MAY 2 1918 
 
 BV 5082 .A4 1918 
 Addison, Charles Morris, 
 
 1856-1947. 
 The theory and practice of 
 
 mysticism 
 
THE THEORY AND PRACTICE 
 OF MYSTICISM 
 
THE 
 THEORY AND PRACTIC| .. p,^^^^ 
 OF MYSTICISM ^^' 
 
 MAY 2 1918 
 CHARLES MORRIS ADDISON, D.D. 
 
 RECTOR OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, 
 STAMFORD, CONN. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON y COMPANY 
 
 681 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
COPYEIGHT, 191 8, 
 
 Bv E, P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 Printed in the antted States of Hmertea 
 
TO 
 
 JOHN WALLACE SUTER 
 
 WITH WHOM I HAVE SOUGHT FOR GOD 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The lectures which form the substance of 
 this volume were written at the request of the 
 Faculty of the Episcopal Theological School in 
 Cambridge and were delivered there in May, 
 19 1 5. They were given also, in November of 
 the same year, at the Theological Department 
 of the University of the South, Sewanee, Ten- 
 nessee. They were not written for publica- 
 tion but for intimate conferences with younger 
 ministers and young men studying for the min- 
 istry. This will explain their familiar char- 
 acter. 
 
 I was speaking to friends whom I wished to 
 interest in Mysticism, to get them to study it 
 and to practise it, because of its growing 
 importance in and for the life of to-day. 
 They did not think Mysticism had any mes- 
 sage for them or for their people. They 
 thought it was a curious abnormality in the re- 
 ligious life of the past. So had I once thought. 
 But I have been led by so many unlooked-for 
 
▼iii Preface 
 
 and gracious openings to feel differently and 
 to gain so much, that I felt drawn to get others 
 to start on the same path and to outgo me. For 
 if the Way was open to me, surely any other 
 man, minister or layman can walk in it. 
 
 So I wrote out of my own heart and the 
 lectures came out more like sermons than es- 
 says, because I was a missionary and not a 
 professor. 
 
 In conclusion, I wish to express my thanks 
 to Messrs. Burns and Oates for permission to 
 quote from their edition of Francis Thompson's 
 poems; to the Macmillan Company for their 
 permission to give extracts from their editions 
 of Tennyson and Matthew Arnold, and also to 
 the Houghton Mifflin Company for similar 
 privileges in connection with the works of 
 Lowell. 
 
 C. M. A. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. The Longing for God and Its Implica- 
 tions 3 
 
 II. The Way Toward God 39 
 
 III. The Meeting Point 74 
 
 IV. St. Francis of Assisi, Heinrich Suso and 
 
 Mother Julian of Norwich . . .106 
 
 V. Modern Mysticism 149 
 
 VI. Practical Mysticism 183 
 
THE THEORY AND PRACTICE 
 OF MYSTICISM 
 
THE THEORY AND 
 PRACTICE OF MYSTICISM 
 
 THE LONGING FOR GOD AND ITS IMPLICATIONS 
 
 These lectures are concerned with the the- 
 ory of Mysticism only as that may be of use in 
 learning how to practise it. What we are, I 
 hope, to be interested in, is Mysticism as an 
 Art. There has of late been much careful 
 study of Mysticism as a Science, to understand 
 its philosophical and theological assumptions 
 and its psychological methods. Du Prel and 
 Recejac and James and others have made much 
 clearer ''the bases of the mystic knowledge," 
 but their discussions are mainly academic. 
 They are tremendously interesting, but they 
 tend rather to make more intelligent the criti- 
 cism of Mysticism than to make more Mystics. 
 On the other hand, there are many little hand- 
 
 3 
 
4 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 books, whose authors and titles I need not men- 
 tion, which offer you short and easy paths to 
 the practice of Mysticism, which are founded 
 (some of them) upon very distorted views of 
 psychology, upon very weak philosophical pre- 
 suppositions, and with theological ideas widely 
 at variance with the truths of Christianity, 
 most of them having more interest in the body 
 than in the soul. 
 
 I should like to mediate between these two 
 extremes. I should like to make use of the 
 studies of others, and try to show how the the- 
 ories they have set forth may be applied to the 
 actual practice of Mysticism, and by making 
 my practical suggestions depend upon scientific 
 foundations, give the art of being a Mystic a 
 firmer basis than is afforded by the little tract, 
 *'How to Wake the Solar Plexus." 
 
 Too long has Mysticism been regarded as a 
 peculiar thing, attributed to a few peculiar peo- 
 ple : — a mental aberration, a theological heresy, 
 an ascetic life. All these, and more, have been 
 at times attached to it ; but the thing itself per- 
 sists. And my aim is to get at the thing itself, 
 to seek its foundation in our common human 
 nature, to show the implications contained in 
 it, and having discovered its essence, to explain 
 
The Longing for God and Its Implications 5 
 
 its method, show how the art is to be practised 
 and so make it useful in our lives and in the 
 lives of those to whom we are called to min- 
 ister. 
 
 Mysticism is founded on man's conscious 
 need of communion with God, as painting and 
 sculpture are founded on man's craving for 
 beauty. Everything else in Mysticism grows 
 out of this. It is the art which some men 
 have developed to satisfy this need. In this 
 lecture I purpose to speak of this longing, and 
 of certain implications contained in it, not to 
 prove any of them, but assuming them exactly 
 as Mysticism does, to proceed to build our 
 study on them. Only so shall we be kept from 
 drifting into side issues and non-essentials, and 
 be guided by this golden thread through the 
 psychological intricacies, the individual idio- 
 syncrasies and the theological vagaries which 
 lie in wait for the student of Mysticism. Such 
 a course will also help us to understand the 
 common feeling which binds us to the Mystics, 
 and will show us how practical and modern a 
 thing is Mysticism. 
 
 I say that the cause of Mysticism is man's 
 conscious need of God. This makes a very 
 broad foundation, as broad as religion itself, 
 
6 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 for Mysticism is only one form of religion. 
 There is a longing in the human heart for God, 
 universal and inextinguishable, a longing so 
 deep and so intense that it was well called by 
 one who knew the dryness of the Syrian desert 
 the "thirst" of the soul for the living God. It 
 may not always be acknowledged, it may not 
 even be clearly known, but it is there in every 
 heart. The savage with his crude rites and 
 cruel sacrifices, his fetishes and medicine men, 
 may not clearly formulate his want, but we 
 know that all he does comes from the outreach 
 of his soul towards something not himself, 
 which his felt want leads him to believe is ob- 
 tainable. Just what the want is, or whence 
 the satisfaction is to come, he does not know. 
 
 The Old Testament is called the Book of 
 Promise. If there were no unsatisfied desires 
 in the religious life there would be nothing to 
 promise ; but the Jews looked forward, yearned 
 and strained their eyes. They are the people 
 of a still unfulfilled prophecy. Their book is 
 an unfinished torso, — it breaks ofif in the mid- 
 dle of a sentence. All the way through, the 
 thirst for a Saviour is the most prominent 
 characteristic of their Book. All the way from 
 Adam and Eve, with the promise of a Seed 
 
The Longing for God and Its Implications 7 
 
 which should deliver their posterity from the 
 curse of their sin, down to that last Old Testa- 
 ment character, John the Baptist, with his anx- 
 ious question : "Art thou he that should come 
 or look we for another?" always there is the 
 constant onlooking expectation and desire. 
 
 The whole drama of the life of Job is the de- 
 lineation of his strugg^le to find and reach God, 
 and so learn why all his troubles had come 
 upon him: "Even to-day is my complaint bit- 
 ter, my stroke is heavier than my groaning. 
 Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I 
 might come even to his seat." ^ 
 
 The Psalms, deepest expressions of the re- 
 ligious life, are full of these longings: "As 
 the hart panteth after the water brooks, so 
 panteth my soul after thee, O God; my soul 
 thirsteth for God, for the living God. When 
 shall I come and appear before God?" ^ 
 
 "O God, thou art my God; earnestly will I 
 seek thee ; my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh 
 longeth for thee, in a dry and weary land where 
 no water is." ^ 
 
 "Seek ye the Lord while he may be found; 
 call ye upon him while he is near." * 
 
 * Job 23 :2, 3. • Psalm 63 :i. 
 
 • Psalm 42 :i, 2. * Isaiah 55:6. 
 
8 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 And remember Philip's question: "Lord, 
 show us the Father, and it sufficeth us"; and 
 the altar to the Unknown God, which was but 
 the visible expression of a desire to reach the 
 ultimate Zeus, whoever he might be. 
 
 The same longing persists. It is about us 
 to-day. It is felt by many men of science, by 
 physicians and philosophers and poets. The 
 cases are almost as well known as the texts I 
 have quoted. 
 
 There is Darwin, who lost not only God but 
 the very enjoyment of poetry and music out of 
 his life, and who knew his loss and deplored 
 it. There are few things more pathetic than 
 the awful void made, in the lives of such men 
 as he and Kingdon Clifford and George Ro- 
 manes, by a wrong idea of the nature of the 
 proof required before a man could find God. 
 The latter said, before he found the way (and 
 his words remind us of Job's, with all their 
 sublime trust left out) : "When at times I 
 think, as think at times I must, of the appalling 
 contrast between the hallowed glory of that 
 creed which was once mine and the lonely mys- 
 tery of existence as now I find it; — at such 
 times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid 
 
The Longing for God and Its Implications 9 
 
 the sharpest pang of which my nature is sus- 
 ceptible." ^ 
 
 For such men a glory has departed, and they 
 know it is gone, and they miss it and seek to 
 regain it. It is a common condition in these 
 days among many men. They may not re- 
 peat the world-old cry of Job: *'0h, that I 
 knew where I might find him"; they may veil 
 it in the garb of scientific research or in the 
 imagery of the poet. But the question is there. 
 Few have voiced it better than Matthew Ar- 
 nold, the poet of aloofness, of a longing which 
 just missed connection with its object: 
 
 "Yes, in the sea of life enisled, 
 
 With echoing^ straits between us thrown, 
 Dotting tlie shoreless, watery wild, 
 We mortal millions live alone." 
 
 Again : 
 
 "We but dream we have our wish'd for powers, 
 
 Ends we seek, we never shall attain. 
 Ah ! some power exists there which is ours ? 
 Some end is there we indeed may gain ?" 
 
 But the proof of the longing of the human 
 heart for God does not depend only upon the 
 
 ^ Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, p. 29. 
 
lo The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 testimony of others. Our own hearts tell the 
 same story. We have felt the longing. Some- 
 times it is weak and does not trouble us, and 
 sometimes it breaks out fiercely and will not 
 let us alone. Most of the time our spiritual life 
 is very lonesome. It is because there is one 
 heart in all of us and God made it for himself, 
 and that heart in each of us is restless until it 
 find rest in God. 
 
 Now, as I have said, this unsatisfied yearn- 
 ing is the cause, the reason, the fundamental 
 postulate of Mysticism. Man is incomplete, 
 and knows it, and will be satisfied with noth- 
 ing less than God. The Mystics are the people 
 who have felt this want most keenly and been 
 most desperately in earnest to satisfy it. I 
 have said that all men feel it ; that the want is 
 universal; but there are degrees of desire. I 
 think that the only reason you and I are not 
 Mystics is that we do not want God enough. 
 This means that while all men may be re- 
 ligious, they are only potentially Mystics. We 
 may learn a lesson from the young man in 
 Vivekananda's story who thought he wanted 
 God more than anything, and went to an In- 
 dian Sage to learn how to find him. He re- 
 ceived no answer to his eager questions until 
 
The Longing for God and Its Implications ii 
 
 he had gone many times. Then the Sage rose 
 from his meditation and took the young man 
 down to the river to bathe with him, and while 
 they were in the water the Sage suddenly 
 grasped the young man and held him down 
 under the water till he was almost drowned. 
 Then he released him. And when the young 
 man had recovered the Sage said to him: 
 "What did you want most when you were 
 under the water ?" The young man answered, 
 "A breath of air." And the Sage said : "When 
 you want God as you wanted that breath of 
 air you will find him." 
 
 As Emile Boutroux says: "The starting 
 point, the first moment, is a state of the soul 
 which it is difficult to define, but which is char- 
 acterized well enough by the German word 
 Sehnsucht. It is a state of desire, vague and 
 disturbed, very real and liable to be very in- 
 tense, as a passion of the soul ; very indetermi- 
 nate, or rather very inexplicable, as regards 
 both its object and its cause. It is an aspiration 
 towards an unknown object, towards a good 
 which the heart imperatively demands and 
 which the mind cannot conceive. Such a state 
 may indeed be found in men of very different 
 
12 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 characters, and may have very different de- 
 grees of signification. In the Mystic it is pro- 
 found and lasting; it works in the soul, which 
 gradually forms for itself an idea of the object 
 of its aspiration." ® 
 
 Any one who will spend one hour with the 
 Mystics will need no proof of this statement. 
 The longing breathes through their every ut- 
 terance. Let me only quote these passages, 
 first from the "Theologia Germanica," and 
 then from Ruysbroek, and lastly from the 
 old English mystic writing called "The Cloud 
 of Unknowing": 
 
 "Now mark how the Father draweth men unto 
 Christ. When somewhat of this Perfect Good is dis- 
 covered and revealed within the soul of man, as it 
 were in a glance or flash, the soul conceiveth a long- 
 ing to approach unto the Perfect Goodness, and unite 
 herself with the Father. And the stronger this yearn- 
 ing groweth, the more is revealed unto her; and the 
 more is revealed unto her, the more is she drawn to- 
 ward the Father, and her desire quickened. Thus is 
 the soul drawn and quickened into a union with the 
 Eternal Goodness. And this is the drawing of the 
 Father, and thus the soul is taught of Him who 
 draweth her unto Himself, that she cannot enter into 
 a union with Him except she come unto Him by the 
 
 'International Journal of Ethics. January, 1908, p. 183. 
 
The Longing for God and Its Implications 13 
 
 life of Christ. Behold! now she puttcth on tliat life 
 of which I have spoken afore." ^ 
 
 "Here there begins an eternal hunger, which shall 
 nevermore be satisfied. It is the yearning and the 
 inward aspiration of our faculty of love, and of our 
 created spirit towards an uncreated good. And as 
 the spirit desires joy, and is invited and constrained 
 by God to partake of it, it is always longing to realize 
 joy. Be^old then the beginning of an eternal aspira- 
 tion and of eternal eflForts, while our impotence is 
 likewise eternal. These are the poorest of all men, 
 for they are eager and greedy, and they can never be 
 satisfied." * 
 
 "And if any thought rise and will press continually 
 above thee betwixt thee and that darkness, and ask 
 thee saying, 'What seekest thou, and what wouldest 
 thou have ?' say thou that it is God that thou wouldest 
 have. 'Him I covet, Him I seek, and naught but 
 Him.' " "> 
 
 Now in this sense of need there are con- 
 tained certain implications. Man is incomplete 
 and knows it, but he has also a sense of com- 
 pleteness. If he did not he could not know his 
 incompleteness. The want postulates its satis- 
 faction and also its own capacity to receive it. 
 It implies, you see, God and our capacity for 
 
 ' Theologia Germanica, Trans, by Winkworth : pp. 201- 
 202. 
 
 •Maeterlinck: Ruysbroek and the Mystics, pp. 147-148. 
 * The Cloud of Unknowing, p. 90. 
 
14 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 God, and the ultimate possibility of our being 
 able to get at him in complete and satisfying 
 communion. As in geometry, given a certain 
 axiom, certain deductions flow naturally from 
 it, so here, in our study of Mysticism, if this 
 longing, universal and in some men intense, 
 be given, there follow, there are implied in it, 
 certain apparently necessary deductions: 
 
 (a) The mere longing implies its satisfac- 
 tion. 
 
 (b) The mere longing implies a prior, if in- 
 complete, possession. 
 
 (c) There can be no satisfaction short of 
 the Infinite God. 
 
 (d) To obtain this satisfaction there must 
 be some essential relationship between God and 
 Man. 
 
 (e) While the priority must be on the side 
 of God, there must be co-operation by man, 
 i.e. there are practical means to be used to 
 gain the end. There is a Mystic Way. 
 
 It is only fair to say at once that I make 
 my own these presuppositions of Mysticism. 
 We cannot understand it together unless we 
 can meet it on its own ground, and as no Mys- 
 tic has ever cared to prove the existence of 
 God, or man's spiritual relationship to him, or 
 
The Longing for God and Its Implications 15 
 
 the possibility of intercommunion with him, 
 so I feel no need to do more than base this 
 study on these as facts. I should never get 
 to my subject if I were obliged to prove every 
 step leading to it. And it is only fair to add 
 that our subject is not Mysticism in general, 
 but Christian Mysticism. It is a large subject 
 as it is, but the whole is enormous, for the 
 longing is as wide as humanity and many men 
 have tried to satisfy it in many ways. The 
 savage dimly gropes, the Buddhist has his 
 Nirvana, the Positivist his Humanity, the 
 Philosopher his Absolute, even the Mystic his 
 Abyss. But for us we must leave aside the 
 fascinating field of Mysticism as it is found 
 among non-Christian systems of religion and 
 thought, and confine our study, as our practice 
 must be confined, to Christian Mysticism, and 
 assume at once that the longing is not for Nir- 
 vana or the Unknowable, but for the Christian 
 God. 
 
 With sublime confidence our Mysticism 
 takes this God for granted. Jesus Christ no 
 more thought of proving the existence of God 
 than you and I would think of stopping now to 
 prove the existence of the atmosphere in and 
 through which we are speaking and listening 
 
1 6 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 to each other. Christ found God already in- 
 stalled in the heart of man, and Christ was so 
 sure, that he could not bring himself to argue 
 about the mere existence of the Father in 
 whose Being and Love he perpetually rested. 
 And more than this : he must have known, as 
 we are slow to perceive, that God cannot be 
 proved. All the so-called proofs are only ex- 
 post facto reasonings on facts already given 
 by God, by which the reasonableness of his ex- 
 istence is demonstrated after the fact is already 
 known. The proofs, then, are merely his mani- 
 festations, multitudinous and manifold, and 
 the arguments merely expositions of his modes 
 of manifestation.^^ 
 
 " "There is no demonstration of the being of God. In every 
 mode of demonstration whose object is to arrive at it, it is 
 assumed. It can form no term in the formulas of logic. It 
 is not a truth that is to be counted among the achievements 
 of human thought. There can be no demonstration of the 
 being of God by man : there may be the manifestation of 
 God to man." [Mulford: The Republic of God, p. 5.] 
 
 "Surely, the existence of God cannot be demonstrated if He 
 is the W^hole, the ground and content of all demonstration, 
 of all thought, even when we try to put Him far from us as 
 the Unknowable. The attempt to prove the existence of God 
 would be like endeavoring to prove that number exists by 
 the use of certain numerals, whereas number is used in every 
 possible demonstration : we show its existence by using it. 
 'You cannot prove the existence of a Deity by any reasoning 
 process, for there may be nothing in a logical conclusion 
 
The Longing for God and Its Implications 17 
 
 The best proof you can have that God is, is 
 to experience him, to feel him touch you, and 
 this is what the Mystic has actually done. The 
 Mystic does not care to know anything about 
 God ; he wants to know God, and as far as he 
 can, to be "one'd" in his deepest nature with 
 God. 
 
 (A.) The first inference we draw from this 
 longing of man for God is that such longing 
 implies that there is a satisfaction prepared 
 for it. 
 
 If, as John Fiske says, this relation of long- 
 ing between man and the invisible world, which 
 is God, is a relation of which only the subjec- 
 
 which was not in the premises; and if God be in your 
 premises, you have begged the question. If He be not in 
 your premises, He will not be logically found in your con- 
 clusion.' " [Dresser: The Perfect Whole, pp. 81-82 (quot- 
 ing Van Norden, The Psychic Factor, p. 204).] 
 
 "It is with purpose that T use the word assumption. As a 
 matter of history, tlie existence of a quasi-human God has al- 
 ways been an assumption or postulate. It is something which 
 men have all along taken for granted. It probably never oc- 
 curred to any one to try to prove the existence of such a 
 God until it was doubted, and doubts on that subject are 
 very modern. Omitting from the account a few score of in- 
 genious philosophers, it may be said that all mankind, the 
 wisest and the simplest, have taken for granted the existence 
 of a Deity, or deities of a psychical nature more or less 
 similar to that of humanity. Such a postulate has formed a 
 part of all human thinking from primitive ages down to the 
 present time." [Fiske: Through Nature to Cod, p. 164.] 
 
i8 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 tive term, Man, is real, and the objective term, 
 God, is non-existent, then it is something utter- 
 ly without precedent in the whole history of 
 creation. Nowhere in Nature do we find such 
 maladjustment to environment. Nowhere do 
 we find the implantation of a desire which has 
 not somewhere provided for it its complete 
 satisfaction. The longing of the duck for the 
 water, of the eagle for his mountain, of the 
 moose for his mate, — nay, even so low as that 
 of the ass for his master's crib, — all are proofs 
 that somewhere is water, and crag, and mate, 
 and food, for every thirst has its drink, and 
 to thirst is to postulate the drink. Therefore 
 every longing is a prophecy and a proof of 
 satisfaction provided somewhere, somehow, 
 some time. The universal healthy longing for 
 God is a proof that there is a God, and a proph- 
 ecy that he shall be found. I say this with all 
 positiveness ; nay, more : 
 
 "The thing we long for, that we are 
 For one transcendant moment." ^^ 
 
 ""Wants are the bands and cements between God and us. 
 Had we not wanted, we never could have been obliged. 
 Whereas now we are infinitely obliged, because we want in- 
 finitely. From Eternity it was requisite that we should want. 
 We could never else have enjoyed anything: Our own wants 
 are treasures. And if want be a treasure, sure everything is 
 
The Longing for God and Its Implications 19 
 
 Everywhere in this Hfe satisfaction means 
 stagnation, and stagnation means death. "In 
 the physical world hunger is a mark of health 
 and the want of appetite proclaims disease. So 
 the mind grows through the longing to know." 
 And so the spirit is dead if it has no longing. 
 
 so. Wants are the ligatures between God and us, the sinews 
 that convey Senses from Him into us. whereby we live in 
 Him, and feel His enjoyments. For had we not been obliged 
 by having our wants satisfied, we should not have been 
 created to love Him. And had we not been created to love 
 Him, we could never have enjoyed His eternal Blessedness." 
 [Traherne: Centuries of Meditations, pp. 34-35-1 
 
 "In accord with this conjecture as to the position of re- 
 ligious truth, namely, that it is determined by the movement 
 of will-to-believe, is an old observation of religious ex- 
 perience. It is written that he who seeks finds : the connec- 
 tion between seeking and finding is infallible. Such infallible 
 connection may be many-wise understood, but it may be thus 
 understood, that the seeking brings the finding with it. 
 'Thou wouldst not seek me hadst thou not already found me.' 
 said Pascal, and to Sabatier this thought came 'like a flash of 
 light . . . the solution of a problem that had long appeared 
 insoluble.' The religiousness of man's nature is the whole 
 substance of his revelation. Whatever we impute to the world 
 comes back to us as a quality pre-resident there — is this not 
 the whole illusion of reality? Impute then to the world a 
 living beneficence: the world will not reject this imputation, 
 will be even as you have willed it. Your belief becomes (as 
 Fichte held) an evidence of your character — not of your 
 learning. He who waits his assent till God is proved to him, 
 will never find Him. But he who seeks finds — has already 
 found." [Hocking; The Meaning of God in Human Experi- 
 ence, p. 147.] 
 
20 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 It is the mood of hope, the only hopeful sign, 
 this intense desire to know more of God, more 
 of his life, of his holiness, of his power, for 
 ever closer communion with him, for more of 
 the divine likeness in the soul. "I am come 
 that they may have life, and that they may 
 have it more abundantly." And St. Paul said: 
 "Brethren, I count not myself to have appre- 
 hended, but I press on," and wherever we see 
 him after that, on whatever radiant height he 
 may be, he is still pressing on with unsatisfied 
 longings and quenchless ardor towards loftier 
 summits, crying ever for more intimate knowl- 
 edge of Christ and more and more of the ful- 
 ness of God. 
 
 (B.) Next, this longing not only implies a 
 satisfaction to be provided in the future, but 
 also a present, though not yet understood, par- 
 tial possession. 
 
 There must be something of the Infinite in 
 us or we could not know enough about it to 
 long for it. ''He hath set Eternity in their 
 heart." ^^ As Augustine says, speaking from 
 God's side, 'In that thou hast sought me, thou 
 hast already found me." The Mystics them- 
 selves realize this. They are seeking a Pres- 
 
 "Eccles. 3:11. 
 
The Longing for God and Its Implications 21 
 
 ence which is already within them. Hear St. 
 Bernard in his Homilies on the "Song of 
 Songs" : 
 
 "I sought after Him whom my soul was de- 
 sirous to love; for it was not then able to love 
 One whom it had not yet found, or, at least it 
 loved Him less than it wished to do, and on that 
 account was seeking Him that it might love 
 Him with an increased affection, though as- 
 suredly it would not have sought Him without 
 having some degree of love for Him pre- 
 viously." ^* 
 
 And in the most beautiful language Mother 
 Juliana of Norwich expresses the same idea: 
 
 "For I saw him and sought him : for we be 
 now so blind and so unwise, that we can never 
 seek God until what time that he of his good- 
 ness sheweth him to us. And when we see 
 ought of him graciously, then are we stirred by 
 the same grace, to seek with great desire to see 
 him more blessedfully. And thus I saw him 
 and sought him, and I had him and wanted 
 him: and this is and should be our common 
 working in this life, as to my sight." ^* 
 
 And it is not so far a cry as it seems to 
 
 *• St. Bernard : Song of Songs, p. 35. 
 
 "Mother Juliana: Revelations of Divine Love, p. 28. 
 
22 The Theory and Practice o£ Mysticism 
 
 our own day and our own Royce, who says: 
 "It is this homing instinct that we for the 
 first merely articulate when we talk of true 
 Being. Being means something for us, how- 
 ever, because of the positive presence and finite 
 consciousness of this inner meaning of even 
 our poorest ideas. We seek. That is a fact. 
 We seek a city still out of sight. In the con- 
 trast with this goal we live. But if this be so, 
 then already we actually possess something of 
 Being even in our finite seeking ; for the readi- 
 ness to seek is already something of an at- 
 tainment, even if a poor one." ^^ 
 
 The atmosphere is before the lungs, the 
 mother's love before the child's. And so when 
 you and I stretch out our hands for holiness 
 we are seeking something which, in a very 
 small measure, we have already, or we could 
 not know how to long for it. When we cry 
 out for the living God, we are crying for some- 
 thing of which we have just caught a glimpse. 
 The search for God really follows the finding 
 of us by God. It is the result of his prior, 
 seeking love. It is because he has suggested 
 himself to us that we immediately realize our 
 need and crave its satisfaction. 
 
 ** Royce : The World and the Individual, Vol. I, p. i8i. 
 
The Longing for God and Its Implications 23 
 
 (C.) Having this glimpse of the Infinite 
 God, the longing for him cannot be satisfied 
 with anything less than the Infinite. No demi- 
 gods will do. "I desire not that which comes 
 forth from thee, but only I desire Thee, O 
 sweetest love." ^^ 
 
 "Alas, my Lord God, what is al Thou canst 
 give to a loving soul which sigheth and panteth 
 for Thee alone, and esteemeth al things as dung 
 that she may gain Thee? What is al, I say, 
 whilst Thou givest not Thyself, but art that 
 one thing which is only necessary and which 
 alone can satisfy our souls? Was it any com- 
 fort to Mary Magdalene, when she sought 
 Thee, to find two angels which presented them- 
 selves instead of Thee? Verily, I cannot think 
 it was any joy unto her. For that soul that 
 hath set her whole love and desire on Thee can 
 never find any true satisfaction but only in 
 Thee." '' 
 
 As the poet Faber says : 
 
 "O majesty unspeakable and dread! 
 Wert thou less mighty than thou art, 
 Thou wast, O Lord, too great for our belief. 
 Too little for our heart. 
 "Catherine of Genoa. Vita e Dottrina, cap. VI. 
 " Gertrude More : Spiritual Exercises, p. 26. 
 
24 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 "But greatness which is infinite makes room 
 
 For all tilings in its lap to lie ; 
 We should be crushed by a magnificence 
 Short of infinity." ^* 
 
 ''Surely he that seeketh God perfectly he 
 will not rest him finally in the remembrance 
 of any angel or saint that is in Heaven," ^■' 
 
 (D.) And then again this longing is the 
 proof of our divinity and capacity. We could 
 not long for anything if we ourselves had 
 reached finality. Why do we seek things that 
 are not here? Why do we not sing through 
 the world as the bluebird sings through the 
 spring days? It is because these days are the 
 bird's all, and they are not our all. This world 
 is not our whole environment, and so our eyes 
 are not satisfied with their seeing, nor our ears 
 with their hearing. Our intellects are not filled 
 with their knowledge nor our hearts with their 
 love, — great, beautiful as these satisfactions 
 are they are not enough for us. They do not 
 satisfy. We are greater than we know, and 
 our qualification for being made divine and 
 perfect lies just in this sense of want. That 
 which makes us superior to the beasts of the 
 
 "Poems, p. 20. 
 
 " The Cloud of UnknoixAng, p. io6. 
 
The LfOnging for God and Its Implications 25 
 
 field is just this superior and superb insight 
 into our own weakness and insufficiency. Some 
 day we shall be satisfied. And satisfied not 
 only because satisfaction is attached to long- 
 ing, not only because wc have a glimpse and a 
 little possession already, not only because we 
 demand the Infinite, but because the Infinite 
 and the finite belong together. There is a 
 real relationship which is the cause of all the 
 yearning and which makes the yearning mu- 
 tual. This the Mystic takes for granted also; 
 and so we do. God and Man belong together. 
 There is a Sonship in Humanity because there 
 is a Fatherhood in God. This makes every 
 good thing possible. I am not arguing but only 
 illustrating when I (luute: "" 
 
 Martensen says, in his Ethics: "Every man 
 is infinitely richer in his being than in his per- 
 formance, is infinitely more than he shows him- 
 self or can show himself to be." "^ 
 
 Wendt, in "The Teachings of Jesus," de- 
 clares that : "God does not become the Father, 
 but is the Heavenly Father even of those who 
 become His sons." "" 
 
 Romans 8:10; II Cor. 13:5; Eph. 3:17; I John 3:1. 
 
 Christian Ethics, Vol. I, p. 82. 
 
 The Teachings of Jesus, Vol. I, p. 193. 
 
26 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 "What such experiences imply and illus- 
 trate may be more compactly stated in terms of 
 the logic of communication as follows: In 
 order that any two beings should establish 
 communication they must already have some- 
 thing in common." ^^ 
 
 "As every being is capable of attracting its 
 like, and humanity is, in a way, like God, as 
 bearing within itself some resemblance to its 
 Prototype, the soul is by a strict necessity at- 
 tracted to the kindred Deity. In fact, what 
 belongs to God must, by all means and at any 
 cost, be preserved for Him." ^^ 
 
 "For nothing can have any longing desire 
 but after its own likeness, nor could anything 
 be made to desire God, but that which came 
 from Him and had the nature of Him." ^^ 
 
 "The Word became flesh that He might 
 make man capable of receiving Divinity." "^ 
 
 (E.) And lastly: Men have not lost God. 
 They have only lost the way to God. God needs 
 to be made real and present before men can be 
 
 *" Hocking : The Meaning of God in Human Experience, 
 p. 272. 
 
 " Gregory of Nyssa : The Soul and the Resurrection, quoted 
 in Jones' Studies in Mystical Religion, p. 85. 
 
 *' William Law, The Spirit of Love. 
 
 " Athanasius : Contra Ar. II, p. 59. 
 
