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RELIGION
is, shortly, the reaction of the human soul in the presence
of God. As God is as much a part of the environment of man
as the earth on which he stands, no man can escape from religion
any more than he can escape from gravitation. But though every
man necessarily reacts to God, men react of course diversely,
each according to his nature, or perhaps we would better say,
each according to his temperament. Thus, broadly speaking,
three main types of religion arise, corresponding to the three
main varieties of the activity of the human spirit, intellectual,
emotional, and voluntary. According as the intellect, sensibility,
or will is dominant in him, each man produces for himself
a religion prevailingly of the intellect, sensibility, or
active will; and all the religions which men have made for
themselves find places somewhere among these three types,
as they produce themselves more or less purely, or variously
intermingle with one another.
We
say advisedly, all the religions which men have made for themselves.
For there is an even more fundamental division among religions
than that which is supplied by these varieties. This is the
division between man-made and God-made religions. Besides
the religions which man has made for himself, God has made
a religion for man. We call this revealed religion; and the
most fundamental division which separates between religions
is that which divides revealed religion from unrevealed religions.
Of course, we do not mean to deny that there is an element
of revelation in all religions. God is a person, and persons
are known only as they make themselves known - reveal themselves.
The term revelation is used in this distinction, therefore,
in a pregnant sense. In the unrevealed religions God is known
only as He has revealed Himself in His acts of the creation
and government of the world as every person must reveal himself
in his acts if he acts at all. In the one revealed religion
God has revealed Himself also in acts of special grace, among
which is included the open Word.
There
is an element in revealed religion, therefore, which is not
found in any unrevealed religion. This is the element of authority.
Revealed religion comes to man from without; it is imposed
upon him from a source superior to his own spirit. The unrevealed
religions, on the other hand, flow from no higher source than
the human spirit itself. However much they may differ among
themselves in the relative prominence given in each to the
functioning of the intellect, sensibility, or will, they have
this fundamental thing in common. They are all, in other words,
natural religions in contradistinction to the one supernatural
religion which God has made.
There
is a true sense, then, in which it may be said that the unrevealed
religions are "religions of the spirit" and revealed religion
is the "religion of authority." Authority is the correlate
of revelation, and wherever revelation is-and only where revelation
is - is there authority. Just because we do not see in revelation
man reaching up lame hands toward God and feeling fumblingly
after Him if haply he may find Him, but God graciously reaching
strong hands down to man, bringing him help in his need, we
see in it a gift from God, not a creation of man's. On the
other hand, the characteristic of all unrevealed religions
is that they are distinctly manmade. They have no authority
to appeal to, they rest solely on the deliverances of the
human spirit. As Rudyard Kipling shrewdly makes his "Tommy"
declare:
The
heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone,
He
don't obey no orders unless they is his own.
Naturally
it makes no difference in this respect whether it is the rational,
emotional, or volitional element in the activities of the
human spirit to which appeal is chiefly made. In no case are
the foundations sunk deeper than the human spirit itself,
and nothing appears in the structure that is raised which
the human spirit does not supply. The preponderance of one
or another of these activities in the structure does, however,
make an immense difference in the aspect of that structure.
Mysticism is the name which is given to the particular one
of these structures, the predominant place in which is taken
by the sensibility. It is characteristic of mysticism that
it makes its appeal to the feelings as the sole, or at least
as the normative, source of knowledge of divine things. That
is to say, it is the religious sentiment which constitutes
for it the source of religious knowledge. Of course mystics
differ with one another in the consistency with which they
apply their principle. And of course they differ with one
another in the account they give of this religious sentiment
to which they make their appeal. There are, therefore, many
varieties of mystics, pure and impure, consistent and inconsistent,
naturalistic and supernaturalistic, pantheistic and theistic
- even Christian. What is common to them all, and what makes
them all mystics, is that they all rest on the religious sentiment
as the source of knowledge of divine things.
