“A primrose by a river’s brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.”
The same primrose to a Linnæus or an Asa Gray would reveal an unseen world. Conversely, there are some things which cannot affect our physical being except by the way of mystical experience. Striking instances of this sort have been suitably termed by von Hügel “psycho-physical.” They are possible only where there is extraordinary sympathy between the mystical and physical, the latter having been made very completely the servant of the former. Only the mystic, or the specialist in the use of the Mystic Sense, is eligible for such experiences. The tremendously real fellowship with the Risen Lord of the disciples was of an ecstatic or psycho-physical order. It degrades the Resurrection manifestations to overemphasize their physical reality as though this, rather than the mystical, were the important feature. Their dominant note is spiritual. The physical perception came through the mystical. The experience of the disciples could not be reproduced in after times with other men, for the necessary conditions were wanting. Here and there among spiritual giants there is a well authenticated psycho-physical experience, but it is of phenomenal rather than of spiritual or moral value. And yet it is within our power to see the Christ as really and effectively as the Apostles did, though not wholly after the same manner.
St. Paul did not begin his life of faith when he had his psycho-physical experience on the road to Damascus. He reached there a turning point in its history. He was converted, turning his mystic powers in a new direction. Those who were with him were not sufficiently developed to see all that he saw or hear all that he heard.[28] His vision of Jesus was momentary but his life of faith was continuous. If faith was at its beginning when Abraham made his venture, it reached an illustrative and inviting climax when St. Paul made his. It was greater for St. Paul to espouse the cause of the Christ than to have a vision of Jesus. The phenomenal or extraordinary does not always culminate in such courage and devotion as his. It was because he was a mystic that he had his vision, not because he had a vision that he became a mystic. The Apostles who knew Jesus in the flesh had a lesser opportunity for faith than St. Paul who saw Him but once and then after psycho-physical fashion, and who never apprehended Him with all his bodily senses like those who saw “with their eyes” and “beheld,” and whose “hands handled” the Word of Life. It was fitting that St. Paul should give Christianity the impetus which made it a world religion. The highest development of faith has assigned to it the biggest undertaking. St. Peter with undeveloped intellectual gifts and faith based on sight could not do what St. Paul with highly developed reason and singular faith could do. The Risen Jesus Himself declared that faith dependent upon physical or psycho-physical experience is of a lower order than that in which the mystic sense is independent of phenomenal action of the bodily sense—Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
The great multitude of mortals will always be outside of psycho-physical experiences. There is no religious loss in the fact. Rather the contrary. That which gives the soul its permanent hold upon moral and spiritual realities and regard for them in mystics is not their rare psycho-physical experiences, but the same exercise of the Mystic Sense in the daily round of commonplace religious duty which is open to every human being, with like wonderful results upon character. A phenomenal spiritual occurrence in the case of one who was not living a religious life would be a mere wonder, perhaps even productive of spiritual harm.[29] Such experiences are never to be sought for. If they come their peril is not less than their inspiration.
“The trivial round, the common task,
Will furnish all we need to ask,
Room to deny ourselves, a road
To bring us daily nearer God.”