CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM
The Bampton Lectures, 1899
Considered in Eight Lectures Delivered before the University of Oxford
by
WILLIAM RALPH INGE, D.D.
Dean Of S. Paul's
Methuen & Co. Ltd.
36 Essex Street W.c.
London
Extract
From The Last Will And Testament
Of The Late
Rev. John Bampton
Canon Of Salisbury
----"I give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to the Chancellor,
Masters, and Scholars of the University of Oxford for ever, to have
and to hold all and singular the said Lands and Estates upon trust,
and to the intents and purposes hereinafter mentioned; that is to say,
I will and appoint that the Vice-Chancellor of the University of
Oxford for the time being shall take and receive all the rents,
issues, and profits thereof, and (after all taxes, reparations, and
necessary deductions made) that he pay all the remainder to the
endowment of eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, to be established for
ever in the said University, and to be performed in the manner
following:
"I direct and appoint that upon the first Tuesday in Easter Term, a
Lecturer be yearly chosen by the Heads of Colleges only, and by no
others, in the room adjoining to the Printing-House, between the hours
of ten in the morning and two in the afternoon, to preach eight
Divinity Lecture Sermons, the year following, at St. Mary's in Oxford,
between the commencement of the last month in Lent Term, and the end
of the third week in Act Term.
"Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons
shall be preached upon either of the following Subjects--to confirm
and establish the Christian Faith, and to confute all heretics and
schismatics--upon the Divine authority of the Holy Scriptures--upon
the authority of the writings of the primitive Fathers, as to the
faith and practice of the primitive Church--upon the Divinity of our
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ--upon the Divinity of the Holy
Ghost--upon the Articles of the Christian Faith, as comprehended in
the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds.
"Also I direct that thirty copies of the eight Divinity Lecture
Sermons shall be always printed within two months after they are
preached; and one copy shall be given to the Chancellor of the
University, and one copy to the head of every College, and one copy to
the Mayor of the City of Oxford, and one copy to be put into the
Bodleian Library; and the expense of printing them shall be paid out
of the revenue of the Land or Estates given for establishing the
Divinity Lecture Sermons; and the Preacher shall not be paid, nor
entitled to the revenue, before they are printed.
"Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be qualified to
preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons, unless he hath taken the degree
of Master of Arts at least, in one of the two Universities of Oxford
or Cambridge; and that the same person shall never preach the Divinity
Lecture Sermons twice."
PREFACE
The first of the subjects which, according to the will of Canon
Bampton, are prescribed for the Lecturers upon his foundation, is the
confirmation and establishment of the Christian faith. This is the aim
which I have kept in view in preparing this volume; and I should wish
my book to be judged as a contribution to apologetics, rather than as
a historical sketch of Christian Mysticism. I say this because I
decided, after some hesitation, to adopt a historical framework for
the Lectures, and this arrangement may cause my object to be
misunderstood. It seemed to me that the instructiveness of tracing the
development and operation of mystical ideas, in the forms which they
have assumed as active forces in history, outweighed the disadvantage
of appearing to waver between apology and narrative. A series of
historical essays would, of course, have been quite unsuitable in the
University pulpit, and, moreover, I did not approach the subject from
that side. Until I began to prepare the Lectures, about a year and a
half before they were delivered, my study of the mystical writers had
been directed solely by my own intellectual and spiritual needs. I was
attracted to them in the hope of finding in their writings a
philosophy and a rule of life which would satisfy my mind and
conscience. In this I was not disappointed; and thinking that others
might perhaps profit by following the same path, I wished to put
together and publish the results of my thought and reading. In such a
scheme historical details are either out of place or of secondary
value; and I hope this will be remembered by any historians who may
take the trouble to read my book.
The philosophical side of the subject is from my point of view of much
greater importance. I have done my best to acquire an adequate
knowledge of those philosophies, both ancient and modern, which are
most akin to speculative Mysticism, and also to think out my own
position. I hope that I have succeeded in indicating my general
standpoint, and that what I have written may prove fairly consistent
and intelligible; but I have felt keenly the disadvantage of having
missed the systematic training in metaphysics given by the Oxford
school of _Literæ Humaniores_, and also the difficulty (perhaps I
should say the presumption) of addressing metaphysical arguments to an
audience which included several eminent philosophers. I wish also that
I had had time for a more thorough study of Fechner's works; for his
system, so far as I understand it, seems to me to have a great
interest and value as a scheme of philosophical Mysticism which does
not clash with modern science.
I have spoken with a plainness which will probably give offence of the
debased supernaturalism which usurps the name of Mysticism in Roman
Catholic countries. I desire to insult no man's convictions; and it
is for this reason that I have decided not to print my analysis of
Ribet's work (_La Mystique Divine, distinguée des Contrefaçons
diaboliques_. Nouvelle Edition, Paris, 1895, 3 vols.), which I
intended to form an Appendix. It would have opened the eyes of some of
my readers to the irreconcilable antagonism between the Roman Church
and science; but though I translated and summarised my author
faithfully, the result had all the appearance of a malicious travesty.
