from  the  eternal 
world  which  is  definitely  un-Christian — a  destruction  of 
the  synthesis  achieved  by  Jesus,  an  unravelling  rather  than 
an  interweaving  of  the  "divine"  and  " human"  sides 

1  De  Princ.,  I.  3,  5.  2  Contra  Cehum,  III.  28. 

8  History  of  Dogma,  Vol.  II.  pp.  314,  315. 


MYSTIC  LIFE   IN  EARLY  CHURCH    287 

of  life.  "  Contemplatives,"  says  Origen,  with  more  than 
a  touch  of  arrogance,  "  are  in  the  house  of  God :  those 
who  lead  an  active  life  are  only  in  the  vestibule"; *  and 
the  last  stage  of  the  perfect  soul  is  that  of  the  dove,  flying 
from  all  terrestrial  things  in  order  that  it  may  rest  in 
"  the  treasures  of  knowledge  and  wisdom."  2  His  theory 
of  contemplation,  in  fact,  is  at  bottom  the  theory  of 
negative  transcendence,  of  the  attainment  of  Being  by 
the  rejection  of  Becoming,  seen  in  excess  in  some  forms 
of  Hindu  mysticism :  though  his  Christian  feeling 
gives  to  it  a  certain  warmth  of  tone.  It  is,  says  Harnack 
with  some  justice,  "  a  joyous  ascetic  contemplativeness,  in 
which  the  Logos  is  the  friend,  associate,  and  bridegroom 
of  the  soul,  which  now,  having  become  a  pure  spirit,  and 
being  herself  deified,  clings  in  love  to  the  Deity  " — one 
half,  in  fact,  of  the  total  Christian  experience.  "  In  this 
view  the  thought  of  regeneration,  in  the  sense  of  a  funda 
mental  renewal  of  the  Ego,  has  no  place."  s 

Thus  Origen  really  presents  two  opposing  views  of  the 
mystic  life,  and  betrays  the  mixed  Christian  and  Pagan 
temper  of  his  mind.  In  him  "  the  brook  and  river  "  meet, 
but  do  not  merge.  In  him,  as  in  no  other  writer,  are 
found  side  by  side,  though  still  unharmonised,  all  the 
elements  which  were  afterwards  characteristic  of  the 
developed  mysticism  of  the  Middle  Ages.  He  is  the 
first  Christian  to  apply  the  passionate  imagery  of  the  Song 
of  Songs  to  the  relation  of  the  soul  with  God.  He 
adopted,  and  laid  stress  upon,  the  Neoplatonic  diagram  of 
a  "  ladder  of  ascent "  :  the  psychological  method  by  which 
the  contemplative  stops  the  wheel  of  imagination,  empties 
the  field  of  consciousness,  abstracts  himself  one  by  one 
from  visible  things,  from  all  that  is  known  and  all  that 
may  be  conceived,  until  at  last  by  this  steady  process  of 
reduction  he  attains  to  a  universe  swept  clear  of  all  but 
the  Unknowable  One  who  is  "  above  all  being  and  above 

1  In  Ps.  cxxxiii.  2  In  Cant.  I.  4. 

8  Harnack,  op.  eit.,  Vol.  II.  p.  376. 


288  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

all  knowledge."  l  This  proceeding  is  often  looked  upon 
as  the  very  essence  of  Christian  mysticism.2  It  is,  on  the 
contrary,  merely  a  method  or  discipline,  based  upon 
psychological  laws  which  have  been  formulated  as  the 
result  ofgenerations  of  experience,  and  which  is  adopted 
by  many  Christian  mystics  to  facilitate  the  difficult 
business  of  readjustment  and  exclusive  attention  to  Reality, 
in  those  hours  of  contemplation  which  uphold  their  active 
life. 

Some  such  method  the  mystic  type  was  bound  either 
to  appropriate  or  to  invent:  and,  since  our  mental 
machinery  is  undenominational,  it  here  followed  a  true 
instinct  in  accepting  and  turning  to  new  uses  the  system 
of  mental  training  already  evolved  by  the  race.  Whether 
the  supersensual  fact  on  which  it  is  concentrated  be  called 
Brahma,  the  Celestial  Venus,  the  Absolute,  Allah,  or  the 
Blessed  Trinity,  consciousness  passes  through  much  the 
same  stages,  follows  the  same  general  laws,  obeys  the  same 
psychological  imperatives,  in  the  course  of  attending  to  it. 
Hence  Hindu,  Sufi,  Neoplatonic  and  Christian  contem- 
platives  have  much  in  common,  and  may  and  do  learn 
from  one  another  the  principles  which  should  govern  the 
training  of  their  peculiar  powers.  Nor  can  they,  as  a 
class,  dispense  with  such  training.  That  which  the  great 
spiritual  genius,  the  great  natural  artist,  does  by  instinct, 
the  many  who  only  possess  a  talent  for  Reality  must  do 
by  the  nurture  and  gradual  education  of  their  lesser  faculty 
for  God.  Jesus  lived  always  in  a  state  of  direct  and 
profound  communion  with  the  supernal  order,  "  His  head 
in  Eternity,  His  feet  in  time."  Paul  and  John  had  little 
need  of  the  "Celestial  Ladder"  to  help  their  flight 
towards  the  Origin  of  All  that  Is.  But  others,  who  lacked 
their  power,  did  require  the  support  of  some  system  which 
should  initiate  them  into  the  art  of  contemplation,  show 

1  Dionysius  the  Areopagite,  Dg  Myst.  Tbeo.  I.  I.    Cf.  Harnack,  History 
of  Dogma,  Vol.  II.  p.  375. 
8  Especially  by  writers  of  the  Ritschlian  school.    Cf .  supr a,  Cap.  I,  §  V. 


MYSTIC  LIFE  IN  EARLY   CHURCH    289 

them  how  the  machinery  of  perception  might  be  adjusted 
to  the  rhythm  of  this  new  universe. 

Such  a  system — such  a  method — the  Christian  mystic 
of  the  third  century  found  ready  to  his  hand  in  Neo- 
platonism,  and  adapted  to  the  purposes  of  his  own 
experience.  Hence  results  one  of  those  confusing  cases 
in  which  the  characteristics  of  one  form  of  life  are  found, 
"  to  a  certain  extent,"  in  the  other.  The  mystical  philo 
sophy  of  the  Neoplatonists  was,  like  that  of  the  classic 
Hindu  schools — to  which  it  may  be  indebted — fundamentally 
negative  and  sterile.  It  was  directed  to  the  attainment  of 
pure  Being  by  the  total  rejection  of  Becoming ;  its  ideal 
was  static  absorption  in  an  unconditioned  Reality,  the 
personal  satisfaction  of  the  Vision  of  the  One  "whose 
dwelling-place  is  darkness."  1  We  see  it  in  its  best  and 
least  forbidding  form  in  the  works  of  Plotinus  ;  for  here 
the  ardent  soul  of  a  great  natural  mystic  perpetually  wars 
with,  and  often  conquers,  the  map-making  brain  of  a 
metaphysician.  Baron  von  Hugel  has  pointed  out  that 
the  inconsistencies  of  Plotinus  are  largely  the  result  of 
this  war;  of  the  refusal  of  the  intuitive  spirit  to  accept 
the  conclusions  of  the  logical  mind.  "  In  spite  of  the 
philosopher's  insistence  upon  the  emptiness  of  God,  and 
the  corresponding  need  of  emptiness  in  the  soul  that 
would  approach  Him,  Plotinus's  words,  where  his  own 
mystical  experience  speaks,  really  convey  or  imply  the 
very  opposite — the  unspeakable  richness  of  God  in  life, 
love  and  joy;  His  ever  immediate,  protective  closeness  to 
man's  soul  ;  and  this  soul's  discovery  of  Him,  the  Lover, 
by  becoming  aware  of,  and  by  completely  willing,  His 
actual  contact,  when  it  freely,  heroically  turns  its  whole 
being,  away  from  the  narrow  self,  to  Him,  its  root  and  its 
true,  overflowing  life."  2 

Thus  it  is  that  whilst  the  brain  of  the  philosopher, 
struggling  to  measure  infinite  Fact  by  finite  image,  is 
driven  at  last  to  conceive  of  God  in  terms  as  negative, 

i  Cf.  supra,  Cap.  I,  §  II.  »  Eternal  Lift,  p.  83. 

U 


290  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

as  abstract,  and  as  arid  as  those  employed  by  the  most 
orthodox  Hindu,  yet  the  intuitive  heart  of  Plotinus 
discerns  something  behind  this  Pure  Being,  this  imper 
sonal  and  unconditioned  Absolute,  which  evokes  in  him 
the  same  passionate  love  which  the  Christian  or  Sufi 
mystic  offers  to  his  personal  Deity.  Plainly  it  is  the 
actual  presence  of  God  which  Plotinus,  the  natural  mystic, 
discerns  and  worships  behind  the  forbidding  diagrams 
invented  by  his  busy  intellect.  So  too  his  rapturous 
contemplation  of  Divine  Perfection  forces  upon  him  a 
convinced  consciousness  of  imperfection  ;  and  a  purifying 
process,  a  veritable  purgation,  becomes  as  necessary  for 
him  as  for  the  Christian  saints.  Ordinary  human  exist 
ence  "  which  is  without  God  "  is  for  him  "  a  vestige  of 
life  and  an  imitation  of  that  life  which  is  real " :  l  a 
position  which  St.  Augustine  was  able  to  accept  without 
change.2  Like  another  Baptist,  he  calls  on  his  disciples  to 
"  change  their  minds  "  and  enter  on  a  deliberate  asceti 
cism,  whereby  the  soul  can  detach  itself  alike  from 
unreality  and  from  desire,  transcend  the  senses,  and 
become  a  spiritual  being  dwelling  in  a  spiritual  world :  a 
state  of  consciousness  which  bears  a  superficial  resemblance 
to  the  Illuminative  Way  of  the  Christian  mystics. 

But  the  difference  between  the  two  systems — or  rather 
between  the  artificial  system  and  the  organic  life  process — 
becomes  clear  when  we  reach  the  third  stage  ;  the  objective 
to  which  this  training  tends.  Here,  instead  of  the  Unitive 
Life  of  the  Christian,  we  find  the  Ecstatic  Union  of  the 
Neoplatonist.  We  have  seen  what  the  completed  life  of 
union,  or  sonship,  the  true  participation  in  the  Divine 
Nature,  meant  for  Paul  and  John :  how  far  they  were 
from  confusing  it  with  mere  "  other-worldliness  "  or  with 
the  temporary  raptures  of  ecstatic  vision,  how  deeply  it 
was  founded  in  the  principles  of  self-surrender  and  heroic 
love,  how  closely  they  identified  it  with  the  career  of 
divine  fecundity,  of  glad  self-spending  in  the  interests 
i  Ennead,  VI.  9.  *  Aug.,  Conf.,  Bk.  X.  cap.  28. 


MYSTIC  LIFE   IN  EARLY  CHURCH    291 

of  the  Universal  Life.  True,  this  untiring  activity  of  the 
deified  soul  is  supported  by  those  ecstatic  contemplations 
in  which  it  enjoys  a  veritable  fruition  of  God,  and  lives 
"  eternal  life  in  the  midst  of  time " :  but  this  is  only 
one  half  of  its  completed  movement — the  outward  swing 
to  the  Transcendent  Order,  which  conditions  the  homeward 
turning  swing  of  love  to  men.  But  for  Plotinus  there  is 
no  question  of  an  outflowing  gift  to  others  of  the  vitality 
that  has  been  received.  Here  "  deification  "  means,  not 
the  acquisition  of  a  divine  creativeness,  a  participation  in 
the  glad  travail  of  Infinite  Life  and  Love,  but  merely  the 
transitory  experience  of  ecstatic  union  with  God,  "alone 
with  the  Alone  " ;  the  intense  assurance  of  Reality,  the 
attainment  of  that  strange,  brief  "  silence  in  heaven "  when 
the  perceiver  "  seems  to  be  one  with  the  Thing  perceived," 
and  "  folded  about  Divinity,  has  no  part  void  of  contact 
with  Him." 1  Such  a  mysticism  as  this,  however  lofty  its 
expression,  is  yet  definitely  self-regarding :  the  satisfaction 
of  a  spiritual  lust  rather  than  the  veritable  marriage  of  the 
souJ.  In  it  the  elan  vital  finds  a  blind  alley,  not  a  thorough 
fare  :  since  its  highest  stage  is  a  condition  of  static  know 
ledge,  not  a  condition  of  more  abundant  life.  At  its  best  it 
mistakes  a  means  for  an  end  :  at  its  worst,  it  leads  directly 
—and  in  historic  fact  did  lead — to  the  soul-destroying 
excesses  of  that  Quietism,  that  idle  basking  in  the  Presence 
of  God,  which  all  the  true  mystics  unsparingly  condemn. 

This,  then,  was  the  substance  of  that  new  influence 
which  the  third  century  brought  to  bear  upon  Christian 
mysticism :  with  the  result  which  might  have  been  antici 
pated.  For  a  time,  the  new  art  of  contemplation,  with  its 
promise  of  ecstatic  union  with  God,  a  direct  fruition  of 
Reality,  swept  all  before  it :  destroying  the  delicate  balance 
between  life  temporal  and  life  eternal  which  constitutes 
the  strength  and  beauty  of  the  Christian  idea.  The 
Christian  mystic — still  more,  the  mystically-minded 
Christian  who  lacked  the  vitality,  the  romantic  genius 

*  Enneads  V.  3  and  VI.  9. 
u  a 


292  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

needed  for  the  true  business  of  transcendence — seems  to 
have  become  intoxicated  by  this  art  when  first  it  was 
introduced  to  him.  The  old  vivid  consciousness  of  a 
new  life  lived  in  closest  communion  with  Reality,  which 
had  inspired  the  collective  life  of  the  Church,  was  fading : 
and  this  promise  of  the  attainment  of  the  Unchanging 
God — a  swift  yet  veritable  contact  with  Eternal  Life— 
by  the  total  rejection  of  all  changing  things,  a  deliberate 
elevation  and  concentration  of  the  mind,  offered  him  a 
tempting  way  of  escape  from  the  formalities  and  disillu 
sions  of  an  ever  more  highly  organised,  more  ecclesiastical 
and  magical  cult. 

Moreover,  this  art  was  based  on  psychological  experi 
ence.  Those  who  practised  it  found  that  it  worked.  The 
artificial  production  of  ecstacy,  one  of  the  oldest  of  human 
secrets,  was  here  reduced  to  a  scientific  formula,  and  given 
a  justification  half  religious,  half  philosophic.  From  this 
deliberate  and  studied  emptying  of  the  mind,  "  leaving 
behind  both  sensible  perceptions  and  intellectual  efforts, 
and  all  objects  of  sense  and  thought,  and  all  that  is  and  all 
that  is  not,"  they  did  attain  that  indescribable  condition 
of  consciousness  which  they  called  the  "  Divine  Dark  in 
which  God  is  said  to  dwell."  *  All  mystics,  Christian  and 
non-Christian,  agree  that  such  states  of  pure  receptivity, 
mind,  heart  and  will  surrendered  to  the  All,  are  peculiarly 
favourable  to  the  spiritual  life :  that  the  barriers  of  sense 
are  then  broken,  and  a  veritable  fruition  of  the  Infinite  is 
enjoyed  by  the  contemplative  soul.  We  know  from  St. 
Augustine  that  such  a  fruition  was  experienced  by  the 
adepts  of  Neoplatonism,  Christian  and  Pagan  alike.  Hence 
it  is  not  surprising  that  they  accepted  the  system  as  it 
was,  with  all  its  elements  of  exaggerated  passivity  and 
"  other-worldliness,"  its  arid  and  exclusively  transcendent 
definition  of  God,  its  tendency  to  supersensual  egotism. 
Hence  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that  the  art  of  contempla- 

1  Dionysius  the  Areopagite,  De  Myst.  Theo.,  I.,  and  Letter  to  Dorothy 
the  Deacon. 


MYSTIC  LIFE   IN   EARLY   CHURCH     293 

tion,  as  it  came  to  be  taught  at  least  by  some  of  the 
Fathers,  has  a  strongly  Pagan  tone. 

The  secret  of  Jesus,  His  power  as  the  perfect  expression 
of  completed  human  nature,  had  lain  in  His  steady  alterna 
tion  of  action  and  contemplation,  the  interweaving  of  two 
orders  of  Reality;  His  discovery  of  the  "Kingdom"  in 
the  common  things  of  life,  His  ecstatic  fruition  of  God 
and  unwearied  service  of  man.  In  the  so-called  "  mysti 
cism"  of  the  Greek  Fathers  from  the  time  of  Origen 
onwards,  we  find  few  traces  of  this  dual  consciousness  of 
Reality.  What  we  do  find  is  an  imperfectly  Christianised 
version  of  the  exclusively  transcendentalist  and  largely 
impersonal  mysticism  of  the  Pagan  Neoplatonists :  a  view 
of  the  universe  and  of  the  soul's  path  to  God,  founded  upon 
its  doctrine  of  "  Emanations."  These  Fathers  have  little 
to  say  about  the  true  Mystic  Way,  the  vital  principle  of 
growth,  the  total  lifting-up  of  man  to  the  life  of  Reality. 
That  Eternal  Life  is  for  them  essentially  static ;  removed 
by  a  vast  distance  from  the  sensual  world,  from  which  it  is 
separated  by  those  intervening  worlds,  Emanations,  or 
Hierarchies,  which  mediate  the  Uncreated  Light  to  created 
things,  decreasing  in  splendour  and  reality,  increasing  in 
multiplicity,  as  they  recede  farther  and  farther  from  the 
One. 

"  If,"  says  St.  Basil  the  Great,  "  you  would  speak 
worthily  of  God,  or  understand  that  which  is  said  of  Him, 
leave  your  body,  leave  your  senses,  abandon  alike  both 
land  and  sea,  tread  the  air  beneath  your  feet,  leave  behind 
you  all  that  is  temporal,  all  the  successiveness  of  things, 
all  the  beauty  of  this  world;  and  rise  above  the  stars  and 
above  all  that  you  find  admirable  therein,  their  brilliance 
and  their  greatness,  their  happy  influence  upon  this 
world.  .  .  .  Transcend  in  spirit  all  this  universe,  take  your 
flight  above  the  skies,  and,  soaring  at  those  sublime 
heights,  let  the  eyes  of  your  soul  rest  upon  the  fairest  of 
all  beings  ;  look  upon  the  heavenly  armies,  the  choirs  of 
Angels,  consider  the  might  of  the  Archangels,  the  glory 


294  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

of  the  Dominations,  the  seats  whereon  the  Thrones  are 
established,  the  Virtues,  the  Principalities,  the  Powers. 
Then,  transcending  even  all  angelic  natures,  raising  your 
self  in  thought  beyond  and  above  all  creation,  contemplate 
the  Divine  Nature,  steadfast  and  immovable,  exempt  from 
every  vicissitude  and  every  emotion,  simple  and  indi 
visible,  Inaccessible  Light,  Ineffable  Power,  Limitless 
Splendour,  Incomparable  Glory,  the  sovereign  desirable 
Good,  the  Perfect  Beauty  which  inflicts  upon  the  enrap 
tured  soul  an  ineffable  wound  of  love,  but  of  which  human 
language  is  powerless  to  tell  the  Majesty."  1 

The  doctrine  of  the  transcendence  of  God  could  hardly 
go  further  than  in  this  passage  ;  which  contains  in  germ 
the  central  idea  of  Dante's  Paradiso.  Dionysius  the 
Areopagite,  usually  and  wrongly  credited  with  the  intro 
duction  of  these  doctrines  into  Christian  mysticism,  says 
no  more:  and  St.  Basil  wrote  at  least  a  hundred  years 
before  that  enigmatic  personage.2 

It  is  clear  that  the  one-sided  development  of  such  a 
tendency  as  this  was  of  doubtful  benefit  to  Christian 
mysticism.  Yet  on  the  other  hand  it  must  not  be  for 
gotten  that  the  Christian  mystic  had  much  to  learn  from 

1  First  Homily  on  Faith. 

J  Dionysius  the  Areopagite  (c.  500)  has  obtained  a  far  higher  place  than 
he  deserves  in  the  history  of  Christian  mysticism.  A  strange  and  subtle 
thinker  rather  than  a  mystic,  he  fused  together  Jewish,  Christian  and 
Neoplatonic  ideas  to  form  a  system  of  theology  at  once  fantastic  and 
profound.  But  of  the  really  mystical  ideas  in  his  works  hardly  one  is 
original.  Writing  after  the  great  spiritual  experimentalists  and  specu 
lative  thinkers  of  the  first  five  centuries  had  done  their  work,  and  the 
tradition  of  contemplation  was  consequently  fixed,  he  gathered  up  from 
the  writings  and  experiences  alike  of  Christians  and  Neoplatonists,  the 
elements  of  his  mystical  theology.  It  was  chiefly  through  the  preservation 
of  his  writings,  their  false  attribution  to  the  disciple  of  St.  Paul,  and 
their  translation  into  Latin  in  the  ninth  century,  that  the  Neoplatonic 
method  of  contemplation  was  inherited  in  its  most  exaggerated  form  by 
the  mediaeval  Church;  but  its  principles  were  already  antique  when 
Dionysius  was  born.  He  did  but  reduce  to  intellectual  terms  a  practical 
tcience  which  had  already  been  worked  out  in  life. 


MYSTIC  LIFE   IN  EARLY  CHURCH    295 

the  Neoplatonic  specialists,  though  he  paid  for  his  lesson 
a  heavy  price.  From  those  specialists  came  the  whole 
discipline  in  contemplative  prayer,  the  psychological  drill, 
the  "degrees  of  orison,"  the  rules  which  govern  the 
adjustment  of  our  consciousness  to  the  Transcendental 
World,  which  now  form  an  integral  part  of  the  "  Mystical 
Theology"  of  the  Church,  and  have  helped  and  con 
ditioned  for  centuries  the  communion  of  the  contemplative 
saints  with  the  Infinite  Life.  The  stages  of  ascent 
described  by  Richard  of  St.  Victor,  St.  Bonaventura, 
Ruysbroeck,  Hilton;  the  degrees  of  orison  of  St.  Bernard 
or  St.  Teresa;  all  these  owe  much  to  the  acute  observation 
and  descriptive  genius  of  the  Alexandrian  Neoplatonists, 
and  probably  through  them  to  the  adepts  of  older 
"  mystic  "  cults.  The  ardent  souls  of  the  first  Christian 
initiates,  their  wild,  romantic  passion  for  reality,  somehow 
achieved  that  "  contact  with  God,"  that  immersion  in  the 
Spiritual  Order,  which  sustained  and  nourished  their 
organic  growth*  Just  because  of  this  spontaneous  quality 
in  it,  their  life  "  towards  God  "  had  a  power  and  freshness 
never  found  again.  They  were  great  natural  artists,  who 
discovered  for  themselves — though  often  with  great 
stress  and  difficulty — the  requisite  means  of  expression. 
Though  the  machinery  of  the  mind  were  ill-adjusted  to 
the  task  laid  on  it,  an  untamed  ardour  upheld  them :  their 
deep  unconquerable  instinct  for  transcendence,  their 
stormy  love  found,  somehow,  the  thoroughfare  along 
which  it  could  force  a  way.  "The  Spirit,"  says  St.  Paul, 
describing  these  struggles,  "  helpeth  our  infirmity;  for 
we  know  not  how  to  pray  as  we  ought  ;  but  the  Spirit 
himself  maketh  intercession  for  us,  with  groanings  which 
cannot  be  uttered."  l 

Such  natural  and  untrained  effort  could  not  survive  the 
first  ages  of  enthusiasm.    The  "  new  creature  "  and  his 
new  powers  must  submit  to  education.     The  mental  dis 
cipline  elaborated  by  the  Neoplatonists,  the  exercises  which 
*  Rom.  viii.  26  (R.V.). 


296  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

turned  the  self's  attention  from  the  sensual  to  the  super- 
sensual  world,  that  process  of  detachment  whereby  the 
field  of  consciousness  was  emptied  of  all  other  objects,  the 
mirror  made  clear  for  the  reflection  of  the  Uncreated 
Light,  here  came  to  the  assistance  of  the  Christian  type : 
educated  its  wild  genius,  and  prevented  the  shipwreck 
which  might  easily  have  overtaken  the  New  Life  in  the 
hour  of  its  necessary  but  perilous  movement  from  the 
spontaneous  to  the  organised  stage. 

It  was  greatly  due  to  the  philosophic  language  provided 
by  the  Neoplatonists,  that  the  ecstatic,  outgoing  aspect 
of  the  Christian  life — the  fact  of  its  empirical  fruition  of 
God — became  fixed  in  the  growing  Christian  tradition. 
This  language  it  was  which  provided  the  means  whereby 
the  great  intuitions  of  the  contemplative,  which  would 
otherwise  have  remained  merely  personal  experiences,  were 
translated  into  intellectual  concepts  and  entered  into  the 
currency  of  Christian  thought.  Hence  it  is  that  we  know 
so  much  more  about  the  transcendental  experience  of 
the  mediaeval  mystics — although  the  language  by  which 
they  describe  it  is  largely  made  up  of  negations — than 
about  that  of  Paul  or  John;  who  are  left  inarticulate  by 
their  most  sublime  adventures.  Silence  wraps  round  the 
communion  of  Jesus  with  the  Father.  That  he  was 
"  caught  up  into  Paradise  and  heard  unspeakable  words 5>  l 
is  all  that  Paul  can  say  of  his  own  great  adventure — he  is 
unable  to  reduce  his  intuition  to  speech.  Compare  with 
this  the  description  of  Christian  ecstacy  given  by  St. 
Basil  the  Great,2  the  classic  treatise  on  "  dark  contem 
plation  "  of  Dionysius  the  Areopagite,  that  jewel  of 
mediaeval  literature,  The  Cloud  of  Unknowing,  the 
sublime  poetry  in  which  Dante  tells  of  his  brief  vision  of 
God,3  the  wonderful  self-analyses  of  St.  Teresa,  or  the 
exact  psychology  of  St.  John  of  the  Cross:  and  you  will 
see  the  debt  which  the  mystical  consciousness  of  the 
Church  owes  to  Alexandrian  thought. 

1  2  Cor.  xii.  4.  2  Supra,  p.  293.  *  Par.,  XXXIII. 


MYSTIC  LIFE   IN  EARLY   CHURCH    297 

Moreover,  as  the  centuries  passed,  and  the  first-hand 
experience  of  many  great  mystics  worked  upon  the 
diagram  which  they  had  inherited  from  the  Neoplatonists, 
a  steady  Christianisation  of  that  diagram  took  place.  The 
tendency  which  it  represented  became  merged  in  the 
general  process  of  the  spiritual  life.  Its  hard  antitheses 
between  action  and  contemplation,  God  and  the  World, 
Being  and  Becoming,  were  softened  and  humanised  by  the 
"  fire  of  love."  It  is  true  that  we  can  trace  the  persistence 
of  its  abstract  and  negative  elements  in  the  reports  of 
many  mediaeval  contemplatives :  in  Angela  of  Foligno's 
ineffable  vision  of  God  in  "great  darkness,"  where  the 
soul  "  seems  to  see  nothing,  yet  sees  all  things,"  l  in 
Tauler's  description  of  the  "  Wilderness  of  the  Quiet 
Desert  of  Godhead,"  2  or — in  lovelier  shape— in  Ruys- 
broeck's  "  Abyss  of  Darkness  where  the  loving  spirit  dies  to 
itself,  and  wherein  begins  the  manifestation  of  God  and  of 
Eternal  Life."  3  These  concepts  survive  because  they  do 
no  doubt  represent  the  effort  of  the  mind  to  express  in 
human  speech  one  side  of  man's  ineffable  experience  of 
that  Transcendent  Reality  which  is  "  dark  to  the  intellect 
and  radiant  to  the  heart " :  that  paradoxical  synthesis  of 
the  extremes  of  deprivation  and  fulfilment  which  he  calls 
the  "rich  nought,"  the  "dim  silence  where  lovers  lose 
themselves,"  and  in  which,  mysteriously,  "  the  night  of 
thought  becomes  the  light  of  perception."  4 

"  Reck  thee  never,"  says  The  Cloud  of  Unknowing,  "  if 
thy  wits  cannot  reason  of  this  nought ;  for  surely,  I  love 
it  much  the  better.  It  is  so  worthy  a  thing  in  itself,  that 
they  cannot  reason  thereupon.  This  nought  may  better 
be  felt  than  seen  :  for  it  is  full  blind  and  full  dark  to  them 
that  have  but  little  while  looked  thereupon.  Nevertheless, 

1  Visionum  et  instructionum  liber,  cap.  26  (Eng.  trans.,  p.  183-185). 
*  Third  Instruction  (The  Inner  Way,  p.  324). 

3  UOrnement  des  noces  spirituelles,  Lib.  III.  cap.  2. 

4  Coventry  Patmpre,  T be  Rod,  the  Root  and  the  Flower,  "  Aurea  Dicta," 
XIII. 


298  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

if  I  shall  soothlier  say,  a  soul  is  more  blinded  in  feeling 
of  it  for  abundance  of  ghostly  light,  than  for  any  darkness 
or  wanting  of  bodily  light.  What  is  he  that  calleth  it 
nought?  Surely  it  is  our  outer  man,  and  not  our  inner. 
Our  inner  man  calleth  it  All."  x 

But  in  all  the  works  of  true  Christian  mysticism,  though 
the  psychological  methods  of  Neoplatonism  are  accepted 
and  adapted  to  the  Way  of  the  Cross,  these  methods  are 
perpetually  sweetened  and  invigorated  by  the  Christian 
elements  of  personal  love  and  eager  outgoing  desire :  the 
"  little  secret  love  "  "  speedily  springing  unto  God  as  a 
sparkle  from  the  coal " ; 2  the  determined  effort  of 
awakened  spirit  to  "  be  to  the  Eternal  Goodness  what  his 
own  hand  is  to  a  man."  Thus  the  developed  Christian 
science  of  contemplation,  though  its  origins  are,  on  the 
intellectual  side,  Neoplatonic,  is  full  of  an  implied  appeal 
to  the  active  will.  It  too  has  suffered  a  "  new  birth  "  ; 
received  a  new  dower  of  vitality,  and  become  a  vigorous 
art,  to  be  practised  "  stalwartly  but  listily,  with  a  devout 
and  a  pleasing  stirring  of  love."  8  It  presses  out  and  up 
from  the  known  world  of  sense  to  the  "  Cloud  of 
Unknowing "  ;  and  there,  all  intellectual  concepts  tran 
scended,  new  worlds  of  wonder,  new  eternal  opportunities 
of  service,  are  disclosed  to  the  questing  heart. 

This  "  science  of  the  love  of  God,"  as  some  of  the 
saints  have  called  it,  has  the  zest  and  joy  of  a  living, 
growing  thing :  for  it  is  one  of  the  forms  under  which 
the  Spirit  of  Life  "conquers  the  oppositions  of  matter," 
and  obtains  a  foothold  in  the  Transcendent  sphere.  It  is  a 
sign,  not  of  the  "  higher  laziness,"  but  of  the  movement  of 
human  personality  in  its  wholeness  to  a  participation  in  a 
greater  universe,  a  closer  and  more  impassioned  union 
with  the  Deity  Who  is  not  only  "  Eternal  Rest "  but  also 
"  Eternal  Work  " :  who  is  found  not  only  in  the  One, 
but  in  the  Many,  not  only  in  the  Cloud  of  Unknowing 

1  'The  Cloud  of  Unknowing,  cap.  68.  *  Op.  «'*.,  cap.  4. 

3  Op.  cit.y  cap.  6. 


MYSTIC   LIFE   IN   EARLY   CHURCH     299 

but  also  in  the  busy,  stirring,  suffering  world  of  things. 
"  Without  our  own  industry  and  love,"  says  Ruysbroeck, 
"  we  cannot  be  blessed."  *  The  true  contemplative  is 
above  all  things  a  worker  and  a  lover,  who  both  sees  and 
seeks,  possesses  and  desires.  This  love  it  was — romantic, 
dynamic,  self-spending — with  which  the  Christian  mystics 
animated  the  scientific  spirituality  of  the  Neoplatonic 
schools. 

If  we  wish  to  see  the  true  difference  between  such  a 
mysticism  and  the  ecstatic  ascent  to  Reality  solus  cum 
solo  taught  and  practised  by  Plotinus,  we  have  but  to  go 
to  St.  Augustine  ;  who  stands  at  the  end  of  the  fourth 
century,  the  typical  figure  which  links  in  experience  these 
two  tendencies  of  life,  and  transmits  them — fused  in  the 
crucible  of  his  ardent  temperament — to  the  mediaeval 
world.  A  natural  mystic,  an  inveterate  seeker  for  God, 
he  had  been  an  adept  of  the  Neoplatonic  ecstacy  before 
his  conversion.  Possessed  of  unequalled  powers  of 
observation,  with  a  peculiar  genius  for  the  description  of 
psychological  states,  the  passages  in  which  he  compares 
Platonic  and  Christian  contemplation  are  amongst  the 
classics  of  religious  psychology.  St.  Augustine's  Christi 
anity,  when  at  last  he  attained  it,  was  the  complete  and 
vital  Christian  mysticism  of  Paul.  A  "  real  life  "  lived 
within  the  Eternal  Order  was  its  objective;  not  a  brief  ex 
perience  of  Perfect  Beauty — a  mere  glimpse  of  the  Being 
of  God.  Movement  was  of  its  essence.  In  the  crucial 
change,  the  self-surrender  of  his  conversion,  he  found, 
as  he  says,  "  the  road  leading  to  the  blessed  Country 
which  is  no  mere  vision  but  a  home."  a  Hence  he  looks 
back  upon  the  sterile  satisfactions  of  his  Neoplatonic 
period,  when  "for  a  moment  he  beheld  from  a  wooded 
height  the  land  of  peace,  but  found  no  path  thereto."  3 

The  literature  of  mysticism  contains  no  more  vivid  and 
realistic  description  of  supernal  experience  than  Augus- 

1  VOmemeni  des  noces  sfiritutUes,  Lib.  II.  cap.  77. 

a  Aug.,  Conf.t  Bk.  VII.  cap.  20.  •  Loc.  fit.,  cap.  21. 


