Christian Mysticism | Page 8

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.