The
great variety of the accounts which mystics give of the feeling
to which they make their appeal arises from the very nature
of the case. There is a deeper reason for a mystic being "mute"
- that is what the name imports - than that he wishes to make
a mystery of his discoveries. He is "mute" because, as a mystic,
he has nothing to say. When he sinks within himself he finds
feelings, not conceptions; his is an emotional, not a conceptional,
religion; and feelings, emotions, though not inaudible, are
not articulate. As a mystic, he has no conceptional language
in which to express what he feels. If he attempts to describe
it he must make use of terms derived from the religious or
philosophical thought in vogue about him, that is to say,
of non-mystical language. His hands may be the hands of Esau,
but his voice is the voice of Jacob. The language in which
he describes the reality which he finds within him does not
in the least indicate, then, what it is; it is merely a concession
to the necessity of communicating with the external world
or with his own more external self. What he finds within him
is just to his apprehension an "unutterable abyss." And Synesius
does himself and his fellow mystics no injustice when he declares
that "the mystic mind says this and that, gyrating around
the unutterable abyss."
On
the brink of this abyss the mystic may stand in awe, and,
standing in awe upon its brink, he may deify it. Then he calls
it indifferently Brahm or Zeus, Allah or the Holy Spirit,
according as men about him speak of God. He explains its meaning,
in other words, in terms of the conception of the universe
which he has brought with him, or, as it is more fashionable
now to phrase it, each in accordance with his own world-view.
Those who are held in the grasp of a naturalistic conception
of the world will naturally speak of the religious feeling
of which they have become acutely conscious as only one of
the multitudinous natural movements of the human soul, and
will seek merely, by a logical analysis of its presuppositions
and implications, to draw out its full meaning. Those who
are sunk in a pantheistic world-view will speak of its movements
as motions of the subliminal consciousness, and will interpret
them as the surgings within us of the divine ground of all
things, in listening to which they conceive themselves to
be sinking beneath the waves that fret the surface of the
ocean of being and penetrating to its profounder depths. If,
on the other hand, the mystic chances to be a theist, he may
look upon the movements of his religious feelings as effects
in his soul wrought by the voluntary actions of the God whom
he acknowledges; and if he should happen to be a Christian,
he may interpret these movements, in accordance with the teachings
of the Scriptures, as the leadings of the Holy Spirit or as
the manifestations within him of the Christ within us the
hope of glory.
This
Christian mysticism, now, obviously differs in no essential
respect from the parallel phenomena which are observable in
other religions. It is only general mysticism manifesting
itself on Christian ground and interpreting itself accordingly
in the forms of Christian thought. It is mysticism which has
learned to speak in Christian language. The phenomena themselves
are universal. There has never been an age of the world, or
a form of religion, in which they have not been in evidence.
There are always everywhere some men who stand out among their
fellows as listeners to the inner voice, and who, refusing
the warning which Thoas gives to Iphigenia in Goethe's play,
"There speaks no God: thy heart alone 'tis speaks," respond
like Iphigenia with passionate conviction, "'Tis only through
our hearts the gods e'er speak." But these common phenomena
are, naturally, interpreted in each instance, according to
the general presuppositions of each several subject or observer
of them. Thus, for example, they are treated as the intrusion
of God into the soul (Ribet), or as the involuntary intrusion
of the unconscious into consciousness (Hartmann), or as the
intrusion of the subconscious into the consciousness (Du Prel),
or as the intrusion of feeling, strong and overmastering,
into the operations of the intellect (Goethe).
According
to these varying interpretations we get different types of
mysticism, differing from one another not in intrinsic character
so much as in the explanations given of the common phenomena.
Many attempts have been made to arrange these types in logical
schemes which shall embrace all varieties and present them
in an intelligible order. Thus, for example, from the point
of view of the ends sought, R. A. Vaughan distinguishes between
theopathic, theosophic, and theurgic mysticism, the first
of which is content with feeling, while the second aspires
to knowledge, and the third seeks power. The same classes
may perhaps be called more simply emotional, intellectual,
and thelematic mysticism. From the point of view of the inquiry
into the sources of religious knowledge four wellmarked varieties
present themselves, which have been given the names of naturalistic,
supernaturalistic, theosophical, and pantheistic mysticism.