300  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

tine's  report  of  his  Platonic  experiment  in  introversion, 
his  brief  Plotinian  contemplation  of  the  One.  "  Being  by 
these  books  [of  the  Platonists]  admonished  to  return  unto 
myself,  I  entered  into  the  secret  chamber  of  my  soul, 
guided  by  Thee  ;  and  this  I  could  do  because  Thou  wast 
my  helper.  I  entered,  and  beheld  with  the  mysterious  eye 
of  my  soul  the  light  that  never  changes,  above  the  eye 
of  my  soul,  above  my  intelligence.  It  was  not  the  common 
light  which  all  flesh  can  see,  nor  was  it  greater  yet  of  the 
same  kind,  as  if  the  light  of  day  were  to  grow  brighter  and 
brighter  and  flood  all  space.  It  was  not  like  this,  but 
something  altogether  different  from  any  earthly  illumina 
tion.  Nor  was  it  above  my  intelligence  in  the  same  way 
as  oil  is  above  water,  or  heaven  above  earth,  but  it  was 
higher  because  it  made  me,  and  I  was  lower  because 
made  by  it.  He  who  knows  the  truth  knows  that  Light, 
and  he  who  knows  that  Light  knows  Eternity.  Love 
knows  that  Light.  .  .  .  Step  by  step  I  was  led  upwards, 
from  bodies  to  the  soul  which  perceives  by  means  of  the 
bodily  senses,  and  thence  to  the  soul's  inward  faculty,  to 
which  the  bodily  sense  reports  external  facts,  and  thence 
to  the  reasoning  power.  And  when  this  power  also  found 
itself  changeable  it  withdrew  its  thoughts  from  experience, 
abstracting  itself  from  the  contradictory  throng  of  sensu 
ous  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,  under 
stood  by  means  of  the  things  that  are  made,  but  I  could 
not  sustain  my  gaze :  my  weakness  was  dashed  back,  and 
I  was  relegated  to  my  ordinary  experience,  bearing  with 
me  nothing  but  a  loving  memory,  cherishing  as  it  were 
the  fragrance  of  those  meats  on  which  I  was  not  yet  able 


In  this  experience  St.  Augustine,  no  less  than  Plotinus, 
believed  that  he  had  truly  enjoyed  for  an  instant  the 
1  Bk.  VII.  caps.  10  and  17  slightly  condensed. 


MYSTIC   LIFE    IN   EARLY   CHURCH    301 

beatific  Vision  of  God  ;  which  is  one  and  the  same  for 
Christian  and  for  Platonist.1  That  which  he  saw  from 
the  "  wooded  height  "  was  indeed  the  promised  land  :  the 
mighty  synthesis  of  All  that  Is.  But  for  the  Platonic 
contemplative  that  land  remains  a  vision,  he  "  sees  the 
end,  but  not  the  road  thereto."  2  Hence,  this  glimpse  of 
it — this  "  hurried  glance  " — could  not  satisfy  Augustine's 
deep  craving  for  Reality.  Had  it  done  so,  his  conversion 
need  never  have  taken  place.  In  his  own  classic  phrase, 
the  mystic  need  is  for  a  Home,  not  for  a  Vision.  He 
is  not  content  to  balance  himself  for  one  giddy  moment 
on  the  apex  of  "  the  sublime  pyramid  of  thought "  :  but 
demands  of  his  transfigured  universe  depth  and  breadth 
as  well  as  height — an  all-round  expression  of  Reality. 
His  objective  is  "  the  participation  of  Eternity,  of  all  things 
most  delightful  and  desired,  of  all  things  most  loved  by 
them  who  have  it,"  3  which  alone  can  satisfy  the  cravings 
of  heart,  mind  and  will;  and  such  a  participation  means 
the  adjustment  of  consciousness  to  a  greater  rhythm, 
growth  into  a  new  order  of  Reality — the  treading  of  that 
Mystic  Way  which  was  "  built  by  the  care  of  the  Heavenly 
Emperor."4  Even  the  swift  flash  of  thought  in  which 
Monica  and  Augustine  "  touched  the  Eternal  Wisdom  "  * 
cannot  satisfy  this  instinct  for  a  completed  life  lived  in 
the  "  diviner  air."  6  It  was  not  vision  which  Augustine 
acclaimed  as  the  firstfruits  of  his  conversion,  but  the  power 
to  perform  "  free  acts."  7 

1  Cf.  De  Civ.  Dei,  Bk.  X.  cap.  2.  *  Aug.,  Conf  ,  Bk.  VII.  cap.  20. 

3  Aquinas,  Summa  contra  Gentiles,  Bk.  II.  cap.  42. 

4  Aug.,  Conf.,  Bk.  VII.  cap.  20.  5  Ibid.,  Bk.  IX.  cap.  10. 

6  The  difference  between  these  two  phases  in  Augustine  is  well  illus 
trated  by  the  two  exactly  equivalent  phases  which  Mr.  Edmund  Gardner 
distinguishes  in  the  development  of  Dante.  First,  the  philosophic 
"  apparent  mysticism  of  the  Convivio"  "  not  based  upon  a  true  religious 
experience,  but  upon  an  intellectual  process."  Secondly,  the  true 
mysticism  of  the  Divina  Commedia,  entailing  the  vital  experiences  of  the 
conversion  and  purification  of  the  soul  (Dante  and  the  Mystics,  p.  19). 

'  Aug.,  Conf.,  Bk.  XL  cap.  I. 


302  THE  MYSTIC  WAY 

Hence  the  Christian  mystic  can  never  afford  to  accept 
the  principle  of  contemplation  divorced  from  the  prin 
ciple  of  growth :  never  forgets  that  being,  not  knowing, 
is  his  aim — that  he  moves,  not  towards  clearer  vision,  but 
towards  closer  and  more  fruitful  identity  with  the  Spirit 
of  Life.  "  Christian  Mysticism,"  says  Delacroix,  "  sub 
stitutes  for  ecstacy  a  wider  state :  where  the  permanent 
consciousness  of  the  Divine  does  not  suspend  practical 
activity,  where  definite  action  and  thought  detach  them 
selves  from  this  indefinite  ground,  where  the  disappear 
ance  of  the  feeling  of  self-hood  and  the  spontaneous  and 
impersonal  character  of  the  thoughts  and  motor-tendencies 
inspire  the  subject  with  the  idea  that  these  acts  do  not 
emanate  from  him,  but  from  a  divine  Source :  and  that 
it  is  God  Who  lives  and  acts  within  him."  l 

1  Etudes  d'histoire  ft  dt  psychologic  du  mysticisme,  p.  xi. 


Ill 

THE    MONASTIC    IDEAL 

THE  struggle  between  the  negative  transcendentalism 
of  the  Neoplatonists  and  the  dynamic,  affirmative  instincts 
of  primitive  Christian  enthusiasm — between  the  ideal  of 
a  vision  seen  and  of  a  life  lived — endured  for  more  than 
two  centuries  :  and  culminated,  as  such  long-drawn  warfare 
often  does,  in  the  apparent  victory  of  both  combatants, 
the  apparent  consummation  of  an  alliance  between  them. 
Christian  mysticism  seems  at  first  sight  to  have  conquered 
Neoplatonism  only  after  absorbing  nearly  everything  that 
it  possessed.1  In  the  work  of  Dionysius  the  Areopagite, 
which  closed  the  Neoplatonic  period  and  became  the  chief 
representative  on  the  Christian  side  of  its  mystical  philo 
sophy,  we  have  a  theory  of  the  spiritual  world  and  man's 
communion  with  it,  which  the  Hellenist  may  call  Neo- 
platonised  Christianity,  and  the  Christian,  Christianised 
Neoplatonism.2  Here  the  Greek  intellect  and  the  Chris 
tian  aspiration  are  present  in  about  equal  proportions : 
with  the  result  that  the  character  of  each  is  modified  to  a 
degree  which  obscures  its  most  vital  characteristics. 

The  manner  and  extent  in  which  the  different  members 
of  the  Christian  body  came  to  terms  with  Neoplatonism 
varied  enormously.  In  some  cases  the  assimilation  was 
complete;  and  the  new  method  of  communion  with 

1  Cf.  Harnack,  History  of  Dogma,  Vol.  I.  p.  361. 

2  There  are,  of  course,  other  elements,  both  Jewish  and  Oriental,  in 
the  religious  metaphysics  of  Dionysius ;  but  these  were  known  and  used 
by  later  Pagan  Neoplatonists,  many  of  whom  might  have  adopted  Moliere's 
motto,  "  Je  prends  mon  bien  ou  je  le  trouve." 

303 


304  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

Reality,  the  new  language  which  described  it,  did  but 
educate  and  enrich  the  total  experience  of  a  "  new 
creature "  strong  enough  to  digest  this  spiritual  food. 
In  others,  Hellenism  achieved  a  private  victory  by  accept 
ing  the  title  whilst  obliterating  the  true  marks,  of  the 
Christian  mystic ;  and  substituting  the  sterile  principle  of 
static  contemplation  for  the  vital  principle  of  growth. 

That  vital  principle,  however — the  dynamic,  richly 
human,  all-embracing  mysticism  of  Jesus  and  Paul — did 
not  fail :  though  its  triumphs  in  this  period  do  not  lie  upon 
the  surface  of  history.  It  shifted  its  centre,  broke  out  in  a 
new  direction,  and  put  on  an  almost  impenetrable  disguise 
before  it  undertook  its  pilgrimage  to  the  west :  a  disguise 
behind  which  many  scholars  have  failed  to  recognise  the 
features  of  that  Spirit  of  Life  which  is  "  movement  itself." 
Superficially,  the  general  tendency  of  fourth-century 
Christianity  seems  practical  and  intellectual  rather  than 
mystical :  inclined  ever  more  and  more  to  sacrifice  that 
character  of  mobility  which  is  the  essence  of  life,  that  it 
may  obtain  a  secure  foothold  within  the  social  framework 
in  exchange.  As  the  external  Church  rose  towards  power 
and  splendour,  entered  upon  warfare  against  heretics,  built 
up  her  theological  bulwarks  and  elaborated  her  ceremonial 
cult,  her  manifold  activities — the  numerous  and  inevitable 
compromises  effected  between  the  austere  primitive  spirit 
and  the  "  world  "  to  which  it  supposed  itself  to  be  sent— 
obscured  the  ideals  of  those  mystical  souls,  those  true 
citizens  of  the  Kingdom  of  Reality,  who  constitute  the 
"invisible  church."  The  Church  of  the  third  century, 
says  Harnack,  was  already  and  to  a  high  degree  secularised. 
She  had  not  renounced  her  characteristic  nature;  but  had 
dangerously  lowered  her  standard  of  life.1  She  had,  in 
fact,  "  travelled  far  from  the  original  conception  of  a 
community  of  saints,  all  washed,  all  sanctified,  all  justified  : 
far  from  the  ideal  of  that  little  company  of  disciples  who 
stood  aloof  from  the  whole  world  lying  under  the  power 
1  Das  Moncbtum,  §  3. 


MYSTIC  LIFE   IN  EARLY  CHURCH    605 

of  the  evil  one,  and  who  could  not  sin  because  '  the  seed 
of  Him'  (i  John  iii.  9)  was  abiding  in  them."1  Yet 
the  descendants  of  that  little  company  survived,  the 
thoroughfare  of  life  was  still  open,  the  original  type  con 
tinued  to  reproduce  itself  :  chiefly,  perhaps,  amongst  those 
ascetics  and  candidates  for  martyrdom  who  formed  a 
permanent  and  well-marked  class  within  the  Christian 
community,  and  represented  a  vivid  if  one-sided  appre 
hension  of  the  Christian  demand. 

During  the  primitive  period,  these  representatives  of 
the  "  little  flock,"  the  glad  romantic  spirit  of  self-donation, 
had  not  separated  themselves  from  ordinary  life.  Whilst 
the  age  of  enthusiasm  endured  they  stood — in  idea  if  not 
in  fact — for  the  Christian  norm  rather  than  the  Christian 
exception.  Later,  the  ascetics  often  lived  in  a  partial 
seclusion  on  the  outskirts  of  towns  and  villages :  a  stage 
of  development  described  in  the  early  chapters  of  the 
Vita  Antonn.  But  as  time  went  on,  and  the  primitive 
instinct  for  a  new  life,  a  total  change  of  outlook,  grew 
more  rare,  those  in  whom  "  the  mind  of  Christ  "  appeared 
were  less  and  less  able  to  adjust  its  stern  demands  to  the 
counter-claim  of  the  social  system  within  which  they  found 
themselves  ;  and  which  was  tolerated,  if  not  accepted  in 
theory,  by  the  growing  Church.  More  and  more  such 
spirits  felt  the  need  for  that  free  life  of  poverty  and 
detachment,  that  single-minded  concentration  on  Reality, 
that  opportunity  of  self-simplification,  which  He  had 
proclaimed  as  the  condition  of  a  perfect  fruition  of  Eternal 

Life.2 

The  upgrowth  of  the  monastic  system  within  Christi 
anity,  which  began  in  Egypt  early  in  the  fourth  century,3 

1  Hannay,  T£<?  Spirit  and  Origin  of  Christian  Monasticism,  p.  76. 

2  Matt.  xix.  16-22. 

3  According  to  Dom  Cuthbert  Butler,  the  birth  of  Christian  Monas- 
ticism  coincides  with  St.  Anthony's  return  from  his  great  retreat  in  the 
desert  (for  which  see  below)  and  first  attempt  to  organise  the  lives  of  his 
disciples      This  took  place  in  the  first  years  of  the  fourth  century.     Two 
of  these  disciples,  St.  Pachomius  and  St.  Macarius,  are  usually  regarded  as 


306  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

represents  the  flight  of  these  mystical  spirits  from  the 
restless  complications  and  unrealities  of  the  world  ;  with 
its  perpetual  calls  on  attention,  its  perpetual  tendency  to 
deflect  the  movement  of  consciousness  from  the  "  strait 
and  narrow  path  "  of  its  thoroughfare  to  God.  Here,  the 
thwarted  spirit  of  new  life  shifts  its  centre,  begins  to  cut 
another  "  way  out "  towards  transcendence,  tries  once 
again  to  conquer  those  "  oppositions  of  matter,"  those 
tendencies  to  automatism,  which  dog  its  steps,  and  hinder 
the  performance  of  its  great  office  of  bringing  Eternity 
into  time.  "It  is  one  of  the  most  striking  historical 
facts,"  says  Harnack,  "  that  the  Church,  precisely  at  the 
time  when  she  was  becoming  more  and  more  a  legal  and 
sacramental  institution,  threw  out  an  ideal  of  life  which 
could  be  realised  not  in  herself,  but  only  alongside  of 
herself.  The  more  deeply  she  became  compromised  with 
the  world,  the  higher,  the  more  superhuman,  became  her 
ideal.  .  .  .  Monasticism,  unable  to  find  satisfaction  in 
c  theology,'  seriously  accepted  the  view  that  Christianity 
is  a  religion,  and  demands  from  the  individual  a  surrender 
of  his  life."  1  The  monastic  movement,  then,  was  essen 
tially  a  mystical  movement;  one  more  exhibition  of  the 
imperishable  instinct  for  new  life,  the  ever-renewed  neces 
sity  for  distinction  between  the  "  little  flock  "  of  forward- 
moving  spirits  and  the  crowd.  It  was  a  genuine  outshoot 
from  the  parent  stem :  that  official  Church,  which  tended 
more  and  more  to  exchange  spontaneity  for  habit  and 
mystical  actuality  for  symbolic  form — to  turn,  in  fact,  on 
its  own  tracks,  and  adjust  itself  to  this  world  rather  than 
cut  its  way  through  to  the  next.2 

This  new  off-shoot  proclaimed  itself,  and  with  some 
reason,  as  a  return  to  the  primitive  Christian  ideal.  Its 
aim  was  the  double  aim  of  the  Christian  mystic :  a  vital 

the  founders  of  the  earliest  monastic  communities,  which  effected  the 
transition  from  anchorite  to  monk.     Cf.  Dom  C.  Butler,  "  Monasticism," 
in  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  nth  ed.,  Vol.  XVIII.  p.  687. 
1  Harnack,  Das  Mancbtum,  §  3.  2  Cf.  Harnack,  kc.  ctt. 


MYSTIC   LIFE   IN   EARLY   CHURCH     807 

and  permanent  union  with  God,  and  regeneration  as  the 
way  thereto.  Its  emphasis  was  on  life-changing  and  life- 
enhancement  :  and  on  penance  and  prayer — purification 
and  communion — as  the  only  means  by  which  this  could 
be  achieved.  It  sought,  as  well  as  it  could,  escape  from 
just  those  conditions  which  prevent  the  "  imitation  of 
Christ "  ;  and  made  the  life  of  spirit  possible  to  many 
selves  whose  vitality  would  not  have  sufficed  for  the  hard 
and  pioneer  work  of  path-cutting  through  the  jungle  of 
the  world.  "  Anciently,"  says  Augustine  Baker,  "  souls 
embracing  a  religious  life  were  moved  thereto  merely  out 
of  the  spirit  of  penance,  without  any  regard  at  all  to  make 
use  of  their  solitude  for  the  getting  of  learning — their 
principal  care  being,  to  attend  unto  God,  and  to  aspire 
unto  perfect  union  in  spirit  with  Him."  1 

So  the  old  Benedictine  ascetic.  Protestant  scholarship 
supports  the  same  view.  According  to  the  Greek  and 
Roman  churches,  says  Harnack,  "  the  true  monk  is  the 
true  and  most  perfect  Christian.  Monasticism  is  not  in 
the  Catholic  churches  a  more  or  less  accidental  phenomenon 
alongside  of  others :  but  as  the  churches  are  to-day,  and 
as  they  have  for  centuries  understood  the  gospel,  it  is 
an  institution  based  on  their  essential  nature — it  is 
the  Christian  life."  2  Hence,  from  the  fourth  century 
onwards,  a  large  proportion  of  those  true  mystics  who 
have  never  failed  to  leaven  the  Christian  Church,  are 
likely  to  be  found  within  the  monastic  system :  and  the 
life  which  that  system  proposes  to  its  novices  is  likely  to 
be  framed  upon  lines  corresponding  with  those  psycho 
logical  laws  which  govern  the  mystical  temperament. 

Both  theories  are  justified  by  fact.  Throughout  the 
"  dark  ages  "  and  the  mediaeval  period,  the  majority  of 
those  in  whom  the  "  new  life  "  awoke  tended  more  and 
more  to  adopt  the  religious  profession,  driven  to  specialisa 
tion  by  the  oppositions  of  the  world,  and  by  an  interior 
sense  of  their  own  limitations :  the  impossibility  of  moving 
1  Holy  Wisdom,  p.  168.  *  Das  Monchtum,  §  I. 

X   2 


308  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

in  two  directions  at  once,  conforming  simultaneously  to 
two  discordant  rhythms — in  fact,  of  serving  both  "  God 
and  Mammon."  Their  object  was  the  attainment  of  that 
interior  sanctity  which  is  the  self's  response  to  a  perceived 
perfection  :  the  inevitable  corollary  of  the  vision  of  God. 
True,  in  the  case  of  all  the  greatest  spirits,  the  real  and 
complete  "  imitators  of  Christ,"  this  retreat  from  the 
world  was  but  the  preliminary  to  a  return.  The  great 
solitaries  and  monks  were  not  the  selfish  visionaries,  the 
cowardly  fugitives  from  the  battle  of  life,  which  the  ultra- 
Protestant  imagination  delights  to  depict :  but  mighty  and 
heroic  lovers  of  Reality,  who  fulfilled  the  lover's  function 
of  handing  on  the  torch  of  life.  "  Our  holy  fathers,  filled 
with  God,"  they  are  called  in  the  liturgy  of  the  Orthodox 
Church.1  Even  St.  Anthony,  first  and  most  uncompromis 
ing  of  hermits,  who  lived  for  twenty  years  shut  up  in  a 
ruined  fort  without  seeing  the  face  of  man,  emerged  from 
that  long  retreat  when  he  felt  that  the  time  of  preparation 
was  over,  and  lived  amongst  his  disciples,  teaching  them 
the  mysteries  of  the  ascetic  life  or  "  perfect  way."  2  So 
too  St.  Bernard,  St.  Hildegarde,  St.  Francis,  St.  Teresa, 
and  many  another — sometimes  by  the  creative  power  of 
their  writings,  sometimes  by  immediate  act — were  the 
instruments  of  a  world-renewal  which  was  directly  de 
pendent  on  their  own  first  movement  of  retreat  and  con 
centration,  and  could  never  have  been  effected  by  the  busy 
and  altruistic  Martha  "  pulled  this  way  and  that"3  by  a 
multitude  of  conflicting  claims  upon  attention,  will  and 
love. 

Religious  orders,  then,  in  so  far  as  they  retained  the 
primitive  spirit  of  self-donation,  the  primitive  passion  for 
sanctity,  tended  to  attract  those  selves  most  capable  of 
growth  towards  the  Real.  Hence  results  the  fact  that  the 
discipline  of  those  orders  did,  and  does  still,  imitate  in 

1  Neale  and  Littledale,  The  Liturgies  of  SS.  Mark,  James,  Clement, 
Chrysostom  and  Basil,  p.  185. 

2  Vita  Antonii,  caps.  10  and  48.          8  Luke  x.  40  (We/mouth's  trans.). 


MYSTIC   LIFE   IN  EARLY   CHURCH     809 

little  the  life  process  of  the  mystical  soul,  its  spiral  ascent 
towards  union  with  Reality,  as  seen  in  perfection  in  Jesus 
and  those  who  follow  most  closely  in  His  steps.  It  does 
this  because,  as  those  who  made  the  great  monastic  Rules, 
and  those  who  lived  them  best,  perpetually  declare  to  us, 
the  one  object  of  the  true  monk  is  to  "  imitate  Christ." 
Vita  tua,  via  nostra,  said  a  Kempis,  speaking  for  all  of 
them  ;  and  his  book,  which  is  little  more  than  an  expan 
sion  of  this  epigram,  reflects  in  its  purest  form  the  true 
monastic  ideal.  "  Our  Lord  saith  :  he  that  followeth  me 
goeth  not  in  darkness.  These  are  the  words  of  Christ  in 
the  which  we  are  admonished  to  follow  his  life  and  his 
manners  if  we  would  be  verily  illumined  and  be  delivered 
from  all  manner  of  blindness  of  heart.  Wherefore  let  our 
sovereign  study  be — in  the  life  of  Jesu  Christ.  The 
teaching  of  Christ  passeth  the  teaching  of  all  saints  and 
holy  men;  and  he  that  hath  the  spirit  of  Christ  should  find 
there  hidden  manna.  But  it  happeneth  that  many  feel 
but  little  desire  of  often  hearing  of  the  gospel  ;  for  they 
have  not  the  spirit  of  Christ  ;  for  whoever  will  understand 
the  words  of  Christ  plainly  and  in  their  savour,  must  study 
to  conform  all  his  life  to  his  life."  l 

To  this  study — this  effort  to  repeat  life's  greatest 
achievement — the  monastic  orders  were  dedicated.  "  The 
Benedictine  rule,"  says  Hannay,  the  rule  which  first 
gathered  to  an  orderly  system  the  principles  of  monas- 
ticism,  and  is  the  root  of  all  subsequent  develop 
ments  in  the  West,  "  was  true  to  the  old  ascetic  ideal  of 
seeking  God  only  without  compromise,  and  literally 
imitating  Christ.  If  the  monks  of  the  order  became 
afterwards  colonists,  philanthropists,  scholars,  statesmen,  it 
was  not  because  their  rule  trained  them  for  such  work. 
They  were  trained  to  be  good,  and  nothing  more.  They 
sought  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  His  righteousness.  It 
was  not  because  they  pursued  them,  or  laboured  for  them, 
or  desired  them,  that  all  the  other  things  were  added  to 
1  De  Imit.  Christ*,  Bk.  I.  cap.  I. 


810  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

them  afterwards.  .  .  .  The  Benedictine  rule  aimed  at 
making  good  men,  and  left  the  question  of  their  usefulness 
to  God."  l 

This  being  so,  it  is  of  special  interest  to  observe  how 
close  is  the  accordance  between  this  Rule,  this  "  training 
in  goodness,"  and — not  only  the  ethics  of  the  New 
Testament — but  also,  the  psychological  laws  which  govern 
mystic  growth.  The  system  of  education  implied  by  it, 
leads  the  postulant  through  the  degrees  of  "  Beginner"  and 
"Proficient"  towards  that  of  "Perfect";2  a  sequence 
which  has  a  real  and  organic  resemblance  to  the  "  mystic 
way "  of  Purgation,  Illumination  and  Union.  This 
"threefold  way"  of  monastic  asceticism  begins  by  hard 
and  unremitting  mortification  and  penance,  a  true  purga 
tion  of  the  roots  of  self-hood ;  an  education,  part  mental, 
part  physical,  in  which  the  regnant  will  obtains  an  ever 
increasing  control  of  the  lower  centres  of  consciousness, 
character  is  slowly  purged,  braced,  and  readjusted  to  the 
new  and  higher  life,  and  that  humility  which  is  "pure 
receptivity  "  3  is  attained.  This  is  succeeded  by  a  period 
in  which,  the  "  virtues  "  being  conquered,  and  will  and 
desire  turned  "  towards  the  Best,"  the  growing  self  is 
led  to  higher  levels  of  correspondence  with  Reality,  a 
balanced  career  of  service  and  of  prayer :  finally — and  often 
by  way  of  the  aridity  and  spiritual  distress  well  known  in 
the  cloistered  life — to  that  condition  of  perfect  adjustment 
to  the  Divine  Will,  "  by  pureness  and  singleness  of  heart, 
by  love  and  by  contemplation,"  4  which  is  the  normal 
man's  equivalent  of  the  Unitive  State  attained  by  the 
great  mystic  in  his  last  stage.5 

1  Hannay,  The  Spirit  and  Origin  of  Christian  Monasticism,  pp.  246,  250. 

2  These  are  technical  terms  of  Christian  asceticism ;  appearing  in  all 
books  of  monastic,  and  many  of  non-monastic,  origin  which  treat  of  the 
mystic  life.     See  for  instances  Rolle,  The  Mending  of  Life,  cap.  12 ;  The 
Cloud  of  Unknowing,  cap.  35,  and  the  Theologia  Germanica,  cap.  14. 

8  Harnack,  Das  Wesen  des  Christentums,  p.  47. 

4  Theo.  Ger.,  loc.  cit. 

5  Details  in  almost  any  manual  of  Catholic  asceticism :  particularly 


MYSTIC   LIFE   IN   EARLY  CHURCH    311 

This,  then,  was  the  mould  into  which  the  "  oppositions 
of  matter"  gradually  forced  the  spirit  of  new  life:  with 
the  inevitable  result  of  that  loss  of  elasticity  and  freedom 
which  always  follows  upon  the  tendency  of  spirit  to  take 
material  form.  The  subsequent  history  of  monasticism 
is  largely  the  history  of  the  perpetually  recurring  lapse  of 
the  mystical  into  the  mechanical :  its  periodical  restoration 
through  the  appearance  both  within  and  without  the 
cloister  of  great  and  vital  spirits,  able  to  triumph  over 
the  automatisms  of  the  system  which  surrounded  them. 
In  these,  the  elan  'vital  found,  again  and  again,  a  new 
opportunity  of  expression,  a  new  thoroughfare  to  the 
heights.  From  them,  again  and  again,  a  new  dower  of 
vitality  was  poured  out  upon  the  world.1 

It  was  with  the  emergence  of  a  group  of  such  great 
spirits — the  first  Egyptian  hermits  of  the  third  and  fourth 
centuries — that  Christian  monasticism  began,  and  Chris 
tian  mysticism  found  its  fresh  thoroughfare.  The  Coptic 
saints,  Anthony  the  Great 2  and  his  pupil  Macarius  of 
Egypt,8  preserved  and  carried  over  to  the  post-Nicene 
Church  the  true  "  secret  of  the  Kingdom  "  :  the  mystery 
of  organic  spiritual  growth.  They  represent  a  genuine 
new  movement  on  Life's  part,  the  cutting  of  a  fresh 
channel  through  the  world  of  things. 

Anthony,  the  hero  and  pioneer  of  this  whole  movement, 
was  suddenly  converted  in  true  mystical  fashion,  and  at 

Augustine  Baker,  Holy  Wisdom;  A.  Poulain,  Graces  cPoraison;  A.  Saudreau, 
L*s  Dcgrts  de  la  Vie  sprituelle  ;  A.  Devine,  Manual  of  Ascetic  Theology. 
1  The  history  of  vital  religion  is  largely  the  history  of  such  personalities 
and  the  new  life  which  flows  from  them  :  for  instance  St.  Benedict, 
St.  Bernard,  St.  Hildegarde,  St.  Dominic,  St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  St. 
Catherine  of  Siena,  the  Friends  of  God,  St.  Ignatius,  St.  Teresa.  To 
these  we  may,  perhaps,  add  our  own  "  regenerators  "  :  Bunyan,  Fox,  and 
Wesley. 

1  A.D.  251-356. 

3  St.  Macarius,  called  "  of  Egypt,"  also  "  the  Great,"  was  born  in 
either  295  or  300,  and  died  in  either  386  or  391.  The  best  authorities 
incline  to  the  earlier  date. 


812  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

the  psychologically  probable  age  of  eighteen,1  from  a 
prosperous  life  in  the  world — he  was  the  son  of  wealthy 
Christian  parents — to  the  extreme  of  ascetic  renunciation. 
It  happened  one  day  that  he  heard  in  church  the  words  of 
the  gospel :  "If  thou  wilt  be  perfect,  go  and  sell  that 
thou  hast  and  give  to  the  poor,  and  thou  shalt  have 
treasure  in  heaven :  and  come  and  follow  Me."  2  As  St. 
Augustine,  hearing  the  child's  voice  say  "Tolle,  lege!  " 
knew  that  it  spoke  for  him  alone ;  as  St.  Francis  was 
"  smitten  by  unwonted  visitations'5  in  the  lonely  church  and 
came  out  another  man;  as  St.  Catherine  of  Genoa  suddenly 
received  in  her  heart  the  "  wound  of  the  unmeasured  love 
of  God,"  so  Anthony  heard  in  these  words  a  personal 
command.  He  at  once  obeyed  them  :  and  having  stripped 
himself  of  all  property,  he  went  to  and  fro  for  some  time 
amongst  those  Christians  who  were  striving  to  live  the 
ascetic  life  in  the  world — the  "  athletes  of  piety  "  as  they 
were  called  in  the  language  of  that  day — that  he  might 
learn  from  them  all  he  could. 

But  the  storms  and  trials  of  the  Purgative  Way  soon 
seized  upon  him.  His  nature  was  strong  and  ardent :  and 
its  movement  toward  transcendence  was  one  long  series 
of  battles  between  the  lower  and  the  higher  centres  of 
consciousness.  He  fled  into  the  desert  ;  first  to  a  tomb 
near  his  native  village,  then  to  a  lonely  ruined  fort  near 
the  Nile.  Here,  for  a  long  period  of  years,  in  utmost 
solitude,  he  struggled  for  self-conquest.  The  violence  of 
his  temptations,  the  heroic  austerities  by  which  he  opposed 
them,  can  be  discerned  behind  the  symbolic  form  which 
they  have  taken  in  the  ancient,  and  well  known,  legends 
of  the  "  temptations  of  St.  Anthony."  When  at  last,  at 
the  age  of  fifty-five,  he  returned  to  the  world  of  men, 
those  who  had  expected  to  see  a  man  physically  wrecked 
and  mentally  over-strung  by  fasting,  penance  and  lone 
liness,  saw  instead  the  adept  of  a  true  asceticism  ;  the 
"  mortified "  mystic,  "  normal  in  body  simply  sane  in 
*  Cf.  supra,  Cap.  I,  f  IV.  »  Matt,  xix.  ^\. 


MYSTIC   LIFE   IN  EARLY  CHURCH    318 

mind."1  Driven  by  the  mystical  impulse  to  service, 
Anthony  now  devoted  himself  to  organising  the  lives  of 
those  ascetics  who  had  followed  him  to  the  desert.  During 
the  persecution  of  Maximinus  (A.D.  311)  he  went  to 
Alexandria  to  comfort  and  strengthen  the  suffering 
church :  but  this  period  of  contact  with  the  world  was 
followed,  when  the  immediate  need  for  his  presence  ceased, 
by  a  second  retreat  into  more  remote  solitudes — the  "  inner 
mountain,"  near  the  Red  Sea.  Here  he  lived  until  his 
death :  sometimes  visiting  his  old  disciples  in  the  desert 
of  the  Thebaid,  and  ever  accessible  to  the  many  who  came 
to  him  for  help,  teaching  and  advice.2  It  is  said  that 
his  was  one  of  those  rare  natures  which  never  attained 
the  equilibrium  characteristic  of  a  mature  mystical  con 
sciousness.  His  inner  life  was  characterised  by  alternate 
conflict  and  high  spiritual  joy;  swinging  to  and  fro  between 
the  negative  sense  of  sin  and  failure,  and  the  ecstatic 
communion  with  God  which  he  described  as  "  the  only 
perfect  prayer";3  between  the  Divine  Union  and  the 
Dark  Night.  As  he  put  it  in  the  figurative  language  that 
he  loved,  his  "  conflicts  with  demons"  continued  to  the 
last. 