The Longing for God and Its Implications 37 
 
 satisfied. They must exchange their ideas 
 about God for a constant feeling of his pres- 
 ence. In some way they must be made aware 
 of him. This is what Mysticism undertakes to 
 do. It is not vaL^ue, but immediately and in- 
 tensely practical. The need is real and nothing 
 but reality will satisfy it. It is an Art to be 
 practised rather than a Science to be reasoned 
 out. It considers that the academic question, 
 "Is there a God ?" is best answered by showing 
 the way to him, by obtaining a personal con- 
 viction of his presence. And so the Mystic's 
 question is a personal one: "Where is God 
 and how may I find him?" Therefore there is 
 a Mystic way. Men must understand the path 
 or the process or the rules — call it what you 
 will — which will help them to get into com- 
 munion with God. The trouble with most of 
 us is that we have not yet made this connec- 
 tion, either from lack of desire or from lack of 
 knowledge of the way. Our souls have not yet 
 thrilled at the touch of God. Such a touch is 
 not a casual happening, a matter of luck, or 
 even of temperament. It is real, and the real 
 in us must be developed until like meets like. 
 Cor ad cor loquitur, and we know even as we 
 are known. The process is called the Mystic 
 
28 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 Way, and before treating of it in the next lec- 
 ture I will gather up something of what we 
 have been thinking and anticipate something of 
 what we are going to think and try to make 
 it into a definition of Mysticism. 
 
 While I have said that Mysticism was most 
 practical, it is true also, and must be said, that 
 like all the deepest things in life, it is hard to 
 define. Definition always tends to clearness, 
 iDut sometimes we have a knowledge which it 
 is not easy to put into words. So Mysticism 
 almost defies definition. It is as undefinable 
 and yet as recognizable as Beauty, or Love — 
 or God, yet still it is possible to get a better 
 understanding of it and to approach some sort 
 of definition which will be true as far as it 
 goes. 
 
 The word Mysticism is commonly used in 
 many connections, and very loosely. Some- 
 times it is used to denote Symbolism or Al- 
 legorism, an undue stress upon poetic form. 
 Sometimes it means the wildest vagaries of 
 Oriental occultism and magic, and sometimes 
 merely the harmless idiosyncrasies of the poor 
 parson who is only unpractical and cannot bal- 
 ance his accounts. If we do not understand a 
 
The Longing for God and Its Implications 29 
 
 man's theology we think we have condemned 
 it when we have called it mystical. 
 
 But if we press further for a proper under- 
 standing of the thing we are met by just as 
 much divergence among those scholars who 
 attempt a definition as among the unthinking 
 crowd which does not care for one. Inge, in 
 his Bampton Lectures on "Christian Mysti- 
 cism." gives a selected list of twenty-six, and 
 I think I am safe in saying that not more 
 than two of them agree. Perhaps we can best 
 guide ourselves through their confusion by di- 
 viding them into four classes : 
 
 1st: Those which mistake disparagement 
 and abuse for definition, as Noack: "Mysti- 
 cism is formless speculation"; and Vaughan, 
 who, after spending many "Hours with the 
 Mystics" can only say of them that their prin- 
 ciple is "That form of error which mistakes 
 for a divine manifestation the operations of 
 a merely human faculty." And then you know 
 Harnack, who, with Hermann and the whole 
 Ritschlian school, bitterly opposes a Mysticism 
 they misunderstand, defines it as "Rationalism 
 applied to a sphere above reason" ; while Her- 
 mann says bluntly that "the Mystic's experience 
 of God is a delusion." 
 
30 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 It is certain that these statements do not 
 help us. We must at least believe that not all 
 Mystics are fools if we would come into any 
 sympathetic apprehension of their teaching. 
 
 2nd: Those who would describe Mysticism 
 by its aberrations and excesses, as with Vic- 
 tor Cousin, who defines it as consisting "in 
 substituting ecstasy for reason, rapture for 
 philosophy"; and Max Nordau says of it: 
 "Mysticism blurs outlines and makes the trans- 
 parent opaque." But it is wrong always to 
 define anything by its abnormalities or even 
 by its exaggerations. Homo-sexuality is not 
 love. There is a normal and an abnormal love, 
 and so there is a normal and an abnormal Mys- 
 ticism, and while we may learn much from the 
 diversions from the norm, we must not con- 
 found the two nor make the exception the rule. 
 
 3rd: Those who run to the other extreme 
 and would define Mysticism in such broad and 
 general terms as to merge it into ordinary 
 Christian living and thought, as when Ewald 
 defines it by saying: "Mystical theology be- 
 gins by maintaining that man has fallen away 
 from God and craves to be again united with 
 him." This is perfectly true, but Mysticism is 
 more than, or is at least not exactly like, Cal- 
 
The Longing for God and Its Implications 31 
 
 vinism or evangelicalism. And Moberly, in 
 his great book, "Atonement and Personality," 
 says: "In proportion as Mysticism either 
 claims to be or is regarded by ordinary Chris- 
 tians as being, an abnormal by-way or by-re- 
 gion of special experiences rather than as the 
 realization in special fulness of that which is 
 the central inspiration and meaning of all 
 Christian life as well practical as contempla- 
 tive, in that proportion does the Mysticism it- 
 self become directly liable to various forms of 
 exaggeration and unhealthiness, while the 
 Christianity which is content to remain 'non- 
 mystical' is impoverished at the very center of 
 its being. All Christians profess to believe in 
 the Holy Ghost. Had only all Christians un- 
 derstood and lived up to their belief they would 
 all have been Mystics ; or, in other words, there 
 would have been no Mysticism." ^^ 
 
 Such definitions evaporate all that is definite 
 in Mysticism. We may all hope, and perhaps 
 some us expect, that the trend of our Chris- 
 tian Hving is to be more and more towards 
 Mysticism as its most perfect expression when 
 properly understood and used. But just now 
 we are seeking a definition that will really de- 
 
 " Atonement and Personality, p. 315. 
 
32 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 fine our subject. I hope to show, as Prof. Ru- 
 fus M. Jones says, that "Mysticism is simply 
 Religion in its most acute, intense and living 
 stage," -^ but we must first distinguish clearly 
 its principles and methods from those which 
 are non-mystical, before we can intelligently 
 bring them close together again. So we may 
 hope more, I think, from the last group of 
 definitions, which try to tell us something of 
 Mysticism where it is dififerentiated from ordi- 
 nary forms of Christianity, both in its philoso- 
 phy and its practice, omitting all that it has in 
 common. 
 
 4th : Recejac says : "Mysticism claims to be 
 able to know the Unknowable without help 
 from dialectics, and is persuaded that by means 
 of love and will it reaches a point to which 
 thought, unaided, cannot attain.'' -" 
 
 And Rufus M. Jones says, most truly, that 
 Mysticism is "that type of religion which puts 
 the emphasis on immediate awareness of rela- 
 tion with God, on direct and intimate con- 
 sciousness of the divine Presence." ^^ 
 
 And Miss Underbill says: "The Mystics 
 
 " Studies in Mystical Religion, p. xv. 
 
 ** The Bases of the Mystic Knowledge, p. 7. 
 
 *" Studies in Mystical Religion, p. xv. 
 
The Longing for God and Its Implications 33 
 
 find the basis of their method not in logic but 
 in life, in the existence of a discoverable real, 
 a spark of true being within the seeking sub- 
 ject, which can, in that inefifable experience 
 which they call the act of union, fuse itself with 
 and thus apprehend the reality of the sought 
 object. In theological language their theory 
 of knowledge is that the spirit of man, itself 
 essentially divine, is capable of immediate 
 communion with God, the only reality.'' ''^ 
 
 Schure defines Mysticism as ''The art of 
 finding God in one's self." 
 
 "Mysticism is that form of religious experi- 
 ence in which man is so directly and intuitive- 
 ly conscious of God's presence within him, that, 
 with the aid of symbols, he can express this 
 experience least inadequately as a union with 
 the Divine." "^^ 
 
 I hardly dare to add another to the many 
 definitions of Mysticism, especially after call- 
 ing it undefinable ; and yet T am impelled to do 
 so in the hope that it may clear the way for 
 a better understanding of what is to follow, 
 
 " Underbill : Mysticism, p. 28. 
 
 *" James Thayer Addison : Mysticism in the Fourth Gospel, 
 p. 26. 
 
34 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 even if I have to anticipate some of my state- 
 ments. 
 
 It is such a personal thing that I prefer to 
 describe it not as a system called Mysticism, 
 but in terms of a man, as the Creed of a Mystic, 
 and I say that a Christian Mystic is that kind 
 of a Christian who longs for, and who believes 
 he can have, an experience of intimate com- 
 munion with God, through Christ, in this life. 
 This is his supreme purpose. To carry this 
 out he believes that by a course of training he 
 may so develop his inmost self — call it what 
 you will — that his whole nature becomes open 
 and susceptible to God to such a degree that 
 the fact of God's presence within him becomes, 
 for him, the supreme reality of his life. And 
 lastly, the true Mystic not only has this longing 
 for God and this determination to fit himself 
 for God, but he perseveres until he accom- 
 plishes his purpose and attains real union with 
 God. 
 
 I call your attention to what is in my defini- 
 tion and not in the others, viz. : the method. 
 It connects the Longing with the Fruition by 
 a Way. I think this is important. 
 
 But we must remember that definitions, 
 while necessary for a science, are only helpful 
 
The Longing for God and Its Implications 35 
 
 for an art. We can never understand Mysti- 
 cism by defining it. It is a life which must make 
 its appeal to our lives, and is best studied in 
 the lives of the Mystics themselves. They 
 have been to the country we only read about. 
 They have succeeded, where so many of us 
 have so far failed, in establishing direct com- 
 munion with God, and the atmosphere of their 
 country is so rare that we cannot breathe it 
 suddenly; their lives are lived on a plane to 
 which we have not yet reached. If the pure in 
 heart are the ones who see God, then there 
 must be some purity in our hearts before we 
 can even see those who have seen him. For- 
 tunately we do not have to depend upon defini- 
 tions, nor is it a matter of logical demonstra- 
 tion. There is a Mystic Way, and if we choose 
 we can follow it, and if we follow it it brings 
 its own reward. It is open to all who want 
 God enough to put themselves in it, and it ends 
 at the last by their finding themselves in him. 
 As Coventry Patmore makes them say : 
 
 " 'Oh, taste and see !* they cry in accents of astound- 
 ing certainty and joy. 'Ours is an experimental sci- 
 ence. We can but communicate our system, never its 
 result. We come to you not as thinkers, but as doers. 
 Leave your deep and absurd trust in the senses, with 
 
36 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 their language of dot and dash, which may possibly 
 report fact but can never communicate personality. 
 If philosophy has taught you anything, she has surely 
 taught you the length of her tether, and the impos- 
 sibility of attaining to the doubtless admirable grazing 
 land which lies beyond it. One after another, idealists 
 have arisen who, straining frantically at the rope, have 
 announced to the world their approaching liberty ; only 
 to be flung back at last into the little circle of sensa- 
 tion. But here we are, a small family, it is true, yet 
 one that refuses to die out, assuring you that we have 
 slipped the knot and are free of those grazing- 
 grounds. This is evidence which you are bound to 
 bring into account before you can add up the sum 
 total of possible knowledge ; for you will find it im- 
 possible to prove that the world, as seen by the mys- 
 tics, "unimaginable, formless, dark, with excess of 
 bright," is less real than that which is expounded by 
 the youngest and most promising demonstrator of the 
 psycho-chemical universe. We will be quite candid 
 with you. Examine us as much as you like : our ma- 
 chinery, our veracity, our results. We cannot promise 
 that you shall see what we have seen, for here each 
 man must adventure for himself ; but we defy you to 
 stigmatize our experiences as impossible or invalid. 
 Is your world of experience so well and logically 
 founded that you dare make of it a standard? Phi- 
 losophy tells you that it is founded on nothing better 
 than the reports of your sensory apparatus and the 
 traditional concepts of the race. Certainly it is im- 
 perfect, probably it is illusion ; in any event, it never 
 
The Longing for God and Its Implications 37 
 
 touches the foundation of things. Whereas what the 
 world, which truly knows nothing, calls "mysticism" 
 is the science of ultimates . . . the science of self- 
 evident Reality, which cannot be "reasoned about," 
 because it is the object of pure reason or perception.' " 
 ["The Rod, the Root and the Flower," Aurea Dicta 
 CXXVIII.] 
 
 Let us accept their invitation to taste and 
 see. Experiment in all honesty. Adventure 
 for God. Start on the Mystic Way. 
 
 So I propose in the next lecture to take them 
 at their word, and to let them tell us what 
 they have done and felt, and make up from 
 their testimony a directory of the Way and see 
 if the path is not inviting. I think you will 
 find it less unfamiliar than you think. I beg 
 you to carry over to it the few thoughts I have 
 given you to-day. Like Bergson's Memory, 
 our study is to be cumulative, and we cannot 
 leave anything behind except, I trust, our pre- 
 judices, which you know are only unfavorable 
 opinions founded upon ignorance. 
 
 SUGGESTED READING 
 
 Fiske: Through Nature to God. Houghton, Mifflin 
 
 Co. 1899. 
 Jones: Social Law in the Spiritual World. John C. 
 
 Winston Co. 1904. 
 
38 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 Inge: Christian Mysticism. Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 1899. 
 
 Inge : Light, Life, and Love. Methuen & Co. 1904. 
 
 Fleming: Mysticism in Christianity. Fleming H. 
 Revell Co. 1913. 
 
 Theologia Germanica, translated by Miss Winkworth. 
 Macmillan & Co. 1874. 
 
 St. Augustine : Confessions. 
 
 RoYCE : Sources of Religious Insight. Charles Scrib- 
 ner's Sons. 1912. 
 
II 
 
 THE WAY TOWARD GOD 
 
 The Mystic aims to find God and to com- 
 plete himself in him. 
 
 We saw in the last lecture that he begins 
 with a sense of need, a need not peculiar to 
 himself, but universal, and felt by all men, al- 
 though in varying degree. And we saw that 
 from this longing grew a number of postulates, 
 truths which could reasonably be assumed, 
 granting that this longing is a genuinely hu- 
 man thing. The Mystic believes that this want 
 is not purely subjective, but is part of his di- 
 vine endowment, a taste of divinity given him 
 to whet his appetite for more ; that to desire is 
 to have, to seek is to find. And because his de- 
 sire is so intense, because he knows that noth- 
 ing less than God will satisfy it, he sets out to 
 find God by experience, and is sure in his heart 
 that he will arrive. 
 
 So to-day it is our purpose to study how the 
 
 39 
 
40 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 Mystic proceeds to attain his aim. There are 
 certain means to be used by which man can 
 reach God, or perhaps we had better say, cer- 
 tain means by which man may hold himself 
 open for God to come to him; or better still, 
 call it the secret of that descent into the center 
 of his being that God may be found already 
 there. 
 
 Whatever we call it, it is a process. It is the 
 Mystic Way. 
 
 Unless man is like God, bears his nature, 
 he cannot find God nor hope to know him. The 
 hope of success lies in this relationship which 
 we have assumed exists. But the Mystic 
 knows that the mere fact of relationship is not 
 enough. To know that at once reveals the 
 humiliating difiference. He cannot know God 
 until he becomes more like God. It is a circle, 
 but a virtuous one. To know more makes like, 
 and as each touch of likeness is added comes a 
 truer knowledge. 
 
 Therefore I keep repeating that Mysticism 
 is not a mere opinion, not a philosophy, not 
 even a hunger, however great. It is a prac- 
 tical way of life, a development of the self in 
 the attempt to satisfy that hunger. It is a 
 striving to remake the character, to fit it that 
 
The Way Toward God 41 
 
 it may become worthy to receive the satisfac- 
 tion it craves. As Recejac says : "There is no 
 other means of getting^ possession of the Abso- 
 lute than by adapting ourselves to it, and when 
 once it has first taken possession of us we ac- 
 quire experience of it in ourselves.* 
 
 This at once differentiates Mysticism from 
 all the vagueness and visionariness which have 
 been ascribed to it, and rules out many of the 
 definitions we have studied. It may dream and 
 poetize and philosophize, but in the true Mystic 
 these are all subordinate to the practical aim, 
 which is Sanctity, the fitting of one's self to 
 receive God. Leuba says : "One of the marks 
 of the true Mystic is the tenacious and heroic 
 energy with which he pursues a definite moral 
 ideal." 2 
 
 Even Sanctity, the perfecting of individual 
 character, is only a means to an end, the at- 
 tainment of the supreme end, living union with 
 God. In other words, the Mystic cares for 
 purity of heart only that by it he may see God. 
 
 If we read the works of the Mystics them- 
 selves we discover a certain order in their dis- 
 cipline, sometimes set down clearly as a road 
 
 ' The Bases of the \fyslic Kttoivledge, p. 35. 
 'Quoted in Underbill: Mysticism, p. 109. 
 
42 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 for others to follow, sometimes appearing only 
 in the course of a life of devotion. These steps 
 in the Mystic Way vary somewhat in number, 
 but in character they are so much alike that 
 we can make a composite diagram of them 
 which will do for our purpose in understand- 
 ing the principle, even if it do not fit any one 
 Mystic exactly. Some of them have insisted 
 on three, as in the "Theologia Germanica," ^ 
 Ruysbroek calls his three steps the Active Life, 
 the Inward Life, and the Contemplative Life, 
 although he proceeds to subdivide each of 
 these. Others set forth seven. Miss Under- 
 bill compromises on five. I think we shall gain 
 in clearness if we adhere to the larger number, 
 
 * "Now be assured that no one can be enlightened unless 
 he be first cleansed or purified and stripped. So also no one 
 can be united with God unless he be first enlightened. Thus 
 there are three stages : first, the purification ; secondly, the 
 enlightenment; thirdly, the union. The purification concern- 
 eth those who are beginning or repenting, and is brought to 
 pass in a threefold wise: by contrition and sorrow for sin, 
 by full confession, by hearty amendment. The enlightening 
 belongeth to such as are growing, and also taketh place in 
 three ways : to wit, by the eschewal of sin, by the practice 
 of virtue and good works, and by the willing endurance of 
 all manner of temptation and trials. The union belongeth to 
 such as are perfect, and also is brought to pass in three ways : 
 to wit, by pureness and singleness of heart, by love, and by 
 the contemplation of God, the Creator of all things." 
 [Theologia Gcrtnanica, Trans, by Winkworth : pp. 44-45.] 
 
The Way Toward God 43 
 
 and by thus subdividing make our steps short- 
 er. I would say, then, that the processes 
 through which the Mystics in general pass 
 from longing to fruition are these seven: — 
 
 1st. The Longing, of which we have already 
 treated. That surely must come first and be 
 real and intense. It need not imply a definite 
 consciousness of its Object, but it need be 
 none the less urgent because vague and dif- 
 fused. 
 
 2nd. The awakening of the soul when, more 
 or less suddenly, it catches a glimpse of its goal 
 and undergoes a change in the level of its liv- 
 ing. It is the result of what is called in re- 
 ligious phrase, Conversion. 
 
 3rd. The sight of God and Self thus brought 
 together even with the slightest understand- 
 ing of the former, gives to the Self that sense 
 of shame we call Repentance, that desire for 
 change we call Metanoia, the result of which 
 is often the crudest asceticism. It is the at- 
 tempt of the finite and sinful to eliminate, not 
 only by repudiation but by discipline, the im- 
 perfections and sins which keep the soul away 
 from God. The Mystical word for this is Pur- 
 gation. 
 
 4th. Not following but running parallel 
 
44 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 with this is the next step, called Contempla- 
 tion. In this are the Silence, Meditation, 
 Prayer, Concentration, visions and adventures 
 of the soul, processes all by which the soul, 
 gradually becoming more pure in heart, attunes 
 itself, putting itself en rapport with God. 
 
 5th. Then these glimpses result some day 
 in a vision which is clear enough to rejoice the 
 soul, in a sense of the Divine Presence, which 
 satisfies, even if not completely. It is called 
 Illumination. The search is rewarded, the 
 mountain top is seen, if not yet reached. Joy 
 enters the soul. 
 
 6th. But so near are joy and sorrow in life 
 that along with the vision come alternations 
 of darkness; along with the satisfaction come 
 moments of black despair; along with the sense 
 of growing union come awful moments when 
 the sense of the Divine Presence is lost. Some- 
 times this state will alternate, and sometimes, 
 and for long at a time, it will occupy the whole 
 field. It is called the Dark Night of the Soul, 
 or the Mystic Death. It is mysteriously con- 
 nected with the death of the Self. It is the 
 last step in Purgation. In utter submission 
 the soul gives up and, asking nothing, is then 
 ])repared for the final step, the . 
 
The Way Toward God 45 
 
 7th, which cuhninates in perfect union, God 
 waiting only for the complete preparation of 
 man's soul to reward it by inward joys which 
 only those who have endured to the end can 
 understand. It is called the Unitive State. 
 
 I. In tracing more in detail these steps of 
 the Mystic Way we need not retrace the first. 
 We take the Longing for granted. 
 
 II. Sooner or later, to the earnest soul seek- 
 ing satisfaction, there comes the answer back 
 from God. The connection is shown. The 
 soul recognizes its goal. It has nothing to do 
 with the acceptance of theological statements. 
 It is too real for that. It is Life, enhanced 
 life, life on a higher plane, the setting of the 
 character in a different environment. You 
 may call this Conversion, if you will, but with 
 the Mystic, while it may be the same in essence 
 as the ordinary sort, it is much higher in de- 
 gree. By so much as the initial longing was 
 greater, the joy that now comes is more in- 
 tense. 
 
 It may also be either sudden or gradual, but 
 these are very relative terms. Like a long- 
 dreaded and long-expected death, when it 
 comes it is always sudden and yet there is no 
 touch of God which comes to the soul that is 
 
46 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 not long prepared for. Conversion is always 
 both a process and a crisis. St. Paul's is called 
 sudden, but there must have been many warn- 
 ings that came to him in the "goads," much 
 preparation in twinges of conscience, and un- 
 certainties and longings and regrets. St. Au- 
 gustine has told us in his "Confessions," as he 
 looked back over the course of his life, how 
 many leadings were given him, withholdings 
 from sin, guidances in his Jife's work, in- 
 fluences from many sources, all unsuspected 
 and unheeded, and yet all found afterwards to 
 have had their convergence upon that one su- 
 preme moment when he heard the words, 
 "Tolle, lege" and was converted. But who 
 shall say that even that result was sudden ? As 
 well fix the moment when the rose blooms or 
 the apple ripens.* 
 
 * "There are times in Alpine climbing when the stroke of 
 an ice-axe or the shout of a climber will set an avalanche in 
 motion. It was not the shout that was fit to move a thousand 
 tons of snow. It was the weight of the snow itself in 
 equipoise so fine that the least vibration of the air could 
 start it. So, too, thoughts and feelings gather until a word 
 will give them life and force to the overthrowing of spirit- 
 ual dominions, principalities and powers. But the fitting 
 word must be rightly spoken and the right word is always 
 an appeal to something already within the soul." [Steven : 
 The Psychology of the Christian Soul, p. 163.] 
 
The Way Toward God 47 
 
 To almost every one who has had this ex- 
 perience and looks back upon it, there comes 
 the recollection of a long, if at the time, un- 
 appreciated preparation. The flesh had been 
 lusting against the spirit, and the spirit against 
 the flesh. Doubts had been fought and long- 
 ings had been stifled, modes of life were criti- 
 cised and then acquiesced in. Thoughts came 
 unbidden and were dismissed. But these all 
 left their mark and their effect was cumula- 
 tive. As the strength of them increased, the 
 fight against them increased also; as the wa- 
 ters rose the dam was built higher and higher 
 to meet and resist them. It is the everlasting 
 conflict. And then some day the dam bursts 
 and the water of life floods the soul, and we 
 call that moment Conversion. It all depends 
 upon the fight the man has made how sudden 
 the defeat seems. But "defeat" is not the word 
 to use. If the breaking of the dam stands for 
 the crumbling of the old and lower self, it 
 stands much more for the influx of the new 
 self, the new man in Christ Jesus.^ It is vic- 
 tory, 
 
 ^ "Spontaneous awakenings are the fructification of that 
 which has been ripening within the subliminal consciousness." 
 [Starbuck: The Psychology of Religion, p. 108.] 
 
 "The ideal dawns: the will is exercised in its direction; 
 
48 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 Thus does the second stage of the Mystic 
 Way open. It is the awakening of the soul, its 
 new birth. The true life of the Mystic, as of 
 every Christian, begins here, and it begins in 
 a joy which is unutterable. All the storm and 
 stress of the past are forgotten. In its joyous 
 submission to God the soul, released from the 
 bonds of self, leaps up to find ''all things new." 
 God is seen everywhere and in everything. All 
 nature is irradiated with him. In almost all 
 cases when the Mystic has spoken, it is, like St. 
 Paul, of a blinding radiance. 
 
 But then these vague raptures which en- 
 velop the whole world in a new light must not 
 dissipate the personal touch which God has laid 
 upon the soul. His word, "My son, give me 
 thine heart," must be heeded. And here there 
 is an even deeper joy, the joy of self -surrender 
 and of service. The convert hears some defi- 
 nite command, is given some definite task. 
 "Rise, enter into the city and it shall be told 
 thee what thou must do," were the words to 
 
 failing, there is unrest and distress; finally the ideal is un- 
 expectedly realized. The function of the will in Conversion 
 then seems to be to give point and direction to the uncon- 
 scious processes of growth which in turn work out and give 
 back to clear consciousness the revelations striven after." 
 [Ibid., p. 112.] 
 
The Way Toward God 49 
 
 St. Paul; and to St. Francis came the words 
 from the Crucifix: "Go, repair my house, the 
 which, as thou seest, is falling into decay." 
 So Conversion, to be complete, must end in a 
 decision of the will, crowning all that has gone 
 before, involving often a complete change not 
 only of the inward but of the outward life. St. 
 Paul "was not disobedient unto the heavenly 
 vision." St. Francis began immediately to re- 
 pair the fabric of St. Damian.*' 
 
 III. If Conversion is the sight of God in 
 Christ, then surely Repentance is the sight of 
 self in the light of God's Holiness. Then the 
 infinite difference becomes manifest. In his 
 light we see light. Then comes the desire for 
 Purification, among some Mystics so deep and 
 intense as to lead them into the extremest as- 
 ceticism. All that would make life pleasant 
 is cut off, the flesh is denied, the social instincts 
 are crushed. This is partly as self-punish- 
 ment for the past, partly an attempt to avoid 
 the old temptations, and partly a setting free 
 
 •"Divine love draws those whom it seizes beyond them- 
 selves, and this so greatly that they belong no longer to them- 
 selves, but wholly to the Object loved." [Dionysius: Diznnc 
 Navies. IV, 13I 
 
50 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 of the soul for the highest thing, the attain- 
 ment of GodJ 
 
 All this differs from the repentance of the 
 ordinary Christian only in degree, and even 
 here we must be careful to remember that not 
 all Mystics are ascetics, any more than are 
 all ascetics Mystics. Even among the ex- 
 tremists their asceticism is generally tempo- 
 rary. They outgrow it and see its abnormal 
 character. Suso is a fair example. After 
 more than fifteen years of the most terrible 
 austerities, he has told us, speaking of himself 
 in the third person, of a vision that he had. 
 On a certain Whitsunday a Heavenly messen- 
 ger appeared to him and ordered him, in God's 
 name, to continue them no more. He at once 
 ceased and threw all the instruments of his 
 sufferings into a river, and began to lead a 
 more natural life. 
 
 ' "Meekness in itself is nought else, but a true knowing and 
 feeling of a man's self as he is. For surely whoso might 
 verily see and feel himself as he is, he should verily be 
 meek." [The Cloud of Unknowing, p. ii6.] 
 
 "And wete thou well that he that desireth for to see God, 
 him behoveth to cleanse his soul, the which is as a mirror, in 
 which all things are clearly seen, when it is clean ; and when 
 the mirror is foul, then mayest thou see nothing clearly 
 Avithin; and right so it is of thy soul, when it is foul, neither 
 thou knowest thyself nor God." [The Cell of Self -Knowl- 
 edge, p. 30.1 
 
The Way Toward God 51 
 
 It is the Mystic spirit which underlies the 
 monastic vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedi- 
 ence. As for Poverty, Miss Underhill's quo- 
 tations from Rolle and Petersen and St. John 
 of the Cross show how high and pure is the 
 Mystic's ideal. True poverty is only the new 
 way of looking at Reality, of not being taken 
 captive by the mere show of "Things." It 
 is one's attitude towards such. "I am not 
 speaking here of the absence of things," says 
 St. John of the Cross, "for absence is not de- 
 tachment if the desire remains — but of that 
 detachment which consists in suppressing de- 
 sire and avoiding pleasure. It is this that sets 
 the soul free even though possession may be 
 still retained." ^ 
 
 And Gerlac Petersen says: "Let all things 
 be forsaken of me so that, being pure, I may 
 be able, in great inward spaciousness and 
 without any hurt, to suffer want of all those 
 things which the mind of man can desire out 
 of or except God himself." ® 
 
 And again Richard Rolle tells us: "If thou 
 truly all things for God forsake, see more 
 
 * The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book I, Chap. Ill, 4. 
 * Ignitum cum Deo Soliloquitim, I:i, III. 
 
52 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 what thou despiseth than what thou for- 
 saketh." '" 
 
 "Fast thou never so much, wake thou never so long, 
 rise thou never so early, He thou never so hard, wear 
 thou never so sharp ; yea, and if it were lawful to do 
 — as it is not — put thou out thine eyes, cut thou out 
 thy tongue of thy mouth, stop thou thine ears and thy 
 nose never so fast, though thou shear away thy mem- 
 bers, and do all the pain to thy body that thou mayest 
 or canst think : all this would help thee right nought. 
 Yet will stirring and rising of sin be in thee." ^^ 
 
 Of Chastity the Mystic has none of the 
 monkish feeling. It is purity of heart which 
 he seeks, and family life need not be re- 
 pudiated. 
 
 And Obedience is seldom as of the monk to 
 a human Superior. It is to God alone. But 
 all these, and whatever else they may do or 
 deny, are means to an end. They have no 
 value in themselves. The Mystic is after God 
 and so pushes from him everything that would 
 hinder his search. It is slight wonder if in 
 some cases he stripped himself of more than 
 was needful. 
 
 A horrible example is given by that other- 
 
 *• The Mending of Life, Ch. III. 
 " The Cloud of Unki^oiving. p. 113. 
 
The Way Toward God 53 
 
 wise saintly Angela da Foligno, who seems to 
 expect approval by this statement: — "In that 
 time, and by God's will, there died my mother, 
 who was a great hindrance unto me in fol- 
 lowing the way of God: my husband died like- 
 wise, and in a short time there also died all 
 my children. And because I had commenced 
 to follow the aforesaid way and had prayed 
 God that he would rid me of them, I had great 
 consolation of their deaths, albeit I did also 
 feel some grief." ^^ 
 
 IV. Mysticism is a life process, a method 
 by which man attempts to put himself, by the 
 use of means, into direct relation to reality, to 
 turn from the "shows of things" to God him- 
 self by ever completer adjustment. So far the 
 steps have been quite in harmony with those 
 taken by any earnest man, be he Mystic or not. 
 The longing, the glimpse of the goal, the striv- 
 ing for a better life, are parts of Mysticism 
 only as that is human. We come now to an- 
 other step where the ways part somewhat. 
 
 As we have seen, the Mystic, however the 
 earth may become irradiated for him with the 
 sense of God everywhere, looks for God within 
 himself. He does not expect to come at God 
 
 "Book of the Ditniie Consolation, p. 5. 
 
