Christian Mysticism Part 22

There is one other point on which I wish to make my position clear.

The fact that human love or sympathy is the guide who conducts us to the heart of life, revealing to us G.o.d and Nature and ourselves, is proof that part of our life is bound up with the life of the world, and that if we live in these our true relations we shall not entirely die so long as human beings remain alive upon this earth. The progress of the race, the diminution of sin and misery, the advancing kingdom of Christ on earth,--these are matters in which we have a _personal_ interest. The strong desire that we feel--and the best of us feel it most strongly--that the human race may be better, wiser, and happier in the future than they are now or have been in the past, is neither due to a false a.s.sociation of ideas, nor to pure unselfishness. There is a sense in which death would not be the end of everything for us, even though in this life only we had hope in Christ.

But when this comforting and inspiring thought is made to form the basis of a new Chiliasm--a belief in a millennium of perfected humanity on this earth, and when this belief is subst.i.tuted for the Christian belief in an eternal life beyond our bourne of time and place, it is necessary to protest that this belief entirely fails to satisfy the legitimate hopes of the human race, that it is bad philosophy, and that it is flatly contrary to what science tells us of the destiny of the world and of mankind. The human spirit beats against the bars of s.p.a.ce and time themselves, and could never be satisfied with any earthly utopia. Our true home must be in some higher sphere of existence, above the contradictions which make it impossible for us to believe that time and s.p.a.ce are ultimate realities, and out of reach of the inevitable catastrophe which the next glacial age must bring upon the human race.[406] This world of s.p.a.ce and time is to resemble heaven as far as it can; but a fixed limit is set to the amount of the Divine plan which can be realised under these conditions. Our hearts tell us of a higher form of existence, in which the doom of death is not merely deferred but abolished. This eternal world we here see through a gla.s.s darkly: at best we can apprehend but the outskirts of G.o.d's ways, and hear a small whisper of His voice; but our conviction is that, though our earthly house be dissolved (as dissolved it must be), we have a home not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. In this hope we may include all creation; and trust that in some way neither more nor less incomprehensible than the deliverance which we expect for ourselves, all G.o.d's creatures, according to their several capacities, may be set free from the bondage of corruption and partic.i.p.ate in the final triumph over death and sin. Most firmly do I believe that this faith in immortality, though formless and inpalpable as the air we breathe, and incapable of definite presentation except under inadequate and self-contradictory symbols, is nevertheless enthroned in the centre of our being, and that those who have steadily set their affections on things above, and lived the risen life even on earth, receive in themselves an a.s.surance which robs death of its sting, and is an earnest of a final victory over the grave.

It is not claimed that Mysticism, even in its widest sense, is, or can ever be, the whole of Christianity. Every religion must have an inst.i.tutional as well as a mystical element. Just as, if the feeling of immediate communion with G.o.d has faded, we shall have a dead Church worshipping "a dead Christ," as Fox the Quaker said of the Anglican Church in his day; so, if the seer and prophet expel the priest, there will be no discipline and no cohesion. Still, at the present time, the greatest need seems to be that we should return to the fundamentals of spiritual religion. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that both the old seats of authority, the infallible Church and the infallible book, are fiercely a.s.sailed, and that our faith needs reinforcements.

These can only come from the depths of the religious consciousness itself; and if summoned from thence, they will not be found wanting.

The "impregnable rock" is neither an inst.i.tution nor a book, but a life or experience. Faith, which is an affirmation of the basal personality, is its own evidence and justification. Under normal conditions, it will always be strongest in the healthiest minds. There is and can be no appeal from it. If, then, our hearts, duly prepared for the reception of the Divine Guest, at length say to us, "This I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see," we may, in St. John's words, "have confidence towards G.o.d."

The objection may be raised--"But these beliefs change, and merely reflect the degree of enlightenment or its opposite, which every man has reached." The conscience of the savage tells him emphatically that there are some things which he _must not do_; and blind obedience to this "categorical imperative" has produced not only all the complex absurdities of "taboo," but crimes like human sacrifice, and faith in a great many things that are not. "Perhaps we are leaving behind the theological stage, as we have already left behind those superst.i.tions of savagery." Now the study of primitive religions does seem to me to prove the danger of resting religion and morality on unreasoning obedience to a supposed revelation; but that is not my position. The two forces which kill mischievous superst.i.tions are the knowledge of nature, and the moral sense; and we are quite ready to give both free play, confident that both come from the living Word of G.o.d. The fact that a revelation is progressive is no argument that it is not Divine: it is, in fact, only when the free current of the religious life is dammed up that it turns into a swamp, and poisons human society. Of course we must be ready to admit with all humility, that _our_ notions of G.o.d are probably unworthy and distorted enough; but that is no reason why we should not follow the light which we have, or mistrust it on the ground that it is "too _good_ to be true."

Nor would it be fair to say that this argument makes religion depend merely on _feeling_. A theology based on mere feeling is (as Hegel said) as much contrary to revealed religion as to rational knowledge.