I have therefore suppressed this Appendix; but with regard to Roman
Catholic "Mysticism" there is no use in mincing matters. Those who
find edification in signs and wonders of this kind, and think that
such "supernatural phenomena," even if they were well authenticated
instead of being ridiculous fables, could possibly establish spiritual
truths, will find little or nothing to please or interest them in
these pages. But those who reverence Nature and Reason, and have no
wish to hear of either of them being "overruled" or "suspended," will,
I hope, agree with me in valuing highly the later developments of
mystical thought in Northern Europe.
There is another class of "mystics" with whom I have but little
sympathy--the dabblers in occultism. "Psychical research" is, no
doubt, a perfectly legitimate science; but when its professors invite
us to watch the breaking down of the middle wall of partition between
matter and spirit, they have, in my opinion, ceased to be scientific,
and are in reality hankering after the beggarly elements of the later
Neoplatonism.
The charge of "pantheistic tendency" will not, I hope, be brought
against me without due consideration. I have tried to show how the
Johannine Logos-doctrine, which is the basis of Christian Mysticism,
differs from Asiatic Pantheism, from Acosmism, and from (one kind of)
evolutionary Idealism. Of course, speculative Mysticism is nearer to
Pantheism than to Deism; but I think it is possible heartily to eschew
Deism without falling into the opposite error.
I have received much help from many kind friends; and though some of
them would not wish to be associated with all of my opinions, I cannot
deny myself the pleasure of thanking them by name. From my mother and
other members of my family, and relations, especially Mr. W.W. How,
Fellow of Merton, I have received many useful suggestions. Three past
or present colleagues have read and criticised parts of my work--the
Rev. H. Rashdall, now Fellow of New College; Mr. H.A. Prichard, now
Fellow of Trinity; and Mr. H.H. Williams, Fellow of Hertford. Mr. G.L.
Dickinson, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, lent me an unpublished
dissertation on Plotinus. The Rev. C. Bigg, D.D., whose Bampton
Lectures on the Christian Platonists are known all over Europe, did me
the kindness to read the whole of the eight Lectures, and so added to
the great debt which I owe to him for his books. The Rev. J.M. Heald,
formerly Scholar of Trinity, Cambridge, lent me many books from his
fine library, and by inquiring for me at Louvain enabled me to procure
the books on Mysticism which are now studied in Roman Catholic
Universities. The Rev. Dr. Lindsay, who has made a special study of
the German mystics, read my Lectures on that period, and wrote me a
very useful letter upon them. Miss G.H. Warrack of Edinburgh kindly
allowed me to use her modernised version of Julian of Norwich.
I have ventured to say in my last Lecture--and it is my earnest
conviction--that a more general acquaintance with mystical theology
and philosophy is very desirable in the interests of the English
Church at the present time. I am not one of those who think that the
points at issue between Anglo-Catholics and Anglo-Protestants are
trivial: history has always confirmed Aristotle's famous dictum about
parties--[Greek: gignontai ai staseis ou peri mikrôn all' ek mikrôn,
stasiazousi de peri megalôn]--but I do not so far despair of our
Church, or of Christianity, as to doubt that a reconciling principle
must and will be found. Those who do me the honour to read these
Lectures will see to what quarter I look for a mediator. A very short
study would be sufficient to dispel some of the prejudices which still
hang round the name of Mysticism--e.g., that its professors are
unpractical dreamers, and that this type of religion is antagonistic
to the English mind. As a matter of fact, all the great mystics have
been energetic and influential, and their business capacity is
specially noted in a curiously large number of cases. For instance,
Plotinus was often in request as a guardian and trustee; St. Bernard
showed great gifts as an organiser; St. Teresa, as a founder of
convents and administrator, gave evidence of extraordinary practical
ability; even St. Juan of the Cross displayed the same qualities; John
Smith was an excellent bursar of his college; Fénelon ruled his
diocese extremely well; and Madame Guyon surprised those who had
dealings with her by her great aptitude for affairs. Henry More was
offered posts of high responsibility and dignity, but declined them.
The mystic is not as a rule ambitious, but I do not think he often
shows incapacity for practical life, if he consents to mingle in it.
And so far is it from being true that Great Britain has produced but
few mystics, that I am inclined to think the subject might be
adequately studied from English writers alone. On the more
intellectual side we have (without going back to Scotus Erigena) the
Cambridge Platonists, Law and Coleridge; of devotional mystics we have
attractive examples in Hilton and Julian of Norwich; while in verse
the lofty idealism[1] and strong religious bent of our race have
produced a series of poet-mystics such as no other country can rival.
