CHAPTER III.
And those that endeavour after so still, so silent, and demure condition of minde, that they would have the sense of nothing there but peace and rest, striving to make their whole nature desolate of all Animal Figurations whatsoever, what do they effect but a clear Day, shining upon a barren Heath, that feeds neither Cow nor Horse,—neither Sheep nor Shepherd is to be seen there, but only a waste, silent Solitude, and one uniform parchednesse 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 stillnesse and fixednesse of Melancholy that thus abuses him, instead of the true divine Principle.—Henry More.
II. St. John of the Cross.
Little John of the Cross—a hero, like Tydeus, small in body, but great in soul—was in the prime of life when Theresa was growing old. Early distinguished by surpassing austerity and zeal, he was selected by the Saint as her coadjutor in the great work of Carmelite reform. The task was no easy one, though sanctioned by the highest spiritual authority. This troculus service—the picking the teeth of the gorged ecclesiastical crocodile—has always been a somewhat delicate and dangerous affair. The great jaws closed with a horrible crash one day on poor Madame Guyon, as she was working away with her solitary bill and the best intentions. On John, too, busy at a little scavenger’s work, those jaws had once almost met, and at least knocked him fluttering into a hollow tooth,—in other words, a dark and noisome dungeon at Toledo. But what between St. Theresa’s intercession and that of the Mother of God, he is let fly again. Vicar-provincial of Andalusia, he plies his task anew, with admirable intrepidity and self-devotion; courts hatred and opprobrium on every side; flourishes his whip; overturns secularities; and mouses for flaws of regulation. He succeeds in excavating in every direction spiritual catacombs and mummy-caves, where, swathed up in long rows, the religious dumb and withered line the cloister-walls—motionless—satisfactorily dead. Next to Ignatius Loyola, he was, perhaps, the greatest soul-sexton that ever handled shovel.
John of the Cross obtained this distinctive name through his love of crosses. He was consumed by an insatiable love of suffering. It was his prayer that not a day of his life might pass in which he did not suffer something. Again and again does he exhort the monk, saying—‘Whatsoever you find pleasant to soul or body, abandon; whatsoever is painful, embrace it.’ ‘Take pains,’ he says, ‘to give your name an ill savour; burrow deep and deeper under heaped obloquy, and you are safe.’[[300]] Thus is the odour of sanctity best secured; and the disguised saint resembles that eastern prince who concealed himself from his pursuers beneath a heap of onions, lest the fragrance of his perfumes should betray him. The man who is truly dead and self-abandoned will not only thus disguise his virtues before others; he will be unconscious of them himself. The whole life of John was an attempt towards a practical fulfilment of such precepts. The party of his enemies gained the upper hand in the chapter, and the evening of his days was clouded by the disgrace of which he was covetous. He passed existence in violent extremes, now gazing with delight on some celestial mirage, swimming in seas of glory that waft him to the steps of the burning throne,—and anon hurled down into the abyss, while vampyre wings of fiends ‘darken his fall, with victory,’ and his heart itself is a seething hell-cauldron, wherein demon talons are the raking fleshhooks.
The piety of John is altogether of the Romanist type. In his doctrine of humility, truth is not to be considered, but expediency,—that is, an edifying display of self-vilification. On his own principles, John ought to have persuaded himself, and assured others, that he was a self-indulgent, pleasure-loving drone,—though perfectly aware of the contrary. St. Paul is content to bid men think of themselves not more highly than they ought to think. John of the Cross is not satisfied unless they think worse than they ought,—unless they think untruly, and labour to put a pious fraud upon themselves. John disturbs the equilibrium of Quietism. There is quite as much self-will in going out of the way of a blessing to seek a misery, as in avoiding a duty for the sake of ease. Many men will readily endure a score of mortifications of their own choosing, who would find it hard to display tolerable patience under a single infliction from a source beyond their control. This extreme of morbid asceticism is more easy, because more brilliant in its little world, than the lowly fortitude of ordinary Christian life. How many women, at this hour, in poverty, in pain, in sorrow of heart, are far surpassing St. Theresa in their self-sacrifice and patience, unseen and unpraised of men.
