With regard to the doctrines of holy indifference and disinterested love, the German mystics are by no means so extreme as the French. Their views of the divine character were more profound and comprehensive; their heaven and hell were less external and realistic. A mysticism like theirs could not concentrate itself, as Quietism did, on the degrees and qualities of one particular affection. Their God was one who, by a benign necessity of nature, must communicate Himself in blessing, one whose love lay at the root of His being. ‘If men would only believe,’ cries Tauler, in one of his sermons, ‘how passionately God longs to save, and bring forth His Son in them!’ They care little for being themselves accused of making matter eternal, and creatures necessary to God, if they can free Him from the imputation of selfishness or caprice. And so they have no scruples as to whether it be not selfish and criminal to pray for our own salvation. In the sense of Tauler—a true and deep one—no man can say, ‘Thy will be done,’ and ‘Thy kingdom come,’ without praying for his own salvation. When Tauler seems to demand a self-abnegation which consents to perdition itself, he is to be understood in one of two ways: either he would say that salvation should be desired for the sake of God, above our own, and that we should patiently submit, when He sees fit to try us by withdrawing our hope of it; or that the presence and the absence of God make heaven and hell—that no conceivable enjoyment ought to be a heaven to us without Him, no conceivable suffering a hell with Him. But how different is all this from teaching, with some of the Quietists, that, since (as they say) God is equally glorified in our perdition and in our salvation, we should have no preference (if our love be truly disinterested) for the one mode of glorifying Him above the other. That any human being ever attained such a sublime indifference I shall not believe, until it is attested by a love for man as much above ordinary Christian benevolence, as this love for God professes to be above ordinary Christian devotion; for what is true of the principle of love, is true of its degrees—‘He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen?’
The strongly ascetic language of Tauler and his brethren, their almost Manichean contempt of the world, must be read by the light of their times, so full of misery and corruption; and by the light, also, of those fearful furnaces of trial through which they had personally passed. What soul, into which the iron has entered, will say, while the pain is still fresh, that the words of Tauler, or of Thomas à Kempis, are intemperate? It is probable that Tauler would have been less impatient to abolish his very personality, in order to give place to God, had he been able, like Luther, to regard salvation, in greater measure, as consisting in a work done for, as well as wrought in him. But his justification is a progressive, approximate process. It is not a something he accepts, but a something he has to work out; and seeing, as, with his true humility, he was sure to do, how unsatisfactory was his likeness to God, how great the distance still, the only resource open to him is to ignore or annihilate that sorry and disappointing personality altogether, that God, instead of it, may perform his actions, and be, in fact, the substitute for his soul. Both Tauler and Luther believe in substitution. The substitution of Tauler is internal—God takes his place within himself. The substitution of Luther is external—when he believed in Christ, the Saviour associated him with Himself, and so brought him into sonship. So inevitable is the idea of some substitution, where the sense of sin is deep. Luther believes as profoundly as Tauler in a present, inward, living Saviour, as opposed to a remote historic personage, intellectually acknowledged. In the theology of both the old dualism is broken down, and God is brought near to man, yea, within him. But the Son to whom Tauler is united, is the uncreated essence, the super-essential Word, from the beginning with the Father. The Son to whom Luther is united is emphatically the Godman, as truly human, in all sympathy and nearness, as when He walked the Galilean hills. The humanity of Christ is chiefly historic with Tauler, and for any practical purpose can scarcely be said to have survived His exaltation; but with Luther that humanity is so vital and so perpetual that he will even transfer to it the attributes of Deity. So far from desiring to pass upward from the man Christ Jesus to the Logos, as from a lower to a higher, Luther calls ‘that sinking himself so deep in flesh and blood,’ the most glorious manifestation of Godhead. He does not, with the Platonists, see degradation in the limitations of our nature; that nature has been honoured unspeakably, and is glorified, not annihilated, by the Incarnate One. According to Luther, the undivine consists in sin, and sin alone; not in our human means and modes, and processes of thought. Thus with him the divine and human are intimately associated, not merely in the religious life, as it is termed, but in our temporal hopes and fears, in every part of our complicated, struggling, mysterious humanity. The theology of Luther is more free, joyous, and human, partly because the serene and superhuman ideal of Tauler did not appear to him either possible or desirable, partly because sanctification was, with him, a change of state consequent on a change of relation—the grateful service of one who, by believing, has entered into rest; and partly, also, because he does not lose sight of the humanity of Christ, in His divinity, to the extent which Tauler does. Both Luther and Tauler say—the mere history alone will not profit: Christ must be born in you. Luther adds—Christ begins to be born in you as soon as you heartily believe upon Him. Tauler adds—Christ is born in you as soon as you have become nothing.