It has not been possible in these Lectures to do justice to George
Herbert, Vaughan "the Silurist," Quarles, Crashaw, and others, who
have all drunk of the same well. Let it suffice to say that the
student who desires to master the history of Mysticism in Britain will
find plenty to occupy his time. But for the religious public in
general the most useful thing would be a judicious selection from the
mystical writers of different times and countries. Those who are more
interested in the practical and devotional than the speculative side
may study with great profit some parts of St. Augustine, the sermons
of Tauler, the _Theologia Germanica_, Hilton's _Scale of Perfection_,
the Life of Henry Suso, St. Francis de Sales and Fénelon, the Sermons
of John Smith and Whichcote's _Aphorisms_, and the later works of
William Law, not forgetting the poets who have been mentioned. I can
think of no course of study more fitting for those who wish to revive
in themselves and others the practical idealism of the primitive
Church, which gained for it its greatest triumphs.
I conclude this Preface with a quotation from William Law on the value
of the mystical writers. "Writers like those I have mentioned," he
says in a letter to Dr. Trapp, "there have been in all ages of the
Church, but as they served not the ends of popular learning, as they
helped no people to figure or preferment in the world, and were
useless to scholastic controversial writers, so they dropt out of
public uses, and were only known, or rather unknown, under the name of
mystical writers, till at last some people have hardly heard of that
very name: though, if a man were to be told what is meant by a
mystical divine, he must be told of something as heavenly, as great,
as desirable, as if he was told what is meant by a real, regenerate,
living member of the mystical body of Christ; for they were thus
called for no other reason than as Moses and the prophets, and the
saints of the Old Testament, may be called the spiritual Israel, or
the true mystical Jews. These writers began their office of teaching
as John the Baptist did, after they had passed through every kind of
mortification and self-denial, every kind of trial and purification,
both inward and outward. They were deeply learned in the mysteries of
the kingdom of God, not through the use of lexicons, or meditating
upon critics, but because they had passed from death unto life. They
highly reverence and excellently direct the true use of everything
that is outward in religion; but, like the Psalmist's king's daughter,
they are all glorious within. They are truly sons of thunder, and sons
of consolation; they break open the whited sepulchres; they awaken the
heart, and show it its filth and rottenness of death: but they leave
it not till the kingdom of heaven is raised up within it. If a man has
no desire but to be of the spirit of the gospel, to obtain all that
renovation of life and spirit which alone can make him to be in Christ
a new creature, it is a great unhappiness to him to be unacquainted
with these writers, or to pass a day without reading something of what
they wrote."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: It is really time that we took to burning that travesty
of the British character--the John Bull whom our comic papers
represent "guarding his pudding"--instead of Guy Fawkes. Even in the
nineteenth century, amid all the sordid materialism bred of commercial
ascendancy, this country has produced a richer crop of imaginative
literature than any other; and it is significant that, while in
Germany philosophy is falling more and more into the hands of the
empirical school, our own thinkers are nearly all staunch idealists.]
CONTENTS
LECTURE
I. General Characteristics of Mysticism
II. The Mystical Element in the Bible
III. Christian Platonism and Speculative Mysticism--(1) In the East
IV. Christian Platonism and Speculative Mysticism--(2) In the West
V. Practical and Devotional Mysticism
VI. Practical and Devotional Mysticism--_continued_
VII. Nature-Mysticism and Symbolism
VIII. Nature-Mysticism--_continued_
APPENDIX A. Definitions of "Mysticism" and "Mystical Theology"
APPENDIX B. The Greek Mysteries and Christian Mysticism
APPENDIX C. The Doctrine of Deification
APPENDIX D. The Mystical Interpretation of the Song of Solomon
INDEX
LECTURE I
[Greek: "Hêmin de apodeikteon hôs ep' eutuchia tê megistê para Theôn
hê toiautê mania didotai hê de dê apodeixis estai deinois men
apistos, sophois de pistê"]
PLATO, _Phædrus_, p. 245.
"_Thoas_. Es spricht kein Gott; es spricht dein eignes Herz.
_Iphigenia_. Sie reden nur durch unser Herz zu uns."
GOETHE, _Iphigenie_.
"Si notre vie est moins qu'une journée
En l'éternel; si l'an qui fait le tour
Chasse nos jours sans espoir de retour;
Si périssable est toute chose née;
Que songes-tu, mon âme emprisonnée?
Pourquoi te plaît l'obscur de notre jour,
Si, pour voler en un plus clair séjour,
Tu as au dos l'aile bien empennée!
Là est le bien que tout esprit désire,
Là, le repos ou tout le monde aspire,
Là est l'amour, là le plaisir encore!
Là, ô mon âme, au plus haut ciel guidée,
Tu y pourras reconnaître l'idée
De la beauté qu'en ce monde j'adore!"
OLD POET.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM
"Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest
what we shall be. We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be
like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is."--I JOHN iii. 2, 3.
No word in our language--not even "Socialism"--has been employed more
loosely than "Mysticism." Sometimes it is used as an equivalent for
symbolism or allegorism, sometimes for theosophy or occult science;
and sometimes it merely suggests the mental state of a dreamer, or
vague and fantastic opinions about God and the world. In Roman
Catholic writers, "mystical phenomena" mean supernatural suspensions
of physical law. Even those writers who have made a special study of
the subject, show by their definitions of the word how uncertain is
its connotation.[2] It is therefore necessary that I should make clear
at the outset what I understand by the term, and what aspects of
religious life and thought I intend to deal with in these Lectures.
The history of the _word_ begins in close connexion with the Greek
mysteries.[3] A mystic [Greek: mystês] is one who has been, or is
being, initiated into some esoteric knowledge of Divine things, about
which he must keep his mouth shut ([Greek: myein]); or, possibly, he is
one whose _eyes_ are still shut, one who is not yet an [Greek:
epoptês].[4] The word was taken over, with other technical terms of
the mysteries, by the Neoplatonists, who found in the existing
mysteriosophy a discipline, worship, and rule of life congenial to
their speculative views. But as the tendency towards quietism and
introspection increased among them, another derivation for "Mysticism"
was found--it was explained to mean deliberately shutting the eyes to
all external things.[5] We shall see in the sequel how this later
Neoplatonism passed almost entire into Christianity, and, while
forming the basis of mediæval Mysticism, caused a false association to
cling to the word even down to the Reformation.[6]
The phase of thought or feeling which we call Mysticism has its
origin in that which is the raw material of all religion, and perhaps
of all philosophy and art as well, namely, that dim consciousness of
the _beyond_, which is part of our nature as human beings. Men have
given different names to these "obstinate questionings of sense and
outward things." We may call them, if we will, a sort of higher
instinct, perhaps an anticipation of the evolutionary process; or an
extension of the frontier of consciousness; or, in religious language,
the voice of God speaking to us. Mysticism arises when we try to bring
this higher consciousness into relation with the other contents of our
minds. Religious Mysticism may be defined as the attempt to realise
the presence of the living God in the soul and in nature, or, more
generally, as _the attempt to realise, in thought and feeling, the
immanence of the temporal in the eternal, and of the eternal in the
temporal_. Our consciousness of the beyond is, I say, the raw material
of all religion. But, being itself formless, it cannot be brought
directly into relation with the forms of our thought. Accordingly, it
has to express itself by symbols, which are as it were the flesh and
bones of ideas. It is the tendency of all symbols to petrify or
evaporate, and either process is fatal to them. They soon repudiate
their mystical origin, and forthwith lose their religious content.
Then comes a return to the fresh springs of the inner life--a revival
of spirituality in the midst of formalism or unbelief. This is the
historical function of Mysticism--it appears as an independent active
principle, the spirit of reformations and revivals. But since every
active principle must find for itself appropriate instruments,
Mysticism has developed a speculative and practical system of its
own. As Goethe says, it is "the scholastic of the heart, the dialectic
of the feelings." In this way it becomes possible to consider it as a
type of religion, though it must always be remembered that in becoming
such it has incorporated elements which do not belong to its inmost
being.[7] As a type of religion, then, Mysticism seems to rest on the
following propositions or articles of faith:--
First, _the soul_ (as well as the body) _can see and
perceive_--[Greek: esti de psychês aisthêsis tis], as Proclus says.
We have an organ or faculty for the discernment of spiritual truth,
which, in its proper sphere, is as much to be trusted as the organs of
sensation in theirs.
The second proposition is that, since we can only know what is akin to
ourselves,[8] _man, in order to know God, must be a partaker of the
Divine nature_. "What we are, that we behold; and what we behold,
that we are," says Ruysbroek. The curious doctrine which we find in
the mystics of the Middle Ages, that there is at "the apex of the
mind" a spark which is consubstantial with the uncreated ground of the
Deity, is thus accounted for. We could not even begin to work out our
own salvation if God were not already working in us. It is always "in
His light" that "we see light." The doctrine has been felt to be a
necessary postulate by most philosophers who hold that knowledge of
God is possible to man. For instance, Krause says, "From finite reason
as finite we might possibly explain the thought of itself, but not the
thought of something that is outside finite reasonable beings, far
less the absolute idea, in its contents infinite, of God. To become
aware of God in knowledge we require certainly to make a freer use of
our finite power of thought, but the thought of God itself is
primarily and essentially an eternal operation of the eternal
revelation of God to the finite mind." But though we are made in the
image of God, our _likeness_ to Him only exists potentially.[9] The
Divine spark already shines within us, but it has to be searched for
in the innermost depths of our personality, and its light diffused
over our whole being.