54 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 with telescope or microscope or by the logical 
 processes of reason. To find God he must re- 
 tire into his inmost self and there be quiet and 
 look and listen. This is the step called Con- 
 templation. It is not taken alone. It is, as I 
 have said, parallel to that of Purgation, and 
 even to that of Illumination. It is the common 
 medium by which and in which the Mystic 
 works. It is the most characteristic quality 
 of Mysticism, and it is a large and varied one. 
 By Contemplation I mean the Practice of the 
 Presence of God, and it includes Quiet, Silence, 
 Recollection, Prayer. In it are found also 
 those peculiarly mystical tendencies to the 
 hearing of voices and the seeing of visions, to 
 trances and raptures and ecstasies. These 
 will need much careful study if we would un- 
 derstand the theory, and much hard work if we 
 could come to its practice. For as Miss Under- 
 bill says : "Transcendental genius, then, obeys 
 the laws which govern all other forms of 
 genius in being susceptible of culture, and in- 
 deed cannot develop its full powers without an 
 educative process of some kind. This strange 
 art of Contemplation, which the Mystic tends 
 naturally to practise during the whole of his 
 career — which develops step by step with his 
 
The Way Toward God 55 
 
 vision and his love — demands of the self which 
 undertakes it the same hard, dull work, the 
 same slow training of the will which lies be- 
 hind all supreme achievement, and is the price 
 of all true liberty. It is the want of such train- 
 ing — such *super-sensual drill' — which is re- 
 sponsible for the mass of vague, ineffectual and 
 sometimes harmful Mysticism which has al- 
 ways existed: the dilute cosmic emotion and 
 limp spirituality which hangs, as it were, on 
 the skirts of the true seekers of the Absolute 
 and brings discredit on their science." '^ 
 
 "Now the education which tradition has ever 
 prescribed for the Mystic consists in the grad- 
 ual development of an extraordinary faculty of 
 concentration, a power of spiritual atten- 
 tion."^^ 
 
 All the powers of the soul must be gathered 
 and concentrated upon "one point." ''Cease," 
 says Boehme, "but from thine own activity 
 steadfastly fixing thine eye upon one point. 
 . . . For this end gather in all thy thoughts 
 and by faith press into the Center, laying hold 
 upon the Word of God which is infallible and 
 which hath called thee. Be thou obedient to 
 this call and be silent before the Lord, sitting 
 
 " Underbill : Mysticisni, p. 359. " Ibid. : p. 360. 
 
56 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 alone with him in thine inmost and most hid- 
 den cell, thy mind being centrally united in it- 
 self and attending his will in the patience of 
 hope."^^ 
 
 Just as attention was called to the danger, in 
 the Purgative stage, of running into the ex- 
 tremes of asceticism and self -mutilation, so 
 here we should be warned of another common 
 exaggeration which has often brought Mysti- 
 cism into disrepute. There is danger that this 
 Quiet degenerate into or be mistaken for 
 Quietism. One is the active state of spiritual 
 receptiveness, the other is mere spiritual lazi- 
 ness — "a half-hypnotic state of passivity." 
 Ruysbroek has sternly condemned this perver- 
 sion. *'It is important that we should know, 
 
 " Boehme : Dialogue of the Super-sensual Life, p. 56. 
 
 "So being beaten to it, by constant sense, and daily ex- 
 perience, that it is not by our willing or running, according 
 to our wisdom and strength, that we can attain anything; but 
 by God's showing mercy to us in Christ; we therefore daily 
 wait at the posts of God's heavenly wisdom, to feel the gate 
 of mercy and tender love opened to us, and mercy and love 
 flow in upon us, whereby we may and daily do, obtain what 
 our hearts desire and seek after, blessed be the Lord for- 
 ever." [Isaac Penington : Horce Mystica, p. 72.] 
 
 "In time of strong temptation, desertion and desolation it 
 is necessary for thee to get close into thy centre, that thou 
 raayest only look at and contemplate God, who keeps His 
 throne and His abode in the bottom of thy soul." [Molinos : 
 Mora Mystica, p. 116.] 
 
The Way Toward God 57 
 
 denounce and crush all quietism. These quiet- 
 ists remain in a state of utter passivity; in 
 order that they may more tranquilly enjoy their 
 false repose they abstain from every interior 
 and exterior activity. Such a repose is treason 
 to God, a crime of Icse-majcste. Quietism 
 blinds a man, plunging him into that ignorance 
 which is not superior, but inferior to all knowl- 
 edge; such a man remains seated within him- 
 self, useless and inert. This repose is simply 
 laziness and this tranquillity is forgetfulness of 
 God, one's self and one's neighbor. It is the 
 exact opposite of the divine peace, the opposite 
 of the peace of the Abyss, of that marvelous 
 peace which is full of activity, full of affection, 
 full of desire, full of seeking, that burning and 
 insatiable peace which we pursue more and 
 more after we have found it. Between the 
 peace of the heights and the quietism of the 
 depths there is all the difference that exists be- 
 tween God and a mistaken creature." ^^ 
 
 If we have at all understood what is meant by 
 Recollection and Quiet, or if we should attempt 
 to put these into practice, we should find, per- 
 haps to our surprise, that what we had at- 
 
 " Quoted in Underbill : Mysticism, p. 385, from condensa- 
 tion by Hello. 
 
58 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 tained to was Prayer in its highest form. It 
 is not the petitionary side of prayer, but it has 
 behind and through it all the intense longing 
 for God. Prayer is asking, but it is more large- 
 ly receiving; it is talking with God, but if we 
 would be acceptable conversationalists we must 
 be good listeners, and to listen for God is to be 
 greatly rewarded. 
 
 Before leaving this step in the Mystic Way 
 we must touch on some of its results, which 
 have received from many more attention than 
 they deserve. The whole matter of Contem- 
 plation, because it is largely composed of con- 
 centration, of course carries with it results 
 psychical and psychological, which we know to 
 be associated with concentration. It is possible 
 to let go all hold of the outer world, to be ac- 
 tually lost in thought, a state made familiar by 
 hypnotism. Intense absorption upon one ob- 
 ject or idea may lead to physical trance or cata- 
 lepsy, complete and rigid anesthesia. I need 
 hardly remind you that while this may accom- 
 pany the Mystic's contemplation, it is no part 
 of it. It may accompany anybody's contempla- 
 tion say, of his navel, and is equally important 
 and useful. By itself it has no spiritual value. 
 As Godfernaux says, it is only "the extreme 
 
The Way Toward God 59 
 
 form of a state which must be classed among 
 the ordinary accidents of conscious life." '"^ 
 
 This accounts for the common use of sym- 
 bols to stimulate the Mystic's attention and so 
 to cause the ecstasy. For each some special 
 thing or act is used as the help towards gaining 
 the vision or the trance. The Holy Communion 
 would do this for St. Catherine of Siena, while 
 St. Francis of Assisi and many others would 
 gaze upon the Crucifix. Boehme was sent into 
 a trance by looking at the reflection of the light 
 seen on a copper kettle. The reason these states 
 of ecstasy and rapture have bulked so large in 
 the history of Mysticism is because its subjects 
 have been of such intense nature that in them 
 they have been most extraordinarily induced; 
 and in many of them they have been valued 
 above their real worth. They have not real- 
 ized their earthly origin and have forgotten 
 how easy it is for the starving to see visions, 
 whether their fasting be voluntary and for 
 righteousness' sake, or involuntary on a raft in 
 mid-ocean. Nevertheless they do have their 
 value, and properly criticised, must be admit- 
 ted to have great importance. But this comes 
 not from the ecstasy itself, but from its after 
 
 "As quoted in Underbill: Mysticism, p. 431. 
 
6o The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 effects. It must be known by its fruits. "It 
 is all the difference between a healthy appe- 
 tite for nourishing food and the morbid crav- 
 ing for garbage. The same organs of diges- 
 tion are used in satisfying both; yet he would 
 be a hardy physiologist who undertook to dis- 
 credit all nutrition by a reference to its degene- 
 rate forms." ^^ 
 
 The same person may have two trances, and 
 one be healthful, exalting, and exhilarating, 
 and the other be enfeebling and morbid. "For 
 I tell thee truly that the Devil hath his con- 
 templatives as God hath his." ^^ 
 
 The ecstasy of which we are speaking is not 
 only physical and psychological, a natural thing 
 working upon something given, like an idea in 
 the mind or a crucifix before the eyes, and 
 which can give the subject nothing more than 
 he had before, but it is an enhancement of the 
 
 " Underhill : Mysticism, p. 432. 
 
 "Thus, when the mystic eye is pure it sees in God only 
 such things as add to the moral and rational life of humanity, 
 according to the degree in which the Absolute is infused in 
 the consciousness. In the end it is Reason which must give 
 its seal of approval to the results of Inspiration. In what 
 other way could we distinguish those results from the in- 
 ferior suggestions which Desire often imposes on the con- 
 sciousness, under cover of the Good?" [Recejac: The Bases 
 of the Mystic Knowledge, p. 54.] 
 
 "* Hilton : Scale of Perfection, p. 216. 
 
The Way Toward Gcxi 6i 
 
 subject's receptivity, and the means by which, 
 through the unification of the whole person- 
 ality, reason, love and will, new and higher 
 revelations may be received. It is the comple- 
 tion of the effort, "the blind intent of stretch- 
 ing" toward God, the single point of contact 
 with God at the "apex" of the soul, the most 
 exalted act of perception of which our nature 
 is capable. 
 
 What the object is which is perceived, what 
 the vision is, or what the voice heard, the Mys- 
 tic who has had this experience can rarely tell 
 us. Even St. Paul, with all his powers of ex- 
 pression, hid behind the statement that it was 
 not "lawful" to utter what he had seen in the 
 third Heaven. The vision is sudden, over- 
 whelming, ineffable. The Mystic who tries to 
 tell of it stumbles with the load of the multi- 
 tude of symbols he is obliged to use. St. Au- 
 gustine says : "My mind withdrew its thought 
 from experience, extracting itself from the 
 contradictory throng of sensuous images that 
 it might find out what that light was wherein 
 it was bathed. . . . And thus, with the flash 
 of one hurried glance, it attained to the vision 
 of That Which Is/' 2« 
 
 * Confessions. Bock VII. Chap. XVII. 
 
62 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 *'When the soul, forgetting itself, dwells in 
 that radiant darkness, it leaves all its faculties 
 and all its qualities," as St. Bernard has said. 
 "And this more or less completely, according 
 to whether the soul — whether in the body or 
 out of the body — is more or less united to God. 
 This forgetfulness of self is, in a measure, a 
 transformation in God, who then becomes, in 
 a certain manner, all things for the soul, as the 
 Scripture saith. In this rapture the soul dis- 
 appears, but not entirely. It acquires, it is 
 true, certain qualities of divinity, but does not 
 actually become divine. To speak in the com- 
 mon language, the soul is rapt by the divine 
 power of the resplendent being above its natu- 
 ral faculties into the nakedness of the Noth- 
 ing." - 
 
 "My desire follows and pursues, but the 
 finite can never attain to the infinite. Never- 
 theless, though there remains an invincible di- 
 versity between us, the law of Jesus promises 
 and shows us the eternal fruition of his divin- 
 ity. There are persons who have an experi- 
 mental knowledge of God. Is it any wonder if 
 joy completely breaks them down?" ^^ 
 
 "Suso: Lt/?, Chap. LV. 
 * Ruysbroek : Mirror j p. 79. 
 
The Way Toward God 63 
 
 I could quote many more such passages. But 
 even their authors know they could not tell 
 us. We must go where they have been, if we 
 would see what they saw. They cannot tell 
 us, but we need not therefore doubt the fact 
 they tell us of. "But these most excellent and 
 divine workings in the soul whereby God doth 
 manifest himself, man can in no wise speak or 
 even stammer." ^^ 
 
 V. I hope you have noted all along the ap- 
 proach to the fifth step in the Mystic Way 
 which we have now reached. The Illumination 
 is now a fact. First, dimly longed for, then 
 laboriously prepared for, negatively by puri- 
 fication and positively by introspection and 
 concentration and prayer. God is found with- 
 in. And as the seeing eye makes all the world 
 it sees, yellow if jaundiced, glowing with 
 beauty if in perfect health, so one of the first 
 results of Illumination is the illumination of 
 the outer world with the "light that never was 
 on sea or land." 
 
 Eckhart was before Tennyson in saying: 
 "The meanest thing that one knows in God — 
 for instance, if one could understand a flower 
 as it has its Being in God — that would be a 
 
 "Angela da FoUgno: Book of Divine Cotisolation, p. 189. 
 
64 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 higher thing than the whole world." "And 
 the bodily sight stinted, but the spiritual sight 
 dwelled in my understanding and I abode with 
 reverent dread, joying in that I saw." ^'' 
 
 But more truly, as our study has shown us, 
 must the illumination be within. The Mystic, 
 
 ^ Juliana of Norwich : Revelations of Divine Love, Ch. 
 VIII. 
 
 "We were saying then: — If to any the tumult of the flesh 
 were hushed, hushed the phantasies of earth, and waters and 
 air; hushed too, the heavens; and the very soul hushed unto 
 herself, and pass beyond herself by not thinking of self; 
 hushed all dreams and imaginary revelations, every language 
 and every sign, and utterly hushed whatever exists only to 
 pass away; since, if any should hear, all these are saying, 
 'We made not ourselves, but He made us that abideth for- 
 ever'; if, having said this, they then were to be silent, having 
 roused our ear to Him who made them, and He alone were to 
 speak, not by them, but by Himself, that we might hear His 
 word, not through tongue of flesh, not through voice of angel, 
 not through sound of thunder, nor in the dark riddle of a 
 similitude, but were to hear Him whom in these we love, 
 His very self without these ; and even as we now stretch out 
 ourselves, and in rapid thought, touch that Eternal Wisdom 
 that abideth over all, if this could be continued, and other 
 visions of kind far unlike, be withdrawn, and this one catch 
 up, and absorb, and bury its beholder amidst inward joys, so 
 our unending life might be such as was that moment of un- 
 derstanding for which we sighed : would not this be to enter 
 into the joy of the Lord? [St. Augustine: Confessions, Bk. 
 
 IX, ID.] 
 
 "I felt my face must have shone like that of Moses. I had 
 a general feeling of buoyancy. It was the greatest joy it was 
 ever my lot to experience." [Starbuck: Psychology of Re- 
 ligion, p. 120.] 
 
The Way Toward God 65 
 
 by contemplation, attains to a "Vision of the 
 Heart" which means more to him than any- 
 thing he can see with his eyes.'^ 
 
 Thus this vision fills the whole being, for 
 some it is large and light and dazzling, but al- 
 ways the personality to whom the illumination 
 comes is preserved. There is as yet no absorp- 
 tion of the finite by the Infinite, no "flight of 
 the alone to the Alone." 
 
 But the illumination varies with diflferent 
 persons, and at times even with the same per- 
 son. Sometimes all is light;'® again, it is a 
 knowledge of the deep things of God;" or 
 
 * "And being thence admonished to return to myself, I en- 
 tered with Thy guidance into my inmost self, and I was en- 
 abled to do so, for Thou wert my Helper. And I entered 
 and beheld with the eye of my soul (such as it was), above 
 the same eye of my soul, above my mind, the Light Un- 
 changeable : not this common light, which shines for all 
 fiesh ; nor as it were a greater of the same kind, as though 
 the brightness of this should shine out more and more 
 brightly, and with its greatness take up all space. Not such 
 was this light, but other, yea, far other from all these. Nor 
 was it above my soul, as oil is above water, nor yet as heaven 
 above earth : but higher than I, because It made me ; and I 
 below it, because I was made by It. He that knoweth the 
 Truth, knoweth what that Light is; and he that knoweth It, 
 knoweth eternity." [St. Augustine: Confessions, Book VII, 
 Chap. X.] 
 
 " Dante : Paradiso. XXXIII, 82. 
 
 " Angela da Foligno. 
 
66 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 again it is small and intimate, as with Mother 
 Juliana of Norwich.^* 
 
 In every case, what comes to the soul is rev- 
 elation and strength and enrichment, and is 
 felt as such. By them the light is tested, the 
 true distinguished from the false, and the soul, 
 ''humbled yet exultant," is made ready for the 
 still further pursuit of its aim, communion with 
 God. 
 
 VI. But in between comes the next stage in 
 the Mystic Way, called Negation, or by some, 
 "The Dark Night of the Soul." Here again 
 we find the state a common one among Chris- 
 tians, only here, as before, what distinguishes 
 it is its greater intensity. It is a common 
 psychological law, that of reaction. As Star- 
 buck says: *lt is one of the best established 
 laws of the nervous system that it has periods 
 of exhaustion, if exercised continuously in one 
 direction, and can only recuperate by havin.q; 
 a period of rest." -^ 
 
 All good Christians have to complain of 
 periods of "dryness in prayer," or of peculiar 
 openness to temptation when their spiritual life 
 seems to be at a low ebb. And if the ordinary 
 
 * Revelations of Divine Love, p. 204. 
 
 " Starbuck : The Psychology of Religion, p. 24. 
 
The Way Toward God 67 
 
 Christian's weak experiences of God can cause 
 such after- fatigue, what must be the intensity 
 of the Mystic's loss of all he held most dear 
 and counted on most certainly ? It is not mere- 
 ly to be thought of as physical or psychological, 
 which are, of course, the foundations, but we 
 must remember that there comes the sense of 
 a real spiritual loss. The hold on God is loosen- 
 ed, the dreadful thought takes possession of 
 the soul that it is abandoned of God, the horror 
 as of those who think they have committed the 
 "unpardonable sin." This is the utmost depth 
 to which the soul can be brought. It was hard 
 enough to break away from the Imperfect in 
 the Purgative stage. It is far harder now to 
 feel the loss of the Perfect. "My God, my God, 
 why hast thou forsaken me?" But in this state 
 there are other feelings which depress nearly 
 as much. There is, as I have said, the enfeeble- 
 ment, the lassitude, the "aridity" which is so 
 hard to bear — a spiritual "ennui" — which is 
 as real as physical fatigue, and this weakness 
 attacks the will. Temptations seem to come in 
 almost overwhelming force. "I had thought 
 of all the sins," says Mme. Guyon, "though 
 without committing them; and these thoughts 
 seemed to my mind to be realities, because I 
 
68 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 felt that my heart was occupied by created 
 things." And Santa Teresa, in her quaint self- 
 depreciation and sense of humor, says : "The 
 Devil then sends so offensive a spirit of bad 
 temper that I think I could eat people up." 
 These and many others are the forms by which 
 we recognize the Negative state. It is not 
 clearly defined, nor does it appear always at 
 this definite place. The alternations of hope 
 and fear, of light and darkness, have appeared 
 all along the Way. But here the alternations 
 are more intense and trying. We are drawing 
 near the close, the soul is almost ready for the 
 last step, which is Union. And here this trial 
 has its moral, its spiritual purpose. Hereto- 
 fore, with all its purification, the soul has been 
 itself; with all its illumination and joy, it has 
 been the self which has enjoyed. Now it must 
 give up its very selfhood, claiming nothing, 
 owning nothing, content, if need be, to be swal- 
 lowed up in God. It is not willing acceptance 
 of a duty, as in the second step. It reaches 
 deeper, as much as the words, "Not my will, 
 but Thine, be done," are deeper than "I must 
 work the works of Him that sent me." 
 
 "Although the exercise of the will is an im- 
 portant element in Conversion, we are con- 
 
The Way Toward God 69 
 
 fronted with the paradox that in the same per- 
 sons who strive toward the higher life, self sur- 
 render is often necessary before the sense of 
 assurance comes. The personal will must be 
 given up. In many cases relief persistently 
 refuses to come until the person ceases to re- 
 sist or to make an effort in the direction he 
 desires to go." ^" 
 
 Thus Negation, you see, is really a forward, 
 not a backward, step. It is the removing of 
 the last vestige of self and self will, which are 
 the only remaining barriers between the soul 
 and God, and thus are the last steps to be taken 
 before the soul can feel itself *'oned" with 
 God. 
 
 VII. It will not be necessary here to at- 
 tempt a description at second hand of what is 
 meant by the union of the soul with God as 
 understood by the Mystics. If we cannot gain 
 the experience for ourselves, there is only one 
 way, and that is to let the Mystics tell us, in 
 their own words; and here even their words 
 fail them; they know, as we have seen, even 
 as far as their Illumination, how feeble any 
 description is. As Myers has interpreted St. 
 Paul's "unlawful": 
 
 "Starbuck: The Psychology of Religion, p. 113. 
 
70 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 "O could I tell ye surely would believe it ! 
 O could I only say what I have seen! 
 How should I tell or how can ye receive it. 
 How, till he bringeth you where I have been?" 
 
 I would only call your attention to the com- 
 mon error of attributing to all Mystics the 
 extreme view of some regarding the absorp- 
 tion of the soul in union, the danger which so 
 many come perilously near, of Pantheism. 
 Many expressions, taken by themselves, lend 
 color to this view and have brought much dis- 
 credit upon Mysticism. But a careful study 
 will show that it is a mistake. Such state- 
 ments as are condemned in the Mystics may be 
 found in many theologians who are not Mys- 
 tics. Clement of Alexandria says: "It is, 
 then, the greatest of all lessons to know one's 
 self, for if one knows himself he will know 
 God, and knowing God he will be made like 
 God." '' 
 
 ''From him there began the interweaving of 
 divine and human nature in order that the hu- 
 man, by communion with the divine, may rise 
 to be divine, not in Jesus alone, but in all those 
 who not only believe but enter upon the life 
 
 ** Pcedagogus, Book. Ill, Chap. T. 
 
The Way Toward God 71 
 
 which Jesus taught." ^- And even Athanasius 
 says : "He became flesh that we might be made 
 capable of receiving Divinity." Does Eckhart, 
 the Mystic, go any farther when he writes: 
 "Our Lord says to every loving soul, *I became 
 Man for you. If you do not become God for 
 me, you do me wrong' "? What they mean is 
 explained by the oft-used simile of Boehme: 
 
 "I give you an earthly similitude of this. 
 Behold a bright flame, possibly of iron, which 
 of itself is dark and black. The fire so pene- 
 trateth and shineth through the iron that it 
 giveth light. Now the iron does not cease to 
 be; it is iron still ; and the source (or property) 
 of the fire retaineth its own propriety: it doth 
 not take the iron into it, but it penetrateth 
 (and shineth) through the iron; and it is iron 
 then as well as before, fire in itself, and so also 
 is the source (or property) of the fire. In such 
 a manner is the soul set in the Deity ; the Deity 
 penetrateth through the soul and dwelleth in 
 the soul, yet the soul doth not comprehend the 
 Deity, but the Deity comprehendeth the soul, 
 but doth not alter it (from being a soul), but 
 only giveth it the divine source (or property) 
 of the majesty." ^^ 
 
 "Origen: Contra Celsum, III, ^. 
 
 " Boehme : The Three-Fold Life of Man, p. 190. 
 
72 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 *'To enjoy God without intermediary : this is 
 what the spirit longs for, naturally and super- 
 naturally, with a supreme desire. But even if 
 the divine union be effected without medium 
 we must understand that God and the creature 
 can never be confounded. Union can never 
 become confusion. The distinction remains 
 forever inviolable." ^* 
 
 Nay, so far from Pantheism is this idea of 
 union that the Mystics claim that they are in 
 this gaining and not losing; gaining complete 
 freedom, gaining at last the perfection of their 
 own personality, finding self by losing it. This 
 may be paradoxical, but it is not pantheistic.^^ 
 
 "The union of the soul with God is far more 
 inward than that of the soul and body. 
 
 "Ruysbroek: Mirror of Eternal Salvation, p. 24. 
 
 ^ "And for that that I would that thou knew what manner 
 of working it is that knitteth man's soul to God, and that 
 maketh it one with Him in love and accordance of will, after 
 the word of Saint Paul saying thus: Qui adhccrct Deo unus 
 spiritus est cum illo; that is to say: 'Who so draweth near to 
 God,' as it is by such a reverent affection touched before, 'he 
 IS one spirit with God.' That is, though all that God and he 
 be two and sere in kind, nevertheless yet in grace they are so 
 knit together that they are but one in spirit; and all this is 
 for onehead of love and accordance of will ; and in this one- 
 head is the marriage made between God and the soul, the 
 which shall never be broken, though all that the heat and the 
 fervour of this work cease for a time, but by a deadly sin." 
 [The Cell of Self-Knowledge, pp. 87-88.I 
 
The Way Toward God 73 
 
 ''Now I might ask, how stands it with the 
 soul that is lost in God? Does the soul find 
 herself or not? To this will I answer as it 
 appears to me, that the soul finds herself in the 
 point, where every rational being understands 
 itself with itself. Although it sinks and sinks 
 in the eternity of the Divine Essence, yet it 
 can never reach the ground. Therefore God 
 has left a little point wherein the soul turns 
 back upon itself and finds itself, and knows it- 
 self to be a creature." ^''' 
 
 To gain this union, which is not confusion, 
 there must at least be "a point of contact." To 
 the study of that point we will turn in the next 
 lecture and ask, Where and how do God and 
 man meet? 
 
 SUGGESTED READING 
 Starbuck: The Psychology of Religion. Walter 
 
 Scott, Ltd. 1900. 
 Gr<\nger : The Soul of a Christian. The Macmillan 
 
 Co. 1900. 
 Steven : The Psychology of the Christian Soul. Hod- 
 
 der & Stoughton. 
 Ames: The Psychology of Religious Experience. 
 
 Houghton, Mifflin Co. 1910. 
 CoE : The Spiritual Life. Eaton & Mains. 1900. 
 Underhill: Mysticism. E. P. Dutton & Co. 191 1. 
 *Eckhart: Life, Light and Love, Inge, pp. 14-15. 
 
Ill 
 
 TH^ MEETING POINT 
 
 We have studied the mystic yearning and 
 the , mystic way — man longing for God, and 
 man seeking God. From all that has been said 
 so far it may begin to look as though we 
 thought that man, by his searching, might find 
 out God, whereas we believe, with Job and 
 John, that man cannot/ The man's desire and 
 will must be active; there is a path for the 
 prodigal which, if he will take, will lead him 
 home, but we must never forget that to God 
 belongs the priority.^ The longing itself is 
 fundamental, just because it is implanted. 
 Deep calleth unto deep because originally they 
 were one. The home is behind the prodigal 
 as well as before him. What he really means 
 to say is, *'I will arise and go back to my 
 father." And so he does, but not only is the 
 
 * Job II 7, 8, 9; John i:i8. 
 
 • Phillips Brooks : Sermons, Vol. V. p. 40. 
 
 74 
 
The Meeting Point 75 
 
 father behind his start, he runs to meet his son 
 before he arrives. 
 
 In other words, here, at the heart of Mysti- 
 cism, we meet the heart of the mystery of God's 
 revelation of himself. How does man find 
 God? He doesn't. God finds him. There is 
 an infinite desire in the Father's heart for his 
 child, and an omnipotent will to accomplish 
 that desire. God and man, then, are working 
 toward each other. It is their prior inherent 
 relationship which creates the desire and which 
 guarantees its satisfaction. We must ask now, 
 Where is the Meeting Point? The search 
 being mutual, man cannot be utterly passive. 
 He must at least fit himself to meet God. The 
 steps we have discussed in the last lecture have 
 this for their purpose, but when we come to 
 study them carefully we discover one which 
 stands out as the distinctive mark of Mysti- 
 cism. This is the fourth step, which is called 
 Contemplation. In a sense, this is an exer- 
 cise of the mind, and in another sense, as we 
 shall see, it implies some faculty of the mind 
 which is at least not the logical faculty and 
 which is even yet a mysterious and little known 
 part of us. 
 
 I have said that Mysticism implies the whole 
 
76 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 man. Religion, Christianity, Mysticism, all 
 are not slices of life, but touch and make de- 
 mands on every faculty man possesses. I know 
 it is unfashionable to make hard and fast dis- 
 tinctions, and yet the old-fashioned names 
 Feeling, Will, and Intellect are useful in dis- 
 tinguishing and discussing certain functions of 
 ourselves about which we can at least think 
 separately. And certainly Mysticism is not the 
 exercise of some unique faculty which is not 
 common to all men, but peculiar to a few spe- 
 cially endowed souls. It is rather, as I have 
 indicated, the exercise of the ordinary man's 
 faculties to their utmost; the most intense de- 
 sire, the strongest will and the keenest intel- 
 lectual pursuit; that is, it is the combination 
 and co-ordination of the whole personality. 
 
 In the pursuit of ends the order is that which 
 I have given. Even in the ordinary man's life, 
 the desire for some good, the eager out-going 
 willing to get it, and then the criticism and con- 
 trol of the mind is the usual succession. We 
 have spoken in the first lecture of the part de- 
 sire plays in Mysticism. It is fundamental. 
 No one who does not long intensely can be a 
 Mystic, and the longing is necessary to move 
 the will. As Aristotle says: "The intellect 
 
The Meeting Point 77 
 
 by itself moves nothing." Thus urged on by 
 desire, the will decides to act, and "where 
 there's a will there's a way." So in our second 
 lecture we spoke of the Way by which the will 
 endeavors to gain its end. But everything so 
 far is preparatory. The longing gives the im- 
 petus; then comes the glimpse of the goal, and 
 then the defining of the purpose of the will 
 into some channel commanded by God, the re- 
 adjustment of the life on a new plane which 
 we call Conversion. Repentance and Purga- 
 tion are acts of the will. All this, as I have 
 said, is preparatory. It is also common to the 
 Christian life of every man. It is when we 
 come to the middle step of the Seven we have 
 described that we find ourselves at the heart 
 of the question. The secret of Mysticism lies 
 here : it claims to have discovered the meeting 
 place where God and Man see face to face, 
 where the union so long sought and in so many 
 directions, is alone found to be real and satis- 
 fying. While it is still perfectly true that the 
 whole man, every part and faculty, must be 
 employed, even to hands and feet, we are to 
 think now of this one faculty which the Mystic, 
 above all men, has learned to train and use, a 
 faculty known to be a reality itself because by 
 
78 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 its use real objective effects follow. It is 
 claimed also to be a faculty resident in all men 
 and not an endowment of a few geniuses; a 
 faculty which we need not name yet, but which 
 we will describe simply as that organ by which 
 it seems that man can get most easily and most 
 perfectly into communication with God. It Is 
 this which we must now study. 
 
 In the first place, the Mystics say that we 
 find God within us, ** Verily the kingdom of 
 God is within you, and whosoever knoweth 
 himself shall find it." ^ It is in the deep of our 
 own nature that we feel God. Touch is the 
 primal sense. We don't look like him, we don't 
 think like him, we don't act like him, but we do 
 feel him and respond to his touch, where alone 
 spirit with spirit can meet in the inmost re- 
 cesses of our own nature, in that part of us 
 we call familiarly our soul, and about which we 
 know so little. 
 
 Men have been trying in all ages to find God. 
 They have tried in many directions and by 
 many methods. They have used telescopes, 
 and said that the undevout astronomer was 
 mad. They have used microscopes and got up 
 
 •Oxyrhynchus Logia. lo, in Bernhard Pick. Paralipo- 
 tnena, p. 37. 
 
The Meeting Point 79 
 
 ingenious arguments from design in Nature 
 implying an ingenious Designer. Then again 
 they have looked within as far as their brains, 
 and concocted interesting and complicated in- 
 tellectual reasons why God must exist, think- 
 ing out proofs of a probable God; and then 
 they have gone outside once more and endeav- 
 ored to find God by doing his will, leading 
 lives of strenuous activity, of philanthropic 
 work, going on crusades to redeem the city of 
 Jerusalem, or plunging into social work. 
 
 Certainly, as God is everywhere, we cannot 
 go anywhere, inside or outside, without finding 
 glimpses of him, at least. But it is as certainly 
 true that there is no complete satisfaction by 
 any or all of these ways. Everything that 
 comes to us from our five senses or our brains, 
 or our outward activity, must report at once 
 back of these to our inmost selves — nothing is 
 ours until it touches our hearts. The eye sees 
 no God in the farthest star, nor through the 
 strongest microscope. It sees only something 
 which, when it gets back to the God in the 
 heart, connects itself there with the only true 
 idea of God, and then carries back God in the 
 "mind's eye" to the farthest star or to the 
 smallest atom, and sees then that they belong 
 
So The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 together and prove each other. To the man, 
 astronomer or ploughman, who has felt no God 
 in himself, the heavens will always seem empty. 
 "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he," and so, 
 we may add, is the whole universe — to him. 
 
 Now while I do not deny that there are some 
 aspects of God which may be seen by the eye, 
 and some which may be heard by the ear, and 
 some which the mind of man can entertain and 
 reason upon, I do say that only at some point 
 within us can we come into complete and satis- 
 factory contact with the Father of Spirits. 
 There our likeness to him seems to be complete. 
 It is there, and there alone, that we find our- 
 selves made in his image ; there he can reveal 
 himself to us; there is the seat of what we call 
 Inspiration — the naked and unashamed con- 
 versation with God in the cool of the day which 
 we wanderers from Eden are always trying to 
 regain. So while we will not disparage the 
 other ways, we will consider it as settled that 
 the descent into our own spirits is at the same 
 time the ascent to God. For these are the 
 words of Tertullian, followed later by Albertus 
 Magnus, who says: "To mount to God is to 
 enter into one's self, for he who inwardly en- 
 tereth and intimately penetrateth into himself 
 
The Meeting Point St 
 
 gets above and beyond himself and surely 
 mounts up to God." 
 
 We do not have to ascend up into Heaven to 
 bring him down to us, nor do we have to go 
 down into Hell to bring him up, because we 
 know that the Lord is very nigh us, even in our 
 hearts. "The kingdom of God is within you." 
 If there is this omnipresence about us and with- 
 in us which we call God, infinite in holiness and 
 love, then the contention of Mysticism is that 
 its point of contact with us men is at that place 
 within us where we finite bits of his infinitude 
 strive for holiness and yearn for love. 
 
 This is the very commonplace of Mysticism. 
 It seems hardly necessary to quote in order to 
 establish it. Royce says: "According to 
 Mysticism, Being is nothing beyond yourself. 
 You even now hold it within you in your heart 
 of hearts." And Rufus M. Jones says: "It 
 has been the contention of Mystics in all ages 
 that God himself is the ground of the soul, and 
 in the depths of their being all men partake of 
 one central divine life." * And Schwab writes, 
 in his book on Gerson : "The whole effort of 
 Mysticism is directed ... to embrace and 
 experience God, his living presence in the in- 
 
 * Studit's in j]fysliial Religion, p. xxxii. 
 
82 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 nermost soul." While Schure says that Mysti- 
 cism is "the art of finding God in one's self." 
 To quote from the Mystics themselves would 
 be to quote from all : 
 
 "You need not go to heaven to see God, or 
 to regale yourself with God. Nor need you 
 speak loud, as if He were far away. Nor need 
 you cry for wings like a dove so as to fly to 
 Him. Settle yourself in solitude, and you will 
 come upon God in yourself. And then entreat 
 Him as your Father, and relate to Him your 
 troubles. Those who can in this manner shut 
 themselves up in the little heaven of their own 
 hearts, where He dwells Who made heaven 
 and earth, let them be sure that they walk in 
 the most excellent way: they lay their pipe 
 right up to the fountain." ^ 
 
 "See then the mercy and courtesy of Jesus. 
 Thou hast lost Him, but where? Soothly in 
 thy house, that is to say, in thy soul, that if 
 thou hadst lost all thy reason of thy soul by 
 its first sin, thou shouldst never have found 
 Him again; but He left thee thy reason, and 
 so He is still in thy soul, and never is quite lost 
 out of it. 
 
 "Nevertheless thou art never nearer Him till 
 
 •Whyte: Santa Teresa, p. 49. 
 
The Meeting Point 83 
 
 thou hast found Him. He is in thee, though 
 He be lost from thee ; but thou art not in Him 
 till thou hast found Him. This is His mercy 
 also, that He would suffer Himself to be lost 
 only there, where He may be found, so that 
 thou needst not run to Rome, nor to Jerusalem 
 to seek Him there, but turn thy thoughts into 
 thy own soul where He is hid, as the Prophet 
 saith: 'Truly Thou art the hidden God,' hid 
 in thy soul, and seek Him there." ® 
 
 "And what hindereth thee that thou canst 
 neither see nor hear Him? Soothly there is so 
 much din and noise in thy heart of vain 
 thoughts and fleshly desires, that thou canst 
 neither see nor hear Him. Therefore put 
 away these unquiet noises, and destroy the love 
 of sin and vanity, and bring into thy heart the 
 love of virtues and full charity, and then shalt 
 thou hear thy Lord speak to thee." " 
 
 "Where shall I find God? In myself. That 
 is the true Mystical Doctrine. But then I my- 
 self must be in a state for Him to come and 
 dwell in me. This is the whole aim of the Mys- 
 tical Life; and all Mystical Rules in all times 
 and countries have been laid down for putting 
 
 • Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, pp. 71-72. 
 ' Idem, pp. 72-73. 
 
84 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 the soul into such a state. That the soul her- 
 self should be heaven, that our Father who is 
 in heaven should dwell in her, that there is 
 something within us infinitely more estimable 
 than often comes out, that God enlarges this 
 'palace of our soul' by degrees, so as to en- 
 able her to receive Himself, that thus He gives 
 her liberty, but that the soul must give herself 
 up absolutely to Him for Him to do this, the 
 incalculable benefit of this occasional but fre- 
 quent intercourse with the Perfect: this is the 
 conclusion and sum of the whole matter, put 
 into beautiful language by the Mystics. And 
 of this process they describe the steps, and 
 assign periods of months and years during 
 which the steps, they say, are commonly made 
 by those who make them all." ^ 
 
 This gathering up <A the faculties and fixing 
 them upon the kingdom of God within, which 
 is God, is called Recollection, the recalling of 
 the wandering thoughts, the focusing of the 
 scattered loves, the concentration of the wa- 
 vering will, all upon "one thing." *'But thou, 
 when thou prayest, enter into thy inner cham- 
 
 • Cook : The Life of Florence Nightingale, Vol. II, pp. 
 233-234, in her Preface to an unpublished Volume of Selected 
 Readings from the Mystics. 
 
The Meeting Point 85 
 
 ber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy 
 Father, who is in secret, and thy Father, who 
 seeth in secret shall recompense thee." ^ 
 
 Now if God is to be found within us, the 
 knowledge we have of Him must be entirely 
 personal, incommunicable by any one else, and 
 so directly and intuitively known. There must 
 be some faculty in our nature which is espe- 
 cially adapted to making connection with God. 
 "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard" — they 
 cannot. They connect with certain manifesta- 
 tions of God, but the actual touch of God him- 
 
 •Matt. 6:6. 
 
 " 'If the mind would fain ascend to the height of science, 
 let its first and principal study be to know itself.'" [Rich. 
 St. Victor, Benj. Minor, LXXV. 
 
 " 'In the book of Hidden Things it is written/ says Eck- 
 hart, 'I stand at the door and knock and wait' . . . thou 
 needst not seek Him here or there : He is no farther off 
 than the door of the heart. There He stands and waits and 
 waits until He finds thee ready to open and let Him in. 
 Thou needst not call Him from a distance; to wait until thou 
 openest is harder for Him than for thee. He needst thee a 
 thousand times more than thou canst need Him. Thy open- 
 ing and His entering are but one moment. 'God,' he says, 
 in another place, 'can as little do without us, as we without 
 Him.' Our attainment of the Absolute is not a one-sided 
 ambition, but a mutual necessity. 'For our natural will.' 
 says Lady Julian, 'is to have God, and the good will of God 
 is to have us ; and we may never cease from longing till we 
 have Him in fulness of joy.'" [Underbill: Mysticism, p. 
 159.1 
 
86 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 self must come through something in us — call 
 it what you will — made as the eye and ear for 
 its especial purpose. This sense is what the 
 Mystic is reaching to, trying to discover, claim- 
 ing that he has discovered, and which he, hav- 
 ing found, proceeds to use and develop and 
 perfect by the act, or combination of acts, 
 called Contemplation. What is this "sixth 
 sense," personal and interior, by which we men 
 may and must stand face to face with God and 
 re-join our natures to his? Here again we 
 must ask the Mystics themselves. At the start 
 we must take their word ^" although these lec- 
 tures would not be written if the study were 
 only academic and not in order to find the 
 Mystic experience true for ourselves, to dis- 
 cover in us that faculty and to use it as did 
 the Mystics. 
 
 There has never been an age in any religion 
 in which there were not to be found some lives 
 imbued with what we call Mysticism — with a 
 sense of an unseen presence, and the discovery 
 and use of a faculty in man which, so man at 
 least believes, connects with God. This point 
 of contact is what makes religion possible, 
 which even Animism must feel. The Hindu 
 
 '"John 4: 42. 
 
The Meeting Point 87 
 
 religion is full of it; it sings itself into com- 
 munion with the Unseen in many of the hymns 
 of Brahminism. It is the very essence of what 
 Socrates and Plato taught. The savage, 
 dreaming of his ancestors, reaching the spirit 
 world through the dream world, both equally 
 real to him; the Indian fakir, wrapping himself 
 into unconsciousness and sitting day after day 
 lost, not in thought, but in the void where 
 thought is not; the visitations of that spiritual 
 monitor whom Socrates called his Daemon,— 
 are not these experiences and types of Mysti- 
 cism indicating its essence, however variously 
 and absurdly each subject would explain them? 
 This power, inherent in man's nature, not 
 known or used by all but still universally resi- 
 dent, which connects with God, gives the sense 
 of oneness, of personal union, if not of identity 
 with God, which is of the essence of Mysticism. 
 Elijah, piercing through the whirlwind and 
 the earthquake and the fire until he hears God's 
 voice as *'a sound of gentle stillness"; Elisha 
 opening the eyes of the young man that he 
 also might see the vision of the mountain full 
 of horses and chariots of fire; the prophet's 
 inspiration with its clairvoyance and clairau- 
 
88 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 dience; St. Paul coming to visions and revela- 
 tions of the Lord, telling of the experience he 
 had had fourteen years before, "how that he 
 was caught up into Paradise and heard un- 
 speakable words which it is not lawful for a 
 man to utter," " I could multiply examples 
 were it not superfluous. What do they show ? 
 A faculty in man by which he knows intuitive- 
 ly, the reason being in abeyance, truths and 
 facts else incommunicable. And then the 
 Christian church does not have to go outside 
 of itself, to the Neo-platonists, to Plotinus and 
 Jamblichus, to trace the later workings of this 
 same faculty. They belong in the church, — 
 not only to Montanism and the monkish Om- 
 phalopsychites and Hesychasts, but to less ex- 
 aggerated and more orthodox forms. Igna- 
 tius says : "Some in the church most certainly 
 have a knowledge of things to come. Some 
 have visions, others utter prophecies and heal 
 the sick by laying on of hands ; and others still 
 speak in many tongues, bringing to light the 
 secret things of men and expounding the mys- 
 teries of God." Tatian declares that "our vir- 
 gins at the distaff utter divine oracles, see vis- 
 ions and sing the holy words that are given 
 
 " II Cor. 12 :4, 
 
The Meeting Point 89 
 
 them"; and Tertullian and many more of the 
 Fathers give the same testimony. 
 
 Now my point is this: that these are all 
 manifestations of the principle upon which 
 Mysticism rests, and that because Mysticism 
 is always the same (as Harnack says) we are 
 here j^ctting hold of facts which only to-day 
 are having light thrown on them by the ad- 
 vances of a scientific psychology. It matters 
 not that these psychic phenomena were misun- 
 derstood at the time. We are not very clear 
 about them even to-day. As well might we dis- 
 credit astronomy because it had its origin in 
 astrology, or chemistry because it was preceded 
 by alchemy. All I claim is that these are facts, 
 and that the same facts have persisted, and 
 that they are the basis of whatever truth and 
 power there may be in Mysticism. I am not 
 concerned, as I said, with the theologies men 
 have built on these facts. The mystical the- 
 ologies are what have brought Mysticism into 
 disrepute in all ages. It is interesting even to- 
 day to study the old astrologers. Averroes and 
 Paracelsus are worthy of more attention than 
 they receive, but if we wish to know the truth 
 about the heavens we go to the latest and best 
 
go The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 treatise on astronomy, and that not only ex- 
 plains to us the stars but incidentally explains 
 the old astrologers too. We do not need to be- 
 lieve all that Plotinus and Dionysius the Are- 
 opagite have to say about their Mysticism even 
 could we understand it. We accept them as 
 Mystics because they undergo the same ex- 
 perience and build their theories on the same 
 facts which once gave insight and foresight 
 to the prophets, illumined St. Paul on the way 
 to Damascus and St. John in Patmos when he 
 was in the spirit on the Lord's Day, and is to 
 be seen supporting, guiding and inspiring 
 Santa Teresa and Tauler, Fenelon and Fox. 
 
 To come closer to the subject before us, let 
 me show you what the Mystics call this faculty 
 before we bring it to the bar of modern psy- 
 chology. Plotinus is as far back as we need 
 to go. He calls this faculty ''another intellect 
 different from that which reasons and is de- 
 nominated rational." ^^ The pseudo-Dionysius, 
 describing the mystical adept, says: "Then is 
 he delivered from all seeing and being seen, 
 and passes into the truly mystical darkness of 
 ignorance, where he excludes all intellectual 
 apprehensions and abides in the utterly Im- 
 
 " Ennead VI, p- 
 
The Meeting Point 9I 
 
 palpable and Invisible." '^ St. Francis de Sales, 
 in his Treatise on the Love of God, writing- of 
 "The Rest of the recollected soul is its Be- 
 loved," says: "It is this sweet calm which S. 
 Teresa calls the prayer of quietude, which is 
 much the same as what she elsewhere calls a 
 sleep of the active powers." ^^ 
 
 The author of the "Theologia Germanica" 
 gives about the most important statement of 
 all: "Now the created soul of man hath also 
 two eyes; the one has the power of seeing into 
 eternity, the other of seeing into time and the 
 creatures, of perceiving how they differ from 
 each other, of giving life and needful things 
 to the body and ordering and governing it for 
 the best. But these two eyes of the soul of 
 man cannot both perform their work at once, 
 but if the soul shall see with the right eye, 
 then the left eye must close itself and refrain 
 from working, and be as though it were dead. 
 Or if the left eye is fulfilling its office toward 
 outward thin^^s, — that is, holding conversa- 
 tion with time and the creatures, then must the 
 right eye be hindered in its working, that is, 
 in its contemplation." ^° 
 
 "Dionysius: Mystic Theology, Cap. I. Section III. 
 " De Sales : Of the Love of God. Bk. VI. Chap. VIIT. 
 " Theoloflia Germanica. D. 20. 
 
92 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 This is what the Mystics themselves say, not 
 of the theory but of the facts and the actual 
 processes : 
 
 "Mystical knowledge proceeds not from Wit, but 
 from Experience ; it is not invented, but proved ; not 
 read, but received ; and is therefore most secure and 
 efficacious, of great help, and plentiful in fruit. It 
 enters not into the Soul by the ears, nor by the con- 
 tinual reading of books, but by the abundant infusion 
 of the Holy Spirit, Whose Grace, with most delightful 
 intimacy, i-s communicated to the meek and lowly." 
 [Molinos: The Spiritual Guide, p. 50.] 
 
 "Grace never comes in the intelligence or in the 
 will. If it could come in the intelligence or in the 
 will, the intelligence and the will would have to tran- 
 scend themselves. On this a master says : There is 
 something secret about it ; and thereby he means the 
 spark of the soul, which alone can apprehend God. 
 The true union between God and the soul takes place 
 in the little spark, which is called the spirit of the soul. 
 Grace unites not to any work. It is an indwelling and 
 a living together of the soul in God." [Eckhart: 
 Light, Life and Love. Inge, pp. 4-5.] 
 
 "The union of the soul with God is far more inward 
 than that of the soul and body. Now I might ask. 
 how stands it with the soul that is lost in God ? Does 
 the soul find herself or not? To this will I answer 
 as it appears to me, that the soul finds herself in the 
 point, where every rational being understands itself 
 with itself. Although it sinks and sinks in the eternity 
 
The Meeting Point 93 
 
 of the Divine Essence, yet it can never reach the 
 j^round. Therefore God has left a little point wherein 
 the soul turns back upon itself and finds itself, and 
 knows itself to be a creature." [Eckhart: Light, 
 Life and Love. Inge, pp. 14-15.] 
 
 W^ill you bear with me a little farther in my 
 quotations, which 1 think necessary that I may 
 still further explain myself and supplement 
 these old names by more modern authorities? 
 Lotze, in the ''Alicrocosmus," writes: "With- 
 in us lurks a world whose form we but imper- 
 fectly apprehend, and whose working — when 
 in particular phases it comes under our obser- 
 vation — surprises us with foreshadowings of 
 unknown depths in our own being." ^^ And 
 Ribot says: "The ordinary conscious person- 
 ality is only a feeble i)ortion of the whole psy- 
 chological personality." ^" I quote again from 
 Max MiJller, in his "Science of Religion," who 
 writes : "There is in man a faculty which I 
 call simply the faculty of apprehending the 
 Infinite, not only in religion but in all things, 
 a power independent of sense and reason, a 
 power in a certain sense contradicted by sense 
 and reason, yet I suppose a very real power if 
 
 ^^ Microcosmus, Bk. I. Chap. I. Vol. I. p. 13. 
 "Ribot: Les Maladies, iilc, \h \22. 
 
94 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 we see how it has held its own from the be- 
 ginning of the world; how neither sense nor 
 reason have been able to overcome it, while it 
 alone is able to overcome both reason and 
 sense." ^* As William James says: "Our nor- 
 mal waking consciousness, as we call it, is but 
 one special type of consciousness, whilst all 
 about it, parted from it by the filmiest of 
 screens, there lie potential forms of conscious- 
 ness entirely different. We may go through 
 life without suspecting their existence, but ap- 
 ply the requisite stimulus and at a touch there 
 they are, in all their completeness, definite 
 types of mentality which probably somewhere 
 have their field of application and adaptation. 
 No account of the universe in its totality can 
 be final which leaves these other forms of con- 
 sciousness quite disregarded. How to regard 
 them is the question, — for they are so discon- 
 tinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they 
 may determine attitudes, though they cannot 
 furnish formulas, and open a region though 
 they fail to give a map." ^^ 
 
 "Quoted in Bjerregaard, Lectures on Mysticism, p. 12. 
 
 " James : Varieties of Religious Experiences, p. 388. 
 
 "The spiritual is a distinct sphere of the human soul mov- 
 ing from within, having its own organ of knowledge, its own 
 objects, its own method, its own results. As the senses are a 
 
The Meeting Point 95 
 
 But we really need no fortifying with au- 
 thorities. Our own lives furnish us with bet- 
 fundamental endowment of the being, looking out to the ex- 
 ternal world, so the personality has faculties, moral and 
 spiritual, which have immediate aflinities with the spiritual 
 world, which receive impressions from that world, and which 
 become powers in the life through these impressions. The 
 sense of the right, the thirst for a chief good, the instinct of 
 dependence, the strong propension of the reason to find a 
 moral and religious meaning girdling the course of events, 
 are — roughly and popularly speaking — elements of that spirit- 
 ual side. 
 
 "Now though these powers use reason in their latter stages 
 and can always vindicate themselves in the court of reason, 
 they do not work by reasoning. They leap instinctively into 
 exercise by the contact of the personality with another and 
 higher personality." [Smith: The Magnetism of Christ, p. 
 181.] 
 
 "And, in like manner, it is maintained there is an appre- 
 hension of God and divine things that is independent of that 
 which comes to us in the form of propositions and doctrines, 
 and which may be possessed in fullest measure by the man 
 who could not define or prove a single article of a theologi- 
 cal creed. The investigation of the evidences, the analysis and 
 systematic development of the doctrines of religion, may in- 
 deed furnish fit occupation for the highest intellects; but it 
 is by no such process that the essence of religion wins its 
 way into the soul. It comes upon the spirit not as a proposi- 
 tion which it has proved, but as a living reality which it im- 
 mediately and intuitively perceives, as a heavenly melody fall- 
 ing on the ear, as the splendour of an infinite loveliness break- 
 ing on the eye of faith." [Caird : University Sermons, p. 16.] 
 
 "Of all things good and fair and holy there is a spiritual 
 cognizance which precedes and is independent of that knowl- 
 edge which the understanding conveys." [Caird : University 
 Sermons, p. 14.] 
 
96 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 ter proofs. What we call our mind is really 
 made up of two parts. The one is the drudge 
 and mentor and director which we know and 
 use, which gets tired and dies; and the other 
 the immeasurably vaster portion which we sel- 
 dom see and only a little of tener guess we have. 
 Yet it is this unconscious part which is the 
 very tossing ocean which feeds the little foun- 
 tain of our conscious mind — full of wrecks 
 and argosies and dead faces and the traces of 
 vanished generations, able to connect with the 
 same ocean in other men, able, so we have seen 
 in history and philosophy — nay, do we not 
 know this also from dear experience? — able to 
 connect with God. For have we not known 
 some supreme moment, under great emotion 
 of grief or joy, of intense excitement, of fer- 
 vent prayer, when what we call self, with all 
 its self-consciousness and self-carefulness, 
 with its hoard of petty maxims reasoned out 
 of a single petty experience — disappears and a 
 new power comes above the threshold of con- 
 sciousness and takes control ? And when it has 
 sunk once more below the threshold we only 
 then discover the bleeding wound or the evi- 
 dence of some superhuman exertion or the 
 sense of a presence which leaves us tingling. 
 
The Meeting Point 97 
 
 saying, "Truly God was in this place and 1 
 knew it not." 
 
 I think I have said enough to support my 
 point that we have here the peculiarity which 
 distinguishes Mysticism from those forms of 
 religion which we call the dogmatic or intel- 
 lectual, or which we call the ritualistic or in- 
 stitutional. 
 
 Beyond or underneath the usual course of 
 the Christian life there is in Mysticism the de- 
 velopment and use of a faculty which works 
 best when both mind and will are in abeyance, 
 and which seems to have the power of receiving 
 intimations directly from God. The Mystic 
 is thus in all respects like any other Christian, 
 plus the use of this organ and plus also certain 
 rewards or punishments which flow from its 
 use, such as unusual nervous sensitiveness, ex- 
 tremes of joy or sorrow, an abnormal liability 
 to visions and hallucinations. These are not 
 Mysticism, but its by-products. 
 
 We have laid aside the emotions and the will. 
 We have felt that they were preliminary to 
 Mysticism proper, though parts of its process. 
 And we have asked the Mystics to tell us what 
 they thought was their secret. And they have 
 said, with a perfect and positive unanimity, that 
 
98 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 they used, in meeting God, a faculty which they 
 could cultivate, which seemed to them to be 
 the deepest and truest part of their personality, 
 and that this faculty seemed to them some- 
 thing distinct from their intellect, something 
 which did not use logical processes ; that by it 
 they gained the real knowledge, but gained it 
 not by ratiocination but by intuition; that for 
 its highest working this faculty needed that 
 the ordinary activities of the brain be stopped, 
 and then that through it came to them a knowl- 
 edge of God, generally ineffable and inde- 
 scribable, but having enough body to it to be 
 afterward presented to their own intellect to 
 be reasoned on in the usual way. All I can 
 say regarding this is that further definition is 
 at present beyond our powers. This is a prac- 
 tical study and for our purpose it is not neces- 
 sary to enter the much-debated field of the sub- 
 conscious. As yet we know too little about it. 
 Few psychologists would deny its existence. 
 They differ very widely in their definition and 
 valuation of it. We are here concerned only 
 with the fact: That by the use of a faculty 
 which is not the logical mind, and is active 
 mostly when that is quiescent, certain truths 
 are received and a positive spiritual com- 
 
The Meeting Point gg 
 
 munion with God established. I believe that 
 the seat of this faculty lies back in this mys- 
 terious field we call the sub-consciousness. It 
 is a large field and it contains much which is 
 both useful and harmful. It is that penumbra 
 of the intellect which Bergson calls Intuition. 
 We are to use our minds to try the spirits, 
 whether they be of God, but I see no reason to 
 doubt, from its eflfects, that something within 
 us is especially formed to meet with God, and 
 that, like every other organ, it may be culti- 
 vated. The only proof that we have it is by 
 using it ourselves, and this each one of us 
 must do if he would know. We know best that 
 we have eyes by seeing things with them. As 
 Hocking says truly: "The misinterpretation 
 of Mysticism here in question is due to the fact 
 that what is a psychological report (and a true 
 one) is taken as a metaphysical statement (and 
 a false one)." ^^ 
 
 Professor James, than whom is no higher 
 authority, says: 
 
 "The subconscious self is nowadays a well-accred- 
 ited psychological entity; and I believe that in it we 
 have exactly the mediating term required. Apart 
 from all religious considerations, there is actually and 
 *• Mind, No. 8r. p. 42. 
 
loo The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 literally more life in our total soul than we are at any 
 time aware of. The exploration of the transmarginal 
 field has hardly yet been seriously undertaken, but 
 what Mr. Myers said in 1892 in his essay on the 
 Subliminal Consciousness is as true as when it was 
 first written: 'Each of us is in reality an abiding 
 psychical entity far more extensive than he knows, — 
 an individuality which can never express itself com- 
 pletely through any corporeal manifestation. The Self 
 manifests through the organism; but there is always 
 some part of the Self unmanifested ; and always, as it 
 seems, some power of organic expression in abeyance 
 or reserve.' Much of the content of this larger back- 
 ground against which our conscious being stands out 
 in relief is insignificant. Imperfect memories, silly 
 jingles, inhibit! ve timidities, 'dissolutive' phenomena 
 of various sorts, as Myers calls them, enter into it for 
 a large part. But in it many of the performances of 
 genius seem also to have their origin ; and in our study 
 of conversion, of mystical experiences, and of prayer, 
 we have seen how striking a part invasions from this 
 region play in the religious life.'' ^^ 
 
 May I interrupt here for one moment to 
 make clearer my own position, that I may not 
 be more misunderstood than is necessary? I 
 am reminded of one of the clearest definitions 
 of Mysticism among the many that are to be 
 found to-day. It is in the Century Dictionary : 
 
 ''James: Varieties of Religions Experience, p. 511. 
 
The Meeting Point loi 
 
 "Mysticism and Rationalism represent oppo- 
 site poles of theology, Rationalism regarding 
 the reason as the highest faculty of man and 
 the sole arbiter in all matters of religious doc- 
 trine; Mysticism, on the other hand, declaring 
 that spiritual truth cannot be apprehended by 
 the logical faculty, nor adequately expressed 
 in terms of the understanding." 
 
 And yet while this definition is clear as far 
 as it goes, and makes a perfectly true distinc- 
 tion, it is very incomplete, in that it gives noth- 
 ing to supply the defect of the logical faculty. 
 If ''spiritual truth cannot be apprehended by 
 the logical faculty," how can it be apprehend- 
 ed? And this is the very secret of Mysticism, 
 which ought to be told, even in a dictionary. 
 The definition only tells us what Mysticism 
 denies. That's why it's so clear! Add these 
 words, ''that truth can be also received and 
 understood by some function of the subliminal 
 self," call it Intuition, or whatever you please, 
 and we have at least made the definition fuller 
 and more correct, even though the claim of the 
 Mystic should prove to be unfounded. 
 
 That this is the claim of the Mystic and so 
 necessary to an understanding of him, we have 
 
102 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 surely seen. But its relation to Rationalism 
 may not be so clear. 
 
 Mysticism is opposite to Rationalism but not 
 its opponent. Both are necessary to the full 
 and perfect religion of this earth. But noth- 
 ing is commoner than to see the two set at 
 variance. Nothing is commoner than to see 
 Mysticism classed with mere emotionalism. 
 The subliminal self is the seat of the emotions, 
 as of the true memory. But it has a mental 
 life of its own. "It is not the passive, unrea- 
 soning and irresponsive automaton which peo- 
 ple have believed it to be." " The difficulty, 
 you see, is not the old one, between heart and 
 head, between feeling and knowledge, but be- 
 tween two kinds of knowledge. And both are 
 essential, the knowledge which comes through 
 Scholasticism and the knowledge which comes 
 through Mysticism. The one is mediate and 
 proceeds by logic indirectly; the other is imme- 
 diate and proceeds deductively from a prior 
 suggestion. This is not the time to discuss 
 their relative merits; there is certainly a dif- 
 ference in priority. But you will pardon me 
 if I add, that which is not called for by my 
 argument, that God's nature seems more akin 
 
 '* Hudson : The Law of Psychic Phenomena, p. 32. 
 
The Meeting Point 103 
 
 to the mystical side of man's nature. He is 
 Love, not Logic. Omniscience does not ratioc- 
 inate, it simply knows, and the soul, made in 
 the image of God, meets God intuitively (how- 
 ever it may rationalize about Him later), so 
 that we must ask it first, not "are your logical 
 processes correct?" but simply, ''have you seen 
 aright? Have you actually felt God?" " 
 
 " "Now, undoubtedly, religious beliefs, new and old, often 
 do present themselves to the minds of individuals in an intui- 
 tive and unaccountable way. They may subsequently be justi- 
 fied at the bar of Reason : and yet Reason might never have 
 discovered them for herself. They would never have come 
 into the world unless they had presented themselves at first 
 to some mind or other as intuitions, inspirations, immediate 
 Revelations: and yet (once again) the fact that they so pre- 
 sent themselves does not by itself prove them to be true." 
 [Rashdall: Philosophy and Religion, p. 136.] 
 
 "But just as our primary wide-awake consciousness throws 
 open our senses to the touch of things material, so it is logi- 
 cally conceivable that if there be higher spiritual agencies 
 that can directly touch us, the psychological condition of their 
 doing so might be our possession of a subconscious region, 
 which alone should yield access to them. The hubbub of the 
 waking life might close a door which, in the dreamy Sublim- 
 inal, might remain ajar or open." [James: The Varieties of 
 Religious Experience, p. 242.] 
 
 "The notion of a subconscious self certainly ought not at 
 this point of our inquiry to be held to exclude all notion of 
 a higher penetration. If there be higher powers able to im- 
 press us, they may get access to us only through the sublim- 
 inal door." [Ibid., p. 243.] 
 
 "Disregarding the over-beliefs, and confining ourselves to 
 what is common and generic, we have in the fact that the 
 
104 ^^^ Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 And so we come back to the heart of the mat- 
 ter. Leaving for the last lecture any practical 
 lessons we may have found, let us remind our- 
 selves of the point we have reached, the meet- 
 ing point with God. 
 
 The Mystic, that he may see God, get any 
 the least glimpse of him, must prepare himself, 
 and having stripped from him everything that 
 would hinder of sight, hearing, touch, even 
 thought, then he comes to the next and most 
 important step of all, that which stamps him 
 as soon as he takes it, as a Mystic, different 
 in this respect from other creatures; he sits 
 down in this utter nakedness and in silence and 
 without effort at last waits for God to speak 
 in the "still small voice," or to show himself 
 in some vision or to give some touch upon his 
 heart by which he may be known. It is the 
 concentration of all the powers upon "one 
 point." It is the "inward look." In quiet and 
 in silence the soul now attends intently. By 
 concentration all the little sounds have been 
 stilled. The efforts of Recollection to bring 
 the mind and heart and will into harmony have 
 
 conscious person is continuous with a wider self through 
 which saving experiences come, a positive content of reli- 
 gious experience, which it seems to me, is literally and ob- 
 jectively true, as far as it goes." [Ibid., p. 51S] 
 
The Meeting Point 105 
 
 succeeded and so relax. The soul is at peace. 
 The busy thoughts are hushed, the unruly will 
 is silenced. The attitude is that of listening. 
 No longer is it content to do. It finds its satis- 
 faction in being, and its being becomes one 
 great receptivity. It can say now, "Speak, 
 Lord, for thy servant heareth" and not mis- 
 take heavenly sounds for earthly. It is in the 
 ante-room of the Presence. The next move is 
 God's. 
 