The
common element in all these varieties of mysticism is that
they all seek all, or most, or the normative or at least a
substantial part, of the knowledge of God in human feelings,
which they look upon as the sole or at least the most trust
worthy or the most direct source of the knowledge of God.
The differences between them turn on the diverging conceptions
which they entertain of the origin of the religious feelings
thus appealed to. Naturalistic mysticism conceives them as
merely "the natural religious consciousness of men, as excited
and influenced by the circumstances of the individual." Supernaturalistic,
as the effects of operations of the divine Spirit in the heart,
the human spirit moving only as it is moved upon by the divine.
Theosophical mysticism goes a step further and regards the
religious feelings as the footprints of Deity moving in the
soul, and as, therefore, immediate sources of knowledge of
God, which is to be obtained by simple quiescence and rapt
contemplation of these His movements. Pantheistic mysticism
advances to the complete identification of the soul with God,
who is therefore to be known by applying oneself to the simple
axiom: "Know thyself."
Clearly
it is the type which has been called supernaturalistic that
has the closest affinity with Christianity. Christian mysticism
accordingly, at its best, takes this form and passes insensibly
from it into evangelical Christianity, to which the indwelling
of the Holy Ghost - the Christ within - is fundamental, and
which rejoices in such spiritual experiences as are summed
up in the old categories of regeneration and sanctification
- the rebegetting of the soul into newness of life and the
leading of the new-created soul along the pathway of holy
living. From these experiences, of course, much may be inferred
not only of the modes of God's working in the salvation of
men but also of the nature and character of God the worker.
The
distinction between mysticism of this type and evangelical
Christianity, from the point of view which is now occupying
our attention, is nevertheless clear. Evangelical Christianity
interprets all religious experience by the normative revelation
of God recorded for us in the Holy Scriptures, and guides,
directs, and corrects it from these Scriptures, and thus molds
it into harmony with what God in His revealed Word lays down
as the normal Christian life. The mystic, on the other hand,
tends to substitute his religious experience for the objective
revelation of God recorded in the written Word, as the source
from which he derives his knowledge of God, or at least to
subordinate the expressly revealed Word as the less direct
and convincing source of knowledge of God to his own religious
experience. The result is that the external revelation is
relatively depressed in value, if not totally set aside.
In
the history of Christian thought mysticism appears accordingly
as that tendency among professing Christians which looks within,
that is, to the religious feelings, in its search for God.
It supposes itself to contemplate within the soul the movements
of the divine Spirit, and finds in them either the sole sources
of trustworthy knowledge of God, or the most immediate and
convincing sources of that knowledge, or, at least, a coordinate
source of it alongside of the written Word. The characteristic
of Christian mysticism, from the point of view of religious
knowledge, is therefore its appeal to the "inner light," or
"the internal word," either to the exclusion of the external
or written Word, or as superior to it and normative for its
interpretation, or at least as coordinate authority with it,
this "inner light" or "internal word" being conceived not
as the rational understanding but as the immediate deliverance
of the religious sentiment. As a mere matter of fact, now,
we lack all criteria, apart from the written Word, to distinguish
between those motions of the heart which are created within
us by the Spirit of God and those which arise out of the natural
functioning of the religious consciousness. This substitution
of our religious experience - or "Christian consciousness,"
as it is sometimes called - for the objective Word as the
proper source of our religious knowledge ends therefore either
in betraying us into purely rationalistic mysticism, or is
rescued from that by the postulation of a relation of the
soul to God which strongly tends toward pantheizing mysticism.
In
point of fact, mysticism in the Church is found to gravitate,
with pretty general regularity, either toward rationalism
or toward pantheism. In effect, indeed, it appears to differ
from rationalism chiefly in temperament, if we may not even
say in temperature. The two have it in common that they appeal
for knowledge of God only to what is internal to man; and
to what, internal to man, men make their actual appeal, seems
to be determined very much by their temperaments, or, as has
been said, by their temperatures. The human soul is a small
thing at best; it is not divided into watertight compartments;
the streams of feeling which are flowing up and down in it
and the judgments of the understanding which are incessantly
being framed in it are constantly acting and reacting on one
another. It is not always easy for it to be perfectly clear,
as it turns within itself and gazes upon its complex movements,
of the real source, rational or emotional, of the impressions
which it observes to be crystallizing within it into convictions.
