Christian Mysticism | Page 3

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 mikron all' ek mikron,
stasiazousi de peri megalon]--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;
Fenelon 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 Fenelon, 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