Selections From German Mystics

Eckhart, Johannes (c. 1260-1327) (Author of section)Tauler, John (c. 1300-1361) (Author of section)Suso, Henry (c. 1296-1366) (Author of section)Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library

Publisher:

Rights:

2000-07-09

Date Created:

[selections from German mystics]

General Comments:

All; Classic; Mysticism;

CCEL Subjects:

BV5080

LC Call no:

Practical theology

LC Subjects:

Practical religion. The Christian lifeMysticism

Table of Contents

p. ii

About This Book ......................................

p. 1Title Page..........................................p. 2Table of Contents.....................................p. 3Introduction.........................................p. 31. The Precursors of the German Mystics.....................p. 52. Meister Eckhardt...................................p. 73. Eckhardt's Religious Philosophy.........................p. 154. The German Mystics as Guides to Holiness.................p. 175. Writers of the School of Eckhard–Tauler....................p. 176. Suso...........................................p. 197. Ruysbroek.......................................p. 198. Theologia Germanica................................p. 209. Modern Mysticism..................................p. 2110. Specimens of Modern Mysticism........................p. 24Light, Life and Love....................................p. 24Eckhardt..........................................p. 24God............................................p. 24Rest Only in God...................................p. 25God is Always Ready.................................p. 25Grace...........................................p. 26The Will.........................................p. 26Surrender of the Will.................................p. 27Suffering.........................................p. 27Sin.............................................p. 28Contentment......................................p. 28Detachment.......................................p. 29Prayer..........................................p. 29Love of Our Neighbor.................................p. 29Love............................................p. 30The Union with God..................................p. 30The Last Judgment..................................p. 30Precept and Practice.................................p. 30Relics...........................................p. 31Sayings of Eckhardt..................................p. 31Tauler............................................

iii

W. R. IngeLight, Life, and Love

INTRODUCTION

1. THE PRECURSORS OF THE GERMAN MYSTICS

TO most English readers the "Imitation of Christ" is the representative of mediaeval Germanmysticism. In reality, however, this beautiful little treatise belongs to a period when that movementhad nearly spent itself. Thomas a Kempis, as Dr. Bigg has said,

was only a semi-mystic. He tonesdown the most characteristic doctrines of Eckhart, who is the great original thinker of the Germanmystical school, and seems in some ways to revert to an earlier type of devotional literature. The"Imitation" may perhaps be described as an idealised picture of monastic piety, drawn at a timewhen the life of the cloister no longer filled a place of unchallenged usefulness in the social orderof Europe. To find German mysticism at its strongest we must go back a full hundred years, andto understand its growth we must retrace our steps as far as the great awakening of the thirteenthcentury—the age of chivalry in religion—the age of St. Louis, of Francis and Dominic, of Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas. It was a vast revival, bearing fruit in a new ardour of pity andcharity, as well as in a healthy freedom of thought. The Church, in recognising the new charitableorders of Francis and Dominic, and the Christianised Aristotelianism of the schoolmen, retainedthe loyalty and profited by the zeal of the more sober reformers, but was unable to prevent thediffusion of an independent critical spirit, in part provoked and justified by real abuses. Discontentwas aroused, not only by the worldiness of the hierarchy, whose greed and luxurious living werefelt to be scandalous, but by the widespread economic distress which prevailed over Western Europeat this period. The crusades periodically swept off a large proportion of the able-bodied men, of whom the majority never returned to their homes, and this helped to swell the number of indigentwomen, who, having no male protectors, were obliged to beg their bread. The better class of thesefemale mendicants soon formed themselves into uncloistered charitable Orders, who were notforbidden to marry, and who devoted themselves chiefly to the care of the sick. These Beguinesand the corresponding male associations of Beghards became very numerous in Germany. Theirreligious views were of a definite type. Theirs was an intensely

inward

religion, based on the longingof the soul for immediate access to God. The more educated among them tended to embrace avague idealistic Pantheism. Mechthild of Magdeburg (1212–1277), prophetess, poetess, Churchreformer, quietist, was the ablest of the Beguines. Her writings prove to us that the technicalterminology of German mysticism was in use before Eckhart,

and also that the followers of whatthe "Theologia Germanica" calls the False Light, who aspired to absorption in the Godhead, anddespised the imitation of the incarnate Christ, were already throwing discredit on the movement.Mechthild's independence, and her unsparing denunciations of corruption in high places, broughther into conflict with the secular clergy. They tried to burn her books—those religious love songs

In his Introduction to the "Imitation of Christ," in this series.

e.g.

she distinguishes, as Eckhart does, between God and the Godhead.

W. R. IngeLight, Life, and Love

which had already endeared her to German popular sentiment. It was then that she seemed to heara voice saying to her:Lieb’ meine, betr

be dich nicht zu sehr,Die Wahrheit mag niemand verbrennen!The rulers of the Church, unhappily, were not content with burning books. Their hostility towardsthe unrecognised Orders became more and more pronounced: the Beghards and Beguines wereharried and persecuted till most of them were driven to join the Franciscans or Dominicans, carryingwith them into those Orders the ferment of their speculative mysticism. The more stubborn "Brethrenand Sisters of the Free Spirit" were burned in batches at Cologne and elsewhere. Their fate in thosetimes did not excite much pity, for many of the victims were idle vagabonds of dissolute character,and the general public probably thought that the licensed begging friars were enough of a nuisancewithout the addition of these free lances.The heretical mystical sects of the thirteenth century are very interesting as illustrating the chief dangers of mysticism. Some of these sectaries were Socialists or Communists of an extreme kind;others were Rationalists, who taught that Jesus Christ was the son of Joseph and a sinner like othermen; others were Puritans, who said that Church music was "nothing but a hellish noise" (

nihil nisiclamor inferni

), and that the Pope was the

magna meretrix

of the Apocalypse. The majority wereAnti-Sacramentalists and Determinists; and some were openly Antinomian, teaching that thosewho are led by the Spirit can do no wrong. The followers of Amalric of Bena

believed that theHoly Ghost had chosen their sect in which to become incarnate; His presence among them was acontinual guarantee of sanctity and happiness. The "spiritual Franciscans" had dreams of a moreapocalyptic kind. They adopted the idea of an "eternal Gospel," as expounded by Joachim of Floris,and believed that the "third kingdom," that of the Spirit, was about to begin among themselves. Itwas to abolish the secular Church and to inaugurate the reign of true Christianity—

i.e

. "poverty"and asceticism.Such are some of the results of what our eighteenth-century ancestors knew and dreaded as"Enthusiasm"—that ferment of the spirit which in certain epochs spreads from soul to soul like anepidemic, breaking all the fetters of authority, despising tradition and rejecting discipline in itseagerness to get rid of formalism and unreality; a lawless, turbulent, unmanageable spirit, in which,notwithstanding, is a potentiality for good far higher than any to which the lukewarm "religion of all sensible men" can ever attain. For mysticism is the raw material of all religion; and it is easierto discipline the enthusiast than to breathe enthusiasm into the disciplinarian.Meanwhile, the Church looked with favour upon the orthodox mystical school, of which Richardand Hugo of St. Victor, Bonaventura, and Albertus Magnus were among the greatest names. Thesemen were working out in their own fashion the psychology of the contemplative life, showing how

The "three propositions" of Amalric are—1. "Deus est omnia." 2. Every Christian, as a condition of salvation, must believe thathe is a member of Christ. 3. To those who are in charity no sin is imputed.

W. R. IngeLight, Life, and Love

we may ascend through "cogitation, meditation, and speculation" to "contemplation," and how wemay pass successively through

jubilus

ebrietas spiritus

spiritualis jucunditas

, and

liquefactio

, tillwe attain

raptus

or ecstasy. The writings of the scholastic mystics are so overweighted with thispseudo-science, with its wire-drawn distinctions and meaningless classifications, that very fewreaders have now the patience to dig out their numerous beauties. They are, however, still theclassics of mystical theology in the Roman Church, so far as that science has not degenerated intomere miracle-mongering.