In  Anthony's  second  retreat,  less  savagely  austere  than 
that  of  his  purgative  period,  work  took  its  place  by  the 
side  of  contemplation  as  a  part  of  the  sane  and  normal 
monastic  life :  not  only  the  constant  spiritual  work  of 
teaching  disciples,  and  giving  comfort  and  advice  to 
pilgrims  who  sought  him  out,  but  those  homely  trades  of 
mat-weaving  and  agriculture  which  became  a  part  of  the 
rule  observed  by  all  later  Egyptian  solitaries  and  monks,4 

1  Hannay,  of.  «'/.,  p.  99.     I  have  condensed  much  of  the  preceding 
account  of  Anthony's  conversion  and  penance,  which  occupies  the  first 
fourteen  chapters  of  the  Vita,  from  Mr.  Hannay's  excellent  paraphrase. 

2  Vita  Antonii,  caps.  49-58.  8   Cassian,  Coll.,  IX.  31. 

4  See  Murray's  Dictionary  of  Christian  Biography,  art.  "  Antonius 
Abbas."  Such  manual  work  was  the  great  protection  of  the  hermit 
against  the  monastic  sin  of  "  accidie  " ;  the  restless  misery  and  boredom 
which  comes  over  the  contemplative  when  his  spiritual  insight  fails  him, 


314  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

and  give  the  first  hint  of  that  monastic  ideal  of  ardent  soul 
in  industrious  body  which  finds  its  classical  expression  in 
the  Benedictine  rule. 

Anthony  had  little  education,  though  the  reports  of  his 
disputes  with  Pagan  philosophers  suggest  that  he  possessed 
the  ready  wit  and  lucid  mind  so  often  found  in  great 
contemplatives.  Hence,  his  mysticism  never  took  literary 
form  :  we  can  but  guess  his  doctrine  from  his  life.1  That 
doctrine  was  propagated  through  his  immediate  personal 
influence  ;  the  enduring  influence  and  contagious  quality, 
possessed  by  a  commanding  character,  a  natural  leader 
and  initiator  of  men.  He  "  found  a  new  form  of  life  and 
justified  it" — the  peculiarity,  says  Delacroix,  of  the 
Christian  mystical  type :  found  it  by  the  way  of  heroic 
sacrifices,  nurtured  it  by  the  twin  means  of  contemplation 
and  service,  and  handed  it  on,  through  the  disciples  who 
inherited  his  vitality,  to  the  generations  that  were  to  be. 

and  he  is  thrown  back  on  the  futilities  of  daily  life.  Hannay  (op.  cit.9 
pp.  154-157)  has  a  vivid  and  amusing  account  of  the  monk  smitten  with 
this  spiritual  disease. 

1  The  long  sermon  into  which  Anthony's  teachings  are  condensed  in 
the  Vita  deals  chiefly  with  his  favourite  subject  of  "  demons,"  and  the 
way  in  which  they  may  best  be  overcome. 


IV 

A    MYSTIC    OF    THE    DESERT 

IT  was  probably  in  the  years  which  immediately  pre 
ceded  and  followed  St.  Anthony's  death,  that  the  principle 
which  had  inspired  his  career,  the  secret  of  that  life  to 
which  he  had  attained,  first  found  expression  in  literature : 
in  the  work  of  his  favourite  disciple,  St.  Macarius  the  Great 
of  Egypt.1 

Macarius  had  lived  in  closest  sympathy  with  Anthony, 
and  is  said  to  have  tended  him  during  the  last  fifteen  years 
of  his  life.  Moreover,  the  curve  of  his  development 
closely  followed  that  of  his  master.  For  twenty  years  he 
too  lived  the  solitary  and  penitential  life  of  an  anchorite 
"  alone  with  the  wild  beasts "  in  the  desert  of  the 
Thebaid :  orientating  his  whole  personality  to  that  inflow 
ing  Power  by  which  he  felt  himself  to  be  possessed,  war 
ring  with  his  lower  nature,  subduing  the  machinery  of 
sense  to  the  purposes  of  the  spiritual  consciousness,  by 
those  hard  austerities  which  seem  to  our  softer  generation 
to  be  compounded  of  the  offensive  and  the  miraculous. 
Only  when  he  had  already  become  celebrated  for  an 
exceptional  sanctity — when  psychic  equilibrium  was 
restored,  the  affirmative  state  of  spiritual  illumination 
established  in  him — did  the  compensating  instinct  of 
service  to  his  fellow  men  make  itself  felt.  Then,  as 
Anthony  came  out  from  his  ruined  fort  "  strong  in  the 
Spirit,"  to  teach  others  how  they  might  vanquish  the 
demons  of  sin  and  desire,  so  Macarius  too — urged  by 
1  Not  to  be  confused  with  St.  Macarius  of  Alexandria,  also  a  "  father 
of  the  desert." 


316  THE    MYSTIC   WAY 

the  entreaties  of  those  disciples  who  perpetually  broke  in 
upon  his  solitude  begging  for  spiritual  help  and  advice 
— exchanged  the  life  of  complete  isolation  which  he  had 
loved,  for  that  of  the  head  of  a  "  laura  "  or  village  com 
munity  of  hermits,  who  dwelt  around  him  in  the  Scetic 
desert,  and  whom  he  trained  in  that  rigorous  asceticism 
which  he  regarded  as  the  foundation  of  all  spirituality. 
For  these  and  others  whom  he  helped  and  taught,  he 
wrote  the  homilies  and  tracts  upon  the  spiritual  life- 
process  and  its  " graces"  which  we  still  possess:  the 
greatest  literary  monument  of  Christian  mysticism  in  the 
fourth  century.  In  asceticism  the  pupil  of  St.  Anthony, 
in  mystical  thought  the  descendant  of  St.  Paul  and  the 
Fourth  Evangelist,  he  is  the  first  scientific  mystic  of  Chris 
tendom  ;  reducing  the  experiences  and  intuitions  of  the 
New  Testament  giants  to  a  clear  and  orderly  system 
which  is  yet  lit  up  by  the  vivid  light  of  personal 
experience.1 

I  have  said  that  the  mystical  doctrine  of  Macarius,  like 
the  life  which  he  learned  from  Anthony  the  Great,  was 
rooted  in  asceticism.  But  this  asceticism  was  not  pur 
sued  for  its  own  sake :  was  neither  the  result  of  a  Mani- 
chasan  dualism,  nor  the  deliberate  self-torture  of  the 
fanatic,  trying  to  propitiate  an  angry  deity.  It  was  a 
means  to  an  end :  the  athletic  and  educative  asceticism 
of  the  Christian  mystic,  re-ordering  his  disordered  loves, 
subduing  his  vagrant  instincts,  that  all  his  desires,  all  his 
conative  powers,  may  be  trained  towards  the  one  Reality. 
Its  aim,  says  Macarius,  is  the  production  of  a  "  strong, 
clean,  and  holy  "  personality :  an  instrument  adapted  to 
the  true  goal  of  life — the  union  of  the  soul  with  its 

1  The  life  and  works  of  Macarius  arc  in  Migne,  Pat.  Grate.,  T.  XXXIV. 
The  chief  sources  for  his  biography  are  the  His  tori  a  Lausiaca  of  Palladius 
and  the  Historia  Monachorum  of  Rufinus.  The  best  account  of  his 
mysticism  is  by  J.  Stoffels,  Die  mystiche  Theologie  Makarius  des  Aegypters 
und  die  'dltesten  Ans'dtze  christlicher  Mystik  (1908).  I  am  much  in 
debted  to  this  excellent  monograph. 


MYSTIC   LIFE   IN   EARLY   CHURCH     317 

Creator.1  "  We  can  only  behold  that  which  we  are  "— 
this  law  of  knowledge,  with  its  logical  corollary  that  only 
the  God-like  can  know  God,  was  already  clear  to  him. 

It  was,  then,  on  the  solid  and  practical  basis  of  character- 
building — long  and  strenuous  discipline,  slow  growth, 
profound  psychological  adjustments — that  his  theory  of 
the  mystical  life  was  raised.  Macarius  was  neither  a 
theologian  nor  a  philosopher :  but  he  was  a  born  psycho 
logist,  with  few  illusions  about  human  nature,  and  a 
singularly  clear  perception  of  those  native  disharmonies, 
those  downward-falling  tendencies  always  found  in  it, 
which  we  call  "  sin."  Though  his  writings  show  that 
he  was  familiar  with  many  schools  of  thought — had  read 
not  only  the  Scriptures  and  early  Fathers,  but  the  Stoics 
and  some  at  least  of  the  Alexandrian  Neoplatonists — yet 
he  does  but  use  the  language  of  these  thinkers  to  express 
the  results  of  an  intense  personal  experience.  It  was  by 
the  Christian  method  of  steadfast  attention  to  the  Spiritual 
Order,  unwearied  and  loving  meditation  and  prayer,  and 
for  the  Christian  reason  of  disinterested  love,  that  he 
grew  to  the  full  stature  of  the  mystic  life :  and  it  was  by 
the  same  means  that  he  strove  to  induct  other  men  into 
that  universe  which  he  describes  with  the  certitude  and 
enthusiasm  of  a  citizen,  as  "  Light,"  "  Glory  "  and  "  True 
Life." 

From  his  homilies,  and  the  seven  little  tracts  on 
"  Christian  perfection,"  we  can  yet  deduce  the  exultant 
vision  by  which  Macarius  was  possessed :  the  form  which 
it  took  in  his  consciousness.  His  whole  "  system  " — 
though  it  is  no  more  self-consistent,  ring-fenced  and  com 
plete  than  any  other  vital  and  evolving  thing — hangs  on 
one  central  truth  :  itself  the  purest  product  of  that  mysti 
cism  of  the  "Kingdom"  and  "  divine  sonship  "  which 
descends  from  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  This  truth  has  an 
obverse  and  a  reverse,  a  temporal  and  an  eternal  side. 
The  temporal,  dynamic  aspect  of  it  is  the  idea  of  man's 
1  StBffels,  op.  dt.j  p.  6. 


318  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

soul  as  an  infinitely  precious  and  mysterious  thing,  pos 
sessed  of  a  latent  divine  quality — a  seed  that  can  spring  to 
life — and  of  deification  as  the  natural  goal  of  its  develop 
ment.  The  other  aspect  is  the  complementary  idea  of 
God,  the  transcendent  and  eternal  Reality,  as  revealing 
Himself  to  that  divine-human  soul  and  willing  its  union 
with  Him :  the  mutual  tendency  or  love  existing  between 
separated  spirits  and  their  Source.  Like  Origen,  Macarius 
finds  in  the  historic  life  of  Jesus  the  classic  "  drawing 
together  "  of  the  human  and  divine,  of  immanent  and 
transcendent  Reality.  This,  first  accomplished  in  Him, 
must  be  continued  in  the  "  New  Race  "  which  is  descended 
from  Him  :  and  which  represents  a  genuine  fresh  creation, 
a  new  type,  one  of  Life's  "  saltatory  ascents. "  He  speaks 
in  uncompromising  terms  of  this  novelty  and  high  destiny 
of  the  Christian  life.  "  Christians  belong  to  another 
world,  they  are  the  sons  of  a  heavenly  Adam,  a  new 
generation,  the  children  of  the  holy  Spirit,  the  bright  and 
glorious  brethren  of  Christ,  perfectly  like  their  Father."  l 
The  movement  of  the  self  towards  this  transcendence, 
its  achievement  of  "  divine  humanity,"  is  clearly  under 
stood  by  Macarius  as  an  organic,  not  a  magical  process. 
It  takes  place  through  the  birth  of  consciousness  into,  and 
its  growth  within,  a  new  order :  helped  by  deliberate 
effort,  moral  storm  and  stress.  As  gradually  and  naturally 
as  the  embryo  of  physical  life  emerges  into  the  physical 
world,  the  germ  of  real  life  which  is  latent  in  human 
personality  takes  form  and  develops  to  the  mystic  climax 
of  perfect  participation  in  the  Eternal  World.  The  whole 
great  movement — at  once  a  pilgrimage  and  a  transmutation 
from  the  enslaved  and  degenerate  life  which  he  calls  "  sin  " 
to  the  free,  mature,  exultant  life  which  he  calls  "  glory  " 
— is  for  Macarius  the  essence  of  the  Christian  idea.  "  As 
the  child  in  the  womb  does  not  suddenly  grow  into  a 
man,  but  gradually  takes  form  and  comes  to  birth,  and 
even  then  is  not  a  perfect  man,  but  must  grow  during 
1  Horn.  VIII. 


MYSTIC   LIFE   IN  EARLY   CHURCH     819 

many  years  that  he  may  attain  to  manhood;  so  also  must 
man  grow  gradually  in  the  spiritual  life,  which  is  a  state 
of  highest  wisdom  and  most  ethereal  form,  until  he  attains 
at  last  to  perfect  manhood  and  to  complete  maturity."  l 

This  gradual  and  orderly  deification  of  human  person 
ality  originates,  like  human  life,  in  the  conjunction  of  two 
forces;  in  a  communication  of  vitality  from  without.  The 
fertilising  touch  of  Divine  Energy  must  somehow  pene 
trate  the  ramparts  of  self-hood  and  sting  to  life  the  hidden 
seed,  man's  little  spark  of  reality.3  It  begins,  in  fact, 
with  the  experience  of  mystical  conversion,  the  group  of 
movements  and  changes  that  together  result  in  "  new 
birth."  Moreover,  Macarius  sees  with  an  unusual  sharp 
ness  that  this  same  dependence  on  the  Universal  Life 
characterises  the  "  new  creature  "  during  the  whole  of  its 
unresting  and  adventurous  career.  Its  growth  is  con 
ditioned  by  correspondences  with  that  world  of  spirit 
which  supports  and  feeds  it.  These  correspondences  are 
not  automatic,  but  are  set  up  by  the  deliberate  willed  acts 
of  the  free  personality.  Its  attention  and  receptivity,  its 
eagerness  and  desire,  are  essential  to  the  inflow  of  power : 
"  the  perfect  operation  of  the  Spirit  is  conditioned  by  the 
will  of  man."  3 

Thus  will  and  grace,  the  interaction  of  an  interior  and 
an  exterior  energy,  are  the  coefficients  which  together 
work  the  mystical  life-process.  This  life-process,  then,  is 
not  merely  a  miraculous  gift  forced  upon  man  from  with 
out,  nor  merely  the  gradual  upgrowth  of  something 
"natural"  which  he  has  within,  but  the  result  of  the 
interplay  of  both  these  elements:  of  a  growth  that 
depends,  like  physical  growth,  upon  the  perpetual  eager, 
voluntary  absorption  of  new  material  from  the  surround- 

1  Horn.  XV.  41.  The  birth  imagery  of  Macarius,  which  is  worked 
out  in  some  passages  with  minute  details  of  a  physical  kind,  is  reproduced 
by  Dionysius  the  Areopagite  (De  Ecdes.  Eier.t  cap.  3,  iii.  6),  and  hence 
became  the  common  property  of  later  mystics. 

»  Horn.  II.  3  and  IV.  6,  and  7.  s  Horn.  XXXVII.  10. 


320  THE  MYSTIC  WAY 

ing  universe,  upon  the  feeding  of  the  soul  on  the  substance 
of  Reality.  The  babe  sucking  its  mother's  breast,  said 
Patmore,  is  the  type  and  prince  of  mystics :  l  the  child 
of  the  Infinite  must  be  nourished  at  the  source  of  his 
being  if  he  is  to  grow  up  to  maturity.  This  idea, 
prominent  in  the  Fourth  Gospel,  is  central  for  the 
mysticism  of  Macarius.  "  For  as  the  body  hath  not  life 
from  itself,  but  from  without,  that  is  from  the  earth,  and 
without  those  things  which  are  external  to  it,  cannot  con 
tinue  in  life :  so  too  the  soul  cannot  be  re-born  from  this 
world  into  that  more  living  world,  and  take  to  itself  wings 
and  grow  and  grow  up  into  the  Spirit  of  God,  and  put  on 
the  secret  heavenly  clothing  of  beauty  and  holiness,  with 
out  that  food  which  is  its  life.  For  the  bread  of  life,  and 
the  living  water,  and  the  wine  that  maketh  glad  the  heart 
of  man,  and  the  oil  of  gladness,  and  the  whole  variety 
of  the  food  of  the  heavenly  Spirit,  and  the  heavenly 
clothing  of  light  which  is  of  God — in  these  doth  the 
eternal  life  of  the  soul  consist."  2 

Note  well,  that  it  is  not  a  sacramental  act  which  St. 
Macarius  is  here  concerned  to  acclaim  :  nor  should  we 
expect  this  in  one  who  had  lived,  as  did  these  first 
Egyptian  mystics  of  the  desert,  outside  the  sphere  of  all 
ecclesiastical  observances.  The  first  hermits  were  as  inde 
pendent  of  Church  and  sacraments  as  the  Quakers  them 
selves.3  They  "  walked  and  talked  with  God":  their 
ideal  was  a  direct  and  unmediated  intercourse  with  the 
Divine  Order.  "  The  Lord  Himself  is  the  heavenly  food 

1  The  Rod,  the  Root,  and  the  Flower,  "  Aurea  Dicta,"  128. 

2  Horn.  I.  ii. 

3  Hannay,  The  Spirit  and  Origin  of  Christian  Monasticism,  pp.  115-122. 
With  the  growth  of  the  "  lauras  "  or  hermit  villages,  however,  the  need 
of  a  regular  sacramental  dispensation  made  itself  felt;  for  here  many 
came  to  attempt  the  religious  life  who  would  never  have  dared  the  terrors 
of  a   complete  solitude.     Hence  Macarius  himself,   apparently  on  the 
advice  of  St.  Anthony,  was  ordained  a  priest  in  the  year  340  in  order 
that  he  might  minister  to  the  community  of  disciples  which  had  gathered 
about  his  cell  (op.  cit.,  p.  120). 


MYSTIC   LIFE   IN   EARLY   CHURCH    321 

and  spiritual  drink  of  the  soul,"  says  Macarius.1  "  I  do 
not  need  the  communion,  for  I  have  seen  Christ  Himself 
to-day,"  says  the  hermit  Valens  to  his  disciples  ; 2  and 
this  was  no  doubt  the  spirit  of  the  true  solitaries,  whose 
loneliness  would  have  been  unendurable  had  it  been  as 
complete  as  it  seemed  to  other  men,  unrelieved  by  that 
which  Thomas  a  Kempis  calls  the  "  great  craft "  of 
heavenly  conversation. 

The  beautiful  chapters  in  which  a  Kempis  tries  to 
teach  this  heavenly  art,  this  direct  and  loving  intercourse, 
and  describes  its  rapturous  satisfactions,  tell  us  far  more 
of  the  secret  life  which  was  possessed  by  these  fathers  of 
the  desert,  the  friendship  that  lit  their  loneliness,  the 
character  of  their  communion  with,  and  "  feeding  upon," 
God,  than  the  fantastic  biographies  of  the  Vit<z  Patrum: 
for  a  thousand  years  makes  little  difference  to  the  true 
monastic  temperament,  which  is  conditioned  by  its  out 
look  on  Eternity  rather  than  by  its  circumstances  in  time. 
"  In  the  wilderness  the  Beloved  "  must  often  have  spoken 
thus  to  the  heart  of  the  lover,  "  as  it  were  a  bashful  lover 
that  his  sweetheart  before  men  entreats  not."3  In  the 
long  still  days  and  watchful  nights  a  Presence  drew  near, 
and  became  the  strength  and  refreshment  of  the  solitary's 
soul. 

"  Shut  thy  door  upon  thee,  and  call  unto  thee  Jesu  thy 
Love,"  says  a  Kempis.  "Dwell  with  him  in  thy  cell, 
for  thou  shalt  not  find  elsewhere  so  great  peace.  .  .  . 
When  Jesu  is  nigh  all  goodness  is  nigh,  and  nothing 
seemeth  hard  ;  but  when  Jesu  is  not  nigh,  all  things  are 
hard.  When  Jesu  speaketh  not  within,  the  comfort  is  of 
little  price  ;  but  if  Jesu  speak  one  word,  there  is  found 
great  comfort.  .  .  .  To  be  without  Jesu  is  a  griev 
ous  hell,  and  to  be  with  Jesu  is  a  sweet  Paradise.  If 
Jesu  be  with  thee,  there  may  no  enemy  hurt  thee.  .  .  . 
It  is  a  great  craft  for  a  man  to  be  conversant  with 

1  Horn.  XIV.  3.  2  Vita  Patrum,  V.  24. 

8  Richard  Rolle,  The  Fire  of  Love,  Bk.  II.  cap.  7. 


322  THE  MYSTIC  WAY 

Jesu  ;  and  to  know  how  to  hold  Jesu,  is  a  great 
prudence.5'1 

Here,  the  intercourse  of  the  soul  with  the  supersensual 
takes  its  most  intensely  personal  form.  The  "  feeding  " 
which  Macarius  describes  is  the  completing  opposite  of 
such  an  experience.  It  is  the  impersonal  aspect  of  man's 
most  intimate  communion  with  the  Divine  Order.  His 
constant  use  of  Christological  language,  his  free  move 
ment  between  the  ideas  of  Personality  and  of  Grace,  show 
that  for  him,  as  for  most  great  mystics,  these  were  but 
two  ways  of  apprehending  one  Reality.  For  him,  in  fact, 
as  for  Clement  of  Alexandria  and  Augustine,  heavenly 
contemplation  is  the  "  food  of  the  full  grown  spirit,"  the 
medium  of  its  refreshment  and  sustenance,  of  an  actual 
appropriation  of  new  energy :  yet,  in  that  act  of  feeding, 
it  is  the  personal  Christ  of  whom  he  conceives,  in  true 
Johannine  fashion,  as  mystically  assimilated  and  knit  up 
into  the  substance  of  the  soul. 

The  new-born  life  of  Spirit,  thus  sustained  from. with 
out  by  its  feeding  on  Reality,  enters  at  once  on  the 
process  of  growth.  This  process  is  to  Macarius  so  real, 
so  objective,  that  he  conceives  of  it  not  only  as  a  spiritual, 
but  in  a  sense  as  a  physical  occurrence.  The  gradual 
change  from  glory  to  glory  into  the  image  of  God, 
which  he  accepts  from  Paul  as  the  essence  of  Christian 
psychology,  becomes  a  change  in  the  substance,  the  con 
stitution  of  the  soul :  because  he  regards  the  soul,  with 
the  Stoic  philosophers,  as  something  not  wholly  im 
material,  but  made  of  a  fine,  ethereal  stuff.  The  mystical 
life-process,  then,  signifies  the  actual  steady  transmutation 
of  this  substance  from  its  original  "  density  "  to  purest 
spirituality,  under  the  purgative  action  of  the  Divine  Fire, 
which  cleanses,  heals  and  renews  it :  and  ends  in  a  personal 
and  physical  approximation  of  the  re-made,  ethereal- 
ised,  transmuted,  soul  to  the  spiritual  being  of  Christ 2 — 

1  De  Imit.  Christi,  Lib.  I.  cap.  20  and  Lib.  II.  cap.  8. 

2  StBffels,  p.  162. 


MYSTIC   LIFE   IN   EARLY   CHURCH     323 

an  elaboration  of  Paul's  most  splendid  dream,  made  under 
the  influence  of  Stoic  philosophy. 

Such  a  process  means  for  consciousness  a  searching 
moral  readjustment,  a  destruction  of  old  paths,  a  cutting 
of  new :  the  steadfast  endurance  of  that  which  St.  John  of 
the  Cross  called  "  the  dark  night  of  loving  fire  " — in  a 
word,  Purgation  of  the  most  drastic  kind.  It  means,  for 
a  mystic  of  that  time  and  place,  a  thorough-going  asceti 
cism;  the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  this  interior  and 
painful  change  in  the  direction  of  life,  this  deliberate  war 
declared  on  old  ideals.  As  a  corn  of  wheat  hidden  in 
the  earth  slowly  ripens  during  the  storms  and  hardships 
of  winter,  so  Macarius — who  loves,  as  do  all  great  mystics, 
the  close  parallels  between  "nature"  and  "grace" — 
describes  the  seed  of  new  life  as  slowly  ripening  amongst 
the  turmoils,  deprivations  and  miseries  or  this  season  of 
stress.  It  then,  he  says,  puts  forth  four  little  shoots, 
which  mark  the  steady  march  of  its  development :  faith, 
renunciation,  charity  and  humility.  They  are  the  crescent 
indications  of  the  unfolding  of  the  mystic  type.  Often 
enough  Macarius  and  his  disciples  must  have  watched 
this  natural  process  in  the  laura,  where  each  hermit  grew 
a  patch  of  wheat  sufficient  for  his  own  needs. 

If  it  be  faithful  to  the  harsh  and  storm-swept  career 
of  sacrifice  and  love,  the  growing  spirit  passes  from  the 
period  of  stress  to  a  spring-like  state  of  mystical  eleva 
tion  :  from  Purgation  to  Illumination.  "  Like  metals 
which,  cast  into  the  fire,  lose  their  natural  hardness,  and 
the  longer  they  remain  in  the  furnace  are  more  and  more 
softened  by  the  flame,"  he  says  under  another  image,  its 
resistances  to  grace  have  been  burned  away  ;  the  hard 
edges  are  melted,  every  part  of  it  is  made  molten  and 
incandescent  by  the  Fire  of  Love.1  Hence,  instead  of  the 
painful  burning  of  the  Fire,  the  agony  of  collision  be 
tween  two  inharmonious  orders  of  reality,  it  experiences 
that  same  onslaught  of  spirit,  that  same  inflowing  dower 
1  Horn.  IV.  14. 

Y  2 


324  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

of  grace  and  truth,  as  the  irradiations  of  the  heavenly 
Light. 

This  image  of  the  divine  vitality  successively  experi 
enced  as  a  painful  Fire  and  a  heavenly  Light — of  the 
purging  of  the  soul  as  in  a  furnace  ;  the  anguish  through 
which  it  passes  to  that  condition  of  harmony  in  which, 
"  itself  becoming  fire,"  the  flame  that  had  been  in  its 
onslaught  a  torment  to  the  separated  will  becomes  to  the 
transmuted  creature  an  indwelling  radiance,  a  source  of 
joy  and  life, — all  this  is  found  again  and  again  in  the  later 
Christian  mystics.  Whatever  be  its  ultimate  origin,  or 
the  exact  course  of  its  descent,  they  all  recognised  it  as  a 
faithful  picture  of  the  experiences  which  they  had  known : 
and  hence  their  declarations  may  help  us  to  understand 
something  of  the  spiritual  adventures  which  Macarius 
here  struggles  to  describe. 

"  As  a  bar  of  iron,  heated  red-hot,  becomes  like  fire 
itself,  forgetting  its  own  nature,"  says  St.  Bernard,  "  or 
as  the  air  radiant  with  sunbeams  seems  not  so  much  to 
be  illuminated  as  to  be  Light  itself;  so  in  the  saints  all 
human  affections  melt  away,  by  some  unspeakable  trans 
mutation,  into  the  Will  of  God."  *  "  The  naked  will," 
says  Ruysbroeck,  "  is  transformed  by  the  Eternal  Love  as 
fire  by  fire."  2  "  We  are  like  coals,"  he  says  in  another 
place  "  burned  on  the  hearth  of  Infinite  Love."  3  "  Souls 
thrown  into  the  furnace  of  My  charity,"  says  the  Divine 
Voice  to  St.  Catherine  of  Siena,  "  the  whole  of  them 
being  inflamed  in  Me,  are  like  a  brand  which  is  not  wholly 
consumed  in  the  furnace,  so  that  no  one  can  take  hold  of 
it  or  extinguish  it,  because  it  has  become  fire."  4 

For  St.  Catherine  of  Genoa,  too,  the  love  of  God  was 
felt  in  terms  of  fire  and  light :  and  this  conception  is  the 
basis  of  her  celebrated  doctrine  of  Purgatory.  "This 
holy  soul,  yet  in  the  flesh,  found  herself  placed  in  the 
purgatory  of  God's  burning  love,  which  consumed  and 

1  De  (liligendo  Deo,  cap.  10.  2  Samuel  (Hello,  p.  201). 

8  De  Septem  gradibus  amoiis,  cap.  14.  4  Dialogo,  cap.  78. 


MYSTIC   LIFE   IN   EARLY   CHURCH     325 

purified  her  from  whatever  she  had  to  purify,  in  order 
that  after  passing  out  of  this  life  she  might  enter  at  once 
into  the  immediate  presence  of  God  her  Love.  By  means 
of  this  furnace  of  love  she  understood  how  the  souls  of 
the  faithful  are  placed  in  purgatory  to  get  rid  of  all  the 
rust  and  stain  of  sin  that  in  this  life  was  left  unpurged. 
.  .  .  The  souls  are  covered  with  a  rust,  the  rust  of  sin, 
which  is  gradually  burned  away  by  the  fire  of  purgatory. 
The  more  it  is  burned  away,  the  more  they  respond  to 
God  their  true  Sun :  their  happiness  increases  as  the  rust 
falls  off,  and  lays  them  open  to  the  Divine  Light." 1 

Here  we  have  the  exact  psychological  situation  de 
scribed  by  Macarius.  In  the  work  of  a  later  mystic,  St. 
John  of  the  Cross,  its  implications  are  made  yet  more  clear. 
The  Fire  and  the  Light  are,  of  course,  two  ways  of  experi 
encing  one  Reality,  which  brings  torment  or  rapture 
according  to  the  temper  and  purity  of  the  receptive  soul. 
"When  the  Divine  Light  beats  upon  the  soul,"  he  says, 
"  it  makes  it  suffer,  because  the  purgative  and  loving 
knowledge,  or  Divine  Light,  is  to  the  soul  which  it  is 
purifying  in  order  to  unite  it  perfectly  to  itself  as  fire  is 
to  fuel  which  it  is  transmuting  into  itself."  Because  the 
spirit  is  opaque  and  resistant,  it  feels  this  Divine  Energy 
as  a  "  dark  night  of  loving  fire  ";  but  "  when  it  has  been 
purified  ...  it  will  have  eyes  to  discern  the  blessings 
of  the  Divine  Light."  2 

For  the  soul  of  the  lover  there  is  a  subtle  joy  even  in 
the  anguish  of  the  Fire.  It  is  a  "  flame  of  living  love," 
says  John  of  the  Cross  again  :  and  its  pain  is  like  the  pain 
of  lovers,  strangely  compounded  of  anguish  and  delight. 

"  O  burn  that  burns  to  heal  ! 

O  more  than  pleasant  wound  ! 
And  O  soft  hand,  O  touch  most  delicate, 

That  dost  new  life  reveal, 

That  dost  in  grace  abound, 
And,  slaying,  dost  from  life  to  death  translate. 

1  Trattato  di  Purgatorio,  caps.  I  and  2. 

2  Noche  Escura  del  alma,  Lib.  II.  caps.  9,  10,  12,  13. 


326  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

O  lamps  of  fire  that  shined 

With  so  intense  a  light 
That  those  deep  caverns  where  the  senses  live, 

Which  were  obscure  and  blind, 

Now  with  strange  glories  bright 
Both  heat  and  light  to  his  beloved  give."  1 

The  spiritual  Fire  and  Light,  then,  shining  ever  more 
clearly  within  the  purified  soul  which  they  have  raised  to 
their  own  tension  and  temperature,  bring  it  to  that  state  of 
perfect  self-knowledge,  in  which  its  own  situation  within 
the  transcendental  order  becomes  clear  to  it  ;  enable  it  to 
apprehend  the  unspeakable  revelations  of  God;  and  even 
confer  on  it  the  ecstatic  vision  of  the  Divine  Nature.2 
For  Macarius,  as  for  the  Fourth  Evangelist,  Light  and 
Life  are  identical :  they  are  interchangeable  names  for  the 
primal  Reality  manifested  in  the  Christ-Logos,  and  now 
experienced  by  human  consciousness.  He  leaves  us  in 
no  doubt  as  to  the  all-round  enhancement  of  life,  the 
rich  variety  of  response  towards  every  level  of  existence, 
every  aspect  of  the  Being  of  God,  made  possible  to  those 
who  are  irradiated  by  this  Incomprehensible  Light :  the 
balanced  and  Christ-like  career  of  charity  and  contempla 
tion  which  awaits  them. 

"Those  who  have  become  the  true  children  of  God, 
and  are  re-born  of  the  Spirit,  .  .  .  these  receive  from  the 
Spirit  of  God  many  and  various  favours  and  activities. 
Sometimes,  like  guests  at  a  royal  feast,  they  are  satiated 
with  indescribable  enjoyments  ;  sometimes  they  are  filled 
with  a  divine  and  intimate  delight,  like  that  of  the 
bride  when  she  rejoices  in  the  presence  of  the  bride 
groom  .  .  .  sometimes  the  communication  of  the  divine 
mysteries  induces  in  them  a  holy  inebriation.  Sometimes 
they  are  seized  by  a  lively  compassion  at  the  sight  of 
human  misery,  and,  in  the  ardour  of  their  charity,  they 

1  St.  John   of   the  Cross,  Llama  de  amor  viva^  translated  by  Arthur 
Symons. 

2  StOffels,  op.  ctt.,  p.  147. 


MYSTIC  LIFE   IN  EARLY   CHURCH    327 

give  themselves  wholly  to  prayer  and  tears,  begging  the 
Divine  Mercy  for  the  whole  human  race  ...  as  a  brave 
soldier  puts  on  the  armour  of  his  king,  rushes  into  the 
battle,  and  returns  victorious,  so  we  sometimes  see  the 
spiritual  man  put  on  the  armour  of  the  Spirit,  and  attack 
the  enemies  of  the  soul  and  crush  them  under  his  feet. 
At  other  times,  he  immerses  himself  in  a  profound 
silence  ;  and  then  his  soul  enjoys  great  peace,  and  tastes 
in  its  quietude  of  ineffable  delights.  Or  else  the  Holy 
Spirit  illuminates  his  intelligence,  and  communicates  to 
him  a  supernal  wisdom,  and  high  knowledge  which  human 
speech  cannot  express.  Thus  does  divine  grace  cause  the 
incessant  alternations  of  peace  and  of  activity."1 

Such  a  career  of  inspired  activities,  however — irradiated 
by  the  Divine  Spirit,  but  not  yet  one  with  it — is  for 
Macarius  only  a  half-way  house.  In  very  different 
language  he  describes  the  state  of  those  "  deified  "  selves 
in  whom  has  been  accomplished  the  spiritual  marriage 
of  the  Logos  and  the  soul.  These  are  the  utterly  sur 
rendered  spirits  whom  "  the  heavenly  charioteer  "  drives 
wherever  He  will;  and  who  are  themselves  so  completely 
transmuted  to  another  glory  and  power  by  the  action  of 
the  divine  Fire  and  Light,  that  they  become  centres  which 
reflect  something  of  that  absolute  Power  and  Glory  to 
the  world.  "  The  soul,"  he  says  in  the  great  homily 
which  sums  up  his  whole  mystic  doctrine,  "  that,  prepared 
by  the  Holy  Spirit  to  be  His  seat  and  habitation,  and 
found  worthy  to  participate  in  His  light,  is  illuminated 
by  the  beauty  of  His  ineffable  glory,  becomes  all  light, 
all  face,  all  eyes ; 2  nor  is  there  any  part  of  her  that  is  not 

1  Horn.  XVIII.  7-9. 

2  The  reference  is  of    course  to  Ezekiel's  vision  of    the  Cherubim, 
which  Macarius  interpreted  in  proper  Alexandrian  fashion  as  an  allegory 
of  the  glorified  soul.     "  And  their  whole  body,  and  their  backs,  and  their 
hands,  and  their  wings  .  .  .  were  full  of  eyes  .  .  .  and  the  glory  of  the 
God  of  Israel  was  over  them  above.  .  .  .  Every  one  had  four  faces  apiece, 
and  every  one  had  four  wings ;  and  the  likeness  of  the  hands  of  a  man 
was  under  their  wings  "  (Ezek.  z.  12,  19,  21). 


328  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

full  of  these  spiritual  eyes  of  light.  That  is  to  say,  no  part 
of  her  is  in  shadow,  but  she  is  all  entirely  wrought  into 
light  and  spirit  and  is  all  full  of  eyes,  having  neither  an 
anterior  nor  a  posterior  part  ;  but  appears  as  it  were  all 
face  because  of  the  ineffable  beauty  of  the  glory  of  the 
Light  of  Christ,  that  hath  descended  on  her  and  dwells 
with  her.  And  as  the  sun  is  altogether  of  one  likeness, 
having  no  hinder  nor  imperfect  part,  but  is  all  throughout 
resplendent  with  light,  and  is  all  light  without  least  variety 
of  part;  or  even  as  fire,  that  is  to  say  the  light  of  fire,  is 
all  like  unto  itself,  neither  hath  in  itself  before  nor  behind, 
greater  nor  less;  so  too  the  soul  that  is  perfectly  illuminated 
by  the  ineffable  beauty  of  the  glory  of  the  light  of  the 
face  of  Christ,  and  perfectly  partakes  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
and  is  adjudged  worthy  to  be  made  the  dwelling-place  and 
seat  of  God,  becomes  all  eyes,  all  light,  all  face,  all  glory 
and  all  spirit.  .  .  .  The  Cherubim,  then,  are  driven,  not 
whither  they  would  themselves  go,  but  the  way  in  which 
He  who  holds  the  reins  directs.  Which  way  so  ever  He 
is  willing,  there  they  go,  and  He  carries  them.  For  it 
saith  *  Manus  enim  erat  sub  illis.'  Thus  the  holy  souls 
are  led  and  directed  on  their  way  by  the  spirit  of  Christ, 
who  leads  them  where  He  chooses  ;  sometimes  into 
heavenly  contemplation,  sometimes  to  bodily  activities. 
Where  His  pleasure  is,  there  do  they  serve  Him.  ...  If 
therefore  thou  art  become  the  throne  of  God,  and  the 
Heavenly  Charioteer  hath  seated  Himself  within  thee, 
and  thy  soul  is  wholly  become  a  spiritual  eye,  and  is 
wholly  made  into  light ;  if  too  thou  art  nourished  with 
the  heavenly  food  of  that  spirit  and  hast  drunk  of  the 
Living  Water,  and  hast  put  on  the  secret  vesture  of  light 
— if  thine  inward  man  has  experienced  all  these  things 
and  is  established  in  abundant  faith,  lo !  thou  livest  indeed 
the  Eternal  Life,  and  thy  soul  rests  even  in  this  present 
time  with  the  Lord.  Lo!  thou  art  an  adept,  and  hast 
verily  received  from  the  Lord  these  things  that  thou 
mayest  live  the  true  life.  But  if  thou  art  conscious  of 


MYSTIC   LIFE   IN  EARLY  CHURCH    829 

none  of  these  things,  lament  and  grieve  and  mourn, 
because  as  yet  thou  art  not  made  a  sharer  of  the  eternal 
and  spiritual  riches  and  hast  not  received  true  life."  * 

We  may  observe  in  this  passage  a  synthesis  of  all  the 
main  elements  of  Christian  mysticism :  and  first,  how 
completely  it  is  governed,  not  by  the  idea  of  vision,  but 
by  the  idea  of  life.  "  To  live  the  true  life  " — this  it  is 
which  St.  Macarius  has  learned  in  the  desert  ;  this  total 
surrender  of  the  individual  to  the  universal  purpose,  which 
makes  the  mature  soul  like  to  the  swift-moving  Cherubim, 
seats  of  the  Divine  Wisdom,  who  "  go  not  whither  they 
would,"  but  are  driven  by  the  will  of  the  Spirit  that  holds 
the  reins.  At  the  end  of  the  Mystic  Way  he  finds  himself, 
like  Paul,  to  be  God-possessed  ;  subject  to  a  "  secondary 
personality  of  a  superior  type,"  an  indwelling  power  that 
drives  him  where  it  will.  "  The  hand  of  the  charioteer 
is  under  his  wings."  Even  in  this  present  life,  then,  he 
knows  that  such  high  levels  of  response  to  the  Tran 
scendent  Order  are  possible  for  the  spirit  of  man.  They 
represent  the  dynamic  aspect  of  that  supernal  life  and 
consciousness  which  he  calls  "  glory " :  the  divinely 
governed  progress,  the  "  movement  which  is  life  itself," 
and  which  balances  that  fruition  of  Reality — "  all  joy,  all 
delight,  all  exultation,  all  love" — in  which  the  deified 
soul  feels  itself  to  be  "  immersed  in  the  Spirit,  as  a  stone 
at  the  bottom  of  the  ocean  is  immersed  in  the  sea." 

Thus  the  end  to  which  the  mysticism  of  Macarius  tends, 
and  for  which  he  has  endured  hunger,  thirst  and  utter 
loneliness,  the  trials  and  uncertainties  of  the  spiritual 
adolescence,  and  heroic  struggles  with  the  flesh,  is  no 
selfish  satisfaction.  It  achieves  the  paradoxical  combina 
tion  of  humility  and  ecstacy,  of  complete  surrender  and 
energetic  love.  Its  aim  is  identical  with  the  supreme 
ambition  of  the  German  mystic :  "  to  be  to  the  Eternal 
Goodness  what  his  own  hand  is  to  a  man  " — an  absolute 
dedication  to  the  purposes  of  the  Infinite  Life.  The 
i  Horn.  I.  2.  2  Horn.  XVIII.  10. 


380  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

mystic,  like  the  Cherub,  is  submitted  to  the  secret  guidance 
of  the  Spirit ;  yet  his  individual  activity  remains.  He  is 
" all  eyes  and  all  wings " — all  vision  and  all  energy  ;  "all 
light  and  all  face  " — reflecting  the  splendour  of  Reality 
to  other  men.  To  this  career  his  new  birth,  his  long 
endurance  of  the  heavenly  Fire,  his  steady  upward  growth, 
his  participation  in  the  heavenly  Light,  his  final  trans 
mutation  into  "light  and  spirit,"  have  been  directed. 
Such  an  ideal  has  more  affinity  with  Gethsemane  than  with 
Alexandria,  for  it  makes  of  self-naughting  man's  highest 
good:  Non  mea  voluntas,  sed  tua  fiat. 

Macarius,  in  fact,  looks  back  to  Paul  and  John,  and 
through  them  to  Jesus.  These  are  the  real  sources  of 
his  doctrine  of  true  life,  and  he  is  the  real  inheritor  of  their 
tradition  ;  the  channel  through  whom  the  "  mounting 
flood "  of  their  spirit  passed  on  its  way  to  the  great 
mystics  of  the  West.  St.  Basil  the  Great  was  his  friend ; 
and  from  the  Rule  of  Basil  came  ultimately  the  Rule  of 
Benedict,  and  thence  the  whole  mediaeval  theory  of  the 
religious  life,  with  its  definite  system  of  character-building, 
its  eager  pursuit  of  perfection,  its  balanced  career  of  con 
templation  and  work.  Hence  Macarius  the  Coptic  hermit, 
rather  than  Dionysius  the  Neoplatonist,  is  the  vital  link 
between  East  and  West  in  the  chain  of  the  Christian 
Mystics ;  a  true  thoroughfare  of  the  Spirit  of  New  Life. 


CHAPTER   VI 
THE    WITNESS   OF    THE   LITURGY 

"  Manducat  te  Angelus  ore  pleno  :  manducet  te  peregrinus  homo  pro 
modulo  suo,  ne  deficere  possit  in  via,  tali  recreatus  viatico  "  (Praparatio 
ad  Miss  am). 

"  Et  inveni  me  longe  esse  a  te  in  regione  dissimilitudinis,  tanquam 
audirem  vocem  tuam  de  excelso  :  Cibus  sum  grandium,  cresce,  et  mandu- 
cabis  me ;  nee  tu  me  in  te  mutabis,  sicut  cibum  carnis  tuae,  sed  tu  muta- 
beris  in  me  "  (ST.  AUGUSTINE,  Confessions,  Bk.  VII.  cap.  10). 


THE    OUTER    MYSTERY 

A  LITURGY,  says  Dom  Cabrol,  is  "  the  external  and 
official  manifestation  of  a  religion":1  and  the  Mass,  the 
typical  liturgic  rite  of  the  Catholic  world,  is  "  the  synthesis 
of  Christianity.5' 2  If,  then,  our  discovery  of  the  mystic 
life  at  the  heart  of  the  Christian  religion  be  a  discovery 
indeed  and  not  a  fantasy,  it  is  here  that  we  may  expect 
to  find  its  corroboration.  Here,  in  that  most  characteristic 
of  the  art-products  of  Christendom,  the  ceremonial  with 
which  the  love  and  intuition  of  centuries  have  gradually 
adorned  the  primitive  sacrament  of  the  Eucharist,  we  may 
find  the  test  which  shall  confirm  or  discredit  our  conclu 
sions  as  to  the  character  of  that  life  which  descends  from 
Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

Much  of  the  material  that  we  have  considered,  and  on 
which  those  conclusions  were  based,  belongs  in  form  to 
the  past.  It  comes  to  us  now  as  history,  not  as  experience  : 
though  it  is  illuminated  and  made  actual  by  the  ever- 
renewed  repetition  of  its  chief  characters  in  the  lives  of  all 
those  mystics  through  whom  the  mounting  flood  of  Spirit 
has  passed  upon  its  way.  By  their  help  we  may  still  go 
back  up  the  stream  of  becoming,  till  we  reach  their  source; 
the  parent  type.  But  here,  in  the  ceremony  of  the  Mass, 
we  have  a  work  of  art  designed  and  adapted  by  the  racial 
consciousness  of  Christendom  for  the  keeping  and  reveal 
ing  of  something,  claiming  descent  from  that  same  source, 
which  lives:  lives,  not  in  the  arid  security  of  liturgical 
1  Les  Origines  Liturgiques,  p.  17.  a  Ibid.,  p.  140. 

333 


334  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

museums,  but  in  the  thick  of  diurnal  existence — in  the 
cathedral  and  the  mission  hut,  in  the  city  and  the  cloister, 
in  the  slums  and  lonely  places  of  our  little  twisting  earth. 
This  "  something  "  is  still  the  true  focus  of  that  Christian 
consciousness  which  has  not  broken  away  from  tradition. 
The  great  dramatic  poem  of  the  liturgy  is  still  for  that 
consciousness  the  shrine  in  which  the  primal  secret  of 
transcendence  is  preserved.  We  may  yet  experience  the 
full  force  of  its  immense  suggestive  magic  when  we  will. 
Here,  from  within  the  circle  of  the  static,  the  authoritative, 
the  apparently  mechanical,  the  Spirit  of  Life  now  makes 
its  most  subtle  appeal.  In  this  strange  reliquary  it  has 
successfully  endured  through  centuries  of  change. 

The  Christian  Church  has  often  been  likened,  and  not 
without  reason,  to  a  ship :  a  ship,  launched  nineteen 
hundred  years  ago  upon  that  great  stream  of  Becoming 
which  sets  towards  the  "  Sea  Pacific  "  of  Reality.  Though 
she  goes  upon  inland  waters,  yet  hints  of  the  ocean  magic, 
the  romance  of  wide  horizons,  mysterious  tides  and  undis 
covered  countries,  hang  about  her.  In  the  course  of  her 
long  voyage,  carried  upon  the  current  of  the  river,  she  has 
sometimes  taken  fresh  and  strange  cargo  on  board  ;  some 
times  discharged  that  which  she  brought  with  her  from 
the  past.  She  has  changed  the  trim  of  her  sails  to  meet 
new  conditions,  as  the  river  ran  now  between  hard  and 
narrow  banks  and  now  spread  itself  to  flow  through  fields. 
But  through  all  these  changes  and  developments,  she  kept 
safe  the  one  treasure  which  she  was  built  to  preserve: 
the  mystical  secret  of  deification,  of  the  ever-renewed  and 
ever-fruitful  interweaving  of  two  orders  of  reality,  the 
emergence  of  the  Eternal  into  the  temporal,  the  perpetu 
ally  repeated  "  wonder  of  wonders,  the  human  made 
divine."  She  kept  this  secret  and  handed  it  on,  as  all 
life's  secrets  have  ever  been  preserved  and  imparted,  by 
giving  it  supreme  artistic  form.  In  the  Christian  liturgy, 
the  deepest  intuitions,  the  rich  personal  experiences,  not 
only  of  the  primitive  but  of  the  patristic  and  mediaeval 


THE   WITNESS   OF   THE   LITURGY     385 

epochs,  have  found  their  perfect  expression.  Herein  has 
been  distilled,  age  by  age,  drop  by  drop,  the  very  essence 
of  the  mystical  consciousness.  "The  rites  and  symbols 
of  the  external  Christian  church,' >  says  Eckartshausen, 
"  were  formed  after  the  pattern  of  the  great,  unchangeable, 
and  fundamental  truths,  announcing  things  of  a  strength 
and  of  an  importance  impossible  to  describe,  and  revealed 
only  to  those  who  knew  the  innermost  sanctuary."  1  Each 
fresh  addition  made  to  this  living  work  of  art  has  but 
elaborated  and  enriched  the  one  central  idea  that  runs 
through  the  whole.  Here  it  is  that  Life's  instinct  for 
recapitulation  is  found  at  work :  here  she  has  dramatised 
her  methods,  told  in  little  the  story  of  her  supreme  ascent. 
The  fact  that  the  framework  of  the  Mass  is  essentially 
a  mystical  drama,  the  Christian  equivalent  of  those 
Mysteries  which  enacted  before  the  Pagan  neophyte  the 
necessary  adventures  of  his  soul,  was  implicitly  if  not 
directly  recognised  in  very  early  times.  It  was  the 
"  theatre  of  the  pious,"  said  Tertullian  in  the  second 
century  ; 2  and  the  steady  set  of  its  development  from 
the  Pauline  sacrament  of  feeding  on  the  Spiritual  Order, 
the  Fractio  Pants  of  the  catacombs,  to  the  solemn  drama 
of  the  Greek  or  Roman  liturgy,  was  always  in  the  direction 
of  more  and  more  symbolic  action,  of  perpetual  elabora 
tions  of  the  ritual  and  theatrical  element.  To  the  sacra 
mental  meal  of  apostolic  times,  understood  as  a  foretaste 
and  assurance  of  the  "  Messianic  banquet"  in  the  coming 
Parousia,  there  was  soon  prefixed  a  religious  exercise 
— modelled  perhaps  on  the  common  worship  of  the  Syna 
gogue — which  implied  just  those  preparatory  acts  of 
penance,  purification  and  desirous  stretching  out  towards 
the  Infinite,  which  precede  in  the  experience  of  the  grow 
ing  soul  the  establishment  of  communion  with  the  Spiritual 
World.  Further,  the  classic  exhibition  of  such  communion 
— the  earthly  life  of  Jesus — naturally  suggested  the  form 

1  The  Cloud  upon  the  Sanctuary,  Letter  II. 

2  De  Sfectaculis,  29  and  30.     See  Him,  The  Sacred  Shrine,  p.  493. 


336  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

taken  by  this  "  initiation  of  initiations  "  l  when  its  ritual 
development  once  began  ;  the  allegory  under  which  the 
facts  of  the  Christian  mystery  should  be  exhibited  before 
men.  The  Mass  therefore  became  for  devout  imagination 
during  the  succeeding  centuries,  not  only  the  supreme 
medium  through  which  the  Christian  consciousness  could 
stretch  out  to,  and  lay  hold  on,  the  Eternal  Order,  not 
only  the  story  of  the  soul's  regeneration  and  growth,  but 
also  the  story  of  the  actual  career  of  Jesus,  told,  as  it  were, 
in  holy  pantomime :  indirect  evidence  that  the  intuitive 
mind  of  the  Church  saw  these  as  two  aspects  of  one  truth.2 
Hence  every  development  of  the  original  rite  was  made 
by  minds  attuned  to  these  ideas  ;  with  the  result  that 
psychological  and  historical  meanings  run  in  parallel 
strands  through  the  developed  ceremony,  of  which  many 
a  manual  act  and  ritual  gesture,  meaningless  for  us, 
had  for  earlier  minds  a  poignant  appeal  as  being  the 
direct  commemoration  of  some  detail  in  the  Passion  of 
Christ. 

As  Europe  now  has  it,  then,  in  the  Divine  Liturgy  of 
the  Orthodox  and  the  Mass  of  the  Catholic  Church,  this 
ceremony  is  the  great  living  witness  to — the  great  artistic 
expression  of — those  organic  facts  which  we  call  mystical 
Christianity  :  the  "  transplanting  of  man  into  a  new  world 
over  against  the  nearest-at-hand  world,"  the  "funda- 

1  Dionysius  the  Areopagite.     De  Ecdes.  Hier.,  cap.  3,  i.  I. 

2  The  great  exponent  of  the  Mass  as  a  dramatic  presentation  of  the 
life  of  Christ  is  the  ninth-century  theologian  Amalarius  of  Metz,  De 
Ecclesiastics  Officis  ;  but  this  kind  of  interpretation  had  already  begun 
in  the  third  century,  in  the  writings  of  St.  Cyprian,  and  was  developed 
in  the  sixth  and  seventh  by  St.  Germanus  of  Paris  and  St.  Isidore  of 
Seville.     See  W.  H.  Frere,  The  Principles  of  Religious  Ceremonial,  cap.  II. 
The  most  celebrated  and  elaborate  of  all  these  allegorical  explanations 
is  of  course  that  contained  in  the  Rationale  of  Durandus  of  Mende 
(thirteenth  century).     Convenient  modern  accounts  are  in  Him,   The 
Sacred  Shrine,  cap.  5  (with  full  bibliography),  and  A.  Durand,  Tr/sor 
liturgique  des  fiddles,  pp.  29-60.      The  same  method  of   interpretation 
was  followed  in  the  Eastern  Church.     See  Neale  and  Littledale,  Liturgies 
of  SS.  Mark,  James,  Clement,  etc.,  pp.  xxi-xl. 


THE   WITNESS   OF  THE  LITURGY    337 

mental  inner  renewal,"  the  "  union  of  the  human  and  the 
divine."  l  All  the  thoughts  that  gather  about  this  select 
series  of  acts — apparently  so  simple,  sometimes  almost 
fortuitous,  yet  charged  with  immense  meanings  for  the 
brooding  soul — all  the  elaborate,  even  fantastic  symbolic 
interpretations  placed  upon  these  acts  in  mediaeval  times, 
have  arisen  at  one  time  or  another  within  the  collective 
consciousness  of  Christendom.  Sometimes  true  organic 
developments,  sometimes  the  result  of  abrupt  intuitions, 
the  reward  of  that  receptivity  which  great  rituals  help 
to  produce,  they  owe  their  place  in  or  about  the  cere 
mony  to  the  fact  that  they  help  it  in  the  performance  of 
its  function,  the  stimulation  of  man's  spiritual  sense  ; 
emphasising  or  enriching  some  aspect  of  its  central  and 
fundamentally  mystical  idea. 

That  central  idea,  as  we  have  seen,  is  simple  and  yet 
complex.  Here,  as  nowhere  else,  we  find  it  in  its  many- 
sided  unity.  "  The  divine  initiation  of  the  Eucharist," 
says  Dionysius  the  Areopagite,  "  although  it  has  a  single, 
simple  and  indivisible  Source,  is  multiplied  out  of  love 
to  man  into  the  holy  variety  of  the  symbols,  veiling  itself 
in  all  those  external  forms  whereby  Divinity  is  manifested 
to  us.  Yet  this  multiplicity  of  symbols  always  returns 
to  the  fundamental  Unity :  to  which  Unity  all  worthy 
participators  in  this  mystery  are  drawn."2  Transmuta 
tion  and  communion :  the  pushing  out  as  it  were  of  a 
bit  of  the  time  world  into  the  eternal  world,  or — the  same 
thing  seen  at  another  angle — the  discovery  of  Reality's 
substance  under  simplest  accidents  within  the  framework 
of  the  Here-and-Now :  the  paradoxical  encounter  of 
Divine  Personality  under  profoundly  impersonal  forms: 
Divine  Union  actually  achieved  by  the  separated  human 
creature :  the  feeding  of  crescent  spirit  upon  Eternal  Life : 
the  slow  growth  and  pilgrimage  of  the  soul  up  from  its 
new  birth  to  an  actual  attainment  of  God,  under  the  cyclic 

1  Encken,  The  Truth  of  Religion,  pp.  544-545- 
*  De  Eccles.  Hicr.,  cap.  3,  iii.  §  3. 


338  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

law  that  governs  the  Mystic  Way — all  these  aspects  of 
Life's  movement  have  their  place  in  it. 

I  propose,  then,  to  examine  in  some  detail  the  witness 
which  is  borne  by  the  liturgy  to  the  character  of  the 
mystic  life:  and  to  take  as  the  basis  of  inquiry  the 
Roman  ceremony  of  the  Mass  as  we  now  possess  it.  To 
the  practical  mind  such  a  proceeding  must  seem  at  best 
fantastic  and  at  worst  insane.  To  the  liturgic  student  it 
will  seem  in  addition  profoundly  unhistorical;  since  the 
Roman  Missal  contains  many  late  mediaeval  additions, 
and  has  lost  several  primitive  elements — has  in  fact  been 
subjected  to  the  vital  law  of  mobility  and  change.  To 
the  first  type  of  student  I  reply,  that  the  study  of  those 
artistic  and  religious  forms  in  which  his  emotions  and 
intuitions  are  expressed,  is  an  important  part  of  the  study 
of  man.  To  the  second,  that  the  additions  and  develop 
ments  which  differentiate  the  primitive  from  the  modern 
Mass  have  all  taken  place  in  harmony  with,  and  as  adorn 
ments  of,  the  central  idea  which  the  Eucharist  is  designed 
to  exhibit  ;  they  are  but  the  rubrications  of  the  text. 
Also  they  have  been  for  the  most  part  the  work  of  great 
and  ardent  spirits,  true  members  of  the  "  Interior 
Church  "  ;  and  "  all  that  the  external  Church  possesses  in 
symbol,  ceremony,  or  rite,  is  the  letter  which  expresses 
externally  the  spirit  and  the  truth  residing  in  the  interior 
Sanctuary."  1  Hence,  if  our  view  of  that  central  idea  be 
correct,  they  should  demonstrate  rather  than  obscure  it : 
should  represent  life's  secret,  gradual,  and  ever  deepening 
apprehension  of  its  richness  and  variety.  I  choose  the 
Roman  rite  rather  than  the  Divine  Liturgy  of  the 
Orthodox  Church — with  which,  however,  we  may  often 
illustrate  and  compare  it — not  because  it  is  more  mystical, 
but  because  it  is  so  easily  accessible  to  all  Christians  of  the 
West  ;  and  represents  the  supreme  effort  of  their  Church 
towards  that  which  Eucken  has  called  "  the  bringing  of 

1  Eckartshausen,  The  Cloud  upon  the  Sanctuary,  Letter  II.- 


THE   WITNESS   OF  THE   LITURGY    339 

the  supersensuous  world  to  some  kind  of  concrete 
expression."  1 

When  we  take  up  the  Roman  Missal,2  we  find  that  it 
consists  of  an  unvarying  nucleus — the  "  Order  of  the 
Mass"— and  a  number  of  special  parts;  the  readings, 
chants  and  prayers  proper  to  each  Sunday  and  feast-day  of 
the  year,  each  circumstance  of  human  life.  In  these  special 
parts  we  notice  at  once  a  certain  order,  which,  if  not  inten 
tionally  devised,  is  now  at  least  most  clearly  present :  an 
order  which  links  up  that  ascent  to  communion  with  God 
which  this  ceremony  exhibits  in  terms  of  time  and  space, 
first  with  the  historic  career  of  Jesus,  next  with  the  cyclic 
movement  of  those  spiritual  seasons  which  condition  the 
growth  of  the  soul,  finally  with  the  fortunes  of  the  whole 
Christian  family — the  continuity  and  solidarity  of  the 
New  Race.  The  life  of  the  Founder  is  here  recapitulated, 
step  by  step,  from  Advent  to  Pentecost :  the  great  external 
facts  of  it,  the  alternate  joys  and  pains.  Side  by  side  with 
this  historical  drama  runs  the  parallel  strand  of  the  psycho 
logical  drama :  the  story  of  the  Mystic  Way  trodden  by 
those  who  "  imitate  Christ."  This,  too,  goes  from  the 
"advent"  of  the  first  faint  stirrings  of  new  life,  and  the 
birth  and  slow,  steady  unfolding  and  growth  of  spirit, 
through  the  purifications  of  Lent,  the  destitutions  and 
self-surrender  of  Passion-tide,  to  the  resurrection-life, 
and  great  completing  experience  of  a  Triumphing  Spiritual 
Power.  All  the  way  from  the  first  turn  in  the  new  direc 
tion — "Ad  te  levavi  animam  meam:"3 — to  the  final, 
sublime  consciousness  of  world-renewal — "  Spiritus 
Domini  replevit  orbem  terrarumy  alleluia:"* — the  chang 
ing,  moving  liturgy  tracks  out  the  adventures  of  the  soul. 

Within  this  great  memorial  act  is  again  enshrined  the 

1  The  Truth  of  Religion,  p.  463. 

2  Readers  who  distrust  the  word  "  Roman  "  in  such  a  connection  will 
find  nearly  all  of  the  described  characteristics  in  the  Sarum  Missal. 

3  Introit  for  the  First  Sunday  in  Advent. 

4  Introit  for  Whitsunday. 

Z2 


340  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

lesser  memorial  acts  which  do  honour  to  those  who  have 
celebrated  in  their  lives  the  difficult  liturgy  of  love :  the 
"  illustrious  athletes  "  in  whom  "  grace  was  victorious  " 
as  they  are  called  in  the  Nestorian  rite.1  There  is  hardly 
a  day  on  which  such  partial  repetitions  of  the  pattern 
career — the  attainment  of  sanctity,  the  ascent  to  the 
Eternal  Order  and  heroic  descent  in  charity  to  men — 
achieved  by  some  man  or  woman,  is  not  commemorated 
with  declarations  of  gratitude  and  joy. 

"  O  quam  pulchra  est  casta  generatio  cum  claritate  !'*... 

"  Implevit  eum  Dominus  spiritu  sapientiae  et  intellectus :   stolam  glorias 

induit  eum.  .  .  ." 
"  Justus  germinabit  sicut  lilium :  et  florebit  in  aeternum  ante  Dominum."  a 

The  special  characters  of  these,  the  "  Knights  and  Ladies 
of  the  Holy  Spirit "  are  here  recited :  sometimes — and 
especially  in  the  older  collects — with  the  epic  dignity 
proper  to  the  commemoration  of  heroic  personalities : 
sometimes  in  little,  sudden,  loving  phrases,  the  naive  and 
intimate  expressions  of  a  domestic  joy  and  pride.  St. 
Francesca  Romana,  unwearied  helper  of  the  poor,  who 
was  "  honoured  by  the  close  friendship  of  an  angel"  :  St. 
Jerome  Emilianus,  "a  father  of  orphans" :  St.  Catherine 
of  Genoa,  "  wholly  burned  up  by  the  Fire  of  Divine 
Love  "  :  St.  Jane  Frances  de  Chantal,  who  "  sought  with  a 
wonderful  fortitude  in  every  by-way  of  life  the  one  way  of 
perfection"  :  St.  Rose  of  Lima  on  whom  "  heavenly  grace 
fell  like  dew,  so  that  she  brought  forth  the  flowers  of 
patience  and  virginity  " :  St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  through 
whom  "  the  Church  conceived  and  bore  new  children  "  : 
St.  Peter  of  Alcantara,  teacher  of  St.  Teresa,  blessed  by  the 
twin  gifts  of  "  wondrous  penitence  and  loftiest  contempla 
tion  "  :  St.  Gertrude,  "  in  whose  heart  God  made  Himself 
a  home " :  3  day  by  day  these,  and  hundreds  of  other 

1  Brightman,  Liturgies  Eastern  and  Western,  Vol.  I.  p.  279. 

*  Common  of  Virgins,  Easter  Gradual;  and  Common  of  Doctors, 
Introit  and  Easter  Gradual. 

3  Collects  for  March  9,  July  20,  4th  Sunday  after  Easter,  Aug.  21, 
Aug.  30,  Oct.  4,  Oct.  19,  Nov.  15. 


THE  WITNESS   OF  THE   LITURGY    341 

amateurs  of  Eternity,  initiates  of  humility  and  love,  are 
brought  to  mind  by  the  living  members  of  that  race  which 
produced  them,  ensamples  of  the  rich  variety  in  unity 
which  marks  the  mystic  type. 

This,  then,  is  the  triple  recapitulation  effected  by  the 
wide  rhythms  of  the  ecclesiastical  year :  a  threefold  wit 
ness  to  new  life,  first  achieved  in  a  classic  example,  then 
taught  and  continued  in  the  race.  But  day  by  day  within 
this  wider  rhythm,  the  developed  sacramental  act  presents, 
in  more  intimate  and  detailed  drama,  the  "  Mystic  Way  " 
trodden  by  each  spirit  in  its  movement  from  partial  to 
completed  life;  the  law  of  man's  growth  into  Reality,  the 
economy  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  The  Order  of  the 
Mass — the  unchanging  nucleus  of  it — is  the  book  of  this 
more  intimate  drama :  the  ceremonial  and  deeply  mystical 
representation,  not  of  an  historical  past  nor  of  an  apoc 
alyptic  future,  but  of  an  Everlasting  Now,  the  rules 
which  govern  the  correspondence  between  two  orders  of 
Reality,  the  communion  of  those  two  mysterious  forces 
which  we  call  life  human,  and  life  divine. 

Now  this  order,  this  rite,  consists  structurally  of  two 
distinct  parts  :  the  so-called  "  Mass  of  the  Catechumens  " 
which  ends  with  the  reading  of  the  Gospel,  and  with  the 
instruction  or  sermon  that  may  follow  it,  and  the  "  Mass 
of  the  Faithful"  extending  from  the  Offertory  to  the 
end.  The  sharp  cleavage  between  these  two  parts  is  now 
veiled  in  the  Missal  by  the  Creed  which  comes  between 
them;  an  eleventh-century  innovation  so  far  as  the  Roman 
rite  is  concerned.1  It  has  ceased  to  have  any  "  practical  " 
importance,  and  therefore  no  longer  receives  ceremonial 
emphasis.  But  in  primitive  times  this  cleavage  did  possess 
a  most  real  and  practical  significance.  The  Mass  of  the 
Catechumens  was  a  service  of  prayer,  reading  and  song, 
accessible  to  all:  to  the  unbaptised  converts,  the  unre 
conciled  penitents,  the  "possessed."  The  Mass  of  the 
Faithful — that  is  to  say,  the  whole  sacramental  act — was 
1  A.  Fortescue,  The  Mass,  pp.  215  and  265. 


342  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

a  mystery  exhibited  only  to  initiates.  To  this,  none  but 
those  "regenerate  in  baptism"  and  living  "  in  grace" 
were  admitted.  Thus  in  the  liturgy  of  St.  John  Chrysos- 
tom,  the  normal  rite  of  the  Orthodox  Church — which 
retains  many  antique  elements  lost  to  the  West — the 
deacon  still  cries  before  the  beginning  of  the  "  Prayers  of 
the  Faithful,"  "All  catechumens  go  out!  Catechumens 
go  out.  All  catechumens  go  out.  No  one  of  the  catechu 
mens!  "  l  At  the  same  point  in  the  old  Roman  rite,  at 
least  as  late  as  the  sixth  century,  the  deacon  made  an 
equivalent  proclamation :  according  to  St.  Gregory,  "  Si 
quis  non  communicat,  det  locum."  2 

The  idea,  then,  of  an  inner  and  an  outer  church,  a 
higher  and  lower  communion  with  Reality,  of  a  separation 
of  "  believers "  into  two  classes,  is  a  fundamental 
character  of  the  Christian  liturgy  both  in  the  East  and  in 
the  West.2  Though  it  arose  to  some  extent  under  the 
pressure  of  practical  necessities,  and  though  the  line  of 
demarcation  between  the  two  classes  was  inevitably  con 
ditioned  by  formula  rather  than  by  fact — by  the  outward 
reception  of  baptism  or  sacramental  absolution,  not  by 
true  change  of  mind  or  purgation  of  heart — yet  it  repre 
sented  a  deep-seated  conviction  that  the  central  mysteries 
of  this  new  life  were  not  everybody's  business.  They 
were  "  food  for  the  full-grown  "  not  "  milk  for  babes." 
Immaturity,  degeneracy,  disharmony,  aberration,  were 
conditions  of  consciousness  in  which  no  communion  with 
Reality  could  take  place.4  The  liturgy,  in  fact,  continued 

1  A.  Fortescue,  The  Divine  Liturgy  of  our  Father  among  the  Saints, 
John    Chrysostom,   done    into    English,  with  an  Introduction  and  Notes, 
p.   82. 

2  Dial,  II.  23.    Cf.  Duchesne,  Origines  du  culte  chretien,  3*  ed.,  p.  171. 

3  Examples  of    the  Eastern  use  in  Brightman,  Liturgies  Eastern  and 
Western,  Vol.  I. ;   for  the  Western  see  A.  Fortescue,  The  Mass,   p.    215, 
and  Duchesne,  op.  cit.,  loc.  cit. 

4  The  three  excluded  classes,  according  to  Dionysius,  were  the  "  un 
initiated,"  the  "  imperfect,"  and  those  "  entangled  by  contrary  qualities," 
i.  e.  the  unharmonised  (De  Eccles.  Hier.,  cap.  3,  iii.  §  7). 


THE   WITNESS   OF  THE   LITURGY     843 

and  fixed  at  the  heart  of  the  Christian  tradition  the  sense 
of  election,  of  the  "  little  flock,"  the  "  few  chosen,"  which 
runs  through  the  Synoptic  gospels;  the  classification  of 
mankind  as  "  psychic  "  or  "  spiritual,"  which  seemed  to 
St.  Paul  a  plain  fact  of  experience ;  the  division  of  Chris 
tians  into  the  "  somatic  "  and  the  "  gnostic  "  which  was 
Clement's  way  of  re-stating  that  same  fundamental  fact 
of  an  actually  new  spiritual  type — inheritor,  not  of  a  belief, 
but  of  a  more  abundant  vitality — emerging  here  and  there 
from  amongst  the  mass  of  men,  and  capable,  as  that  mass 
was  not,  of  moving  to  new  levels  of  consciousness. 

The  liturgy  was  an  expression  of  life.  Therefore  it 
inevitably  registered,  though  in  crude  symbolic  fashion, 
the  law  which  governed  life's  new  "  saltatory  ascent." 
"The  rules  of  the  holy  Hierarchy,"  says  Dionysius, 
"permit  the  catechumens,  the  possessed,  and  the  peni 
tents,  to  hear  the  sacred  chanting  of  the  psalms,  and 
inspired  reading  of  most  holy  Scripture;  but  they  do  not 
invite  these  to  the  next  religious  rites  and  contemplations, 
but  only  the  initiated.  For  the  Hierarchy — image  of  God 
— is  full  of  reverent  justice,  and  distributes  in  a  salutary 
manner  to  each  according  to  their  measure.  .  .  .  Cate 
chumens  have  not  yet  their  being  in  God  through  Divine 
Birth;  but  are  being  brought  by  life-giving  changes  to 
wards  that  life  and  light,  which  is  birth  in  God.  .  .  . 
Therefore  the  all-wise  science  of  the  holy  mysteries  brings 
these  first  to  delivery,  and  when  it  has  made  them  ripe  for 
Divine  Birth  gives  them  in  due  order  participation  in 
those  things  which  illuminate  and  perfect."  l 

The  Mass  of  the  Catechumens,  the  "  outer  mystery  " 
through  which  all  must  pass  towards  that  "  inner  mystery  " 
of   the   Eucharist    "where    things   lowest   and    highest, 
earthly  and  divine,  are  united,"  2  bears,  then,  a  double 
significance  for  mystical  thought.     It  is,  on  the  institu 
tional  side,  an  image  of  that  exterior  Church  of  believers 
*  De  Ecdcs.  Hier.,  cap.  3,  iii.  §  6,  slightly  condensed. 
2  Missale  Romanum.    Preefaratio  ad  Missam,  Feria  II. 


344  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

within  which  is  enshrined  the  interior  Church  of  the 
mystics :  the  "  partakers  of  the  Divine  Nature,  or  deified 
men."1  On  its  psychological  side,  it  recapitulates  that 
sequence  of  mental  states  which  prepares  the  movement 
of  consciousness  towards  new  levels :  the  opening  of  the 
eyes  of  the  soul,  the  leading,  as  it  were,  of  the  self  to  the 
frontiers  of  the  Spiritual  World.  Its  general  character 
and  purpose  therefore  is  educative ,  in  the  original  sense 
of  that  degenerate  word.  It  leads  the  powers  of  thought 
and  will  and  love  out  towards  spiritual  reality,  effects  the 
difficult  transition  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  tension, 
stimulates  the  transcendental  sense,  promotes  receptivity; 
turns  the  mind,  as  Origen  has  it,  "  towards  that  which  is 
Best."  It  is  the  business  of  the  first  psalms  and  hymns 
of  the  liturgy,  says  Dionysius  the  Areopagite,  to  "  har 
monise  the  habits  of  our  souls  to  the  things  which  are 
presently  to  be  ministered  .  .  .  establishing  an  accordance 
with  things  divine."2 

Most  liturgies  are  easily  divisible  by  analysis  into  a 
series  of  linked  sections  ;  well  marked  groups,  each  in 
cluding  several  connected  prayers,  songs,  or  acts,  and 
each  the  expression  of  a  definite  mood.  The  first  of  such 
sections,  naturally  enough,  is  almost  invariably  concerned 
with  the  preparation  or  the  celebrant :  the  effecting  in 
him  of  that  primary  change  of  direction,  which  turns  man 
from  his  normal  universe  to  attend  to  the  supernal  world. 
The  celebrant  at  Mass  is  the  image  of  every  mystic,  as 
first  a  partaker,  and  then  a  revealer,  of  the  Divine  Life : 
therefore  his  dramatic  acts  must  begin  with  that  "  change 
of  mind  "  in  which  every  mystic  turns  to  the  world  of 
spirit  from  the  world  of  sense.  Moreover,  this  prepara 
tion  of  the  priest  has  a  general  as  well  as  a  personal  signi 
ficance  :  since  in  theory  he  is  but  the  type,  delegate  and 
representative  of  all  the  "  faithful."  Their  wills  are 
united  to  his,  his  hands  and  his  voice  are  the  organs  of 
the  community,  each  thing  which  he  does,  he  does  in  the 
1  Theologia  Germanica,  cap.  41.  a  Op.  cit.,  cap.  3,  iii.  §  5. 


THE   WITNESS   OF  THE  LITURGY    345 

name  of  all.  Hence,  before  the  prayer  of  consecration, 
he  demands  their  active  and  deliberate  co-operation,  as 
the  essential  condition  of  an  "acceptable  sacrifice."1 

In  the  Roman  Missal,  this  preparation  of  the  priest, 
which  was  in  earlier  times  a  private  and  voluntary  devo 
tion,  has  acquired  a  fixed  form.2  It  now  consists  of  a 
psalm,  a  confession  of  sin,  a  group  of  prayers  for  healing 
and  purity.  Joy  and  contrition — the  twin  feeling-states 
proper  to  conversion,  to  man's  first  emergence  from  the 
narrow  universe  of  self  into  the  wide  universe  of  spirit — 
are  its  dominant  notes :  and  the  first  of  these  notes  is 
struck  by  the  exultant  declaration  with  which  the  celebrant 
comes  to  the  altar-steps,  crosses  the  frontier  of  his  normal 
world. 

"  I  will  go  in  unto  the  Altar  of  God — unto  God,  who 
giveth  joy  to  my  youth."3  He  is  the  symbol  of  man's 
soul  standing  upon  the  threshold  of  its  great  adventure; 
that  "  adolescent  of  the  infinite"  about  to  set  forth 
upon  its  pilgrimage.  Fresh  youthful  feeling,  the  glad 
sense  of  limitless  possibilities,  all  the  romance  of  that  new 
life  which  lies  before  awakened  spirit — the  true  source 
of  happiness  suddenly  perceived  by  him — floods  his  con 
sciousness,  evokes  in  him  a  rapturous  movement  of 
acceptance.  It  is  "  spring-time  in  his  soul." 

In  the  psalm  from  which  these  first  words  are  taken, 
and  which  he  next  recites — that  psalm  of  the  New 
Creature,  with  its  clear  sense  of  separation  from  "  the  race 
that  is  not  holy"4 — this  mood  of  exaltation,  this  pure  note 

1  "  Orate,  frates  :  ut  meum  ac  vestrum  sacrificium  acceptabile  fiat  apud 
Deum  Patrem  omnipotentem."     A  mediaeval    addition,    but    a    deeply 
significant  one.     Cf.  Fortescue,  'The  Mass,  p.  311. 

2  Fortescue  suggests  that  this  form,  which  as  we  have  it  is  the  most 
recent  of  the  many  additions  to  the  Mass,  simply  standardised  the  sequence 
of  prayers  which  had  long  been  in  general  use  :  a  powerful  argument  for 
their  psychological  appropriateness  (The  Mass,  p.  225). 

3  Ps.  xlii.  4  (Vulgate). 

4  "  Judica  me  Deus,  et  discerne  causam  meam  de  gente  non  sancta," — 
Ps.  xlii.  6  (Vulgate). 


346  THE   MYSTIC  WAY 

of  mystic  joy,  alternates  with  the  oncoming  complement 
ary  mood  of  fear  and  penance :  the  discovered  disparity 
between  the  imperfect  human  creature  and  the  perfect 
place  where  it  aspires  to  be.  The  pendulum  of  the  ascend 
ing  consciousness  is  taking  its  first  swing. 

"  Thou  O  God  art  my  strength  .  .  .  Why  go  I  sorrowful  whilst  the 

enemy  afflicteth  me  ? 

I  will  praise  Thee  upon  the  harp,  O  God,  my  God.    Why  art  thou  sad, 
O  my  soul,  and  why  dost  thou  disquiet  me  ?  "  l 

The  joy  of  the  discovery  of  Perfection  is  here  balanced 
by  the  sadness  of  the  discovery  of  self;  the  drama  of  the 
mystical  life-process  moves  to  that  first  complete  realisa 
tion  of  disharmony,  of  the  profound  need  for  readjust 
ment,  which  introduces  the  growing  soul  to  the  Purgative 
Way.  "  I  was  dragged  up  to  Thee  by  Thy  Beauty,  but 
dragged  back  again  by  my  own  weight :  "  2  these  are  in 
essence  the  two  movements  which  constitute  the  prepara 
tion  of  the  priest.  The  Confiteor  is  the  ritual  equivalent 
of  this  backward  swing  ;  of  the  sudden  vision  of  self,  per 
ceived  in  the  light  of  Reality.  Hence  its  abject  confession 
of  personal  responsibility — mea  culpa — and  personal  in 
adequacy  "  in  thought,  word  and  deed  " :  a  confession 
made,  not  only  as  towards  the  Divine  Order,  but  as 
towards  all  those  other  human  spirits  who  are  members 
of  the  New  Race.  Their  family  honour  is  stained,  their 
achievement  marred,  by  every  failure  to  preserve  the  type; 
by  every  self  that  tends  to  lag  behind,  turn  on  its  tracks 
and  hinder  the  triumphant  march  of  life.  Therefore,  "  I 
confess  to  all  the  saints." 

The  dramatic  picture  of  interior  growth,  then,  has 
moved  from  the  psychological  stage  of  Conversion  to 
that  of  Purgation.  The  soul  has  been  introduced  into  the 
"cell  of  self-knowledge";  and  to  the  mingled  emotions 
of  contrition,  of  fear,  and  of  humble  dependence  on  that 

1  Ps.  xlii.  2,  4,  5. 

*  Aug.,  Conf.  Bk.  VII.  cap.  17. 


THE  WITNESS   OF  THE  LITURGY     847 

Supernatural  Order  which  is  now  entreated  to  heal  the 
disharmonies  of  the  separated  creature,  and  "  lead  it  into 
eternal  life." *  The  movement  of  the  liturgy  here  follows 
the  process  of  life;  exhibiting  in  their  organic  relation 
the  necessary  antecedents  of  all  transcendence,  whether  of 
body,  of  intellect,  or  of  soul — disillusion,  self-stripping, 
humble  realisation  of  "  one's  own  place."  Moreover,  this 
searching  preparation  of  the  priest  has  its  reflection  in 
the  acts  and  attitude  of  mind  suggested  to  the  people 
whom  he  leads.  For  them,  too,  there  is  a  song  of  entrance 
—the  Introit — to  mark  the  crossing  of  the  threshold  ; 
and  a  prayer  of  humble  approach,  the  Kyrie  Eleison — 
the  first  prayer  of  the  actual  Mass 2 — emphasising  the 
utter  dependence  of  the  individual  on  a  supernal  lire  and 
love. 

From  this,  celebrant  and  people  together  pass  at  once 
to  that  sublime  expression  of  the  souPs  delight  in  Divine 
Goodness  and  Beauty,  both  immanent  and  transcendent 
"  in  the  highest  and  on  earth,"  the  Gloria  in  Excelsis. 
Fit  image  of  the  joyous  vision  of  the  universe  which  is 
characteristic  of  the  illuminated  state — the  abrupt  dilata 
tion  of  consciousness,  the  abrupt  reaction  from  pain- 
negation  to  the  positive  emotions  of  adoration  and  delight, 
which  so  often  marks  the  end  of  the  Purgative  Way — it 
is  not  surprising  that  this  song,  woven  of  the  golden 
threads  of  humility  and  exaltation,  though  at  first  recited 
only  on  specially  joyful  feasts,  should  have  become  a  per 
manent  feature  of  the  Mass.3  At  the  same  point  in  the 
Eastern  Liturgy  the  hymn  of  the  Trisagion  is  sung. 

1  Misereatur  tui  omnipotens    Deus,  et  dimissis  peccatis  tuis,  perducat 
te  ad  vitam  aeternam  "  (Absolution). 

2  The   Kyrie,   the   only   Greek    formula   in   the   Roman   Mass,  is  a 
vestigial  relic  of  the  litanies  which  originally  were  said  by  the  people  at 
this  point.    These  are  still  retained  in  the  Greek  liturgies,  and  are  said  in 
the  Roman  rite  on  Easter  eve  and  Whitsun  eve.— Fortescue,  The  Mass,  pp. 
232-6,  and  Liturgy  of  St.  John  Chrysostom,  pp.  60-68. 

3  It  is  still  omitted  in  penitential  seasons,  and  in  all  Masses  for  the 
Dead. 


348  THE  MYSTIC  WAY 

More  solemn  perhaps,  less  joyous,  it  is  essentially  repre 
sentative  of  the  same  psychological  situation :  the  con 
vinced  vision  of,  and  meek  dependence  on,  Divine  Reality. 

"Ayios  6  ©cos  *  ay tos  ttr^upos  *  ayios  d^ai/aros  '  eXoycrov  ^/xas.1 

It  marks,  like  the  Gloria  of  the  West,  the  high-water 
mark  achieved  by  those  who  do  not  pass  beyond  the 
"  external  mystery  "  :  is  an  image  of  that  apprehension 
of  Reality  to  which,  in  his  mystical  moments,  the  normal 
man  is  here  caught  up. 

The  Mass  of  the  Catechumens  is  concluded  by  a  group 
of  actions  which  seems  a  fitting  symbol  of  the  varied 
powers  and  duties  proper  to  that  illuminated  consciousness, 
"  flowing  out  in  charity  to  God  and  man,"  which  has  now 
been  achieved  in  drama  by  the  celebrant  priest,  and  infer- 
entially  by  those  whom  he  represents :  the  consecutive 
recitation  of  Collect,  Epistle,  Gradual,  and  Gospel.  In 
the  Collect,  the  celebrant  gathers  up  the  diffused  spiritual 
aspirations  of  the  community,  their  "  blind  intent  stretch 
ing  to  God  "  :  focussing  as  it  were  the  common  attention 
on  one  point,  thrusting  it  out  towards  the  supersensual 
in  one  harmonious  movement  of  eager,  outgoing  desire. 
The  formula  Or  emus  which  precedes  the  Collect  directly 
invites  the  active  co-operation  of  every  will;  the  deliberate 
concentration  of  the  general  consciousness  upon  the  one 
act  of  approach.2  The  reading  of  the  Epistle  and  Gospel 
represent  the  " completing  opposite"  of  this  outgoing 
movement.  Here,  the  instinct  of  ministry  to  man,  the 
effort  of  the  initiate  to  tell  all  who  will  hear  him  the  un 
dying  secret  of  the  Kingdom  of  New  Life,  asserts  itself. 
The  song?  or  Gradual,  which  comes  between  these  two 
lessons  represents  the  continuance  of  that  feeling-state  of 
joyous  certitude  achieved  in  the  Gloria  in  Excelsis.  We 
have  here,  then,  a  compact  image  of  the  illuminated  life  in 
its  wholeness :  its  attitude  of  rapt  attention  to,  and  glad 

1  "  Holy  God,  holy  strong  one,  holy  immortal  one,  have  mercy  on  us." 
The  Roman  Church  still  sings  this  in  Greek  on  Good  Friday. 

2  Cf.  Cabrol,  Les  Origin es  liturgiques,  p.  109. 


THE  WITNESS   OF  THE  LITURGY     349 

adoration  of,  the  Transcendent  Order,  its  perpetual  effort 
to  share  with  others  the  secret  which  it  has  received. 

The  little  Gradual-song  which  separates  the  Scripture 
lessons  is  one  of  the  oldest  parts  of  the  Mass.  Such  an 
alternation  of  reading  and  song,  says  Dr.  Fortescue,  is  a 
universal  feature  of  liturgies.1  It  seems  to  represent 
man's  deep  instinct  that  this  dramatic  picture  of  his 
spiritual  career  must  preserve  and  express  the  central 
principle  of  that  career :  its  pendulum-swing  between  the 
joyful  adoration  of  God  and  the  steadfast  service  of  man, 
between  the  heavenward-turning  act  of  orison  and  the 
earthward-turning  act  of  spreading  the  news,  the  effort  of 
the  mystic  to  impart  the  secret  of  transcendence  if  he  can. 
The  Sermon,  which  should  come  after  the  Gospel,  and  is 
another  ancient  element  of  the  liturgy,  simply  emphasises 
and  extends  this  principle  of  a  mediatorship  laid  on  the 
illuminated  soul. 

Because  there  were  originally  three  lessons,  separated  by 
two  songs,  the  Gradual  has  now  two  distinct  parts :  that 
called  the  "  Psalm,"  now  reduced  to  two  verses,  which 
came  once  between  the  Prophecy  and  the  Epistle,  and  that 
called  the  "  Alleluia  "  which  came  between  Epistle  and 
Gospel.2  It  will  be  seen  that  as  these  lessons  advance  from 
the  promise  or  description  of  new  life  in  the  prophets  and 
St.  Paul  to  its  perfect  achievement  in  Jesus,  so  the  com 
plementary  act  of  adoration  becomes  more  exultant  as  the 
Gospel  is  approached.  The  "Alleluia5'  which  is  sung 
before  it  is  the  traditional  Judeo-Christian  expression  of 
joy.  Originally  used  here  only  at  Easter,  it  now  marks 
the  transition  from  Epistle  to  Gospel  on  all  save  peni 
tential  days.3  Its  last  syllable  is,  and  must  be,  drawn  out 
on  a  long  musical  phrase,  called  the  iubilus:  a  feature  of 
great  liturgic  and  mystic  importance.  "All  mediaeval 
authors,"  says  Dr.  Fortescue,  "  see  in  the  iubilus  an 

1  The  Mass,  p.  265. 

*  This  original  arrangement  is  still  preserved  in  the  Mass  for  Wednesday 
in  Holy  Week  and  one  or  two  other  places  where  three  lessons  are  read. 
8  The  Alleluia  occurs  in  the  same  position  in  the  Orthodox  rite. 


350  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

inarticulate  expression  of  joy,  by  which  the  mind  is  carried 
up  to  the  unspeakable  joy  of  the  saints."  *  There  is  little 
need  to  insist  on  the  appropriateness  of  such  a  suggestion 
at  this  point :  where  the  drama  of  human  transcendence 
has  come,  as  it  were,  to  the  end  of  its  first  great  act;  to 
the  complete  establishment  of  the  "  First  Mystic  Life  "  of 
illumination,  the  glad  and  convinced  consciousness  of  the 
spiritual  world. 

1  The  Mass,  p.  269.  The  Sequence,  a  poem  which  continued  the 
notes  of  the  iubilus,  was  once  sung  at  this  point.  Only  five  Sequences  are 
now  retained  in  the  Missal :  those  for  Easter,  Whitsuntide,  Corpus  Christi, 
the  Seven  Dolours,  and  the  Mass  for  the  Dead. 


II 

THE    INNER   MYSTERY 

THE  recitation  of  the  Creed,  which  is  placed  after  the 
Gospel  in  nearly  all  great  liturgies,1  now  covers  the  break 
between  the  "outer"  and  "inner"  mysteries  of  Cate 
chumens  and  Faithful.  It  is  a  late,  and  rather  inartistic, 
addition  to  the  Roman  Mass  ;  apparently  introduced  as 
a  test  which,  in  times  of  heresy,  discerned  the  true  initiate 
from  the  false.  Here  the  official  faith  was  reaffirmed 
before  passing  on  to  the  inward  experience  which  it  veiled : 
for  the  liturgic  drama  has  now  brought  the  soul  to  the 
frontiers  of  the  "  Second  Mystic  Life" — the  real  sorting- 
house  of  spirit,  the  gateway  of  "  the  Upper  School  of 
Perfect  Self-abandonment."  2 

According  to  the  original  intention  of  the  Mass,  the 
rules  of  the  Disciplina  Arcani^  only  those  capable  of  com 
munion — i.  e.  representatives  in  the  exterior  Church  of 
those  susceptible  of  union  with  God — took  part  in  this 
inner  mystery;  as  the  "  second  mystic  life"  in  man  is  the 
privilege  of  virile  souls  alone.  As  that  second  mystic  life 
begins  by  the  disestablishment  of  the  state  of  equilibrium 
which  has  been  achieved — by  the  throw-back  of  the 
illuminated  self  into  the  melting-pot,  in  order  that  the 
elements  of  character  may  be  re-grouped  about  the  higher 
centres  of  humility  and  self-surrendered  love — so  this  new 
act  began  with  a  renewed  affirmation,  not  of  the  soul's 
achievement,  but  of  its  lowliness  ;  of  the  spirit's  needs 

1  In  most  Eastern  rites  it  is  said  at  the  Kiss  of  Peace.  Fortescue,  Thf 
Mass,  p.  290. 

1  Suso,  Leben,  cap.  21. 

35 ' 


352  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

and  utter  dependence  on  the  universal  life.  It  began,  as 
it  were,  by  a  fresh  "  tuning  up  "  of  the  collective  con 
sciousness,  now  ready  to  begin  its  ascent  to  new  levels  of 
Reality.  This  phase  in  the  drama  of  the  spiritual  life  was 
represented  by  the  "Prayers  of  the  Faithful,"  which  were 
recited  in  common  after  the  catechumens  were  expelled :  a 
feature  still  retained  in  Eastern  liturgies,  though  now  lost 
in  the  West.1  "  Grant,  O  God,  to  all  who  join  in  our 
prayer  a  growth  in  life,"  says  the  Prayer  of  the  Faithful 
in  the  Orthodox  rite  ; 2  expressing  in  one  swift  phrase  the 
mystical  impulsion  which  lies  behind  this  act. 

Now  it  is  significant  that  whilst  in  the  Mass  of  the 
Catechumens,  the  emphasis  is  always  upon  words — on 
prayers  and  lessons  recited,  on  hymns  sung — in  the  Mass 
of  the  Faithful  the  emphasis  is  almost  wholly  on  acts. 
Though  some  of  these  acts  are  now  implied  rather  than 
performed,  it  is  still  through  and  by  them  that  the  deepest 
meanings  of  the  ceremony  are  conveyed  to  us :  in  panto 
mime  its  final  mysteries  are,  or  were,  made  plain  to  men. 
The  first  of  these  great  symbolic  acts — once  performed  by 
the  whole  company  of  initiates,  now  done  in  their  name 
by  the  priest  alone — is  the  Offertory;  the  bringing  to  the 
altar  of  gifts  of  bread  and  wine.  From  these  deliberate 
free-will  offerings,  and  from  these  only,  came  the  elements 
susceptible  of  consecration  ;  the  instruments  of  the 
supreme  communication  of  the  Divine  Life  to  men.  The 
Christian  brought  his  obley-loaf,  his  flask  of  wine,  even 
the  water  which  was  to  be  mingled  with  it,  to  the 
sanctuary  ; 3  he  took  from  that  sanctuary  the  bread  of 
angels  and  the  wine  of  life — the  common  stuff  of  things 
raised  to  a  higher  order  of  Reality.  His  own  free  act  of 
donation  it  was,  his  own  movement  of  generosity,  of 

1  At  this  point  in  the  Roman  Mass  the  priest  still  says,  "  Let  us  pray," 
but  no  prayer  follows  !     A  curious  example  of  the  "  vestigial  relic." 

2  Fortescue,  Liturgy  of  St.  John  Chrysostom,  p.  64. 

8  Good  description  in  Frere's  Principles  of  Religious  Ceremonial,  p.  77. 
In  the  ninth-century  frescoes  of  S.  Clemente  at  Rome  we  may  still  see 
this  ceremony  taking  place. 


THE   WITNESS   OF   THE  LITURGY     353 

surrender — the  "pushing  Godwards"  of  these  intimate 
symbols  of  his  daily  life,  these  simplest  necessities  of  his 
existence — which  formed  the  first  link  in  that  chain 
stretching  out  to  the  Eternal,  made  the  first  breach  in 
"the  ramparts  of  the  world"  and  conditioned  the  inflow 
of  Reality.  As  Macarius  has  it,  "  the  perfect  operation  of 
the  Spirit  is  conditioned  by  the  will  of  man  " :  the  inter 
weaving  of  divine  and  human  is  a  mutual  act,  the 
deliberate  coming  together  of  two  loves. 

In  the  Great  Entrance  of  the  Orthodox  Church,  the 
Eastern  equivalent  of  the  Offertory  of  the  West,  the 
bread  and  wine  so  brought  to  the  altar  are  treated,  by 
a  beautiful  act  of  trust  and  anticipation,  as  already  po 
tentially  divine.  The  bringing  in  of  these  gifts  is  the 
dramatic  centre  of  the  liturgy :  they  are  surrounded  by 
every  circumstance  of  honour.  As  they  come,  the  choir, 
"  mystically  representing  the  cherubim  " — those  spirits 
who  gaze  most  deeply  into  things  divine — acclaim  "  The 
King  of  all  things  who  comes  escorted  by  unseen  armies 
of  angels  "  : l  since  that  which  is  here  brought  and  offered 
is  freely  sacrificed  that  it  may  be  the  medium  of  Spirit's 
emergence,  and  "  where  the  door  is  open,  He  cannot  but 


come  in."  2 


Ruysbroeck,  in  a  profound  and  living  passage,  and  in 
that  personal  and  Christological  language  which — difficult 
though  it  may  seem  to  us — has  surely  here  a  special 
appropriateness,  perhaps  comes  nearer  than  any  other 
mystic  to  suggesting  the  spiritual  situation  which  is 
dramatised  in  this  offertory  act.  "It  is  the  property  of 
love,"  he  says,  "  ever  to  give,  and  ever  to  receive.  Now 
the  love  of  Jesus  is  both  avid  and  generous.  All  that  He 
has,  all  that  He  is,  He  gives  ;  all  that  we  are,  all  that 
we  have,  He  takes.  He  demands  more  than  we  are  able 
of  ourselves  to  give,  for  He  has  a  mighty  hunger,  that 

1  The  "Cherubic  Hymn."     See  Fortescue,  Thf  Mass,  p.  298,  and 
Liturgy  of  St.  John  Chrysostom,  p.  86. 

2  Meister  Eckhart,  Pred.  III. 

AA 


354  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

would  wholly  devour  us.  .  .  .  He  makes  of  us  His  very 
bread,  burning  up  in  the  fire  of  His  love  our  vices,  defects, 
and  misdeeds.  .  .  .  He  would  absorb  our  life,  in  order  to 
change  it  into  His  own  :  ours  full  of  sin,  His  full  of  grace 
and  glory,  all  ready  for  us,  if  we  will  but  renounce  our 
selves.  .  .  .  For  the  love  of  Jesus  is  of  a  noble  nature: 
where  He  has  devoured  all,  there  it  is  that  He  would  give 
Himself  as  food."  * 

The  singularly  beautiful  invocations  which  accompany 
in  the  Missal  the  offering  of  the  elements — effecting,  as 
it  were,  their  transition  from  the  purposes  of  "  nature  " 
to  the  purposes  of  "  grace  " — bring  these  ideas  into  greater 
prominence  ;  especially  perhaps  the  antique  and  deeply 
mystical  prayer  which  is  said  when  the  chalice  is  mixed 
— an  ancient  image  of  man's  union  with  the  Divine  Life. 
This  prayer  is  an  almost  perfect  epitome  of  the  essence  of 
Christian  mysticism,  the  meaning  of  the  ceremony  of  the 
Mass.  "  God,  who  hast  wonderfully  framed  man's  exalted 
nature,  and  still  more  wonderfully  renewed  it,  grant  us  by 
the  mystery  of  this  wine  and  water  to  become  partakers  of 
His  divinity,  Who  vouchsafed  to  become  a  partaker  of 
our  humanity."  2  Even  so  St.  Bernard  says,  that  as  a  drop 
of  water  poured  into  wine  loses  itself  and  takes  the  colour 
and  savour  of  wine,  so  in  the  saints,  by  "  some  unspeak 
able  transmutation,"  all  human  affections  are  merged  in 
the  will  of  God.3 

Finally,  the  whole  offertory  action  is  completed,  its 
true  intention  and  place  in  the  process  of  transcendence 
made  clear,  by  two  paradoxical  declarations.  The  first 
is  the  renewed  confession  of  man's  utter  poorness  and 
meekness  ;  his  very  act  of  self-donation  so  wretched  and 
ineffectual  a  thing  when  measured  by  the  standards  of 
Eternity.  "  In  spiritu  humilitatis,  et  in  animo  contrite 

1  Le  Miroir  du  Salut  Eternel,  cap.  7.     Slightly  condensed. 

2  Originally  the  Collect  for  Dec.  24,  and  so  given  in  the  Leonine 
Sacramentary.     Cf.  Fortescue,  op.  cit.,  p.  25. 

3  De  diligendo  Deo,  cap.  10.     For  the  rest  of  this  passage,  vide  supra, 
P.  324. 


THE   WITNESS   OF  THE   LITURGY     355 

suscipiamur  a  te,  Domine."  The  next — startling  in  its 
sudden  transition  from  abasement  to  supreme  assurance — 
is  an  abrupt  and  confident  appeal  to  the  supernal  sphere, 
the  demand  that  the  Wind  of  God  shall  blow  upon  this 
garden,  that  the  spices  thereof  may  flow  out ;  the 
passionate  invocation  of  a  spiritual  Presence  whereby 
"Man's  nothing-perfect51  shall  be  transformed,  here  and 
now,  into  "God's  all-complete."  "Come!  O  Sanctifier, 
Almighty  Eternal  God!  and  bless  this  sacrifice  set  forth 
in  Thy  holy  Name."  "  Thou  needst  not  call  Him  from 
a  distance,"  says  Meister  Eckhart  again,  "  thy  opening  and 
His  entering  are  but  one  moment."  l 

From  the  attitude  of  donation  we  move  to  the  attitude 
of  purification;  that  final,  drastic  purification  of  body,  soul 
and  spirit,  which  precedes  the  Unitive  State.  Here  again 
the  soul's  adventure  is  played  out  in  action;  in  the  cere 
monial  ablutions  of  the  priest,  which  take  place  in  all 
liturgies  at  this  point.  The  prayers  for  purity  which  now 
accompany  this  act  were  added  during  the  Middle  Ages : 
but  its  interior  meaning  was  realised  in  much  earlier  times. 
"The  Hierarch,"  says  Dionysius  the  Areopagite  in  his 
mystical  interpretation  of  the  liturgy,  "  standing  before 
the  most  holy  symbols,  washes  his  hands  with  water, 
together  with  the  reverend  order  of  priests :  because,  as 
the  Oracles  testify,  when  a  man  has  been  washed  [i.  e.  in 
baptism]  he  needs  no  other  washing,  save  that  of  his 
extremities — that  is,  of  his  lowest  (John  xiii.  10).  Which 
last  and  complete  cleansing  of  the  extremities  makes  man 
powerful  and  free,  as  being  now  wholly  clothed  in  the 
holy  vesture  of  the  Divine  Image;  and  advancing  in  well 
doing  in  inferior  things,  yet  being  always  turned  uniquely 
to  the  One,  he  will  make  his  return  without  spot  or 
blemish  to  the  Divine  Unity,  as  preserving  in  himself  the 
fulness  and  perfection  of  the  Divine  Image." 

The  celebrant,  symbolically  purified,  and  now  the  image 

l  Pred.  III. 

a  De  Eccles.  Hier.,  cap.  3,  iii.  §  9. 

AA  2 


356  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

of  the  purged  and  surrendered  soul  which  is  wholly 
adjusted  to  the  purposes  of  the  Universal  Life,  then 
returns  to  the  altar :  and  sums  up  in  a  last  prayer  the 
now  completed  offering  of  all  man  has  to  bring.1  He 
then  turns  to  the  people  and  begs  their  help ;  the  support 
of  their  collective  will,  attention,  and  desire  in  the  mutual 
act  which  he  is  about  to  undertake  in  their  name.  "  Pray, 
my  brethren!  that  my  sacrifice  and  yours  may  be  accept 
able  " — the  Christian  mystic,  going  forward  to  his  en 
counter  with  Reality,  goes  in  the  name  of  the  whole  race. 

The  action  has  now  reached  the  supreme  point,  both 
mystical  and  sacramental,  of  the  rite :  the  great  dramatic 
prayer  of  the  Canon,  or  act  of  consecration  itself.  Such 
an  act  as  this — and  I  include  in  it  the  further  completing 
act  of  communion,  for  these,  though  liturgically  distinct, 
are  mystically  two  aspects  of  a  movement  which  is  one — 
is  not  matter  for  the  explorations  of  the  psychologist. 
Still  the  living  symbol — more,  the  living  medium — of 
the  highest  experience  which  is  possible  to  the  spirit  of 
man,  its  deepest  meanings  are  not  amenable  to  the  dissect- 
ing-knife  of  intellect;  they  yield  their  secret  only  to  the 
humble  intuition  of  the  heart.  Here,  we  are  but  con 
cerned  to  remark  the  presence,  within  that  ritual  form 
which  " veils  and  reveals"  the  climax  of  the  mystical 
drama,  the  presence  of  all  the  chief  factors,  all  the 
emotional  equivalents,  of  that  New  Life  which  we  have 
traced  from  its  emergence  on  the  shores  of  Jordan  to  its 
perpetual  exhibition  at  the  altars  of  the  Christian  Church. 

The  bringing  of  the  Eternal  into  Time,  the  lifting  up 
of  man  into  the  kingdom  of  Reality,  was,  we  said,  that 
life's  supreme  objective  :  the  adding  of  that  "  top  storey" 
to  human  nature  which  should  make  humanity  an  inter 
mediary  between  two  worlds.  The  new,  completed  man 
hood  thus  achieved  we  found  to  be  supremely  human : 

1  "  Suspice,  sancta  Trinitas,  hanc  oblationem,  etc.  "  Fortescue  insists 
that  this  prayer  and  the  ablutions  which  precede  it  are  all  part  of  the 
offertory  act. 


THE   WITNESS   OF  THE   LITURGY     357 

the  whole  personality,  not  some  "  spiritual "  part  of  it, 
was  the  matter  of  this  Great  Work.  Its  note  was  no  thin 
and  abstract  transcendentalism,  but  rather  the  glad  and 
bold  acceptance  of  the  common  stuff  of  things,  as  being 
implicitly  susceptible  of  God.  Founded  in  the  deeply 
natural  processes  of  birth  and  growth,  it  planted  the  free, 
transfigured  spirit  firmly  within  the  framework  of  the 
Here-and-Now.  Nor  was  the  life  achieved  by  that  trans 
figured  spirit  concentrated  on  any  one  narrow  aspect  of 
Reality.  At  once  theocentric  and  social,  it  flowed  out 
not  alone  in  adoration  to  God,  but  also  in  charity  to  men. 
We  found  that,  like  great  music,  it  compassed  and 
harmonised  the  extremes  of  joy  and  pain  :  that  "  seeing 
that  here  there  is  true  perfect  manhood,  so  there  is  a  per 
fect  perceiving  and  feeling  of  pleasure  and  pain,  liking 
and  disliking,  sweetness  and  bitterness,  joy  and  sorrow, 
and  all  that  can  be  perceived  and  felt  within  and  without." l 
Possessing  its  life  under  the  two  orders  of  active  work  and 
eternal  peace,  rejecting  nothing  of  the  "  given  "  world  of 
sense,  it  found  in  that  "  given  "  world  a  sacrament  of  the 
Divine  Nature,  discovering  God  alike  in  the  travail  of 
Becoming,  and  in  that  changeless  Being  to  which  life  tends 
as  its  Eternal  Home. 

Take  then  the  great  Eucharistic  prayer  of  the  Roman 
Missal,  from  its  opening  in  the  Preface  2  to  the  closing 
Doxology,  and  ask  of  it  what  witness  it  brings  to  the 
character  of  man's  spiritual  life.  First  we  observe  that 
the  priest  who  recites  it,  and  those  whom  he  represents, 
must  enter  on  this  supreme  adventure  in  a  special  and 
appropriate  mood.  A  fresh  "  tuning  up  "  is  here  asked 
of  them :  and  the  mood  demanded  is  to  be  governed  by 
the  characteristically  mystical  emotion  of  joy.  The  call 
to  joy,  which  runs  like  music  through  the  Mass,  is  now 
heard  at  its  clearest.  "  Sursum  Corda!  "  The  growing 

1  Theo.  Ger.,  cap.  24. 

2  The  Preface,  though  now  printed  as  a  separate  prayer,  is  an  integral 
part  of  the  Canon.    Cf.  Fortescue,  The  Mass,  p.  316. 


358  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

creature  is  to  try  its  wings.  Not  awe  and  abasement,  but 
sweet  gladness  of  spirit,  exaltation  of  heart,  is  the  feeling- 
state  proper  to  that  encounter  of  love  which  "raises  the 
spirit  from  the  sphere  of  reverence  to  one  of  rapture  and 
dalliance."  *  "  Lift  up  thine  heart  unto  God,"  says  The 
Cloud  of  Unknowingy  "with  a  meek  stirring  of  love  ; 
and  mean  Himself  and  none  of  His  goods.  And  thereto 
look  thee  loath  to  think  on  aught  but  Himself.  So  that 
nought  work  in  thy  wit  nor  in  thy  will,  but  only  Himself. 
.  .  .  This  is  the  work  of  the  soul  that  most  pleaseth  God. 
All  saints  and  angels  have  joy  of  this  work,  and  hasten 
them  to  help  it  in  all  their  might.  All  fiends  be  furious 
when  thou  thus  dost,  and  try  for  to  defeat  it  in  all  that 
they  can.  All  men  living  on  earth  be  wonderfully  holpen 
of  this  work,  thou  wottest  not  how.  Yea,  the  souls  in 
purgatory  be  eased  of  their  pain  by  virtue  of  this  work. 
Thyself  art  cleansed  and  made  virtuous  by  no  work  so 
much."2  It  is  by  the  glad  and  grateful  laying  hold  on 
his  inheritance  of  joy,  that  the  purified  spirit  of  man 
enters  most  deeply  into  the  heart  of  Reality. 

That  Reality  is  there  at  his  door,  once  consciousness  has 
been  lifted  up  to  the  level  at  which  communion  with  it 
becomes  possible.  Therefore  the  Eucharistic  act  begins 
not  so  much  by  a  prayer,  a  demand  for  new  life,  as  by  a 
thankful  remembrance  of  the  very  essence  of  life;  present 
in  the  Here-and-Now,  and  known  in  its  richness  and 
beauty  to  the  transfigured  consciousness.  For  this  it  is 
"  meet  and  right  "  to  give  thanks.3  The  supreme  act  of 
communion  to  which  the  drama  is  moving  means  the 
doing  away  of  that  flame  of  separation  which  keeps  finite 
and  infinite  life  apart;  the  glad  participation  of  the  separ 
ated  creature  in  the  whole,  deep  mighty  torrent  of  the  life 

1  Coventry  Patmore,  The  Rod,  the  Root  and  the  Flower,  "  Aurea  Dicta," 
XXXIX. 

2  The  Cloud  of  Unknowing,  cap.  3. 

3  "  Vere  dignum  et  justum  est,  aequum  et  salutare,  nos  tibi  semper  et 
ubique  gratias  agere  " — the  invariable  opening  phrase  of  the  Preface. 


THE   WITNESS   OF  THE   LITURGY    859 

of  God,  shining  in  the  spiritual  universe,  energising  the 
world  of  men.  "Therefore  with  angels  and  archangels, 
with  Thrones  and  Dominations,  with  all  the  army  of 
heaven  "  the  forward-moving  soul  now  dares  to  associate 
itself,  in  acts  of  love  and  praise : 1  and  the  one  song  by 
which  the  people  express  their  own  participation  in  this 
mystery  is  the  awful  cry  of  the  Sanctus,  which  cherubim 
and  seraphim,  the  emblems  of  purest  wisdom  and  most 
ardent  love  "  cease  not  daily  to  cry  out  " — that  wonderful 
hymn  to  a  Divine  Perfection,  transcendent  and  immanent, 
filling  heaven  and  earth. 

"  Heaven  and  earth  are  full  of  Thy  glory  .  .  .  there 
fore,  most  merciful  Father,  we  pray  that  Thou  wouldst 
accept  and  bless  these  gifts."  2  Whether  intentionally 
devised  or  not,  the  petition,  as  we  have  it  now,  is  imme 
diately  dependent  on  the  declaration :  on  the  fact  that  the 
natural  things  of  earth — the  wheat,  the  vine,  all  growing 
living  creatures — are  already  entinctured  with  Spirit, 
radiant  of  the  divine  loveliness,  "full  of  Thy  glory,"  and 
hence  may  be  lifted  up  into  a  higher  order  of  Reality,  may 
become  lenses  that  focus  and  distribute  the  flashes  of  the 
Uncreated  Light.  This  last  offering  up  of  the  uncon- 
secrated  elements  is  the  completion  of  that  solemn  and 
significant  act  of  donation  and  sacrifice  which  began  with 
the  Offertory,  and  is  implied  in  each  subsequent  move 
ment  of  the  rite.  It  is  an  act  of  donation  made,  not  by 
and  for  one  special  soul,  lifted  out  of  the  ruck  of  humanity, 
that  he  may  achieve  a  private  union  with  God :  but  in 
the  name  of  the  whole  nation  of  the  twice-born,  the  sons 
of  Divine  Reality.  These,  therefore,  are  now  remem- 

1  Some  ancient  rites  here  practically  commemorate  and  give  thanks  for 
the  whole  creation  as  manifesting  the  goodness  of  God.     A  fine  example 
is  in  the  Liturgy  of  St.  Clement  (Neale  and  Littledale,  pp.  76-82). 

2  "  Pleni  sunt  cceli  et  terra  gloria  tua.  Te  igitur,  clementissime  Pater, .  .  . 
supplices  rogamus  ac  petimus,  uti  accepta  habeas,  et  benedicas,  haec  dona." 
(Sanctus  and  1e  igitur ;   or  first  section  of  the  Canon.    The  Eucharistic 
prayer  is  generally  divided  into  twelve  such  sections,  each  known  by  its 
opening  words.) 


360  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

bered  one  by  one.  First  all  the  living,  present  and  absent. 
Then  the  saints,  the  heroes  of  the  race;  not  as  strangers, 
glimpsed  across  great  intervening  spaces,  but  "  communi 
cating  with  them,"  since  those  still  in  the  flesh  are  here 
about  to  participate,  if  only  for  an  instant,  in  that  "  vision 
which  is  the  privilege  of  intensely  loving  souls."  Then 
the  dead,  the  whole  concourse  of  our  compatriots,  "  qui 
nos  praecesserunt  cum  signo  fidei." l  It  is  a  great  domestic 
act :  "  this  oblation  of  our  service,  and  that  of  Thy  whole 
family  we  beseech  Thee  O  Lord  graciously  to  accept."2 
"  When  the  priest  saith  Mass,"  says  a  Kempis,  "  he 
honoureth  God,  he  giveth  joy  unto  the  angels,  he  edifieth 
the  Church,  he  helpeth  the  loving  people,  he  giveth  rest  to 
them  that  be  passed,  and  maketh  himself  partner  of  all 
good  works."3 

At  once,  and  by  a  natural  transition,  we  pass  to  the 
final  and  completing  commemoration;  that  of  the  found 
ing  of  this  family,  the  career  of  Jesus  Himself.4  "  For 
if  we  aspire  to  communion  with  Him  we  must  keep  our 
eyes  fixed  upon  His  most  godly  life  in  the  flesh,"  says 
Dionysius :  "  My  humanity,"  says  the  Eternal  Wisdom 
to  Suso,  "  is  the  road  which  all  must  tread  who  would 
come  to  that  which  thou  seekest."  5  This,  the  climax  of 
the  Canon,  recapitulates  in  words  and  manual  acts  of 
highest  dramatic  significance  that  first  great  "  interweav 
ing  of  divine  and  human  "  which  it  now  exhibits  under 

1  Canon  of  the  Mass :  Memento  Domine  ;  Communic antes  ;  Memento 
etiam  ;  Nobis    quoque.    These  commemorations,  now  distributed  at  the 
beginning  and  end  of  the  Canon,  were  once  continuous.     Cf.  Fortescue, 
The  Mass,  pp.   in   and  330-333.     In  the  Orthodox  and  most  other 
Eastern  liturgies  they  are  all  placed  together  after  the  Consecration. 
(Examples  in  Neale  and  Littledale,  pp.  52,  116,  137.) 

2  Hanc  igitur. 

3  De  Imit.  Cbristi,  Bk.  IV.  cap.  5. 

4  Qui  fridie.     It  is  within  this  section  that  the  "  words  of  institution," 
now  regarded  as  the  consecrating  formula,  are  pronounced ;  but  originally 
the  entire  Canon  was  the  consecrating  formula.     Fortescue,  op.  cit.,  p. 
347- 

5  Bucblein  von  der  ewigen  Weisbeit,  cap.  2. 


THE   WITNESS   OF  THE  LITURGY    361 

veils;  with  a  natural  and  special  emphasis  upon  the 
institution  of  the  Eucharist  itself.  Solemnly  re-enacted 
by  the  priest,  it  is  this  symbolic  drama  of  sacrifice  and 
self-donation  which  constitutes  for  Western  Christendom 
the  "  Act  of  Consecration.55  It  is  the  external  image,  the 
dramatic  repetition,  of  that  mystical  sacrifice — that  dying 
to  live,  and  losing  to  find — which  ministers  to  the  sur 
rendered  consciousness  "  the  holy  bread  of  eternal  life, 
and  the  cup  of  everlasting  health.551  Once  in  the  liturgy 
of  the  West,  and  still  in  all  Eastern  rites,  this  sublime 
mystery  of  the  emergence  of  Reality,  the  immanent  divine 
life,  from  the  very  substance  of  the  time- world — "  treasures 
from  darkness,  hidden  riches  from  the  secret  places  5) — 
received  its  countersign  in  the  answering  mystery  of  an 
inflowing  transcendent  power,  a  new  dower  of  vitality 
demanded  and  received :  the  Epiklesis,  or  invocation  of 
the  Holy  Spirit,  "  Giver  of  life,  who  is  everywhere,  who 
filleth  all  places  and  no  place  containeth  Him,  simple  in 
nature,  manifold  in  operation,  the  fountain  of  the  grace 
of  God.552  It  is  this  which  constitutes  for  Eastern  Chris 
tians  the  act  of  consecration,  as  the  "  words  of  institu 
tion55  do  for  Christians  of  the  West.3  They  are  the 
"  completing  opposites  5>  of  one  reality :  Aperiatur  terra 
is  balanced  by  Rorate  coell^  bringing  to  full  circle  the 
souPs  dual  discovery  of  a  Transcendent  yet  Immanent 
God. 

It  is  in  the  Anaphoras  or  consecrating  prayers  of  these 
Eastern  liturgies,  that  we  can  best  discern  that  which  the 
act  of  consecration — so  easily  understood  in  a  crudely 
magical  sense  alone — meant  and  means  for  the  mystical 
consciousness. 

1  Canon  :   Unde  ft  Memores. 

2  Epiklesis  of  the  Coptic  Jacobites.     Brightman,  Eastern  Liturgies,  p. 

179. 

3  Fortescue,  Liturgy  of  St.  John  Chrysostom,  p.  101.     Further  examples 
of  the  Epiklesis  in  Brightman's  Eastern  Liturgies  and  Neale  and  Littledale, 
op.  cit. 


362  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

"  Mingle  O  Lord  our  humanity  with  Thy  divinity. 
Thy  greatness  with  our  humility  and  our  humility  with 
Thy  greatness,"  says  the  priest  in  the  Ethiopia  liturgy  of 
St.  Gregory  of  Armenia.1 

"  He  then,  the  Prince  of  the  Revelation  of  our  good 
things,'3  says  the  Syro- Jacobite  rite  of  John  of  Bassora, 
"on  that  evening  of  His  voluntary  anguish,  explained 
by  these  quickening  and  easily-to-be-handled  elements 
this  Mystery  which  cannot  be  expressed  in  words."2 

"  He  took  the  bread,"  says  the  Armenian  liturgy,  "  in 
His  creative  hands."3  "  His  life-giving  hands,"  says 
the  Anaphora  of  the  Coptic  Jacobites.4 

Here,  as  ever  in  the  true  creations  of  Christian  genius, 
the  central  fact,  the  dominant  note,  is  always  the  impart 
ing  of  new  life.  The  instruments  chosen,  the  poetic  meta 
phors  and  historical  commemorations,  snatched  at  in  the 
effort  to  make  plain  this  communication  of  a  supernal 
vitality,  are  but  ancillary  to  that  actual,  indicible  "  Mystery 
of  Faith  "  to  which  they  give  artistic  form.  "  Heavenly 
Bread — Life  of  the  World,"  says  the  priest  in  the  liturgy 
of  St.  James.5  Through  Christ,  says  the  Roman  Canon, 
which  is  throughout  addressed  to  the  supreme  Godhead, 
"  Thou  dost  create ;  sanctify  ;  quicken  ;  bless."  That 
which  is  acclaimed  is  the  very  principle  of  divine 
fecundity ;  the  new  dower  of  energy  given  to  human  con 
sciousness  that  it  may  grow  up  to  new  levels  of  freedom 
and  full  life.  This  accession  of  new  life,  as  the  last  stage 
in  the  drama  of  mystical  change  and  growth,  is  emphasised 
in  most  liturgies  by  a  further  direct  memorial — "  a  calling 
to  mind  "  according  to  the  Roman  Canon — of  the  Resur 
rection  and  Ascension,6  as  typical  exhibitions  of  that 
"  deified  life  "  possessed  by  Jesus  and  possible  of  achieve- 

1  Neale  and  Littledale,  p.  215.  2  Ibid.,  p.  227. 

8  Brightman,  p.  436.  4  Ibid.,  p.  176. 

5  Neale  and  Littledale,  p.  60. 

6  Sometimes,  especially  in  early  rites,  the  Parousia  also :    as  in  the 
Liturgy  of  St.  James  (Neale  and  Littledale,  p.  50). 


THE  WITNESS   OF  THE   LITURGY     363 

ment  by  all  those  re-born  into  His  universe  and  nourished 
by  the  substance  of  Reality. 

Then,  to  the  confusion  of  liturgiologists,  who  have 
sought  many  and  lame  explanations  of  its  insertion  here,1 
the  Roman  Canon  proceeds  to  a  swift  and  vivid  recog 
nition  of  the  unearthly  act  of  creation  that  has  taken  place; 
the  supernal  character  of  the  real  Gifts  now  upon  this 
altar.  Those  gifts  are  at  once  the  food  of  the  faithful, 
media  of  the  inflowing  divine  life,  and  also  the  veritable 
images  of  the  surrendered  soul  "  made  Christ,"  whose 
highest  joy  it  shall  be  to  grow  through  sanctification  to 
sacrifice  :  whose  final  destiny  shall  be  the  giving  back  of 
"  more  abundant  life  "  to  the  world. 

Here  it  is  that  two  waves  meet  ;  the  outward-tending 
wave  of  sacrifice,  the  incoming  wave  of  "  grace."  Mystic 
ally,  it  is  the  new  transmuted  creature,  now  indeed  "  pure, 
holy  and  immaculate,"2  capable  of  utmost  transcendence, 
which  is  offered  :  and  becomes  by  its  self-surrender  a  part 
of  the  universal  life,  is  woven  up  into  the  Body  of  God. 
It  is  of  this  spiritual  sacrifice  that  the  priest  prays  that  it 
"be  carried  by  the  hands  of  Thy  holy  Angel  to  Thine 
altar  on  high,  into  the  presence  of  Thy  Divine  Majesty,"  z 
lifted  up  into  the  independent  spiritual  world.  The 
"  flaming  ramparts  of  the  world  "  are  down  :  and  it  is 
the  secret  of  Life,  the  urgent,  suffering,  forward-moving 
life  of  God,  latent  in  the  web  of  the  whole  universe, 
shining  in  the  twice-born  soul,  which  is  here  declared  — 
"  He  that  is  broken  and  not  divided  asunder,  ever  eaten 
and  never  consumed."  4  The  complex  strands  of  the 
central  mystic  experience  —  that  experience  in  which 
giving  and  receiving  become  "  One  Act,"  and  the  divine 
union  is  found  to  be  the  obverse  of  the  human  sacrifice 
—  are  gathered  into  a  higher  synthesis,  which  judged  by 

1  "  Full  of  difficulties,"  says  Fortescue  of  this  section  (The  Mass,  pp. 


~- 
2  unde  et  Memores.  8  Supplies  U  rogamus. 

4  Liturgy  of  St.  John  Chrysostom  (Neale  and  Littledale,  p.  120). 


364  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

the  logical  intellect  is  compact  of  paradox,  but  yields 
unsuspected  depths  of  meaning  to  the  intuition  of  the 
heart.  Of  such  an  intuition  Aquinas  sang,  in  the  greatest 
of  Eucharistic  poems — 

"  Adoro  te  devote,  latens  Deltas, 
Quas  sub  his  figuris  vere  latitas ; 
Tibi  se  cor  meum  totum  subjicit 
Quia  te  contemplans  totum  deficit." 

Those  two  apparently  contradictory  modes  under  which 
the  self  must  lay  hold  of  Divine  Reality — the  personal 
and  the  impersonal  aspects  of  transcendent  life — are  here 
fused  into  one.  In  the  oblique,  suggestive  language  of 
the  liturgy  "  He  is  both  Sacrifice  and  Priest."  Moreover, 
the  sacrificial  aspect  of  the  divine  life,  supremely  exempli 
fied  in  the  career  of  Jesus,  is  by  that  career  made  acces 
sible  to  men.  Man,  said  St.  Bernard,  is  "a  capacity  for 
the  Infinite."  But  it  is  as  "  branches  of  the  Vine,"  as 
the  Johannine  Mystic  has  it,  sharers  in  the  totality  of  that 
new  creation,  the  surrendered  life  susceptible  of  God,  of 
which  He  is  the  "  head,"  that  individual  men  become  at 
once  "  partakers  of  the  Divine  Nature  "  and  part  of  the 
eternal  Eucharist — "  through  Him  and  with  Him  and  in 
Him."  2 

Therefore  at  the  end  of  the  Canon,  the  celebrant — 
representative  of  the  New  Race — takes  upon  his  lips 
the  Paternoster ;  the  actual  prayer  of  Jesus,  and  perfect 
expression  of  His  mystical  secret,  the  divine  sonship 
of  man.  This  prayer,  which  is  in  the  highest  degree 
social — the  domestic  act  of  a  family,  not  the  intimate 
devotion  of  an  individual — is  said  in  the  East  by  the 
whole  congregation,  and  represents  their  sense  of  corporate 
participation  in  the  sacrifice  just  achieved :  their  corporate 
consciousness  of  the  goal  towards  which  it  tends.  "Ad- 
veniat  regnum  tuum :  fiat  voluntas  tua  sicut  in  ccelo  et  in 

1  Missale  Romanum  :  Orationes  post  Celebrationem. 

2  Doxology  of  the  Roman  Canon. 


THE   WITNESS   OF  THE   LITURGY     365 

terra"  :— -the  object  of  mystical  growth.  It  is  during  the 
prayer  Libera  nos,  the  expansion  or  "embolism"  of  its 
last  phrase,  that  the  Fraction  or  breaking  of  the  Host — 
poignant  image  of  omnipresent,  inextinguishable  life- 
takes  place.  A  part  of  the  broken  Host  is  then  put  into 
the  chalice :  an  emblem  of  the  unity  of  that  divine  life 
which  is  now  exhibited  under  the  "  multiplicity  of  the 
symbols  "  of  sense. 

"  Fracto  demum  Sacramento 
Ne  vacilles,  sed  memento, 
Tantum  esse  sub  fragmento, 
Quantum  toto  tegitur. 

Nulla  rei  fit  scissura ; 
Signi  tantum  fit  factura  : 
Qua  nee  status,  nee  statura 
Signati  minuitur.  " 1 

Once,  in  the  old  Roman  rite,  the  continuity — the 
"  duration  " — of  this  life-force  was  further  emphasised 
by  the  curious  ceremony  of  the  "Sancta";  in  which  a 
fragment  from  the  Host  consecrated  at  a  previous  Mass 
was  put  into  the  new  chalice  by  the  Pope.2 

The  Fraction  is  followed  by  two  prayers :  one,  the 
A gnus  Dei,  invoking  Christ  as  the  principle  of  sacrifice, 
the  Repairer  of  the  broken  bridge  between  creation  and 
its  source,  the  other  a  direct  address  to  the  divine-human 
Person.  They  represent  the  twofold  aspect  of  the  mystic 
union  now  about  to  be  consummated ;  the  twofold  response 
of  consciousness  to  those  "  mysteries  of  faith "  which 
have  been  declared  under  veils. 

But  the  union  here  set  up  between  man  and  God, 
between  the  finite  and  infinite  life,  is  incomplete  so  long 
as  it  remains  the  union  of  the  "  Alone  with  the  Alone." 
Divine  Love  is  not  a  single  thread  that  links  creature  and 
Creator;  but  rather  a  web  that  knits  up  the  many  with  the 

1  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  Lauda  Ston  (Roman  Missal :  Feast  of  Corpus 
Christi,  sequence). 

2  Cf.  Duchesne,  Origines  du  culte  chrttien,  p.    185 ;    and   Fortescue, 
The  Mass,  p.  366. 


866  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

One.  Therefore  the  priest  and  his  ministers — originally 
the  whole  congregation,  whom  they  here  represent — 
exchange  the  Kiss  of  Peace:  symbol  of  that  bond  of 
charity  between  men  which  is  the  reflection  of  the  union 
between  man  and  God.1  "  They  cannot  draw  near  to  the 
One,  and  enter  into  close  and  peaceful  union  therewith," 
says  Dionysius,  "  who  are  divided  amongst  themselves 
...  it  is  the  part  of  the  ceremony  of  the  Pax,  to  stab- 
lish  amongst  us  the  life  of  perfect  union."2  This 
dramatic  welding  together  of  the  faithful  into  one  is  the 
natural  antecedent  of  the  act  of  communion,  to  which  the 
celebrant  now  proceeds,  the  consummation  of  the  mystic 
life  in  Man :  for  it  is  the  corporate  soul  of  the  New  Race 
which  goes,  in  his  person,  to  the  supreme  encounter  with 
Reality. 

The  mood  of  the  celebrant  is  here  once  again  that  para 
doxical  mood  of  humility  and  exaltation — rapture  as  to 
wards  Infinite  Perfection,  grief  as  towards  human  limita 
tions  still  most  poignantly  perceived — which  characterises 
the  mystic  in  his  hours  of  greatest  lucidity.  "  Panem 
coelestem  accipiam!  "  "  Domine,  non  sum  dignus!  "  3 — it 
is  an  epitome  of  the  history  of  man.  These  swift  alterna 
tions  between  the  ecstatic  apprehension  of  God  and  the 
complementary  vision  of  self,  constitute  the  inevitable 
response  of  the  surface  consciousness  to  the  impact  of 
New  Life.  "  When  God  gives  Himself  to  a  soul,"  says 
Ruysbroeck,  "  the  chasm  between  herself  and  Him 
appears  immense."  4 

But  the  actuality  of  that  mystic  union  which  evokes 
this  dual  consciousness,  this  inexorable  vision  of  Reality 

1  The  Kiss  of  Peace  is  one  of  the  oldest  and  most  essential  elements  of 
the  liturgy.     It  was  once  given  at  the  beginning  of  the  Mass  of  the  Faith 
ful — a  sign  of  the  "  peaceful  charity  in  life  naughted  "  in  which  they  were 
about  to  enter  on  the  Mysteries — and  it  still  retains  this  position  in  Eastern 
rites.     Fortescue,  The  Mass,  p.  370. 

2  De  Eccles.  Hier.,  cap.  3,  iii.  §  8. 

3  Roman  Missal :  the  Communion  of  the  Priest. 

4  Samuel  (Hello,  p.  200). 


THE   WITNESS   OF  THE   LITURGY      367 

— the  experience  of  the  heart — remains  unknown.  Here 
the  limits  of  liturgic  drama  are  over-passed;  "there  is 
silence  in  heaven."  "The  mystic  experience,"  says 
R6cejac,  "  ends  with  the  words,  '  I  live,  yet  not  I  but 
God  in  me '  "  1 — and  here  the  art-form  which  that  experi 
ence  has  created  follows  close  upon  the  footsteps  of  life. 
"  Thou  givest  me,"  says  Peter  sen,  "  thy  whole  self  to  be 
mine,  whole  and  undivided,  if  at  least  I  shall  be  Thine 
whole  and  undivided."  2  By  the  gates  of  the  senses  the 
supersensual  has  been  reached :  the  soul's  participation 
of  Eternity  is  suddenly  revealed  within  the  framework  of 
Time.  "Whilst  the  multitude,"  says  Dionysius  of  the 
celebrant  here,  "  have  but  beheld  the  symbols  which  veil 
this  mystery,  he,  led  of  the  Spirit,  and  possessing,  as 
becomes  a  Hierarch,  the  purity  of  the  deiform  state,  has 
ascended  by  divine  contemplation  to  the  intelligible 
sources  of  those  ceremonies  that  have  been  performed."  * 
Yet,  true  to  that  central  principle  of  the  spiritual  life,  that 
law  of  divine  fecundity,  which  runs  through  the  history 
of  Christian  mysticism  and  receives  in  the  liturgy  its  most 
perfect  symbolic  expression,  this  ascent  of  the  celebrant  is 
made  only  that  he  may  descend  again  and  distribute  the 
light  he  has  received  to  other  men.  The  mystic,  said 
Ruysbroeck,  must  go  up  and  down  the  ladder  of  con 
templation  :  his  fruition  of  Reality  must  evoke  the 
complementary  impulse  of  charity  to  all  the  world.  The 
communion  of  the  priest  is  therefore  the  antecedent  of 
the  communion  of  the  people.  He  is  here  the  perfect 
type  of  the  "  deified  soul  "  whose  highest  experience  leads, 
not  to  a  solitary  rapture,  but  to  the  imparting  of  a  more 
abundant  life.  "  For  we  must  receive,"  says  Dionysius, 
"  before  we  can  give :  and  therefore  the  reception  of  the 
mysteries  precedes  the  mystic  distribution  thereof  .  .  . 
therefore  the  celebrant  first  partakes  and  is  filled  with  the 

1  Fondements  de  la.  connaissance  mystique,  Pt.  I.  cap.  2,  §  2. 

2  The  Fiery  Soliloquy  with  God,  cap.  15. 

3  Dionysius  the  Areopagite.    De  Eccles.  Hier.,  cap.  3,  ii. 


368  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

heavenly  gifts,  which  afterwards  through  him  are  imparted 
to  other  men."  * 

The  object  of  the  liturgic  drama,  "  to  show  forth  the 
union  of  the  initiate  with  the  Adorable  One " 2  is 
achieved :  its  climax  is  passed.  Its  ceremonies  are  com 
pleted  by  the  recessional  prayers  and  blessings  which 
represent  the  inevitable  withdrawal  of  the  mystical  con 
sciousness  from  its  brief  immersion  in  the  Inaccessible 
Light,  to  that  normal  world  of  which  it  is  itself  destined 
to  be  the  light,  the  leaven,  the  salt.  he,  Missa  est !  the 
tale  of  transcendence  is  done. 

That  tale  has  been  told  by  a  method  artistic  and  oblique. 
Its  living  heart  has  been  exhibited,  its  poignant  actuality 
brought  home  to  the  conscious  self,  partly  by  those  vital 
symbols  which  body  forth  the  mystic  intuition  of  man  and 
"  fulfil  the  double  function  of  evoking  the  Infinite  in  the 
mind  and  making  Him  known  of  the  heart,"  3  partly  by 
those  ritual  devices  which  tend  to  enhance  receptivity, 
shift  the  normal  field  of  perception,  and  concentrate  atten 
tion  upon  new  levels  of  lire — effect,  in  a  word,  that 
"  change  of  mind  "  which  is  the  condition  of  a  change  of 
universe.  Rhythmic  gesture,  rhythmic  utterance,  dramatic 
action,  music,  perfume,  the  tangible  made  the  instrument 
of  supersensual  manifestations — "  Him  verily  seeing  and 
fully  feeling,  Him  spiritually  hearing  and  Him  delectably 
smelling  and  sweetly  swallowing  "  4 — every  door  of  sense 
has  been  attacked.  Every  possibly  suggestive  act  and 
declaration,  every  agent  which  could  operate  an  enhance 
ment  of  consciousness,  has  been  used — often  with  an 
apparent  inconsequence — in  the  effort  to  achieve  this 
one  result.  Yet,  as  though  some  hidden  genius,  that 
spiritual  Entelechy  which  guides  the  race  of  men,  had 
controlled  the  evolution  of  the  rite,  the  result  of  this 
age-long  process  of  growth  and  selection  has  that  fine 

1  Op.  cit.,  cap.  3,  iii.  §  14.  2  Op.  cit.,  cap.  3,  i. 

3  Recejac,  op.  cit.,  Pt.  I.  cap.  2,  §  I. 

4  Julian  of  Norwich,  Revelations  of  Divine.  Love,  cap.  43. 


THE  WITNESS  OF  THE   LITURGY    369 

exactitude,  that  close  and  perfect  correspondence  between 
vision  and  expression,  which  is  the  character  of  all  great 
art. 

