CHAPTER I.
Wär nicht das Auge sonnenhaft,
Wie könnten wir zur Sonne blicken?
Wär nicht in uns des Gottes eigne Kraft,
Wie könnt uns Göttliches entzücken?[[398]]
Goethe.
Early in December, Atherton was called away from Ashfield by some matters of business. His solitary evenings were spent in the chief inn of a quiet cathedral town, and solaced by the drawing up of a kind of summary, which was to indicate the main results arrived at by so much reading and talking about the mystics. This final review was despatched in a letter to Gower,—was read aloud by him to a full auditory (comprising, beside its ordinary members, Mr. and Mrs. Lowestoffe, who had come up to spend Christmas),—and is here inserted.
Old Red Dragon, Snorumbury.
My dear Gower,
I had purposed keeping this concluding paper, which you asked of me, till I could rejoin you once more, and we might read and talk over it together. But I cannot say how long I may be detained here: so I send it you at once, that our mystical inquiries may be wound up before the Christmas merry-makings begin.
In the present day, there are few who will acknowledge the name of mystic. Indeed, Mysticism is now held in combination with so many modifying or even counteracting elements, that a very strongly-marked or extreme expression of it is scarcely possible. Yet in many and very diverse forms of religious opinion, a mystical tendency may be discerned. It is apparent in the descendant of Irving, with his supernatural gifts; among some of the followers of Fox, where the inner light eclipses the outer; in the disciple of Swedenborg, so familiar with the world of spirits. The mystical tendency is present, also, wherever the subjective constituent of religion decidedly overbalances the objective. It is to be found whereever the religionist (under whatever pretence) refuses to allow the understanding to judge concerning what falls within its proper province. Thus, I tend toward mysticism, if I invest either my religious intuitions or my particular interpretation of scripture, with a divine halo—with a virtual infallibility—and charge with profanity the man whose understanding is dissatisfied with my conclusions. The ‘evangelical’ is wrong, if he hastily condemns, as ‘carnal,’ him who does not find his express doctrines in the Bible;—if, instead of attempting to satisfy the understanding of the objector with reasons, he summarily dismisses it, by misquoting the passage, ‘the natural man discerneth not the things of the spirit.’ The ‘spiritualist’ errs, in precisely the same way, when he assumes that his intuitions are too holy to be questioned by the logical faculty,—proclaims his religious sentiment above criticism, and pronounces every objection the utterance of a pedantic formalism, or a miserable conventionality. So to do, is to confound the childlike and the childish,—to forget that we should be, in malice, children; but in understanding, men. If the intuition of the one man, or the faith of the other, be removed from the sphere of knowing, and the court of evidence,—be an impulse or an instinct, rather than a conviction, and be rendered inaccessible utterly to the understanding, then is the bridge broken down between them and their fellows. The common tongue of interpretation and the common ground of argument are taken altogether away. For such faith no reason can be rendered to him who has it not.
In Germany, it may be questioned whether the efforts of the ‘faith-philosophers’ were not more injurious than helpful to the cause which they espoused. They endeavoured to shelter religion from Rationalism by relegating it to the province of feeling or sentiment. Hamann and Jacobi[[399]] might have withstood Rationalism on its own ground. But these defenders abandoned, without a blow, the fortifications of an impregnable argument, and shut themselves up in the citadel—faith. Both were soon eclipsed by the deservedly great name of Schleiermacher. His position was a stronger one than theirs, and more comprehensive; yet, in the issue, scarcely more satisfactory. In Schleiermacher’s theology, the individual ‘Christian consciousness’ is made the test according to which more or less of the recorded history of the Saviour is to be received. The supposed facts of Christianity contract or expand according to the supposed spiritual wants of the individual Christian. Thus, if any say, ‘Certain of the miracles, the resurrection and ascension of Christ, do not make a part of my Christian consciousness,—I can realize spiritual communion with Christ, independently of these accessories,’—Schleiermacher tells him he may dispense with believing them. Here, again, too much is conceded: portions of the very heart are set aside as non-essentials. Christianity is a living whole, and cannot be thus dismembered without peril to life. This baptism of Schleiermacher is rapid and sweeping, and the veriest sceptics are Christianized in spite of themselves. Men whose Christianity is historic, much as Mahommedanism is historic, turn out excellent Christians, notwithstanding.
