The social consciousness, moreover, as we have seen, must have a conception of religion that can really justify the social consciousness, and, therefore, must do justice to the fully personal in God and man; and this need also leads the social consciousness naturally to the conception of religion as a personal relation.
2. Requires the Laws of a Deepening Friendship in Religion.—When this conception is carried out, it is found that growth in the religious life, in communion with God, follows the laws of a deepening friendship.[36] These laws can, therefore, be known and studied and formulated; and religion, at the same time, ceases to be unintelligible and ceases to be isolated—cut off from the rest of life, and becomes rather that one great fundamental relation which gives being and meaning and value to all the rest. In absolute harmony, then, with the genesis of the social consciousness, religion, in this conception, is bound up with the whole of life; and we catch a glimpse of the real and final unity of life in true love, the relation to God and the relation to man each helping everywhere the other. If religion is truly a personal relation, and its laws are those of a deepening friendship, then every human relation, heartily and truly fulfilled, becomes a new outlook on God, a revelation of new possibilities in the religious life. And, on the other hand, in that mutual self-revelation and answering trust upon which every growing personal relation is built, every fresh revelation of God is an enlarging of our ideal for our relations to others. Even biblical literature, perhaps, furnishes no more perfect example of the interplay of the human and divine relations than Hosea's account of his own providential leading through the human relation into the divine, and back again from the divine to a still better human.
3. Requires the Ideal Conditions of the Richest Life in Religion.—And if religion is to be justified in its supreme claims by the social consciousness, it must be felt to offer, besides, the ideal conditions of the richest life. As a personal relation to God, religion need not shrink from this test. Our great needs are character and happiness. Psychology seems to me to point to two great means and to two accompanying conditions of both character and happiness. The means are association and work; the corresponding conditions are reverence for personality, and objectivity—the mood of both love and work. The great essentials, therefore, to the richest life are (1) association in which personality is respected, and (2) work in which one can lose himself. Now, when would these conditions become ideal? On the one hand, as to association, when the association is with him who is of the highest character and of the infinitely richest life, and relation to whom is fundamental to every other personal relation; when, secondly, God is made concrete and real to us in an adequate personal revelation of his character, and of his love toward us; and when, third, the association is individualized for each one, who throws himself open to God, in God's spiritual presence in us, constantly and intimately, and yet unobtrusively, coöperating with us. And, on the other hand, as to work, when the work is God-given work, to which one is set apart, and in which he may lose himself with joy. These are the ideal conditions of the richest life. Just these ideal conditions Jesus declared actualities. For the fulfilment of just these, in the case of his disciples, he prayed in his double petition,—"Keep them," "Sanctify them," "Keep them in thy name," that is, through the divine association. "Sanctify them"—set them apart unto their God-given work. "As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world." Such a conception of religion can fairly claim to meet, broadly and deeply, the most exacting demands of the social consciousness for emphasis upon the personal relation in religion.
II. THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS THUS KEEPS THE TRULY MYSTICAL
I have no predilection for the term mystical, and would gladly confine it to what I have termed the neo-platonic or falsely mystical, were it not that, in spite of the dictionaries and the histories of philosophy and the histories of doctrine, the term is used in two quite different senses. Many, it seems to me, are defending what they call the mystical in religion, who have no idea of defending what Herrmann and Nash call mystical. And many, on the other hand, are defending and teaching the falsely mystical through an undefined fear that else they will lose the truly mystical. Theology and religion both greatly need a clear discrimination of terms here. Many are involved, in both living and thinking, in a self-contradiction, which they feel but cannot state; and are urging with themselves and with others a means of religious life and a corresponding method of conception, which really contradict their highest convictions in other lines of life and thought. Can we find our way out of this confusion?
If one studies carefully the historical representatives of mysticism, and especially such a strong type as Jacob Böhme, whom Erdmann calls the "culmination of mysticism," and still keeps his head, certain dangers in mysticism, it would seem, must become apparent. And it may be worth while to attempt a brief, but definite, analysis of the justifiable and unjustifiable elements in these mystical movements.
1. The Justifiable and Unjustifiable Elements in Mysticism.—(1) The first danger in mysticism seems to me to be the tendency to make simple emotion the supreme test of the religious state. Whether this emotion is thought of as ecstatic—such as some of the old mystics called "being drunk with God," or, as quietistic—in which imperturbability, passionlessness, become the highest good—is comparatively indifferent. The justifiable element here is the insistence that religion is real and is life; for feeling is perhaps the most powerful element in the sense of reality. So James says: "Speaking generally, the more a conceived object excites us, the more reality it has."[37] The unjustifiable element is the perilous subjection of the rational and ethical. Such a view must always lack any positive and adequate conception of our active life and vocation in the world.
(2) A second closely connected danger in mysticism is the tendency toward mere subjectivism. There is here a justifiable element in the emphasis on one's own personal conviction and faith; an unjustifiable element in the tendency to underrate anything but the purely subjective, to ignore all correcting influences from others, from the church, and from the Scriptures.
(3) A third danger follows from this: the marked tendency to underestimate the historical. The justifiable element here is, again, the emphasis on personal conviction and faith; the unjustifiable element is the tendency toward the greatest one-sidedness, and toward emptiness, especially of ethical content. Advising our young people simply to "listen to God," without the strongest insistence upon the historical revelation of God at the same time, is exposing them to the great danger of mistaking for an indubitable, divine revelation the veriest vagary that may chance in their empty-mindedness next to come into their thought. With the reason in supposed abeyance, the door is thus thrown open to the grossest superstitions. Honest attempts to deepen the religious life may thus become dangerous assaults upon true religion.
(4) A fourth danger in mysticism is so strong a tendency toward vagueness, that the common mind is not without warrant in identifying mysticism and mistiness. The justifiable element here is in the real difficulty of expressing the full content of the entire religious experience; the unjustifiable element is, once more, the slighting of the historical, the ethical, and the rational, especially in talking much of the contradictions of reason, and of what is above reason. Mysticism naturally lacks positive content.