The fact that G.o.d is present to our feeling is no proof that He exists; our feelings include imaginations which have no reality corresponding to them. No, it is not feeling, but the _heart_ or _reason_ (whichever term we prefer), which speaks with authority. By the heart or reason I mean the whole personality acting in concord, an abiding mood of thinking, willing, and feeling. The life of the spirit perhaps begins with mere feeling, and perhaps will be consummated in mere feeling, when "that which is in part shall be done away"; but during its struggles to enter into its full inheritance, it gathers up into itself the activities of all the faculties, which act harmoniously together in proportion as the organism to which they belong is in a healthy state.

Once more, this reliance on the inner light does not mean that every man must be his own prophet, his own priest, and his own saviour. The individual is not independent of the Church, nor the Church of the historical Christ. But the Church is a _living_ body and the Incarnation and Atonement are _living_ facts still in operation. They are part of the eternal counsels of G.o.d; and whether they are enacted in the Abyss of the Divine Nature, or once for all in their fulness on the stage of history, or in miniature, as it were, in your soul and mine, the process is the same, and the tremendous importance of those historical facts which our creeds affirm is due precisely to the fact that they are _not_ unique and isolated portents, but the supreme manifestation of the grandest and most universal laws.

These considerations may well have a calming and rea.s.suring influence upon those who, from whatever cause, are troubled by religious doubts.

The foundation of G.o.d standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth, and is known by, them that are His. But we must not expect that "religious difficulties" will ever cease. Every truth that we know is but the husk of a deeper truth; and it may be that the Holy Spirit has still many things to say to us, which we cannot bear now.

Each generation and each individual has his own problem, which has never been set in exactly the same form before: we must all work out our own salvation, for it is G.o.d who worketh in us. If we have realised the meaning of these words of St. Paul, which I have had occasion to quote so often in these Lectures, we cannot doubt that, though we now see through a gla.s.s darkly, and know only in part, we shall one day behold our Eternal Father face to face, and know Him even as we are known.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 364: Horace, _Ep._ i. 12. 19.]

[Footnote 365: [Greek: polypoikilos sophia], Eph. iii. 10.]

[Footnote 366: Pindar, _Olymp._ ii. 154.]

[Footnote 367: Barine in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, April 1891.]

[Footnote 368: The latter, like Fechner in our own century, holds that the stars are living organisms, whose "sensibility is full of pleasure."]

[Footnote 369: See Illingworth's _Divine Immanence_, where this and other interesting pa.s.sages are quoted. But Suso was, of course, _not_ a "Protestant mystic." And I cannot agree with the author when he says that Lucretius found no religious inspiration in Nature. The poet of the _Nature of Things_ shows himself to have been a lonely man, who had pondered much among the hills and by the sea, and who loved to taste the pure delights of the spring. Thence came to him the "holy joy and dread" ("quaedam divina voluptas atque horror") which pulsates through his great poem as he shatters the barbarous mythology of paganism, and then, in the spirit of a priest rather than of a philosopher, turns the "bright shafts of day" upon the folly and madness of those who are slaves to the world or the flesh. The spirit of Lucretius is the spirit of modern science, which tends neither to materialism nor to atheism, whatever its friends and enemies may say.]

[Footnote 370: Christian Platonism has never been more beautifully set forth than in the poem of Spenser named above. Compare, especially, the following stanzas:--

"The means, therefore, which unto us is lent Him to behold, is on His works to look, Which He hath made in beauty excellent, And in the same, as in a brazen book To read enregistered in every nooke His goodness, which His beauty doth declare: For all that's good is beautiful and fair.

"Thence gathering plumes of perfect speculation, To imp the wings of thy high-flying mind, Mount up aloft through heavenly contemplation, From this dark world, whose damps the soul do blind, On that bright Sun of glory fix thine eyes, Cleared from gross mists of frail infirmities."

Sh.e.l.ley sums up a great deal of Plotinus in the following stanza of "Adonais":--

"The One remains; the many change and pa.s.s; Heaven's light for ever shines; earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured gla.s.s, Stains the white radiance of eternity."

Compare, too, the opening lines of "Alastor."]

[Footnote 371: Compare the following sentences in Bradley's _Appearance and Reality_: "Nature viewed materialistically is only an abstraction for certain purposes, and has not a high degree of truth or reality. The poet's nature has much more.... Our principle, that the abstract is the unreal, moves us steadily upward.... It compels us in the end to credit nature with our higher emotions. That process can only cease when nature is quite absorbed into spirit, and at every stage of the process we find increase in reality."]

[Footnote 372: "Prelude," viii. 340 sq.]

[Footnote 373: "Prelude," viii. 668.]

[Footnote 374: La Rochefoucauld.]

[Footnote 375: These words, from Milton's "Comus," are applied to Wordsworth by Hazlitt.]

[Footnote 376: "Prelude," iv. 1207-1229. The ascetic element in Wordsworth's ethics should by no means be forgotten by those who envy his brave and unruffled outlook upon life. As Hutton says excellently (_Essays_, p. 81), "there is volition and self-government in every line of his poetry, and his best thoughts come from the steady resistance he opposes to the ebb and flow of ordinary desires and regrets. He contests the ground inch by inch with all despondent and indolent humours, and often, too, with movements of inconsiderate and wasteful joy--turning defeat into victory, and victory into defeat."

