In the present day, there are few who will acknowledge the name of mystic. Indeed, Mysticism is now held in combination with so many modifying or even counteracting elements, that a very strongly-marked or extreme expression of it is scarcely possible. Yet in many and very diverse forms of religious opinion, a mystical tendency may be discerned. It is apparent in the descendant of Irving, with his supernatural gifts; among some of the followers of Fox, where the inner light eclipses the outer; in the disciple of Swedenborg, so familiar with the world of spirits. The mystical tendency is present, also, wherever the subjective constituent of religion decidedly overbalances the objective. It is to be found whereever the religionist (under whatever pretence) refuses to allow the understanding to judge concerning what falls within its proper province. Thus, I tend toward mysticism, if I invest either my religious intuitions or my particular interpretation of scripture, with a divine halo—with a virtual infallibility—and charge with profanity the man whose understanding is dissatisfied with my conclusions. The ‘evangelical’ is wrong, if he hastily condemns, as ‘carnal,’ him who does not find his express doctrines in the Bible;—if, instead of attempting to satisfy the understanding of the objector with reasons, he summarily dismisses it, by misquoting the passage, ‘the natural man discerneth not the things of the spirit.’ The ‘spiritualist’ errs, in precisely the same way, when he assumes that his intuitions are too holy to be questioned by the logical faculty,—proclaims his religious sentiment above criticism, and pronounces every objection the utterance of a pedantic formalism, or a miserable conventionality. So to do, is to confound the childlike and the childish,—to forget that we should be, in malice, children; but in understanding, men. If the intuition of the one man, or the faith of the other, be removed from the sphere of knowing, and the court of evidence,—be an impulse or an instinct, rather than a conviction, and be rendered inaccessible utterly to the understanding, then is the bridge broken down between them and their fellows. The common tongue of interpretation and the common ground of argument are taken altogether away. For such faith no reason can be rendered to him who has it not.

In Germany, it may be questioned whether the efforts of the ‘faith-philosophers’ were not more injurious than helpful to the cause which they espoused. They endeavoured to shelter religion from Rationalism by relegating it to the province of feeling or sentiment. Hamann and Jacobi[[399]] might have withstood Rationalism on its own ground. But these defenders abandoned, without a blow, the fortifications of an impregnable argument, and shut themselves up in the citadel—faith. Both were soon eclipsed by the deservedly great name of Schleiermacher. His position was a stronger one than theirs, and more comprehensive; yet, in the issue, scarcely more satisfactory. In Schleiermacher’s theology, the individual ‘Christian consciousness’ is made the test according to which more or less of the recorded history of the Saviour is to be received. The supposed facts of Christianity contract or expand according to the supposed spiritual wants of the individual Christian. Thus, if any say, ‘Certain of the miracles, the resurrection and ascension of Christ, do not make a part of my Christian consciousness,—I can realize spiritual communion with Christ, independently of these accessories,’—Schleiermacher tells him he may dispense with believing them. Here, again, too much is conceded: portions of the very heart are set aside as non-essentials. Christianity is a living whole, and cannot be thus dismembered without peril to life. This baptism of Schleiermacher is rapid and sweeping, and the veriest sceptics are Christianized in spite of themselves. Men whose Christianity is historic, much as Mahommedanism is historic, turn out excellent Christians, notwithstanding.

Such a theory is, after all, ignoble, because it does not seek Truth alone, at all costs. The first object of religious inquiry is not moral expediency, not edification, not what we may deem productive of the most wholesome impressions, not what we wish to find true; but what is true. Let us seek the Truth, and if faithful to what we can find of that, these other things will be added to us. Mere good nature is a spurious charity. The cause of religion can never be served by acquiescence in a falsehood. The Christianity offered by Schleiermacher is a glass which mirrors every man—a source of motive, never beyond our own level—a provision which is always what we like and expect. Now, it may so happen that the kind of religion we should like is not that which is the true—not that, therefore, which is good for us. We need a religion adapted to us, but yet high above us, to raise us up. The untrained eye does not at the first view appreciate the old masters of art. If we are sincere in seeking God’s truth, we must count on having to receive some things that do not at once commend themselves to our judgment, but into which we shall grow up, in the process of spiritual education. Now, for this kind of self-transcendence Schleiermacher makes no preparation, and his easy entrance does, in reality, preclude progress. We are not surprised to see the Romish priest considering first, not what is truth or fact, but what statement will bring the greatest number within the pale of the Church, what will produce the most edifying impression, what will do least violence to the current preconceptions. The children of the day should disdain the slightest approach to such facile complaisance. If Christ did not rise from the dead, Christianity is a lie. On this question no inquiry must be spared—our minds must be thoroughly made up. But to allow the name of Christian to men who do not regard this fact as established, looks as though we were afraid of inquiry,—as politic governments will seem hot to see offences which it would be dangerous to punish. I justify my means by my end—I am wanting in truth and manhood, if, having myself rejected some doctrine, I yet appear to hold it, because I think it morally expedient that it should be generally received. I am guilty of a similar pious fraud if I yield up as non-essential some fact on which the Christian faith must hang, in order to recall certain wanderers to the fold of a nominal Christianity. Schleiermacher’s sincerity can only be saved at the expense of his judgment. This was the weak point of his accomplished intellect—a weakness shared by many a German divine,—he regarded external facts as of small moment compared with inward feeling. The continual evaporation of outward reality in sentiment is the vitiating principle in his system.[[400]]

Side by side with the advocates of faith and feeling in the religious province, appeared German Romanticism in the field of art and literature. The Romanticists were the enthusiastic champions of the Ideal against Realism, the assailants of all artificial method and servile conventionality, the sworn foes everywhere of that low-minded, prosaic narrowness which Germany calls Philistinism.[[401]]

Schelling gave them a poetical philosophy, and young Schleiermacher’s Discourses on Religion were, for a time, their Bible. French Encyclopedism and German Rationalism had professed a summary explanation for every mystery, had exiled the supernatural, and ridiculed the Middle Age. In the pages of the Athenæum and the Europa, Romanticism undertook the defence of mediæval superstition, extolled its fist-law, its wager by battle, its ‘earnest’ religious wars; and confounding clear thought and definite expression with the pert self-complacence of Rationalism, announced itself enamoured of every mystical obscurity, for the very shadow’s sake.

