[1]By Earle Bailie. London: Thomas Baker. 1905.
[2]_Cf._ the Polish sect of _Mariavites_, or _Mystic Priests_, under the
misguidance of the woman Mary Frances, whose extravagances were
condemned by Rome, September 1904, and again April 1906.
[3]Provost is the equivalent in a College of Clergy of the Abbot in a
Monastery; though many Congregations of Canons Regular have borrowed
the title and style of Abbot from the monastic institute.
[4]Translation by J. P. Arthur. _The Founders of the New Devotion._ Kegan
Paul. 1905.
[5]Especially: _Outlines of the Life of Thomas a Kempis_. By Sir Francis
Cruise. _C.T.S._ of Ireland. _Thomas a Kempis_. By the same. London:
Kegan Paul. _Life of the Venerable Thomas a Kempis_. By Dom Scully.
London: Washbourne. _Thomas a Kempis and the Brothers of the Common
Life_. By Kettlewell. London: Kegan Paul. _Thomas a Kempis, His Age
and His Book_. By De Montmorency, London: Methuen.
[6]Father Sharpe, in his recent admirable volume, _Mysticism: Its True
Nature and Value_, writes thus of the mystic teaching, properly so
called, of a Kempis's world-famous masterpiece: "_The Imitation of
Christ_ ... probably owes much of its vast popularity to its constant
recurrence to the elementary duties of religion and morality, and its
insistence on the necessity of their performance as the prerequisite
of the more exalted spiritual states. The 'purgative,' 'illuminative,'
and 'unitive' ways are seen, so to speak, together, and are dealt with
as aspects or constituents of the Christian life as a whole, to the
completeness of which all three are necessary and, in different ways,
of equal importance. The purely mystical passages are comparatively
few and short; and the abundance of practical directions the book
contains has sometimes caused its mystical character to be entirely
overlooked. This disproportion, however, is quite sufficiently to be
accounted for by the character of the work, which is that of a
directory of spiritual life in general, and not a scientific treatise
on any particular department of it. In such a book attempts at
describing the indescribable phenomena of mysticism would obviously
have been out of place, whereas the practical details of the lower and
preliminary states admit of and require minute explanation. But the
tone of the whole book is mystical, and the most commonplace duties
and the most humiliating strivings with temptation are in a manner
illuminated and glorified by the brilliancy of the result to which
they tend. Thus, in point of fact, the higher and lower elements, the
mystical and the non-mystical, the purgative, the illuminative and the
unitive, are blended in actual human experience" (pp. 188, 189).
[7]The whole subject of mystic theology is excellently well treated by
Rev. A. B. Sharpe, M.A., in a volume entitled _Mysticism: Its True
Nature and Value_, already quoted, just published by Sands & Co. There
is frequent reference to our Saint and his writings.