2. MEISTER ECKHART

It was in 1260, when Mechthild of Magdeburg was at the height of her activity, that MeisterEckhart, next to Plotinus the greatest philosopher-mystic, was born at Hocheim in Thuringia. Itseems that his family was in a good position, but nothing is known of his early years. He enteredthe Dominican Order as a youth, perhaps at sixteen, the earliest age at which novices were admittedinto that Order. The course of instruction among the Dominicans was as follows:—After two years,during which the novice laid the foundations of a good general education, he devoted the next twoyears to grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, and then the same amount of time to what was called the

Quadrivium

, which consisted of "arithmetic, mathematics, astronomy, and music." Theology, thequeen of the sciences, occupied three years; and at the end of the course, at the age of twenty-five,the brothers were ordained priests. We find Eckhart, towards the end of the century, Prior of Erfurtand Vicar of Thuringia, then Lector Biblicus at Paris, then Provincial Prior of Saxony. In 1307 themaster of the Order appointed him Vicar-General for Bohemia, and in 1311 he returned to Paris.We find him next preaching busily at Strassburg,

and after a few more years, at Cologne, wherethe persecution of the Brethren of the Free Spirit was just then at its height. At Strassburg therewere no less than seven convents of Dominican nuns, for since 1267 the Order had resumed thesupervision of female convents, which it had renounced a short time after its foundation. Many of Eckhart's discourses were addressed to these congregations of devout women, who indeed were toa large extent the backbone of the mystical movement, and it is impossible not to see that thedevotional treatises of the school are strongly coloured by feminine sentiment. A curious poem,written by a Dominican nun of this period, celebrates the merits of three preachers, the third of whom is a Master Eckhart, "who speaks to us about Nothingness. He who understands him not, inhim has never shone the light divine." These nuns seem to have been fed with the strong meat of Eckhart's mystical philosophy; in the more popular sermons he tried to be intelligible to all. It was

Preger is probably wrong in identifying him with a "brother Eckhart," Prior of Frankfort, who about 1320 was delated to thehead of the Order as

suspectus de malis familiaritatibus

, words which can only mean "keeping bad company" in a moral sense,not "consorting with heretics," as Preger suggests. Eckhart's character, so far as we know, was never assailed, even by his enemies,and it is therefore probable that "brother Eckhart" was a different person.

W. R. IngeLight, Life, and Love

not very long after he took up his residence at Cologne that he was himself attacked for heresy. In1327 he read before his own Order a retractation of "any errors which might be found" (

si quid errorum repertum fuerit

) in his writings, but withdrew nothing that he had actually said, andprotested that he believed himself to be orthodox. He died a few months later, and it was not till1329 that a Papal bull was issued, enumerating seventeen heretical and eleven objectionable doctrinesin his writings.This bull is interesting as showing what were the points in Eckhart's teaching which in thefourteenth century were considered dangerous. They also indicate very accurately what are the realerrors into which speculative mysticism is liable to fall, and how thinkers of this school may mostplausibly be misrepresented by those who differ from them. After expressing his sorrow that "acertain Teuton named Ekardus,

doctor, ut fertur, sacrae paginae

, has wished to know more thanhe should," and has sown tares and thistles and other weeds in the field of the Church, the Popespecifies the following erroneous statements as appearing in Eckhart's writings

:—1. "God createdthe world as soon as God was. 2. In every work, bad as well as good, the glory of God is equallymanifested. 3. A man who prays for any particular thing prays for an evil and prays ill, for he praysfor the negation of good and the negation of God, and that God may be denied to him.

4. God ishonoured in those who have renounced everything, even holiness and the kingdom of heaven. 5.We are transformed totally into God, even as in the Sacrament the bread is converted into the Bodyof Christ.

Unum, non simile

. 6. Whatever God the Father gave to His only-begotten Son in Hishuman nature, He has given it all to me. 7. Whatever the Holy Scripture says about Christ is verifiedin every good and godlike man. 8. External action is not, properly speaking, good nor divine; God,properly speaking, only works in us internal actions. 9. God is one, in every way and according toevery reason, so that it is not possible to find any plurality in Him, either in the intellect or outsideit; for he who sees two, or sees any distinction, does not see God; for God is one, outside numberand above number, for

one

cannot be put

with

anything else, but follows it; therefore in God Himself no distinction can be or be understood. 10. All the creatures are absolutely nothing: I say not thatthey are small or something, but that they are absolutely nothing." All these statements are declaredto have been found in his writings. It is also "objected against the said Ekardus" that he taught thefollowing two articles in these words:—1. "There is something in the soul, which is uncreated anduncreatable: if the whole soul were such, it would be uncreated and uncreatable: and this is theintelligence."

2. God is not good or better or best: I speak ill when I call God good; it is as if Icalled white black."

The bull declares all the propositions above quoted to be heretical, with theexception of the three which I have numbered 8–10, and these "have an ill sound" and are "veryrash," even if they might be so supplemented and explained as to bear an orthodox sense.

I have abridged the bull considerably, but have included all the main accusations.

See pages 13, 16.

See pages 14, 15.

See page 1.

W. R. IngeLight, Life, and Love

This condemnation led to a long neglect of Eckhart's writings. He was almost forgotten tillFranz Pfeiffer in 1857 collected and edited his scattered treatises and endeavoured to distinguishthose which were genuine from those which were spurious. Since Pfeiffer's edition fresh discoverieshave been made, notably in 1880, when Denifle found at Erfurt several important fragments inLatin, which in his opinion show a closer dependence on the scholastic theology, and particularlyon St Thomas Aquinas, than Protestant scholars, such as Preger, had been willing to allow. But theattempt to prove Eckhart a mere scholastic is a failure; the audacities of his German discoursescannot be explained as an accommodation to the tastes of a peculiar audience. For good or evilEckhart is an original and independent thinker, whose theology is confined by no trammels of authority.

3. ECKHART'S RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY

The Godhead, according to Eckhart, is the universal and eternal Unity comprehending andtranscending all diversity. "The Divine nature is Rest," he says in one of the German discourses;and in the Latin fragments we find: "God rests in Himself, and makes all things rest in Him." Thethree Persons of the Trinity, however, are not mere modes or accidents,

but represent a realdistinction within the Godhead. God is unchangeable, and at the same time an "everlasting process."The creatures are "absolutely nothing"; but at the same time "God without them would not be God,"for God is love, and must objectify Himself; He is goodness, and must impart Himself. As thepicture in the mind of the painter, as the poem in the mind of the poet, so was all creation in themind of God from all eternity, in uncreated simplicity. The ideal world was not created in time;"the Father spake Himself and all the creatures in His Son"; "they exist in the eternal Now"

—"abecoming without a becoming, change without change." "The Word of God the Father is thesubstance of all that exists, the life of all that lives, the principle and cause of life." Of creation hesays: "We must not falsely imagine that God stood waiting for something to happen, that He mightcreate the world. For so soon as He was God, so soon as He begat His coeternal and coequal Son,He created the world." So Spinoza says: "God has always been before the creatures, without evenexisting before them. He precedes them not by an interval of time, but by a fixed eternity." This isnot the same as saying that the world of sense had no beginning; it is possible that Eckhart did notmean to go further than the orthodox scholastic mystic, Albertus Magnus, who says: "God createdthings from eternity, but the things were not created from eternity." St Augustine (Conf. xi. 30)bids objectors to "understand that there can be no time without creatures, and cease to talk nonsense."

This is an obscure point in Eckhart's philosophy, too technical to be discussed here; but Eckhart's doctrine of God is certainlymore orthodox and less pantheistic than those of 'Dionysius' and Scotus Erigena.

Cf.

St Augustine,

In Joann. Ev. Tract.

xxxix. 10: praeteritum et futurum invenio in omni motu rerum: in veritate quae manetpraeteritum et futurum non invenio, sed solum praesens."

W. R. IngeLight, Life, and Love

Eckhart also tries to distinguish between the "interior" and the "exterior" action of God. God, hesays, is in all things, not as Nature, not as Person, but as Being. He is everywhere, undivided; yetthe creatures participate in Him according to their measure.

The three Persons of the Trinity haveimpressed their image upon the creatures, yet it is only their "nothingness" that keeps them separatecreatures. Most of this comes from the Neoplatonists, and much of it through the pseudo-Dionysiusthe Areopagite, a Platonising Christian of the fifth century, whose writings were believed in theMiddle Ages to proceed from St Paul's Athenian convert. It would, however, be easy to find parallelsin St Augustine's writings to most of the phases quoted in this paragraph. The practical consequenceswill be considered presently.The creatures are a way from God; they are also a way to Him. "In Christ," he says, "all thecreatures are one man, and that man is God." Grace, which is a real self-unfolding of God in thesoul, can

make

us "what God is by Nature"—one of Eckhart's audacious phrases, which are notreally so unorthodox as they sound. The following prayer, which appears in one of his discourses,may perhaps be defended as asking no more than our Lord prayed for (John xvii.) for His disciples,but it lays him open to the charge, which the Pope's bull did not fail to urge against him, that hemade the servant equal to his Lord. "Grant that I, by Thy grace, may be united to Thy Nature, asThy Son is eternally one in Thy Nature, and that grace may become my nature."The ethical aim is to be rid of "creatureliness," and so to be united to God. In Eckhart's system,as in that of Plotinus, speculation is never divorced from ethics. On our side the process is a negativeone. All our knowledge must be reduced to not-knowledge; our reason and will, as well as ourlower faculties, must transcend themselves, must die to live. We must

detach

ourselves absolutely"even from God," he says. This state of spiritual nudity he calls "poverty." Then, when our houseis empty of all else, God can dwell there: "He begets His Son in us." This last phrase has alwaysbeen a favourite with the mystics. St Paul uses very similar language, and the Epistle to Diognetus,written in the second century, speaks of Christ as, "being ever born anew in the hearts of the saints."Very characteristic, too, is the doctrine that complete detachment from the creatures is the way tounion with God. Jacob B

hme has arrived independently at the same conclusion as Eckhart. "Thescholar said to his master: How may I come to the supersensual life, that I may see God and hearHim speak? The master said: When thou canst throw thyself but for a moment into that place whereno creature dwelleth, then thou hearest what God speaketh. The scholar asked: Is that near or faroff? The master replied: It is in thee, and if thou canst for a while cease from all thy thinking andwilling, thou shalt hear unspeakable words of God. The scholar said: How can I hear, when I standstill from thinking and willing? The master answered: When thou standest still from the thinkingand willing of self, the eternal hearing, seeing, and speaking will be revealed to thee, and so Godheareth and seeth through thee."In St Thomas Aquinas it is "the will enlightened by reason" which unites us to God. But thereare two sorts of reason. The passive reason is the faculty which rises through discursive thinking

This doctrine is fully explained by St. Augustine,

Epist.

