Christian Mysticism

ich lighteth every man comin

vilion round about Him; darkness of waters

vowed their intention of bringing back the Church to "her old loving nurse the Platonic philosophy." These English Platonists knew what they were talking of; but for the medi?val mystics Platonism meant the philosophy of Plotinus adapted by Augustine, or that of Proclus adapted by Dionysius, or the curious blend of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Jewish philosophy which filtered through into the Church by means of the Arabs. Still, there was justice underlying this superficial ignorance. Plato is, after all, the father of European Mysticism.[109] Both the great types of mystics may appeal to him-those who try to rise through the visible to the invisible, through Nature to God, who find in earthly beauty the truest symbol of the heavenly, and in the imagination-the image-making faculty-a raft whereon we may navigate the shoreless ocean of the Infinite; and those who distrust all sensuous representations as tending "to nourish appetites which we ought to starve," who look upon this earth as a place of banishment, upon material things as a veil which hides God's face from us, and who bid us "flee away from hence as quickly as may be," to seek "yonder," in the realm of the ideas, the heart's true home. Both may find in the real Plato much congenial teaching-that the highest good is the greatest likeness to God-that the greatest happiness is the vision of God-that we should seek holiness not for the sake of external

e, as will be abundantly clear when we consider the startling expressions which Mysticism has often found for itself. But though I have not attempted to give even an outline of the history of Mysticism, I feel that the best and safest way of studying this or any type of religion is to consider it in the light of its historical development, and of the forms which it has actually assumed. And so I have tried to set these Lectures in a historical framework, and, in choosing prominent figures as representatives of the chief kinds of Mysticism, to observe, so f

d unsuccessful attempt to achieve what the school of Alexandria afterwards partially succeeded in doing. The anticipations of Neoplatonism among the Gnostics would probably be found to be very numerous, if the victorious party had thought their writings worth preserving. But Gnosticism was rotten before it was ripe. Dogma was still in such a fluid state, that there was nothing to keep speculation within bounds; and the Oriental element, with its insoluble dualism, its fantastic mythology and spiritualism, was too strong for the Hellenic. Gnosticism presents all the features which we shall find to be characteristic of degenerate Mysticism. Not to speak of its oscillations between fanatical austerities and scandalous licence,

of them, however, had not been monks all their life, but were retired men of business, who wished to spend their old age in contemplation, as many still do in India. They were, of course,

latonism. The claims of orthodoxy are satisfied by saying, rather audaciously, "All this is Moses' doctrine, not mine." His chief instrument in this difficult task is allegorism, wh

en." It is best to contemplate God in silence, since we can compare Him to nothing that we know. All our knowledge of God is really God dwelling in us. He has breathed into us something of His nature, and is thus the archetype of what is highest in ourselves. He who is truly inspired "may with good reason be called God." This blessed state may, however, be prepared for by such mediating agencies as the study

od. Here he anticipates Plotinus; but he does not reduce God to a logical point. His God is self-conscious, and reasons. By the agency of the Logos the worlds were made: the intelligible world, the [Greek: kosmos noêtos], is the Logos acting as Creator. Indeed, Philo calls the intelligible universe "the only and beloved Son of God"; just as Erigena says, "Be assured that the Word is the

ff its right hand." "It should shun the whirlpool of life, and not even touch it with the tip of a finger." The highest stage is when a man leaves behind his finite self-consciousness, and sees God face to

out of the Pentateuch, and, as such, interesting only to the Jews, who were at this period becoming more and more unpopular.[115] The same prejudice may possibly have impaired the influence of Numenius, another semi-mystical thinker, who in the age of the Antoni

onstruct a philosophy of religion-a Gnosis, "knowledge," he calls it-which shall "initiate" the educated Christian into the higher "mysteries" of his creed. The Logos doctrine, according

n the wings of this "knowledge" the soul rises above all earthly passions and desires, filled with a calm disinterested love of God. In this state a man can distinguish truth from falsehood, pure gold from base metal, in matters of belief; he can see the connexion of the various dogmas, and their harmony with reason; and in reading Scripture he can penetrate beneath the literal to the spiritual meaning. But when Clement spea

by the Logos. "There is one river of truth," he s

by weakness of will. The cure for the one is kno

s, but only what He is not. Clement apparently objects to saying that God is above Being, but he strips Him of all attributes and qualities till nothing is left but a nameless point; and this, too, he would eliminate, for a point is

sees the world as reflected in the Son. This bold and

d his strength. But he gathers up most of the religious and philosophical ideas of his time, and wea