It would be very unfair to make it a matter of blame to Tauler that he did not see with Luther’s eyes, and do Luther’s work. Luther in one century, and Tauler in another, had their tasks appointed, and quitted themselves like men. It was for Tauler to loosen the yoke of asceticism: it was for Luther to break it in pieces. But it would be just as culpable to disguise the real differences between Tauler and Luther, and to conceal the truth, from a desire to make Tauler appear a more complete reformer than he really was. Our High Churchmen, in their insular self-complacency, love to depreciate Luther and the Continental reformers. Idolaters of the past as they are, we do not think that they will be better pleased with that noblest product of the Middle Age—the German mysticism of the fourteenth century, now placed within their reach. These sermons of Tauler assert so audaciously against sacerdotalism, the true priesthood of every Christian man. There is so little in them of the ‘Church about us,’ so much of the ‘Christ within us.’
It would have moved the scorn of some of the mystics, and the sorrow of others, could they have been made aware of the strange uses to which some persons were to turn them in this nineteenth century. The Emersonian philosophy, for example, is grieved that one series of writings should arrogate inspiration to themselves alone. It is obvious that a ready credence given to professed inspiration in other quarters, and later times, must tend to lower the exclusive prestige of the Scriptures. Thus the mystics may be played off against the Apostles, and all that is granted to mysticism may be considered as so much taken from the Bible. A certain door has been marked with a cross. Emerson, like the sly Abigail of the Forty Thieves, proceeds to mark, in like manner, all the doors in the street. Very gratifying truly, and comic in the highest degree, to witness the perplexity of mankind, going up and down, seeking some indication of the hoped-for guidance from above! I do not believe that the inspired writers were (to use Philo’s comparison) as passive as a lyre under the hand of a musician. But some, who are much shocked at this doctrine in their case, would have us be awe-stricken, rather than offended, by similar pretension on the part of certain mystics. Then, they tell us to tread delicately—to remember how little the laws of our own nature are known to us—to abstain from hasty judgment. In this way, it is supposed that Bibliolatry may be in some measure checked, and one of the greatest religious evils of the time be happily lessened. Criticise, if you will, John’s history, or Paul’s letters, but let due reverence restrain you from applying the tests of a superficial common sense to the utterances of the Montanuses, the Munzers, the Engelbrechts, the Hildegards, the Theresas. But what saith History as to mysticism? Very plainly she tells us that the mystics have been a power in the world, and a power for good, in proportion as their teaching has been in accordance with the Bible;—that the instances wherein they have failed have been precisely those in which they have attempted (whether wittingly, or not) to substitute another and a private revelation for it. They have come as a blessing to their age, just in proportion as they have called the attention of men to some of the deepest lessons of that book—to lessons too commonly overlooked. The very men who might seem, to superficial observers, to bear witness against the Bible, do in reality utter the most emphatic testimony for it. A fact of this nature lends additional importance to the history of mysticism at the present time.
Again, there are some who may suppose there is a real resemblance between the exhortations of Tauler, and the counsel given men by such philosophers as Fichte or Herr Teufelsdröckh. Do not both urge men to abandon introspections—to abstain from all self-seeking—to arise and live in the transcendental world, by abandoning hope and fear, and by losing our finite in an Infinite Will? Some similarity of sound there may occasionally be, but the antipathy of principle between the two kinds of teaching is profound and radical.