237, who follows Plotinus,

Enn.

vi. 4–6.

W. R. IngeLight, Life, and Love

to knowledge. The active reason is a much higher faculty, which exists by participation in the divinemind, "as the air is light by participation in the sunshine." When this active reason is regarded asthe standard of moral action, it is called by Aquinas

synteresis

Eckhart was at first content withthis teaching of St Thomas, whom he always cites with great reverence; but the whole tendency of his thinking was to leave the unprofitable classification of faculties in which the Victorine Schoolalmost revelled, and to concentrate his attention on the union of the soul with God. And thereforein his more developed teaching,

the "spark" which is the point of contact between the soul and itsMaker is something higher than the faculties, being "uncreated." He seems to waver about identifyingthe "spark" with the "active reason," but inclines on the whole to regard it as something even higherstill. "There is something in the soul," he says, "which is so akin to God that it is one with Him andnot merely united with Him." And again: "There is a force in the soul; and not only a force, butsomething more, a being; and not only a being, but something more; it is so pure and high andnoble in itself that no creature can come there, and God alone can dwelt there. Yea, verily, andeven God cannot come there with a form; He can only come with His simple divine nature." Andin the startling passage often quoted against him, a passage which illustrates admirably his affinityto one side of Hegelianism, we read: "The eye with which I see God is the same eye with whichHe sees me. Mine eye and God's eye are one eye and one sight and one knowledge and one love."I do not defend these passages as orthodox; but before exclaiming "rank Pantheism!" we oughtto recollect that for Eckhart the

being

of God is quite different from His personality. Eckhart nevertaught that the Persons of the Holy Trinity become, after the mystical Union, the "

Form

" of thehuman soul. It is the

impersonal

light of the divine nature which transforms our nature; humanpersonality is neither lost nor converted into divine personality. Moreover, the divine spark at thecentre of the soul is not the soul nor the personality. "The soul," he says in one place, using a figurewhich recurs in the "Theologia Germanica," "has two faces. One is turned towards this world andtowards the body, the other towards God." The complete dominion of the "spark" over the soul isan unrealised ideal.

The truth which he values is that, as Mr Upton

has well expressed it, "there is a certainself-revelation of the eternal and infinite One to the finite soul, and therefore an indestructible basisfor religious ideas and beliefs as distinguished from what is called scientific knowledge. .

. This

This queer word occurs for the first time, I think, in Jerome's notes to the first chapter of Ezekiel. He writes the word in Greek,and explains it as that part of the soul which always opposes vices. The word is common in Bonaventura and other scholasticmystics, and is often misspelt

synderesis

It must, however, be said that Preger is too ready to assume that the logical development of Eckhart's system away from Thomistscholasticism can be traced as a gradual process in his writings, the order of which is very uncertain. We are not justified insaying in a positive manner that Eckhart's philosophy passed through three phases, in the first of which the primacy is held bythe will, in the second by the created reason, and in the third by the uncreated reason.

See pages 14, 15.

C.B. Upton: "Hibbert Lectures," p. 17.

W. R. IngeLight, Life, and Love

immanent universal principle does not pertain to, and is not the property of any individual mind,but belongs to that uncreated and eternal nature of God which lies deeper than all those differenceswhich separate individual minds from each other, and is indeed that incarnation of the Eternal, whothough He is present in every finite thing, is still not broken up into individualities, but remainsone and the same eternal substance, one and the same unifying principle, immanently and indivisiblypresent in every one of the countless plurality of finite individuals." It might further be urged thatneither God nor man can be understood in independence of each other. A recent writer on ethics,

not too well disposed towards Christianity, is, I think, right in saying: "To the popular mind, whichassumes God and man to be two different realities, each given in independence of the other, .

.the identification of man's love of God with God's love of Himself has always been a paradox anda stumbling-block. But it is not too much to say that until it has been seen to be no paradox, but asimple and fundamental truth, the masterpieces of the world's religious literature must remain asealed book to us."Eckhart certainly believed himself to have escaped the pitfall of Pantheism; but he oftenexpressed himself in such an unguarded way that the charge may be brought against him with someshow of reason.Love, Eckhart teaches, is the principle of all virtues; it is God Himself. Next to it in dignitycomes humility. The beauty of the soul, he says in the true Platonic vein, is to be well ordered, withthe higher faculties above the lower, each in its proper place. The will should be supreme over theunderstanding, the understanding over the senses. Whatever we

will

earnestly, that we have, andno one can hinder us from attaining that detachment from the creatures in which our blessednessconsists.Evil, from the highest standpoint, is only a means for realising the eternal aim of God in creation;all will ultimately be overruled for good. Nevertheless, we can frustrate the good will of Godtowards us, and it is this, and not the thought of any insult against Himself, that makes God grievefor our sins. It would not be worth while to give any more quotations on this subject, for Eckhartis not more successful than other philosophers in propounding a consistent and intelligible theoryof the place of evil in the universe.Eckhart is well aware of the two chief pitfalls into which the mystic is liable to fall—dreamyinactivity and Antinomianism. The sects of the Free Spirit seem to have afforded a good object-lessonin both these errors, as some of the Gnostic sects did in the second century. Eckhart's teaching hereis sound and good. Freedom from law, he says, belongs only to the "spark," not to the faculties of the soul, and no man can live always on the highest plane. Contemplation is, in a sense, a meansto activity; works of charity are its proper fruit. "If a man were in an ecstasy like that of St Paul,when he was caught up into the third heaven, and knew of a poor man who needed his help, heought to leave his ecstasy and help the needy." Suso

tells us how God punished him for disregarding

A.E. Taylor: "The Problem of Conduct," PP. 464–5.

See pages 71–2.

W. R. IngeLight, Life, and Love

this duty. True contemplation considers Reality (or Being) in its manifestations as well as in itsorigin. If this is remembered, there need be no conflict between social morality and the inner life.Eckhart recognises

that it is a harder and a nobler task to preserve detachment in a crowd than ina cell; the little daily sacrifices of family life are often a greater trial than self-imposed mortifications."We need not destroy any little good in ourselves for the sake of a better, but we should strive tograsp every truth in its highest meaning, for no one good contradicts another." "Love God, and doas you like, say the Free Spirits. Yes; but as long as you like anything contrary to God's will, youdo not love Him."There is much more of the same kind in Eckhart's sermons—as good and sensible doctrine asone could find anywhere. But what was the practical effect of his teaching as a whole? It is generallythe case that the really weak points of any religious movement are exposed with a cruel logicalitymost exasperating to the leaders by the second generation of its adherents. The dangerous side of the Eckhartian mysticism is painfully exhibited in the life of his spiritual daughter, "SchwesterKatrei," the saint of the later Beguines. Katrei is a rather shadowy person; but for our presentpurpose it does not much matter whether the story of her life has been embroidered or not. Hermemory was revered for such sayings and doings as these which follow. On one occasion sheexclaimed: "Congratulate me; I have become God!" and on another she declared that "not even thedesire of heaven should tempt a good man towards activity." It was her ambition to forget whowere her parents, to be indifferent whether she received absolution and partook of the HolyCommunion or not; and she finally realised her ambition by falling into a cataleptic state in whichshe was supposed to be dead, and was carried out for burial. Her confessor, perceiving that she wasnot really dead, awoke her: "Art thou satisfied?" "I am satisfied at last," said Katrei: she was now"dead all through," as she wished to be.Are we to conclude that the logical outcome of mysticism is this strange reproduction, inTeutonic Europe, of Indian Yogism? Many who have studied the subject have satisfied themselvesthat Schwester Katrei is the truly consistent mystic. They have come to the conclusion that the realattraction of mysticism is a pining for deliverance from this fretful, anxious, exacting, individuallife, and a yearning for absorption into the great Abyss where all distinctions are merged in theInfinite. According to this view, mysticism in its purest form should be studied in the ancientreligious literature of India, which teaches us how all this world of colour and diversity, of sharpoutlines and conflicting forces, may be lost and swallowed up in the "white radiance," or black darkness (it does not really matter which we call it) of an empty Infinite.The present writer is convinced that this is not the truth about mysticism. Eckhart may haveencouraged Schwester Katrei in her attempt to substitute the living death of the blank trance forthe dying life of Christian charity; but none the less she caricatured and stultified his teaching. AndI think it is possible to lay our finger on the place where she and so many others went wrong. Theaspiration of mysticism is to find the unity which underlies all diversity, or, in religious language,

See pages 12–13.

W. R. IngeLight, Life, and Love

to see God face to face. From the Many to the One is always the path of the mystic. Plotinus, thefather of all mystical philosophy in Europe (unless, as he himself would have wished, we give thathonour to Plato), mapped out the upward road as follows:—At the bottom of the hill is the sphereof the "merely many"—of material objects viewed in disconnection, dull, and spiritless. This is aworld which has no real existence; it may best be called "not-being" ("

ein lauteres Nichts

," asEckhart says), and as the indeterminate, it can only be apprehended by a correspondingindeterminateness in the soul. The soul, however, always adds some form and determination to theabstract formlessness of the "merely many." Next, we rise to, or project for ourselves, the worldof "the one and the many." This is the sphere in which our consciousness normally moves. We areconscious of an overruling Mind, but the creatures still seem external to and partially independentof it. Such is the temporal order as we know it. Above this is the intelligible world, the eternalorder, "the one-many,"

das ewige Nu

, the world in which God's will is done perfectly and all reflectsthe divine mind. Highest of all is "the One," the, Absolute, the Godhead, of whom nothing can bepredicated, because He is above all distinctions. This Neoplatonic Absolute is the Godhead of whom Eckhart says: "God never looked upon deed," and of whom Angelus Silesius sings:"Und sieh, er ist nicht Wille,Er ist ein’ ewige Stille."Plotinus taught that the One, being superessential, can only be apprehended in ecstasy, when thought,which still distinguishes itself from its object, is transcended, and knower and known become one.As Tennyson's

Ancient Sage

says:"If thou would'st hear the Nameless, and descendInto the Temple-cave of thine own self,There, brooding by the central altar, thouMay'st haply learn the Nameless hath a voice,By which thou wilt abide, if thou be wise;For knowledge is the swallow on the lake,That sees and stirs the surface-shadow thereBut never yet hath dipt into the Abysm."In the same way Eckhart taught that no

creature

can apprehend the Godhead, and, therefore,that the spark in the centre of the soul (this doctrine, too, is found in Plotinus) must be verily divine.The logic of the theory is inexorable. If only like can know like, we cannot know God except by afaculty which is itself divine. The real question is whether God, as an object of knowledge andworship for finite beings,

the absolute Godhead, who transcends all distinctions. The mediaevalmystics held that this "flight of the alone to the alone," as Plotinus calls it, is possible to men, andthat in it consists our highest blessedness. They were attracted towards this view by severalinfluences. First, there was the tradition of Dionysius, to whom (

e.g

.) the author of the "TheologiaGermanica" appeals as an authority for the possibility of "beholding the hidden things of God byutter abandonment of thyself, and of entering into union with Him who is above all existence, and

W. R. IngeLight, Life, and Love

all knowledge." Secondly, there was what a modern writer has called "the attraction of the Abyss,"the longing which some persons feel very strongly to merge their individuality in a larger and betterwhole, to get rid not only of selfishness but of self for ever. "Leave nothing of myself in me," isCrashaw's prayer in his wonderful poem on St Teresa. Thirdly, we may mention the awe and respectlong paid to ecstatic trances, the pathological nature of which was not understood. The blank trancewas a real experience; and as it could be induced by a long course of ascetical exercises and ferviddevotions, it was naturally regarded as the crowning reward of sanctity on earth. Nor would it beat all safe to reject the evidence, which is very copious,

that the "dreamy state" may issue inpermanent spiritual gain. The methodical cultivation of it, which is at the bottom of most of thestrange austerities of the ascetics, was not only (though it was partly) practised in the hope of enjoying those spiritual raptures which are described as being far more intense than any pleasuresof sense

: it was the hope of stirring to its depths the subconscious mind and permeating the wholewith the hidden energy of the divine Spirit that led to the desire for visions and trances. Lastly, Ithink we must give a place to the intellectual attraction of an uncompromising

monistic

theory of the universe. Spiritualistic monism, when it is consistent with itself, will always lean tosemi-pantheistic mysticism rather than to such a compromise with pluralism as Lotze and hisnumerous followers in this country imagine to be possible.But it is possible to go a long way with the mystics and yet to maintain that under no conditionswhatever can a finite being escape from the limitations of his finitude and see God or the world orhimself "with the same eye with which God sees" all things. The old Hebrew belief, that to see theface of God is death, expresses the truth under a mythical form. That the human mind, while still"in the body pent," may obtain glimpses of the eternal order, and enjoy foretastes of the bliss of heaven, is a belief which I, at least, see no reason to reject. It involves no rash presumption, and isnot contrary to what may be readily believed about the state of immortal spirits passing through amortal life. But the explanation of the blank trance as a temporary transit into the Absolute mustbe set down as a pure delusion. It involves a conception of the divine "Rest" which in his bestmoments Eckhart himself repudiates. "The Rest of the Godhead," he says, "is not in that He is thesource of being, but in that He is the consummation of all being." This profound saying expressesthe truth, which he seems often to forget, that the world-process must have a real value in God'ssight—that it is not a mere polarisation of the white radiance of eternity broken up by the

See, for example, Prof. W. James' "Varieties of Religions Experience," P. 400.

Jacob B

hme's experience is typical: "Suddenly did my spirit break through into the innermost birth or geniture of the Deity,and there was I embraced with love, as a bridegroom embraces his dearly beloved bride. But the greatness of the triumphingthat was in the spirit I cannot express in speech or writing; nor can it be compared to anything but the resurrection of the deadto life. In this light my spirit suddenly saw through all; even in herbs and grass it knew God, who and what He is," etc. Dr Johnsonwas, no doubt, right in thinking that "Jacob" would have been wiser, and "more like St Paul," if he had not attempted to utterthe unutterable things which he saw.

W. R. IngeLight, Life, and Love

imperfection of our vision. Whatever theories we may hold about Absolute Being, or an Absolutethat is above Being, we must make room for the Will, and for Time, which is the "form" of thewill, and for the creatures who inhabit time and space, as having for us the value of reality. Norshall we, if we are to escape scepticism, be willing to admit that these appearances have no surerelation to ultimate reality. We must not try to uncreate the world in order to find God. We werecreated out of nothing, but we cannot return to nothing, to find our Creator there. The still, smallvoice is best listened for amid the discordant harmony of life and death.The search for God is no exception to the mysterious law of human nature, that we cannot getanything worth having—neither holiness nor happiness nor wisdom—by trying for it directly. Itmust be given us through something else. The recluse who lives like Parnell's "Hermit":"Prayer all his business, all his pleasure praise,"is not only a poor sort of saint, but he will offer a poor sort of prayers and praises. He will missreal holiness for the same reason that makes the pleasure-seeker miss real happiness. We must loseourselves in some worthy interest in order to find again both a better self and an object higher thanthat which we sought. This the German mystics in a sense knew well. There is a noble sentence of Suso to the effect that "he who realises the inward in the outward, to him the inward becomes moreinward than to him who only recognises the inward in the inward." Moreover, the recognition that"God manifests Himself and worketh more in one creature than another" ("Theologia Germanica"),involves a denial of the nihilistic view that all the creatures are "

ein lauteres Nichts

It would beeasy to find such passages in all the fourteenth-century mystics, but it cannot be denied that on thewhole their religion is too self-centred. There are not many maxims so fundamentally wrong-headedand un-Christian as Suso's advice to "live as if you were the only person in the world."

The lifeof the cloistered saint may be abundantly justified—for the spiritual activity of some of them hasbeen of far greater service to mankind than the fussy benevolence of many "practical"busybodies—but the idea of social service, whether in the school of Martha or of Mary, oughtsurely never to be absent. The image of Christ as the Lover of the individual soul rather than as theBridegroom of the Church was too dear to these lonely men and women. Unconsciously, theylooked to their personal devotions to compensate them for the human loves which they had forsworn.The raptures of Divine Love, which they regarded as signal favours bestowed upon them, were notvery wholesome in themselves, and diverted their thoughts from the needs of their fellow-men.They also led to most painful reactions, in which the poor contemplative believed himself abandonedby God and became a pray to terrible depression and melancholy. These fits of wretchedness cameindeed to be recognised as God's punishment for selfishness in devotion and for too great desire

The extracts from the "Theologia Germanica" will show that this treatise represents a later and less paradoxical form of mysticalthought than Eckhart's.

