Christian Mysticism | Page 7

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 Fenelon 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 Irenaeus 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 mediaeval 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