Banished to the little Convent of Pegnuela, he completed among the crags of the Sierra Morena his great mystical treatises, The Obscure Night, and The Ascent of Carmel. He follows in the steps of the Pseudo-Dionysius. He describes the successive denudations of the soul as it passes,—the shadow of itself, into the infinite shade of the Divine Dark.[[301]] We have seen how instantaneously Theresa could attain at times this oblivious self-reduction. Her soul falls prostrate, with the ordinary attire of faculties, but rises, stripped of all in a moment. Not more dexterously was the fallen Andrew Fairservice stripped in a twinkling by the Highlanders, so that he who tumbled down a well-clothed, decent serving-man, stood up ‘a forked, uncased, bald-pated, beggarly-looking scarecrow.’ John of the Cross describes with almost scientific method the process of spiritual unclothing,—preaches a series of sermons on the successive removal of each integument,—and perorates on the blessed reduction of the soul to a supernatural state of nature.
The ‘Obscure Night,’ would be the most fitting title for both treatises; for the night of mysticism is their sole subject, and Mount Carmel does but figure as a frontispiece, in compliment to the Order probably. Sundry verses head the works as texts; the first of these, with its exposition, will sufficiently indicate the character of the whole.
En una noche escura
Con ansias en amores inflammada
¡O dichosa ventura!
Salí sin ser notada
Estando ya mi casa sosegada.
‘’Twas in a darksome night, inflamed with restless love, O fortune full of bliss, I ventured forth unmarked, what time my house was still.’
The Saint interprets his stanza, in substance, as follows:—
Here the soul says, ‘I went out unhindered by sensuality or the devil. I went out, that is, of myself—out from my own poor and feeble manner of knowing, loving, and tasting God. I went out, unassisted by any action of my own powers; while my understanding was wrapped in darkness; while will and memory were overwhelmed by affliction. I went out, abandoning myself in pure faith to darkness—that is, to the night of my spirit and my natural powers.
‘This going forth has crowned me with happiness; for I have been straightway elevated to operations entirely divine—to most familiar intercourses with God; in other words, my understanding has passed from a human to a divine condition. Uniting myself to God by this purgation, my knowledge is no longer weak and limited as formerly; but I know by the divine wisdom, to which I am conjoined.
‘My will also has gone out of itself, and become in a sort divine; for being united to the Divine Love, it does not love any longer by its own former powers, but by the powers of the Divine Spirit. Thus, its acts of love towards the Creator are rendered no more in a human manner.
‘My memory is filled with images of heavenly glory. All my powers, in short, and all my affections, are renovated by the Night of the spirit and the despoliation of the old man, in such sort that their very nature seems changed, and they can relish only spiritual and divine delights.’[[302]]
Thus, the soul is to resemble the wondrous eastern tree of the old travellers, which by daylight stands leafless and flowerless, but after sundown puts forth countless white blossoms, shining in the darkness like the drops of a silver fountain; and when the sun is risen again, sheds all its beauty, and stands bare and barren as before. When all our natural powers, slain and buried, lie dead under the midnight;—then arise, instead of them, certain divine substitutes, which will, and love, and know, as the Infinite does, not as men.
The First Night is that of the Sense: the long process of vigil and austerity which, with the caduceus of asceticism, tames and lulls to slumber the Argus-eyed monster of the flesh.[[303]] A painful work, but not without meet recompence. New pleasures, even of the sense, are supernaturally vouchsafed to the steadfast votary. The wearied eye and the unvisited ear are regaled by glorious visions and seraphic melody; yea, the parched tongue, and haggard, bleeding flesh, are made to know delights of taste and touch, that melt with most delicious pleasure through the frame, and beggar with their transport all the joys of banquets or of love.