The maxim, however, is much older than Suso.

W. R. IngeLight, Life, and Love

for the sweetness of communing with God, and so arose the doctrine of "disinterested love," whichwas more and more emphasised in the later mysticism, especially by the French Quietists.I have spoken quite candidly of the defects of Eckhart's mystical Christianity. As a religiousphilosophy it does not keep clear of the fallacy that an ascent though the unreal can lead to reality."To suppose, as the mystic does, that the finite search has of itself no Being at all, is illusory, isMaya, is itself nothing, this is also to deprive the Absolute of even its poor value as a contrastinggoal. For a goal that is a goal of no real process has as little value as it has content."

But, as Prof.Royce says, mysticism furnishes us with the means of correcting itself. It supplies an obvious

reductio ad absurdum

of the theory with which it set out, that "Immediacy is the one test of reality,"and is itself forced to give the world of diversity a real value as manifesting in different degreesthe nature of God. Those who are acquainted with the sacred books of the East will recognise thathere is the decisive departure from real Pantheism. And it may be fairly claimed for the Germanmystics that though their speculative teaching sometimes seems to echo too ominously the apatheticdetachment of the Indian sage, their lives and example, and their practical exhortations, preacheda truer and a larger philosophy. Eckhart, as we have seen, was a busy preacher as well as a keenstudent, and some of the younger members of his school were even more occupied in pastoral work.If the tree is to be judged by its fruits, mysticism can give a very good account of itself to theMarthas as well as the Marys of this world.

4. THE GERMAN MYSTICS AS GUIDES TO HOLINESS

THIS little volume is a contribution to a "Library of Devotion," and in the body of the work the reader will be seldom troubled by any abstruse philosophising. I have thought it necessary togive, in this Introduction, a short account of Eckhart's system, but the extracts which follow aretaken mainly from his successors, in whom the speculative tendency is weaker and less original,while the religious element is stronger and more attractive. It is, after all, as guides to holiness thatthese mystics are chiefly important to us. This side of their life's work can never be out of date, forthe deeper currents of human nature change but little; the language of the heart is readily understoodeverywhere and at all times. The differences between Catholic and Protestant are hardly felt in thekeen air of these high summits. It was Luther himself who discovered the "Theologia Germanica"and said of it that, "next to the Bible and St Augustine, no book hath ever come into my handswhence I have learnt or would wish to learn more of what God and Christ and man and all thingsare. I thank God that I have heard and found my God in the German tongue, as I have not yet foundHim in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew." The theology of these mystics takes us straight back to theJohannine doctrine of Christ as the all-pervading Word of God, by whom all things were made and

Royce: "The World and the Individual" vol. i. p. 193.

W. R. IngeLight, Life, and Love

in whom all things hold together. He is not far from any one of us if we will but seek Him whereHe is to be found—in the innermost sanctuary of our personal life. In personal religion this meansthat no part of revelation is to be regarded as past, isolated, or external. "We should mark and knowof a very truth," says the author of the "Theologia Germanica," "that all manner of virtue andgoodness, and even the eternal Good which is God Himself, can never make a man virtuous, good,or happy, so long as it is outside the soul." In the same spirit Jacob B

hme, 250 years later, says:"If the sacrifice of Christ is to avail

for

me, it must be wrought

me." Or, as his English admirer,William Law, puts it: "Christ given for us is neither more nor less than Christ given into us. He isin no other sense our full, perfect, and sufficient Atonement than as His nature and spirit are bornand formed in us." The whole process of redemption must in a sense be reenacted in the inner lifeof every Christian. And as Christ emptied Himself for our sakes, so must we empty ourselves of all self-seeking. "When the creature claimeth for its

own

anything good, such as life, knowledge,or power, and in short whatever we commonly call good, as if it

were

that, or possessed that—itgoeth astray." Sin is nothing else but self-assertion, self-will. "Be assured," says the "TheologiaGermanica," "that he who helpeth a man to his own will, helpeth him to the worst that he can." He,therefore, who is "simply and wholly bereft of self" is delivered from sin, and God alone reigns inhis inmost soul. Concerning the highest part or faculty of the soul, the author of this little treatisefollows Eckhart, but cautiously. "The True Light," he says, is that eternal Light which is God;

or else

it is a created light, but yet Divine, which is called grace." In either case, "where God dwellsin a godly man, in such a man somewhat appertaineth to God which is His own, and belongs toHim only and not to the creature." This doctrine of divine immanence, for which there is amplewarrant in the New Testament, is the real kernel of German mysticism. It is a doctrine which, whenrightly used, may make this world a foretaste of heaven, but alas! the "False Light" is always tryingto counterfeit the true. In the imitation of the suffering life of Christ lies the only means of escapingthe deceptions of the Evil One. "The False Light dreameth itself to be God, and sinless"; but "noneis without sin; if any is without consciousness of sin, he must be either Christ or the Evil Spirit."Very characteristic is the teaching of all these writers about rewards and punishments. Withoutin any way impugning the Church doctrine of future retribution, they yet agree with BenjaminWhichcote, the Cambridge Platonist, that "heaven is first a temper, then a place"; while of hellthere is much to recall the noble sentence of Juliana of Norwich, the fourteenth-century visionary,"to me was showed no harder hell than sin." "Nothing burneth in hell but self-will," is a saying inthe "Theologia Germanica."

They insist that the difference between heaven and hell is not thatone is a place of enjoyment, the other of torment; it is that in the one we are with Christ, in theother without Him. "The Christlike life is not chosen," to quote the "Theologia Germanica" oncemore, "in order to serve any end, or to get anything by it, but for love of its nobleness, and becauseGod loveth and esteemeth it so highly. He who doth not take it up for love, hath none of it at all;he may dream indeed that he hath put it on, but he is deceived. Christ did not lead such a life as

So in the "Lignum Vitae" of Laurentius Justinianus we read: "Let self-will cease, and there will be no more hell."

W. R. IngeLight, Life, and Love

this for the sake of reward, but out of love, and love maketh such a life light, and taketh away allits hardships, so that it becometh sweet and is gladly endured." The truly religious man is alwaysmore concerned about what God will do

him than what He will do

him; in his intense desirefor the purification of his motives he almost wishes that heaven and hell were blotted out, that hemight serve God for Himself alone.

5. WRITERS OF THE SCHOOL OF ECKHART—TAULER

Such are the main characteristics of the religious teachings which we find in the German mystics.Among the successors of Eckhart, from whose writings the following extracts are taken, the mostnotable names are those of Tauler, Suso, and Ruysbroek. From Tauler I have taken very little,because a volume of selections from his sermons has already appeared in this series.

Accordingly,it will only be necessary to mention a very few facts about his life.John Tauler was born at Strassburg about 1300, and studied at the Dominican convents of Strassburg and Cologne. At both places he doubtless heard the sermons of Eckhart. In 1329 thegreat interdict began at Strassburg, and was stoutly resisted by many of the clergy. It is a disputedpoint whether Tauler himself obeyed the Papal decree or not. His uneventful life, which was devotedto study, preaching, and pastoral work, came to an end in 1361. Like Eckhart, he had a favourite"spiritual daughter," Margaret Ebner, who won a great reputation as a visionary.

6. SUSO

Henry Suso was born in 1295 and died in 1365. His autobiography was published not longbefore his death. He is the poet of the band. The romance of saintship is depicted by him with astrange vividness which alternately attracts and repels, or even disgusts, the modern reader. Thewhole-hearted devotion of the "Servitor" to the "Divine Wisdom," the tender beauty of the visionsand conversations, and the occasional

vet

of the narrative, which shows that the saint remainedvery human throughout, make Suso's books delightful reading; but the accounts of the horriblemacerations to which he subjected himself for many years shock our moral sense almost as muchas our sensibilities; we do not now believe that God takes pleasure in sufferings inflicted in Hishonour. Moreover, the erotic symbolism of the visions is occasionally unpleasant: we are no longerin the company of such sane and healthy people as Eckhart and Tauler. The half-sensuous pleasure

"The Inner Way," being thirty-six sermons by John Tauler. Translated by A.W. Hutton, M.A.

W. R. IngeLight, Life, and Love

of ecstasy was evidently a temptation to Suso, and the violent alternations of rapture and miserywhich he experienced suggest a neurotic and ill-balanced temperament.

On this subject—the pathological side of mysticism—a few remarks will not be out of place,for there has been much discussion of it lately. A great deal of nonsense has been written on theconnexion between religion and neuroticism. To quote Professor James' vigorous protest, "medicalmaterialism finishes up St Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesionof the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. It snuffs out St Teresa as an hysteric, St Francis of Assisi as an hereditary degenerate. George Fox's discontent with the shams of his age, and hispining for spiritual veracity, it treats as a symptom of a disordered colon. Carlyle's organ-tones of misery it accounts for by a gastro-duodenal catarrh. All such mental over-tensions, it says, are,when you come to the bottom of the matter, mere affairs of diathesis (auto-intoxications mostprobably), due to the perverted action of various glands which physiology will yet discover."