As  we  look  at  this  drama,  which  has  so  often  operated 
in  the  mystics  a  mighty  dilatation  of  consciousness,  a  new 
intensity  of  vision,  we  too  are  liberated  for  an  instant 
from  the  tyranny  of  use  and  wont :  the  mind  screwed 
down  to  the  sense-world  becomes  attuned  to  a  deeper, 
wider  rhythm.  Then  it  is  that  we  see,  beyond  and  through 
this  pageant,  deep  into  the  secret  processes  of  creation  :  are 
immersed  if  only  for  a  moment  in  the  great  currents  of 
a  spiritual  universe,  and  feel  the  bourne  to  which  those 
currents  tend.  Nam  exspectatio  creature  revelationem 
filiorum  Dei  exspectat:  the  victory  of  forward-moving 
spirit,  the  achievement  of  freedom  and  full  life.  Here 
that  which  is  the  heart  of  every  prophet's  vision,  which 
every  artist  knows  and  struggles  to  communicate,  which 
all  great  music  strives  to  utter  in  an  ecstacy  of  pain,  is 
dimly  shadowed  forth :  the  rich  yet  simple  revelation  of 
Reality.  It  is  life  itself,  the  Energetic  Word,  and  the 
pathway  of  its  progress,  which  we  see  in  pantomime :  life, 
as  supremely  "  manifest "  in  the  soul  of  pilgrim  man. 
It  is  that  adolescent  of  the  infinite  whom  we  have  seen 
in  the  strangely- vested  and  symbolic  figure  of  the  cele 
brant.  It  is  the  soul's  ideal  adventure,  as  once  achieved 
in  its  perfection,  that  we  have  followed  in  his  gestures 
and  his  declarations;  its  growth  and  its  duration  through 
alternate  phases  of  effort  and  attainment,  of  humility 
and  joy. 

The  Mass  is  the  mirror  of  souls :  as  we  gaze  at  it,  one 
by  one  those  mighty  spirits  whose  surrender  and  triumph 
it  recapitulates,  loom  up  to  us  from  the  deeps.  We  see 
against  this  background  the  value  and  proportion  of  their 
lives.  Were  all  their  special  commemorations  expunged 
from  it,  it  would  remain  the  supreme  memorial  of  the 
saints  ;  the  epic  of  the  twice-born  soul.  Day  by  day  it 
sets  forth  the  career  of  advancing  spirit,  from  its  new  birth 


BB 


370  THE   MYSTIC   WAY 

to  that  awful  moment  of  creation  when  man,  surrendered 
to  the  universal  purpose  and  inspired  by  it,  dares  lay  his 
hands — poor  tools  of  the  Eternal  Wisdom — on  the  very 
substance  of  the  world  ;  and,  stripping  off  its  unrealities 
and  accidents,  can  say  of  it,  "  Behold  the  true  Body,  the 
actual  Life  of  God."  It  was  by  the  way  of  hard  growth 
and  under  the  spur  of  glad  love — exultant  joy  that  urged 
him  forward,  clear  self-knowledge  pointing  out  the  way — 
that  he  came  to  this  achievement :  entered  into  this 
Kingdom  of  Real  Things.  From  first  to  last  the  "  divine 
comedy"  that  he  played  was  a  ceaseless  process  of 
Becoming.  It  imaged  for  us  that  life  which  is  "  move 
ment  itself,"  and  the  consummation  in  God,  the  fruition 
of  Eternity,  to  which  that  "  movement "  tends. 

It  was  by  some  mutual  act  of  donation,  a  mystical  self- 
mergence,  that  the  Transcendent  Life  which  supports  the 
ceaseless  travail  of  the  time-world,  itself  became  for  him 
"  the  food  of  the  full  grown."  Again,  it  was  by  the 
mysterious  craft  of  sacrifice  that  those  simplest  gifts  of 
nature  which  he  carried  to  the  altar  were  made  the  links 
between  Appearance  and  Reality,  became  susceptible  of 
the  inundations  of  the  Uncreated  Light.  Aperiatur  terra, 
et  germinet  salvatorem !  They  came  out  of  the  heart  of 
our  common  life :  the  field  and  vineyard  bore  them :  and 
the  mounting  flood  of  spirit  carried  them  up  "per  manus 
sancti  Angeli  tui  in  sublime  altare  tuum,  in  conspectu 
divine  Majestatis  tu<e." 

Life  immanent  and  life  transcendent,  the  Temporal  and 
the  Eternal  order,  here  come  together  ;  are  discovered  as 
the  complementary  expressions  of  a  Reality  which  is  one. 
The  divine  seed  within  the  world,  the  divine  spark  within 
the  soul,  has  been  brought  from  its  hiddenness.  By  the 
resistless  alchemy  of  a  courageous  and  self-giving  love  it 
has  subdued  to  its  purpose,  changed  to  its  very  substance, 
the  recalcitrant  stuff  of  the  material  world.  That  material 
world  in  its  wholeness  is  now  seen  as  the  Body  of  Reality : 
Eternal  Life  shines  clear  through  the  changeful,  perishable 


THE  WITNESS   OF  THE  LITURGY    371 

life  of  things.  To  this,  the  utmost  union  of  created  with 
creator,  the  long  travail  of  transcendence  was  directed  :  the 
Mystic  Way  of  life's  ascent  to  God. 

Bcce  tabernaculum  fcet 

cum  bomfnt&us :  et  babitabft 

cum  ete,  et  ipsf  populus 

ejus  erunt :  et  fpse  fceus 

cum  els  etit  eorum 


BB2 


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Cunninghame-Graham,  G. 

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376  LIST  OF  AUTHORITIES 

Epiphanius. 

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(Eng.  trans.)  The  Meaning  and  Value  of  Life.     London,  1909. 
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The  Divine  Liturgy  of  our  Father  among  the  Saints,  John  Chrysostom, 
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Journal.     8th.  ed.     2  vols.     London,  1901. 
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Hannay,  J.  0. 

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Harnack,  Adolf. 

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Harrison,  E.  J. 

The  Fighting  Spirit  of  Japan.     London,  1913. 
Hartmann,  F. 

The   Life  and  Doctrines  of  Jacob  Boehme.     London,  1891. 
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Herrmann,  W. 

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Leben  Jesu.     Tubingen  and  Leipzig,  1901. 

(Eng.  trans.)  The  Life  of  Jesus.     London,  1904. 

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Hugel,  Baron  F.  von. 

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John,  Gospel  of.    (In  the  "  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,"  nth  ed.    Vol.  XV, 

P-  4S2-) 
Ignatius  Loyola,  St. 

Exercitia  Spiritualia  ex  autographe  Hispanico.     Namur,  1841. 
(Eng.  trans.)  The  Spiritual  Exercises,  trans,  from  the  original  Spanish. 
London,  1880. 

The  Testament  of  St.  Ignatius  Loyola,  trans,  by  E.  M.  Rix,  with  a  preface 
by  G.  Tyrrell.     London,  1900. 
Inge,  Rev.  W.  R.,  Dean  of  St.  Paul's. 

Christian  Mysticism.     London,  1899. 

Irenesus. 

Opera  omnia.     (Migne,  Pat.  Greec.,  t.  7.) 

(Eng.  trans.)  Writings.   2  vols.  (Ante-Nicene  Library.)  Edinburgh,  1868. 

Jacopone  da  Todl. 

Laude  di  frate  Jacopone  da  Todl.     A  cura  di  G.  Fem.     Rome,  1910. 

Jalalu  'ddin  Rumi. 

Selected  Poems  from  the  Divan  i  Shamsi  Tabnz  :  trans.  R.  A.  Nicholson. 
Persian  and  English.    Cambridge,  1898. 


378  LIST  OF  AUTHORITIES 

John  of  Holy  Crosse,  Brother. 

Philothea's  Pilgrimage  to  Perfection.     Bruges,  1668. 
John  of  the  Cross,  St. 

Obras.  (Biblioteca  de  autores  espanoles,  t.  27.)     1853. 

(Eng.  trans.)  The  Ascent  of  Mount  Carmel,  trans.  D.  Lewis.     London, 
1906. 

The  Dark  Night  of  the  Soul,  trans.  D.  Lewis.     London,  1908. 

A  Spiritual  Canticle  of  the  Soul,  trans.  D.  Lewis.     London,  1911. 
Jones,  Rufus  M. 

Studies  in  Mystical  Religion.     London,  1909. 
Julian  of  Norwich. 

Revelations  of  Divine  Love,  ed.  by  Grace  Warrack.     London,  1901. 
Jiilicher,  A . 

Einleitung  in  das  neue  Testament.     1st    and   2nd    eds.     Freiburg  and 
Leipzig,  1894. 

(Eng.  trans. )  An  Introduction  to  the  New  Testament.     London,  1904. 
Jundt,  A . 

Rulman  Merswin  et  1'ami  de  Dieu  de  1'Oberland.     Paris,  1890. 
Justin  Martyr. 

Apology.     (Migne,  Pat.  Grac.,  t.  6.) 

(Eng.  trans.)  Works.     Oxford,  1861. 
Kilner,  Walter. 

The  Human  Atmosphere.     London,  1911. 
King,  E.  G. 

Early  Religious  Poetry  of  the  Hebrews.     Cambridge,  1911. 
Law,  William. 

Works.     9  Vols.     London,  1762.     (Privately  reprinted  :  London,  1893.) 

The  Liberal  and  Mystical  Writings  of  William  Law,   ed.   by  W.   Scott 
Palmer.     London,  1908. 
Lawrence,  Brother. 

The  Practice  of  the  Presence  of  God  (with  additional  letters).     London, 
1906. 
Le  Bon,  Gustave. 

Psychologic  des  foules.     Paris,  1895. 

(Eng.  trans.)  The  Crowd.     4th  ed.     London,  1903. 
Leuba. 

Les  Tendances  fondamentales  des  mystiques  Chretiens.     In  "  Revue  philo- 
sophique,"  July,  1902. 
Lightfoot,  J.B.,  Bishop  of  Durham. 

The  Apostolic  Fathers.     London,  1891. 

Biblical  Essays.     London,  1893. 
Loisy,  Alfred. 

Le  Quatrieme  eVangile.     Paris,  1903. 

Les  Evangiles  synoptiques.     2  vols.     Ceffonds,  1907. 
Macarius  of  Egypt,  St. 

Vitaet  Opera.     (Migne,  Pat.  Grc8C.t  t.  34.) 
Mai  aval. 

La  Pratique  de  la  vraie  theologie  mystique.     2  vols.     Paris,  1709. 
Masefield,  John. 

The  Everlasting  Mercy.     London,  1911. 
Matheson,  G. 

The  Spiritual  Development  of  St.  Paul.     Edinburgh  and  London.     1890. 


LIST  OF  AUTHORITIES  879 

Mechthild  of  Magdeburg. 

Offenbarungen  der  Schwester  Mechthild  von  Magdeburg,  oder  das  fliess- 
ende  Licht  der  Gottheit.  Herausgegeben  von  P.  Gall  Morel.  Ratisbon, 
1869. 

Mirror  of  Simple  Souls,  The. 

British  Museum  Add.  MSS.  37790. 

Missale  ad  usum  insignis  et  prceclares  Ecclesia  Sarum.  Ed.  by  F.  H. 
Dickenson.  Burntisland.  1861-1883. 

(Eng.  trans.)  The  Sarum  Missal  in  English,  edited  and  translated  by 
A.  H.  Pearson.  London,  1868. 

Missale  Romanum.  E~x  decreto  SS.  Concilii  Tridentini  restitutum.  S.  Pii  V 
Pont.  Max.  jussu  editum,  dementis  VIII,  Urbani  VIII,  et  Leonis  XIII 
auctoritate  recognitum.  Rome,  Tournay,  Paris,  1905. 

(Eng.  trans.)  The  Roman  Missal  in  Latin  and  English,  arranged  for  the 
use  of  the  Laity.  (Pub.  Soc.  of  St.  John  the  Evangelist.)  Tournay,  1911. 

Murray's  Dictionary  of  Christian  Biography  and  Literature,  edited  by 
H.  Wace  and  W.  C.  Piercey.  London,  1911. 

Neale,  J.  M.,  and  Littledale,  R.  F. 

The  Liturgies  of  SS.  Mark,  James,  Clement,  Chrysostom  and  Basil,  and 
the  Church  of  Malabar.     Trans.,  with  Introduction  and  Appendices.    2nd 
ed.     London,  1869. 
Newman,  John  Henry. 

Essay  on  the  Development  of  Christian  Doctrine.    London,  1878. 

Oman,  J.  C. 

The  Mystics,  Ascetics  and  Saints  of  India.    London,  1903. 

Origen. 

Opera  omnia.     (Migne,  Pat.  Greec.,  t.  11-17.) 

(Eng.  trans.)  Writings.     2  vols.      (Ante-Nicene   Library.)     Edinburgh, 
1869-72. 
Palladius. 

Historia  Lausiaca.    (Migne,  Pat.  Grtsc.,  t.  34.)    See  also  under  Butler. 

Pascal. 

Les  Pens^es,  Fragments  et  Lettres  de  Blaise  Pascal,  ed.  by  Faugere. 
2nd  ed.     Paris,  1897. 
Patmore,  Coventry. 

The  Rod,  the  Root  and  the  Flower.    2nd  ed.    London,  1907. 

Peter  sen,  Gerlac. 

Gerlaci  Petri,  ignitum  cum  Deo  soliloquium.     Cologne,  1849. 
(Eng.  trans.)  The  Fiery  Soliloquy  with  God  of  the  Rev.  Master  Gerlac 
Petersen.     London,  1872. 

Opera.     Recog.  L.  Cohn  et  P.  Wendland.     5  vols.     Berlin,  1896-1906. 
(Eng.  trans.)  Works,  trans,  by  Yonge.    4  vols.     London,  1854. 

Plato. 

Opera.    Ed.  J.  Burnet.    5  vols.    (Bibliotheca  Scriptorum    Classicorum 

Oxoniensis)  1899-1907. 

(Eng.  trans.)  The  Dialogues,  trans,  by  B.  Jowett.  3rd  ed.  5  voli. 
Oxford,  1892. 

°  ^  Plotini  Enneades,  prsemisso  Porphyrii  de  vita  Plotini  deaue  ordine  librorum 
eius  libello.     Edidit  R.  Volkmann.    2  vols.     Leipzig,  1883-84. 
(Eng.  trans.)  Select  Works,  trans,  by  T.  Taylor.    London,  1895. 


880  LIST  OF  AUTHORITIES 

Poulain,  A . 

Graces  d'oraison.     Paris,  1906. 

(Eng.  trans.)  The  Graces  of  Interior  Prayer.     London,  1910. 
Ramsay,  Sir  William. 

St.  Paul  the  Traveller  and  the  Roman  Citizen.     5th  ed.     London,  1900. 

The  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire  before  A.D.  170.     7th  ed.     London, 

The  Cities  of  St.  Paul :  their  Influence  on  his  Life  and  Thought.     London, 
1907. 

Luke  the  Physician,  and  other  Studies  in  the  History  of  Religion.     London, 
1908. 
Rtctjac,  E. 

Essai  sur  les  fondements  de  la  connaissance  mystique.     Paris,  1897. 
(Eng.  trans.}  Essay  on  the  Bases  of  the  Mystic  Knowledge.      London, 
1899. 
RMlle,  Albert. 

Jeius  de  Nazareth :  etudes  critiques  sur  les  antecedents  de  Thistoire  evange- 
lique  et  de  la  vie  de  Jesus.     2  vols.     Paris,  1897. 
Reville,  Jean. 

La  Doctrine  du  Logos  dans  le  quatrieme  eVangile  et  dans  les  ceuvres  de 
Philon.     Paris.  1881. 

Le  Quatrieme  evangile :  son  origine  et  sa  valeur  historique.     Paris,  1901. 
Rhys  Davids,  Mrs. 

Buddhism.     (Home  University  Library.)     London,  1912. 
Richard  of  St.  Victor. 

Opera  omnia.     (Migne,  Pat.  Lat.,  t.  196.) 
Rohde,  Erwin. 

Psyche  :  Seelencult   und    Unsterblichkeitsglaube  der  Griechen.     2  v»ls. 
2nd  ed.     Freiburg,  1898. 
Rolle,  Richard. 

The  Fire  of  Love  and  the  Mending  of  Life.     Englished  by  R.  Misyn. 
(E.E.T.S.,  vol.  106.)    London,  1896. 
Royce,  Josiah. 

The  World  and  the  Individual.     2  vols.     London,  1900. 
Ruysbroeck,  Venerable,  J. 

Opera  omnia,  trad.  Surius.     Cologne,  1652. 

L'Ornement    des    noces    spirituelles,   trad.   M.    Maeterlinck.      Brussels, 
1900. 

CEuvres :  trad,  du  Flamand  par  les  Benedictins  de  St. -Paul  de  Wisques. 
Tome  I  (in  progress).     Brussels,  1912. 

CEuvres  choisies,  trad.  E.  Hello.     Paris,  1902. 
Sabatier,  L.  A. 

L'Ap6tre  Paul.     3rd.  ed.     Paris,  1896. 
(Eng.  trans.)  The  Apostle  Paul.     London,  1591. 
Sabatier,  Paul. 

Vie  de  S.  Fra^ois  d'Assise.     22nd  ed.     Paris,  1899. 
(Eng.  trans.)  Life  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi.     London,  1901. 
Salmon,  George. 

The  Human  Element  in  the  Gospels :  a  Commentary  on  the  Synoptic 
Narrative.     London,  1907. 
Saudreau,  A. 

Les  Degr^s  de  la  vie  spirituelle.     2  vols.     Paris,  1896. 

(Eng.  trans.)  The  Degrees  of  the  Spiritual  Life.     2  vols.     London,  1907. 


LIST   OF  AUTHORITIES  381 

Schweitzer,  Albert. 

Vom  Reimarus  zu  Wrede.  Eine  Geschichte  der  Leben-Jesu-Forschung. 
Tubingen,  1906. 

(Eng.  trans.)  The  Quest  of  the  Historical  Jesus,  and  ed.  London. 
1911. 

Smith,  W.,  and  Cheetham,  S. 

Dictionary  of  Christian  Antiquities.     2  vols.     London,  1875-1880. 

Speculum  perfectionis  seu  S.  Francisci  Assisiensis  leeenda  antiquissima. 
Ed.  P.  Sabatier.      1898. 

(Eng.  trans.)  The  Mirror  of  Perfection.  (Temple  Classics.)   London,  1903. 
Starbuck,  E.  T. 

The  Psychology  of  Religion.     2nd  ed.     London,  1901. 
Stdffels,  J. 

Die  mystiche  Theologie  Makarius  des  Aegypters  und  die  altesten  Ansatre 
christlicher  Mystik.     Bonn,  1908. 
Suso,  Henry. 

Die  Schriften  des  seligen  H.  Seuse.     Ed.  H.  S.  Denifle.     Munich,  1876. 
Swete,  H.  B. 

The  Holy  Spirit  in  the  New  Testament.     London,  1909. 

The  Holy  Spirit  in  the  Ancient  Church.     London,  1912. 

Tagore,  Rabindranath. 

Gitanjali  (Song-offerings).     Published   by  the    India  Society.     London, 
1912. 
Tauler,  John. 

Johann  Tauler's  Predigten,  nach  den  besten  Ausgaben  in  die  jetzige  Schrift- 
sprache,  ubertragen  von  J.  Hamberger.  3  vols.  Prague,  1872. 

(Eng.  trans.)  The  History  and  Life  of  the  Rev.  Doctor  John  Tauler,  with 
Twenty-five  of  his  Sermons.  Trans,  by  Susannah  Winkworth.  New  edition. 
London,  1906. 

The  Inner  Way :  being  Thirty-six  Sermons  for  Festivals.  (Library  of 
Devotion.)  3rd  ed.  London,  1909. 

Teresa,  St. 

Obras  y  escritos  de  Santa  Teresa  de  Jesus.     6  vols.     Madrid,  1 88 1. 

(Eng.  trans.)  The  Life  of  St.  Teresa  of  Jesus  written  by  herself,  trans,  by 
D.  Lewis.  3rd  ed.  London,  1904. 

The  Interior  Castle,  trans,  by  the  Benedictines  of  Stanbrook  Abbey. 
London,  1906. 

The  History  of  the  Foundations,  trans,  by  Sister  Agnes  Mason.     London, 
1909. 
Tertullian. 

Opera.     (Migne,  Pat.  Lat.,  t.  I  and  2.) 

(Eng.  trans.)  Writings.    3  vols.     (Ante-Nicene  Library.)     Edinburgh, 
1869-70. 
Theologia  Germanica. 

Deutsche  Theologie,  herausgegeben  von  P.  Kohler.     Berlin,  1859. 

(Eng.  trans.)  Theologia  Germanica,  edited  by  Susanna  Winkworth.     4th 
ed.    London,  1907. 
Thomas  a  Kempis. 

De  Imitatione  Christi.     Ed.  P.  E.  Puyal.     Paris,  1886. 

(Eng.  trans.)  The  Imitation  of  Christ :  the  earliest  English  translation. 
(Everyman's  Library.)  London,  n.d. 

Of  the  Imitation  of  Christ,  trans,  by  Rev.  C  Bigg.  (Library  of  Devotion. ) 
London,  1901. 


382  LIST   OF   AUTHORITIES 

Thomas  Aquinas,  St. 

Opera  omnia.     25  vols.     Parma,  1852-72. 
Summa  contra  Gentiles.     Paris,  1877. 

(Eng.  trans.)  Of  God  and  His  Creatures  :  an  annotated  translation  of  the 
Summa  contra  Gentiles  by  Father  J.  Rickaby,  SJ.     London,  1905. 
Thomas  of  Celano. 

S.   Francisci  Assisiensis  vita    et  miracula.      Ed.  by  Father  E.  Alen9on 
O.F.M.    Rome,  1906. 

(Eng.  trans.)  The  Lives  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  trans,  by  A.  G.  Ferrers 
Howell.     London,  1908. 
Tyrrell,  George. 

Through  Scylla  and  Charybdis;  or,  the  Old  Theology   and  the  New. 
London,  1907. 
Underhill,  Evelyn. 

Mysticism  :  a  Study  in  the  Nature  and  Development  of  Man's  Spiritual 
Consciousness.     4th  eel.     London,  1912. 
Upanishads,  The. 

Trans,  by  J.  Max  Muller.     (Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  I  and  15.)     Oxford, 
1879-1884. 

Vita  Patrum.    (Migne,  Pat.  GYCBG.,  t.  40,  and  Pat.  Lat.,  t.  73,  74.) 
Wackernagel,  W. 

Altdeutsches  Lesebuch.     5th  ed.     Basel,  1873. 
Warren,  F.  C. 

Liturgy  of  the  Ante-Nicene  Church.     London,  1897. 
Way,  Arthur. 

The  Letters  of  St.  Paul.     3rd  ed.     London,  1911. 

Weinel,  H. 

Paulus.     Der  Mensch  und  sein  Werk.  .   .  .  Tubingen,  1904. 

(Eng.  trans.)  St.  Paul:  the  Man  and  his  Work.     London,  1906. 
Wcizsdcher,  C.  von. 

Das  Apostolisches  Zeitalter  des  christlichen  Kirche.     Freiburg,  1886. 

(Eng.  trans.)  The  Apostolic  Age.     2  vols.     London,  1894-5. 

Wernle,  Paul. 

Die  Anfange  unserer  Religion.     2nd  ed.     Tubingen  and  Leipzig,  1904. 
(Eng.  trans.)  The  Beginnings  of  Christianity.     London,  1903. 

Weymouth,  R.  W. 

The  New  Testament  in  Modern  Speech.     3rd  ed.     London,  1910. 

Wilpert,  J. 

Le  Pitture  delle  Catacombe  Romane.     2  vols.     Rome,  1910. 

Wrede,  W. 

Paulus.     Breslau,  1904. 

(Eng.  trans.)  Paul.     London,  1907. 


TABLE  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT  QUOTATIONS 


Matt.  iii.    2 
16 

iv.  17 
v.    6-8 

13-16 

20 
Vi.  22,  24 

vii.     6 

7 

13 

14 

21 

24 

28,  29 

viii.  19-22 
x.  16-23 

37 

xii.  50 
xiii.  31-33 

44-46 
xiv.  23 
xvi.  16 

21 

22,  23 

24 

xvii.     1-8 

17 

xviii.    3 
xix.  16-22 

21 

xx.  20-28 
xxi.  22 

xxii.  15-40 
xxiv.     . 
xx  vi.  6-13 
Mark    i.  10 

12 

14 
16-38 


9-12 

35 


PACE 

PAGE 

. 

85 

Mark  vi.  46 

.      .      .    98 

• 

87 

viii.  29 

.   102,  114 

• 

105 

31 

•   125 

112 

34 

III,  128 

. 

114 

35 

.   126 

. 

113 

.  38    . 

.   125 

1  12 

. 

107 

3 

.  118 

• 

114 

4 

.  119 

. 

113 

15 

.   122 

• 

112 
1  14. 

19 

.   125 

, 

A  J  ^ 

112 

35-45  • 

.   129 

• 

114 

xii.  13-34  . 

.   I29 

, 

109 

xiii.  . 

.   129 

. 

III 

xiv.  3-9  . 

131 

. 

IO4 

xv.  34 

.   139 

t 

80 

Luke  iii.  2 

.     .    .    84 

III 

5,  8  . 

.    8«j 

j 

105 

16    . 

...   81 

. 

114 

17 

.   86 

§ 

98 

21 

.   .   .   87 

t 

114 

iv.  14 

.   .    .   96 

125 

vi.  12 

.    .   .   98 

. 

126 

vi.  43 

•  105 

Ill 

,  128 

20 

.  114 

. 

114 

23 

.  in,  128 

. 

"3 

28-36  . 

.  114 

. 

106 

29,  3i 

.  118 

Ill 

,  305 

1.25-37  . 

.   .   .  129 

. 

312 

40 

.   .   .  308 

. 

129 

42 

.   80 

. 

129 

xii.  27 

.  109 

. 

129 

xiv.  17 

'     *    «   "3 

. 

129 

25-33  • 

80,  III 

t 

13* 

xvi.  1  6 

.  106 

87 

xviii.  18-23  . 

.  in 

, 

90 

xx.  20-38  . 

.  129 

T/"»C 

* 

105 
99 

xxii.  1  8 

.   .   .  132 

98 

,  100 

John  i.  9 

.   .   .  225 

"5 

12     . 

.  241 

B 

99 

13 

.   .   .  243 

. 

in 

15-40  - 

.   .   .  241 

383 


384      NEW  TESTAMENT   QUOTATIONS 


John  i.  2 
ii. 
iii. 

iv. 

V. 

vi 

vii 
ix. 

X. 

xi. 
xii 

xiv. 

XV. 

xvii. 
xix. 

XX. 

Acts  viii. 
ix. 

X. 

xi. 
xiii. 

xiv. 
xvi. 

9-34      • 
14-16  . 
i-n   . 

10-14  • 
38        . 
2-9 
17-21  . 

• 

•    243, 

PAGE 
96 

242 
241 

243 
272 

243 
231 
244 
231 
244 
244 

245 
231 
246 

57 
243 
244 
244 
245 
246 

245 

244 
248 

249 
250 

249 
250 
250 
255 
251 
251 
251 
254 
254 
254 
254 
256 
249 
231 
249 
239 
256 
266 
160 
42 
174 
163 
266 
266 

266 
169 
169 
170 

Acts  xvi 

xvii 
xviii 

xix 

28 
•   5 

9 
.    6 

• 

• 

• 

PAGB 
I69 
I69 
194 
170 

181 
169 
266 
169 
42 
1  60 
165 
185 
160 
161 
199 
196 
184 
184 
198 

195 
197 
204 
185 
255 
185 
200 
197 
185 
295 
197 
1  80 
185 
202 
197 
203 

183 
203 

III 

205 
205 

202 

192 
206 
172 
I69 
171 

15 

205 
200 
266 
169 
266 

IgS 

23 
xxii.    6-  1  1  . 
17-22  . 
xxiii.-xxviii. 
xx  vi.  1  2-  1  8 
19        . 
Rom.  v.       2 
vi.     23 
vii.  14,  15,  18, 
22-24   • 
viii.    2  . 

4-9    - 
6. 

19 

- 

184, 

57,  58  • 
17 
38        . 

39 

- 

• 

10 

25 
38-46  . 

4 
23-26  . 
2,  3    • 
4 
6 

10 

17 
18 

20 
23,  26  . 
2 

• 

•     231, 

xvi. 
I  Cor.  i. 
ii. 

iii. 
iv. 

viii. 
ix. 

xi. 

xiii. 

xiv. 

XV. 

12-14  • 
15-17   • 
16 

17 
19 
19-21  . 

21 
26 
29 

31-39    • 

3i,  38,  39 
25,  26  . 
18 
i 

3 
7-12,  14, 

14,  15  • 

22 
I 

13 
20 
I           . 
I 

16 
25-27  • 
I 

•:< 

• 

158, 
196, 

8        . 
ii 

12,  14  . 
15 

18 
6,  9    • 

• 

•        • 

35 
17,  21,  31 
15-20  . 
1-9     . 

2 

8 

9 

44 

25,  26  . 

2 

2,  52 

9-ii  . 

10 

6,7    • 

• 

."    1  68, 

10 

• 

• 

• 

18 
20 

10       169, 

180, 

191, 

196, 

NEW  TESTAMENT   QUOTATIONS     385 


1  Cor.  xv.  20-28  , 

28 

45    • 
46-49 

Xvi.  22 

2  Cor.  i.  5 

ii.  4 
ii.  18 
v.  7-9 

10 

ii 
v.  4 

6-8  , 
8 

J3 

17 

vi.  9 
vii.  5 
x.  10 
xi. 

26 

..  27 
xii. 
I 

4 
7 
8-10 

12 

Gal.  i.  12 

16,  17 
18 
ii.  2 

20 

iv.  13 
14,  15 
'9 

v.  16 

vi.  8 

ii 

17 

Eph.  i.  23 

ii.  4-10 

iii.  8 

iv.  6 

7 


PAGB 

PAGE 

.     .   2OI 

.   194 

18 

•   195 

•   197 

24 

.   187 

•   195,  205 

v.  19 

.      .      .   I89 

.   201 

vi.  10-17 

.  180 

•     •   135 

Phil.  i.  4 

.   .  188 

.   183 

1  8 

.  1  88 

.   159,  192 

21 

.  187,  191 

.   172 

26 

.  188 

.   183 

ii.  5,  12 

.  191 

.   158 

«3 

.   187,  191,  198 

•   183 

16 

.  191 

.   191 

I7 

.  188 

.   1  2O 

iii.  i 

.  188 

.   191 

12,  13 

.  191 

33.  161,  183 

.  188 

.   .  183 

iv.  i 

.  192 

.  182 

4 

.  188 

.  192 

13 

.  191 

.  188 

Col.  i.  24 

.  188 

.   .  178 

27 

.   187,  201 

.   .  164 

29 

.     .    .   I87 

.  1  88 

iii.  16 

.     .     .   I89 

.  169 

23 

i  ^  "* 

206 

•    •  *y« 
•   174 

v-  5-' 

o   .   .   .180 

.   177 

Philem.  9,  10 

.  191,  192 

.   172 

2  Pet.  i.  4 

•   55 

164,  169 

Heh.  v.  8  . 

.  127 

.   163 

i  John  i.  2 

.  224 

.  i6<\ 

3 

.   221 

.    .  169 

ii.  6 

-   235,  255 

.   170,  183 

20 

.   224 

-   174,  177 

iii.  1-3 

.   257 

.  174 

2 

4 

.  192 

iv.  i 

.    .    .  267 

•  195 

8 

21,  223 

•  195 

9 

.   223 

.  174 

13 

.   224 

.    .  198 

16,  19 

.   223 

.    .  186 

16 

•   251 

.  1  80 

Rev.  iii.  12 

.   268 

.   1  88,  202 

v.  9 

.   268 

T  C   T  O  1 

.   268 

;  .  '  268 

xxii.  I,  17 

.    .    •     •  215 

CO 


INDEX 


ABBOTT,  E.  A.,  44,  81,  109,  218 

Accidie,  313 
Adolescence,  48  et  seq. 
Amalarius  of  Metz,  336 
Amida,  229 

Ammonius  Saccus,   284 
Anabaptists,  265 

Angela  of  Foligno,  Blessed,  13, 
47,  51,  52,  62,  63,  68,  138, 
173,  177,  182,  231,  236,  297 

on  ecstacy,  122 

on  mystical  illness,   175 

auditions  of,  232 
Anthony,  St.,  164,  305,  308,  320 

his  life,  311  et  seq. 
Apocalyptic,  85 

of  Jesus,  102  et  seq. 

of  St.  Paul,  200 

Early   Christian,    215    et   seq., 

267  et  seq.,  270  et  seq. 
Aristotle,  280 

Asceticism,  53,  85,  108,  263,  284 
et  seq.,  290,  305  et  seq.,  312 

in  Luke,  80 

in  St.  Paul,  171 

Monastic,  310  et  seq. 

in  St.  Anthony,  312 

in  St.  Macarius,  316 
Atonement,  138 
'Attar,  51 

Attention,  18,  229,  288,  317 
Auditions,  Mystical,   119,  226  et 
seq. 

of  Jesus,  87 

of  St.  Paul,  161,  165,  177,  181 

in  Fourth  Gospel,  228  et  seq. 
Augustine,    St.,    10,    13,    20,    21, 
34.  38,  39.  52,  90.  107,  "5, 
133,  232,  274,  283,  290,  292, 

322.  346 
on  God,  5,  17 


Augustine,  St.  (continued) 

on  Manichaeans,  40 

on  Love,  207 

and  Neoplatonism,  299  et  seq. 

Conversion  of,  299,  301,  312 
Aura,  120 

Baker,  Ven.  Augustine,  307,  311 
Baptism,  279,  283,  342 

of  John,  85,  89 

of  Jesus,  86  et  seq. 

and  new  birth,  272  et  seq. 

symbols  of,  274 
Barnabas,  St.,  167  et  seq. 