It has often been observed in the progress of history, accordingly,
that men who have deserted the guidance of external revelation
have become mystics or rationalists, largely according as
their religious life was warm or cold. In periods of religious
fervor or in periods of fervid religious reactions they are
mystics; in periods of religious decline they are rationalists.
The same person, indeed, sometimes vibrates between the two
points of view with the utmost facility.
It
is, however, with pantheism that mysticism stands in the closest
association. It would not be untrue, in fact, to say that
as a historical phenomenon mysticism is just pantheism reduced
to a religion, that is to say, with its postulates transformed
into ends. Defenses of mysticism against the inevitable (and
true) charge of pantheizing usually, indeed, stop with the
announcement of this damaging fact. "Lasson," remarks Dean
Inge as if that were the conclusion of the matter instead
of, as it is, the confession of judgment, "says well, in his
book on Meister Eckhart, 'Mysticism views everything from
the standpoint of teleology, while pantheism generally stops
at causality.'" What it is of importance to observe is that
it is precisely what pantheism, being a philosophy, postulates
as conditions of being that mysticism, being a religion, proposes
as objects of attainment. Mysticism is simply, therefore,
pantheism expressed in the terms of religious aspiration.
This
is as true within the Christian Church as without it. All
forms of mysticism have no doubt from time to time found a
place for themselves within the Church. Or perhaps we should
rather say that they have always existed in it, and have from
time to time manifested their presence there. This must be
said even of naturalistic mysticism. There are those who call
themselves Christians who yet conceive of Christianity as
merely the natural religious sentiment excited into action
by contact with the religious impulse set in motion by Jesus
Christ and transmitted down the ages by the natural laws of
motion, as motion is transmitted, say, through a row of billiard
balls in contact with one another. Yet it would only be true
to say that mysticism as a phenomenon in the history of the
Church has commonly arisen in the wake of the dominating influence
in the contemporary world of a pantheizing philosophy. It
is the product of a pantheizing manner of thinking impinging
on the religious nature, or, if we prefer to phrase it from
the opposite point of view, of religious thought seeking to
assimilate and to express itself in terms of a pantheizing
philosophy.
The
fullest stream of mystical thought which has entered the Church
finds its origin in the Neoplatonic philosophy. It is to the
writings of the Pseudo - Dionysius that its naturalization
in the Eastern Church is usually broadly ascribed. The sluice-gates
of the Western Church were opened for it, in the same broad
sense, by John Scotus Erigena. It has flowed strongly down
through all the subsequent centuries, widening here and there
into lakelets. The form of mysticism which is most widely
disturbing the modern Protestant churches comes, however,
from a different source. It takes its origin from the movement
inaugurated in the first third of the nineteenth century by
Friedrich Schleiermacher, with the ostensible purpose of rescuing
Christianity from the assaults of rationalism by vindicating
for religion its own independent right of existence, in a
region "beyond reason." The result of this attempt to separate
religion from reason has been, of course, merely to render
religion unreasonable; even Plotinus, warned us long ago that
"he who would rise above reason falls outside of it."
But
what we are immediately concerned to observe is the very widespread
rejection of all "external authority," which has been one
of the results of this movement, and the consequent casting
of men back upon their "religious experience," corporate or
individual, as their sole trustworthy ground of religious
convictions. This is, of course, only "the inner light" of
an earlier form of mysticism under a new and (so it has been
hoped) more inoffensive name; and it is naturally, therefore,
burdened with all the evils which inhere in the mystical attitude.
These evils do not affect extreme forms of mysticism only;
they are intrinsic in the two common principles which give
to all its forms their fundamental character - the misprision
of "external authority," and the attempt to discover in the
movements of the sensibilities the ground or norm of all the
religious truth which will be acknowledged.