Greek: epopteia]) "the great mysteries." He borrows verbatim from a Neopythagorean document a whole sentence, to the effect that "it is not lawful to reveal to profane persons the mysteries of the Word"-the "Logos" taking the place of "the Eleusinian goddesses." This evident wish to claim the Greek mystery-worship, with its technical language, for Christianity, is very interesting, and the attempt was by no means unfruitful. Among other ideas whi

ut his mind was less inclined to mystical modes of thought than was Clement's.

aching founded upon the historical narrative, he says, "What better method could be devised to assist the masses?" The Gnostic or Sage no longer needs the crucified Christ. The "eternal" or "spiritual" Gospel, which is his possession, "shows clearly all things concerning the Son of God Himself, both the mysteries shown by His words, and the things of which His acts were the symbols.[123]" It is not that he denies or doubts the truth of the Gospel history, but he feels

he attributes self-consciousness[124] and reason to God, who therefore does not require the Second Person in order to co

ivity of God, the World-Principle, the One who is the basis of the manifold. Human souls have fallen through sin

s is a doctrine which we shall meet with again. Man, he expressly asserts, cannot be consubstantial with God, for man can change, while God is immutable. He does not s

of Mysticism, which in Plato are only thrown out tentatively, are in Plotinus welded into a compact whole. Among the doctrines which first receive a clear exposition in his writings are, his theory of the Absolute, whom he calls the One, or the Good; and his theory of the Ideas, which differs from Plato's; for Plato represents the mind of the World-Artist as immanent in the Idea of the Good, while Plotinus makes the Ide

ormed by the soul, by classifying the things of sense, are said to be "Ideas unrolled and separate," that is, they are conceived as separate in space and time, instead of existing all together in eternity. The nature of the soul is triple; it is presented under three forms, which are at the same time the three stages of perfection which it can reach.[131] There is first and lowest the animal and sensual soul, which is closely bound up with the body; then there is the logical, reasoning soul, the distinctively human part; and, lastly, there is the superhuman stage or part, in which a man "thinks hims

so it is a great mistake to shut our eyes to the world around us, "and all beautiful things.[132]" The love of beauty will lead us up a long way-up to the point when the love of the Good is ready to receive us. Only we must not let

t. God draws all men and all things towards Himself as a magnet draws iron, with a constant unvarying attraction. This theory of emanation is often sharply contrasted with that of evolution, and is supposed to be discred

g creature. So Origen says, "As our body, while consisting of many members, is yet held together by one soul, so the universe is to be thought of as an immense living being, which is held together b

tended to identify th

ity, with the [Gre

tinus, and rightly; bu

ted position, being p

ded as a vit

he calls it, or, as we might call it, God as thought, God existing in and for Himself; and the Soul, the One and Many, occupying the sphere of appearance or imperfect reality-God as action. Soulless matter,

not exist, we mean that we shall not always see it in this form. The "Ideas" are the ultimate form in which things are regarded by Intelligence, or by God. [Greek: Nous] is descri

only appear in conjunction with some low degree of goodness which suggests to Plotinus the fine s

but teach us the principles of measure and rule, which are Divine characteristics. This is immens

f the intelligible, so is action a shadow of contemplation, suited to weak-minded persons.[144] This is turning the tables on the "man of action" in good earnest; but it is false Platonism and false Mysticism. It leads to the heartless doctrine, quite unworthy of the man, that public calamities are to the

even of that which is derived from Intelligence; for it is impossible, when in conscious possession of any other attribute, either to behold or to be harmonised with Him. Thus the soul must be neither good nor bad nor aught else, that she may receive Him only, Him alone, she alone.[146]" While she is in thi

philosopher-saint to converse with the hypostatised Abstraction who transcends all distinctions. The vision of the One is no part of his philosophy, but is a mischievous accretion. For though the "superessential Absolute" may be a logical necessity, we cannot make it, even in the most transcendental manner, an object of sense, without depriving it of

