Following chronological order as nearly as he can, he next passes to George Fox and the early Quakers, introducing a curious—and in our own case quite novel—little episode concerning “The History of Hai Ebn Yokhdan,” a medieval Arabian romance, which old Barclay seems to have got hold of and pressed into the service of his sect, taking it for literal truth.
The twelfth book is devoted to Swedenborg, and a very valuable little sketch it is, and one which goes far to clear up the moral character, and the reputation for sanity also, of that much-calumniated philosopher, whom the world knows only as a dreaming false prophet, forgetting that even if he was that, he was also a sound and severe scientific labourer, to whom our modern physical science is most deeply indebted.
This is a short sketch of the contents of a book which is a really valuable addition to English literature, and which is as interesting as it is instructive. But Mr. Vaughan must forgive us if we tell him frankly that he has not exhausted the subject; that he has hardly defined Mysticism at all—at least, has defined it by its outward results, and that without classifying them; and that he has not grasped the central idea of the subject. There were more things in these same mystics than are dreamt of in his philosophy; and he has missed seeing them, because he has put himself rather in the attitude of a judge than of an inquirer.
He has not had respect and trust enough for the men and women of whom he writes; and is too much inclined to laugh at them, and treat them de haut en bas. He has trusted too much to his own great power of logical analysis, and his equally great power of illustration, and is therefore apt to mistake the being able to put a man’s thoughts into words for him, for the being really able to understand him. To understand any man we must have sympathy for him, even affection. No intellectual acuteness, no amount even of mere pity for his errors, will enable us to see the man from within, and put our own souls into the place of his soul. To do that, one must feel and confess within oneself the seed of the same errors which one reproves in him; one must have passed more or less through his temptations, doubts, hunger of heart and brain; and one cannot help questioning, as one reads Mr. Vaughan’s book, whether he has really done this in the case of those of whom he writes. He should have remembered too how little any young man can have experienced of the terrible sorrows which branded into the hearts of these old devotees the truths to which they clung more than to life, while they too often warped their hearts into morbidity, and caused alike their folly and their wisdom. Gently indeed should we speak even of the dreams of some self-imagined “Bride of Christ,” when we picture to ourselves the bitter agonies which must have been endured ere a human soul could develop so fantastically diseased a growth. “She was only a hysterical nun.” Well, and what more tragical object, to those who will look patiently and lovingly at human nature, than a hysterical nun? She may have been driven into a convent by some disappointment in love. And has not disappointed affection been confessed, in all climes and ages, to enshroud its victim ever after in a sanctuary of reverent pity? If sorrow “broke her brains,” as well as broke her heart, shall we do aught but love her the more for her capacity of love? Or she may have entered the convent, as thousands did, in girlish simplicity, to escape from a world she had not tried, before she had discovered that the world could give her something which the convent could not. What more tragical than her discovery in herself of a capacity for love which could never be satisfied within that prison? And when that capacity began to vindicate itself in strange forms of disease, seemingly to her supernatural, often agonising, often degrading, and at the same time (strange contradiction) mixed itself up with her noblest thoughts, to ennoble them still more, and inspire her not only with a desire of physical self-torture, which would seem holy both in her own eyes and her priest’s, but with a love for all that is fair and lofty, for self-devotion and self-sacrifice—shall we blame her—shall we even smile at her if, after the dreadful question: “Is this the possession of a demon?” had alternated with, “Is this the inspiration of a god?” she settled down, as the only escape from madness and suicide, into the latter thought and believed that she found in the ideal and perfect manhood of One whom she was told to revere and love as a God, and who had sacrificed His own life for her, a substitute for that merely human affection from which she was for ever debarred? Why blame her for not numbering that which was wanting, or making straight that which was crooked? Let God judge her, not we: and the fit critics of her conduct are not the easy gentlemanlike scholars, like Mr. Vaughan’s Athertons and Gowers, discussing the “aberrations of fanaticism” over wine and walnuts; or the gay girl, Kate; hardly even the happy mother, Mrs. Atherton; but those whose hairs are gray with sorrow; who have been softened at once and hardened in the fire of God; who have cried out of the bottomless deep like David, while lover and friend were hid away from them, and laid amid the corpses of their dead hopes, dead health, dead joy, as on a ghastly battle-field, “stript among the dead, like those who are wounded, and cut away from God’s hands;” who have struggled drowning in the horrible mire of doubt, and have felt all God’s billows and waves sweep over them, till they were weary of crying, and their sight failed for waiting so long upon God; and all the faith and prayer which was left was “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor suffer thy Holy One to see corruption.” Be it understood, however, for fear of any mistake, that we hold Mr. Vaughan to be simply and altogether right in his main idea. His one test for all these people, and all which they said or did, is—Were they made practically better men and women thereby? He sees clearly that the “spiritual” is none other than the “moral”—that which has to do with right and wrong; and he has a righteous contempt for everything and anything, however graceful and reverent, and artistic and devout, and celestial and super-celestial, except in as far as he finds it making better men and women do better work at every-day life.