This brings us to the third proposition--"_Without holiness no man may
see the Lord_"; or, as it is expressed positively in the Sermon on the
Mount, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."
Sensuality and selfishness are absolute disqualifications for knowing
"the things of the Spirit of God." These fundamental doctrines are
very clearly laid down in the passage from St. John which I read as
the text of this Lecture. The filial relation to God is already
claimed, but the vision is inseparable from _likeness_ to Him, which
is a hope, not a possession, and is only to be won by "purifying
ourselves, even as He is pure."
There is one more fundamental doctrine which we must not omit.
Purification removes the obstacles to our union with God, but our
guide on the upward path, _the true hierophant of the mysteries of
God, is love_[10]. Love has been defined as "interest in its highest
power";[11] while others have said that "it is of the essence of love
to be disinterested." The contradiction is merely a verbal one. The
two definitions mark different starting-points, but the two "ways of
love" should bring us to the same goal. The possibility of
disinterested love, in the ordinary sense, ought never to have been
called in question. "Love is not love" when it asks for a reward. Nor
is the love of man to God any exception. He who tries to be holy in
order to be happy will assuredly be neither. In the words of the
_Theologia Germanica_, "So long as a man seeketh his own highest good
_because_ it is his, he will never find it." The mystics here are
unanimous, though some, like St. Bernard, doubt whether perfect love
of God can ever be attained, pure and without alloy, while we are in
this life.[12] The controversy between Fénelon and Bossuet on this
subject is well known, and few will deny that Fénelon was mainly in
the right. Certainly he had an easy task in justifying his statements
from the writings of the saints. But we need not trouble ourselves
with the "mystic paradox," that it would be better to be with Christ
in hell than without Him in heaven--a statement which Thomas à Kempis
once wrote and then erased in his manuscript. For wherever Christ is,
there is heaven: nor should we regard eternal happiness as anything
distinct from "a true conjunction of the mind with God.[13]" "God is
not without or above law: He _could_ not make men either sinful or
miserable.[14]" To believe otherwise is to suppose an irrational
universe, the one thing which a rational man cannot believe in.
The mystic, as we have seen, makes it his life's aim to be transformed
into the likeness of Him in whose image he was created.[15] He loves
to figure his path as a ladder reaching from earth to heaven, which
must be climbed step by step. This _scala perfectionis_ is generally
divided into three stages. The first is called the purgative life,
the second the illuminative, while the third, which is really the goal
rather than a part of the journey, is called the unitive life, or
state of perfect contemplation.[16] We find, as we should expect, some
differences in the classification, but this tripartite scheme is
generally accepted.
The steps of the upward path constitute the ethical system, the rule
of life, of the mystics. The first stage, the purgative life, we read
in the _Theologia Germanica_, is brought about by contrition, by
confession, by hearty amendment; and this is the usual language in
treatises intended for monks. But it is really intended to include the
civic and social virtues in this stage.[17] They occupy the lowest
place, it is true; but this only means that they must be acquired by
all, though all are not called to the higher flights of contemplation.
Their chief value, according to Plotinus, is to teach us the meaning
of _order_ and _limitation_ ([Greek: taxis] and [Greek: peras]), which
are qualities belonging to the Divine nature. This is a very valuable
thought, for it contradicts that aberration of Mysticism which calls
God the Infinite, and thinks of Him as the Indefinite, dissolving all
distinctions in the abyss of bare indetermination. When Ewald says,
"the true mystic never withdraws himself wilfully from the business
of life, no, not even from the smallest business," he is, at any rate,
saying nothing which conflicts with the principles of Mysticism.[18]
The purgative life necessarily includes self-discipline: does it
necessarily include what is commonly known as asceticism? It would be
easy to answer that asceticism means nothing but _training_, as men
train for a race, or more broadly still, that it means simply "the
acquisition of some greater power by practice.[19]" But when people
speak of "asceticism," they have in their minds such severe
"buffeting" of the body as was practised by many ancient hermits and
mediæval monks. Is this an integral part of the mystic's "upward
path"? We shall find reason to conclude that, while a certain degree
of austere simplicity characterises the outward life of nearly all the
mystics, and while an almost morbid desire to suffer is found in many
of them, there is nothing in the system itself to encourage men to
maltreat their bodies. Mysticism enjoins a dying life, not a living
death. Moreover, asceticism, when regarded as a virtue or duty in
itself, tends to isolate us, and concentrates our attention on our
separate individuality. This is contrary to the spirit of Mysticism,
which aims at realising unity and solidarity everywhere. Monkish
asceticism (so far as it goes beyond the struggle to live unstained
under unnatural conditions) rests on a dualistic view of the world
which does not belong to the essence of Mysticism. It infected all the
religious life of the Middle Ages, not Mysticism only.[20]
The second stage, the illuminative life, is the concentration of all
the faculties, will, intellect, and feeling, upon God. It differs from
the purgative life, not in having discarded good works, but in having
come to perform them, as Fénelon says, "no longer as virtues," that is
to say, willingly and almost spontaneously. The struggle is now
transferred to the inner life.