 SUGGESTED READING 
 
 Du Prel: The Philosophy of Mysticism. 2 vols. 
 
 George Redway. 1889. 
 Recejac: The Bases of the Mystic Knowledge. C. 
 
 Scribner's Sons. 1899. 
 James: The Varieties of Religious Experience. 
 
 Longmans, Green & Co. 1902. 
 Hocking : The Meaning of God in Human Experi- 
 ence. Yale University Press. 1912. 
 Jastrow: The Sub-conscious. Houghton, Mifflin & 
 
 Co. 
 Delacroix: Etudes d'Histoire et de Psychologie du 
 
 Mysticisme. Felix Alcan. Paris, 1908. 
 Ribot: Essay on the Creative Imagination. Open 
 
 Court Publishing Co. 1906. 
 Hudson: The Law of Psychic Phenomena. A. C. 
 
 McClurg & Co. 1899. 
 
IV 
 
 ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI, HEINRICH SUSO AND 
 MOTHER JULIAN OF NORWICH 
 
 Having discussed in our previous chapters 
 the Mystic Way, and tried to account for it 
 psychologically, it will be interesting, I think, 
 bearing in mind what we have learned, to pro- 
 ceed now to study these processes in the lives 
 of some sample Mystics and see how they bear 
 out in practice what we have been studying the- 
 oretically. 
 
 A history of Mysticism is an impossibility. 
 It has no history. It is a religious exercise 
 which occurs sporadically and unexpectedly 
 throughout history. It is an emergence, not 
 an evolution. It appears, like Melchisedec, 
 without a genealogy but with a blessing. For 
 certain purposes, of course, it is helpful to 
 study the Mystics chronologically, but in what- 
 ever century we find them we will find St. Mar- 
 tin's words true : "All Mystics speak the same 
 1 06 
 
St. Francis — Suso — Mother Julian 107 
 
 language and come from the same country." 
 Mysticism is such a personal thing, relates 
 so much more to eternity than to time, that the 
 student who looks to history, as he should, to 
 discover causes and relations, to see the order- 
 ly growth of ideas and institutions, should be 
 told that here he must not expect an ordered 
 evolution. Sometimes the Mystics appear in 
 groups, but just as often they are lonely as 
 well as unexpected figures in the pages of his- 
 tory. There have been periods when we can 
 see an unusual outpouring of the mystical 
 spirit, and we may see, or say, that such is due 
 to a reaction against over-intellectualism or 
 against some tight ecclesiastical organization. 
 Sometimes a low ethical order of things or a 
 time of spiritual dryness will seem to cause a 
 Mystic revival, but just as often it appears 
 with no apparent reason. 
 
 And so we may the more readily omit any 
 historical presentation, because our purpose is 
 practical and we can be helped more by select- 
 ing some figures of especial interest and study- 
 ing them, because they are typical of the life 
 and its process which we have been trying to 
 describe. 
 
 It is embarrassing to have to choose, and any 
 
lo8 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 choice will seem arbitrary, but I can speak 
 better of those who interest me most, and of 
 all these I think we may gain a wider under- 
 standing of the subject if we take two men and 
 one woman, and choose them from different 
 countries and from different centuries. They 
 are also so far removed from each other that 
 we cannot trace any influences acting between 
 them, so that each may stand by itself as a 
 type. I ask you to look with me at St. Francis 
 of Assisi ( 1 182-1226) and Heinrich Suso of 
 Germany (1300-1365) and Mother Julian of 
 Norwich, in England (1343-1413). We will 
 tell their story and see if it be possible to fit 
 them into the scheme we have already laid 
 down. By seeing our theories translated into 
 life we may understand and practise them the 
 better. 
 
 St. Francis, in many traits of his character 
 and in his mode of life, might seem far re- 
 moved from the typical Mystic of the Middle 
 Ages. Yet for this very reason his Mysticism 
 is brought into clearer relief and is seen, with 
 all its intensity, to be a very human thing. 
 More than any I know he kept himself in 
 closest touch with everything human. His 
 knowledge of men was unusual, and with Na- 
 
St. Francis — Suso— Mother Julian 109 
 
 ture in her every aspect he had the deepest 
 sympathy. He ordered his followers always 
 to have a plot for flowers in their more useful 
 vegetable gardens, while his love for the birds, 
 especially for the larks, was a passion.^ His 
 influence over his time and after it was greater 
 than we are even now beginning to realize. 
 He is one of the great men of the world, a 
 man who not only made a deep impression on 
 the life of his time, but one whose influence 
 persists after seven centuries, and who has 
 even now a personal devotion accorded to him 
 which I dare to say is received by no one save 
 by his Master. 
 
 It is not to our purpose to study these larger 
 aspects of his character and work. They can 
 be understood only after thorough knowledge 
 of the conditions which he faced. He simply 
 stepped into the midst of everything that was 
 abhorrent to him and brought with him his 
 unflagging courtesy, his joyous temperament, 
 his keen insight and common sense, his love 
 and sympathy, and above all, his desire to be 
 like Christ, and then, like Christ, just went 
 about doing good. I speak of this only in pass- 
 ing, to remind you of what is so often forgot- 
 
 ^ Mirror of Perfection, p. 170. 
 
no The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 ten, that it is not incompatible with true Mys- 
 ticism to be extremely practical and constantly 
 busy, and sometimes astonishingly influential 
 and successful. We have not time to show how 
 true this is of Francis, — how he influenced art 
 and literature, how be brought a new temper 
 into political life, how he stands to the lepers 
 of Italy as a John Howard to the prisoners of 
 England or a Dorothea Dix to the insane of 
 America, and how, above all, by his institution 
 of the Order of Tertiaries, he undermined and 
 finally did away with the burden of Feudalism 
 in his own land. Our aim in these lectures is 
 different, more personal and interior. I turn 
 to the man himself. 
 
 His name was Francis Bernadone, born in 
 Assisi in 1182, son of a rich cloth merchant, 
 his mother probably French, destined to take 
 over his father's business, leader in the gay 
 life of the town, ''the best dressed man in 
 Assisi." He was for a time a soldier fighting 
 against Assisi's enemy, Perugia, captured and 
 imprisoned there for a year, the cheeriest man 
 in the dungeon, spending the time in recon- 
 ciling enmities and singing French chansons, 
 sent home to be taken ill with a fever, where he 
 hovered between life and death for many 
 
St. Francis — Suso — Mother Julian iii 
 
 weeks, — and then, out of this gay, pleasure- 
 loving, merchant-soldier, St. Francis begins to 
 emerge, simply, quaintly, yet with all the joy- 
 ousness and sweetness of the former trouba- 
 dour, now sublimated and spiritualized into 
 the troubadour of God, the knight errant of 
 the Church. 
 
 Some people know Francis only as the 
 founder of the great order of Brothers Minor, 
 the Franciscans, perhaps a little more inter- 
 esting than the rest of the crowd of pallid fig- 
 ures of whose hallucinations and self-inflicted 
 tortures and incredible miracles we read in 
 Golden Legends and Acta Sanctorum. Some 
 people think of him only as a half crazy me- 
 dieval monk. But he is a Mystic, and all his 
 life is a consistent expression of the Mystic 
 spirit. The steps are easily traced. He had 
 come out of his year's imprisonment and long 
 illness with that sense of something lacking in 
 his life which comes to so many young men 
 and must come to every Mystic. It is the first 
 step in the Mystic Way. And here, as so often 
 we know, the Church failed to fill his need. He 
 was not satisfied with his former life and yet 
 he could see nothing else to do, and so he went 
 back to it again. Once more he was the leader 
 
112 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 in processions and dances and banquets, and 
 having the chance to go to war again with a 
 knightly train to take part in some feud in 
 Apulia, he gathered an equipment of princely 
 proportions, never being stinted of money, and 
 started off. But he got no further than Spo- 
 leto,^ where he again fell ill of a fever, and 
 came back, weakened and discouraged, to meet 
 
 •"When therefore he had gone to Spoleto to set forth on 
 his journey and go into Apulia, he began to ponder somewhat. 
 Yet none the less anxious about his journey, when he had 
 yielded unto sleep, he heard while half asleep one asking him 
 whither he desired to proceed. And when Francis had re- 
 vealed his whole purpose, he added : 'Which can do the better 
 for thee, the lord or the servant?' And when he answered 
 'the lord/ that other said again unto him: 'Wherefore then 
 dost thou leave the lord for the servant, and a rich lord 
 for a poor?' And Francis said: -Lord, what wouldst thou 
 have me to do?' 'Return,' saith He, 'unto thine own country, 
 and it shall be told unto thee what thou shalt do, for the 
 vision that thou hast seen behoveth thee to understand in 
 other wise.' Then, waking, he began earnestly to ponder this 
 vision. And just as in the first vision he had been as it were 
 quite carried out of himself for his great joy, coveting world- 
 ly good fortune, so in this vision he withdrew within himself 
 entirely, wondering at its might, and meditating so earnestly 
 that he could sleep no more that night. And so, at early 
 morn, he returned toward Assisi in haste and with gladness 
 and joy exceeding, awaiting the will of the Lord, Who had 
 shown him this thing, and to be told concerning his salva- 
 tion from himself. Changed in his mind is he now, and re- 
 fusing to go into Apulia, seeketh to mould himself unto the 
 Divine Will," [Salter: The Legend of St. Francis, pp. 15- 
 
 i6a 
 
St. Francis — Suso^Mother Julian 113 
 
 the jeers of the young men whose jealousy he 
 had excited. Then for months he wandered 
 about, frequenting a cave near Assisi, attend- 
 ing Masses in the little wayside chapels. The 
 stream of his intense nature was being dammed 
 up, and no one knew when it would break 
 forth. In studying such a life, lived 700 years 
 ago, we must judge it, as far as we can, from 
 the standard of the time. And here we must 
 remember that the Italy of his day was even 
 more intense than it is now. Men then did 
 nothing by halves. They sinned completely and 
 gorgeously. When they turned from sin they 
 became ascetics of the severest and most un- 
 compromising sort. And Francis was a man 
 typical of his time. The popular idea of him 
 as weak and negative is totally wrong. He is 
 of all saints the youngest, most restless, gentle 
 indeed but virile, and when he breaks loose 
 now and hears his call, nothing can stop him 
 and he will stop at nothing. It is vain for us 
 to call him enthusiastic and visionary and 
 laugh at his extravagances. For him and his 
 time it was the only way to express himself, 
 and as the end crowns the work, we must ac- 
 knowledge that his way succeeded. 
 
 For two years he went about trying to find 
 
114 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 what his Father's business was. "His friends 
 were making continual efforts to induce him 
 to take up his old habits again. One day he 
 invited them all to a sumptuous banquet. They 
 thought they had conquered and as in old 
 times, they proclaimed him King of the Revels. 
 The feast was prolonged far into the night, 
 and at its close the guests rushed out into the 
 streets, which they filled with song and up- 
 roar. Suddenly they perceived that Francis 
 was no longer with them. After long search- 
 ing they found him far behind, still holding 
 in his hand his sceptre of King of Misrule, 
 but plunged in a revery so profound that he 
 seemed to be rooted to the ground and un- 
 conscious of all that was going on. 'What is 
 the matter with you?' they cried, bustling 
 about him as if to awaken him. 'Don't you see 
 he is thinking of taking a wife?' said one. 
 'Yes,' answered Francis, arousing himself and 
 looking at them with a smile which they did 
 not recognize, 'I am thinking of taking a wife 
 more beautiful, more rich, more pure than you 
 could ever imagine.' " ^ He was carrying over 
 his troubadour spirit into his new life, and his 
 Lady Paramour was to be the Lady Poverty. 
 
 • Sabatier : The Life of St. Francis, p. 22. 
 
St. Francis — Suso— Mother Julian 115 
 
 But as yet he had not known how to declare 
 his love for her. He went to Rome and sat 
 among the beggars on the steps of St. Peter's. 
 He gave away much money and more sym- 
 pathy. He thought he could remain rich and 
 yet understand the poor. He really cared for 
 them, but for one class he had an instinctive 
 and deep-rooted repugnance. Others agreed 
 with him, for the lepers were banished from all 
 social intercourse. Theirs was a living death. 
 The Church even had a solemn and terrible 
 service for their seclusion from mankind. To 
 this sensitive and fastidious young man even 
 the sight of a leper was loathsome. One day, 
 riding his richly-caparisoned horse around As- 
 sist he came suddenly upon a leper and he 
 wheeled his horse and spurred him away in 
 horror. Then the dam broke. Here was the 
 renunciation, the hardest act of self-sacrifice. 
 He turned his horse and went back and gave 
 the leper all he had of money, and then knelt 
 and kissed his hand, and rode away a free man. 
 Years afterward, on the eve of his death, he. 
 wrote his will and as he cast a backward glance 
 over the way by which he had been led, he sees 
 that this incident was the real turning point 
 of his life. He says, as he begins his last 
 
ii6 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 Testament: "The Lord gave to me. Brother 
 Francis, thus to begin to do penance ; for when 
 I was in sin it seemed to me very bitter to see 
 lepers and the Lord himself led me amongst 
 them, and I showed mercy to them, and when 
 I left them, that which had seemed to me bit- 
 ter was changed for me into sweetness of body 
 and soul." 
 
 This was his conversion, the third step in 
 the Way, but still what to do with himself was 
 not clear. He had not heard the personal call. 
 He dreamed that he was to repair the Church, 
 He did not realize the largeness of the work, 
 so he began to repair, with his own hands, the 
 little chapel of San Damiano on the outskirts 
 of Assisi. To its priest he gave all his per- 
 sonal property. This done he built a hut by 
 the side of the still smaller chapel of the Por- 
 tiuncula, a little farther from the town, and 
 began to repair that. Attending Mass in it one 
 morning he heard the words in the Gospel for 
 the day: "Take neither gold nor silver nor 
 brass in your purses, nor scrip for your jour- 
 ney, nor shoes nor staves." Then suddenly it 
 flashed upon him that he had found his orders, 
 the clear directions from Christ himself as to 
 what he should do. He threw away every- 
 
St. Francis — Suso— Mother Julian 117 
 
 thing and put on the commonest dress of the 
 poorest Apennine peasant. It was the taking 
 of the Franciscan habit, the gray tunic and 
 the rough cord. It was the real founding of 
 the Order. And its rule was that simple verse. 
 Soon Bernard of Quintavalle, a rich and 
 prominent man of Assisi, and Pietro, a peasant, 
 decided to attach themselves to him and to 
 follow his example. He took them to a church 
 and opened the Gospel and read the verse to 
 them and said : ''Brethren, this is our life and 
 our Rule and that of all who may join us. Go, 
 then, and do as you have heard." It was all 
 as simple as that. Other men came to join 
 these three, and then more. Then a real but 
 still simple Rule was set forth, and they jour- 
 neyed to Rome to have it approved by the Pope. 
 So the order of Brothers Minor grew, not out 
 of a paper constitution but as the direct out- 
 come and influence of a man's life. It was all 
 summed up in doing what St. Francis did, and 
 he, we know, desired only to do what Christ 
 did. In his life we modern Christians find 
 some very shocking and to us unnecessary 
 imitations, but we see also a very sane and 
 sensible man doing them, and they certainly 
 
ii8 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 Open up some very heart-searching questions.* 
 Asceticism is belief in pain and want for 
 their own sakes, as agreeable in themselves to 
 God and as laying up grace in Heaven. No- 
 where do we find St. Francis laying any 
 stress upon this thought. These things, — pov- 
 erty, cold, nakedness, hunger, contumely — are 
 means by which the man who would be free 
 dominates the tyrant within.® 
 
 Both his poverty and his asceticism are so 
 spontaneous and joyous that they are forever 
 taken out of the gloomy category of Mo- 
 nasticism. He could not himself be free and 
 yet be rich. Some men can, but he had tried 
 it and had failed. He was no child of the 
 proletariat, railing at those who were better 
 off. He did not set himself to be the judge of 
 the rich, but for him there was a royal road 
 to freedom of spirit and that was to be poor, 
 utterly and entirely poor. Being an adven- 
 turer, a knight errant, he must carry no such 
 burden. He must have his hands, his heart, 
 and above all, his soul, free. And here his 
 aim was joy as much as that of any epicurean. 
 Cheerfulness was blessed and sadness damned 
 
 * The Little Flowers, Chap. VIII. 
 
 ' Mirror of Perfection, Chap. XXVII and Chap. XCVI. 
 
St. Francis — Suso — Mother Julian iig 
 
 by him. To be sure, in his youthful zeal he 
 rather overdid the mauling of his body, and 
 he confessed this himself. Eager and keen, he 
 spurred and flogged this "Brother Ass," as he 
 called his body, and fed it sparely, ever unsatis- 
 fied until he had made it willing and swift and 
 hardy. But this step we call Purgation was 
 for him only an exhilarating knightly exer- 
 cise. 
 
 All this joyousness of nature and natural- 
 ness and absolute freedom from anything that 
 was morbid make Francis' life singularly free 
 from that stage we have called Negation, that 
 Dark Night of the Soul which shrouds so 
 many sometimes for many years. So we may 
 thankfully omit that from our study of this 
 man and be glad that he shows us how we may 
 escape. Thus we come to the end when the 
 longing to be like Christ with which he started 
 has its symbolical fulfillment in the reception 
 of the Stigmata in the solitude of the Mount 
 of Alvernia. He saw his vision and heard 
 these words: "And as he thus marveled it 
 was revealed by him that appeared to him that 
 by divine Providence this vision had been 
 shown in such form to the end that he might 
 understand that not by the martyrdom of the 
 
I20 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 body but by the enkindling of his mind must 
 he needs be wholly transformed into the ex- 
 press image of Christ crucified in that glorious 
 apparition." ® Then he came down from the 
 Mount trying to conceal from his nearest 
 friends the "marks of the Lord Jesus." '^ 
 
 The union was very nearly complete, his goal 
 almost reached. The wracked body could bear 
 no more and he failed rapidly. His friends 
 tell the story with simple pathos: 
 
 "And having said this he was carried to St. 
 Mary of the Angels, where, having completed 
 forty years of his age and twenty years of per- 
 fect penitence, he, in the year of our Lord 1227, 
 on the 4th of the Nones of October, passed 
 away to the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he loved 
 with his whole heart, with his whole mind, 
 his whole soul, his whole strength, his most ar- 
 dent desire and fullest affection, following him 
 most perfectly, running after him most sweet- 
 ly, and at the last reaching him most gloriously, 
 who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives 
 and reigns forever and ever. Amen." ^ 
 
 Turn we now to another sample of the same 
 
 ' The Little Flowers, p. 192. 
 
 'St. Bonaventura: The Life of St. Francis, pp. 139-4O. 
 The Little Flowers, p. 185. 
 » The Mirror of Perfection, Chap. CXXIV. 
 
St. Francis — Suso — Mother Julian 121 
 
 Spirit, another troubadour, but of the heavier 
 Teutonic sort, living more than a century later 
 than St. Francis. 
 
 Heinrich Suso was born at Ueberlingen, 
 near Constance, on St. Benedict's Day, A. D. 
 1300. He was well born on both sides of his 
 house, the families being both noble and an- 
 cient. From his devotion to his mother he 
 called himself by her name, Seuss, Latinized 
 into Suso, his father's name being von Berg. 
 He became a Dominican monk, entering the 
 monastery at Constance when he was 13 years 
 old. Then he was transferred to Cologne, 
 where he studied diligently at the University. 
 "While there he made such great progress in 
 learning that he was about to be promoted to 
 the degree of Doctor of Theology, but he was 
 forbidden to accept this honor by a voice from 
 God within him, saying: — 'Thou knowest well 
 enough already how to give voice to God and 
 to draw other men to him by thy preaching.' 
 From that time forth he began to preach with 
 great zeal and fervor and to devote himself 
 to the conversion of sinners and the guidance 
 of souls along the highest paths of mystical 
 perfection. At length, after many years of 
 unceasing labors and sufferings he died at 
 
122 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 Ulm, on the Feast of the Conversion of St. 
 Paul, in 1365, and was buried in the cloister of 
 the Dominican convent in that city." ^ 
 
 He has left us two books from which we 
 must draw all our knowledge of his life save the 
 bare facts just recorded. He wrote his own 
 life, or rather his experiences related to his 
 friend Elizabeth Stagelin were set down by her 
 and then surreptitiously circulated. "Later on, 
 when he found out this ghostly theft, he re- 
 proved her for it and forcing her to give up 
 to him all the writing, he burnt up all of it that 
 was there." When, however, the rest of it 
 was given to him and he was going to treat 
 it in like manner, he was stopped by a heavenly 
 message from God forbidding it. Thus what 
 follows remained unhurt, for the most part, 
 just as she had written it with her own hand. 
 Many good instructions were also added to it 
 by him after her death in her name.^*^ 
 
 Of this book Inge, in his Bampton Lectures 
 (p. 173) says: "In his old age, shortly before 
 his death in 1365, he published the history of 
 his life, which is one of the most interesting 
 
 • The Life of the Blessed Henry Suso. Translator's Preface, 
 p. xxxi. 
 *• Suso : Life, p. 5- 
 
St. Francis — Suso — Mother Julian 123 
 
 and charming- of all autobiographies. Suso's 
 literary gift is remarkable. Unlike most 
 ecstatic Mystics who declare on each occa- 
 sion that "tongue cannot utter" their experi- 
 ences, Suso's store of glowing and vivid lan- 
 guage never fails. The hunger and thirst of 
 the soul for God and the answering love of 
 Christ manifested in the inner man have never 
 found a more pure and beautiful expression." 
 A writer in the Edinburgh Reviezv (for Oc- 
 tober, 1896), says: *'In Suso's narrative the 
 spirit of this century is pictured with a vivid- 
 ness and reality Froissart himself, his contem- 
 porary, does not surpass." 
 
 He wrote himself "The Little Book of Eter- 
 nal Wisdom." Its origin w^as a series of a 
 hundred short meditations on the Passion 
 which he had vowed to make. These form a 
 short appendix to the book and are not very 
 valuable, but in writing them he says: "He 
 gained many a bright inspiration of divine 
 truth whereof these meditations were a cause, 
 and between him and the Eternal Wisdom there 
 sprang up a tender intercourse." " 
 
 The result he gives us is in dramatic form. 
 He is the Servitor and Eternal Wisdom talks 
 
 " The Little Book of Eternal IVisdom, p. 21. 
 
124 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 with him and answers his questions. The con- 
 versation is sweet. The servant treats his 
 Master with reverence, yet with a quaint and 
 half humorous boldness. The answers of the 
 Eternal Wisdom show an intimate acquaint- 
 ance with the writings of Dionysius and 
 Thomas Aquinas and Suso's master, Eckhart. 
 But they are softened and sweetened and 
 made human by passing through his own heart 
 and being expressed in his beautiful language. 
 But we turn away from these. We must 
 trace, in our study of both the Eternal Wisdom 
 and the Life together the various steps in his 
 Mystic experience which for us are more im- 
 portant than the theological discussions. 
 
 "The first beginning of the Servitor's per- 
 fect conversion to God took place when he 
 was in his eighteenth year. And though he 
 had worn the religious habit for the five pre- 
 vious years, his soul was still dissipated within 
 him; and it seemed to him that if God only 
 preserved him from weightier sins, which 
 might tarnish his good name, there was no 
 need to be over-careful about ordinary faults. 
 Nevertheless, he was so kept by God the while, 
 that he had always an unsatisfied feeling with- 
 in him, whenever he turned himself to the ob- 
 
St. Francis — Suso — Mother Julian 125 
 
 jects of his desires, and it seemed to him that 
 it must be something quite different which 
 could bring peace to his wild heart, and he was 
 ill at ease amid his restless ways. He felt at 
 all times a gnawing reproach within, and yet 
 he could not help himself, until the kind God 
 set him free from it by turning him. His 
 companions marvelled at the speedy change, 
 wondering how it had come over him; and 
 one said this, and another that, but as to how 
 it was, no one either guessed or came near to 
 guessing it ; for it was a secret illumination and 
 drawing sent by God, and it wrought in him 
 with speed a turning away from creatures." *^ 
 
 " 'Her have I loved, and have sought her 
 out from my youth, and have desired to take 
 her for my spouse, and I became a lover of her 
 beauty.' These words stand written in the 
 Book of Wisdom, and are spoken by the beau- 
 tiful and all-loving Wisdom. 
 
 "A Servant was filled with disgust and de- 
 jection of heart on his first setting forth on 
 the uneven ways. Then did the Eternal Wis- 
 dom meet him in a spiritual and ineffable 
 form, and lead him through bitter and sweet 
 until she brought him to the right path of di- 
 
 " Life of the Blessed Henry Suso, p. 6. 
 
126 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 vine truth. And, after well reflecting on his 
 wonderful progress, he thus spoke to God: 
 Sweet and tender Lord! from the days of my 
 childhood my mind has sought for something 
 with burning thirst, but w^hat it is I have not 
 as yet fully understood. Lord, I have pursued 
 it ardently many a year, but I never could 
 grasp it, for I know not what it is, and yet it 
 is something that attracts my heart and soul, 
 without which I can never attain true rest. 
 
 "Alas, my God, why didst Thou not show 
 Thyself to me long ago, why hast Thou de- 
 layed so long? How many a weary way have 
 I not wandered !" 
 
 ''Eternal Wisdom — Had I done so thou 
 wouldst not have known My goodness so sen- 
 sibly as now thou knowest it." ^^ 
 
 "The Servant — Lord! art Thou this thing; 
 or am I it, or what is it? 
 
 Bternal Wisdom — Thou art and hast of thy- 
 self nothing but imperfection; I am it, and 
 this is the game of love. 
 
 The Servant — But Lord, what is the game 
 of love? 
 
 Bternal Wisdom — All the time that love is 
 with love, love does not know how dear love 
 
 "Suso: Eternal Wisdom, pp. 25-27, 
 
St. Francis — Suso — Mother Julian 127 
 
 is; but when love separates from love, then 
 only does love feel how dear love was. 
 
 The Servant — Lord ! this is a dreary game. 
 Alas, Lord! is inconstancy never cast aside 
 in any one while time lasts? 
 
 Eternal Wisdom — In very few persons, for 
 constancy belongs to eternity. 
 
 The Servant — Lord, who are these persons? 
 
 Eternal IVidsom— The very purest of all, 
 and in eternity the most like to God. 
 
 The Servant — Lord, which are they ? 
 
 Eternal IVisdom — They are the persons 
 who have denied themselves in the most per- 
 fect manner." ^* 
 
 Here we see the longings of Suso's heart, 
 the beginning of his Alystic Way. **He had 
 always an unsatisfied feeling within him." 
 "He felt at all times a gnawing reproach with- 
 in and yet he could not help himself until the 
 kind God set him free by turning him." It 
 is the usual Christian experience. And then 
 the turning, the conversion, is the awakening. 
 Quite early in his course visions were given 
 him. In Chapter III of his Life he tells of 
 probably the first one of the many. I must 
 
 "Suso: Eternal IVtsdom, pp. 62-63. 
 
128 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 not describe it, lest I spoil the beauty of his 
 own description: 
 
 "His heart was athirst and yet satisfied; 
 his mind was joyous and blooming. Wishes 
 were stilled in him and desires had departed. 
 . . . He said afterwards: If this be not 
 Heaven, I know not what Heaven is . . . 
 adding: Ah, Thou who art my heart's good! 
 Never can this hour pass from my heart. He 
 went on his way in body and no one saw or 
 took note of anything in him outwardly: but 
 his soul and mind were full even of heavenly 
 marvels. The heavenly glances came again 
 and again in his innermost interior, and it 
 seemed to him as if he were floating in the 
 air. The powers of his soul were filled full 
 of the sweet taste of Heaven; just as when a 
 choice electuary has been poured out of a box. 
 The box still keeps the good flavor of it. This 
 heavenly taste remained with him for a long 
 time afterwards and gave him a yearning and 
 longing after God." ^^ 
 
 But along with these glimpses of God's pres- 
 ence within him comes the sight of himself and 
 his sinfulness and unworthiness, ''Was there 
 ever a suitor subjected to as hard terms as 
 
 " Life of the Blessed Henry Suso, p. lo. 
 
St. Francis — Suso — Mother Julian 129 
 
 these? A thought from God answered: *By 
 ancient right love and suffering go together. 
 There is no wooer but he is a sufferer ; no lover 
 but he is a martyr. Therefore it is not unjust 
 that he who aims so high in love should meet 
 with some things repugnant to him. Remem- 
 ber all the mishaps and vexations which 
 earthly lovers suffer, whether with their will 
 or against it.' He was greatly strengthened 
 to persevere by good inspirations of this 
 sort." ^« 
 
 "The Servant — Woe is me, Lord, but this 
 is a dreary pastime! My whole nature rebels 
 against these words. Lord, how shall I ever 
 endure it all? Gentle Lord, one thing I must 
 say: couldst Thou not have found out some 
 other way, in Thy eternal wisdom, to save me 
 and show Thy love for me, some way which 
 would have exempted Thee from Thy great 
 sufferings, and me from their bitter participa- 
 tion? How very wonderful do Thy judgments 
 appear!" ^'^ 
 
 Out of this feeling grew all the terrible aus- 
 terities of which Suso is almost the crowning 
 example among Mystics. A mere recital of 
 
 "Ibid., p. 13. 
 
 "Eternal IVisdom, p. 31. 
 
130 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 his morbidities makes our tender modern flesh 
 creep and shrink from even the thought. We 
 must not judge St. Francis and Suso and the 
 others by our own standards. They used the 
 methods of their day. Probably what their 
 lords and ladies called luxury would be con- 
 sidered hardships by us. At any rate, the at- 
 tempt to fit a soul to meet and see God was 
 a worthy one. They may have mistaken the 
 means, and yet austerity of some sort cannot 
 be avoided even to-day. The saints of to-day 
 are not the easy livers, the ones who pamper 
 themselves and are ministered unto. And so 
 as we feel ourselves shocked reading of what 
 St. Francis and Suso did to their poor bodies, 
 we should not only pity their mistake but also 
 feel for them a great reverence as for men 
 who, though mistaken, at least dared to the ut- 
 most to gain an end we only feebly wish for. 
 Instead of wearing a pectoral cross of gold 
 over a swelling clerical waistcoat, Suso cut 
 with a stylus into his bosom's flesh over his 
 heart, in letters an inch high, the name *7^su." 
 In Chapters XVII-XX may be found his own 
 account, which closes thus: 
 
 "At length, after the Servitor had led, from 
 his eighteenth to his fortieth year, a life of 
 
St. Francis — Suso — Mother Julian 131 
 
 exercises, according to the outer man — such 
 as have been in part described above — and 
 when his whole frame was now so worn and 
 wasted that nothing remained for him except 
 to die or leave off these exercises, he left them 
 oft"; and God showed him that all this austerity 
 and all these practices were nothing more than 
 a good beginning, and a breaking through his 
 uncrushed natural man; and he saw that he 
 must press on still further in quite another 
 way, if he wished to reach perfection." ^® 
 
 These sensible words also follow, showing 
 the growing sense of wherein self-discipline 
 lies: 
 
 ''The same thing happens with these persons 
 when, with their undisciplined reason, they 
 try to behold God as all in all, and endeavor, 
 according to their imperfect intelligence, to 
 let go this and that, they know not how. It 
 is true indeed, that everything must be let go 
 by him who would attain perfection ; but they 
 do not understand how this letting-go of things 
 is to be managed, and they try to let go this 
 and that without discretion, and to rid them- 
 
 ^"Life of the Blessed Henry Suso, p. 64. 
 Read the beautiful Hymn of Suffering in The Little Book 
 of Eternal Wisdom, p. 80. 
 
