Chapter II: Part 2

The mystics are much inclined to adopt, in a modified form, the old notion of an _anima mundi_. When Erigena says, "Be well assured that the Word--the second Person of the Trinity--is the Nature of all things," he means that the Logos is a cosmic principle, the Personality of which the universe is the external expression or appearance.[47]

We are not now concerned with cosmological speculations, but the bearing of this theory on human personality is obvious. If the Son of God is regarded as an all-embracing and all-pervading cosmic principle, the "mystic union" of the believer with Christ becomes something much closer than an ethical harmony of two mutually exclusive wills. The question which exercises the mystics is not whether such a thing as fusion of personalities is possible, but whether, when the soul has attained union with its Lord, it is any longer conscious of a life distinct from that of the Word. We shall find that some of the best mystics went astray on this point. They teach a real _substitution_ of the Divine for human nature, thus depersonalising man, and running into great danger of a perilous arrogance. The mistake is a fatal one even from the speculative side, for it is only on the analogy of human personality that we can conceive of the perfect personality of God; and without personality the universe falls to pieces. Personality is not only the strictest unity of which we have any experience; it is the fact which creates the postulate of unity on which all philosophy is based.

But it is possible to save personality without regarding the human spirit as a monad, independent and sharply separated from other spirits. Distinction, not separation, is the mark of personality; but it is separation, not distinction, that forbids union. The error, according to the mystic's psychology, is in regarding consciousness of self as the measure of personality. The depths of personality are unfathomable, as Heraclitus already knew;[48] the light of consciousness only plays on the surface of the waters. Jean Paul Richter is a true exponent of this characteristic doctrine when he says, "We attribute far too small dimensions to the rich empire of ourself, if we omit from it the unconscious region which resembles a great dark continent. The world which our memory peoples only reveals, in its revolution, a few luminous points at a time, while its immense and teeming mass remains in shade.... We daily see the conscious passing into unconsciousness; and take no notice of the bass accompaniment which our fingers continue to play, while our attention is directed to fresh musical effects.[49]" So far is it from being true that the self of our immediate consciousness is our true personality, that we can only attain personality, as spiritual and rational beings, by passing beyond the limits which mark us off as separate individuals. Separate individuality, we may say, is the bar which prevents us from realising our true privileges as persons.[50] And so the mystic interprets very literally that maxim of our Lord, in which many have found the fundamental secret of Christianity: "He that will save his life--his soul, his personality--shall lose it; and he that will lose his life for My sake shall find it." The false self must die--nay, must "die daily," for the process is gradual, and there is no limit to it. It is a process of infinite _expansion_--of realising new correspondences, new sympathies and affinities with the not-ourselves, which affinities condition, and in conditioning constitute, our true life as persons. The paradox is offensive only to formal logic. As a matter of experience, no one, I imagine, would maintain that the man who has practically realised, to the fullest possible extent, the common life which he draws from his Creator, and shares with all other created beings,--so realised it, I mean, as to draw from that consciousness all the influences which can play upon him from outside,--has thereby dissipated and lost his personality, and become less of a person than another who has built a wall round his individuality, and lived, as Plato says, the life of a shell-fish.[51]

We may arrive at the same conclusion by analysing that unconditioned sense of duty which we call _conscience_. This moral sense cannot be a fixed code implanted in our consciousness, for then we could not explain either the variations of moral opinion, or the feeling of _obligation_ (as distinguished from necessity) which impels us to obey it. It cannot be the product of the existing moral code of society, for then we could not explain either the genesis of that public opinion or the persistent revolt against its limitations which we find in the greatest minds. The only hypothesis which explains the facts is that in conscience we feel the motions of the universal Reason which strives to convert the human organism into an organ of itself, a belief which is expressed in religious language by saying that it is God who worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.

If it be further asked, Which is our personality, the shifting _moi_ (as Fénelon calls it), or the ideal self, the end or the developing states? we must answer that it is both and neither, and that the root of mystical religion is in the conviction that it is at once both and neither.[52] The _moi_ strives to realise its end, but the end being an infinite one, no process can reach it. Those who have "counted themselves to have apprehended" have thereby left the mystical faith; and those who from the notion of a _progressus ad infinitum_ come to the pessimistic conclusion, are equally false to the mystical creed, which teaches us that we are already potentially what God intends us to become. The command, "Be ye perfect," is, like all Divine commands, at the same time a promise.

It is stating the same paradox in another form to say that we can only achieve inner _unity_ by transcending mere individuality. The independent, impervious self shows its unreality by being inwardly discordant. It is of no use to enlarge the circumference of our life, if the fixed centre is always the _ego_. There are, if I may press the metaphor, other circles with other centres, in which we are vitally involved. And thus sympathy, or love, which is sympathy in its highest power, is the great _atoner_, within as well as without. The old Pythagorean maxim, that "a man must be _one_,[53]" is echoed by all the mystics. He must be one as God is one, and the world is one; for man is a microcosm, a living mirror of the universe. Here, once more, we have a characteristic mystical doctrine, which is perhaps worked out most fully in the "_Fons Vitæ_" of Avicebron (Ibn Gebirol), a work which had great influence in the Middle Ages. The doctrine justifies the use of _analogy_ in matters of religion, and is of great importance. One might almost dare to say that all conclusions about the world above us which are _not_ based on the analogy of our own mental experiences, are either false or meaningless.