The last stage of the journey, in which the soul presses towards the
mark, and gains the prize of its high calling, is the unitive or
contemplative life, in which man beholds God face to face, and is
joined to Him. Complete union with God is the ideal limit of religion,
the attainment of which would be at once its consummation and
annihilation. It is in the continual but unending approximation to it
that the life of religion subsists.[21] We must therefore beware of
regarding the union as anything more than an infinite process, though,
as its end is part of the eternal counsel of God, there is a sense in
which it is already a fact, and not merely a thing desired. But the
word deification holds a very large place in the writings of the
Fathers, and not only among those who have been called mystics. We
find it in Irenæus as well as in Clement, in Athanasius as well as in
Gregory of Nyssa. St. Augustine is no more afraid of "deificari" in
Latin than Origen of [Greek: theopoieisthai] in Greek. The subject is
one of primary importance to anyone who wishes to understand mystical
theology; but it is difficult for us to enter into the minds of the
ancients who used these expressions, both because [Greek: theos] was a
very fluid concept in the early centuries, and because our notions of
_personality_ are very different from those which were prevalent in
antiquity. On this latter point I shall have more to say presently;
but the evidence for the belief in "deification," and its continuance
through the Middle Ages, is too voluminous to be given in the body of
these Lectures.[22] Let it suffice to say here that though such bold
phrases as "God became man, that we might become God," were
commonplaces of doctrinal theology at least till after Augustine, even
Clement and Origen protest strongly against the "very impious" heresy
that man is "a part of God," or "consubstantial with God.[23]" The
attribute of Divinity which was chiefly in the minds of the Greek
Fathers when they made these statements, was that of _imperishableness_.
As to the means by which this union is manifested to the
consciousness, there is no doubt that very many mystics believed in,
and looked for, ecstatic revelations, trances, or visions. This,
again, is one of the crucial questions of Mysticism.
Ecstasy or vision begins when thought ceases, _to our consciousness_,
to proceed from ourselves. It differs from dreaming, because the
subject is awake. It differs from hallucination, because there is no
organic disturbance: it is, or claims to be, a temporary enhancement,
not a partial disintegration, of the mental faculties. Lastly, it
differs from poetical inspiration, because the imagination is passive.
That perfectly sane people often experience such visions there is no
manner of doubt. St. Paul fell into a trance at his conversion, and
again at a later period, when he seemed to be caught up into the third
heaven. The most sober and practical of the mediæval mystics speak of
them as common phenomena. And in modern times two of the sanest of our
poets have recorded their experiences in words which may be worth
quoting.
Wordsworth, in his well-known "Lines composed above Tintern Abbey,"
speaks of--
"That serene and blessed mood,
In which ... the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood,
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things."
And Tennyson says,[24] "A kind of waking trance I have often had,
quite from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has generally
come upon me through repeating my own name two or three times to
myself silently, till all at once, out of the intensity of the
consciousness of individuality, the individual itself seemed to
dissolve and fade away into boundless being: and this not a confused
state, but the clearest of the clearest, and the surest of the surest,
the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an
almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it
were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life."
Admitting, then, that these psychical phenomena actually occur, we
have to consider whether ecstasy and kindred states are an integral
part of Mysticism. In attempting to answer this question, we shall
find it convenient to distinguish between the Neoplatonic vision of
the super-essential One, the Absolute, which Plotinus enjoyed several
times, and Porphyry only once, and the visions and "locutions" which
are reported in all times and places, especially where people have not
been trained in scientific habits of thought and observation. The
former was held to be an exceedingly rare privilege, the culminating
point of the contemplative life. I shall speak of it in my third
Lecture; and shall there show that it belongs, not to the essence of
Mysticism, and still less to Christianity, but to the Asiatic leaven
which was mixed with Alexandrian thought, and thence passed into
Catholicism. As regards visions in general, they were no invention of
the mystics. They played a much more important part in the life of the
early Church than many ecclesiastical historians are willing to admit.
Tertullian, for instance, says calmly, "The majority, almost, of men
learn God from visions.[25]" Such implicit reliance was placed on the
Divine authority of visions, that on one occasion an ignorant peasant
and a married man was made Patriarch of Alexandria against his will,
because his dying predecessor had a vision that the man who should
bring him a present of grapes on the next day should be his successor!
In course of time visions became rarer among the laity, but continued
frequent among the monks and clergy. And so the class which furnished
most of the shining lights of Mysticism was that in which these
experiences were most common.
But we do not find that the masters of the spiritual life attached
very much importance to them, or often appealed to them as aids to
faith.[26] As a rule, visions were regarded as special rewards
bestowed by the goodness of God on the struggling saint, and
especially on the beginner, to refresh him and strengthen him in the
hour of need. Very earnest cautions were issued that no efforts must
be made to induce them artificially, and aspirants were exhorted
neither to desire them, nor to feel pride in having seen them. The
spiritual guides of the Middle Ages were well aware that such
experiences often come of disordered nerves and weakened digestion;
they believed also that they are sometimes delusions of Satan. Richard
of St. Victor says, "As Christ attested His transfiguration by the
presence of Moses and Elias, so visions should not be believed unless
they have the authority of Scripture." Albertus Magnus tries to
classify them, and says that those which contain a sensuous element
are always dangerous. Eckhart is still more cautious, and Tauler
attaches little value to them. Avila, the Spanish mystic, says that
only those visions which minister to our spiritual necessities, and
make us _more humble_, are genuine. Self-induced visions inflate us
with pride, and do irreparable injury to health of mind and body.[27]
It hardly falls within my task to attempt to determine what these
visions really are. The subject is one upon which psychological and
medical science may some day throw more light. But this much I must
say, to make my own position clear: I regard these experiences as
neither more nor less "supernatural" than other mental phenomena. Many
of them are certainly pathological;[28] about others we may feel
doubts; but some have every right to be considered as real
irradiations of the soul from the light that "for ever shines," real
notes of the harmony that "is in immortal souls." In illustration of
this, we may appeal to three places in the Bible where revelations of
the profoundest truths concerning the nature and counsels of God are
recorded to have been made during ecstatic visions. Moses at Mount
Horeb heard, during the vision of the burning bush, a proclamation of
God as the "I am"--the Eternal who is exalted above time. Isaiah, in
the words "Holy, Holy, Holy," perceived dimly the mystery of the
Trinity. And St. Peter, in the vision of the sheet, learned that God
is no respecter of persons or of nationalities. In such cases the
highest intuitions or revelations, which the soul can in its best
moments just receive, but cannot yet grasp or account for, make a
language for themselves, as it were, and claim the sanction of
external authority, until the mind is elevated so far as to feel the
authority not less Divine, but no longer external. We may find fairly
close analogies in other forms of that "Divine madness," which Plato
says is "the source of the chiefest blessings granted to men"--such as
the rapture of the poet, or (as Plato adds) of the lover.[29] And
even the philosopher or man of science may be surprised into some such
state by a sudden realisation of the sublimity of his subject. So at
least Lacordaire believed when he wrote, "All at once, as if by
chance, the hair stands up, the breath is caught, the skin contracts,
and a cold sword pierces to the very soul. It is the sublime which has
manifested itself![30]" Even in cases where there is evident
hallucination, e.g. when the visionary sees an angel or devil sitting
on his book, or feels an arrow thrust into his heart, there need be no
insanity. In periods when it is commonly believed that such things may
and do happen, the imagination, instead of being corrected by
experience, is misled by it. Those who honestly expect to see miracles
will generally see them, without detriment either to their
truthfulness or sanity in other matters.
The mystic, then, is not, as such, a visionary; nor has he any interest
in appealing to a faculty "above reason," if reason is used in its
proper sense, as the logic of the whole personality. The desire to find
for our highest intuitions an authority wholly external to reason and
independent of it,--a "purely supernatural" revelation,--has, as
Récéjac says, "been the cause of the longest and the most dangerous of
the aberrations from which Mysticism has suffered." This kind of
supernaturalism is destructive of _unity_ in our ideas of God, the
world, and ourselves; and it casts a slur on the faculties which are the
appointed organs of communication between God and man. A revelation
absolutely transcending reason is an absurdity: no such revelation could
ever be made. In the striking phrase of Macarius, "the human mind is the
throne of the Godhead." The supremacy of the reason is the favourite
theme of the Cambridge Platonists, two of whom, Whichcote and Culverwel,
are never tired of quoting the text, "The spirit of man is the candle of
the Lord." "Sir, I oppose not rational to spiritual," writes Whichcote
to Tuckney, "for spiritual is most rational." And again, "Reason is the
Divine governor of man's life: it is the very voice of God.[31]" What we
can and must transcend, if we would make any progress in Divine
knowledge, is not reason, but that shallow rationalism which regards the
data on which we can reason as a fixed quantity, known to all, and which
bases itself on a formal logic, utterly unsuited to a spiritual view of
things. Language can only furnish us with poor, misleading, and wholly
inadequate images of spiritual facts; it supplies us with abstractions
and metaphors, which do not really represent what we know or believe
about God and human personality. St. Paul calls attention to this
inadequacy by a series of formal contradictions: "I live, yet not I";
"dying, and behold we live"; "when I am weak, then I am strong," and so
forth; and we find exactly the same expedient in Plotinus, who is very
fond of thus showing his contempt for the logic of identity. When,
therefore, Harnack says that "Mysticism is nothing else than rationalism
applied to a sphere above reason," he would have done better to say that
it is "reason applied to a sphere above rationalism.[32]"
For Reason is still "king.[33]" Religion must not be a matter of
_feeling_ only. St. John's command to "try every spirit" condemns all
attempts to make emotion or inspiration independent of reason. Those
who thus blindly follow the inner light find it no "candle of the
Lord," but an _ignis fatuus_; and the great mystics are well aware of
this. The fact is that the tendency to separate and half personify the
different faculties--intellect, will, feeling--is a mischievous one.
Our object should be so to _unify_ our personality, that our eye may
be single, and our whole body full of light.
We have considered briefly the three stages of the mystic's upward
path. The scheme of life therein set forth was no doubt determined
empirically, and there is nothing to prevent the simplest and most
unlettered saint from framing his conduct on these principles. Many of
the mediæval mystics had no taste for speculation or philosophy;[34]
they accepted on authority the entire body of Church dogma, and
devoted their whole attention to the perfecting of the spiritual life
in the knowledge and love of God. But this cannot be said of the
leaders. Christian Mysticism appears in history largely as an
intellectual movement, the foster-child of Platonic idealism; and if
ever, for a time, it forgot its early history, men were soon found to
bring it back to "its old loving nurse the Platonic philosophy." It
will be my task, in the third and fourth Lectures of this course, to
show how speculative Christian Mysticism grew out of Neoplatonism; but
we shall not be allowed to forget the Platonists even in the later
Lectures. "The fire still burns on the altars of Plotinus," as
Eunapius said.
Mysticism is not itself a philosophy, any more than it is itself a
religion. On its intellectual side it has been called "formless
speculation.[35]" But until speculations or intuitions have entered
into the forms of our thought, they are not current coin even for the
thinker. The part played by Mysticism in philosophy is parallel to the
part played by it in religion. As in religion it appears in revolt
against dry formalism and cold rationalism, so in philosophy it takes
the field against materialism and scepticism.[36] It is thus possible
to speak of speculative Mysticism, and even to indicate certain
idealistic lines of thought, which may without entire falsity be
called the philosophy of Mysticism. In this introductory Lecture I
can, of course, only hint at these in the barest and most summary
manner. And it must be remembered that I have undertaken to-day to
delineate the general characteristics of Mysticism, not of Christian
Mysticism. I am trying, moreover, in this Lecture to confine myself to
those developments which I consider normal and genuine, excluding the
numerous aberrant types which we shall encounter in the course of our
survey.
The real world, according to thinkers of this school, is created by
the thought and will of God, and exists in His mind. It is therefore
spiritual, and above space and time, which are only the forms under
which reality is set out as a process.
When we try to represent to our minds the highest reality, the
spiritual world, as distinguished from the world of appearance, we are
obliged to form images; and we can hardly avoid choosing one of the
following three images. We may regard the spiritual world as endless
duration opposed to transitoriness, as infinite extension opposed to
limitation in space, or as substance opposed to shadow. All these are,
strictly speaking, symbols or metaphors,[37] for we cannot regard any
of them as literally true statements about the nature of reality; but
they are as near the truth as we can get in words. But when we think
of time as a piece cut off from the beginning of eternity, so that
eternity is only in the future and not in the present; when we think
of heaven as a place somewhere else, and therefore not here; when we
think of an upper ideal world which has sucked all the life out of
this, so that we now walk in a vain shadow,--then we are paying the
penalty for our symbolical representative methods of thought, and must
go to philosophy to help us out of the doubts and difficulties in
which our error has involved us. One test is infallible. Whatever view
of reality deepens our sense of the tremendous issues of life in the
world wherein we move, is _for us_ nearer the truth than any view
which diminishes that sense. The truth is revealed to us that we may
have _life_, and have it more abundantly.
The world as it is, is the world as God sees it, not as we see it. Our
vision is distorted, not so much by the limitations of finitude, as by
sin and ignorance. The more we can raise ourselves in the scale of
being, the more will our ideas about God and the world correspond to
the reality. "Such as men themselves are, such will God Himself seem
to them to be," says John Smith, the English Platonist. Origen, too,
says that those whom Judas led to seize Jesus did not know who He was,
for the darkness of their own souls was projected on His features.[38]
And Dante, in a very beautiful passage, says that he felt that he was
rising into a higher circle, because he saw Beatrice's face becoming
more beautiful.[39]