Such a theory is, after all, ignoble, because it does not seek Truth alone, at all costs. The first object of religious inquiry is not moral expediency, not edification, not what we may deem productive of the most wholesome impressions, not what we wish to find true; but what is true. Let us seek the Truth, and if faithful to what we can find of that, these other things will be added to us. Mere good nature is a spurious charity. The cause of religion can never be served by acquiescence in a falsehood. The Christianity offered by Schleiermacher is a glass which mirrors every man—a source of motive, never beyond our own level—a provision which is always what we like and expect. Now, it may so happen that the kind of religion we should like is not that which is the true—not that, therefore, which is good for us. We need a religion adapted to us, but yet high above us, to raise us up. The untrained eye does not at the first view appreciate the old masters of art. If we are sincere in seeking God’s truth, we must count on having to receive some things that do not at once commend themselves to our judgment, but into which we shall grow up, in the process of spiritual education. Now, for this kind of self-transcendence Schleiermacher makes no preparation, and his easy entrance does, in reality, preclude progress. We are not surprised to see the Romish priest considering first, not what is truth or fact, but what statement will bring the greatest number within the pale of the Church, what will produce the most edifying impression, what will do least violence to the current preconceptions. The children of the day should disdain the slightest approach to such facile complaisance. If Christ did not rise from the dead, Christianity is a lie. On this question no inquiry must be spared—our minds must be thoroughly made up. But to allow the name of Christian to men who do not regard this fact as established, looks as though we were afraid of inquiry,—as politic governments will seem hot to see offences which it would be dangerous to punish. I justify my means by my end—I am wanting in truth and manhood, if, having myself rejected some doctrine, I yet appear to hold it, because I think it morally expedient that it should be generally received. I am guilty of a similar pious fraud if I yield up as non-essential some fact on which the Christian faith must hang, in order to recall certain wanderers to the fold of a nominal Christianity. Schleiermacher’s sincerity can only be saved at the expense of his judgment. This was the weak point of his accomplished intellect—a weakness shared by many a German divine,—he regarded external facts as of small moment compared with inward feeling. The continual evaporation of outward reality in sentiment is the vitiating principle in his system.[[400]]
Side by side with the advocates of faith and feeling in the religious province, appeared German Romanticism in the field of art and literature. The Romanticists were the enthusiastic champions of the Ideal against Realism, the assailants of all artificial method and servile conventionality, the sworn foes everywhere of that low-minded, prosaic narrowness which Germany calls Philistinism.[[401]]
Schelling gave them a poetical philosophy, and young Schleiermacher’s Discourses on Religion were, for a time, their Bible. French Encyclopedism and German Rationalism had professed a summary explanation for every mystery, had exiled the supernatural, and ridiculed the Middle Age. In the pages of the Athenæum and the Europa, Romanticism undertook the defence of mediæval superstition, extolled its fist-law, its wager by battle, its ‘earnest’ religious wars; and confounding clear thought and definite expression with the pert self-complacence of Rationalism, announced itself enamoured of every mystical obscurity, for the very shadow’s sake.