The idea of man as a microcosm was developed in two ways. Plotinus said that "every man is double," meaning that one side of his soul is in contact with the intelligible, the other with the sensible world. He is careful to explain that the doctrine of Divine Immanence does not mean that God _divides_ Himself among the many individuals, but that they partake of Him according to their degrees of receptivity, so that each one is potentially in possession of all the fulness of God. Proclus tries to explain how this can be. "There are three sorts of _Wholes_--the first, anterior to the parts; the second, composed of the parts; the third, knitting into one stuff the parts and the whole.[54]" In this third sense the whole resides in the parts, as well as the parts in the whole. St. Augustine states the same doctrine in clearer language.[55] It will be seen at once how this doctrine encourages that class of Mysticism which bids us "sink into the depths of our own souls" in order to find God.

The other development of the theory that man is a microcosm is not less important and interesting. It is a favourite doctrine of the mystics that man, in his individual life, recapitulates the spiritual history of the race, in much the same way in which embryologists tell us that the unborn infant recapitulates the whole process of physical evolution. It follows that the Incarnation, the central fact of human history, must have its analogue in the experience of the individual. We shall find that this doctrine of the birth of an infant Christ in the soul is one of immense importance in the systems of Eckhart, Tauler, and our Cambridge Platonists. It is a somewhat perilous doctrine, as we shall see; but it is one which, I venture to think, has a future as well as a past, for the progress of modern science has greatly strengthened the analogies on which it rests. I shall show in my next Lecture how strongly St. Paul felt its value.

This brief introduction will, I hope, have indicated the main characteristics of mystical theology and religion. It is a type which is as repulsive to some minds as it is attractive to others. Coleridge has said that everyone is born a Platonist or an Aristotelian, and one might perhaps adapt the epigram by saying that everyone is naturally either a mystic or a legalist. The classification does, indeed, seem to correspond to a deep difference in human characters; it is doubtful whether a man could be found anywhere whom one could trust to hold the scales evenly between--let us say--Fénelon and Bossuet. The cleavage is much the same as that which causes the eternal strife between tradition and illumination, between priest and prophet, which has produced the deepest tragedies in human history, and will probably continue to do so while the world lasts. The legalist--with his conception of God as the righteous Judge dispensing rewards and punishments, the "Great Taskmaster" in whose vineyard we are ordered to labour; of the Gospel as "the new law," and of the sanction of duty as a "categorical imperative"--will never find it easy to sympathise with those whose favourite words are St. John's triad--light, life, and love, and who find these the most suitable names to express what they know of the nature of God. But those to whom the Fourth Gospel is the brightest jewel in the Bible, and who can enter into the real spirit of St. Paul's teaching, will, I hope, be able to take some interest in the historical development of ideas which in their Christian form are certainly built upon those parts of the New Testament.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: See Appendix A for definitions of Mysticism and Mystical Theology.]

[Footnote 3: See Appendix B for a discussion of the influence of the Greek mysteries upon Christian Mysticism.]

[Footnote 4: Tholuck accepts the former derivation (cf. Suidas, [Greek: mystêria eklêthêsan para to tous akouontas myein to stoma kai mêdeni tauta exêgeisthai]); Petersen, the latter. There is no doubt that [Greek: myêsis] was opposed to [Greek: epopteia], and in this sense denoted _incomplete_ initiation; but it was also made to include the whole process. The prevailing use of the adjective [Greek: mystikos] is of something seen "through a glass darkly," some knowledge purposely wrapped up in symbols.]

[Footnote 5: So Hesychius says, [Greek: Mystai, apo myô, myontes gar tas aisthêseis kai exô tôn sarkikôn phrontidôn genomenoi, outô tas theias analampseis edechonto.] Plotinus and Proclus both use [Greek: myô] of the "closed eye" of rapt contemplation.]

[Footnote 6: I cannot agree with Lasson (in his book on Meister Eckhart) that "the connexion with the Greek mysteries throws no light on the subject." No writer had more influence upon the growth of Mysticism in the Church than Dionysius the Areopagite, whose main object is to present Christianity in the light of a Platonic mysteriosophy. The same purpose is evident in Clement, and in other Christian Platonists between Clement and Dionysius. See Appendix B.]

[Footnote 7: It should also be borne in mind that every historical example of a mystical movement may be expected to exhibit characteristics which are determined by the particular forms of religious deadness in opposition to which it arises. I think that it is generally easy to separate these secondary, accidental characteristics from those which are primary and integral, and that we shall then find that the underlying substance, which may be regarded as the essence of Mysticism as a type of religion, is strikingly uniform.]