But rejoice not, O mystic! for even now, lest thou shouldst grow greedy of these high luxuries, there strides towards thee the darkness of—
The Second Night—the Night of the Spirit. Here all caresses are withdrawn. The deserted soul cannot think, or pray, or praise, as of old. The great pains are to begin. Pitiless purgation and privation absolute are about to make the second night not night only, but midnight. You seem to descend, God-abandoned, alive into hell. Make no resistance: utter no cry for comfort. Solace is a Tantalus’ bough, which will wave itself away as you stretch forth your hand. Acquiesce in all: be in your desertion as absolutely passive as in your rapture. So, from the bright glassy edge and summit of this awful fall, you shoot down helpless, blind, and dizzy,—down through the surging cataract, among the giant vapour columns, amid the eternal roar, to awake at the boiling foot, and find that you yet live, in your tossing shallop,—or rather, you no longer, for you yourself are dead—so much mere ballast in the bottom of the boat: a divine and winged Radiance has taken your place, who animates rather than steers, guiding, in your stead, by mysterious impulse.[[304]]
To the higher faculty, then, there are already visible, after the first horrors, breaking gleams of a super-celestial dawn. Visions are seen; forms of glory come and go: gifts of subtlest discernment are vouchsafed: substantial words are spoken within, which make you, in that moment, all they mean.[[305]]
But all such particular and special manifestations you are peremptorily to reject, come they from God or come they from the Devil;—not even to reflect upon and recall them afterwards, lest grievous harm ensue. For the philosophy of John is summary. Two ideas alone have room there—All and Nothing. Whatsoever is created is finite: whether actual or ideal, it bears no proportion to the All,—it cannot therefore be helpful to any on their way to the All. The Something is no link between the opposites of All and Nothing. Therefore, if any view of a particular divine perfection, any conception of Deity, or image of saint or angel, be even supernaturally presented to the mind, reject it. You are aiming at the highest—at loss in the All. Everything definite and particular—all finite apprehension, must be so much negation of the Infinite,—must limit that All. You should pass beyond such things to blend immediately with the Universal,—to attain that view of God which is above means—is unconditioned—is, from its illimitable vastness, an anguish of bliss,—a glory which produces the effect of darkness.[[306]]
But why, it will be asked, does God grant these favours of vision to the saints at all, if it is their duty to disregard them?
John answers, ‘Because some transition stage is unavoidable. But the higher you attain, the less of such manifestation will you meet with. This portion of your progress is a grand stair-case hung with pictures;—hurry up the steps, that you may enter the darkened chamber above, where divine ignorance and total darkness shall make you blest. If in doubt about a vision, there is always your confessor, to whom, if you have not constant resort, woe be to you! But you are safe, at any rate, in not receiving and cherishing such inferior bestowments. To reject them will be no sin—no loss. For the beneficial effects they are designed to produce will be wrought by God internally, if you only abide passive, and refuse to exert about such signs those lower faculties which can only hinder your advance.’[[307]]
Such a reply is but a fence of words against a serious difficulty. He should be the last to talk of necessary intermediate steps who proclaims the rejection of everything mediate,—who will have the mystic be reduced to the Nothing and rapt to the All, by a single entrancing touch.[[308]]
But much higher than any visions of the picture-gallery are certain manifestations (sometimes granted in this state) of divine truth in its absolute nakedness. These are glimpses of the veritas essentialis nude in se ipsa, beyond all men, and angels, and heavenly splendours, which Tauler bids the mystic long for. John forbids us to seek them—for effort would unseal our slumber. They come altogether without consent of ours. Though we are not to hold ourselves so negative towards them as we should towards more palpable and inferior favours.