The evils against which the Romanticists contended were many of them real; much they laughed at, well deserving ridicule; but with their truth they mingled a world of fantastic folly. Voltaire was, in many things, as shallow as he was transparent,—therefore the muddy obscurity of every visionary who rhapsodized about the All, must be profound as the ‘everlasting deeps.’ Conventionalism, utilitarianism, logic-grinding, old formulas,—all were to be dethroned by the inspired votaries of intellectual intuition. The most startling extravagance or desperate paradox of opinion was hailed with the loudest plaudits, as most surely fraught with the divine afflatus. The Romanticists essayed to harmonize the ideal and the real. For the most part, they succeeded only in confounding their spheres; and ending by absorbing the real in the ideal. In their hands, philosophy became imaginative and rhetorical,—a very garden of gay fancies; while poetry grew metaphysical and analytic. Where they should have created, they dissect; where they should have inquired, they imagine.[[402]]

It is a cardinal doctrine with Romanticism that the common should be regarded as the wondrous, and the wondrous as the common. The land of faëry is to be our beaten business track; its dreamy speech, a household language; its spirit-glances, our familiar looks. At the same time, the objects and appliances of everyday existence are to be informed with supernatural significance, and animated with a mysterious life. So, in Sartor Resartus (a book which is simply the Evangel of Romanticism, in its more vigorous form), Mr. Carlyle reminds the reader that his ‘daily life is girt with Wonder,’ and that his ‘very blankets and breeches are Miracles.’ Thus our life is to be at once a trophy and a bazaar; like old Westminster Hall, where the upper story was gorgeous with blazonry and proud with the ensigns of chivalrous romance, and the ground-floor laid out in shops.

Ere long, Romanticists like Creuzer and Görres, began to resolve the old mythologies into allegorical science: while Romanticists like Frederick Schlegel, were resolving religion into poetry, and morality into æsthetics. Dante and Tasso, Camoens and Goethe, had intermingled classic and romantic myths as a poetic decoration, or a fanciful experiment. With the Romanticists (so frequently mastered by their own materials), such admixture became actual earnest. They announced the approach of a new Religion of Humanity and Art. They summoned flower-spirits from the Ganges, braceleted crocodiles from the Nile, monstrous forms from the Talmud and the Koran, to fill its incongruous pantheon of symbols. The novel wonders of animal magnetism were to constitute its miracles. Thus, like Proclus, they could make philosophy superstitious, they could not make superstition philosophical. They attempted the construction of a true and universal religion, by heaping together the products of every recorded religious falsity, and bowing at all shrines in turn. Like Iamblichus, they sought in theurgy for a sign; and in their credulous incredulity, grew greedy of every supranaturalism except the scriptural. In a moment of especial inspiration, Frederick Schlegel, writing in the Athenæum, declared that the only opposition which the new religion of philanthropy and good taste was likely to encounter, would spring from the few Christians proper still in existence; but even they, when the Aurora actually shone, would fling aside their prejudice, fall down, and worship.[[403]]

Such anticipations appear ridiculous enough. But against ridicule, to which they were peculiarly sensitive, the Romanticists possessed a ready safeguard. This resource consisted in their doctrine of Irony. After advancing a paradox, or pushing a fancy to the edge of absurdity, let the author turn round, and abandon his own creation; or dissipate it, with a serene smile; or assuming another tone, look down upon it, as questionable, from some new and superior height. Thus, if any dullard begins gravely to criticise, he shall have only laughter for his pains, as one too gross for the perception of humour; while at the same time, the reader is given to understand that beneath that jest there does lie, nevertheless, a kernel of most earnest and momentous truth. According to the Ironic theory, such saying and unsaying is not convenient merely (as a secret door of escape behind the tapestry), but in the highest degree artistic. For what is Art, but a sublime play? Does not loftiest genius ever sport, godlike, with its material, remote and riddling to the lower apprehension of common minds? In Sartor Resartus the English public have been familiarized with this ingenious device. After professing to translate, from the paper-bags of Teufelsdröckh, some ultra-transcendental sally, Mr. Carlyle makes a practice of addressing the reader, admits that he may well feel weary and perplexed, confesses that he himself does not always see his way in these ‘strange utterances,’ calls them a farrago whose meaning must be mainly conjectured, and finally leaves it pleasantly uncertain how much is delirium, how much inspiration.

But no artifice could save Romanticism, in the hands of its most extravagant representatives, from the condign catastrophe. This sensuous æsthetic religion, this effeminate symbolism, with its gallery of arbitrary and incongruous types from the dreams of all time,—this worship of Art as Deity, could tend but in one direction. The men who began with sentimental admiration for the Church of Rome, ended by passing their necks beneath her yoke; and the artist terminates miserably in the bigot. They had contemned the Reformation, on æsthetic grounds, as unromantic: they came to dread it on superstitious grounds as unsafe. Romanticism, so sanguine and so venturous in its revolutionary youth, grew anile in its premature decrepitude; mumbled its credos; cursed its heretics—and died.