[Footnote 8: The analogy used by Plotinus (_Ennead_ i. 6. 9) was often quoted and imitated: "Even as the eye could not behold the sun unless it were itself sunlike, so neither could the soul behold God if it were not Godlike." Lotze (_Microcosmus_, and cf. _Metaphysics_, 1st ed., p. 109) falls foul of Plotinus for this argument. "The reality of the external world is utterly severed from our senses. It is vain to call the eye sunlike, as if it needed a special occult power to copy what it has itself produced: fruitless are all mystic efforts to restore to the intuitions of sense, by means of a secret identity of mind with things, a reality outside ourselves." Whether the subjective idealism of this sentence is consistent with the subsequent dogmatic assertion that "nature is animated throughout," it is not my province to determine. The latter doctrine is held by a large school of mystics: the acosmistic tendency of the former has had only too much attraction for mystics of another school.]

[Footnote 9: This distinction is drawn by Origen, and accepted by all the mystical writers.]

[Footnote 10: Faith goes so closely hand in hand with love that the mystics seldom try to separate them, and indeed they need not be separated. William Law's account of their operation is characteristic. "When the seed of the new birth, called the inward man, has faith awakened in it, its faith is not a notion, but a real strong essential hunger, an attracting or magnetic desire of Christ, which as it proceeds from a seed of the Divine nature in us, so it attracts and unites with its like: it lays hold on Christ, puts on the Divine nature, and in a living and real manner grows powerful over all our sins, and effectually works out our salvation" (_Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration_).]

[Footnote 11: R.L. Nettleship, _Remains_.]

[Footnote 12: "Nescio si a quoquam homine quartus (gradus) in hac vita perfecte apprehenditur, ut se scilicet diligat homo tantum propter Deum. Asserant hoc si qui experti sunt: mihi (fateor) impossibile videtur" (_De diligendo Deo_, xv.; _Epist_. xi. 8).]

[Footnote 13: From a sermon by Smith, the Cambridge Platonist. Plotinus, too, says well, [Greek: ei tis allo eidos êdonês peri ton spoudaion bion zêtei, ou ton spoudaion bion zêtei] (_Ennead_ i. 4. 12).]

[Footnote 14: From Smith's sermons.]

[Footnote 15: Pindar's [Greek: genoio oios essi mathôn] is a fine mystical maxim. (_Pyth._ 2. 131.)]

[Footnote 16: Strictly, the unitive road (_via_) leads to the contemplative life (_vita_). Cf. Benedict, xiv., _De Servorum Dei beatific_., iii. 26, "Perfecta hæc mystica unio reperitur regulariter in perfecto contemplativo qui in vita purgativa et illuminativa, id est meditativa, et contemplativa diu versatus, ex speciali Dei favore ad infusam contemplativam evectus est." On the three ways, Suarez says, "Distinguere solent mystici tres vias, purgativam, illuminativam, et unitivam." Molinos was quite a heterodox mystic in teaching that there is but a "unica via, scilicet interna," and this proposition was condemned by a Bull of Innocent XI.]

[Footnote 17: In Plotinus the civic virtues _precede_ the cathartic; but they are not, as with some perverse mystics, considered to lie _outside_ the path of ascent.]

[Footnote 18: Tauler is careful to put social service on its true basis. "One can spin," he says, "another can make shoes; and all these are gifts of the Holy Ghost. I tell you, if I were not a priest, I should esteem it a great gift that I was able to make shoes, and would try to make them so well as to be a pattern to all." In a later Lecture I shall revert to the charge of indolent neglect of duties, so often preferred against the mystics.]

[Footnote 19: R.L. Nettleship, _Remains_.]

[Footnote 20: In a Roman Catholic manual I find: "Non raro sub nomine theologiæ mysticæ intelligitur etiam ascesis, sed immerito. Nam ascesis consuetas tantum et tritas perfectionis semitas ostendit, mystica autem adhuc excellentiorem viam demonstrat." This is to identify "mystical theology" with the higher rungs of the ladder. It has been used in this curious manner from the Middle Ages. Ribet says, "La mystique, comme science spéciale, fait partie de la théologie ascétique"; that part, namely, "dans lequel l'homme est réduit à la passivité par l'action souveraine de Dieu." "L'ascèse" is defined as "l'ascension de l'âme vers Dieu."]

[Footnote 21: Cf. Professor W. Wallace's collected _Lectures and Essays_, p. 276.]

[Footnote 22: See Appendix C on the Doctrine of Deification.]

[Footnote 23: So Fénelon, after asserting the truth of mystical "transformation," adds: "It is false to say that transformation is a deification of the real and natural soul, or a hypostatic union, or an unalterable conformity with God."]