The evils against which the Romanticists contended were many of them real; much they laughed at, well deserving ridicule; but with their truth they mingled a world of fantastic folly. Voltaire was, in many things, as shallow as he was transparent,—therefore the muddy obscurity of every visionary who rhapsodized about the All, must be profound as the ‘everlasting deeps.’ Conventionalism, utilitarianism, logic-grinding, old formulas,—all were to be dethroned by the inspired votaries of intellectual intuition. The most startling extravagance or desperate paradox of opinion was hailed with the loudest plaudits, as most surely fraught with the divine afflatus. The Romanticists essayed to harmonize the ideal and the real. For the most part, they succeeded only in confounding their spheres; and ending by absorbing the real in the ideal. In their hands, philosophy became imaginative and rhetorical,—a very garden of gay fancies; while poetry grew metaphysical and analytic. Where they should have created, they dissect; where they should have inquired, they imagine.[[402]]
It is a cardinal doctrine with Romanticism that the common should be regarded as the wondrous, and the wondrous as the common. The land of faëry is to be our beaten business track; its dreamy speech, a household language; its spirit-glances, our familiar looks. At the same time, the objects and appliances of everyday existence are to be informed with supernatural significance, and animated with a mysterious life. So, in Sartor Resartus (a book which is simply the Evangel of Romanticism, in its more vigorous form), Mr. Carlyle reminds the reader that his ‘daily life is girt with Wonder,’ and that his ‘very blankets and breeches are Miracles.’ Thus our life is to be at once a trophy and a bazaar; like old Westminster Hall, where the upper story was gorgeous with blazonry and proud with the ensigns of chivalrous romance, and the ground-floor laid out in shops.
Ere long, Romanticists like Creuzer and Görres, began to resolve the old mythologies into allegorical science: while Romanticists like Frederick Schlegel, were resolving religion into poetry, and morality into æsthetics. Dante and Tasso, Camoens and Goethe, had intermingled classic and romantic myths as a poetic decoration, or a fanciful experiment. With the Romanticists (so frequently mastered by their own materials), such admixture became actual earnest. They announced the approach of a new Religion of Humanity and Art. They summoned flower-spirits from the Ganges, braceleted crocodiles from the Nile, monstrous forms from the Talmud and the Koran, to fill its incongruous pantheon of symbols. The novel wonders of animal magnetism were to constitute its miracles. Thus, like Proclus, they could make philosophy superstitious, they could not make superstition philosophical. They attempted the construction of a true and universal religion, by heaping together the products of every recorded religious falsity, and bowing at all shrines in turn. Like Iamblichus, they sought in theurgy for a sign; and in their credulous incredulity, grew greedy of every supranaturalism except the scriptural. In a moment of especial inspiration, Frederick Schlegel, writing in the Athenæum, declared that the only opposition which the new religion of philanthropy and good taste was likely to encounter, would spring from the few Christians proper still in existence; but even they, when the Aurora actually shone, would fling aside their prejudice, fall down, and worship.[[403]]
Such anticipations appear ridiculous enough. But against ridicule, to which they were peculiarly sensitive, the Romanticists possessed a ready safeguard. This resource consisted in their doctrine of Irony. After advancing a paradox, or pushing a fancy to the edge of absurdity, let the author turn round, and abandon his own creation; or dissipate it, with a serene smile; or assuming another tone, look down upon it, as questionable, from some new and superior height. Thus, if any dullard begins gravely to criticise, he shall have only laughter for his pains, as one too gross for the perception of humour; while at the same time, the reader is given to understand that beneath that jest there does lie, nevertheless, a kernel of most earnest and momentous truth. According to the Ironic theory, such saying and unsaying is not convenient merely (as a secret door of escape behind the tapestry), but in the highest degree artistic. For what is Art, but a sublime play? Does not loftiest genius ever sport, godlike, with its material, remote and riddling to the lower apprehension of common minds? In Sartor Resartus the English public have been familiarized with this ingenious device. After professing to translate, from the paper-bags of Teufelsdröckh, some ultra-transcendental sally, Mr. Carlyle makes a practice of addressing the reader, admits that he may well feel weary and perplexed, confesses that he himself does not always see his way in these ‘strange utterances,’ calls them a farrago whose meaning must be mainly conjectured, and finally leaves it pleasantly uncertain how much is delirium, how much inspiration.
But no artifice could save Romanticism, in the hands of its most extravagant representatives, from the condign catastrophe. This sensuous æsthetic religion, this effeminate symbolism, with its gallery of arbitrary and incongruous types from the dreams of all time,—this worship of Art as Deity, could tend but in one direction. The men who began with sentimental admiration for the Church of Rome, ended by passing their necks beneath her yoke; and the artist terminates miserably in the bigot. They had contemned the Reformation, on æsthetic grounds, as unromantic: they came to dread it on superstitious grounds as unsafe. Romanticism, so sanguine and so venturous in its revolutionary youth, grew anile in its premature decrepitude; mumbled its credos; cursed its heretics—and died.