" which we have already mentioned. Evidence is abundant; but I will content myself with one quotation.[148] In Amiel's Journal[149] we have the following record of such a trance: "Like a dream which trembles and dies at the first glimmer of dawn, all my past, all my present, dissolve in me, and fall away from my consciousness at the moment when it returns upon myself. I feel myself then stripped and empty, like a convalescent who remembers nothing. My travels, my reading, my stu

of regeneration, unless Christ were repeatedly to die, emptying Himself for the sake of each individual." "Christ must be born mentally ([Greek: moêt?s]) in every individual," and each individual saint, by participating in Christ, "is born as a Christ." This is exactly t

nation of God, who is not, even now, outside of mankind?... If the form of the Divine presence is not now the same, we are as much agreed that God is among us to-day, as that He was in the world then." He argues in another place that all other species of spiritual beings must have had their Incarnations of Christ; a doctrine which was afterwards condemned, but which seems

more of his successors, which strongly suggest Asiatic influences.[152] When we turn from Alexandria to Syria, we find Orientalism more rampant. Speculation among the Syrian monks of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries was perhaps more unfettered and more audacious than in any other branch of Christendom at any period. Our knowledge of their theories is very limited, but one strange specimen has survived in the book of Hierotheus,[153] which the canonised Dionysius praises in glowing terms as an inspired oracle-indeed, he professes that his own object in writing was merely to popularise the teaching of his master. The book purports to be the work of Hierotheus, a holy man converted by St. Paul, and an instructor of the real Dionysius the Areopagite. A stron

even the devils are thrown into the same melting-pot. Consistently with mystical principles, these three world-periods are also phases in the development of individual souls. In the first stage the mind aspires towards its first principles; in the second it becomes Christ, the universal Mind; in the third its personality is wholly merged. The greater part of the book is taken up with the adventures of the Mind in climbing the ladder of perfection; it is a kind of theosophical romance, much more elaborate and fantastic t

it descends below all essences, and sees a formless luminous essence, and marvels that it is the same essence that it has seen on high. Now it comprehends the truth, that God is consubstantial with the Universe, and that there are no real distinctions anywhere. So it ceases to wander. "All these doctrines,"

thes borrowed from Jewish allegorists, half-Christian Gnostics, Manicheans, Platonising Christians, and pagan Neoplatonists. We will now see

rpetrated a deliberate fraud-a pious fraud, in his own opinion-by suppressing his own individuality, and fathering his books on St. Paul's Athenian convert. The success of the imposture is amazing, even in that uncritical age, and gives much food for reflection. The sixth century sa

ianity in the guise of a Platonic mysteriosophy, and he uses the technical terms of the mysteries whenever

all-transcending hiddenness of the all-transcending super-essentially super-existing super-Deity.[162]" But even in the midst of this barbarous jargon he does not quite forget his Plato. "The Good and Beautiful," he says, "are the cause of all things that are; and all things love and aspire to the Good and Beautiful, which are, indeed, the sole objects of their desire." "Since, then, the Absolute Good and Beautiful is honoured by eliminating all qualities from

soul; nor in the brutes; nor in inanimate nature; nor in matter. Having thus hunted evil out of every corner of the universe, he asks-Is evil, then, simply privation of good? But privation is not evil in itself. No; evil must arise from "disorderly and inharmonious motion." As dirt has been defined as matter in the wrong place, so evil is good in the wrong place. It arises by a kind of accident; "a