"Mystics,"
says George Tyrrell, "think they touch the divine when they
have only blurred the human form with a cloud of words." The
astonishing thing about this judgment is not the judgment
itself but the source from which it comes. For Tyrrell himself
as a "Modernist" held with our "experientialists," and when
he cast his eye into the future could see nothing but mysticism
as the last refuge for religion. "Houtin and Loisy are right,"
he writes; "the Christianity of the future will consist of
mysticism and charity, and possibly the Eucharist in its primitive
form as the outward bond. I desire no more." The plain fact
is that this" religious experience," to which we are referred
for our religious knowledge, can speak to us only in the language
of religious thought; and where there is no religious thought
to give it a tongue it is dumb. And above all, it must be
punctually noted, it cannot speak to us in a Christian tongue
unless that Christian tongue is lent it by the Christian revelation.
The rejection of "external authority" and our relegation to
"religious experience" for our religious knowledge is nothing
more nor less, then, than the definitive abolition of Christianity
and the substitution for it of natural religion. Tyrrell perfectly
understood this, and that is what he means when he speaks
of the Christianity of the future as reduced to "mysticism
and charity." All the puzzling facts of Christianity (this
is his view) - the incarnation and resurrection of the Son
of God and all the puzzling doctrines of Christianity - the
atonement in Christ's blood, the renewal through the Spirit,
the resurrection of the body - all, all will be gone. For
all this rests on "external authority." And men will content
themselves, will be compelled to content themselves, with
the motions of their own religious sensibilities - and (let
us hope) with charity.
There
is nothing more important in the age in which we live than
to bear constantly in mind that all the Christianity of Christianity
rests precisely on "external authority." Religion, of course,
we can have without "external authority," for man is a religious
animal and will function religiously always and everywhere.
But Christianity, no. Christianity rests on "external authority,"
and that for the very good reason that it is not the product
of man's religious sentiment but is a gift from God. To ask
us to set aside "external authority" and throw ourselves back
on what we can find within us alone-call it by whatever name
you choose, "religious experience," "the Christian consciousness,"
"the inner light," "the immanent Divine" - is to ask us to
discard Christianity and revert to natural religion. Natural
religion is of course good in its own proper place and for
its own proper purposes. Nobody doubts - or nobody ought to
doubt - that men are by nature religious and will have a religion
in any event. The sensus divinitatis implanted in us-to employ
Calvin's phrases - functions inevitably as a semen religionis.
Of
course Christianity does not abolish or supersede this natural
religion; it vitalizes it, and confirms it, and fills it with
richer content. But it does so much more than this that, great
as this is, it is pardonable that it should now and then be
overlooked. It supplements it, and, in supplementing it, it
transforms it, and makes it, with its supplements, a religion
fitted for and adequate to the needs of sinful man. There
is nothing "soteriological" in natural religion. It grows
out of the recognized relations of creature and Maker; it
is the creature's response to the perception of its Lord,
in feelings of dependence and responsibility. It knows nothing
of salvation. When the creature has become a sinner, and the
relations proper to it as creature to its Lord have been superseded
by relations proper to the criminal to its judge, natural
religion is dumb. It fails just because it is natural religion
and is unequal to unnatural conditions. Of course we do not
say that it is suspended; we say only that it has become inadequate.
It requires to be supplemented by elements which are proper
to the relation of the offending creature to the offended
Lord. This is what Christianity brings, and it is because
this is what Christianity brings that it so supplements and
transforms natural religion as to make it a religion for sinners.
It does not supersede natural religion; it takes it up in
its entirety unto itself, expanding it and developing it on
new sides to meet new needs and supplementing it where it
is insufficient for these new needs.
We
have touched here the elements of truth in George Tyrrell's
contention, otherwise bizarre enough, that Christianity builds
not on Judaism but on paganism. The antithesis is unfortunate.