[Footnote 24: _Life of Tennyson_, vol. i. p. 320. The curious experience, that the repetition of his own name induced a kind of trance, is used by the poet in his beautiful mystical poem, "The Ancient Sage." It would, indeed, have been equally easy to illustrate this topic from Wordsworth's prose and Tennyson's poetry.]

[Footnote 25: See the very interesting note in Harnack, _History of Dogma_, vol. i. p. 53.]

[Footnote 26: The Abbé Migne says truly, "Ceux qui traitent les mystiques de visionnaires seraient fort étonnés de voir quel peu de cas ils font des visions en elles-mémes." And St. Bonaventura says of visions, "Nec faciunt sanctum nec ostendunt: alioquin Balaam sanctus esset, _et asina_, quæ vidit Angelum."]

[Footnote 27: The following passage from St. Francis de Sales is much to the same effect as those referred to in the text: "Les philosophes mesmes ont recogneu certaines espèces d'extases naturelles faictes par la véhémente application de l'esprit à la considération des choses relevées. Une marque de la bonne et sainete extase est qu'elle ne se prend ny attache jamais tant à l'entendement qu'à la volonté, laquelle elle esmeut, eschauffe, et remplit d'une puissante affection envers Dieu; de manière que si l'extase est plus belle que bonne, plus lumineuse qu'affective, elle est grandement douteuse et digne de soupçon."]

[Footnote 28: Some of my readers may find satisfaction in the following passage of Jeremy Taylor: "Indeed, when persons have long been softened with the continual droppings of religion, and their spirits made timorous and apt for impression by the assiduity of prayer, and the continual dyings of mortification--the fancy, which is a very great instrument of devotion, is kept continually warm, and in a disposition and aptitude to take fire, and to flame out in great ascents; and when they suffer transportations beyond the burdens and support of reason, they suffer they know not what, and call it what they please." Henry More, too, says that those who would "make their whole nature desolate of all animal figurations whatever," find only "a waste, silent solitude, and one uniform parchedness and vacuity. And yet, while a man fancies himself thus wholly Divine, he is not aware how he is even then held down by his animal nature; and that it is nothing but the stillness and fixedness of melancholy that thus abuses him, instead of the true Divine principle."]

[Footnote 29: Plato, _Phædrus_, 244, 245; Ion, 534.]

[Footnote 30: Lacordaire, _Conférences_, xxxvii.]

[Footnote 31: Compare, too, the vigorous words of Henry More, the most mystical of the group: "He that misbelieves and lays aside clear and cautious reason in things that fall under the discussion of reason, upon the pretence of hankering after some higher principle (which, a thousand to one, proves but the infatuation of melancholy, and a superstitious hallucination), is as ridiculous as if he would not use his natural eyes about their proper object till the presence of some supernatural light, or till he had got a pair of spectacles made of the crystalline heaven, or of the _cælum empyreum_, to hang upon his nose for him to look through."]

[Footnote 32: There is, of course, a sense in which any strong feeling lifts us "above reason." But this is using "reason" in a loose manner.]

[Footnote 33: [Greek: ho nous basileus], says Plotinus.]

[Footnote 34: Roman Catholic writers can assert that "la plupart des contemplatifs étaient dépourvus de toute culture littéraire." But their notion of "contemplation" is the passive reception of "supernatural favours,"--on which subject more will be said in Lectures IV. and VII.]

[Footnote 35: "Die Mystik ist formlose Speculation," Noack, _Christliche Mystik_, p. 18.]

[Footnote 36: The Atomists, from Epicurus downwards, have been especially odious to the mystics.]

[Footnote 37: The theory that time is real, but not space, leads us into grave difficulties. It is the root of the least satisfactory kind of evolutionary optimism, which forgets, in the first place, that the idea of perpetual progress in time is hopelessly at variance with what we know of the destiny of the world; and, in the second place, that a mere _progressus_ is meaningless. Every created thing has its fixed goal in the realisation of the idea which was immanent in it from the first.]

[Footnote 38: Origen in _Matth._, Com. Series, 100; _Contra Celsum_, ii. 64. Referred to by Bigg, _Christian Platonists of Alexandria_, p. 191.]

[Footnote 39: _Paradiso_ viii. 13--

"Io non m'accorsi del salire in ella;
Ma d'esserv' entro mi fece assai fede
La donna mia ch'io vidi far più bella." ]

[Footnote 40: "Deo nihil opponitur," says Erigena.]

[Footnote 41: Compare Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, where it is shown that the essential attributes of Reality are _harmony_ and _inclusiveness_.]

[Footnote 42: I.e. "necessary" or "expedient."]

[Footnote 43: _Life_, vol. i. p. 55.]

[Footnote 44: J. Smith, _Select Discourses_, v. So Bernard says (_De Consid._ v. I), "quid opus est scalis tenenti iam solium?"]

[Footnote 45: Aug. _De Libero Arbitrio_, ii. 16, 17.]

[Footnote 46: _Troilus and Cressida_, Act III. Scene 3.]