But even on this ground we must protest against such a sketch as this; even of one of the least honourable of the Middle-age saints:
ATHERTON. Angela de Foligni, who made herself miserable—I must say something the converse of flourished—about the beginning of the fourteenth century, was a fine model pupil of this sort, a genuine daughter of St. Francis. Her mother, her husband, her children dead, she is alone and sorrowful. She betakes herself to violent devotion—falls ill—suffers incessant anguish from a complication of disorders—has rapturous consolations and terrific temptations—is dashed in a moment from a seat of glory above the empyrean . . .
Very amusing, is it not? To have one’s mother, husband, children die—the most commonplace sort of things—what (over one’s wine and walnuts) one describes as being “alone and sorrowful.” Men who having tasted the blessings conveyed in those few words, have also found the horror conveyed in them, have no epithets for the state of mind in which such a fate would leave them. They simply pray that if that hour came, they might just have faith enough left not to curse God and die. Amusing, too, her falling ill, and suffering under a complication of disorders, especially if those disorders were the fruit of combined grief and widowhood. Amusing also her betaking herself to violent devotion! In the first place, if devotion be a good thing, could she have too much of it? If it be the way to make people good (as is commonly held by all Christian sects), could she become too good? The more important question which springs out of the fact we will ask presently. “She has rapturous consolations and terrific temptations.” Did the consolations come first, and were the temptations a revulsion from “spiritual” exaltation into “spiritual” collapse and melancholy? or did the temptations come first, and the consolations come after, to save her from madness and despair? Either may be the case; perhaps both were: but somewhat more of care should have been taken in expressing so important a spiritual sequence as either case exhibits.
It is twelve years and more since we studied the history of the “B. Angela de Foligni,” and many another kindred saint; and we cannot recollect what were the terrific temptations, what was the floor of hell which the poor thing saw yawning beneath her feet. But we must ask Mr. Vaughan, has he ever read Boccaccio, or any of the Italian novelists up to the seventeenth century? And if so, can he not understand how Angela de Foligni, the lovely Italian widow of the fourteenth century, had her terrific temptations, to which, if she had yielded, she might have fallen to the lowest pit of hell, let that word mean what it may; and temptations all the more terrific because she saw every widow round her considering them no temptations at all, but yielding to them, going out to invite them in the most business-like, nay, duty-like, way? What if she had “rapturous consolations”? What if she did pour out to One who was worthy not of less but of more affection than she offered in her passionate southern heart, in language which in our colder northerns would be mere hypocrisy, yet which she had been taught to believe lawful by that interpretation of the Canticles which (be it always remembered) is common to Evangelicals and to Romanists? What if even, in reward for her righteous belief, that what she saw all widows round her doing was abominable and to be avoided at all risks, she were permitted to enjoy a passionate affection, which after all was not misplaced? There are mysteries in religion as in all things, where it is better not to intrude behind the veil. Wisdom is justified of all her children: and folly may be justified of some of her children also.
Equally unfair it seems to us is the notice of St. Brigitta—in our eyes a beautiful and noble figure. A widow she, too—and what worlds of sorrow are there in that word, especially when applied to the pure deep-hearted Northern woman, as she was—she leaves her Scandinavian pine-forests to worship and to give wherever she can, till she arrives at Rome, the centre of the universe, the seat of Christ’s vicegerent, the city of God, the gate of Paradise. Thousands of weary miles she travels, through danger and sorrow—and when she finds it, behold it is a lie and a sham! not the gate of Paradise, but the gate of Sodom and of hell. Was not that enough to madden her, if mad she became? What matter after that her “angel dictated discourses on the Blessed Virgin,” “bombastic invocations to the Saviour’s eyes, ears, hair?”—they were at least the best objects of worship which the age gave her. In one thing she was right, and kept her first love. “What was not quite so bad, she gives to the world a series of revelations, in which the vices of popes and prelates are lashed unsparingly and threatened with speedy judgment.” Not quite so bad? To us the whole phenomenon wears an utterly different aspect. At the risk of her life, at the risk of being burned alive—did anyone ever consider what that means?—the noble Norse-woman, like an Alruna maid of old, hurls out her divine hereditary hatred of sin and filth and lies. At last she falls back on Christ Himself, as the only home for a homeless soul in such an evil time. And she is not burnt alive. The hand of One mightier than she is over her, and she is safe under the shadow of His wings till her weary work is done and she goes home, her righteousness accepted for His sake: her folly, hysterics, dreams—call them by what base name we will—forgiven and forgotten for the sake of her many sorrows and her faithfulness to the end.
But whatever fault we can find with these sketches, we can find none with Mr. Vaughan’s reflections on them: