Willoughby. Aye, its adventures—both persecuted and canonized by kings and pontiffs; one age enrolling the mystic among the saints, another committing him to the inquisitor’s torch, or entombing him in the Bastille. And the principle indestructible after all—some minds always who must be religious mystically or not at all.
Atherton. I thought we might this evening enquire into the causes which tend continually to reproduce this religious phenomenon. You have suggested some already. Certain states of society have always fostered it. There have been times when all the real religion existing in a country appears to have been confined to its mystics.
Willoughby. In such an hour, how mysticism rises and does its deeds of spiritual chivalry——
Gower. Alas! Quixotic enough, sometimes.
Willoughby. How conspicuous, then, grows this inward devotion!—even the secular historian is compelled to say a word about it——
Atherton. And a sorry, superficial verdict he gives, too often.
Willoughby. How loud its protest against literalism, formality, scholasticism, human ordinances! what a strenuous reaction against the corruptions of priestcraft!
Atherton. But, on the other side, Willoughby—and here comes the pathetic part of its romance—mysticism is heard discoursing concerning things unutterable. It speaks, as one in a dream, of the third heaven, and of celestial experiences, and revelations fitter for angels than for men. Its stammering utterance, confused with excess of rapture labouring with emotions too huge or abstractions too subtile for words, becomes utterly unintelligible. Then it is misrepresented: falls a victim to reaction in its turn; the delirium is dieted by persecution, and it is consigned once more to secrecy and silence.
Gower. There, good night, and pleasant dreams to it!
Willoughby. It spins still in its sleep its mingled tissue of good and evil.