132 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 selves of all thing's without attending to the 
 necessary distinctions. This fault arises either 
 from unlearned simplicity or unmortified 
 craftiness." ^^ 
 
 Then he enters the ''other way," the higher, 
 harder school which is thus described by the 
 Angelic Guide who conducted him thither: 
 
 "The youth answered: 'The highest school 
 and the craft which is taught there consist sim- 
 ply in an entire and perfect detachment from 
 self; that is to say, how a man may attain to 
 such an abiding spirit of self-renunciation, 
 that, no matter how God treats him, either 
 directly by Himself, or indirectly through crea- 
 tures, or how he feels, whether joyful or sad, 
 the one object of his strivings shall ever be to 
 continue always the same by a perpetual giving 
 up of self, as far as human frailty will allow, 
 and to make God's honor and glory his sole 
 aim, just in the way that the dear Christ acted 
 towards his heavenly Father/ " ^^ 
 
 There are few more distressing or dramatic 
 stories than the Servitor proceeds to tell, still 
 humbly using the third person, describing the 
 new trials which befell him when he outgrew 
 
 ^^ Life of the Blessed Henry Stiso, pp. 206-207. 
 ""Ibid., p. 66. 
 
St. Francis — Suso — Mother Julian 133 
 
 his lonely self-macerations. The cutting of the 
 flesh is mere childish suffering compared to 
 the false accusations of thievery and deception 
 and adultery, the loss of reputation, of the re- 
 gard of friends, the ruin of his Christian influ- 
 ence as a preacher and a teacher. The beauty 
 and pathos of the story told by him in Chapter 
 XL is without parallel. Surely in the state 
 called Purgation Suso had his perfect school- 
 ing, nor was he spared the state called The 
 Dark Night of the Soul. Even with such bright 
 visions as this one to cheer him, he still fell, 
 he tells us, into the deepest gloom. In Chap- 
 ter VI of his Life, he says: 
 
 "It came to pass once, after the time of his 
 sufferings was over, that early one morning 
 he was surrounded in a vision by the heavenly 
 spirits. Whereupon he sought one of the bright 
 princes of heaven to show him the manner of 
 God's secret dwelling in his soul. The Angel 
 answered thus: 'Cast, then, a joyous glance 
 into thyself, and see how God plays his play 
 of love with thy loving soul.' He looked imme- 
 diately, and saw that his body over his heart 
 was clear as crystal, and that in the centre of 
 his heart was sitting tranquilly, in lovely form, 
 the Eternal Wisdom; beside whom there sat, 
 
134 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 full of heavenly longing, the Servitor's soul, 
 which leaning lovingly towards God's side, and 
 encircled by God's arms, and pressed close to 
 His Divine heart, lay thus entranced and 
 drowned in love in the arms of the beloved 
 God." '' 
 
 And then in Chapter XXIII we read of his 
 three interior sufferings common to many 
 Christians: "One of these was impious imag- 
 inations against the faith . . . the more he 
 fought against them the more perplexed he be- 
 came. God suffered him to remain under these 
 temptations about nine years, during which he 
 ceased not, with wailing heart and w^eeping 
 eyes, to cry to God and all the saints for help. 
 At last, when God deemed that the time was 
 come, he set him entirely free from them and 
 bestowed upon him great steadfastness and 
 clearness of faith." "The second interior suf- 
 fering was an inordinate sadness. He had such 
 a continuous heaviness of spirit that it was as if 
 a mountain lay upon his heart. A partial cause 
 of this was that his turning away from crea- 
 tures to God had been carried out with such 
 excessive speed and severity that his bodily 
 frame had suffered greatly from it. This trial 
 
 Life of the Blessed Henry Suso, pp. 21-22. 
 
St. Francis — Suso— Mother Julian 135 
 
 lasted for eight years." The third suffering 
 was the thought that he was damned eter- 
 nally and that naught could avail to put him 
 among the saved : 
 
 "After this terrible suffering had lasted 
 about ten years, all which time he never looked 
 upon himself in any other light than as one 
 damned, he went to the holy Master Eckhart, 
 and made known to him his suffering. The 
 holy man delivered him from it, and thus set 
 him free from the hell in which he had so 
 long dwelt." "- 
 
 After this he comes out on the broad high 
 plane of serene communion which is called by 
 some the Unitive State. With him, unlike so 
 many, it did not mean any excess of visions, 
 any ecstasy. It seems to have been rather a 
 lessening of the miraculous occurrences of his 
 earlier years. He was turned from the abuse 
 of his body, from his lonely cell, and from si- 
 lence, and made to lead a useful normal life 
 in the world. "After he had spent many years 
 in attending to his interior life, God urged him, 
 by manifold revelations, to apply himself also 
 to the salvation of his neighbor." He is Con- 
 fessor and guide to many. He takes an in- 
 
 " Ibid., p. 79- 
 
136 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 terest in the career of those he sees falling 
 into sin and becomes the savior of many. The 
 later chapters, both of his Little Book and of 
 his Life, become the statement of deep truths 
 about the Nature of God, the right and wrong 
 use of Reason, answering the questions put to 
 him by his spiritual daughter, Elizabeth Stage- 
 lin. The theology is, as I have said, of his time, 
 but there is a charm about the statement show- 
 ing the sweet spirit of the man and a beauty- 
 of language which is beyond that of Eckhart 
 and Tauler. 
 
 Let us leave the man with these words of 
 his ringing in our ears: 
 
 "He who wishes to dwell in his inmost in- 
 terior must rid himself of all multiplicity. He 
 must habitually reject all that is not the one 
 thing." "If a man cannot comprehend the 
 matter let him be passive and the matter will 
 comprehend him." "^ 
 
 *'How is it that thou so readily forgettest 
 thyself when thou art so perfectly encompassed 
 with the external Good? What is it thy soul 
 seeks in exterior things who carries within 
 herself so secretly the Kingdom of Heaven?" ^* 
 
 ** Life of the Blessed Henry Suso, p. 213. 
 ** Eternal Wisdom, p. 63. 
 
St. Francis — Suso— Mother Julian 137 
 
 "Spiritual hunger and actual devotion must 
 impel thee to me more than custom. The soul 
 that wishes to feel me interiorly in the recesses 
 of a secluded life and sweetly to enjoy me, 
 must first of all be cleansed from sin, must be 
 adorned with virtue, encircled with self-de- 
 nial, decked out with the red roses of ardent 
 love, strewn over with the fair violets of hum- 
 ble submission and with the white lilies of 
 perfect purity." ^^ 
 
 Coming to my third example of the Mystic 
 Life I find myself free of any biographical 
 notice. To quote her earliest editor, Hugh 
 
 "Eternal Wisdom, p. 132. 
 
 "Eternal Wisdom. — The truest, most useful, and most prac- 
 tical doctrine in all the Scriptures that, in a few words, will 
 more than amply convince thee of all the truth requisite for 
 the attainment of the summit of perfection in a godly life, is 
 tliis doctrine : Keep thyself secluded from all mankind, keep 
 thyself free from the influence of all external things, disen- 
 thrall thyself from all that depends on chance or accident, 
 and direct thy mind at all times on high in secret and divine 
 contemplation, wherein with a steady gaze from which thou 
 never swervest, thou hast Me before thy eyes. And as to 
 other exercises, such as poverty, fasting, watching, and every 
 other castigation, bend them all to this as their end, and use 
 just so much and so many of them as may advance thee to it. 
 Behold, thus wilt thou attain to the loftiest pitch of perfec- 
 tion, that not one person in a thousand comprehends, be- 
 cause, with their end in view, they all continue in other exer- 
 cises, and go astray the long years." [Eternal IFisdom, p. 
 123.1 
 
138 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 Cressy (born 1605) in his address to the read- 
 er: 
 
 "I was desirous to have told thee somewhat 
 of our virgin compiler of these Revelations, 
 but after all the search I could make I could 
 not discover anything touching her more than 
 what she occasionally sprinkles in the book it- 
 self." 
 
 However, few unknowns convey to us as 
 clear a knowledge of their character as this 
 one. Mother Julian was an anchoress, a re- 
 cluse, living in a cell attached to the little 
 Norman church of St. Julian in Norwich. In 
 the second chapter of her book, which is called 
 "Revelations of Divine Love," of which four 
 manuscripts have been preserved to us, she tells 
 us: "This Revelation was made to a simple 
 Christian, unlettered, living in deadlie flesh 
 the year of our Lord 1373, the 13th day of 
 Maie." She was then, she says, thirty years 
 of age, "which creature [had] desired before 
 three gifts by the grace of God," out of her 
 longing for more love to God and her trouble 
 over the sight of man's sin and sorrow. Be- 
 ginning with this intense desire, the mark of 
 the true Mystic, she asked of God these three 
 things: First, the mind of the Passion, second, 
 
St. Francis — Suso — Mother Julian 139 
 
 some bodily sickness, and third, to have of 
 God's gift three wounds. "These two desires," 
 she tells us, "of the Passion and the sickness 
 that I desired of him, was with a condition; 
 for one thought this was not the common use 
 of prayer. Therefore I said : 'Lord, thou know- 
 est w^hat I would, and if that it be Thy will 
 that I might have it; and if it be not Thy will, 
 good Lord, be not displeased for I will not 
 but as thou wilt.' This sickness I desired in 
 my youth, that I might have it when I were 
 thirty years old. For the third [gift] by the 
 grace of God and teaching of Holie Church, 
 I conceived a mightie desire to receive three 
 wounds in my life. That is to say, the wound 
 of verie contrition, the wound of kind com- 
 passion, and the wound of wilful longing to 
 God. Right as I asked the other twaine with 
 a condition, so asked I this third mightilie 
 without any condition. These twaine desires 
 beforesaid passed from my mind, and the third 
 dwelled continually." ^'^ 
 
 At the time appointed the sickness came. 
 She thought she was near her end, but her life 
 was spared and in the time of recovery came 
 the other gift, the "mind," i. e., the keen imag- 
 
 " Revelations, p .6. 
 
140 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 ination of the passion of her Lord. This was 
 given her in what she calls "shewings" or rev- 
 elations. Fifteen of them came quickly and 
 consecutively, lasting from about 4 o'clock till 
 after 9 o'clock of one morning. On the night 
 of the next day came another shewing. Then 
 through all the years to follow (she speaks 
 once of fifteen and again of twenty years save 
 three months) there come to her the ever clear- 
 er understanding of what the visions meant 
 which had been vouchsafed."^ 
 
 Of all these things, as Miss Warrack, one of 
 her editors, says (p. xix), "Julian gives a 
 careful account, suggestive of great calmness 
 and power of observation and reflection at the 
 time as well as discriminating judgment and 
 certitude afterwards." 
 
 I have no time to introduce you to the 
 woman as revealed in her book. Only a care- 
 ful and repeated reading of it will give you 
 the right understanding of her character, 
 which, in spite of self-repression and extreme 
 modesty, shines through all she says. She 
 closes an early chapter with these words : "And 
 therefore I pray you all, for God's sake, and 
 counsel you for your own profit, that you 
 
 ^ Revelations, p. 193. 
 
St. Francis — Suso — Mother Julian 141 
 
 leave the beholding of a wretch that it was 
 shewed to; and mightily wisely and meekly be- 
 hold in God that of his courtesie, love and end- 
 less goodness would shew it generally in com- 
 fort to us all : for it is God's will that ye take it 
 with a great joy and liking, as Jesus Christ 
 hath shewed it to you." "® 
 
 It is to the teaching of her book that I would 
 turn. It will repay the most careful study. 
 Its theme is the loving nature of God. At 
 the end she sums it up in these words: 
 
 "And from the time that it was shewed I 
 desired oftentimes to wit in what was our 
 Lord's meaning, and fifteen years after and 
 more I was answered in ghostly understanding, 
 saying thus: 'What? Wouldst thou wit thy 
 Lord's meaning in this thing? Wit it well: 
 love was his meaning. Who sheweth it thee? 
 Love. Wherefore sheweth He it thee? For 
 Love. Hold thee therein, thou shalt wit more 
 in the same. But thou shalt never wit therein 
 other without end.' Thus was I learned that 
 Love was our Lord's meaning," -^ and obliter- 
 ating herself she leaves this teaching for all. 
 All her "even Christens" are objects of this 
 
 'Ibid., p. 24. 
 " Ibid., p. 2ia 
 
142 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 same love, and all should rest in it and return 
 it. She says (p. 194) : ''And for this know- 
 ing are we most blind. For some of us believe 
 that God is all mighty and may do all : and that 
 He is all wisdom and can do all: but that He 
 is all love and will do all, there wt fail." 
 
 In marked contrast to Suso and to so many 
 of the medieval Mystics, Julian lays little stress 
 on ascetic practices. Her illness seems to have 
 satisfied her and given her all she felt she 
 needed of bodily infirmity. Immediately after 
 it came all the visions she ever had. She made 
 no attempt to induce any more. She lives the 
 rest of her life in growing appreciation and 
 understanding of what these sixteen Revela- 
 tions reveal to her. In this she is very differ- 
 ent from the type. She differs also in that 
 her life was monastic in the highest degree. 
 She was immured in her narrow cell, which, 
 however, had probably two or three rooms, 
 and she had an attendant who cared for her. 
 Many people must have been attracted to her, 
 and she could converse with them through her 
 barred window and could join in the prayers 
 and sacraments offered in the little church 
 through the "squint," which is still in existence. 
 Her knowledge of human nature, of the 
 
St. Francis — Suso — Mother Julian 143 
 
 thoughts and temptations and sins of men and 
 women, is lar£^e, and her treatment of them is 
 wonderfully keen and modern. 
 
 She begins with the great longing: "For I 
 saw him and sought him; for we be now so 
 blind and so unwise that we can never seek 
 God till what time that he of his goodness 
 sheweth him to us. And when we see aught 
 of him gVaciously then are we stirred with the 
 same grace to seek, with great desire, to see 
 him more blessed fully. And thus I saw him 
 and sought him, and I had him and wanted 
 him, and this is and should be our common 
 working in this life as to my sight." ^^ 
 
 Her style, as this example shows, is most 
 simple and her use of words constantly apt 
 and illuminating. Her grasp of the thought 
 is only equalled by her power of expressing 
 it. It seems to me that no one has more per- 
 fectly caught the strange sensation of having 
 God and yet longing for God; the paradox of 
 the priority found in these phrases: *1 saw 
 him and sought him, and I had him and wanted 
 him"; no one has so clearly stated the loving 
 priority of God's seeking, the cause and there- 
 
 *" Revelations, p. 27. 
 
144 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 fore the satisfaction of ours. For elsewhere 
 she says : *'And all this brought our Lord sud- 
 denly to my mind and shewed these words and 
 said: *I am ground of thy beseeking. First 
 it is my will that thou have it; and sithen I 
 make thee to will it, and sithen I make thee 
 to beseek it, and thou seekest it, how should 
 it then be that thou shouldst not have thy 
 seeking?' " ^^ And she concludes from this 
 that "for all things that our good Lord maketh 
 us to beseek himself he hath ordained it to us 
 from without beginning." ^"^ 
 
 She has a most unmedieval conception of sin. 
 *'And after this our Lord brought to my mind 
 the longing that I had to him before and I 
 saw nothing letted me but sin. And so I be- 
 held generally in us all ; and methought if sin 
 had not been we should all have been clean 
 and like to our Lord as he made us. And thus 
 in my folly before this time I often wondered 
 why, by the great foresaid wisdom of God, 
 the beginning of sin was not letted, for then, 
 thought me, that all should have been well. 
 . . . But Jesus answered by this word and 
 said : 'Sin is behovely but all shall be well, and 
 
 '^Revelations, p. 98. 
 *'Fbid.,'p. 99- 
 
St. Francis — Suso — Mother Julian 145 
 
 all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall 
 be well.' " '^ 
 
 "And in these same words I saw an high 
 marvelous privity hid in God; which privity 
 he shall openly make and shall be known to 
 us in Heaven. In which knowing we shall ver- 
 ily see the cause why he suffered sin to come. 
 In which sight we shall endlessly have joy." ^* 
 
 She cannot reconcile the hard doctrines of 
 Holie Church with this sight of sin in the light 
 of God's love. Many chapters are given up 
 to the discussion, but at the end all she can say 
 is that she believes she is right, but the answer 
 is given "full mistely." ^^ 
 
 We may not study any further, only let me 
 say that there is a freshness and a naive sim- 
 plicity in her treatment of the Incarnation, of 
 the Atonement, and the Church, and that her 
 statements are startlingly modern and interest- 
 ing for their truth to-day as well as for their 
 historical value. I close wnth this passage, 
 coming out as it does upon the high plane of 
 the Mystic philosophy : 
 
 "And then I saw full surely that it is ready 
 
 "Ibid., p. 68. 
 ^ Ibid., p. 70. 
 "Cf. p. 127, and note fine passage on p. 143. 
 
146 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 to US and more easie to come to the knowing 
 of God than to know our own soul. For our 
 soul is so deeply grounded in God and so end- 
 lessly treasured that we may not come to the 
 knowing thereof till we have first knowing of 
 God, which is the Maker to whom it is oned. 
 . . . God is nearer to us than our own soul; 
 for he is ground in whom our soul standeth, 
 and he is mean that keepeth the substance and 
 the sensuality together, so that it shall never 
 depart : for our soul sitteth in God in very rest 
 and our soul standeth in God in sure strength, 
 and our soul is kindly rooted in God in end- 
 less love, and therefore, if we will have know- 
 ing of our soul and communing and dalliance 
 therewith it behooveth us to seek in it our 
 Lord God in whom it is inclosed." ^® 
 
 SUGGESTED READING 
 
 Jones: Studies in Mystical Religion. Macmillan. 
 
 1909. 
 Jones: Spiritual Reformers in the i6th and i/th 
 
 Centuries. Macmillan. 1914. 
 Plotinus' Select Works. Translation by Taylor. G. 
 
 Bell & Sons, Ltd. 191 1. 
 
 *' Revelations, p. 150. 
 
St. Francis — Suso — Mother Julian 147 
 
 The Works of Dionyshis, the Areopagite. Transla- 
 tion by Parker. James Parker & Co. 1897. 
 
 Sabatier: The Life of St. Francis of Assist. C. 
 Scribner's Sons. 1894. 
 
 Eckhart: Translation by Field, London, 1909. 
 
 Tauler and twenty-five of his sermons. Translation 
 by Winkworth. London, 1906. 
 
 Suso: Life. Methuen & Co., Ltd. 1913. 
 
 Suso: Little Book of Eternal Wisdom. The Ange- 
 lus Co. London, 1910. 
 
 Ruysbroek: The Adornment of the Spiritual Mar- 
 riage, etc. J. I\L Dent & Sons. 1916. 
 
 Ruysbroek: Reflections from the Mirror of a Mystic. 
 Thomas Baker. 1905. 
 
 Gardner : St. Catherine of Siena. J. M. Dent & Co. 
 1907. 
 
 VON Hugel: St. Catherine of Genoa. 2 vols. J. M. 
 Dent & Co. 1909. 
 
 Graham : Santa Teresa. Eveleigh Nash. 1907. 
 
 Lewis: St. John of the Cross. London, 1897. 
 
 MoLiNOs: The Spiritual Guide. Methuen & Co. 
 1907. 
 
 Martensen : Boehme. Hodden & Stoughton. 1885. 
 
 De Sales: Of the Love of God. Longmans, Green 
 & Co. 1899. 
 
 Upham : Mme. Guyon. London, 1905. 
 
 Richard Rolle : The Fire of Love and the Mending 
 of Life. Methuen & Co. 1914. 
 
 Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection. West- 
 minster Art & Book Co. 1908. 
 
148 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 Mother Julian of Norwich : Revelations of Divine 
 Love. Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner Co. 
 1902. 
 
 Fox: Journal. 2 vols. London, 1901. 
 
 Law ; The Spirit of Prayer, and, The Spirit of Love. 
 
V 
 
 MODERN MYSTICISM 
 
 Mysticism is not a mere matter of historical 
 interest, the study of which satisfies only an 
 antiquarian curiosity. It has not only been the 
 most compelling force in religious life, but it 
 is so to-day. I believe it to be a force with 
 which we must reckon increasingly. We are 
 living in the era of the Spirit, and there is 
 surely a recrudescence of Mysticism going on 
 all about us — a just and justifiable reaction 
 after the century of hard intellectualism and 
 the century of even harder materialism. I 
 quote DuPrel : ''Mysticism does not stand be- 
 side the other phenomena of Nature, uncon- 
 nected with them, but forms the last connec- 
 tion between all phenomena. So far from It 
 being an obsolete view, much rather obsolete 
 are those, though modern, conceptions in which 
 it has no place. So far is Mysticism from be- 
 longing only to the surmounted past, but much 
 rather will it attain its full significance in the 
 149 
 
150 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 future. As well the Kantian 'Critique of Rea- 
 son' as the physiological theory of sense per- 
 ception and Darwinism point to a view of the 
 world into which Mysticism will be organically 
 fitted." ' 
 
 It would seem worth while, then, to see what 
 Mysticism looks like to-day, where and how 
 it is showing itself, and possibly to enter into 
 the movement ourselves. And this not only 
 for ourselves, but as ministers in a day when 
 ''thousands are craving for a basis of belief 
 which shall rest not on tradition, on author- 
 ity, on historical evidence, but on the ascer- 
 tainable facts of human experience." ^ 
 
 It is wise for us to have gained that experi- 
 ence, or at least to know how others have 
 gained it, and to be able to explain the process. 
 Mysticism having no history, being sporadic 
 and yet universal, any one who has studied 
 it carefully and sympathetically can generally 
 recognize it when it appears. When you see 
 it here or there, early or late, you feel per- 
 fectly at home with it. You say, "Here is 
 the same old thing." It suffers a little, per- 
 haps, from sameness. Harnack's statement, 
 
 * Du Prel : Philosophy of Mysticism, p. xxvi. 
 "Inge: Studies of English Mystics, p. 238. 
 
Modem Mysticism 151 
 
 "Mysticism is always the same," is found to 
 be true all the way along. That is, in its es- 
 sence it is the same. In its manifestations, 
 and in the use made of it, and in the explana- 
 tions offered regarding it, it is very various. 
 Men of very different characters have been 
 Mystics. Dante was a Mystic, but so was 
 Paracelsus. Mother Julian of Norwich, im- 
 mured in a cell, and St. Catherine of Siena, 
 moulding the politics of Europe and making 
 the Pope do what she told him, are both typi- 
 cal. Wordsworth and Browning were both 
 Mystics, but how different and what different 
 use they make of their Mysticism! So that 
 when we come to study the Mysticism of the 
 present day you have only to look clearly and 
 you will not be surprised to find it, nor be 
 confused by finding it under many different 
 forms. It appears in all departments of 
 thought and life. I begin with Philosophy. 
 
 One ought here, of course, to start with 
 Kant, as everybody does, but this might lead 
 to the suspicion that I regarded him as a Mys- 
 tic. And yet I should like to say that Kant has 
 done great service to the modern advance of 
 philosophical Mysticism when he used the 
 weapons of intellect against itself, and, like 
 
152 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 the fabled scorpion, stung, the logical mind 
 with its own tail; he opened the way, as he 
 himself taught, for another knowledge of Re- 
 ality which Mysticism has not been slow to 
 take advantage of. Still farther was the way 
 opened by von Hartmann in his "Philosophy of 
 the Unconscious." He may not have practised 
 what he preached, but he was helping dis- 
 tinctly toward a better grounding of Mysti- 
 cism in the philosophical thought of the age. 
 The quaint, unmystical, and therefore entirely 
 unsympathetic Professor Bowen of the Har- 
 vard of my day said of him : 
 
 ''Hartmann attempts to prove that the germs 
 both of all philosophy and all revealed religion 
 are to be found in the heated fancies of the 
 Mystics, these fancies again being due to in- 
 spirations from the Unconscious." ^ 
 
 Fichte, especially in his "Characteristics of 
 the Present Day," and in "The Way Towards 
 the Blessed Life," is full of mystical thought, 
 deeply grounded in philosophy and Johannean 
 in its theology. 
 
 He says: "One of the most favorite and 
 customary tricks of tongue- fence among these 
 fanatics is this: to give to the thing which is 
 
 'Bowen: Modern Philosophy, p. 456. 
 
Modern Mysticism 153 
 
 hateful only to them, a name which is hateful 
 to all men, in order thereby to decry it, and 
 render it suspected. The existing store of such 
 tricks and nicknames is inexhaustible, and is 
 constantly enriched by fresh additions; and it 
 would be in vain to attempt here any complete 
 enumeration of them. Only one of the most 
 common of these odious nicknames I will here 
 notice, i.e., the charge that this doctrine which 
 we teach is Mysticism." * 
 
 "In that which the Holy Man does, lives 
 and loves, God appears, no longer surrounded 
 by shadows nor hidden by a garment, but in 
 his own, immediate, and eflficient Life; and the 
 question that is unanswerable from the mere 
 empty and imaginary conception of God — 
 'What is God?' — is here answered: 'He is that 
 which he who is devoted to Him and inspired 
 by Him does.' Wouldst thou behold God face 
 to face, as He is in Himself? Seek Him not 
 beyond the skies; thou canst find Him wher- 
 ever thou art. Behold the life of His devoted 
 ones, and thou beholdest Him; resign thyself 
 to Him, and thou wilt find Him within thine 
 own breast." ^ 
 
 * The Way Towards the Blessed Life, p. 32. 
 
 • Ibid., p. go 
 
154 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 There is in that last passage the distinct 
 echo of Eckhart and Suso. Schleiermacher's 
 influence is also to be reckoned with and is 
 clearly traced through Maurice and Kingsley to 
 our own Professor Allen ; and Dr. Allen in his 
 turn has called attention to the fact, likely to 
 be overlooked, that in Jonathan Edwards Mys- 
 ticism obtained a foothold in this country and 
 in the ultra-Calvinistic thought of his day. 
 In his "Life of Jonathan Edwards," Profes- 
 sor Allen says (p. 24) : 
 
 "We may trace in his experience the un- 
 mistakable marks of the mystic in every age 
 — union with God, absorption as it were into 
 the inmost essence of the divine. He finds ex- 
 pression in the intense language of the Psalm- 
 ist: 'My soul breaketh for the longing it 
 hath ; my soul waiteth for the Lord, more than 
 they who watch for the morning.' 
 
 "The seeking and the v^aiting were at last 
 rewarded. He was reading one day the words 
 of Scripture, 'Now unto the King eternal, im- 
 mortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor 
 and glory forever, Amen,' when there came 
 to him for the first time a sort of inward, 
 sweet delight in God and divine things. A 
 sense of the divine glory was, as it were, dif- 
 
Modem Mysticism 155 
 
 fused through him. He thought how happy 
 he should be if he might be wrapt up to God 
 in heaven, and be, as it were, swallowed up 
 in him forever. He began to have an inward, 
 sweet sense of Christ and the work of redemp- 
 tion. The Book of Canticles attracted him as 
 a fit expression for his mood. It seemed to 
 him as if he were in a kind of vision, alone 
 in the mountains or some solitary wilderness, 
 conversing sweetly with Christ and wrapt and 
 swallowed up in God." 
 
 If William James will not allow himself to 
 be called a Mystic, he is surely the cause of 
 Mysticism in many others. He says, in his 
 "Varieties of Religious Experience": 
 
 "One may say truly, I think, that personal 
 religious experience has its root and centre in 
 mystical states of consciousness; so for us, 
 who in these lectures are treating personal ex- 
 perience as the exclusive subject of our study, 
 such states of consciousness ought to form 
 the vital chapter from which the other chap- 
 ters get their light. Whether my treatment 
 of mystical states will shed more light or dark- 
 ness, I do not know, for my own constitution 
 shuts me out from their enjoyment almost 
 entirely, and I can speak of them only at sec- 
 
156 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 ond hand. But though forced to look upon the 
 subject so externally, I will be as objective and 
 receptive as I can ; and I think I shall at least 
 succeed in convincing you of the reality of the 
 states in question, and of the paramount im- 
 portance of their function." ® 
 
 He was too clear-sighted and honest to count 
 himself more than an onlooker, but there is 
 much pathos in his evident longing to be some- 
 thing more. These words of his, which are 
 quoted by Professor Pratt, show more than 
 sympathy : 
 
 ''James's respect for the mystic was an ex- 
 cellent instance of his open mind and empirical 
 point of view; for he was himself no mystic 
 and always disclaimed having what he called 
 the 'leaky' form of consciousness. In answer 
 to a certain question in my questionnaire on 
 this point he replies as follows: 'I believe in 
 God not because I have experienced His pres- 
 ence, but because I need it so that it "must" 
 be true.' 'The whole line of testimony on this 
 point (the existence of such an experience) 
 is so strong that I am not able to pooh-pooh it 
 away. No doubt there is a germ in me of 
 something similar that makes admiring re- 
 
 " James: Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 379- 
 
Modern Mysticism 157 
 
 sponse.' This 'something' in him,, which at 
 least corresponded to the mystic's conscious- 
 ness of God, he once described to me in an- 
 other fashion. It is,' he said, 'very vague 
 and impossible to describe or put into words. 
 In this it is somewhat like another experience 
 that I have constantly, a tune that is always 
 singing in the back of my mind but which I 
 can never identify or whistle or get rid of. 
 Something like that is my feeling for God, or 
 a Beyond. Especially at times of moral crisis 
 it comes to me, as the sense of an unknown 
 something backing me up. It is most indefi- 
 nite, to be sure, and rather faint. And yet I 
 know that if it should cease there would be 
 a great hush, a great void in my life.' " "^ 
 
 Moreover, James's colleague Royce, though 
 differing from him in so many ways, yet agrees 
 with him in his high estimate of the value of 
 Mysticism, its influence in the past and its im- 
 portance for the religion of the future: 
 
 "It is the conception of men whose piety has 
 been won after long conflict, whose thoughts 
 have been dissected by a very keen inner scep- 
 ticism, whose single-minded devotion to an 
 abstraction has resulted from a vast experi- 
 
 ' The Hibbert Journal. October, 1911, p. 232. 
 
158 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 ence of painful complications of life. ... It 
 has been the ferment of the faiths, the fore- 
 runner of spiritual liberty, the inaccessible 
 refuge of the nobler heretics, the inspirer 
 through poetry, of countless youth who know 
 no metaphysics, the teacher, through the devo- 
 tional books, of the despairing, the comforter 
 of those who are weary of finitude; it has de- 
 termined directly or indirectly, more than half 
 of the technical theology of the Church." ® 
 
 These are all statements of outsiders, I con- 
 fess, but they are valuable as coming from keen 
 observers, and all the more valuable as being 
 unprejudiced. Mysticism's power lies in its 
 practice, yet these men, from scientific study, 
 have come to realize that we must no longer, 
 as in the past, regard it as the vagary of a 
 few unbalanced religionists, but as a psycho- 
 logical form of religion which to-day, even 
 more than in the past, must be recognized and 
 reckoned with as a most important factor in 
 man's religious life. 
 
 We come even closer to the heart of Mysti- 
 cism when we study the philosophies of Eucken 
 and Bergson. Here again, while we may not 
 claim them as Mystics, in our sense of the 
 
 ' Royce : The World and the Individual, Vol. I. p. 85. 
 
Modern Mysticism 159 
 
 word, these two men are laying foundations in 
 philosophy and psychology for a deeper and 
 truer Mysticism to come. They are popular 
 teachers largely because they gratify this long- 
 ing of the modern thinker for the spiritual, the 
 Mystic's turning away from the logical rea- 
 son, his belief that true knowledge can come 
 only from vital communion with the object 
 sought. This position is taken up especially by 
 Bergson and given standing and popularity 
 to-day. It will not be necessary to give any re- 
 statement of the thought of these two men. 
 Their works and teaching are well known, but 
 to one familiar with the Mystic thought, the 
 trend of both is clearly in that direction. 
 
 In Eucken I will only call your attention to 
 these three passages, which are characteristic : 
 
 "It seems as if man could never escape from 
 himself, and yet when shut into the monotony 
 of his own sphere he is overwhelmed with a 
 sense of emptiness. The only possible remedy 
 here is to radically alter the conception of man 
 himself, to distinguish within him the narrow- 
 er and the larger life; the life that is strait- 
 ened and finite can never transcend itself, and 
 the infinite life through which he enjoys com- 
 munion with the immensity and truth of the 
 
i6o The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 universe. Can a man rise to this spiritual 
 level ? On the possibility of his doing so rests 
 all our hope of supplying any meaning or value 
 to life. At least we recognize to-day the hope- 
 lessness of trying to supply it from any source 
 external to the individual." ^ 
 
 Speaking of Mysticism Eucken says: *'But 
 even when this loss is recognized, this mode of 
 thought remains an indispensable element in 
 all development of independent spirituality. It 
 not only persists throughout the Middle Ages 
 but comes into prominence in modern times in 
 new shapes and shows that it is still powerful 
 even at the present day. If we give up the im- 
 mediate presence of Infinite being in the soul, 
 the life of the soul must inevitably and imme- 
 diately lose in depth and spontaneity." ^^ 
 
 Again Eucken speaks of Mysticism, though 
 not calling it by name, when he says : 
 
 *'But there is a further and more specific 
 manifestation of religion, for it is the function 
 of religion not only to infuse a sense of the 
 Whole into the work of life; but foregoing all 
 appeal to the medium of work, to realize the 
 Whole through direct communion and thereby 
 
 • The Meaning and Value of Life, p. 77- 
 
 " The Life of the Spirit, p. 48. 
 
Modern Mysticism i6i 
 
 unsealing the sources of a deeper life. So 
 first arose a distinctive or characteristic re- 
 ligion and with it that complete transcendence 
 of the world which issues in pure inwardness 
 of life; with it also a quickening of the Abso- 
 lute in human nature, vivifying what else must 
 have remained at the stage of finite exist- 
 ence." ^^ 
 
 Where Eucken misses the point by avoiding 
 any discussion of this ''direct communion'* 
 
 " The Meaning and Value of Life. p. 125. 
 
 "It is interesting to note that the most recent teaching of 
 Rudolph Eucken is in this respect a pure and practical mys- 
 ticism, though his conclusions have not been reached by the 
 mystic's road. The 'redemptive remaking of personality' in 
 conformity with the transcendent or spiritual life of the uni- 
 verse, is for him the central necessity of human life. The 
 life of reality, he says, is spiritual and heroic; an act, not a 
 thought. Further, Eucken, like the mystics, declares that 
 there is a definite transcendental principle in man. He calls 
 it the Gemiith, the heart or core of personality ; and there, 
 he says, 'God and man initially meet.' He invites us, as we 
 have seen, to distinguish in man two separate grades of being, 
 'the narrower and the larger life, the life that is straitened 
 and finite, and can never transcend itself, and to an infinite 
 life through which he enjoys communion with immensity and 
 the truth of the universe. At bottom, all the books of the 
 mystics tell us no more and no less; but their practical in- 
 structions in the art of self-transcendence, by which man may 
 appropriate that infinite life, far excel those of the philoso- 
 pher in lucidity and exactness.'" [Underbill: Mysticism, 
 p. 64.1 
 
 Note also Hermann's words in Eucken atui Bergson, p. 94. 
 
i62 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 with God, and by omitting, apparently with in- 
 tention, any study of experimental religion, 
 holding himself quite aloof and leaving us 
 with the empty and unanswered question, "Can 
 man rise to this spiritual level?" Bergson, on 
 the contrary, plunges us at once into the closest 
 intimacy. He tells us that we cannot know 
 the real things by keeping at a distance from 
 them, but that only by sympathy can we be- 
 come on intimate terms with them, and so by 
 living them know them. 
 
 We must remember here, before we go any 
 further, that Bergson's system, while clear, is 
 incomplete. He is consistent in refusing to let 
 it be judged "spatially" and as "static." ^" 
 
 What its later developments may lead him 
 to when he follows it into the realm of religion 
 we cannot tell, but as far as he has gone he 
 seems to me to be opening a way for the use 
 and development in religion of that mysterious 
 part of us we glanced at in the third lecture, 
 that penumbra about our logical reason which 
 he calls Intuition. That far we may study 
 him and claim him as more directly a guide 
 into the philosophy of Mysticism than any 
 modern thinker. 
 
 " Creative Evolution, p. xiv. 
 
Modern Mysticism 163 
 
 This is not the place, as I said, to explain 
 his theories, nor do I need to do more than call 
 your attention to what, for our purpose, is the 
 vital point in them. Mysticism has been dis- 
 credited by philosophers and by the man in the 
 street, by both because it was impatient of rea- 
 son and claimed to use a power or faculty 
 which worked while reason was in abeyance. 
 Bergson says that it is through intuition that 
 the great advances in philosophy have been 
 made, and the great works of art produced. 
 He contends that theology, the knowledge we 
 can get of God by the intellect, ''spatial think- 
 ing," is incomplete and unsatisfying, that it 
 does not reach Reality. This is what the Mys- 
 tics have been laughed at for saying. They 
 have felt and said that they had another fac- 
 ulty, deeper, more far-reaching, a faculty 
 which really extended to God because it was 
 the God-part of them. Bergson is not ready 
 to go as far as this, perhaps, yet, but he claims 
 for intuition the same priority: "Concepts 
 are the deposited sediment of intuition; intui- 
 tion produces the concepts, not the concepts in- 
 tuition." ^^ 
 
 "Intuition, if it could be prolonged beyond a 
 
 " Le Roy : The New Philosophy of Henri Bergson, p. 53. 
 
i64 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 few instants, would not only make the philoso- 
 pher agree with his own thought, but also all 
 philosophers agree with each other. Such as 
 it is, fugitive and incomplete, it is in each sys- 
 tem what is worth more than the system and 
 survives it." ^* This sentence from Bergson's 
 explanation of his own system in the little "In- 
 troduction to a New Philosophy" is distinctly 
 mystical and in harmony with all we have been 
 studying: "It therefore follows that an ab- 
 solute should be apprehended only by an intui- 
 tion, while all else is dependent upon analysis. 
 Intuition is that art of intellectual sympathy 
 by which one transports one's self into the in- 
 terior of an object in order to become harmoni- 
 ous with what is peculiar to it alone and so 
 inexpressible" (p. lo). 
 
 It is the cultivation of this "art" of intui- 
 tion which has been my theme from the very 
 beginning. Dr. Dodson has summed up the 
 teaching in these words : 
 
 "The implication is that so far as we do 
 know what anything is, what we are, what life 
 is in us and in the universe, what God is, we 
 know it through insight and not by reasoning. 
 The philosophic view of the world would be 
 
 " Dodson : Bergson and the Modern Spirit, p. 278. 
 
Modern Mysticism 165 
 
 that of the man in whom both of these com- 
 plementary powers of the mental Hfe were well 
 developed. His intellect would look out and 
 ask questions about the material world, ques- 
 tions which the intellect, using scientific meth- 
 ods, can answer. The same intellect would 
 also look in and ask questions about the heart 
 of life, both of self and of God, and instinct, 
 developed into intuition, would give a true and 
 satisfying reply." '^ 
 
 But it is time we turned from the philoso- 
 phers to see Mysticism manifested in other men 
 and other ways. Poetry reflects the spirit of 
 an age and is prophetic of that which is to 
 come.^*' The poets are seers — inseers, and fore- 
 seers. One is tempted, so rich is this field, to 
 go farther back than would be strictly honest 
 in a lecture called "Modern Mysticism." There 
 are fascinating and significant utterances, 
 worthy of more study than they have ever re- 
 ceived, in our English poets of the seventeenth 
 century. Crashaw, with his "Flaming Heart" 
 inspired by Santa Teresa; Vaughan the Silu- 
 rist, with his wonderful poem, 
 
 " Dodson : Bergson and the Modern Spirit, p. 130. 
 "Jones: Spiritual Reformers, p. 321. 
 
i66 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 "I saw Eternity the other night 
 Like a great ring of pure and endless hght, 
 All calm as it was bright"; 
 
 and Donne and the newly discovered Thomas 
 Traherne. But we must not study them, for 
 too much presses from the last century. 
 
 William Blake was living until 1827, so we 
 may count him as the first of our moderns. 
 Strange and wild were his mystic outbursts, 
 but he learned from Swedenborg and Boehme 
 and Law, and although much of his art is too 
 strange to be true, there are flashes which have 
 never been excelled, and we must note that he 
 alone, of all Mystics, has not only tried to ex- 
 press his visions in words, but to put them into 
 pictures of strange form and color. His "An- 
 cient of Days" is as much a poem as his words 
 
 "To see a world in a grain of sand 
 And heaven in a wild flower, 
 Hold infinity in the palm of your hand 
 And eternity in an hour." 
 
 Wordsworth is much more than a nature 
 poet. He is a seer, an acute psychologist. Far 
 greater than his passion for Nature is his pas- 
 sion for God, and he reached God by the com- 
 
Modern Mysticism 167 
 
 mon steps of the Mystic. Caroline Spurgeon 
 speaks thus truly of him: 
 
 "He found that when his mind was freed 
 from preoccupation with disturbing objects, 
 petty cares, 'little enmities and low desires,' 
 that he could then reach a condition of equi- 
 librium, which he describes as a 'wise passive- 
 ness,' or a 'happy stillness of the mind.' He 
 believed this condition could be deliberately 
 induced by a kind of relaxation of the will, 
 and by a stilling of the busy intellect and striv- 
 ing desires. It is a purifying process, an emp- 
 tying out of all that is worrying, self-asser- 
 tive, and self-seeking. H we can habitually 
 train ourselves and attune our minds to this 
 condition, we may at any moment come across 
 something which will arouse our emotions, and 
 it is then, when our emotions — thus purified — 
 are excited to the point of passions, that our 
 vision becomes sufficiently clear to enable us 
 to gain actual experience of the 'central peace 
 subsisting forever at the heart of endless agi- 
 tation.' " '^ What Wordsworth needed to fix 
 his gaze upon was some natural object, — a 
 sounding w^aterfall, a mountain top, a small 
 celandine. These were to him what the cruci- 
 
 " spurgeon: Mysticism in English Literature, p. 61. 
 
1 68 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 fix was to St. Frarucis or the bread on the altar 
 to St. Catherine. His three states are clearly 
 traced: First, Renunciation, the trampling 
 down of passion. It is not conceit, but truth- 
 telling with a purpose, when he says : 
 
 "Never did I, in quest of right or wrong, 
 Tamper with conscience from a private aim. 
 Nor was in any public hope the dupe 
 Of selfish passions ; nor did ever yield 
 Wilfully to mean cares or low pursuits." 
 
 Then come Concentration and Receptivity. 
 It is pure Mysticism when he says : 
 
 "Nor less I deem that there are Powers 
 Which of themselves our minds impress ; 
 That we can feed this mind of ours 
 In a wise passiveness. 
 
 "Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum 
 Of things for ever speaking, 
 That nothing of itself will come, 
 But we must still be seeking?" " 
 
 And then in many passages, from which I 
 choose only one, he describes the consciousness 
 of the Infinite, the Unitive state : 
 
 ^"The Poetical Works of Wm. Wordsworth, Vol. II, p. 
 i8o. 
 
Modern Mysticism 169 
 
 "And I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things."" 
 
 I need not say much of Tennyson, because 
 he had not the mystical temperament, but he 
 is all the more a proof of my thesis. Because 
 he was keenly alive to the intellectual move- 
 ments of his time, he is truly representative of 
 the Victorian age, and while perhaps he had 
 not the root of the matter in him — certainly he 
 did not at first — he grew steadily into the Mys- 
 tic thought. In In Mcmoriam we have the 
 struggle between the intellect and the heart, 
 and the final victory lies with the latter: 
 
 "A warmth within the soul would melt 
 The freezing reason's colder part, 
 And like a man in wrath the heart 
 Stood up and answered : I have felt." 
 
 *• The Poetical Works of Wm. Wordsworth, Vol. I, pp. 
 152-153. 
 
lyo The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 And it was to the scientists that he dared to 
 say: 
 
 "Speak to him, thou, for he hears 
 And spirit with Spirit can meet — 
 Closer is he than breathing. 
 
 And nearer than hands and feet," 
 
 until at the last, in the Ancient Sage, he de- 
 clares : 
 
 "And more, my son! for more than once when I 
 Sat all alone, revolving in myself 
 The word that is the symbol of myself, 
 The mortal limit of the Self was loosed. 
 And past into the Nameless, as a cloud 
 Melts into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs 
 Were strange, not mine — and yet no shade of doubt, 
 But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self 
 The gain of such large life as match'd with ours 
 Were Sun to spark — unshadowable in words, 
 Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world." ^'^ 
 
 I turn to Browning, whom I consider the 
 most typical and consistent Mystic of all our 
 poets. His work is one consistent whole from 
 beginning to end, and it is all built on the Mys- 
 tic bases of optimism, the supremacy of love 
 over evil, and the supremacy of intuition over 
 the intellect. There is a remarkable resem- 
 
 *" The Works of Tennyson. Vol. VIII, p. 48. 
 
Modern Mysticism 171 
 
 blance between him and Mother Julian of Nor- 
 wich. I could illustrate every trait of her 
 Mysticism by quotations from Browning's 
 poems, instead of from her Revelations. There 
 is the same sense of unity under diversity, the 
 same attitude towards temptation and sin, the 
 same calm optimism, the same insistence on the 
 fact that "Love was his meaning," the same 
 trust in the power of intuition. I dare not be- 
 gin to quote, for I am a lover of Browning and 
 you know what they are when they get started. 
 From Paracelsus to Asolando you will find 
 these thoughts appearing in the most unusual 
 places, in "Old Pictures in Florence," and "A 
 Grammarian's Funeral," as well as in ''Jo^^^i" 
 nes Agricola," "Rabbi Ben Ezra," **A Pillar 
 in Sebzevah" and "A Death in the Desert." 
 But to quote unless fully, and to say more than 
 this unless the discussion be carried through, 
 would be an injustice both to Browning and to 
 Mysticism. To leave him now for the rest, I 
 can give you only samples of how many men 
 of many minds have been touched by this feel- 
 ing and have given it various expression. That 
 strange character, Emily Bronte, from her 
 Yorkshire wilderness, voices it thus in her 
 "Last Lines" : 
 
172 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 "O God within my breast, 
 
 Almighty, ever-present Deity, 
 Life — that in me has rest, 
 As I — undying Hfe — have power in Thee. 
 
 "Though earth and man were gone, 
 
 And suns and universes ceased to be. 
 And Thou wert left alone. 
 
 Every existence would exist in Thee." 
 
 Keble's "Two Worlds are Ours" is familiar 
 to all, and Faber is never so sweet and simple 
 as when giving expression to his Mysticism, 
 which is more Protestant than Catholic : 
 
 "But God is never so far off 
 As even to be near; 
 He is within: our spirit is 
 The home He holds most dear. 
 
 "To think of Him as by our side 
 Is almost as untrue, 
 As to remove His throne beyond 
 Those skies of starry blue. 
 
 "So all the while I thought myself 
 Homeless, forlorn, and weary. 
 Missing my joy, I walked the earth 
 Myself God's sanctuary." ^^ 
 
 " Faber's Hymns, p. 196. 
 
Modern Mysticism 173 
 
 Matthew Arnold rather unexpectedly shows 
 ihis side of his character to us occasionally, 
 as in these lines from "The Buried Life": 
 
 "Only — but this is rare — 
 When a beloved hand is laid in ours, 
 When, jaded with the rush and glare 
 Of the interminable hours. 
 Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, 
 When our world-deafen'd ear 
 Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd — 
 A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, 
 And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again. 
 The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, 
 And what wc mean, we say, and what we would, we 
 
 know. 
 A man becomes aware of his life's flow, 
 And hears its winding murmur; and he sees 
 The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. 
 
 And then he thinks he knows 
 The hills where his life rose. 
 And the sea where it goes." ^^ 
 
 Of course Whittier was a Mystic, and I need 
 only refer to his wonderful poem, "The Meet- 
 ing"; but you might overlook his neighbor in 
 Salem, who is less well known than he ought 
 to be, and who wrote some of the most beauti- 
 
 " Poems, by Matthew Arnold, Vol. II, pp. 124-125. 
 
174 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 ful sonnets in our language, one of which, 
 called "The Presence," is distinctly mystical. 
 I mean Jones Very. 
 
 Our own Lowell touches his deepest note 
 when he speaks of the themes which occupy 
 Eckhart, Tauler and Suso. You may remember 
 (and I think he has nothing more beautiful) 
 these lines from *'The Cathedral": 
 
 "No man can think nor in himself perceive. 
 Sometimes at waking, in the street sometimes. 
 Or on the hillside, always unforewarned, 
 A grace of being, finer than himself, 
 That beckons and is gone, — a larger life 
 Upon his own impinging, with swift glimpse 
 Of spacious circles luminous with mind, 
 To which the ethereal substance of his own 
 Seems but gross cloud to make that visible, 
 Touched to a sudden glory round the edge. 
 Who that hath known these visitations fleet 
 Would strive to make them trite and ritual? 
 I, that still pray at morning and at eve. 
 Loving those roots that feed us from the past, 
 And prizing more than Plato things I learned 
 At that best academe, a mother's knee. 
 Thrice in my life perhaps have truly prayed. 
 Thrice stirred below my conscious self, have felt 
 That perfect disenthrallment, which is God." ^^ 
 
 "Lowell's Poetical Works, Vol. IV, p. 52— The Cathedral. 
 
Modern Mysticism 175 
 
 But time would fail me to tell of all the poets, 
 great and small, where you will find, in our 
 modern language, the thoughts of the old Mys- 
 tics. There is the whole Celtic school in Eng- 
 land and Ireland — William Sharpe, who is Fi- 
 ona MacLeod, Yeats, George Russell ("A. 
 E."), Coventry Patmore, William Canton, 
 and Evelyn Underhill. But I cannot leave the 
 poets without one more quotation, this time 
 from the author of "The Hound of Heaven"; 
 if you know it already, so much the better: 
 
 "O world invisible, we view Thee, 
 O world intangible, we touch Thee, 
 O world unknowable, we know Thee, 
 Inapprehensible, we clutch Thee! 
 
 "Does the fish soar to find the ocean, 
 The eagle plunge to find the air — 
 That we ask of the stars in motion 
 If they have rumor of Thee there? 
 
 "Not where the wheeling systems darken 
 And our benumbed conceiving soars! — 
 The drift of pinions, would we hearken, 
 Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. 
 
 "The angels keep their ancient places : 
 Turn but a stone, and start a wing! 
 'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces, 
 That miss the many-splendored thing. 
 
176 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 "But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) 
 Cry ; — and upon thy so sore loss 
 Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder 
 Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross. 
 
 "Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter. 
 Cry, — clinging Heaven by the hems; 
 And lo, Christ walking on the water, 
 Not of Gennesareth, but Thames." 2* 
 
 Turning from individuals to certain move- 
 ments of modern times we may trace, I think, 
 the influence of the principles upon which Mys- 
 ticism is based, even if some of the results are 
 unmystical, strange and even shocking. If 
 Mysticism is the use of the whole man, includ- 
 ing the sub-conscious self, then in how many 
 ways, some true and helpful, many silly and 
 fantastic, is Mysticism rife to-day! 
 
 In the field of education and moral reform 
 we have within a generation the wonderful de- 
 velopment of the psychology of the child mind 
 and the return to and dependence upon the 
 power of suggestion.-^ The talking to the 
 baby as it goes to sleep, the insistence on the 
 value of all the surroundings of a child's life, 
 
 ** The Kingdom of God is Within You, Francis Thomp- 
 son, Poems, Vol. II, p. 226. 
 " Hart : Preventive Treatment, p. 374. 
 
Modern Mysticism 177 
 
 the sounds and sights, the tempers and ideals, 
 the discovery in after years of some long for- 
 gotten fear or degradation, as the poor man 
 comes to be treated, — all are showing us how 
 large our little life is. More and more you will 
 find stress being laid on what Miinsterberg 
 distinguishes from psychical therapy, calling it 
 psychical hygiene. If you will read the works 
 of Waldstein and Quackenbos and Mason you 
 will see how this psychical education, both men- 
 tal and moral, is being carried on. In the realm 
 of the purely physical, the power of suggestion, 
 or what is called mind over matter, a power 
 which has always been used, is now coming to 
 be studied and used as never before. The liter- 
 ature is enormous. 
 
 One of the earliest, and still the classical 
 book on the subject, is Feuchtersleben's "The 
 Dietetics of the Soul." This goes back to 
 about 1840. At the same time was living in 
 this country Phineas P. Quimby, about whom 
 Horatio Dresser has written a book called 
 "Health and the Inner Life." Quimby is the 
 source of all Mrs. Eddy's teachings. Neither 
 of them, however, knew that whatever of truth 
 was in their system was founded on the prin- 
 ciple of Mysticism, the use of the sub-con- 
 
178 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 scious self. But whereas Mysticism uses it as 
 a means of reaching God, or rather as an ave- 
 nue of approach for God to reach us, the Chris- 
 tian Scientist uses it for the purely selfish pur- 
 pose of relieving a headache or curing consti- 
 pation or gently ousting a cancer by saying it 
 isn't there. It is not Mysticism, therefore, but 
 that debased form of it which we call Magic. 
 It is a matter of credulity and incantation, and 
 is a fine example of what the sub-conscious self 
 can be led into when entirely unregulated by 
 the reason. It is not known whether that 
 strange woman who said she discovered Chris- 
 tian Science ever studied to reduce her founda- 
 tion principles to the form of a syllogism. "It 
 is presumed not, for otherwise their intense, 
 monumental and aggressive absurdity would 
 have become as apparent to her as it is to 
 others. Let us see how they look in a syllo- 
 gism: 
 
 " 'Matter has no existence. Our bodies are 
 composed of Matter. Therefore our bodies 
 have no existence and disease cannot exist in 
 a non-existent body.' " ^^ 
 
 But this is waste of time. My point is that 
 Christian Science is a reversion to a type of 
 
 *• Hudson: The Law of Psychic Phenomena, p. 157. 
 
Modern Mysticism 179 
 
 Mysticism. There are many other symptoms 
 of more sensible uses of the power which Mys- 
 ticism holds over the body, all the way from 
 those queer creatures who are publishing books 
 called "Volo," and "The Will to be Well," and 
 ''Just How to Wake the Solar Plexus." Others 
 give us directions how, by concentration, we 
 may acquire large wealth or draw to us just 
 the wife we want or need. Magic, all of it. 
 But more serious are the movements called 
 New Thought, Mental Healing, all the way up 
 to the Emmanuel Movement. Volumes might 
 be written, as many have been written, all with 
 accounts demonstrating the power of the sub- 
 jective self, through suggestion, over the body, 
 its power of modifying function and tissue, 
 increasing or decreasing the circulation of the 
 blood, and actually healing many diseases. It 
 is a sign of the modern Mysticism. And then 
 as to the sphere of religion in modern Chris- 
 tianity, the evidences are all about us. Every 
 one of these movements I have spoken of has 
 a tendency to become distinctly religious, if 
 not Christian. Beginning in revolt against the 
 church, they are steadily returning to Christ. 
 Christian Science has changed from a dose to 
 a dogma, from a cure to a church. All over 
 
i8o The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 this country and in England little groups of 
 people are gathering together to seek God for 
 themselves through the Mystic Way, and are 
 finding him, not only in sporadic outbreaks of 
 Buddhism and Bahaism, in bits of Oriental 
 pantheism like Mr. Bjerregaard's, but in high- 
 er, truer ways men as well as women are meet- 
 ing in ever larger groups to utilize the powers 
 of this subliminal self. These groups bear 
 many names and some are nameless, but the 
 purpose is the same that drove the anchorite 
 to his cell and the Quaker to his meeting, while 
 the methods are identical with those of the old- 
 er Mystics whose way we have traced. The 
 books of devotion written of late are almost all 
 distinctly mystical. Such books of enormous 
 popularity are Annie Payson Call's "Power 
 Through Repose," and Ralph Waldo Trine's 
 "In Tune with the Infinite." What could be 
 more mystical than this from the heart of the 
 latter's book: "The great central fact in hu- 
 man life, in your life and in mine, is the com- 
 ing into a conscious vital realization of our one- 
 ness with this Infinite Life, and the opening of 
 ourselves fully to this divine inflow." And 
 remember, please, that this is not any closet 
 doctrine, but that the book has sold into the 
 
Modern Mysticism i8i 
 
 hundred thousands, and is read by perhaps a 
 million people to-day. They like it because it 
 touches, in a plain and homely and modern 
 way, the mystic sense which we all have and 
 which has been hungry for so long. The num- 
 ber of books on Intercessory Prayer and Medi- 
 tation, the number of reprints of the works of 
 the older Mystics, are all signs of the new in- 
 terest in Mysticism of which I am speaking. 
 I suppose none of us realize how hungry people 
 are to-day for this kind of teaching. T am 
 sure we do not realize how very largely it is 
 being satisfied. It seems to me it is the duty of 
 the Church to speak to these people, in the 
 name of God, to * 'suggest" God to the sub- 
 liminal self, and so develop a new and a better, 
 because a more clearly understood and more 
 scientifically controlled, Christian Mysticism. 
 How the Church is attempting to do this I 
 hope to show in my next and last lecture. The 
 Church is trying in various ways, both to voice 
 and to satisfy this growing need. I have shown, 
 I hope, how universal and how growing it is. 
 It must Interest us to see how we are meeting 
 it, and besides, the Church has much to learn 
 from this movement if it would approach it 
 sympathetically. It would gain as much as it 
 
i82 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 gave. It would gain a deeper sense of the real- 
 ity of spiritual things, of a communion with 
 God through real prayer, and of the power of 
 intercessory prayer which these aberrant Mys- 
 tics are using magnificently. 
 
 We who believe in a Spirit whose comings 
 and goings we cannot tell, ought to hold our- 
 selves open to his breathings, come they whence 
 they may. 
 
 SUGGESTED READING 
 
 VON Hartman: The Unconscious. 
 
 Fichte: The Way Towards the Blessed Life. 
 
 Eucken and Bergson passim 
 
 William Blake : Poems. 
 
 William Wordsworth : Poems. 
 
 Robert Browning: Poems. 
 
 Trine : In Tune with the Infinite. 
 
 Dresser: The Power of Silence. 
 
 Brackett : The Technique of Rest. 
 
 Call: Power Through Repose. 
 
 Wood : Ideal Suggestion, 
 
VI 
 
 PRACTICAL MYSTICISM 
 
 I HAVE failed utterly if I have not made it 
 clear that Mysticism is not a curious by-path 
 which the student of history need not tread, 
 but a constantly recurring and revivifying 
 force in the history of our religion. I have 
 failed if I have not made you see that the great 
 Mystics were not psychic freaks but only ex- 
 treme examples of that life hid with Christ in 
 God which is open, in greater or less degree, to 
 every child of God. 
 
 If I have not failed, then you must agree 
 with what I said in closing my last lecture, that 
 the Christian Church has much to learn from 
 Mysticism, and should study it carefully with 
 a view to its practice, to hold itself open to its 
 influences, come they whence they may. 
 
 The theory of Mysticism is before us. If I 
 have not made tJiaf clear, that does not mean 
 that nobody can. But \\hat I most want to 
 183 
 
184 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 show is that when you do really understand 
 Mysticism, you will find it very hard not to 
 practise it. And so I call this last lecture 
 Practical Mysticism, and ask you to see with 
 me how some men are practising it and offer- 
 ing opportunities for others to practise it, and 
 then to close with some more intimate sugges- 
 tions. 
 
 I want to speak first of certain exhibitions of 
 the Mystic spirit in the worship and work of 
 the Church to-day. I pass by the Emmanuel 
 Movement and the many Healing Missions, be- 
 cause I have already mentioned them and be- 
 cause, however much I am in sympathy with 
 them, their purpose is narrower than my 
 theme, and they deal almost exclusively with 
 the abnormal. The wreckage which crowds 
 their clinics is thrown up from the troubled sea 
 of our modern life and needs special and ex- 
 pert treatment. It is only a symptom of a con- 
 dition in which we all find ourselves. The 
 world is restless and the revival of interest in 
 Mysticism shows that it is trying to reach some 
 center which is calm. Eucken voices this need 
 very clearly when he says : 
 
 *' *It is not only at particular points that 
 civilization does not correspond to the demands 
 
Practical Mysticism 185 
 
 of spiritual life, but that civilization, as a 
 whole, is in many ways in conflict with those 
 demands. We feel, with increasing distress, 
 the wide interval between the varied and im- 
 portant work to be done at the circumference 
 of life and the complete emptiness at the cen- 
 tre. When we take an inside view of life we 
 find that a life of mere bustling routine pre- 
 ponderates, that men struggle and boast and 
 strive to outdo one another, that unlimited am- 
 bition and vanity are characteristic of indi- 
 viduals, that they are always running to and 
 fro, and pressing forward, or feverishly ex- 
 ercising all their powers. But throughout it 
 all we come upon nothing that gives any real 
 value to life, and nothing spiritually elevating. 
 Hence we do not find any meaning and value 
 in life, but in the end a simple huge show in 
 which culture is reduced to a burlesque. Any 
 one who thinks it all over and reflects upon the 
 difference between the enormous labor which 
 has been expended and the accompanying gain 
 to the essentials of life must either be driven 
 to complete negation and despair, or must seek 
 new ways of guaranteeing a value to life and 
 liberating men from the sway of the petty hu- 
 
186 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 man. But this will force men to resume the 
 quest for inner connections.' " ^ 
 
 And then again he says in another place: 
 "If this is really the case, it can be easily 
 understood how men grow tired and weary of 
 all the rush and bustle, which is so confused 
 and yet in the end so empty, how this feeling 
 of weariness spreads and produces a longing 
 for more persistence, more peace and repose 
 in life. It is a remarkable feature of the pres- 
 ent day that the old mysticism is regaining its 
 power of attraction, and that the Indian re- 
 ligions, which release men from the cares and 
 troubles of time, are gaining many adherents 
 also in the West. Is not this to be connected 
 with the change in vital feeling which we have 
 described?" ^ 
 
 This reaching out for more peace and re- 
 pose in life is evident in many directions. If 
 the rush and hurry in these days, which sweeps 
 us along breathlessly either with or against our 
 will, takes its toll in physical or nervous or 
 mental exhaustion, then we turn to the bless- 
 ings offered by the noble men and women who 
 teach us how to be calm, to re-create, to change 
 
 * Quoted in Hermann : Eucken and Bergson, pp. 33-34. 
 
 * Eucken : The Life of the Spiril, pp. 158-159. 
 
Practical Mysticism 187 
 
 the current of our thoughts, and so the cHnics 
 of the workers in the Emmanuel Movement, 
 the New Thought and countless variations of 
 these are crowded. To those who can stultify 
 their intellect even Christian Science brings 
 its blessing of calm and cheerfulness. But 
 widespread as is this nervous exhaustion, this 
 mental strain, and widespread as are its ef- 
 fects in the life of the individual, it is as I 
 said, only a symptom, and a side issue. Most 
 men are healthy in body and mind, and the 
 over-emphasis on the abnormalities have made 
 many feel that the cure must be as peculiar as 
 the disease. But the cure is based on the 
 root principle of Mysticism and uses its very 
 methods. It is an unconscious plagiarism, 
 very interesting to trace. And we are studying 
 the larger issues and uses, those which belong 
 to all men and which we feel are needed by 
 all men. For there is in us all the need of God, 
 and these days of haste and unrest have had 
 the same effect on the spiritual life as they 
 have had upon the nervous system. They have 
 given us no time to think of God, to commune 
 with him in prayer, to be quiet and know. The 
 life of the Spirit has been dwindling, and men 
 and women are beginning to feel a loss : a loss 
 
1 88 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 not to be supplied by any amount of strenuous 
 social service, nor even by the ordinary method 
 of Church-going. 
 