[Footnote 47: This idea of the world as a living being is found in Plotinus: and Origen definitely teaches that "as our body, while consisting of many members, is yet an organism which is held together by one soul, so the universe is to be thought of as an immense living being which is upheld by the power and the Word of God." He also holds that the sun and stars are spiritual beings. St. Augustine, too (_De Civitate Dei_, iv. 12, vii. 5), regards the universe as a living organism; and the doctrine reappears much later in Giordano Bruno. According to this theory, we are subsidiary members of an all-embracing organism, and there may be intermediate will-centres between our own and that of the universal Ego. Among modern systems, that of Fechner is the one which seems to be most in accordance with these speculations. He views life under the figure of a number of concentric circles of consciousness, within an all-embracing circle which represents the consciousness of God.]

[Footnote 48: [Greek: psuchês peirata ouk an exeuroio pasan epiporeuomenos hodon outô bathyn logon echei], Frag. 71.]

[Footnote 49: J.P. Richter, _Selina_. Compare, too, Lotze, _Microcosmus_: "Within us lurks a world whose form we imperfectly apprehend, and whose working, when in particular phases it comes under our notice, surprises us with foreshadowings of unknown depths in our being."]

[Footnote 50: As Lotze says, "The finite being does not contain in itself the conditions of its own existence." It must struggle to attain to complete personality; or rather, since personality belongs unconditionally only to God, to such a measure of personality as is allotted to us. Eternal life is nothing than the attainment of full personality, a conscious existence in God.]

[Footnote 51: J.A. Picton (_The Mystery of Matter_, p. 356) puts the matter well: "Mysticism consists in the spiritual realisation of a grander and a boundless unity, that humbles all self-assertion by dissolving it in a wider glory. It does not follow that the sense of individuality is necessarily weakened. But habitual contemplation of the Divine unity impresses men with the feeling that individuality is phenomenal only. Hence the paradox of Mysticism. For apart from this phenomenal individuality, we should not know our own nothingness, and personal life is good only through the bliss of being lost in God. [Rather, I should say, through the bliss of finding our true life, which is hid with Christ in God.] True religious worship doth not consist in the acknowledgment of a greatness which is estimated by comparison, but rather in the sense of a Being who surpasses all comparison, because He gives to phenomenal existences the only reality they can know. Hence the deepest religious feeling necessarily shrinks from thinking of God as a kind of gigantic Self amidst a host of minor selves. The very thought of such a thing is a mockery of the profoundest devotion."]

[Footnote 52: See, further, Appendix C, pp. 366-7.]

[Footnote 53: [Greek: hena genesthai ton anthrôpon dei]: Pythagoras quoted by Clement. Cf. Plotinus, _Enn._ vi. 9. I, [Greek: kai hugieia de, hotan eis hen syntachthê to sôma, kai kallos hotan hê tou henos ta moria kataschê physis, kai aretê de psychês hotan eis hen kai eis mian homologian henôthê].]

[Footnote 54: Proclus, _in Tim._ 83. 265.]

[Footnote 55: Aug. _Ep._ 187. 19: "Deus totus adesse rebus omnibus potest, _et singulis totus_, quamvis in quibus habitat habeant eum pro suæ capacitatis diversitate, alii amplius, alii minus." More clearly still, Bonaventura, _Itin. ment. ad Deum_, 5: "Totum intra omnia, et totum extra: ac per hoc est sphæra intelligibilis, cuius centrum est ubique, et circumferentia nusquam."]

LECTURE II

[Greek: "To eu zên edidaxen epiphaneis ôs didaskalos, hina to aei zên husteron ôs theos chorêgêsê."]

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA.

"But souls that of His own good life partake
He loves as His own self: dear as His eye
They are to Him; He'll never them forsake:
When they shall die, then God Himself shall die:
They live, they live in blest eternity."

HENRY MORE.

"Amor Patris Filiique,
Par amborum, et utrique
Compar et consimilis:
Cuncta reples, cuncta foves,
Astra regis, coelum moves,
Permanens immobilis.

"Te docente nil obscurum,
Te præsente nil impurum;
Sub tua præsentia
Gloriatur mens iucunda;
Per te læta, per te munda
Gaudet conscientia.

"Consolator et fundator,
Habitator et amator
Cordium humilium;
Pelle mala, terge sordes,
Et discordes fac concordes,
Et affer præsidium."

ADAM OF ST. VICTOR

THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE

"That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all the fulness of God."--EPH. iii. 17-19.

