MYSTICISM, AND ITS RESULTS.
CHAPTER I.
Secrecy; its Uses and Abuses.—Mystery; its Definition.—Mysticism, and its Definition.
It is not true, as has been sometimes said, that wherever there is secrecy there is error.
Secrecy, like most all else, hath its uses and abuses: its uses, as developed in modesty and domestic virtue, in religious meditation, self-examination, and prayer, and in prudence in the affairs of life: its abuses, in prudery, asceticism, superstitious awe, undue veneration of power, and when used as a cloud to conceal crime so hideous that nothing but the truth of God, vindicated by human laws founded thereon, directed by wisdom, can dispel it.
Virtue and modesty shrink from public gaze. Each looks alone to its innate sense, the gift of God, and to the sole approval of the great "I AM."
The hidden sincere aspirations of the heart are known only to Him who "breathed into man the