Such then is the teaching of the Mount Carmel and the Obscure Night, starred with numerous most irrelevant quotations from the psalms and the prophecies, as though David and Isaiah were Quietists, and spent their days in trying to benumb imagination, banish the sensuous images which made them poets, and tone down all distinct ideas to a lustreless, formless neutral tint. The Spanish painters have not more anachronisms than the Spanish mystics; and I think of Murillo’s ‘Moses striking the Rock,’ where Andalusian costumes make gay the desert, Andalusian faces stoop to drink, and Andalusian crockery is held out to catch the dashing streams.
In John of the Cross we behold the final masterpiece of Romanist mysticism, and the practice (if here the term be applicable) of supernatural theopathy is complete. The Art of Sinking in Religion—the divinity of diving, could go no deeper. The natives of South America say that the lobo or seal has to swallow great stones when he wishes to sink to the river-bed—so little natural facility has he that way. We sinners, too, have no native alacrity for the mystical descent: our gravitation does not tend towards that depth of nothing; and huge and hard are the stones (not bread) with which this mystagogue would lade us to bring us down. And when, in imagination at least, at the bottom, we are smothered in an obscure night of mud. What a granite boulder is this to swallow,—to be told that the faintest film of attachment that links you with any human being or created thing will frustrate all your aim, and be stout as a cable to hold back your soul,—that with all your mind, and soul, and strength, you must seek out and adore the Uncomfortable, for its own sake—that, drowned and dead, you must lie far down, hidden, not from the pleasant sunshine only, but from all sweet gladness of faith and hope and love—awaiting, in obstruction, an abstraction. This resurrection to a supersensuous serenity, wherein divine powers supersede your own, is a mere imagination—a change of words; the old hallucination of the mystic. After going through a certain amount of suffering, the devotee chooses to term whatever thoughts or feelings he may have, his own no longer: he fancies them divine. It is the same man from first to last.
Admitting its great fundamental error—this unnaturalness,—as though grace came in to make our flesh and blood a senseless puppet pulled by celestial wires,—it must be conceded that the mysticism of John takes the very highest ground. It looks almost with contempt upon the phantoms, the caresses, the theurgic toys of grosser mystics. In this respect, John is far beyond Theresa. He has a purpose; he thinks he knows a way to it; and he pursues it, unfaltering, to the issue. He gazes steadily on the grand impalpability of the Areopagite, and essays to mount thither with a holy ardour of which the old Greek gives no sign. And this, too, with the vision-craving sentimental Theresa at his side, and a coarsely sensuous Romanism all around him. No wonder that so stern a spiritualism was little to the taste of some church-dignitaries in soft raiment. It is impossible not to recognize a certain grandeur in such a man. Miserably mistaken as he was, he is genuine throughout as mystic and ascetic. Every bitter cup he would press to the lips of others he had first drained himself. His eagerness to suffer was no bravado—no romancing affectation, as with many of his tribe. In his last illness at Pegnuela he was allowed his choice of removal between two places. At one of them his deadly enemy was prior. He bade them carry him thither, for there he would have most to endure. That infamous prior treated with the utmost barbarity the dying saint, on whom his implacable hatred had already heaped every wrong within his power.[[314]] Let, then, a melancholy admiration be the meed of John—not because the mere mention of the cross was sufficient, frequently, to throw him into an ecstasy,—not because his face was seen more than once radiant with a lambent fire from heaven,—these are the vulgar glories of the calendar,—but because, believing in mystical death, he did his best to die it, and displayed in suffering and in action a self-sacrificing heroism which could only spring from a devout and a profound conviction. We find in him no sanctimonious lies, no mean or cruel things done for the honour of his Church—perhaps he was not thus tempted or commanded as others have been,—and so, while he must have less merit with Rome as a monk, let him have the more with us as a man.
Note to page 188.
Montée du Carmel, liv. II. ch. ii. and iv.; also La Nuit Obscure, I. viii. and II. ch. v.-ix. This night is far more dark and painful than the first and third; and while the first is represented as common to many religious aspirants, the second is attained but by a few.
Si quelqu’un demande pourquoi l’âme donne le nom de nuit obscure à la lumière divine qui dissipe ses ignorances, je réponds que cette divine sagesse est non-seulement la nuit de l’âme, mais encore son supplice, pour deux raisons: la première est, parce que la sublimité de la sagesse divine surpasse de telle sorte la capacité de l’âme, que ce n’est que nuit et ténèbres pour elle; la seconde, la bassesse et l’impureté de l’âme sont telles, que cette sagesse la remplit de peines et d’obscurités.—P. 593.
Mais le plus grand supplice de l’âme est de croire que Dieu la hait, la délaisse, et la jette pour cette raison dans les ténèbres.... En effet, lorsque la contemplation dont Dieu se sert pour purifier l’âme la mortifie en la dépouillant de tout, l’âme éprouve, avec une vivacité pénétrante, toute l’horreur que cause la mort, et toutes les douleurs et tous les gémissements de l’enfer, &c.... On peut dire avec probabilité, qu’une âme qui a passé par ce purgatoire spirituel, ou n’entrera pas dans le purgatoire de l’autre monde, ou n’y demeurera pas longtemps.—P. 597.
But the most characteristic passage on this subject is the following: it contains the essence of his mysticism:—Les affections et les connaissances de l’esprit purifié et élevé à la perfection sont d’un rang supérieur aux affections et aux connaissances naturelles, elles sont surnaturelles et divines; de sorte que, pour en acquérir les actes ou les habitudes, il est nécessaire que celles qui ne sortent point des bornes de la nature soient éteintes. C’est pourquoi il est d’une grande utilité en cette matière que l’esprit perde dans cette nuit obscure ses connaissances naturelles, pour être revêtu de cette lumière très-subtile et toute divine, et pour devenir lui-même, en quelque façon, tout divin dans son union avec la sagesse de Dieu. Cette nuit ou cette obscurité doit durer autant de temps qu’il en faut pour contracter l’habitude dans l’usage qu’on fait de cette lumière surnaturelle. On doit dire la même chose de la volonté: elle est obligée de se défaire de toutes ses affections qui l’attachent aux objets naturels, pour recevoir les admirables effets de l’amour qui est extrêmement spirituel, subtil, délicat, intime, qui surpasse tous les sentiments naturels et toutes les affections de la volonté, qui est enfin tout divin; et afin qu’elle soit toute transformée en cette amour par l’union qui lui est accordée dans la perte de tous ses biens naturels.
Il faut encore que la mémoire soit dénuée des images qui lui forment les connaissances douces et tranquilles des choses dont elle se souvient, afin qu’elle les regarde comme des choses étrangères, et que ces choses lui paraissent d’une manière différente de l’idée qu’elle en avait auparavant. Par ce moyen, cette nuit obscure retirera l’esprit du sentiment commun et ordinaire qu’il avait des objets créés, et lui imprimera un sentiment tout divin, qui lui semblera étranger; en sorte que l’âme vivra comme hors d’elle-même, et élevée au-dessus de la vie humaine; elle doutera quelquefois si ce qui se passe en elle n’est point un enchantement, ou une stupidité d’esprit; elle s’étonnera de voir et d’entendre des choses qui lui semblent fort nouvelles, quoiqu’elles soient les mêmes que celles qu’elle avait autrefois entre les mains. La cause de ce changement est parce que l’âme doit perdre entièrement ses connaissances et ses sentiments humains, pour prendre des connaissances et des sentiments divins; ce qui est plus propre de la vie future que de la vie présente.—P. 601.