Now, even if it were true that most religious geniuses, like most other geniuses, have been"psychopaths" of one kind or another, this fact in no way disposes of the value of their intuitionsand experiences. Nearly all the great benefactors of humanity have been persons of one-sided, andtherefore ill-balanced, characters. Even Maudsley admits that "Nature may find an incomplete minda more suitable instrument for a particular purpose. It is the work that is done, and the quality inthe worker by which it is done, that is alone of moment; and it may be no great matter from acosmical standpoint, if in other qualities of character he (the genius) was singularly defective."

Except in the character of our Lord Himself, there are

visible

imperfections in the record of everygreat saint; but that is no reason for allowing such traces of human infirmity to discredit what ispure and good in their work. More particularly, it would be a great pity to let our minds dwell onthe favourite materialistic theory that saintliness, especially as cultivated and venerated byCatholicism, has its basis in "perverted sexuality." There is enough plausibility in the theory tomake it mischievous. The allegorical interpretation of the Book of Canticles was in truth the sourceof, or at least the model for, a vast amount of unwholesome and repulsive pietism. Not a word needbe said for such a paltry narrative of endearments and sickly compliments as the "Revelations of the Nun Gertrude," in the thirteenth century. Nor are we concerned to deny that the artificiallyinduced ecstasy, which is desired on account of the intense pleasure which is said to accompanyit, nearly always contains elements the recognition of which would shock and distress thecontemplatives themselves.

There are, however, other elements, of a less insidious kind, whichmake the ecstatic trance seem desirable. These are, according to Professor Leuba, the calming of the restless intellect by the concentration of the mind on one object; the longing for a support andcomfort more perfect than man can give; and, thirdly, the consecration and strengthening of the

On the psychology of ecstatic mysticism see Leuba, in the Revue Philosophique, July and November 1902.

"Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 13.

Maudsley: "Natural Causes and Supernatural Seemings," p. 256.

See Leuba: "Tendances religieuses chez les mystiques chr

tiens" in

Revue Philosophique

, Nov. 1902.

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will, which is often a permanent effect of the trance. These are legitimate objects of desire, and inmany of the mystics they are much more prominent than any tendencies which might be consideredmorbid. As regards the larger question, about the alleged pathological character of all distinctivelyreligious exaltation, I believe that no greater mistake could be made than to suppose that the religiouslife flourishes best in unnatural circumstances. Religion, from a biological standpoint, I take to bethe expression of the racial will to live; its function (from this point of view) is the preservationand development of humanity on the highest possible level. If this is true, a simple, healthy, naturallife must be the most favourable for religious excellence—and this I believe to be the case. PoorSuso certainly did not lead a healthy or natural life. But in his case, though the suppressed naturalinstincts obviously overflow into the religious consciousness and in part determine the forms whichhis devotion assumes, we can never forget that we are in the company of a poet and a saint whowill lift us, if we can follow him, into a very high region of the spiritual life, an altitude which hehas himself climbed with bleeding feet.The simple confidence which at the end of the

dialogue

he expresses in the value of his work is, I think, amply justified. "Whoever will read these writings of mine in a right spirit, can hardlyfail to be stirred to the depths of his soul, either to fervent love, or to new light, or to hunger andthirst for God, or to hatred and loathing for his sins, or to that spiritual aspiration by which the soulis renewed in grace."

7. RUYSBROEK

[

Note:

the Ruysbroek selection has not been reproduced in this electronic edition. An electronictext of a larger collection of Ruysbroek's works may be available.]

8. THEOLOGIA GERMANICA

The "Theologia Germanica," an isolated treatise of no great length by an unknown author, waswritten towards the end of the fourteenth century by one of the

Gottesfreunde

, a widespreadassociation of pious souls in Germany. He is said to have been "a priest and warden of the houseof the Teutonic Order at Frankfort." His book is both the latest and one of the most importantproductions of the German mystical school founded by Eckhart. The author is a deeply religiousphilosopher, as much interested in speculative mysticism as Eckhart himself, but as thoroughlypenetrated with devout feeling as Thomas ˆ Kempis. The treatise should be read by all, as one of the very best devotional works in any language. My only reason for not translating it in full here

W. R. IngeLight, Life, and Love

is that a good English translation already exists,

so that it seemed unnecessary to offer a new oneto the public. I have therefore only translated a few characteristic passages, which are very far fromexhausting its beauties, and a few of the more striking aphorisms, which indicate the main pointsin the religious philosophy of the writer.

9. MODERN MYSTICISM

The revival of interest in the old mystical writers is not surprising when we consider the wholetrend of modern thought. Among recent philosophers—though Lotze, perhaps the greatest nameamong them, is unsympathetic, in consequence of his over-rigid theory of personality—the greatpsychologist Fechner, whose religious philosophy is not so well known in this country as it deservesto be, has with some justice been called a mystic. And our own greatest living metaphysician, MrF.H. Bradley, has expounded the dialectic of speculative mysticism with unequalled power, thoughwith a bias against Christianity. Another significant fact is the great popularity, all over Europe, of Maeterlinck's mystical works, "Le Tr

sor des Humbles," "La Sagesse et la Destin

e," and "LeTemple Enseveli."The growing science of psychology has begun to turn its attention seriously to the study of thereligious faculty. Several able men have set themselves to collect material which may form thebasis of an inductive science. Personal experiences, communicated by many persons of both sexesand of various ages, occupations, and levels of culture, have been brought together and tabulated.It is claimed that important facts have already been established, particularly in connexion with thephenomena of conversion, by this method. The results have certainly been more than enough to justify confidence in the soundness of the method, and hope that the new science may have a greatfuture before it. Towards mysticism, recent writers on the psychology of religion have been lessfavourable than the pure metaphysicians. While the latter have shown a tendency towards Pantheismand Determinism, which makes them sympathise with the general trend of speculative mysticism,psychology seems just at present to lean towards a pluralistic metaphysic and a belief in free-willor even in chance. This attitude is especially noticeable in the now famous Gifford Lectures of Professor William James

and in the recent volume of essays written at Oxford.

But even if therising tide of neo-Kantianism should cause the speculative mystics to be regarded with disfavour,nothing can prevent the religion of the twentieth century from being mystical in type. The strongestwish of a vast number of earnest men and women to-day is for a basis of religious belief whichshall rest, not upon tradition or external authority or historical evidence, but upon the ascertainablefacts of human experience. The craving for

immediacy

, which we have seen to be characteristic of

"Theologia Germanica," translated by Susanna Winkworth. Macmillan & Co., 1893.

"Varieties of Religious Experience," 1902.

"Personal Idealism," 1902.

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all mysticism, now takes the form of a desire to establish the validity of the God-consciousness asa normal part of the healthy inner life. We may perhaps venture to predict that the Christian biologistof the future will turn the Pauline Christology into his own dialect somewhat after the followingfashion:—"The function of religion in the human race is closely analogous to, if not identical with,that of instinct in the lower animals. Religion is the racial will to live; not, however, to live anyhowand at all costs, but to live as human beings, conforming as far as possible to the highest type of humanity. Religion, therefore, acts as a higher instinct, inhibiting all self-destroying andrace-destroying impulses in the interest of a larger self than the individual life." To turn this statementinto theological form it is only necessary to claim that the "perfect man" which the religious instinctis trying to form is "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," that that perfect humanitywas once realised in the historical Christ, and that the higher instinct within us—ourselves, yet notourselves—which makes for life and righteousness, and is the source of all the good that we canthink, say, or do, may (in virtue of that historical incarnation) be justly called the indwelling

Christ

.This is all that the Christian mystic needs.

10. SPECIMENS OF MODERN MYSTICISM

I conclude this introductory essay with a few extracts from recent American books on thepsychology of religion. It is interesting to find some of the strangest experiences of the cloisterreproduced under the very different conditions of modern American life. The quotations will serveto show how far Tauler and the "Theologia Germanica" are from being out of date."The thing which impressed me most" (says a correspondent of Professor William James)

"was learning the fact that we must be in absolutely constant relation or mental touch with thatessence of life which permeates all and which we call God. This is almost unrecognisable unlesswe live into it ourselves

actually

—that is, by a constant turning to the very innermost, deepestconsciousness of our real selves or of God in us, for illumination from within, just as we turn tothe sun for light, warmth, and invigoration without. When you do this consciously, realising thatto turn inward to the light within you is to live in the presence of God or of your Divine self, yousoon discover the unreality of the objects to which you have hitherto been turning and which haveengrossed you without."The next quotation comes from a small book by one of the "New Thought" or "Mind Cure"school in America. The enormous sale of the volume testifies to the popularity of the teachingwhich it contains.

"Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 103.

"In Tune with the Infinite," by R.W. Trine (Bell & Sons, 1902). Fifty-ninth thousand. The extract appears to be a quotation fromanother writer, but no reference is given.

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"Intuition is an inner spiritual sense through which man is opened to the direct revelation andknowledge of God, the secret of nature and life, and through which he is brought into consciousunity and fellowship with God, and made to realise his own deific nature and supremacy of beingas the son of God. Spiritual supremacy and illumination thus realised through the development andperfection of intuition under divine inspiration gives the perfect inner vision and direct insight intothe character, properties, and purpose of all things to which the attention and interest are directed.It is, we repeat, a spiritual sense opening inwardly, as the physical senses open outwardly; andbecause it has the capacity to perceive, grasp, and know the truth at first hand, independent of allexternal sources of information, we call it intuition. All inspired teaching and spiritual revelationsare based upon the recognition of this spiritual faculty of the soul and its power to receive andappropriate them. Conscious unity of man in spirit and purpose with the Father, born out of hissupreme desire and trust, opens his soul through this inner sense to immediate aspiration andenlightenment from the divine omniscience, and the co-operative energy of the divine omnipotence,under which he becomes a seer and a master. On this higher plane of realised spiritual life in theflesh the mind acts with unfettered freedom and unbiassed vision, grasping truth at first hand,independent of all external sources of information. Approaching all beings and things from thedivine side, they are seen in the light of the divine omniscience.

God's purpose in them, and sothe truth concerning them, as it rests in the mind of God, are thus revealed by direct illuminationfrom the divine mind, to which the soul is opened inwardly through this spiritual sense we callintuition."The practice of meditation "without images," as the mediaeval mystics called it, is speciallyrecommended. "Many will receive great help, and many will be entirely healed by a practicesomewhat after the following nature:—With a mind at peace, and with a heart going out in love toall,

go into the quiet of your own interior self

, holding the thought, I am one with the Infinite Spiritof Life, the life of my life. I now open my body, in which disease has gotten a foothold, I open itfully to the inflowing tide of this infinite life, and it now, even now, is pouring in and coursingthrough my body, and the healing process is going on." "If you would find the highest, the fullest,and the richest life that not only this world but that any world can know, then do away with thesense of the separateness of your life from the life of God. Hold to the thought of your oneness. Inthe degree that you do this, you will find yourself realising it more and more, and as this life of realisation is lived, you will find that no good thing will be withheld, for all things are included inthis."

This modern mysticism is very much entangled with theories about the cure of bodily diseaseby suggestion; and it is fair to warn those who are unacquainted with the books of this sect thatthey will find much fantastic superstition mixed with a stimulating faith in the inner light as thevoice of God.

Compare Eckhart's saying that the eye with which I see God is the same as the eye with which He sees me.

"In Tune with the Infinite," pp. 58, 119.

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But whatever may be the course of this particular movement there can be no doubt that theAmericans, like ourselves, are only at the beginning of a great revival of mystical religion. Themovement will probably follow the same course as the mediaeval movement in Germany, withwhich this little book is concerned. It will have its philosophical supportees, who will press theirspeculation to the verge of Pantheism, perhaps reviving the Logos-cosmology of the ChristianAlexandrians under the form of the pan-psychism of Lotze and Fechner. It will have its evangelistslike Tauler, who will carry to our crowded town populations the glad tidings that the kingdom of God is not here or there, but within the hearts of all who will seek for it within them. It will assuredlyattract some to a life of solitary contemplation; while others, intellectually weaker or less serious,will follow the various theosophical and theurgical delusions which, from the days of Iamblichusdownward, have dogged the heels of mysticism. For the "False Light" against which the "TheologiaGermanica" warns us is as dangerous as ever; we may even live to see some new "Brethren of theFree Spirit" turning their liberty into a cloak of licentiousness. If so, the world will soon whistleback the disciplinarian with his traditions of the elders; prophesying will once more be suppressedand discredited, and a new crystallising process will begin. But before that time comes some changesmay possibly take place in the external proportions of Christian orthodoxy. The appearance of avigorous body of faith, standing firmly on its own feet, may even have the effect of relegating tothe sphere of pious opinion some tenets which have hitherto "seemed to be pillars."For these periodical returns to the "fresh springs" of religion never leave the tradition exactlywhere it was before. The German movement of the fourteenth century made the Reformationinevitable, and our own age may be inaugurating a change no less momentous, which will restorein the twentieth century some of the features of Apostolic Christianity.

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LIGHT, LIFE AND LOVE

ECKHART

GOD

GOD is nameless, for no man can either say or understand aught about Him. If I say, God isgood, it is not true; nay more; I am good, God is not good. I may even say, I am better than God;for whatever is good, may become better, and whatever may become better, may become best. NowGod is not good, for He cannot become better. And if He cannot become better, He cannot becomebest, for these three things, good, better, and best, are far from God, since He is above all. If I alsosay, God is wise, it is not true; I am wiser than He. If I also say, God is a Being, it is not true; Heis transcendent Being and superessential Nothingness. Concerning this St Augustine says: the bestthing that man can say about God is to be able to be silent about Him, from the wisdom of his inner judgement. Therefore be silent and prate not about God, for whenever thou dost prate about God,thou liest, and committest sin. If thou wilt be without sin, prate not about God. Thou canst understandnought about God, for He is above all understanding. A master saith: If I had a God whom I couldunderstand, I would never hold Him to be God. (318)

God is not only a Father of all good things, as being their First Cause and Creator, but He isalso their Mother, since He remains with the creatures which have from Him their being andexistence, and maintains them continually in their being. If God did not abide with and in thecreatures, they must necessarily have fallen back, so soon as they were created, into the nothingnessout of which they were created. (610)

REST ONLY IN GOD

IF I had everything that I could desire, and my finger ached, I should not have everything, forI should have a pain in my finger, and so long as that remained, I should not enjoy full comfort.Bread is comfortable for men, when they are hungry; but when they are thirsty, they find no morecomfort in bread than in a stone. So it is with clothes, they are welcome to men, when they arecold; but when they are too hot, clothes give them no comfort. And so it is with all the creatures.The comfort which they promise is only on the surface, like froth, and it always carries with it awant. But God's comfort is clear and has nothing wanting: it is full and complete, and God isconstrained to give it thee, for He cannot cease till He have given thee Himself. (300)It is only in God that are collected and united all the perfections, which in the creatures aresundered and divided. (324)

The numbers refer to pages in Pfeiffer's edition.

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Yet all the fulness of the creatures can as little express God, as a drop of water can express thesea. (173)

GOD IS ALWAYS READY

NO one ought to think that it is difficult to come to Him, though it sounds difficult and is reallydifficult at the beginning, and in separating oneself from and dying to all things. But when a manhas once entered upon it, no life is lighter or happier or more desirable; for God is very zealous tobe at all times with man, and teaches him that He will bring him to Himself if man will but follow.Man never desires anything so earnestly as God desires to bring a man to Himself, that he mayknow Him. God is always ready, but we are very unready; God is near to us, but we are far fromHim; God is within, but we are without; God is at home, but we are strangers. The prophet saith:God guideth the redeemed through a narrow way into the broad road, so that they come into thewide and broad place; that is to say, into true freedom of the spirit, when one has become a spiritwith God. May God help us to follow this course, that He may bring us to Himself. Amen. (223)

GRACE

THE masters say: That is young, which is near its beginning. Intelligence is the youngest facultyin man: the first thing to break out from the soul is intelligence, the next is will, the other facultiesfollow. Now he saith: Young man, I say unto thee, arise. The soul in itself is a simple work; whatGod works in the simple light of the soul is more beautiful and more delightful than all the otherworks which He works in all creatures. But foolish people take evil for good and good for evil. Butto him who rightly understands, the one work which God works in the soul is better and nobler andhigher than all the world. Through that light comes grace. Grace never comes in the intelligenceor in the will. If it could come in the intelligence or in the will, the intelligence and the will wouldhave to transcend themselves. On this a master says: There is something secret about it; and therebyhe means the spark of the soul, which alone can apprehend God. The true union between God andthe soul takes place in the little spark, which is called the spirit of the soul. Grace unites not to anywork. It is an indwelling and a living together of the soul in God. (255)Every gift of God makes the soul ready to receive a new gift, greater than itself. (15)Yea, since God has never given any gift, in order that man might rest in the possession of thegift, but gives every gift that He has given in heaven and on earth, in order that He might be ableto give one gift, which is Himself, so with this gift of grace, and with all His gifts He will make usready for the one gift, which is Himself. (569)No man is so boorish or stupid or awkward, that he cannot, by God's grace, unite his will whollyand entirely with God's will. And nothing more is necessary than that he should say with earnestlonging: O Lord, show me Thy dearest will, and strengthen me to do it. And God does it, as sure