It was at the opening of the present century that the great rush to Rome took place: a significant lesson, indicating the constant issue of that subjective poetical religionism which divorces Truth from Beauty, which craves religious fancies and neglects religious facts, till it falls a victim to the greatest religious fallacy. Then was celebrated the perversion of Frederick Schlegel, of Adam Müller, of Zachariah Werner—‘a born mystic,’ as Carlyle rightly styles him. Tieck, who must stand acquitted of the follies of the school; and August Wilhelm Schlegel (despite some crotchets, immeasurably superior to Frederick) retained their Protestantism.
Novalis, for by this name Friedrich von Hardenberg is most known, is perhaps as fair a representative of Romanticism as can be found. He had no occasion, like some of the party, to affect, as so much art, the language of the mystics whom he studied with such devotion. Novalis was to the manner born. To none was the realm of reverie and fable—visited by most of us only at intervals—more completely a familiar, daily dwelling-place. Scarcely to the morbid phantasy of Hoffmann was the ordinary life more visibly inwrought with the mysterious. Poetry was his practical staff of every-day existence; and practical life, to him, all poetry. The creations of his fancy were his Holy Writ; and Holy Writ the most divine creation of the fancy. Werner regretted that men should ever have employed two distinct terms to designate Art and Religion. With Novalis they are perfectly identical. It is his wont to deal with spiritual truth by analogies drawn from physics, and to investigate physics by his mystical axioms concerning spiritual truth. A mind so desultory and discursive was quite unequal to the formation of a system. But to what sort of system such a confusion of thought must lead, if ever methodically elaborated, has not patient, hard-working Jacob Behmen already shown us? Where other men are satisfied with tracing a resemblance, Novalis announces an identity. What others use as an illustration, he will obey as a principle. With him, as with the old theosophists, the laws of the universe are the imaginative analogies which link together all its regions, seen and unseen,—analogies bred in his own heated brain.
Thus, according to Novalis, he is the true Archimage of Idealism, ‘who can transform external things into thoughts, and thoughts into external things.’ ‘The poet,’ he says, ‘is the true enchanter: by identifying himself with an object he compels it to become what he will.’ ‘Experience is magical, and only magically explicable.’ ‘Physics is the theory of imagination.’ ‘Religion, Love, Nature, Politics, all must be treated mystically.’ On such a principle alone can we account for the ultra-Neoplatonist rodomontade he utters in praise of mathematics. He declares the genuine mathematician the enthusiast par excellence—mathematics is the life of the gods—it is religion—it is virtual omniscience. Mathematical books are to be read devoutly, as the word of God.[[404]]
The suggestive and sparkling aphorisms of Novalis should be read with due allowance. Some contain admirable thoughts, pointedly expressed; others are curiously perverse or puerile. Now they breathe the lofty stoical spirit we find in Schleiermacher’s monologues. Presently, Fichte seems forgotten; the strain of Titanic self-assertion is relaxed, and Novalis languidly reclines with the Lotos-eaters among the flowers. In one page life is but ‘a battle and a march,’ in another, the soul’s activity is an eating poison; love, a sickness; life, the disease of the spirit—a brief fever, to be soothed by the slumber of mystical repose, and healed at last by healthful, restful death. In this latter mood he woos the sleepy abstraction of the oriental mysticism. Action is morbid, in his eyes; to dream is to overcome. All activity ceases, he says, when Knowledge enters. The condition of Knowlege is Eudæmonia—saintly calm of contemplation.[[405]] Such is the aspiration dimly discernible through the florid obscurity of his Hymns to Night. Shutting out the garish outer world of the Actual, forgetting all its tinsel glories and its petty pains, the enthusiast seems to rise into that mystic meditative Night, whose darkness reveals more truth than the searching brightness of the daylight, and in whose recesses his transported spirit celebrates its bridal with the Queen of Heaven—the æsthetic Mary, the Eternal Beauty.
