We are Two in One, we have reached the goal,
Immortal rapture that cannot die.
Now, a blessed silence doth o’er us flow,
Both wills together would have it so.
He is given to her, she is given to Him,—
What now shall befall her, the soul doth know—
And therefore am I consoled.”
This is the end of all mysticism. It is the term to which all the artistic efforts of the mystics have striven to lead the hearts of other men.
THE EDUCATION OF THE SPIRIT
The old mystics were fond of saying that “Man is a made trinity, like to the unmade Blessed Trinity.” That particular form of words comes to us from Julian of Norwich; but it expresses a thought which we often meet in the spiritual writers of the Middle Ages. Further, these writers were disposed to find in man’s nature a reflection of the three special characters which theology attributes to the Christian Godhead. They thought that the power of the Father had its image in the physical nature of man: the wisdom of the Son in his reason: the creative vigour of the Holy Spirit in his soul. Some taught also that each of these three aspects of humanity corresponded with one aspect of the triune reality of the universe: the physical world of nature, the mental world of idea, the ultimate world of spirit. The sceptic of course would express this differently, and see in it but one more illustration of the fact that man always makes God in his own image. But without scepticism I think we may explain it thus: that those who have pondered most deeply on the Divine Nature have most easily found in its richness, and have best understood, just those attributes which are most clearly marked in human nature. Man has inevitably been for them a key to God.