 And so there has arisen alongside of the ef- 
 forts to provide help for the nervously weak- 
 ened and the mentally unbalanced, a move- 
 ment, as widespread as the need, to provide 
 help for the spiritually stunted, the religiously 
 restless, the seekers for reality in their rela- 
 tion to God, the people who want not only to 
 know about, but to feel God. As we have 
 seen from the beginning of these studies, this 
 longing is the basis of Mysticism. Here to- 
 day, in a time apparently so unfavorable, we 
 find an intense and growing feeling for God, 
 which is yet the outgrowth of and the re-action 
 from this very period of devotion to material 
 things. In response to this, many have begun, 
 in various ways, to guide this longing aright 
 and to satisfy it. Here again the methods used, 
 while various, are just those of the old Mys- 
 tics. Once more, and for the last time, I call 
 your attention to them. 
 
 One of the leaders in this movement is the 
 Rev. Cyril Hepher of Newcastle-on-Tyne. A 
 few years ago I met him at the house of the 
 Dean of the Cathedral in Boston, and heard 
 
Practical Mysticism 189 
 
 him tell of his experience in conducting Mis- 
 sions of Help in New Zealand and in Canada. 
 The next Sunday he preached a remarkable 
 sermon in the Cathedral from the text, "There 
 was silence and I heard a voice." Since then 
 Mr. Hepher had published his experiences and 
 his sermon in a volume called "The Fellowship 
 of Silence," from which I am permitted to 
 quote : 
 
 "Man is not brought to his highest attain- 
 ment when he has won mental concentration, 
 when he has forgotten the existence of his body 
 in the interest of his brain; he has only half 
 his lesson when he stands there ; there is a hard 
 space still to cover — where the intellect itself 
 comes to quiescence, comes to silence, and an- 
 other capacity in man's nature, a capacity for 
 a yet higher' form of consciousness than the 
 intellectual, begins to appear. When a man 
 has fastened his whole being upon his spiritual 
 development, when he would set free the very 
 highest power latent within the soul of man, 
 he must learn to bring the busy, thinking brain 
 to a halt ; he must learn how to still the intel- 
 lect for the sake of the spirit, even as on a 
 lower plane he had to learn how to still his 
 
igo The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 physical organism for the sake of the intel- 
 lectual." 
 
 "There are two great forms in which this 
 consciousness can be practised. The first is in 
 secret meditation. Now, there are thousands 
 of people in the new world who are crying out 
 for meditation, who are absolutely weary of a 
 religion which cannot give them the power of 
 an immediate contact with the Unseen, and 
 who are turning away their interest to strange 
 practices, — to New Thought, to Christian 
 Science, to Theosophy, and what not, — as 
 though that holy practice of meditation was a 
 thing unknown within the Church of God. She 
 is the Mother of meditation ; but there are very 
 few of her children who will take the time to 
 practise it; there are few but would say that 
 the claim of one half-hour a day of silent medi- 
 tation in the Presence of God is an absurd 
 claim — even for the busiest man." 
 
 "But there is yet another way, and you are 
 practising it here: — and right glad am I to 
 stand in this pulpit this morning and speak to 
 you who are finding this other way — of medita- 
 tion in fellowship. I wish I could take you 
 with me to a little Church in New Zealand, 
 where about two years ago I first experienced 
 
Practical Mysticism 191 
 
 the meditation in fellowship: — a little white 
 Church, lying in a circle of pines and cy- 
 presses: — the September afternoon was draw- 
 ing on and the dusk was settling over the land, 
 as we passed into the silent Church, a little 
 group; — no priest at the altar, no minister in 
 the pulpit, no student from any school, — all 
 was emptiness save for the Great Presence, 
 which soon we perceived. No one spoke, there 
 WTre no words of preparation: we entered, we 
 knelt, we were still — and our souls began to be 
 united with a new and strange sense of human 
 fellowship in that silence; and out of that con- 
 sciousness there grew a deeper sense — the 
 sense of a Divine Presence; and the work of 
 prayer, ever hard, became easy. Someone was 
 there, a mighty One — unseen, yet there. The 
 half-hour sped away, and in all one little word 
 and one tiny prayer were the only sounds that 
 broke the stillness; and when at last w-e rose 
 and passed out into the evening light we had 
 been nearer to God than ever I, for one, had 
 been before in all my life. We had found the 
 strange and mystic power of the fellowship 
 of silence. And that you are practising here, 
 and it is a sacred privilege. Once know^n, you 
 will never lose a day without it. It will en- 
 
192 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 large itself, and it will draw to its circle many 
 souls ; and there will be found here, as now in 
 many other places in the world, groups of men 
 who are learning to hear God's voice in that 
 exquisite and holy silence. 
 
 ''Men and women of Boston, I do not know 
 anything concerning conditions of Church life 
 in America, but I know something of them in 
 England and in New Zealand and in Canada, 
 and I know this: that wherever I have been I 
 have found that men are growing dissatisfied 
 with our Church service. They are asking for 
 some greater measure of spiritual depth, — that 
 when we assemble for holy worship we may 
 with more vividness enter into the Presence 
 and touch God. It may be that my words fall 
 on some ears that are responsive. There are 
 plenty of people who are turning away from 
 the Church : — why ? They tell us that they fail 
 to find a sufficient depth of spiritual reality in 
 our public worship. We believe that the res- 
 toration of holy silence into our worship will 
 be gain for the whole people. Of this I am 
 certain: — there is not a man amongst us who 
 will not gain if he can follow, even in part, the 
 words of the Psalmist, — to he silent unto God." 
 
 He speaks again of his New Zealand expe- 
 
Practical Mysticism 193 
 
 riences in an article in The Commonwealth. 
 In a little church were held meetings with a 
 group of Friends (Quakers) and Theosophists. 
 He thus describes what happened : 
 
 "We knelt without a word; presently some 
 rose from their knees and sat down. We were 
 but a handful. There was no sound of vocal 
 prayer. No leader at faldstool, or altar, but 
 'Meeting' had begun. I cannot put into words 
 what happened, but some aspects of the experi- 
 ence T must try to express. First there came 
 very quietly the sense of a Presence. The 
 work of prayer grew strangely easy. We were 
 not resolutely fixing our thoughts upon a 
 friend in a far country; we were listening to 
 One Who was there in the church — speak- 
 ing. The still air seemed to vibrate with this 
 Presence that could be felt. God was speaking 
 to us, not in words, or voices, but in that speech 
 which does not need to be uttered, yet if I may 
 say so bold a thing, it was not what He was 
 saying that mattered so much, as that He was 
 there and we with Him. That was enough. 
 
 ''Then, again, one perception that grew as 
 the minutes slipped by unnoticed was the sense 
 of fellowship. We in that church were no 
 longer isolated individuals. It was unques- 
 
194 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 tionably a corporate act in which we were en- 
 gaged, or rather a corporate experience that 
 had come to us. 
 
 "Afterwards I came to understand that this 
 manner of prayer depends on fellowship of 
 mind and creates what it depends on. The 
 Quakers end their meeting by shaking hands 
 in silence. The symbol of fellowship cannot 
 be repressed. If their experiences are like ours 
 at this meeting I can perfectly understand the 
 significance they set on their simple sacrament 
 of friendship. They enter their meeting too 
 in the spirit of unanimity. One idea is domi- 
 nant in every mind : that of waiting upon God, 
 waiting for the moving of the Spirit. . . . 
 
 "As I try in my mind to weigh the experi- 
 ence, which I have told very inadequately, but 
 at least without conscious exaggeration, or 
 over-statement, what shall I say of it? It was 
 to me a profoundly new experience, dififerent 
 in kind from other times of realization of the 
 Presence, in that it was, as I think, the psychic 
 approach to the spiritual world. Those who 
 make excursions into the psychic in other in- 
 terests than the direct approach to God, spirit- 
 ualists, for example, use methods very like 
 Quaker methods. They use the association in 
 
Practical Mysticism 195 
 
 motionless silence, and they assert that where 
 there is lacking unanimity of mind they have 
 no success; a single person who resists the 
 common desire of the rest is sufficient to pre- 
 vent any advance. The seance is a Quaker 
 meeting put to illegitimate uses; but they are 
 alike in their use of the psychic atmosphere 
 which is created in silence and fellowship. To 
 many the word psychic is a sufficient condem- 
 nation. My reply is, that the God Who made 
 the spiritual made also the psychic, and that 
 there can be no function or capacity of our na- 
 ture which is not for holy uses. As a matter 
 of fact the secret of the preacher's influence is 
 often enough the psychic power with which he 
 is endowed, which unconsciously he is putting 
 forth. 
 
 "I believe our Quiet Meeting to have been 
 the consecrated use of latent psychic forces 
 which led directly and deeply to the spiritual, 
 to God Himself. 
 
 ''A third reflection suggests to me, that more 
 use of silence in our own public worship would 
 lift it to a higher spiritual level. In one church 
 in the North, the silence after the Consecra- 
 tion of the Blessed Sacrament at the Solemn 
 
196 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 Eucharist, though but a bare two minutes, is 
 teaching a congregation a new understanding 
 of adoration. Since it began to be observed, 
 a marked growth in the acceptance of the 
 Eucharist itself has been observed there. But 
 this is so widely advised now that the only 
 marvel is, that there is still left a church in the 
 land where the superstition now holds, that the 
 one thing at all cost to be destroyed in choral 
 services is silence." 
 
 Much of the same sort of spirit is shown in 
 the meetings held by Dean Rousmaniere in the 
 Cathedral Church of St. Paul, in Boston. The 
 Class in Personal Religion emphasizes the ele- 
 ment of silence, and there is much intercessory 
 prayer. He calls the silence "directed," for 
 after each prayer there is observed such a mo- 
 ment or two in which the worshippers are 
 asked to hold steadily in their minds the 
 thought in the prayer which has happened to 
 be the most real expression of their needs or 
 of their experience. Those who enter into the 
 spirit of these meetings know their power to 
 calm and comfort. The work among the 
 Friends at the Cathedral is another attempt to 
 bring the Spirit, which among them needs a 
 little more formality of expression, into our 
 
Practical Mysticism 197 
 
 sacramental system, which sometimes loses 
 the spirit in the form. The Quaker has a 
 great contribution to make to us, and we should 
 welcome it, especially as on his side he is evi- 
 dently coming to see that we have something 
 to offer him ; but we have room to receive him 
 while he can hardly accommodate us. 
 
 There is another work of the same sort, but 
 even more intense. The spirit of it permeates 
 the whole parish, and even extends far beyond 
 its borders. It is being done in the Church of 
 the Comforter in Greenwich Village in New 
 York. The whole atmosphere is saturated 
 with the Mystic spirit; the presence of God 
 seems to brood there, and the smallest detail 
 of the parish work is filled with the sense of it. 
 They have a rescue mission for men, and all 
 the paraphernalia of an institutional church, 
 but all they do is done with the spirit, which 
 makes some of our social work seem perfunc- 
 tory and irreligious, as some of it is. A lay- 
 man, Mr. Ernest C. Hargrove, began the Mis- 
 sion some years ago and still conducts, once 
 a week, a simple service of short prayers and 
 long silences, giving later an interpretative 
 address. One of his courses was upon "Dis- 
 cipleship as a Present Day Possibility," in 
 
igS The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 which he spoke of the inner life as a "life lived 
 in the presence of God and in union with God" ; 
 of the acts of the Inner Life and of the means 
 of attaining the Inner Consciousness, such as 
 (following closely, you see, the Mystic Way) 
 clearing the ground and purification of con- 
 science and heart; Construction and the Prac- 
 tice of Recollection and Detachment; and last- 
 ly, Intimacy, which sounds like the Mystic's 
 Union. 
 
 My own experience has served to show me 
 how even the average parishioner will respond 
 to any effort to supply this need of quiet and 
 silence in worship. 
 
 A recent writer has said: ''Some priests 
 are finding out and teaching their people to 
 value and apprehend the power of active, en- 
 ergizing co-operative silence before God. I 
 hope that slowly, at least, the principle will 
 be generally recognized. But the principle of 
 'bright and hearty services,' with much glare 
 of light and crash of organ, and brief manly 
 heart to heart talks, is stubbornly rooted in 
 the minds of many priests as the ideal of wor- 
 ship and corporate devotion. And I fear it 
 will be long before we get altogether rid of the 
 notion that from beginning to end of a serv- 
 
Practical Mysticism 199 
 
 ice, clergy and congregation must be continu- 
 ously employed in saying or singing something 
 as loudly as possible." ^ So deeply rooted is 
 this idea in the minds of priests and people 
 alike that very few care or dare to try the ex- 
 periment of introducing periods for silent 
 prayer and humble listening into public wor- 
 ship. Should it be tried suddenly we know 
 that the congregation would be troubled and 
 think that the minister had either fainted or 
 was inattentive to his duty and wandering in 
 his mind. 
 
 But the congregation to whom the matter is 
 explained, will respond at once and see the 
 need and reasonableness of the change. This 
 is because they have felt the need in their own 
 hearts and had never realized that the public 
 service in Church could supply it. The quiet 
 office of Holy Communion, at some early hour, 
 can be made more helpful by the introduction 
 after the Prayer for the Church Militant and 
 after the Consecration of the ancient Secre- 
 tae, giving the people time for silence, that 
 they may realize the Divine Presence by calm- 
 ing their inner selves and fitting them to draw 
 
 •Lawrence Enderwych. 
 
20O The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 nearer to that Unitive State which the Sacra- 
 ment symbolizes. 
 
 And in ordinary services, in many ways, this 
 worship of the silence can be made use of. 
 Hymns may be heartily sung and beautiful an- 
 thems listened to, but these should lead up to 
 a few words of direction and explanation by 
 the leader, and then prayers should be made, 
 chiefly personal and intercessory, or for larger, 
 national and human needs, and then after each 
 petition, silence should be kept for a space, 
 that all may concentrate their thoughts and 
 desires on the subject prayed for. The atti- 
 tude of the people is changed from languid 
 inattention to a familiar form of words, to an 
 intense personal co-operation in desiring one 
 thing of the Lord. This sense of a personal 
 partaking in the prayer, brings the sense of 
 God's presence and the knowledge that we are 
 working together with Him for the good of 
 others, and sends us out of His house with a 
 look of joy and strength on our faces, seldom 
 seen after the more formal services of the day. 
 
 To feel ill at ease in a service of silence is to 
 argue a lack of acquaintance with God. I am 
 only afraid of pauses in a conversation when 
 I am talking to a stranger and feel awkward 
 
Practical Mysticism 201 
 
 in his presence. With an intimate friend I 
 can afford to be silent. 
 
 In these and in other ways of which I could 
 tell you, were there time, 1 think you will see 
 how the spirit of Mysticism is expressing it- 
 self in the religious life of the Church. It is 
 all very free and simple. It seems to be grow- 
 ing. Certainly none who have tried these 
 things will give them up. I know there are 
 some who would like to begin. 
 
 It is here that I must become personal and 
 practical. I need not enlarge upon Eucken's 
 words with which I began. We all know and 
 deplore the restlessness of the age. Some of 
 us feel that better things are impending. I 
 feel very strongly that a great many people 
 are waiting to be shown the way into Mysti- 
 cism as the remedy for what we deplore. And 
 just now, I have spoken of the ways some are 
 trying to meet men's needs. But there are 
 other and even better ways than these. The 
 need of God is a personal thing, and while 
 crowds and co-operation and common worship 
 are helps, the need is in the soul and must be 
 filled there in utter loneliness. 
 
 Mysticism brings the soul face to face with 
 God, which is what the soul wants, There arc 
 
2oa The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 no intermediaries, nor companionships. So 
 my last word must be to the individual, who- 
 ever he may be. I have tried in these lectures 
 to make it plain that the way is open even to 
 the average normal man. I have presented a 
 sequence of the various steps a sample of the 
 general path to be taken by the man who wants 
 God, but all I have said has been at second 
 hand, with much reference to others, and many 
 quotations. I would not leave you with only 
 this. I should be disappointed if I had only 
 interested you in the theory. My motive you 
 know from the beginning has been practical, — 
 that of the missionary, perhaps even of the 
 proselyter. 
 
 We must remember that these mystical facts 
 and states which we have studied are only au- 
 thoritative for those who have them. They 
 are not like mathematical axioms which can 
 be handed from one mind to another and com- 
 mand acceptance because the common human 
 reason cannot deny them. They must remain 
 entirely uninfluential and powerless until we 
 experience them ourselves. We have no right 
 to accept the testimony of these mystical states 
 from any Mystic except as being true for him. 
 That does not make them true for us. 
 
Practical Mysticism 203 
 
 What we must do, therefore, if we can, is 
 to set ourselves in the way, to try to use the 
 same processes by which others have succeeded 
 in attaining their desire, to try to be the kind 
 of men they were, and then to see if the same 
 reward will come to us. If it does we know.* 
 There are some who will never know, some 
 who will never care to know, for I do not mean 
 to say that all men should be Mystics, or that 
 if all men were, that the Church would not lose 
 something. As the world of thoughtful men 
 can be divided into only two classes, the Aris- 
 totelians and the Platonists, the intellectualists 
 and the intuitionists, so the fullness of the 
 Church's life requires the same combination of 
 differing qualities, each respecting the other, 
 each learning from the other, each supplement- 
 ing the other's defect. Only the great intel- 
 lectual and religious geniuses can in themselves 
 combine the two — men like Augustine and 
 Eckhart and Phillips Brooks. 
 
 You will already have discovered my limita- 
 tions and know on which side I must be classed, 
 but if my appeal be one-sided I myself have 
 told you. I cannot think it is prejudice which 
 makes me feel that this side is the more im- 
 
 * James : Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 422. 
 
204 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 portant to be emphasized in these days. Men 
 and women want to know God in their hearts ; 
 they want to feel Him there as an ever-present 
 help in time of trouble, not to be able to prove 
 Him there in time of controversy. As I un- 
 derstand the time, men are not controversial, 
 not sceptical, but they are hungry for God. It 
 behooves us to be leaders of men in this their 
 search for God, and to be true leaders we must 
 go on ahead and be able to show that we know 
 the way. We must be living guides, not mere 
 stationary finger posts. To be such as this 
 we must fit ourselves. The way is not easy, 
 but if we will take it and persevere I believe 
 the end is sure. At any rate, I am certain the 
 duty rests upon us. 
 
 I have often wished to quote these words of 
 Professor Royce, written a good many years 
 ago. They apply to religion and its teachers as 
 well as to philosophy and its teachers. He is 
 speaking of one of the greatest of Mystics: 
 
 "Eckhart must preach with the understand- 
 ing — ay, but with the spirit also. He had been 
 early trained to a sense of the importance of 
 learning, but once more these so precious fruits 
 of contemplation must be communicated to 
 others; yes, must be built up anew in every 
 
Practical Mysticism 205 
 
 hearer's mind as the actual outcome, as the 
 very form and body of his own personal and 
 religious life. For all this meant the one great 
 object — the salvation of souls, the guidance of 
 the perplexed, the portrayal of truth. Such 
 popular translation of philosophy, in case a 
 man's philosophy means to him in any sense 
 the mirror of human life, must always tend, in 
 the man who thus translates, to a continual 
 renewal and refreshment of his own most 
 fundamental thinking itself. The technical 
 weaver of philosophical theories may or may 
 not bear in mind the fact that had it not 
 been for the vital perplexities of experience — 
 the immediate issues of life — the problems of 
 the schools would never have come into ex- 
 istence. Accordingly, such a technical student 
 may long neglect the renewed examination of 
 his own fundamental principles for the sake 
 of devoting himself to the development of 
 their most remote theoretical consequences. 
 But the man who wants to make his philosophy 
 immediately interesting to the serious-minded 
 amongst the people must not dwell upon those 
 remoter consequences so much as upon the 
 principles; for it is just the most fundamental 
 principle of life that the unlearned inquirer 
 
2o6 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 desires to get. People naturally begin in phi- 
 losophy with the most critical and tremendous 
 of its issues. But if you are to translate such 
 fundamental principles into the speech of your 
 hearer's spiritual experience, if you are to 
 show him that the most abstruse truth walks 
 daily beside him, well, then, daily you too must 
 experience and must re-state to yourself this 
 abstrusely spiritual truth that lies at the basis 
 of your life as of your hearer's. You must 
 continually re-initiate yourself into the mys- 
 teries of your own philosophical doctrine. It 
 must become and remain a personal as well as 
 a technical matter with you." ^ And then very 
 lately he has added these impressive words: 
 
 "Is such a direct touch with the divine possi- 
 ble? The mystics of all ages have maintained 
 that it is possible. Are they right? To an- 
 swer this question adequately would be to solve 
 the religious paradox. It would be to show 
 whether and how the individual, even in his 
 isolation, 'alone with the divine,' can come to 
 be nevertheless in unity with all other spirits, 
 in touch with all that lies beneath and above 
 himself, and with all that constitutes the es- 
 sence of reality. Perhaps this is indeed pos- 
 
 ' Royce : Studies of Good and Evil, p. 266. 
 
Practical Mysticism 207 
 
 sible. Unless it is possible, revelation, as we 
 have seen, loses precisely its most intimate sig- 
 nificance, as an appeal of the divine spirit di- 
 rectly to the interior light. But, on the other 
 hand, all the mystics confess that, if this is 
 possible, and if it happens in their own cases, 
 they alone, viewing their experience merely 
 as an individual experience, know not how it 
 happens, but must accept their revelation as 
 an insight without knowing in w^hat precise 
 sense it is insight. 
 
 "It follows that individual experience re- 
 mains a source of religious insight as indis- 
 pensable and as fundamental as it is, by itself, 
 inadequate and in need of supplement. Unless 
 you have inwardly felt the need of salvation 
 and have learned to hunger and thirst after 
 spiritual unity and self-possession, all the rest 
 of religious insight is to you a sealed book. 
 And unless, in moments of peace, of illumina- 
 tion, of hope, of devotion, of inw^ard vision, 
 you have seemed to feel the presence of your 
 Deliverer, unless it has sometimes seemed to 
 you as if the way to the homeland of the spirit 
 were opened to your sight by a revelation as 
 from the divine, unless this privilege has been 
 yours, the way to a higher growth in insight 
 
2o8 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 will be slow and uncertain to you. But on 
 the other hand, no one who remains content 
 with his merely individual experience of the 
 presence of the divine and of his deliverer, 
 has won the whole of any true insight. For, 
 as a fact, we are all members one of another; 
 and I can have no insight into the way of my 
 salvation unless I thereby learn of the way of 
 salvation for all my brethren. And there is 
 no unity of the spirit unless all men are privi- 
 leged to enter it whenever they see it and know 
 it and love it." ^ 
 
 This is preaching, I confess, but it is Royce's 
 sermon and not mine. How shall we practise 
 it? There are no schools for teaching Mysti- 
 cism, as there are schools for teaching Mathe- 
 matics and Theology. It is a personal and very 
 private matter. One hesitates to speak of it in 
 public, and fears the immodesty of pretending 
 to know enough of it to teach it. But the mis- 
 sionary must bear his testimony and be pre- 
 pared to see many of his converts, if he is for- 
 tunate enough to have any, go far beyond him 
 in the development of his truth. 
 
 I said in my first lecture, in trying to make 
 clear what we were going to think about to- 
 
 • Royce : Sources of Religious Insight, pp. 31-34- 
 
Practical Mysticism 209 
 
 gether, that "a Christian Mystic is that kind of 
 a Christian who longs for and who believes 
 he can have an experience of intimate com- 
 munion with God, through Christ, in this life. 
 This is his supreme purpose." Now Mysti- 
 cism is founded on this longing. Of course 
 all men have this desire in some degree. 1 
 know that, and have said it. But I have also 
 said, and contend, that with the Mystic this 
 longing is much more intense than it is with 
 the Aristotelian. Therefore the first thing for 
 us to do is "to seek the ground of our hearts," 
 to look into ourselves and ask, with entire 
 honesty and the keenest searching, whether, as 
 a matter of fact, we do so desire this intimate 
 heart communion with God. What are we 
 aiming at? On what thoughts do our minds 
 naturally rest? What is the supreme purpose 
 toward which our efforts as well as our aspira- 
 tions definitely turn? There will be nothing 
 but disappointment until these questions are an- 
 swered. No one can be a Mystic who has not 
 this ''single intent," this "blind stretching of 
 the soul," toward God. As Walter Hilton says: 
 ''Ransack thy conscience and look what thy will 
 is, for therein consisteth the whole business." "^ 
 
 ' The Scale of Perfection, p. 151. 
 
2IO The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 If you will undertake this search, let me beg 
 you to make it thorough. You may not reach 
 your deepest desire at first. Other wishes may 
 appear superior and you may be too easily dis- 
 couraged and too entirel}/ acquiescent. We do 
 not all know what we really want. Like phys- 
 ical hunger, the want is so diffused that we 
 may feel the emptiness in some place where it 
 is not. But if you will persist in your search 
 I think you will find, most of you, that the real 
 answer to your many questions, the real satis- 
 faction of your many fickle wishes, is God. 
 God is not means, but end. Too often Eck- 
 hart's words are true of us : "Know that when 
 you seek your own you never find God there 
 till you seek God alone. You seek something 
 with God and do with him just as though you 
 made him a candle with which to look for 
 something : and having found it you throw the 
 candle away." ^ 
 
 If you find this desire to be not a vague 
 wish, but a compelling impulse, then I call your 
 attention to the second part of my definition. 
 To carry out this ''will to know God," I said 
 that the Mystic believed that by a course of 
 training he could so develop his inmost self — 
 
 * Quoted in Horce Mystica, p. 40. 
 
Practical Mysticism 211 
 
 call it what you will — that his whole nature 
 would become open and susceptible to God in- 
 creasingly. That is, Mysticism is an Art and 
 has its way of self -development, and this way 
 is open to all who want God enough to walk 
 in it faithfully. But before I ask you to take 
 up this way, I want to suggest that you begin 
 at this point to read the writings of some Mys- 
 tic. You will be able to meet him now on his 
 own ground, ''the ground of his heart." You 
 are both after the same thing. You will be 
 in sympathy, at least, with his purpose. Let 
 me warn you however that such reading must 
 be persevered in, for you will meet much at 
 first with which you will not be sympathetic; 
 much will be unintelligible to you, and much 
 that you think you understand will be alien if 
 not repulsive. This makes your first intro- 
 duction to Mystic literature hard. But you 
 will not be daunted if your heart is fixed, and 
 when once you "catch the idea" the reading 
 becomes easy and the sympathy grows. 
 
 If you will allow me to suggest, out of my 
 own experience, I think you will find your path 
 made easier if you read such a book as Profes- 
 sor Rufus M. Jones's ''Social Law in the Spirit- 
 ual World," and then, a good deal later, 
 
212 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 Evelyn Underhill's fascinating and authorita- 
 tive v^ork called '^Mysticism," w^hich quotes 
 and elaborates and teaches and draws you to- 
 ward the subject as no other book does. But 
 in between, and principally, you should read 
 some real Mystic's real book, — ''Theologia 
 Germanica" is good to begin with. There is a 
 little book edited by Dr. Inge, selected from 
 the German Mystics, called 'Xight, Life and 
 Love," which will serve as an introduction to 
 Eckhart and Tauler and Ruysbroek and Suso. 
 Then there is the English Mystic, Walter Hil- 
 ton, whom I have just quoted, with his "Scale 
 (or Ladder) of Perfection." These are all 
 sane, very little ascetic, and not in the least 
 visionary. I dare not begin to tell you what 
 to read after these. You will be guided, I am 
 sure, and find what is best for you in the multi- 
 tude of riches. Those whom I like best might 
 not appeal to you: St. Augustine's Confes- 
 sions, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Catherine 
 of Siena; Santa Teresa and Molinos of Spain, 
 Suso and Ruysbroek, besides Eckhart and Tau- 
 ler, in Germany; and that wonderful woman, 
 Mother Julian of Norwich, who will surely 
 grow in your estimation and love if you will 
 give her the chance. At any rate, I conclude 
 
Practical Mysticism 213 
 
 this advice by asking you to read Mysticism 
 much more than you read about Mysticism. 
 After you have read the Mystics themselves, 
 the books about them, even the lectures about" 
 them, will seem to you trite and tasteless. 
 
 I come back to the Mystic's course of train- 
 ing. What are the means he uses? We have 
 studied them in the second lecture. He insists 
 that they are only means. His purpose is so 
 clear and intense that he can never worship his 
 tools. As I said, he cares for purity of heart 
 only that by it he may see God. That desire 
 comes first, then follows Conversion. We can- 
 not get away from that. It may not be fash- 
 ionable, but it is psychological and Biblical and 
 divine. And when a man is converted he re- 
 pents and reforms. He repudiates his sin and 
 disciplines his character. 
 
 But even goodness does not avail by itself. 
 To see God there are other veils than sin to be 
 removed. And so we come to the fourth and 
 most important step (for the Mystic) — Con- 
 templation. This is where we must lay the 
 emphasis for ourselves and for others. This 
 is where practice is most imperative and most 
 useful Many repent and have faith but few 
 
214 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 reach the fruition of union with God, because 
 few understand the necessity of Prayer, of 
 Quiet and Silence, of Recollection and Con- 
 centration, and few, very few, care to give 
 much time to these exercises, which take much 
 time and more patience and trouble. I repeat, 
 it takes time. Darwin watched the tendrils of 
 a vine for years to gain one scientific fact, and 
 studied earthworms month after month. Is 
 God more easily come at? It is a good ques- 
 tion to ask ourselves whether, in our search for 
 God, we have given, with any regularity, even a 
 half hour a day to Contemplation. God is 
 worth at least as much time as that. 
 
 You will be astonished, when you seriously 
 try, to find how long it does take you, and how 
 hard it is, to become perfectly quiet and abso- 
 lutely silent. To know God, to commune with 
 God, to worship God, not only your lips but 
 your soul must be silent. Men complain of 
 God's silences and call him inscrutable, but I 
 think, the reason is that God cannot communi- 
 cate with them because they never give him a 
 chance; they are so busy, so noisy, so inter- 
 minably loquacious themselves. He is waiting 
 for a decent pause in the conversation. "Be 
 
Practical Mysticism 215 
 
 still and know that I am God." "There was 
 silence and I heard a voice." ^ 
 
 Do I end abruptly ? 1 know that I ought to 
 say more, but I know that I don't know any 
 more. It would not be honest to keep on talk- 
 ing. Here 1 must stop and be content. No, 
 not content, but compelled, just to point on- 
 ward. 
 
 The third and last stage in my definition of 
 Mysticism is still my goal. I said, *'He per- 
 severes until he accomplishes his purpose. 
 God's presence within him becomes the su- 
 preme reality of his life. He attains the union 
 with God." It is here, at the end of our com- 
 mon search, that my last word must be said. 
 "The Mystic experience is not the fruit of con- 
 scious endeavor or self discipline or continued 
 prayer or meditation. These may fit the soul 
 
 ' '"You need not go to heaven to see God, or to regale your- 
 self with God. Nor need you speak loud, as if He were far 
 away. Nor need you cry for wings like a dove so as to fly 
 to Him. Settle yourself in solitude, and you will come upon 
 God in yourself. And then entreat Him as your Father, and 
 relate to Him your troubles. Those who can in this manner 
 shut themselves up in the little heaven of their own hearts, 
 where He dwells Who made heaven and earth, let them be 
 sure that they walk in the most excellent way: they lay their 
 pipe right up to the fountain." 
 
2i6 The Theory and Practice of Mysticism 
 
 for the gift, but when it comes it comes from 
 Another." ^^ Humbly, hopefully, yes, with ab- 
 solute assurance I await that Shewing. 
 
 *' Cobb : Mysticism and the Creed, p. xiii. 
 
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