1. Unethical.—For, in the first place, this neo-platonic conception of religion has nothing distinctly ethical in it. The ethical is manifestly not made the test of true religious experience, as it is in the New Testament. The social consciousness, on the other hand, is predominantly and emphatically ethical, and can have nothing to do with a religion in which ethics is either omitted or is wholly subordinate. At this point, therefore, the pressure of the social consciousness is strongly against a neo-platonic mysticism.
2. Does not Give a Real Personal God.—In the second place, the social consciousness cannot get along with the falsely mystical, because it does not give a real personal God. Let us be clear upon this point. Is not Herrmann right when he says that all that can be said of the God of this mysticism is "that he is not the world? Now that is precisely all that mysticism has ever been able to say of God as it conceives him. Plainly, the world and the conception of it are all that moves the soul while it thinks thus of God. Only disappointment can ensue to the soul whose yearning for God in such case keeps on insisting that God must be something utterly different from the world. If such a soul will reflect awhile on the nature of the God thus reached, the fact must inevitably come to the surface that its whole consciousness is occupied with the world now as it was before, for evidently it has grasped no positive ideas—nothing but negative ideas—about anything else. Mysticism frequently passes into pantheism for this very reason, even in men of the highest religious energy; they refuse to be satisfied with the mere longing after God, or to remain on the way to him, but determine to reach the goal itself, and rest with God himself."[31]
Now we have already seen that the social consciousness can find adequate support and power and motive only in faith that its purpose is God's purpose, that the deepest thing in the universe is an ethical purpose, conceivable only in a personal God; and, therefore, neither an empty negation nor pantheism can ever satisfy it.
3. Belittles the Personal in Man.—The false mysticism, moreover, belittles the personal in man as well as in God; for it does not treat with real reverence either the personality, the ethical freedom, the sense of obligation, or the reason of man. This whole thought of "a state that is half a swoon and half an ecstasy" is a sort of swamping of clear self-consciousness and definite moral initiative, in which the very reality of man's personality consists. It is a heathen, not a Christian, idea of inspiration which demands the suppression of the human, whether in consciousness, in will, in reason, or by belittling the sense of obligation to others. But mysticism has at least tended toward failure in all these respects.
And yet, from the time that Paul argued with the Corinthians against their immense overestimation of the gift of speaking with tongues, this fascination of the merely mystical has been felt in Christianity. (1) The very mystery and unintelligibility of the experience, (2) its ecstatic emotion, (3) its sense of being controlled by a power beyond one's self, and (4) its contrast with ordinary life—all these elements make the mystical experience seem to most all the more divine, although in so judging they are applying a pagan, not a Christian, standard. So far as these experiences have value, it is probably due to the strong and realistic sense which they give of being in the presence of an overpowering being. If thoroughly permeated and dominated with other elements, this sense is not without its value.
But it is interesting to notice that, although Paul does not deny the legitimacy of the gift of speaking with tongues, he nevertheless absolutely subordinates it, and insists that the most ecstatic religious emotions are completely worthless without love. Evidently the considerations which weighed most with the Corinthians in valuing the gift of unintelligible ecstatic utterance weighed little with Paul; and one can see how Paul implicitly argues against each of those considerations: (1) God is not an unknown, mystic force, but the definite, concrete God of character, shown in Christ. (2) He speaks to reason and will as well as to feeling, and he best speaks to feeling when he speaks to the whole man. True religious emotion must have a rational basis and must move to duty. (3) Religion, he would urge, is a self-controlled and voluntary surrender to a personal God of character, not a passive being swept away by an unknown emotion. (4) God has most to give, be assured, he would have added, in the common ways of life.
Now, in every one of these protests, the social consciousness instinctively joins. It cannot rest in a conception of religion that belittles the personal in God or man; for it is itself an emphatic insistence upon the fully personal. And it can, least of all, get on with the mystical ignoring of the rational and the ethical, for it holds that the social evolution moves steadily on to a rational like-mindedness, and to a definitely ethical civilization. Giddings puts the sociological conclusion in a sentence: "It is the rational, ethical consciousness that maintains social cohesion in a progressive democracy."[32] Now that which is clearly recognized as the goal in the relations of man to man will not be set aside as unwarranted or subordinate in the relations of man to God. And we may depend upon it.
4. Leaves the Historically, Concretely Christian.—Once more, the social consciousness cannot approve of the mystical conception of religion in its ignoring, in its highest state, the historically and concretely Christian. With mysticism's subjective, emotional, and abstract conception of the highest communion with God, and of the way thereto, the historical and concrete at best can be to it only subordinate means, more or less mysteriously connected with the attainment of the goal, and left behind when once the goal is reached.
The social consciousness, on the other hand, requires historical justification, and definitely builds on the facts of the historical social evolution.
In the case of the prophets and psalmists, for example, who alone in the ancient world most fully anticipated the modern social feeling, the social consciousness plainly arose in the face of the concrete historical life of a people. No result of modern Old Testament criticism is more certain. So that, speaking of "the religious aspects of the social struggle in Israel," McCurdy can use this strong language: "It is not too much to say that this conflict, intense, uninterrupted, and prolonged, is the very heart of the religion of the Old Testament, its most regenerative and propulsive movement. To the personal life of the soul, the only basis of a potential, world-moving religion, it gave energy and depth, assurance and hopefulness, repose and self-control, with an outlook clear and eternal."[33] But it was this standpoint of the prophets that the falsely mystical conception of religion abandoned. We may well take to heart, in our estimate of mysticism, the gradual but steady elimination of ecstasy in the development of Israel, and its practically total absence in those we count in the highest sense prophets.[34]