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as He lives, and gives him grace in ever richer fulness, till he comes to perfection, as He gave tothe woman at Jacob's well. Look you, the most ignorant and the lowest of you all can obtain thisfrom God, before he leaves this church, yea, before I finish this sermon, as sure as God lives andI am a man. (187)O almighty and merciful Creator and good Lord, be merciful to me for my poor sins, and helpme that I may overcome all temptations and shameful lusts, and may be able to avoid utterly, inthought and deed, what Thou forbiddest, and give me grace to do and to hold all that Thou hastcommanded. Help me to believe, to hope, and to love, and in every way to live as Thou willest, asmuch as Thou willest, and what Thou willest. (415)

THE WILL

THEN is the will perfect, when it has gone out of itself, and is formed in the will of God. Themore this is so, the more perfect and true is the will, and in such a will thou canst do all things.(553)

SURRENDER OF THE WILL

YOU should know, that that which God gives to those men who seek to do His will with alltheir might, is the best. Of this thou mayest be as sure, as thou art sure that God lives, that the verybest must necessarily be, and that in no other way could anything better happen. Even if somethingelse seems better, it would not be so good for thee, for God wills this and not another way, and thisway must be the best for thee. Whether it be sickness or poverty or hunger or thirst, or whatever itbe, that God hangs over thee or does not hang over thee—whatever God gives or gives not, that isall what is best for thee; whether it be devotion or inwardness, or the lack of these which grievesthee—only set thyself right in this, that thou desirest the glory of God in all things, and then whateverHe does to thee, that is the best.Now thou mayest perchance say: How can I tell whether it is the will of God or not? If it werenot the will of God, it would not happen. Thou couldst have neither sickness nor anything elseunless God willed it. But know that it is God's will that thou shouldst have so much pleasure andsatisfaction therein, that thou shouldst feel no pain as pain; thou shouldst take it from God as thevery best thing, for it must of necessity be the very best thing for thee. Therefore I may even wishfor it and desire it, and nothing would become me better than so to do.If there were a man whom I were particularly anxious to please, and if I knew for certain thathe liked me better in a grey cloak than in any other, there is no doubt that however good anothercloak might be, I should be fonder of the grey than of all the rest. And if there were anyone whomI would gladly please, I should do nothing else in word or deed than what I knew that he liked.

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Ah, now consider how your love shows itself! If you loved God, of a surety nothing would giveyou greater pleasure than what pleases Him best, and that whereby His will may be most fully done.And, however great thy pain or hardship may be, if thou hast not as great pleasure in it as in comfortor fulness, it is wrong.We say every day in prayer to our Father, Thy will be done. And yet when His will is done, wegrumble at it, and find no pleasure in His will. If our prayers were sincere, we should certainlythink His will, and what He does, to be the best, and that the very best had happened to us. (134)Those who accept all that the Lord send, as the very best, remain always in perfect peace, forin them God's will has become their will. This is incomparably better than for our will to becomeGod's will. For when thy will becomes God's will—if thou art sick, thou wishest not to be wellcontrary to God's will, but thou wishest that it were God's will that thou shouldest be well. And soin other things. But when God's will becomes thy will—then thou art sick: in God's name; thy frienddies: in God's name! (55)

SUFFERING

MEN who love God are so far from complaining of their sufferings, that their complaint andtheir suffering is rather because the suffering which God's will has assigned them is so small. Alltheir blessedness is to suffer by God's will, and not to

have

suffered something, for this is the lossof suffering. This is why I said, Blessed are they who are willing to suffer for righteousness, not,Blessed are they who have suffered. (434)All that a man bears for God's sake, God makes light and sweet for him. (45)If all was right with you, your sufferings would no longer be suffering, but love and comfort.(442)If God could have given to men anything more noble than suffering, He would have redeemedmankind with it: otherwise, you must say that my Father was my enemy, if he knew of anythingnobler than suffering. (338)True suffering is a mother of all the virtues. (338)

SIN

DEADLY sin is a death of the soul. To die is to lose life. But God is the life of the soul; sincethen deadly sin separates us from God, it is a death of the soul.Deadly sin is also an unrest of the heart. Everything can rest only in its proper place. But thenatural place of the soul is God; as St Augustine says, Lord, thou hast made us for Thyself, and ourheart is restless till it finds rest in Thee. But deadly sin separates us from God; therefore it is anunrest of the heart. Deadly sin is also a sickness of the faculties, when a man can never stand upalone for the weight of his sins, nor ever resist falling into sin. Therefore deadly sin is a sickness

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of the faculties. Deadly sin is also a blindness of the sense, in that it suffers not a man to know theshortness of the pleasures of lust, nor the length of the punishment in hell, nor the eternity of joysin heaven. Deadly sin is also a death of all graces; for as soon as a deadly sin takes place, a manbecomes bare of all graces. (217)Every creature must of necessity abide in God; if we fall out of the hands of his mercy, we fallinto the hands of His justice. We must ever abide in Him. What madness then is it to wish not tobe with Him, without whom thou canst not be! (169)

CONTENTMENT

A GREAT teacher once told a story in his preaching about a man who for eight years besoughtGod to show him a man who would make known to him the way of truth. While he was in this stateof anxiety there came a voice from God and spake to him: Go in front of the church, and there shaltthou find a man who will make known to thee the way of truth. He went, and found a poor manwhose feet were chapped and full of dirt, and all his clothes were hardly worth twopence-halfpenny.He greeted this poor man and said to him, God give thee a good morning. The poor man answered,I never had a bad morning. The other said, God give thee happiness. How answerest thou that? Thepoor man answered, I was never unhappy. The first then said, God send thee blessedness. Howanswerest thou that? I was never unblessed, was the answer. Lastly the questioner said, God givethee health! Now enlighten me, for I cannot understand it. And the poor man replied, When thousaidst to me, may God give thee a good morning, I said I never had a bad morning. If I am hungry,I praise God for it; if I am cold, I praise God for it; if I am distressful and despised, I praise Godfor it; and that is why I never had a bad morning. When thou askedst God to give me happiness, Ianswered that I had never been unhappy; for what God gives or ordains for me, whether it be Hislove or suffering, sour or sweet, I take it all from God as being the best, and that is why I was neverunhappy. Thou saidst further, May God make thee blessed, and I said, I was never unblessed, forI have given up my will so entirely to God's will, that what God wills, that I also will, and that iswhy I was never unblessed, because I willed alone God's will. Ah! dear fellow, replied the man;but if God should will to throw thee into hell, what wouldst thou say then? He replied, Throw meinto hell! Then I would resist Him. But even if He threw me into hell, I should still have two armswherewith to embrace Him. One arm is true humility, which I should place under Him, and withthe arm of love I should embrace Him. And he concluded, I would rather be in hell and possessGod, than in the kingdom of heaven without Him. (623)

DETACHMENT

THE man who has submitted his will and purposes entirely to God, carries God with him in allhis works and in all circumstances. Therein can no man hinder him, for he neither aims at nor enjoys

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anything else, save God. God is united with Him in all his purposes and designs. Even as nomanifoldness can dissipate God, so nothing can dissipate such a man, or destroy his unity. Man,therefore, should take God with him in all things; God should be always present to his mind andwill and affections. The same disposition that thou hast in church or in thy cell, thou shouldst keepand maintain in a crowd, and amid the unrest and manifoldness of the world.Some people pride themselves on their detachment from mankind, and are glad to be alone orin church; and therein lies their peace. But he who is truly in the right state, is so in all circumstances,and among all persons; he who is not in a good state, it is not right with him in all places and amongall persons. He who is as he should be has God with him in truth, in all places and among all persons,in the street as well as in the church; and then no man can hinder him. (547)It is often much harder for a man to be alone in a crowd than in the desert; and it is often harderto leave a small thing than a great, and to practise a small work than one which people considervery great. (565)

PRAYER

GOOD and earnest prayer is a golden ladder which reaches up to heaven, and by which manascends to God.The man who will pray aright should ask for nothing except what may promote God's honourand glory, his own profit and the advantage of his neighbours. When we ask for temporal thingswe should always add, if it be God's will and if it be for my soul's health. But when we pray forvirtues, we need add no qualification, for these are God's own working. (359)

LOVE OF OUR NEIGHBOUR

IT is a hard thing to practise this universal love, and to love our neighbours as ourselves, as ourLord commanded us. But if you will understand it rightly, there is a greater reward attached to thiscommand, than to any other. The commandment seems hard, but the reward is precious indeed.(135)

LOVE

HE who has found this way of love, seeketh no other. He who turns on this pivot is in suchwise a prisoner that his foot and hand and mouth and eyes and heart, and all his human faculties,belong to God. And, therefore, thou canst overcome thy flesh in no better way, so that it may notshame thee, than by love. This is why it is written, Love is as strong as death, as hard as hell. Deathseparates the soul from the body, but love separates all things from the soul. She suffers nought to

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