The Quietists were charged with excluding all human co-operation in the mystical progress. John must plead guilty on this count. His writings abound with reiterated declarations that the soul does absolutely nothing in its night,—with prohibitions against seeking any supernatural favour or manifestation whatever.[[309]]
Urganda the fairy could find no way of raising the paladins she loved above the common lot of mortals, save that of throwing them into an enchanted sleep. So Galaor, Amadis, and Esplandian, sink into the image of death beneath her kindly wand. Such is the device of John—and so does he lull and ward venturous Understanding, learned Memory, and fiery Will. Faith is the night which extinguishes Understanding; Hope, Memory; and Love, Will. The very desire after supernatural bestowments, (though for no other purpose has everything natural been doomed to die) would be a stirring in the torpor—a restless, not a perfect sleep. The serenest Quiet may be ruffled by no such wish.
This, therefore, is John’s fundamental principle. All faculties and operations not beyond the limits of our nature must cease, that we may have no natural knowledge, no natural affection; but find, magically substituted, divine apprehensions and divine sentiments quite foreign to ourselves. Then, still farther, we are desired to ignore even supernatural manifestations, if they represent to us anything whatever; that we may rise, or sink (it is the same), to that swooning gaze on the Infinite Ineffable, wherein our dissolving nature sees, hears, knows, wills, remembers nothing.[[310]]
The Third Night—that of the Memory and the Will.[[311]] Here, not only do all the ‘trivial fond records’ that may have been inscribed upon remembrance vanish utterly, but every trace of the divinest tokens and most devout experience. The soul sinks into profound oblivion. The flight of time is unmarked, bodily pain unfelt, and the place of Memory entirely emptied of its stored ‘species and cognitions,’—of everything particular and distinct. The patient forgets to eat and drink,—knows not whether he has done or not done, said or not said, heard or not heard this or that.
‘Strange exaltation this,’ cries the objector, ‘which imbrutes and makes a blank of man—sinks him below idiotic ignorance of truth and virtue!’
John is ready with his answer. This torpor, he replies, is but transitory. The perfect mystic, the adept established in union, has ceased to suffer this oblivion. Passing through it, he acquires a new and divine facility for every duty proper to his station. He is in the supernatural state, and his powers have so passed into God that the Divine Spirit makes them operate divinely,—all they do is divine. The Spirit makes such a man constantly ignorant of what he ought to be ignorant; makes him remember what he ought to remember; and love what is to be loved—God only. Transformed in God, these powers are human no more.[[312]]
In the same way the night of will extinguishes joy,—joy in sensible good, in moral excellence, in supernatural gifts, that the soul may soar to a delight above delight, be suspended as in a limitless expanse of calm, far beyond that lower meteoric sky which is figured over with wonders and with signs.
Thus John’s desired contemplatio infusa is always, at the same time, a contemplatio confusa.
At his culminating point the mystic is concealed as ‘on the secret top of Horeb;’ he ascends by a hidden scale, cloaked with darkness (por la secreta escala—a escuras y enzelada).
Mark the advantage of this enclouded state. The Devil, it is said, can only get at what is passing in our mind by observing the operations of the mental powers. If, therefore, these are inactive and absorbed, and a divine communication goes on, in which they have no part whatever, Satan is baffled. These highest manifestations, absolutely pure, nude, and immediate he cannot counterfeit or hinder. The soul is then blissfully incognito and anonymous. This secrecy preserves the mystic from malign arts, as the concealment of their real names was thought the safeguard of ancient cities, since hostile sooth-sayers, ignorant of the true name to conjure by, could not then entice away their tutelary gods.[[313]]
Such then is the teaching of the Mount Carmel and the Obscure Night, starred with numerous most irrelevant quotations from the psalms and the prophecies, as though David and Isaiah were Quietists, and spent their days in trying to benumb imagination, banish the sensuous images which made them poets, and tone down all distinct ideas to a lustreless, formless neutral tint. The Spanish painters have not more anachronisms than the Spanish mystics; and I think of Murillo’s ‘Moses striking the Rock,’ where Andalusian costumes make gay the desert, Andalusian faces stoop to drink, and Andalusian crockery is held out to catch the dashing streams.