Now that the assailants of Revelation have grown so extremely pious, we find them zealously enlisting certain modifications of mysticism on their side. Modern spiritualism revives the tactics of ancient philosophy. It borrows from Christianity (as did Porphyry) a higher moral tone than it could otherwise have reached, and then pretends to look down upon the ethics of the scriptures. The religious sentiment so variously evolved in every age and country, is brought forth to overwhelm the religious truth revealed in Christ. A philosophic church is set up. The hope full of immortality is depreciated as low and selfish. Quietism abased itself so profoundly that it would scarcely lift its eyes toward that hope. Spiritualism exalts itself so ambitiously, that it will not stoop to make that hope its own. In the seventeenth century, mysticism was in sad earnest on this question of disinterestedness: in the nineteenth, such indifference is the pretence of a preposterous self-sufficiency.
But the device which failed so signally, some fourteen centuries ago, cannot now prevail, though the hostile approach is more artfully contrived. That antichristian sentimentalism which is too refined for the medium of a book, and for the morality of the Bible, was discomfited as soon as seen, and received its coup de grace from the ‘Eclipse of Faith,’ amidst universal laughter. But this repetition of old ideas is, after all, the most mortifying and damnatory fact. To think; that the advocates of a philosophic religious sentiment, in opposition to the old Book, should exhibit as little novelty as their enemies,—that even after throwing off the Biblical fetters, no progress should be visible,—that the haunting Past should be with them still,—that after making their escape from antiquated Paul and John, they should find themselves in company with antiquated Proclus and Plotinus!
The theosophy of Swedenborg was original. Mysticism has produced nothing really new in that direction since his day, and the northern seer still walks alone within his circle. Franz Baader re-clothes the bones of Behmen’s system from the materials of modern science; and Oetinger, a student both of Behmen and of Swedenborg, attempts to arrange a divine system of science by the mystical interpretation of scripture. Even the ‘holy vegetation’ of oriental mysticism has been reproduced. Schelling bids man know God ‘in silent not-knowing,’ as the plant reveals eternal beauty in ‘stillest existence and without reflection.’ Such counsel means much more than the maxim, ‘Il ne faut pas voyager pour voir, mais pour ne pas voir,’ so frequent with John of the Cross and Fénélon. Laurence Oken, a physiologist of note and a disciple of Schelling, sees in the snail an exalted symbol of mind slumbering deeply within itself. He beholds in that creature an impersonation of majestic wisdom: it is ‘the prophesying goddess sitting on the tripod.’ What reflection, what earnestness, what timidity, what confidence! The same Oken travesties Behmen, when he makes red = fire, love, Father; blue = air, truth, belief, Son; green = water, formation, hope, Ghost; yellow = earth, Satan. He imagined that he wrote his Physio-philosophy in a kind of inspiration. Here, again, we see that this intellectual intuition, professedly so keen, so spontaneous, so free from every formula, does yet continually repeat itself.
Great and various have been the services rendered by mysticism throughout the history of the Christian Church. It has exposed pretence, it has demanded thoroughness. It has sought, amidst surrounding formalism, what was deemed the highest form of spirituality. Its strain has been sometimes of a mood so high as to ‘create a soul within the ribs of death.’
But it has been influential for good in proportion to its temperance in the doctrine concerning the outward rule and the inner light. Wherever it has been extravagant in this respect—has thrown off common sense or decency—been turbulent, licentious, or ‘high fantastical,’ there good men and thoughtful have stood mournfully aloof from it, while formal men or designing have made its follies a plea for tightening the cords of spiritual oppression. It has won acceptance from men when it has been sufficiently moderate to urge intelligible arguments, and to appeal sincerely (if not always warrantably) to that outward Revelation which is commonly received. But the world has rarely been disposed to receive boastful professions of spirituality or freedom, vague declamation and rhapsodical denunciation of reason or the schools, in the place of those definite expressions of opinion which, though sometimes narrow, are at least readily apprehensible. Incalculable must be the advantage of any man or party who can manifest a clear meaning over those who cannot.
