Christian Mysticism Part 2

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

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

[Footnote 5: So Hesychius says, [Greek: Mystai, apo myo, myontes gar tas aistheseis kai exo ton sarkikon phrontidon genomenoi, outo tas theias a.n.a.lampseis edechonto.] Plotinus and Proclus both use [Greek: myo] of the "closed eye" of rapt contemplation.]

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 10: Faith goes so closely hand in hand with love that the mystics seldom try to separate them, and indeed they need not be separated. William Law's account of their operation is characteristic.

"When the seed of the new birth, called the inward man, has faith awakened in it, its faith is not a notion, but a real strong essential hunger, an attracting or magnetic desire of Christ, which as it proceeds from a seed of the Divine nature in us, so it attracts and unites with its like: it lays hold on Christ, puts on the Divine nature, and in a living and real manner grows powerful over all our sins, and effectually works out our salvation" (_Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration_).]

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

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

[Footnote 13: From a sermon by Smith, the Cambridge Platonist.

Plotinus, too, says well, [Greek: ei tis allo eidos edones peri ton spoudaion bion zetei, ou ton spoudaion bion zetei] (_Ennead_ i. 4.

12).]

[Footnote 14: From Smith's sermons.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 23: So Fenelon, after a.s.serting the truth of mystical "transformation," adds: "It is false to say that transformation is a deification of the real and natural soul, or a hypostatic union, or an unalterable conformity with G.o.d."]

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 28: Some of my readers may find satisfaction in the following pa.s.sage of Jeremy Taylor: "Indeed, when persons have long been softened with the continual droppings of religion, and their spirits made timorous and apt for impression by the a.s.siduity of prayer, and the continual dyings of mortification--the fancy, which is a very great instrument of devotion, is kept continually warm, and in a disposition and apt.i.tude to take fire, and to flame out in great ascents; and when they suffer transportations beyond the burdens and support of reason, they suffer they know not what, and call it what they please." Henry More, too, says that those who would "make their whole nature desolate of all animal figurations whatever," find only "a waste, silent solitude, and one uniform parchedness and vacuity.

And yet, while a man fancies himself thus wholly Divine, he is not aware how he is even then held down by his animal nature; and that it is nothing but the stillness and fixedness of melancholy that thus abuses him, instead of the true Divine principle."]

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

[Footnote 30: Lacordaire, _Conferences_, x.x.xvii.]

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

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

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

[Footnote 34: Roman Catholic writers can a.s.sert that "la plupart des contemplatifs etaient depourvus de toute culture litteraire." But their notion of "contemplation" is the pa.s.sive reception of "supernatural favours,"--on which subject more will be said in Lectures IV. and VII.]

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

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

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

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

191.]

[Footnote 39: _Paradiso_ viii. 13--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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