A mysticism which rests ultimately on the doctrine that the human soul is of one substance with God, is fain to fall down and worship at the feet of a man. Such directorship is, of course, no essential part of mysticism—is, in fact, an inconsistency; but, though no member, or genuine outgrowth, it is an entozoon lamentably prevalent. The mystic, after all his pains to reduce himself to absolute passivity, becomes not theopathetic, but anthropopathetic—suffers, not under God, but man.
BOOK THE THIRD
THE MYSTICISM OF THE NEO-PLATONISTS
CHAPTER I.
——a man is not as God,
But then most godlike being most a man.
Tennyson.
Kate. What a formidable bundle of papers, Henry.
Atherton. Don’t be alarmed, I shall not read all this to you; only three Neo-Platonist letters I have discovered.
Mrs. Atherton. We were talking just before you came in, Mr. Willoughby, about Mr. Crossley’s sermon yesterday morning.
Willoughby. Ah, the Tabernacle in the Wilderness; did you not think his remarks on the use and abuse of symbolism in general very good? Brief, too, and suggestive; just what such portions of a sermon should be.