There is danger in the present day, lest in the reaction against logical formalism and prescription, an extravagant value should be set on faith for its own sake. The Romanist makes mere faith, blind and implicit, a saving virtue. The spiritualist falls into the same error when he says, ‘Only be in earnest—get faith in an idea—in something, at any rate—and all will be well.’ But faith is a principle, not an instinct. Among the many claimants for my belief, I must make an intelligent choice. It is of some consequence whether the ‘idea’ on which I am mounted be false or true. It can be good for no man to be recklessly earnest in the devil’s work.
Mysticism has generally apprehended religion rather on its divine than on its human side. It makes haste to lose humanity, and to be glorified. Grievous afflictions have reminded some of the mystical aspirants that they were human still. The spiritual pride of others has betrayed them, first to ostentatious sanctity, and then to shameful sin. Among those who would surpass humanity, some have fallen disgracefully, others ludicrously, below it. There have been those whose transformation proved to be downward to a lower sphere, not upward to an element more rare. They fare like Lucius in the Golden Ass to whom Fotis has given the wrong witch-salve. He extends his arms, he sways himself to and fro, he expects the next moment to find himself changing into a bird. But his hands and feet grow horny, his thickening, irritated skin shoots forth hairs, and behold him metamorphosed into an ass. The theatrical devotion, so frequent among the ornaments of Roman saintship, overlooks common duties, sometimes despises necessary helps, generally mistakes altogether the nature of true greatness. The Christianity exhibited in the New Testament differs most conspicuously from the Mystical Theology in being so much more human. It addresses man as he is; it addresses all; it appeals to the whole nature of every man. It knows nothing of class-religion. It does not bid men exhaust themselves in efforts to live only in the apex of their being—that ἄνθος νόου of which Plotinus speaks.
The history of mysticism shows us, farther, that the attempt to escape all figure or symbol, in our apprehensions of divine truth, is useless, or worse than useless. Such endeavour commonly ends in substituting for a figure which, though limited and partial, has life and heart in it, some vague abstraction, cold and lifeless,—and itself, perhaps, ultimately a figure, after all. It is one thing to remember that language is but language,—that behind all the expressions of love or power lies an infinity that cannot be expressed. It is another to leave behind (as many mystics have striven to do) even the vital breathing metaphors of Holy Writ, and restlessly to peer beyond, into the Unutterable—the Illimitable. Surely the words ‘King,’ ‘Shepherd,’ ‘Father,’ express more truth concerning God than the ‘pure Act’ of philosophy. When I speak of God as near or distant, pleased or displeased, the change may be in me rather than in Him. But in practical result—in the effects I feel—it is to me as though such change of disposition were real. And mysticism must freely grant me this, if it would not play into the hands of scholasticism, its hereditary foe. There is a sickly dread of anthropomorphism abroad among us, which is afraid of attributing to God a heart.
Mysticism has often spoken out bravely and well against those who substitute barren propositions for religious life,—who reject the kindly truth to make a tyrant of some rigid theory or system. But there is danger also on the other side. An imaginative, brainsick man, may substitute religious vagaries, whims, conceits, for religious truth. Men may be led as far astray by mere feeling as by mere logic. While the man of method makes an idol of his theory, the enthusiast may make an idol of his passion or his fancy. To this latter snare we have seen mysticism repeatedly fall a prey. The fanatic and the formalist both essay to build a temple to the Holy Spirit. The formalist is satisfied with raising the structure; and a sorry taper, here and there, makes darkness visible. The fanatic kindles so many lights, and with so little care, that he burns his edifice to the ground, as did the Florentines their Church of the San Spirito, from excessive illumination.