sun shines," "without premeditation or purpose." The Father is simply One; the Son has also plurality, namely, the words (or reasons) which make existence ([Greek: tous ousiopoious logous]), which theology calls fore-ordinations ([Greek: proorismous]). But he does not teach that all separate existences will ultimately be merged in the One. The highest Unity gives to all the power of striving, on the one hand, to share in the One; on the other, to persist in their own individuality. And in more than one passage he speaks of God as a Unity comprehending, not abolishing differences.[165] "God is before all things"; "Being is in Him, and He is not in Being." Thus Dionysius tries to safeguard the transcendence of God, and to escape Pantheism. The outflowing process is appropriated by the mind by the positive method-the downward path through finite existences: its conclusion is, "God is

characters," and necessary steps, which enable us to "mount to the one undivided truth by analogy." This is the way in which we should use the Scriptures. They have a symbolic truth and

t the Scriptures "often use" [Greek: agapê], but justifies his preference for the other word by quoting St. Ignatius, who says of Christ, "My

istotelianism. He is therefore, for us, a very important figure; and there are two parts of his scheme which, I think, require fulle

te, every attribute which can be affirmed of a finite being may be safely denied of God. Hence God can only be described by negatives; He can only be discovered by stripping off all the qualities and attributes which veil Him; He can only be reached by divesting ourselves of all the distinctions of personality, and sinking or rising into our "uncreated nothingness"; and He can only be imitated by aiming at an abstract spirituality, the passionless "apathy" of an universal which is nothing in particular. Thus we see that the whole of those developments of Mysticism which despise symbols, and hope to see God by shutting the eye of sense, hang together. They all follow from the false notion of God as the abstract Unity transcending, or rather excluding, all distinctions. Of course, it is not intended to exclude distinctions, but to rise above them; but the process of abstraction, or subtraction, as it really is, can never lead us to "the One.[173]" The only possible unification with such an Infinite is the [Greek: aterm?n nêgretos hupnos] of Nirvana.[174] Nearly all that repels us in medi?val religious life-its "other-worldliness" and passive hostility to civilisation-the emptiness of its ideal life-its maltreatment of the body-its disparagement of family life-the respect which it paid to indolent contemplation-springs from this one root. But since no one who remains a Christian can exhib

as adhered to long after the grave moral dangers which beset this type of Mysticism had been recognised. Tauler, for instance, who lays the axe to the root of the tree by saying, "Christ never arrived at the emptiness of which these men ta

n Mysticism. The break-up of the ancient civilisation, with the losses and miseries which it brought upon humanity, and the chaos of brutal barbarism in which Europe weltered for some centuries, caused a widespread pessimism and world-weariness which is foreign to the temper of Europe, and which gave way to energetic and full-blooded activity in the Renaissance and Reformation. Asiatic Mysticism is the natural refuge of men who have lost faith in civilisation, but will not give up f

ith is by arrest of growth to become the childish. All the good things of life have first to be renounced, and then given back to us, before they can be really ours. It was necessary that these truths should be not only taught, but lived through. The individual has generally to pass through the quagmire of the "everlasting No," before he can set his feet on firm ground; and the Christian races, it seems, were obliged to go through the same experience. Moreover, there is a sense in which all moral effort aims at destroying the conditions of its own existence, and so ends logically in self-negation. Our highest aim as regards ourselves is to eradicate, not only sin, but temptation. We do not feel that we have

dental to their place in history do not prevent them from being glorious pioneers among the high passes of the spiritual

Emerson. Dionysius, naturally enough, has been freely charged with it. The word is so loosely and thoughtlessly used, even by writers of repute, that

the same thing. Here again we must go to India for a perfect example. "The learned behold God alike in the reverend Brahmin, in the ox and in the elephant, in the dog and in him who eateth the flesh of dogs.[181]" So Pope says that God is "as full, as perfect, in a hair as heart." The Persian Sufis were deeply involved in this error, which leads to all manner of absurdities and even immoralities. It

danger, for the simple reason that he stands too near to Plato. The pantheistic tendency of medi?val Realism requires a few words of explanation, especially as I have placed the name of Plato at the head of this Lecture. Plato's doctrine of ideas aimed at establishing the transcendence of the highest Idea-that of God. But the medi?val doctrine of ideas, as held by the extreme Realists, sought to fi