I will suppose that there comes to our Teufelsdröckh some troubled spirit, full of the burden of ‘this unintelligible world,’ questioning,—as to an oracle. The response is ready. ‘What do you come whining to me about your miserable soul for? The soul-saving business is going down fast enough now-a-days, I can tell you. So you want to be happy, do you? Pining after your Lubberland, as usual,—your Millennium of mere Ease and plentiful supply. Poor wretch! let me tell you this,—the very fact of that hunger of yours proves that you will never have it supplied. Your appetite, my friend, is too enormous. In this wild Universe of ours, storming-in, vague-menacing, it is enough if you shall find, not happiness, but existence and footing to stand on,—and that only by girding yourself for continual effort and endurance. I was wretched enough once—down in the “Everlasting Nay,” thinking this a Devil’s-world, because, in the universal scramble of myriads for a handful, I had not clutched the happiness I set my heart on. Now, here I am in the “Everlasting Yea,” serene as you see me. How? Simply by giving up wanting to be happy, and setting to work, and resigning myself to the Eternities, Abysses, or whatsoever other name shall be given to the fontal Vortices of the inner realms.... Miracles! Fiddlestick! Are not you a miracle to your horse? What can they prove?... Inspiration!—Try and get a little for yourself, my poor friend. Work, man: go work, and let that sorry soul of thine have a little peace.’
‘Peace,’ repeats our ‘poor friend,’ as he goes discomfited away. ‘Peace! the very thing this soul of mine will not let me have, as it seems. I know I am selfish. I dare say this desire of happiness is very mean and low, and all that; but I would fain reach something higher. Yet the first step thereto he does not show me. To leap into those depths of stoical apathy which that great man has reached, is simply impossible to poor me. His experience is not mine. He tells a bedridden man to climb the mountains, and he will straightway be well. Let him show me the way to a little strength, and in time I may. I will not hunger any more after mere “lubberly enjoyment,” if he will offer my affections something more attractive. But Infinite Will, and Law, and Abysses, and Eternities, are not attractive—nay, I am not sure that they are intelligible to me or any mortal.’
Now the doctrine of Tauler is nowhere more in contrast with that just uttered than in its tenderness of Christian sympathy and adaptation, as compared with the dreary and repellent pride of the philosopher. Instead of overwhelming the applicant by absurdly demanding, as the first step, a sublimity of self-sacrifice which only the finished adept may attain, Tauler is not too proud to begin at the beginning. Disinterested love is, with him, a mountain to which he points in the distance, bright with heavenly glory. Disinterested love, with Teufelsdröckh, is an avalanche hurled down right in the path of the beginner. Tauler does not see, in the unhappiness of the man, so much mere craven fear, or thwarted selfishness. He sees God’s image in him; he believes that that hunger of his soul, which he vainly tries to satisfy with things earthly, is a divine craving, a proof that he was born to satisfy it with things heavenly. He does not talk grandiloquently about Duty, and the glory of moral Freedom. He tells him that the same Saviour who died upon the cross is pleading and knocking at his heart, and doth passionately long to bless him. He sends him away to think over this fact, till it shall become more real to him than house and home, or sun and stars. He does not think that he can improve on ‘the low morality’ of the gospel by disdaining to appeal to hope and fear in order to snatch men from their sins. If so to plead be to speak after the flesh, after the flesh he will speak, to save a brother. There will be time enough, he thinks, if God sees fit to lead the man to the heights of absolute self-loss; and God will take His own way to do it. All Tauler has to do is to declare to him the truth concerning a Saviour, not to prescribe out of his own experience a law beyond that which is written. In this way, instead of striking him into despair, or bidding him bury care in work, he comforts and strengthens him. He does not despise him for keeping the law simply out of love to Him who gave it. He does not think it unmanly, but true manhood rather, when he sees him living, a suppliant, dependent on a life higher than his own—on a Person, whose present character and power were attested of old by history and miracle, as well as now by the ‘witness of the Spirit.’
I think the candid reader of Tauler’s sermons, and of Sartor Resartus, will admit that a difference in substance such as I have pointed out, does exist between them. If so, those who follow the philosophy of Teufelsdröckh cannot claim Tauler—have no right to admire him, and ought to condemn in him that which they condemn in the Christianity of the present day.