The task which now lies before me is to consider how far that type of religion and religious philosophy, which I tried in my last Lecture to depict in outline, is represented in and sanctioned by Holy Scripture. I shall devote most of my time to the New Testament, for we shall not find very much to help us in the Old. The Jewish mind and character, in spite of its deeply religious bent, was alien to Mysticism. In the first place, the religion of Israel, passing from what has been called Henotheism--the worship of a national God--to true Monotheism, always maintained a rigid notion of individuality, both human and Divine. Even prophecy, which is mystical in its essence, was in the early period conceived as unmystically as possible, Balaam is merely a mouthpiece of God; his message is external to his personality, which remains antagonistic to it. And, secondly, the Jewish doctrine of ideas was different from the Platonic. The Jew believed that the world, and the whole course of history, existed from all eternity in the mind of God, but as an unrealised purpose, which was actualised by degrees as the scroll of events was unfurled. There was no notion that the visible was in any way inferior to the invisible, or lacking in reality. Even in its later phases, after it had been partially Hellenised, Jewish idealism tended to crystallise as Chiliasm, or in "Apocalypses," and not, like Platonism, in the dream of a perfect world existing "yonder." In fact, the Jewish view of the external world was mainly that of naïve realism, but strongly pervaded by belief in an Almighty King and Judge. Moreover, the Jew had little sense of the Divine _in_ nature: it was the power of God _over_ nature which he was jealous to maintain. The majesty of the elemental forces was extolled in order to magnify the greater power of Him who made and could unmake them, and whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain. The weakness and insignificance of man, as contrasted with the tremendous power of God, is the reflection which the contemplation of nature generally produced in his mind. "How can a man be just with God?" asks Job; "which removeth the mountains, and they know it not; when He overturneth them in His anger; which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble; which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not, and sealeth up the stars.... He is not a man, as I am, that I should answer Him, that we should come together in judgment. There is no daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both." Nor does the answer that came to Job out of the whirlwind give any hint of a "daysman" betwixt man and God, but only enlarges on the presumption of man's wishing to understand the counsels of the Almighty. Absolute submission to a law which is entirely outside of us and beyond our comprehension, is the final lesson of the book.[56] The nation exhibited the merits and defects of this type. On the one hand, it showed a deep sense of the supremacy of the moral law, and of personal responsibility; a stubborn independence and faith in its mission; and a strong national spirit, combined with vigorous individuality; but with these virtues went a tendency to externalise both religion and the ideal of well-being: the former became a matter of forms and ceremonies; the latter, of worldly possessions. It was only after the collapse of the national polity that these ideals became transmuted and spiritualised. Those disasters, which at first seemed to indicate a hopeless estrangement between God and His people, were the means of a deeper reconciliation. We can trace the process, from the old proverb that "to see God is death," down to that remarkable passage in Jeremiah where the approaching advent, or rather restoration, of spiritual religion, is announced with all the solemnity due to so glorious a message. "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah.... After those days, saith the Lord, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord.[57]" That this knowledge of God, and the assurance of blessedness which it brings, is the reward of righteousness and purity, is the chief message of the great prophets and psalmists. "Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil, he shall dwell on high; his place of defence shall be the munitions of rocks: bread shall be given unto him; his waters shall be sure. Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty; they shall behold the land that is very far off.[58]"

This passage of Isaiah bears a very close resemblance to the 15th and 24th Psalms; and there are many other psalms which have been dear to Christian mystics. In some of them we find the "_amoris desiderium_"--the thirst of the soul for God--which is the characteristic note of mystical devotion; in others, that longing for a safe refuge from the provoking of all men and the strife of tongues, which drove so many saints into the cloister. Many a solitary ascetic has prayed in the words of the 73rd Psalm: "Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever." And verses like, "I will hearken what the Lord God will say concerning me," have been only too attractive to quietists. Other familiar verses will occur to most of us. I will only add that the warm faith and love which inspired these psalms is made more precious by the reverence for _law_ which is part of the older inheritance of the Israelites.

There are many, I fear, to whom "the mystical element in the Old Testament" will suggest only the Cabbalistic lore of types and allegories which has been applied to all the canonical books, and with especial persistency and boldness to the Song of Solomon. I shall give my opinion upon this class of allegorism in the seventh Lecture of this course, which will deal with symbolism as a branch of Mysticism. It would be impossible to treat of it here without anticipating my discussion of a principle which has a much wider bearing than as a method of biblical exegesis. As to the Song of Solomon, its influence upon Christian Mysticism has been simply deplorable. A graceful romance in honour of true love was distorted into a precedent and sanction for giving way to hysterical emotions, in which sexual imagery was freely used to symbolise the relation between the soul and its Lord. Such aberrations are as alien to sane Mysticism as they are to sane exegesis.[59]

In Jewish writings of a later period, composed under Greek influence, we find plenty of Platonism ready to pass into Mysticism. But the Wisdom of Solomon does not fall within our subject, and what is necessary to be said about Philo and Alexandria will be said in the next Lecture. In the New Testament, it will be convenient to say a very few words on the Synoptic Gospels first, and afterwards to consider St. John and St. Paul, where we shall find most of our material.