In John of the Cross we behold the final masterpiece of Romanist mysticism, and the practice (if here the term be applicable) of supernatural theopathy is complete. The Art of Sinking in Religion—the divinity of diving, could go no deeper. The natives of South America say that the lobo or seal has to swallow great stones when he wishes to sink to the river-bed—so little natural facility has he that way. We sinners, too, have no native alacrity for the mystical descent: our gravitation does not tend towards that depth of nothing; and huge and hard are the stones (not bread) with which this mystagogue would lade us to bring us down. And when, in imagination at least, at the bottom, we are smothered in an obscure night of mud. What a granite boulder is this to swallow,—to be told that the faintest film of attachment that links you with any human being or created thing will frustrate all your aim, and be stout as a cable to hold back your soul,—that with all your mind, and soul, and strength, you must seek out and adore the Uncomfortable, for its own sake—that, drowned and dead, you must lie far down, hidden, not from the pleasant sunshine only, but from all sweet gladness of faith and hope and love—awaiting, in obstruction, an abstraction. This resurrection to a supersensuous serenity, wherein divine powers supersede your own, is a mere imagination—a change of words; the old hallucination of the mystic. After going through a certain amount of suffering, the devotee chooses to term whatever thoughts or feelings he may have, his own no longer: he fancies them divine. It is the same man from first to last.
Admitting its great fundamental error—this unnaturalness,—as though grace came in to make our flesh and blood a senseless puppet pulled by celestial wires,—it must be conceded that the mysticism of John takes the very highest ground. It looks almost with contempt upon the phantoms, the caresses, the theurgic toys of grosser mystics. In this respect, John is far beyond Theresa. He has a purpose; he thinks he knows a way to it; and he pursues it, unfaltering, to the issue. He gazes steadily on the grand impalpability of the Areopagite, and essays to mount thither with a holy ardour of which the old Greek gives no sign. And this, too, with the vision-craving sentimental Theresa at his side, and a coarsely sensuous Romanism all around him. No wonder that so stern a spiritualism was little to the taste of some church-dignitaries in soft raiment. It is impossible not to recognize a certain grandeur in such a man. Miserably mistaken as he was, he is genuine throughout as mystic and ascetic. Every bitter cup he would press to the lips of others he had first drained himself. His eagerness to suffer was no bravado—no romancing affectation, as with many of his tribe. In his last illness at Pegnuela he was allowed his choice of removal between two places. At one of them his deadly enemy was prior. He bade them carry him thither, for there he would have most to endure. That infamous prior treated with the utmost barbarity the dying saint, on whom his implacable hatred had already heaped every wrong within his power.[[314]] Let, then, a melancholy admiration be the meed of John—not because the mere mention of the cross was sufficient, frequently, to throw him into an ecstasy,—not because his face was seen more than once radiant with a lambent fire from heaven,—these are the vulgar glories of the calendar,—but because, believing in mystical death, he did his best to die it, and displayed in suffering and in action a self-sacrificing heroism which could only spring from a devout and a profound conviction. We find in him no sanctimonious lies, no mean or cruel things done for the honour of his Church—perhaps he was not thus tempted or commanded as others have been,—and so, while he must have less merit with Rome as a monk, let him have the more with us as a man.
Note to page 188.
Montée du Carmel, liv. II. ch. ii. and iv.; also La Nuit Obscure, I. viii. and II. ch. v.-ix. This night is far more dark and painful than the first and third; and while the first is represented as common to many religious aspirants, the second is attained but by a few.
Si quelqu’un demande pourquoi l’âme donne le nom de nuit obscure à la lumière divine qui dissipe ses ignorances, je réponds que cette divine sagesse est non-seulement la nuit de l’âme, mais encore son supplice, pour deux raisons: la première est, parce que la sublimité de la sagesse divine surpasse de telle sorte la capacité de l’âme, que ce n’est que nuit et ténèbres pour elle; la seconde, la bassesse et l’impureté de l’âme sont telles, que cette sagesse la remplit de peines et d’obscurités.—P. 593.