Anatomists tell us of what they term vicarious secretion in the bodies of men. One organ is found, in some cases of injury, to produce the secretion proper to another; and so we survive the hurt. I think some process of the kind must supervene for the benefit of our minds. With many of the mystics, I doubt not, the heart performed, in their spiritual œconomy, the functions of the head. A careful scrutiny of the mystical theology will show, I am confident, that several of its prominent doctrines are, in fact, most valuable correctives, and probably took or maintained their place as such. These doctrines, some of which by no means commend themselves to the non-mystical mind, are the preservatives of the mystic from his peculiar dangers. Mysticism leads to an excessive and morbid introspection. How necessary, then, that doctrine of ‘unconsciousness’ reiterated by John of the Cross and Fénélon,—itself an extreme, but indispensable to counteract its opposite. Mysticism has taught many to expect a perceptible inward guidance. How necessary, then, the doctrine of ‘quiet,’—that the soul should be abstracted in a profound stillness, lest the hasty impulses of self should be mistaken for a divine monition. Mysticism exalts the soul to a fervour and a vision, fraught with strange sweetnesses and glories. How necessary, then, that doctrine of the more elevated Quietism which bids the mystic pass beyond the sensible enjoyments and imaginative delights of religion—escape from the finer senses of the soul, as well as the grosser senses of the body, into that state of pure and imageless contemplation which has no preference or conception of its own. If Quietism is not to become a fantastic selfishness, a sensuous effeminacy, a voice must cry, ‘Haste through the picture-gallery—haste through the rose-garden—dare the darkness, wherein the glory hides!’
The lawless excesses of which mysticism has been occasionally guilty should not serve to commend spiritual despotism. The stock alternative with the Church of Rome has been—‘Accept these fanatical outbreaks as divine, or submit to our rule.’ Unfortunately for this very palpable sophism, the most monstrous mystical extravagance, whether of pantheism, theurgy, or miracle, is to be found in the Romish Church. Angelus Silesius, Angela de Foligni, and Christina Mirabilis, are nowhere surpassed in their respective extremes. The best of the Romish mystics are questionable Romanists. Tauler and Madame Guyon were more Protestant than they were aware. Even the submissive Fénélon is but a half-hearted son of the Church, beside that most genuine type of her saintship—the zealous Dominic. Innocent folk are sometimes inclined to think better of a system which could produce a man like Fénélon. They forget that, as a product of the system, Fénélon was a very inferior specimen—little better than a failure.
There is a considerable class, in these restless, hurrying, striving days, who would be much the better for a measure of spiritual infusion from the Quietism of Madame Guyon. She has found an excellent expositor and advocate in Mr. Upham. The want of leisure, the necessity for utmost exertion, to which most of us are subject, tends to make us too anxious about trifles, presumptuously eager and impatient. We should thank the teacher who aids us to resign ourselves, to be nothing, to wait, to trust. But it is to be feared that such lessons will have the greatest charm for those who need them least—for pensive, retiring contemplatists, who ought rather to be driven out to action and to usefulness. There is a danger lest passivity should be carried too far—almost as though man were the helpless object about which light and darkness were contending, rather than himself a combatant, armed by God against the powers of night. It seems to me, too, better to watch against, and suppress as they arise, our selfish tendencies and tempers—our envy, pride, indifference, hate, covetousness—than to be always nervously trying (as Fénélon does) to catch that Proteus, Self, in the abstract.
Finally, in the mischievous or unsuccessful forms of mysticism we have the recorded result of a series of attempts to substitute the inner light for the outer. When mysticism threw off external authority altogether, it went mad—as we have seen in the revolutionary pantheism of the Middle Age. When it incorporated itself more and more in revealed truth, it became a benign power—as on the eve of the Reformation. The testimony of history, then, is repeatedly and decisively uttered against those who imagine that to set aside the authority of Scripture would be to promote the religious life of men. The Divine Spirit is with us yet; and the healing, elevating wisdom of the inspired page unexhausted still. The hope of our age lies, not in a conceited defiance of controul, but in our ability more fully to apprehend the counsels God Himself has given us. Argument may be evaded. To speak in the name of religion may seem to beg the question. But to resist the verdict of the past is not the part of any thoughtful man. He who hopes to succeed in superseding letter by spirit—in disseminating a gospel more spiritual than that of scripture, by somehow dispensing with the vehicle which all truth requires for its conveyance,—who hopes to succeed in any attempt approaching this, where more powerful minds, sometimes more favourably situated, have met only with defeat—such a fanatic must be dismissed with pity as totally incurable.
It grows late. Good night all. If I can get back earlier I will.
Yours,
Henry Atherton.