Christian Mysticism | Page 4

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 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 mediaeval 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