The first three Gospels are not written in the religious dialect of Mysticism. It is all the more important to notice that the fundamental doctrines on which the system (if we may call it a system) rests, are all found in them. The vision of God is promised in the Sermon on the Mount, and promised only to those who are pure in heart. The indwelling presence of Christ, or of the Holy Spirit, is taught in several places; for instance--"The kingdom of God is within you"; "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them"; "Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world." The unity of Christ and His members is implied by the words, "Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me." Lastly, the great law of the moral world,--the law of gain through loss, of life through death,--which is the corner-stone of mystical (and, many have said, of Christian) ethics, is found in the Synoptists as well as in St. John. "Whosoever shall seek to gain his life (or soul) shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life (or soul) shall preserve it."

The Gospel of St. John--the "spiritual Gospel," as Clement already calls it--is the charter of Christian Mysticism. Indeed, Christian Mysticism, as I understand it, might almost be called Johannine Christianity; if it were not better to say that a Johannine Christianity is the ideal which the Christian mystic sets before himself. For we cannot but feel that there are deeper truths in this wonderful Gospel than have yet become part of the religious consciousness of mankind. Perhaps, as Origen says, no one can fully understand it who has not, like its author, lain upon the breast of Jesus. We are on holy ground when we are dealing with St. John's Gospel, and must step in fear and reverence. But though the breadth and depth and height of those sublime discourses are for those only who can mount up with wings as eagles to the summits of the spiritual life, so simple is the language and so large its scope, that even the wayfaring men, though fools, can hardly altogether err therein.

Let us consider briefly, first, what we learn from this Gospel about the nature of God, and then its teaching upon human salvation.

There are three notable expressions about God the Father in the Gospel and First Epistle of St. John: "God is Love"; "God is Light"; and "God is Spirit." The form of the sentences teaches us that these three qualities belong so intimately to the nature of God that they usher us into His immediate presence. We need not try to get behind them, or to rise above them into some more nebulous region in our search for the Absolute. Love, Light, and Spirit are for us names of God Himself. And observe that St. John does not, in applying these semi-abstract words to God, attenuate in the slightest degree His personality. God _is_ Love, but He also exercises love. "God so loved the world." And He is not only the "white radiance" that "for ever shines"; He can "draw" us to Himself, and "send" His Son to bring us back to Him.

The word "Logos" does not occur in any of the discourses. The identification of Christ with the "Word" or "Reason" of the philosophers is St. John's own. But the statements in the prologue are all confirmed by our Lord's own words as reported by the evangelist. These fall under two heads, those which deal with the relation of Christ to the Father, and those which deal with His relation to the world. The pre-existence of Christ in glory at the right hand of God is proved by several declarations: "What if ye shall see the Son of Man ascending where He was before?" "And now, O Father, glorify Me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was." His exaltation above time is shown by the solemn statement, "Before Abraham was, I am." And with regard to the world, we find in St. John the very important doctrine, which has never made its way into popular theology, that the Word is not merely the Instrument in the original creation,--"by (or through) Him all things were made,"--but the central Life, the Being in whom life existed and exists as an indestructible attribute, an underived prerogative,[60] the Mind or Wisdom who upholds and animates the universe without being lost in it. This doctrine, which is implied in other parts of St. John, seems to be stated explicitly in the prologue, though the words have been otherwise interpreted. "That which has come into existence," says St. John, "was in Him life" ([Greek: ho gegonen, en autô zôê ên.]) That is to say, the Word is the timeless Life, of which the temporal world is a manifestation. This doctrine was taught by many of the Greek Fathers, as well as by Scotus Erigena and other speculative mystics. Even if, with the school of Antioch and most of the later commentators, we transfer the words [Greek: ho gegonen] to the preceding sentence, the doctrine that Christ is the life as well as the light of the world can be proved from St. John.[61] The world is the poem of the Word to the glory of the Father: in it, and by means of it, He displays in time all the riches which God has eternally put within Him.

In St. John, as in mystical theology generally, the Incarnation, rather than the Cross, is the central fact of Christianity. "The Word was made flesh, and tabernacled among us," is for him the supreme dogma. And it follows necessarily from the Logos doctrine, that the Incarnation, and all that followed it, is regarded primarily as a _revelation_ of life and light and truth. "That eternal life, which was with the Father, has been _manifested_ unto us," is part of the opening sentence of the first Epistle.[62] "This is the message which we have heard of Him and announce unto you, that God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all." In coming into the world, Christ "came unto His own." He had, in a sense, only to show to them what was there already: Esaias, long before, had "seen His glory, and spoken of Him." The mysterious estrangement, which had laid the world under the dominion of the Prince of darkness, had obscured but not quenched the light which lighteth _every_ man--the inalienable prerogative of all who derive their being from the Sun of Righteousness. This central Light is Christ, and Christ only. He alone is the Way, the Truth, the Life, the Door, the Living Bread, and the True Vine. He is at once the Revealer and the Revealed, the Guide and the Way, the Enlightener and the Light. No man cometh unto the Father but by Him.