Mais le plus grand supplice de l’âme est de croire que Dieu la hait, la délaisse, et la jette pour cette raison dans les ténèbres.... En effet, lorsque la contemplation dont Dieu se sert pour purifier l’âme la mortifie en la dépouillant de tout, l’âme éprouve, avec une vivacité pénétrante, toute l’horreur que cause la mort, et toutes les douleurs et tous les gémissements de l’enfer, &c.... On peut dire avec probabilité, qu’une âme qui a passé par ce purgatoire spirituel, ou n’entrera pas dans le purgatoire de l’autre monde, ou n’y demeurera pas longtemps.—P. 597.
But the most characteristic passage on this subject is the following: it contains the essence of his mysticism:—Les affections et les connaissances de l’esprit purifié et élevé à la perfection sont d’un rang supérieur aux affections et aux connaissances naturelles, elles sont surnaturelles et divines; de sorte que, pour en acquérir les actes ou les habitudes, il est nécessaire que celles qui ne sortent point des bornes de la nature soient éteintes. C’est pourquoi il est d’une grande utilité en cette matière que l’esprit perde dans cette nuit obscure ses connaissances naturelles, pour être revêtu de cette lumière très-subtile et toute divine, et pour devenir lui-même, en quelque façon, tout divin dans son union avec la sagesse de Dieu. Cette nuit ou cette obscurité doit durer autant de temps qu’il en faut pour contracter l’habitude dans l’usage qu’on fait de cette lumière surnaturelle. On doit dire la même chose de la volonté: elle est obligée de se défaire de toutes ses affections qui l’attachent aux objets naturels, pour recevoir les admirables effets de l’amour qui est extrêmement spirituel, subtil, délicat, intime, qui surpasse tous les sentiments naturels et toutes les affections de la volonté, qui est enfin tout divin; et afin qu’elle soit toute transformée en cette amour par l’union qui lui est accordée dans la perte de tous ses biens naturels.
Il faut encore que la mémoire soit dénuée des images qui lui forment les connaissances douces et tranquilles des choses dont elle se souvient, afin qu’elle les regarde comme des choses étrangères, et que ces choses lui paraissent d’une manière différente de l’idée qu’elle en avait auparavant. Par ce moyen, cette nuit obscure retirera l’esprit du sentiment commun et ordinaire qu’il avait des objets créés, et lui imprimera un sentiment tout divin, qui lui semblera étranger; en sorte que l’âme vivra comme hors d’elle-même, et élevée au-dessus de la vie humaine; elle doutera quelquefois si ce qui se passe en elle n’est point un enchantement, ou une stupidité d’esprit; elle s’étonnera de voir et d’entendre des choses qui lui semblent fort nouvelles, quoiqu’elles soient les mêmes que celles qu’elle avait autrefois entre les mains. La cause de ce changement est parce que l’âme doit perdre entièrement ses connaissances et ses sentiments humains, pour prendre des connaissances et des sentiments divins; ce qui est plus propre de la vie future que de la vie présente.—P. 601.
Note to page 191.