Epistle  of,  268,  275 
Basil  the  Great,  St.,  330 

on  contemplation,  293 
Beatific  Vision,  24,  301 
Beloved  Disciple,  The,  229,  248, 

256,  280 

Benedict,  St,  311 
Benedictine    Rule,    309    et   seq.t 

3'4.  330 
Bergson,  Henri 

"  L  Evolution  Cre"atrice,"  4,  8, 
14,  16,  18,  150,  152,  196,  198, 
204 

"  Le  Rire,"  9 

"  Matiere  et  Me'moire,"  19,  88 
Bernard,  St.,  143,  208,  236,  295, 

3"..  354.  364 

on  deification,  324 
Bhagavad-gita,  22 
Bhakti,  22  et  seq. 
Bigg,  Dr.  C. 

*'  Neoplatonism,"  29 

"  Christian  Platonists,"  280,  284 
Boehme,    Jacob,   6,    10,    13,    92, 

106,  166,  246 
Bonaventura,  St.,  295 
Brahminism,  see  Hinduism 


387 


888 


INDEX 


Brandt,  W.,  218 
Brightman,  F.  E. 
"Eastern  Liturgies,"  340,  342, 

361,  362 

Buddhism,  26  et  seq. 
Bunyan,  John,  311 
Burkitt,  F.  C.,  217 
Butler,  Dom  Cuthbert,  305 

Cabrol,  Dom  F.,  275,  333,  348 
Campbell,  J.  M.,   158 
Carpenter,    Dr.    W.    Estlin,    87, 

89,  115 

Cassian,  John,  313 
Catacombs,  274,  335 
Catherine  of  Bologna,  St.,  121 
Catherine    of    Genoa,     St.,    47, 
100,    122,   162,   175,   178,  231 
et  seq.,  312,  340 

her  ecstacies,    121 

on  Purgatory,  324  et  seq. 
Catherine  of  Siena,   St.,  20,  63, 

95,     96,     100,     116,     164,     178 

et  seq.,  182,  189,  324 
Chandler,  Bishop,  104 

on  mystic  illness,  176 
Charismatic  gifts,  153,  262  et  seq. 
Charity,  27 

St.  Paul  on,  206 

Rolle  on,  208 
Christ,  see  also  Jesus 

Humanity  of,  63 

Life  of,  67 

Imitation   of,  68,    157  et  seq., 

277,  286,  307,  309,  339 
Pauline,  170,  173  et  seq.,  198 
Mind  of,  203,  207 
Johannine,    225    et    seq.,    231 

et  seq. 

as  Bread  of  Life,  245 
Christian  character,  in,  191 
Christian  Mysticism,  94,  215,  254, 

278,  304 

in  Fourth  Gospel,  252  et  seq. 
and  Neoplatonism,  298  et  seq. 
Christianity 
Indian,  23 
defined,  33,  42 
as  a  life,  43 

mystical,  44  et  seq.,  252 
Pauline,  145 
second  century,  261 


Christianity  (continued) 
higher  and  lower,  280  et  seq. 
Origen  on,  285 
and  Neoplatonism,  294,  303  et 

seq. 

Christophanies,   149  et  seq. 
Church,  185 

in  St.  Paul,  182,  195 

inner  and  outer,  214,  272,  276, 

304  et  seq.,  338,  342 
primitive,    150  et  seq.,  261   et 

seq. 

ceremonies  of,  276 
of  third  century,  304  et  seq. 
as  ship,  334 

Clement,  Epistle  of  St.,  268 
Clement   of   Alexandria,    30,    34, 
133,  223,  273,  275,  278,  322, 

.343 

his  doctrines,  280  et  seq. 
Cloud  of  Unknowing,   The,    189 
et  seq.,   200,   280,   252,    255, 
3io,  358 

on  contemplation,  296  et  seq. 
Communion,  245,  321,  351,  366 
Contemplation,  59,  245,  262,  282 

et  seq.,  322 
Hindu,  29 

Neoplatonism  and,  287  et  seq. 
Christian,  297  et  seq. 
of  St.  Augustine,  299  et  seq. 
Conversion,   51   et  seq.,   86,    161 

et  seq.,  273,  277,  311,  319 
of  St.  Paul,  160 
of  St.  Anthony,  311 
in  the  Mass,  345 
Cross,  The,  137  et  seq.,  256 
Crucifixion,  The,  see  Jesus 
Cutten,  G.  B.,  117 
Cyprian,  St.,  277,  336 

Dalman,  G.  H.,  89 

Daniel,  37 

Dante,  137,  147,  294,  296 

his  mysticism,  301 
Dark  Night  of  the  Soul,  55,  144, 
248 

in  Jesus,  128  et  seq. 

in  St.  Paul,  181  et  seq. 

in  Fourth  Gospel,  247 
Deissmann,  A.,  108,  159,  179,  199, 

219 


INDEX 


Deification,   73,   97,    107,    143   et 
seq.,  150,  201,  253,  272,  276, 
282,  344 
in  St.  Paul,  188 
in  Fourth  Gospel,  250  et  seq. 
in  Plotinus,  291 
in  St.  Macarius,  318,  327 
in  the  Mass,  367 
Delacroix,    H.,    28,    41,    62,    67, 

97 
on    Christian    Mysticism,    64, 

.302,314 
Devine,  A.,  311 
Didache,  266  et  seq. 
Dionysius    the    Areopagite,    40, 

208,  246,  288,  292,  294,  296, 

3«3»  3!9>  330,  336 
on  Christ,  74 
on  the  Mass,  337,  342,  355,  366, 

367 

Discerning  of  Spirits,  The,  60 
Divine  Dark,  292 
Divine    Fecundity,    110    et    seq., 

134,  246,  290,  308,  311 
in  Jesus,  147  et  seq. 
in  St.  Paul,  159,  192 
in  Fourth  Gospel,  246,  253  et 

seq. 

in  the  Mass,  362,  367 
Divine   Humanity,   25,    104,    124, 
142,    150  et  seq.,    185   et  seq., 
197,  201,  241,  253,  318,  326 
Divine    Sonship,    106,    119,    147, 

264,  273,  281,  290,  317 
in  St.  Paul,  185 
in  Fourth  Gospel,  241,  256  et 

seq. 

Dobschutz,  E.,  102 
Dominic,  St.,  311 
Donne,  John,  149 
Driver,  Prof.,  74 
Drummond,  J.,  217 
Duchesne,  Monseigneur  L.,  275, 


342,  36' 

"L-,  336 
Durandus  of  Mende,  336 


Dura 


nd,  A., 


Eckhart,   Meister,    10,    117,   353, 

J55 


Eckartshausen,  C.  von,  20,  335, 

338 
on  Eucharist,  134 


Ecstacy,  46,  120  et  seq.,  270,  284 

of  Jesus,  117 

dark,  135 

of  St.  Paul,  165 

Neoplatonic,  290  et  seq. 

of  St.  Augustine,  300 
£lan    Vital,   6,    n,   49,    76,   224, 

264,  291,  311 
Emanations,  Doctrine  of,  293  et 

seq. 
Emmerich,   Anne-Catherine,   236 

et  seq. 

Epiphanius,  270 
Epistle  of  Discretion,  60 
Eschatology,  132  et  seq.,  213 

Pauline,  200  et  seq. 

in  Early  Church,  270 
Eternal    Life,    69,    94,    113,    117, 

224,    251,   255,    264,    271,    279, 

292,  301,  305,  328,  337 
Eucharist    (see    also    Mass),    245 
et  seq.,  276,  333 

institution  of,  132  et  seq. 

Clement  on,  283 

primitive,  335 

mystical  aspect  of,  337  et  seq. 
Eucken,  Rudolph,  6 

"Truth  of  Religion,"  4,  5,  7, 
12,   22,   32,   56,   91,  97,   254, 

339 
Ezekiel,  Vision  of,  327 

Fathers,  The,  278  et  seq. 
mysticism  of,  293 

Fecundity,  Divine,  see  Divine 

Fire,  Divine,  323  et  seq. 

Font,  Blessing  of,  274 

Fortescue,  Dr.  Adrian,  273,  341 
et  seq.,  345,  347,  349,  351  et 
seq.,  356  et  seq.,  360  et  seq., 

363.  365  «*  se<l' 
Fourth  Gospel,  see  John,  Gospel 

of 
Fdx,    George,   51,    164    et   seq., 

169,  171,  173,  254,  265,  311 
Francesca  Romana,  St.,  340 
Francis  of  Assist,  St.,  52,  65,  91, 
100,    109   et   sea.,    112,    115, 
117,  161,  178,  189,  214,  313, 

340 

his  ecstacies,  121  et  seq. 
Francis  Xavier,  St.,  116 


890 


INDEX 


Freemasonry,  41 
Frere,  Rev.  W.  H.,  336,  352 
Friends  of  God,   The,    116,    119, 
265,  311 

Gamble,  Rev.  J.,  101 
Gardner,  Edmund,  61,  207,  301 
Gardner,    Prof.    Percy,    40,    74, 
159,  160,  204 

on  Mysteries,  38 

on  St.  Paul,  202 
Germanus  of  Paris,  St.,  336 
Gertrude,  St.,  340 
Glover,  T.  R.,  40 
Gnostics,  41 

Christian,  280  et  seq.,  343 
God 

definitions  of,  15,  17 

in  Bhakti,  22 

Jewish  idea  of,  37 

dual  aspect  of,    66,    107,    226, 
234,  284,  298,  322,  364 

Fatherhood  of,  89,  106 

loss  of,  139 

as  Love,  223,  251,  281 

Transcendence  of,  286  et  seq., 
292  et  seq. 

Desert  of,  297 

as  food  of  soul,  245,  320  et  seq., 

328 

Gordon,  General,  254 
Grace,  49,  80,  134,  153,  177,  180, 

198,  245,  319,  322 
Gregory,  St.,  342 
Guyon,    Madame,    47,    52,    116, 

182 

"  H  "  on  Last  Supper,  132 
Hall,  G.  Stanley,  n,  33,  76 

on  adolescence,  47  et  seq.,  54 
Hannay,    J.    O.    265,    270,    305, 

310,  313  et  seq.,  320 
Harnack  Adolf,   49,  59,  79,   105, 
216,    261,    270,    285,    303    et 
seq.,  310 

on  Christianity,  33,  57 

on  Manichaeans,  40 

on  Jesus,  43 

on  Origen,  286  et  seq. 

on  Monasticism,  306  et  seq. 
Hellenism,  39,  279  et  seq.,  303 
Heracleitus,  15 


Hermits,  Egyptian,  311,  320 
Herrmann,  W.,  58  et  seq. 
Hildegarde,  St.,  103,  311 
Hilton,  Walter,  136,  233,  295 

on  Charity,  207 
Hinduism,  21  et  seq.,  289  et  seq., 

see  also  Mysticism. 
Him,  Yrjo,  335  et  seq. 
Holtzmann,  H.  J.,  216,  217,  280 

et  seq. 

Holtzmann,  Oscar,  87,  115 
Holy    Spirit,    86,    232,   251,    264, 
278,  281,  285 

gift  of,  262 

manifestations  of,  266 

indwelling,  168  et  seq. 

in  St.  Paul,  170,  204 
Hosea,  36 
Hiigel,  Baron  F.  von,  217,  280 

"Mystical  Element  of  Re 
ligion,"  65,  93,  loi,  162,  175, 
177,  230 

"Eternal  Life,"  109,  204,  224, 

289 
Humanity,  see  Divine 

Ignatius  Loyola,  St.,  52,  91,  178, 

254 

on  the  Spiritual  Life,  69 
Ignatius  of  Antioch,  St.,  278 
Illumination,  53,  88,  172  et  seq., 
1 80 

in  Jesus,  96  et  seq. 

in  St.  Paul,  167  et  seq. 

in  Fourth  Gospel,  245 

in  Plotinus,  290 

in  St.  Macarius,  323 

in  the  Mass,  347  et  seq. 
Immortality,     Conditional,     204, 

245,  266^ 

Indian  religion,  see  Hinduism 
Inge,  Dean,  158 
Irenaeus,  269,  278 
Isaiah,  36,  37,  127 
Isidore  of  Seville,  St.,  336 

Jacopone  da  Todl,  112,  243 
Jalalu  'ddin,   15,  92,  208,  242 

on  love,  21 

on  divine  union,  55 
James,  William,  33 


INDEX 


391 


Jane- Frances    de    Chantal,    St., 

340 

Jefferies,  Richard,  52 
Jerome  Emilianus,  St.,  340 
Jesus,  35,  43,  182,  197,  200,  203, 
205,  213,  222,  224,  230,  253, 
261,  278,  296 

Divinity  of,  73  et  seq. 

Humanity  of,  74,  88 

character,  75  et  seq. 

and  Mystics,  68,  77,  136 

development,  81 

in  Luke,  81 

His    baptism,    86    et   seq.,   96, 
272 

Temptation,  91  et  seq. 

Illumination,  94-123 

Ministry,  96  et  seq. 

His  dual  life,  99  et  seq.,  293 

Miracles,  99,   115 

Prayer,  98,   100,   117 

Apocalyptic,    102  et  seq. 

Teaching,  108  et  seq.,  281,  317 

Transfiguration,     114,     117    et 
seq.,    125 

Messiahship,  81,  102,   118,  131 
et  seq. 

Dark  Night  in,   125  et  seq. 

Parousia  discourse,  129 

Entry  into  Jerusalem,   129 

Anointing,  131,  248 

Last  Supper,    132 

Passion,   132  et  seq.,  146*,  247, 

255 

Agony  in  Garden,  135  et  seq. 

Words  from  Cross,  139  et  seq. 

Deification,  145  et  seq. 

Resurrection,    148  et  seq.,  256 

and  St.  Paul,   172 

glorified,  233  et  seq. 

in  Fourth  Gospel,  241,  250  et 
seq. 

Origen  on,  286 

communion  with,   321 

Life  of,   in   the   Mass,   336  et 

seq.,  339.  360 
Joachim  of  Flora,  19,3 
Joan  of  Arc,  Blessed,  88 
Joel,  36 

johannine   Problem,  216 
John,  Apocalypse  of,  215 
John,  the  Apostle,  St.,  217 


John  the  Baptist,  St.,  83  et  seq., 

96,  202,  241 
John  the  Evangelist,  42,  216  et 

seq.,  234,  262,  288 
John  of  the  Cross,  St.,  59,   177, 
179   et  seq.,    184,    208,    227, 
296,  323 

on  Dark  Night,  139 

on  Fire  of  Love,  325  et  seq. 
John  of  Holy  Crosse,  Brother,  62, 

65 

John,  First  Epistle  of,  21,  217 
John,  Gospel  of,  96,  213  et  seq.t 
279.  3l6>  320 

its  character,  219,  224 

and  St.  Paul,  219 

plot  of,  226 

discourses  in,  230  et  seq.t  245, 
249  et  seq.,  252  et  seq. 

incidents    in,     235,    241,    242, 
244  et  seq. 

Mystic  Way  in,  241  et  seq. 

Prologue,  241 

symbol-miracles,  241,  244 

unitive  life  in,  247  et  seq. 

Passion,   248,  255 

Resurrection,  256 
Jones,  Rufus,  116,   119,  265,  270 
Joy,    Mystic,    188    et    seq.,    254, 

345.  349.  357 

Julian  of  Norwich,  194,  208,  221, 
232,  236,  368 

her  revelations,  227 

auditions,  231 

on  Love,  252 
Jiilicher,  A.,  80,  81,  217,  218 

Kabir,  24,  25 
Kenosis,  73 
Kilner,  Walter,  120 
King,  E.  G.,  37 

Kingdom,    The,    56,    94,    126   et 
seq.,  142,  146,  149,  152,  219, 
242,  25$,  293,  311 
Jesus  and,   104  et  seq.,  113  et 

seq. 

in  St.  Paul,  185,  195,  199,  203 
in  Fourth  Gospel,  250 
Krishna,  Cult  of,  23,  229 

Laurence,  Brother,  51,  174 
Law,  William,  6,  38,  42,  137 


392 


INDEX 


Lazarus,  Raising  of,  244,  247 

Lead,  Jane,  103 

Le  Bon,  G.,  265 

Leo,  St.,  153 

Leuba,  41 

Levitation,  115 

Life,  Bergson  on,  8 

and  Mysticism,  18 

Mystic,  32,  34  et  seq.,  65,  106, 
in,    153,    169    et  seq.,    278, 

357 

in  Eucharist,  133 

essence  of,  146 

exhibited  in  Jesus,  150 

Eternal  (q.v.) 

and  Logos,  222 

in  Fourth  Gospel,  244  et  seq. 

Transcendent,  204,  268  et  seq. 
Lightfoot,  Bishop,  180 
Liturgies,  Eastern 

Epiklesis,  361 

Anaphorae,  361  et  seq. 
Liturgy,  272,  333  et  seq. 

Gothic,  274 

Mozarabic,  274 

Nestorian,  340 

of  St.  Clement,  359 

of  St.   John  Chrysostom,  308, 

336,  342,  352,  353,  361,  363 
Logos,    15,    181,    204,    226,    234, 

241  et  seq.,  244  et  seq.,  253, 

286,  326 

in  Fourth  Gospel,  221  et  seq. 
in  Philo,  222 
in  Greek  thought,  222 
in  St.  Clement,  281 
Loisy,  Alfred,  43 
on  Synoptics,  78,  80,  83,    115, 

132 
on    Fourth    Gospel,    217,    230, 

240,  247 
Love,   20,   46,   207   et  seq.,   223, 

3i8 

Game  of,  124,  186 
St.  Paul  on,  206 
God  as,  251,  281 
Science  of,  252 

Luke,  Gospel  of,  79  et  seq.,  86 
et  seq. 

Macarius  of  Egypt,  St.,  243,  275, 
278,  285,  305,  311,  353 


Macarius  of  Egypt  (continued) 
his  life,  315  et  seq. 
mysticism,  316  et  seq. 
on  Jesus,  317 
on  growth,  322 
Mystic  Way  in,  323  et  seq. 
on  Deified  Soul,  327  et  seq. 
his  importance,  330 
Magdalene,  St.  Mary,  109,  131 
Magnificat,  The,  81 
Malaval,  62 
Manichaeans,  40 
Mark,  Gospel  of,  79  et  seq.,  86 

et  seq.,  221 

Martindale,  Rev.  Cyril,  222 
Martyrdom  of  Polycarp,  269 
Martyrs,  262,  305 
Masefield,  John,  50 
Mass,   The  (see  also  Eucharist), 

333  et  seq. 

as  mystic  drama,  335  et  seq. 
and  Life  of  Jesus,  336  et  seq., 

339,  360 

Roman,  338  et  seq. 
Order  of,  339,  341  et  seq. 
Collects,  340,  348 
Mystic    Way    in,    341    et  seq., 

365  et  seq. 

of  Catechumens,  341  et  seq. 
of  Faithful,  341,  351  et  seq. 
Creed,  341,  351 
preparation    of   priest,    344   et 

seq. 

Confiteor,  346 
Kyrie,  347 
Gloria,  347 
Lessons,  348  et  seq. 
„  Gradual,  348 
lubilus,  349 
Sequence,  350 
Prayers  of  Faithful,  352 
Offertory,  252  et  seq. 
Ablutions,  355 
Canon,  356  et  seq. 
Preface,  357 
Sanctus,  359 
Paternoster,  364 
Fraction,  365 
Agnus,  365 
Pax,  366 

Communion,  366  et  seq. 
Matheson,  G.,  158,  174,  177 


INDEX 


393 


Matthew,  Gospel  of,  79  et  seq., 

87 
Mechthild    of    Magdeburg,    180, 

26 


itation,  225,  317 
and  Vision,  235  et  seq. 
Merswin,  Rulman,  122,  162 
Methodius,  272 

on  growth,  277 
Milk  and  Honey,  275 
Miracles 

of  Jesus,  115 

in  Fourth  Gospel,  244 
Mirror  of  Simple  Souls,   20,   34, 

252 

Missal,  Roman,  274,  339  et  seq. 
Missal,  Sarum,  339 
Monasticism,  263,  305  et  seq. 

aim  of,  306  et  seq. 
Monastic  Rule,  309  et  seq.,  313 
Montanism,  269  et  seq. 
Mortification,    91,     171    et    seq., 

182,  243,  310,  316 
Music,  189 
Mysteries,  Pagan,  38 

Clement  on,  282  et  seq. 
Mystical  illness,  175  et  seq. 
Mystical  Theology,  294  et  seq. 
Mysticism,  10,  12 

Negative,  17  et  seq. 

Hindu,   18  et  seq.t  94,  287 

Western,  31 

Christian,  32,  41  etseq.,  60,  100 

Natural,  35 

and  Hellenism,  39 

dual  character  of,  66,  98,   190, 
280  et  seq.,  326  et  seq. 

in   Early  Church,  262  et  seq., 
304  et  seq. 

Neoplatonic,  289  et  seq. 

and  Monasticism,  307 
Mystics,  10,  12,  35,  178,  249 
Mystic  Way,  47  et  seq. 

in  Life  of  Jesus,  67  et  seq.,  77, 
81,  83  et  seq. 

end  of,  144 

in  St.   Paul,    159  et  seq.,    180 
et  seq. 

in  Fourth  Gospel,  241  et  seq. 

in  Cl«nent,  282  et  seq. 

in  Monasticism,  310 

in  St.  Anthony,  312  et  seq. 


Mystic  Way  (continued) 
in  St.  Macarius,  322 
in  the  Mass,  337  et  seq. 

Neale  and  Littledale,  336 
Neoplatonism,  18,  28,  39,  58,  59, 

77,  94,  97,  251,  280  et  seq. 
and  Christianity,  289  et  seq. 

New   Birth,   38,   39,   49   et  seq., 

78,  in,  183 

in  St.  Paul,  162 

in  Fourth  Gospel,  243 

and  Baptism,  272 

in  St.  Macarius,  318  et  seq. 
New   Race,    197,   215,    255,   261, 

264,  279,  339,  366 
Newman,  J.   H.,  76 
Nicodemus,  243 
Nirvana,  26 
Novelty,  85,  94,  268,  273 

in  Jesus,  101 

in  St.  Paul,  169 

in  Early  Church,  278 

in  St.  Macarius,  318 

Oman,  J.  C.,  24 
Onesimus,   192 
Origen,  271,  278,  318,  344 
his  doctrines,  284  et  seq. 
Orphics,  38 

Pachomius,  St.,  305 

Palladius,  316 

Paraclete,  222,  251,  254  et  seq., 

269 
Parousia,  78,  153,  201,  215,  224, 

257,  266,  270,  335 
Jesus  and,  102,  129,  132 
Pascal,  52,  162,  189 
Patmore,  Coventry,  90,  195,  297, 

320,  358 

Paul,  St.,  15,  33,  58,  65,  75,  95, 
133  et  seq.,   140,   151,   157  et 
seq.,  213,  216,  218,  229,  234, 
243>    253    et   se(l'>    262,    266, 
279,  288,  316,  323,  343 
and  Third  Gospel,  79 
conversion  of,   160 
and  Jesus,   163,   172,   183,   197. 

20 1,  205 

Purgation,  163  et  seq. 
Ecstacies,  165,  297 
at  Antioch,  167 


394 


INDEX 


Paul,  St.  (continued) 

Illumination,  167  et  seq.t  201 

first  journey,  168 

asceticism,  171 

"thorn  in  flesh,"  174  et  seq. 

epistles  of,  177  et  seq.,  180 

his  powers,  178 

Dark  Night,  181  et  seq. 

Unitive  Life,  186  et  seq.,  201 

divine  fecundity,  192 

his  theology,  194  et  seq. 

his  antitheses,  195,  198 

on  Salvation,  193,  196,  205 

on  Law,  198 

Justification,  198 

his  eschatology,  200 

his  "Mystery,"  202 

his  Christolpgy,  204 

doctrine  of  immortality,  204 

on  New  Life,  204 

on  New  Man,  205 

on  Charity,  205  et  seq. 

and  Clement,  281 

on  prayer,  295 
Pentecost,   153 
Peter,  St.,  99,  102,  126 

Confession  of,  114,  124 
Peter  of  Alcantara,  St.,  340 
Petersen,  Gerlac,  187,  367 
Pfleiderer,  O.,  218 
Philip  Neri,  St.,  116 
Philo,  222,  254,  280 

on  Logos,  242 

Philothea's  Pilgrimage,  62,  65, 
Plato,  38,  280 
Plotinus,  9,   15,  20,  29,  92,  223, 

284,  289  et  seq.,  300 
Plutarch,  222 
Porphyry,  285 
Poulain,  A.,  184,  311 
Presence,  Sense  of,  97,   173,  228 
et  seq.,  230,  234,  321 

in  Paul,  170 
Prophets,  83,  230,  262,  264,  270 

Hebrew,  36 

Christian,    168,  215,  267 
Psalm  xxii,   140  et  seq. 
Purgation,  53,  112,  166,  180,  290, 
310 

in  Jesus,  91  et  seq. 

of  will,  136 

in  St.  Paul,  163  et  seq. 


273 


Purgation  (continued) 
in  Fourth  Gospel,  242 
in  St.  Anthony,  312 
in  St.  Macarius,  323 
in  the  Mass,  346 

euakers,   265,   320 
uietism,  18,  291 

Ramananda,  24 

Ramanuja,  23 

Ramsay,    Sir  W.,   79,    165,    174, 

176  et  seq.,  195 
R6ce"jac,  E.,  69,  367  et  seq. 
Regeneration,    33,    85,   263, 

et  seq.,  279 
Religious   Orders,   see    Monasti- 

cism. 

Resch,  A.,  231 

ReVille,  Albert,  108,  126,  136 
ReVille,  Jean,  217 

on  Logos,  222 
Rhys  Davids,  Mrs.,  26,  27 
Richard  of  St.  Victor,  60,  92,  in, 

146,  164,  192,  208,  298 
Ritschlianism,  58  et  seq.,  68,  112, 

288 

Rohde,  Erwin,  40 
Rolle,  Richard,  90,  92,  189,  310, 
321 

on  Charity,  208 
Rose  of  Lima,  St.,  189,  340 
Royce,  J.,  17,  29 
Rufinus,  316 
Rutherford,  S.,  127 
Ruysbroeck,    Blessed    John,    20, 
32,  54»  63>  65»  TOO»  '44  et  seq., 
153,  189,  208,  253,  295,  297, 

299.  324.  366  et  se(l' 
on  union,  34 
on  God,  66 
on  freedom,  98 
on  donation,  353 

Sabatier,  L.  A.,  158 
Sabatier,  P.,   162 
Sacraments    (see    also    Baptism, 
Eucharist,     Mass),     33,     88, 

.    133.  263    320 

in  Fourth  Gospel,  245 

and  magic,  275 
Saints,  Commemorations  of,  340, 

360 


INDEX 


395 


Salmon,  G.,  96 

Salvation,  248,  254,  256 
St.  Paul  on,  193,   196,  205 

Saudreau,  A.,  311 

Schweitzer,  Albert,  104 

Second  Coming,  see  Parousia 

Sin,  Sense  of,   172,  182,  313,  317 
et  seq.,  346,  366 

Solomon,  Odes  of,  51,   189,  224, 
244,  269,  273,  275 

Son  of  God  (see  also  Divine  Son- 
ship),  88,  119,  124,  222 

Son  of  Man,  74,  77,  104,  125, 
127,  130,  231 

Song  of  Solomon,  287 

Sonship,  see  Divine 

Spiritual  Marriage,  252 

Starbuck,  E.  T.,  33,  45 

Stigmatisation,  117 

Stoffels,  J.,  316  et  seq. 

Stoics,  280,  317,  322 

Sufis,  21,  24,  32,  54,  229,  288, 
290 

Surrender,  136  et  seq. 

Suso,  Blessed  Henry,  47,  52,  63, 
95,  112,  128,  137,  143,  162,  164, 
166,  177,  182,  360 

Swete,  H.  B.,  268,  270,  277 
on  St.  Paul,  203 

Synoptic  Gospels,  78  et  seq.,  84, 
126,  215,  225,  242 

Tagore,      Rabindranath,      15,  23, 

31,  208 
on  song,  190 
Tauler,  John,  35,  127,  175,  297 

on  suffering,  137 
Teaching  of  the  Apostles,  The, 

266  et  seq. 

Teresa,  St.,   47,  51,   52,   63,   95, 
101,    112,    116,    121    et    seq., 
136   et   seq.,    164,    167,    170, 
173,    177  et    seq.,    182,    189, 
214,  229,  236,  254,  295  et  seq. 
on  auditions,  230,  232 
Tertullian,  270,  275,  335 
Thebaid,  Hermits  of,  313,  3T5 
Theodore  of  Antioch,  271 
Theologia  G^rmanica,  66,  67,  89, 

200,  310,  344.  357 
Third  Race,  The,  49,   261,   266, 
268 


Thomas  a  Kempis,  68,  127,  246, 

309 

on  the  Cross,  138 

on  heavenly  conversation,  321 

on  the  Mass,  360 
Thomas  Aquinas,  St.,  146,  301 

on  love,  21 

Adoro   te,   364 

Lauda  Sion,  365 
Trisagion,  347 
Tyrrell,  George,  230 

Underbill,  Evelyn,  47 
Union  with  God,  24,  107,   140  et 
seq.,    181,    246,    264,   282    el 
seq.,  313 
as  Absolute,  29 
of  Jesus,  97  et  seq. 
in  St.  Paul,  187  et  seq.,  204 
in   Fourth  Gospel,  220,  247  et 

seq.  _ 

in  Plotinus,  291 
in  the  Mass,  337,  365  et  seq. 
Unitive  Life,  55,  73,  137,  144  et 

seq.,  290 
in  Jesus,  97,  145 
in  St.  Paul,  184  et  seq. 
jin  Fourth  Gospel,  220,  246  et 

seq. 

in  St.  Macarius,  327  et  seq. 
Upanishads,   15 

Valens,  321 

Via  Negativa,  17,  286,  289  et  seq. 

Vishnuism,  23,  25 

Visions,  226  et  seq. 
of  Jesus,  87 
transfiguration,  118 
of  St.  Paul,  161,  165,  181 
in  Fourth  Gospel,  228  et  seq., 

235  et  seq. 

of  A.-C.  Emmerich,  236  et  seq. 
of  Ezekiel,  327 

Voices,  see  Auditions 

Vries,  H.  de.,  52 

Way,  Arthur,  180 
Weinel,  H.,  158 
Weizsacker,  C.  von,  151,  217 
Wernle,  P.,  158,  163,  218 
Wesley,  J.,  314 
Wilpert,  J.,  274  et  seq. 
Wrede,  W.,  159 


RICHARD  CLAY  &  SONS,  LIMITED, 
BRUNSWICK  STREET,  STAMFORD  STREET,  S.I 
AND  BUNGAY,  SUFFOLK. 


A  Book  of  Verse  by  the  Author  of  "The  Mystic  Way.1 


IMMANENCE 

Crown  8vo.       Gilt  top.       Cloth  4/6  net 

(Third  impression.) 


SOME   PRESS  OPINIONS 

THE  TIMES. 

"Among  all  the  beauty,  fine  workmanship,  and  lyric  movement  offered  by  the 

volumes  before  us,  we  find  only  two  poets  who  are  in  any  way  original Miss 

Evelyn  Underbill  and  .  .  .  The  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  would 
recognise  all  her  [Miss  Underbill's]  methods ;  for  she  speaks  with  the  voice  of 
that  age's  "high  church"  or  Catholic  poets.  But  in  the  twentieth  century 
such  mysticism  as  hers  puts  her  alone  among  living  poets.  .  .  .  Miss  Underbill 
sings  with  passion  and  urgent  movement,  and  the  richness  and  loftiness  of  her 
work  cannot  fail  to  find  admirers,  even  among  those  who  are  far  from  sharing  her 
view  of  life." 

DAILY  NEWS. 

"  Miss  Underbill  gives  us  in  her  book  the  imaginative  expression  of  a  vision  of 
life.  .  .  .  Her  muse  is  in  strict  intellectual  harness,  like  the  muse  of  so  many 
of  the  good  mystical  poets.  Her  spiritual  attitude  is  original,  because  it  is  so 
intensely  her  own.  It  is  her  intellectual  governance,  however,  which  gives  her 
work  its  most  immediate  distinction,  for  by  this  she  is  enabled  to  make  use  of 
even  a  frugal  gift  of  imagery  to  suggest  something  of  the  riches  and  the  depth  and 
the  reality  of  her  vision.  Her  right  use  of  words  differentiates  her  work  from  that 
of  the  majority  of  modern  religious  poets,  but  it  is  the  spiritual  beauty  imprisoned 
in  these  words  which  will  send  readers  back  to  the  book  again  and  again." 

WESTMINSTER  GAZETTE. 

"All  the  phases  of  the  mystic  life  are  explored  keenly  by  Miss  Underbill's 
verse." 

MORNING  POST. 

"She  is  a  mystic,  but  her  mysticism  is  the  outcome  of  keen  consistent  thought — 
not  a  form  of  that  sensuousness  of  devout  women  which  springs  from  the  exhaus 
tion  of  the  human  heart,  not  from  the  power  of  logical  abstraction  combined  with 
freshness  and  immediacy  of  emotion.  Her  self-expression  has  its  intellectual  as 
well  as  its  emotional  side ;  her  message  and  her  mandate  are  for  those  who  can 
think  as  well  as  feel  and  require  a  creed  as  well  as  a  faith.  To  her,  God  is  the 
reality  in  all  things.*' 

THE  OBSERVER. 

«'  Miss  Evelyn  Underbill's  book  on  '  Mysticism '  is  of  course  very  well  known. 
Her  poems  are  remarkable  for  a  religious  ecstasy  that  is  not  often  to  be  met  with." 


J.  M.  DENT  &  SONS,  Ltd.,  Aldine  House,  Bedford  Street,  W.C. 


DATE  DUE 


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