Personality. This is not a philosophy which commends itself specially to speculative mystics, because it involves the belief that time is an ultimate reality. If in the cosmic process, which takes place in time, God becomes something which He was not before, it cannot

ts us at once out of Pantheism.[184] It sets up the distinction between what is and what ought to be, which Pantheism cannot find room for, and at the sam

though known to Him as infinite Mind, can hardly be felt by Him as infinite Perfection. The function of evil in the economy of the universe is an inscrutable mystery, about which speculative Mysticism merely

e universe which have been call

e exists; and thus, by denying reality to the visible world, we get a kind of idealistic Pantheism. But the notion of God as abstract Unity, which, as we have seen, was held by the later Neoplatonists and their Christian followers, seems to make a real world impossible; for bare U

is an integral part of Christian philosophy, and, indeed, of all rational theology. But in proportion as the indwelling of God, or of Christ, or the Holy Spirit in the heart of man,

Christianity, if it is to triumph over Pantheism, must absorb it." Those are no true friends to the cause of religion who would base it entirely upon dogmatic supernaturalism. The passion for facts which are objective, isolated, and past, often prevents us from seeing facts which a

TNO

nity with the great speculative mystic of Ephesus, whose fragments supply many mottoes for essays on Mysticism. The identifi

nta aristos Plat?n-oion pheo

finds in Plato all its t

some have thought dishonest, rests on the self-evident proposition

erts als theologisch-transcendente Mystik, und die eigentliche

tion of Philo, On the Contemplative Life, and his refutation of the theory of L

cal influence is al

B.C.) is said to have used the same argument in an expos

n account (in Flaceum) of the ant

ous] in the second book of the Miscellanies: "He says, Whoso hath ears to hear,

istian Platonists of Alexand

f the Johannine) of assent to particular dogmas. [Greek: Gn?sis] welds these together into

reek: askêsis] or

20: Strom,

ee, further, App

gen, [Greek: sophia]

k: gn

igmata] "riddles." On the whole subject see

olutely unlimited; for then He could not have self-consciousness: His

Mysticism. Every treatise on religious thought in the early centuries of our era must take account of the paralle

14, [Greek: ouden estin

Enn. iii. 2.

128: Enn.

129: Enn.

eid?lon kai phantasma ogkou kai hopostase?s ephesis] Enn. iii. 6. 7. If matter were nothi

o the three stages in the mystical ladder whic

s us "turn from things without to look within" (Enn. iv. 8. 1). Remembering that postulate of all Mysticism, that we only know a thing by becoming it, we see that we can only kno

sconception of his meaning, Enn. v. 1. 6, [Gre

eek: z?ê exelittom

ee especially En

to z?on tode to pan heaut?]; iv. 9. 1, [Greek:

iv. 5. 2, [Greek:

ts and Transcendentalists, it was a secondary cause. In Plotinus, the Intelligence ([Greek: Nous]) is "King" (Enn. v. 3. 3), and "the law of Being" (Enn. v. 9. 5). But the Johannine Logos is

cially the interesting

[Greek: eti anthr?pikon hê k

stice is mainly "minding one's business" [Greek: oikeiopagia]. "The purifying virtues"

ielded up to the influence of Divinity by its contempt of all proportion and definiteness, does really nothing but give full play

143: Heb

s to the?rein, skian the?rias kai logou tên praxin poiountai

pokriseis] and [Greek: paignion]; and see

146: Enn.

nsciousness any qualitative or quantitative expression whatever," and yet it is quite certain that we have it. Herbert Spencer's Absolute is, in fact, matter without form. This would seem to identify it rather with the all but non-existing "matter" of Plotinus (see Bigg, Neoplatonism, p. 199), than wi

exterioribus sensibus certum defectum ac speciem quamdam deliquii experiantur cum magna interna suavitate, quod extasim aut raptum esse facillime putant. Cum Dei Spiritui resistere nolint, deliquio illi totas se tradunt, et p