‘Pour répondre à cette objection, je dis que plus la mémoire est unie à Dieu, plus elle perd ses connaissances distinctes et particulières, jusqu’à ce qu’elle les oublie entièrement: ce qui arrive lorsque l’âme est établie dans l’union parfaite. C’est pourquoi elle tombe d’abord dans un grand oubli, puisque le souvenir des espèces et des connaíssances s’évanouit en elle. Ensuite elle se comporte à l’égard des choses extérieures avec une négligence si notable et un si grand mépris d’elle-même, qu’étant toute abîmée en Dieu, elle oublie le boire et le manger, et elle ne sait si elle a fait quelque chose ou non, si elle a vu ou non; si on lui a parlé ou non. Mais lorsqu’elle est affermie dans l’habitude de l’union, qui est son souverain bien, elle ne souffre plus ces oubliances dans les choses raisonnables, dans les choses morales, ni dans les choses naturelles: au contraire, elle est plus parfaite dans les opérations convenables à son état, quoiqu’elle les produise par le ministère des images et des connaissances que Dieu excite d’une façon particulière dans la mémoire. Car lorsque l’habitude de l’union, qui est un état surnaturel, est formée, la mémoire et les autres puissances quittent leurs opérations naturelles et passent jusqu’à Dieu, qui est à leur égard un terme surnaturel. En sorte que la mémoire étant toute transformée en Dieu, ses opérations ne lui sont plus imprimées, et ne demeurent plus attachées à elle. La mémoire et les autres facultés de l’âme sont occupées de Dieu avec un empire si absolu, qu’elles semblent être toutes divines, et que c’est lui-même qui les meut par son esprit et par sa volonté divine, et qui les fait opérer en quelque façon divinement: “Puisque celui,” dit l’Apôtre, “qui s’unit au Seigneur, devient un même esprit avec lui” (1 Cor. vi. 17). Il est donc véritable que les opérations de l’âme, étant unies totalement à Dieu, sont toutes divines.’—Montée du Carmel, liv. III. ch. i.
Note to page 192.
La Nuit Obscure, liv. II. ch. xvii. xviii.:—‘L’esprit malin ne peut connaître ce qui se passe dans la volonté que par les opérations de ces puissances. Ainsi, plus les communications de Dieu son spirituelles, intérieures, et éloignées des sens, moins il peut découvrir et les pénétrer’.—P. 621.
Evil angels may counterfeit those supernatural communications which are vouchsafed through the agency of the good. But the infused passive contemplation, in which neither the understanding, the imagination, nor the sense, exercise their representative office, is secret and safe. ‘Quand Dieu la (l’âme) comble immédiatement par lui-même de ses grâces spirituelles, elle se dérobe entièrement à la vue de son adversaire, parce que Dieu, qui est son souverain Seigneur, demeure en elle, et ni les bons ni les mauvais anges ne peuvent y avoir entrée, ni découvrir les communications intimes et secrètes qui se font entre Dieu et l’âme. Elles sont toutes divines, elles sont infiniment élevées, elles sont en quelque sorte les sacrés attouchements des deux extrémités qui se trouvent entre Dieu et l’âme dans leur union: et c’est là où l’âme reçoit plus de biens spirituels qu’en tous les autres degrés de la contemplation (Cant. I. 1). C’est aussi ce que l’épouse demandait, quand elle priait l’Epoux divin de lui donner un saint baiser de sa bouche’.—Chap. xxiii. p. 623.
Thus, this culminating point of negation is at least, to some extent, a safeguard. The extinction of knowledge, by confining ourselves to the incomprehensible (Lettres Spirituelles, p. 724), and of joy, by renouncing spiritual delights, the refusal to entertain any extraordinary manifestations that assume a definite form or purport, does at the same time shut out all that region of visionary hallucination in which many mystics have passed their days. It is indisputably true that the more the mystic avoids, rather than craves, the excitements of imagination, sentiment, and miracle, the safer must he be from the delusions to which he is exposed, if not by the juggle of lying spirits, by the fever of his own distempered brain. No one who obeys John’s great maxim, ‘Il ne faut pas voyager pour voir, mais pour ne pas voir,’ will trouble the holy darkness of his church by any erratic novelties of light. Indeed, against such danger careful provision is made by that law which is with him the sine quâ non of mystical progress,—Ne regardez jamais votre supérieur, quel qu’il soit, que comme Dieu même, puisqu’il vous est donné comme lieutenant de Dieu.’—Précautions Spirituelles, p. 734.