Christian Mysticism | Page 4

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: "Hemin de apodeikteon hos ep' eutuchia te megiste para Theon
he toiaute mania didotai he de de apodeixis estai deinois men apistos,
sophois de piste"]
PLATO, Phaedrus, 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 journee En l'eternel; si l'an qui fait le tour
Chasse nos jours sans espoir de retour; Si perissable est toute chose nee;
Que songes-tu, mon ame emprisonnee? Pourquoi te plait l'obscur de
notre jour, Si, pour voler en un plus clair sejour, Tu as au dos l'aile bien
empennee! La est le bien que tout esprit desire, La, le repos ou tout le
monde aspire, La est l'amour, la le plaisir encore! La, o mon ame, au

plus haut ciel guidee, Tu y pourras reconnaitre l'idee De la beaute 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: mystes] 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: epoptes].[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