. Humphry Ward's t

menos]. In St. Augustine we find it in a rather surprisingly bold form; cf. in Joh. tract. 21, n. 8: "Gratulemur et grates agamus non solum nos Christia

sed Jews. Those who are best qualified to speak on Jewish philos

show no exclusiveness in his worship, but to be the hierophant

ount of "Hierotheus" is

most interesti

"We must not remain on the top o

us work of Ibn Tophail, translated by Ockley, and much valued by the Quakers, The Improvement of

ou monon math?n alla

ionysius than that which Harnack believes to be most probable; the latter is in favour of placing him i

hus and Proclus (in opposition to Plotinus)

ms to be that the writings are genuine; but Schram admits that "there is a di

e?sis; hierotelestai] and [Greek: mystag?goi] (of the bishops), [Greek:

poios hapasês henados-hyperousios ousia kai nous anoêtos kai logos arrêto

exagei tên hyper panta krypsiotêta tês hyper

monas estai pasês dya

us as a

thy with Oriental speculative Mysticism. The theory set forth in the text must not be confounded with true

See De Div. Nom

e, which includes all knowledge acquired by reasoning, research, etc.; and the direct, in which we rise to higher truths by using outward

to reach [Greek: ton hyperph?ton gnophon kai

d [Greek: paidari?dês phantasia] are phrases

[Greek: esti de ekstatikos ho theios er?s, ouk e?n eaut?n e

terpretation of this passage. Bishop Lightfoot and some other good scholars take it to mean, "My earthly affections are crucified." See the discussion in Ligh

. 242, 243. St. Augustine accepts this s

eloquence is silence, while we confess without confessi

at "the One" could exist substantially by itself. To personify the barest of abstractions, call it God, and then try to imitate

the object, and by abstraction we annihilate the subject of consciousness. But what r

. P. Ramanathan, C.M.G

Godliness. This inter

ndness of the Rev. G.U

mil and Telug

the coats of an onion. The human soul frees itself by knowledge from the sheath. But what is this knowledge? To know that the human intellect and all its faculties are ignorance and delusion. This is to take away the sheath, and to find that God is all. Whatever is not Brahma is nothing. So long as a man

s, which, enclosed in an outline of Mount Carmel, form the

do not desire to tas

of Infinity, do not desire t

ssion of Infinity, des

ng of Infinity, desire to

ng in a creature, thou art ceas

Infinity, thou must surrender

hink that "the Infinite" as a name for God might be given up

ictor, de Pr?p. Anim. 83, "ascendat

om the symbol to the thing symbolised, and so far the followers of the negative road are right; but the life of Mysticism (on this side) c

ranscendence of God, as the "affirmative road" establishes His immanence. I am far from wishing to depreciate a method which when rightly

ghan, Hours with the M

theism." God is regarded as the summum genus, the ultimate Substance of which all existing things are accidents. The genus inheres in the species

olute Idea exists eternally in its full perfection. There can be no real development in time. "Infinite t

on says well, in his b

thing from the standpo

erally stops

ce, Leslie Stephen tries to d

each the ultimate truth of things. This, as Hegel showed, is acosmism rather than Pantheism, and certainly not "atheism." The method of Spinoza should have led him, as the same me

he name or not. It is that which deifies physical law. Sometimes it is "materialism grown sentimental," as it has been lately described; sometimes it issues in s

TUR

dizêsamên

ACL

i elle ne touche à l'ab?me; mais elle c

US

muss in Nich

Sein beha

ET

more abro

ome, but tu

d observe

e dwells s

t this Hous

in a nar

eanly s

lf full roo

ent make

lf and wit

this swe

u with thy

use in peac

rse's fab

H BEA

ns, the many c

r ever shines; ea

dome of many-

ite radiance

EL

NISM AND SPECUL