See the whole pa.s.sage.]

[Footnote 377: "Prelude," vi. 604-608.]

[Footnote 378: "Miscell. Sonnets," xii.]

[Footnote 379: See the Essay in which he deals with Macpherson: "In nature everything is distinct, yet nothing defined into absolute independent singleness. In Macpherson's work it is exactly the reverse--everything is defined, insulated, dislocated, deadened--yet nothing distinct."]

[Footnote 380: "Excursion," v. 500-514.]

[Footnote 381: This seemed flat blasphemy to Sh.e.l.ley, whose idealism was mixed with Byronic misanthropy. "Nor was there aught the world contained of which he could approve."]

[Footnote 382: "Prelude," xiv. 192. Wordsworth's psychology is very interesting. "Imagination" is for him ("Miscellaneous Sonnets," x.x.xv.) a "glorious faculty," whose function it is to elevate the more-than-reasoning mind; "'tis hers to pluck the amaranthine flower of Faith," and "colour life's dark cloud with orient rays." This faculty is at once "more than reason," and identical with "Reason in her most exalted mood." I have said (p.21) that "Mysticism is reason applied to a sphere above rationalism" and this appears to be exactly Wordsworth's doctrine.]

[Footnote 383: "Sonnets on the River Duddon," x.x.xiv.]

[Footnote 384: "Lines composed above Tintern Abbey," 95-102.]

[Footnote 385: "Miscell. Sonnets," x.x.xiii.]

[Footnote 386: "Prelude," xiv. 112-129.]

[Footnote 387: "Prelude," ii. 396-418.]

[Footnote 388: "Lines composed above Tintern Abbey," 35-48.]

[Footnote 389: Wordsworth's Mysticism contains a few subordinate elements which are of more questionable value. The "echoes from beyond the grave," which "the inward ear" sometimes catches, are dear to most of us; but we must not be too confident that they always come from G.o.d. Still less can we be sure that presentiments are "heaven-born instincts." Again, when the lonely thinker feels himself surrounded by "huge and mighty forms, that do not move like living men," it is a sign that the "dim and undetermined sense of unknown modes of being"

has begun to work not quite healthily upon his imagination. And the doctrine of pre-existence, which appears in the famous Ode, is one which it has been hitherto impossible to admit into the scheme of Christian beliefs, though many Christian thinkers have dallied with it. Perhaps the true lesson of the Ode is that the childish love of nature, beautiful and innocent as it is, has to die and be born again in the consciousness of the grown man. That Wordsworth himself pa.s.sed through this experience, we know from other pa.s.sages in his writings.

In his case, at any rate, the "light of common day" was, for a time at least, more splendid than the roseate hues of his childish imagination can possibly have been; and there seems to be no reason for holding the gloomy view that spiritual insight necessarily becomes dimmer as we travel farther from our cradles, and nearer to our graves. What fails us as we get older is only that kind of vision which is a.n.a.logous to the "consolations" often spoken of by monkish mystics as the privilege of beginners. Amiel expresses exactly the same regret as Wordsworth: "Shall I ever enjoy again those marvellous reveries of past days?..." See the whole paragraph on p. 32 of Mrs. Humphry Ward's translation.]

[Footnote 390: These objections are pressed by Lotze, and not only by avowed Pessimists. Lotze abhors what he calls "sentimental symbolism"

because it interferes with his monadistic doctrines. I venture to say that any philosophy which divides man, as a being _sui generis_, from the rest of Nature, is inevitably landed either in Acosmism or in Manichean Dualism.]

[Footnote 391: This is perhaps the best place to notice the mystical treatise of James Hinton, ent.i.tled _Man and his Dwelling-place_, which is chiefly remarkable for its attempt to solve the problem of evil.

This writer pushes to an extremity the favourite mystical doctrine that we surround ourselves with a world after our own likeness, and considers that all the evil which we see in Nature is the "projection of our own deadness." Apart from the unlikelihood of a theory which makes man--"the roof and crown of things"--the only diseased and discordant element in the universe, the writer lays himself open to the fatal rejoinder, "Did Christ, then, see no sin or evil in the world?" The doctrines of sacrifice (vicarious suffering) as a blessed law of Nature ("the secret of the universe is learnt on Calvary"), and of the necessity of annihilating "the self" as the principle of evil, are pressed with a harsh and unnatural rigour. Our blessed Lord laid no such yoke upon us, nor will human nature consent to bear it. The "atonement" of the world by love is much better delineated by R.L.

Nettleship, in a pa.s.sage which seems to me to exhibit the very kernel of Christian Mysticism in its social aspect. "Suppose that all human beings felt permanently to each other as they now do occasionally to those they love best. All the pain of the world would be swallowed up in doing good. So far as we can conceive of such a state, it would be one in which there would be no 'individuals' at all, but an universal being in and for another; where being took the form of consciousness, it would be the consciousness of 'another' which was also 'oneself'--a _common_ consciousness. Such would be the 'atonement' of the world."]

[Footnote 392: Charles Kingsley is another mystic of the same school.]