The teaching of this Gospel on the office of the Holy Spirit claims special attention in our present inquiry. The revelation of God in Christ was complete: there can be no question that St. John claims for Christianity the position of the one eternally true revelation. But without the gradual illumination of the Spirit it is partly unintelligible and partly unobserved.[63] The purpose of the Incarnation was to reveal God _the Father_: "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." In these momentous words (it has been said) "the idea of God receives an abiding embodiment, and the Father is brought for ever within the reach of intelligent devotion.[64]" The purpose of the mission of the Comforter is to reveal _the Son_. He takes the place of the ascended Christ on earth as a living and active principle in the hearts of Christians. His office it is to bring to remembrance the teachings of Christ, and to help mankind gradually to understand them. There were also many things, our Lord said, which could not be said at the time to His disciples, who were unable to bear them. These were left to be communicated to future generations by the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of development had never before received so clear an expression; and few could venture to record it so clearly as St. John, who could not be suspected of contemplating a time when the teachings of the human Christ might be superseded.

Let us now turn to the human side of salvation, and trace the upward path of the Christian life as presented to us in this Gospel. First, then, we have the doctrine of the new birth: "Except a man be born anew (or, from above), he cannot see the kingdom of God." This is further explained as a being born "of water and of the Spirit"--words which are probably meant to remind us of the birth of the world-order out of chaos as described in Genesis, and also to suggest the two ideas of purification and life. (Baptism, as a symbol of purification, was, of course, already familiar to those who first heard the words.) Then we have a doctrine of _faith_ which is deeper than that of the Synoptists. The very expression [Greek: pisteuein eis], "to believe _on_," common in St. John and rare elsewhere, shows that the word is taking a new meaning. Faith, in St. John, is no longer regarded chiefly as a condition of supernatural favours; or, rather, the mountains which it can remove are no material obstructions. It is an act of the whole personality, a self-dedication to Christ. It must precede knowledge: "If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching," is the promise. It is the "_credo ut intelligam_" of later theology. The objection has been raised that St. John's teaching about faith moves in a vicious circle. His appeal is to the inward witness; and those who cannot hear this inward witness are informed that they must first believe, which is just what they can find no reason for doing. But this criticism misses altogether the drift of St. John's teaching. Faith, for him, is not the acceptance of a proposition upon evidence; still less is it the acceptance of a proposition in the teeth of evidence. It is, in the first instance, the resolution "to stand or fall by the noblest hypothesis"; that is (may we not say?), to follow Christ wherever He may lead us. Faith begins with an experiment, and ends with an experience.[65] "He that believeth in Him hath the witness in himself"; that is the verification which follows the venture. That even the power to make the experiment is given from above; and that the experience is not merely subjective, but an universal law which has had its supreme vindication in history,--these are two facts which we learn afterwards. The converse process, which begins with a critical examination of documents, cannot establish what we really want to know, however strong the evidence may be. In this sense, and in this only, are Tennyson's words true, that "nothing worthy proving can be proven, nor yet disproven."

Faith, thus defined, is hardly distinguishable from that mixture of admiration, hope, and love by which Wordsworth says that we live. Love especially is intimately connected with faith. And as the Christian life is to be considered as, above all things, a state of union with Christ, and of His members with one another, love of the brethren is inseparable from love of God. So intimate is this union, that hatred towards any human being cannot exist in the same heart as love to God. The mystical union is indeed rather a bond between Christ and the Church, and between man and man as members of Christ, than between Christ and individual souls. Our Lord's prayer is "that they all may be one, even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us." The personal relation between the soul and Christ is not to be denied; but it can only be enjoyed when the person has "come to himself" as a member of a body. This involves an inward transit from the false isolated self to the larger life of sympathy and love which alone makes us persons. Those who are thus living according to their true nature are rewarded with an intense unshakeable conviction which makes them independent of external evidences. Like the blind man who was healed, they can say, "One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see." The words "we know" are repeated again and again in the first Epistle, with an emphasis which leaves no room for doubt that the evangelist was willing to throw the main weight of his belief on this inner assurance, and to attribute it without hesitation to the promised presence of the Comforter. We must observe, however, that this knowledge or illumination is _progressive_. This is proved by the passages already quoted about the work of the Holy Spirit. It is also implied by the words, "This is life eternal, that they should know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." Eternal life is not [Greek: gnôsis], knowledge as a possession, but the state of acquiring knowledge ([Greek: hina gignôskôsin]). It is significant, I think, that St. John, who is so fond of the verb "to know," never uses the substantive [Greek: gnôsis].

The state of progressive unification, in which we receive "grace upon grace," as we learn more and more of the "fulness" of Christ, is called by the evangelist, in the verse just quoted and elsewhere, _eternal life_. This life is generally spoken of as a present possession rather than a future hope. "He that believeth on the Son _hath_ everlasting life"; "he _is passed_ from death unto life"; "we _are_ in Him that is true, even Jesus Christ. This _is_ the true God, and eternal life." The evangelist is constantly trying to transport us into that timeless region in which one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.