Although in very different senses, Christianity builds both
on Judaism and on paganism; it is the completion of the supernatural
religion begun in Judaism, and it is the supernatural supplement
to the natural religion which lies beneath all the horrible
perversions of paganism. Tyrrell, viewing everything from
the point of view of his Catholicism and dealing in historical
as much as in theological judgments, puts his contention in
this form: "That Catholicism is Christianized paganism or
world-religion and not the Christianized Judaism of the New
Testament." The idea he wishes to express is that Catholicism
is the only tenable form of Christianity because it alone
is founded, not on Judaism, but on "world-religion." What
is worthy of our notice is that he says "world-religion,"
not "world-religions." He is thinking not of the infinite
variety of pagan religions - many of them gross enough, none
of them worthy of humanity ("man's worst crimes are his religions,"
says Dr. Faunce somewhere, most strikingly) - but of the underlying
religion which sustains and gives whatever value they possess
to them all.
Now
mysticism is just this world-religion; that is to say, it
is the expression of the ineradicable religiosity of the human
race. So far as it is this, and nothing but this, it is valid
religion, and eternal religion. No man can do without it,
not even the Christian man. But it is not adequate religion
for sinners. And when it pushes itself forward as an adequate
religion for sinners it presses beyond its mark and becomes,
in the poet's phrase, "procuress to the lords of hell." As
vitalized and informed, supplemented and transformed by Christianity,
as supplying to Christianity the natural foundation for its
supernatural structure, it is valid religion. As a substitute
for Christianity it is not merely a return to the beggarly
elements of the world, but inevitably rots down to something
far worse. Confining himself to what he can find in himself,
man naturally cannot rise above himself, and unfortunately
the self above which he cannot rise is a sinful self.
The
pride which is inherent in the self-poised, self-contained
attitude which will acknowledge no truth that is not found
within oneself is already an unlovely trait, and a dangerous
one as well, since pride is unhappily a thing which grows
by what it feeds on. The history of mysticism only too clearly
shows that he who begins by seeking God within himself may
end by confusing himself with God. We may conceivably think
that Mr. G. K. Chesterton might have chosen his language with
a little more delicacy of feeling, but what he says in the
following telling way much needs to be said in this generation
in words which will command a hearing. He had seen some such
observation as that which we have quoted from Tyrrell, to
the effect that the Christianity of the future is to be a
mere mysticism. This is the way he deals with it:
Only
the other day I saw in an excellent weekly paper of Puritan
tone this remark, that Christianity when stripped of its armor
of dogma (as who should speak of a man stripped of his armor
of bones) turned out to be nothing but the Quaker doctrine
of the Inner Light. Now, if I were to say that Christianity
came into the world specially to destroy the doctrine of the
Inner Light, that would be an exaggeration. But it would be
very much nearer the truth. . . . Of all the conceivable forms
of enlightenment, the worst is what these people call the
Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is
the worship of the God within. Anyone who knows anybody knows
how it would work; anyone who knows anyone from the Higher
Thought Center knows how it does work. That Jones should worship
the God within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones
shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything
rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles,
if he can find any in his street, but not the God within.
Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert
with violence that a man had not only to look inward, but
to look outward, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm
a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being
a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner
Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the
sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.
Certainly,
valuable as the inner light is - adequate as it might be for
men who were not sinners - there is no fate which could be
more terrible for a sinner than to be left alone with it.
And we must not blink the fact that it is just that, in the
full terribleness of its meaning, which mysticism means. Above
all other elements of Christianity, Christ and what Christ
stands for, with the cross at the center, come to us solely
by "external authority." No "external authority," no Christ,
and no cross of Christ. For Christ is history, and Christ's
cross is history, and mysticism which lives solely on what
is within can have nothing to do with history; mysticism which
seeks solely eternal verities can have nothing to do with
time and that which has occurred in time. Accordingly a whole
series of recent mystical devotional writers sublimate the
entire body of those historical facts, which we do not say
merely lie at the basis of Christianity - we say rather, which
constitute the very substance of Christianity - into a mere
set of symbols, a dramatization of psychological experiences
succeeding one another in the soul. Christ Himself becomes
but an external sign of an inward grace. Read but the writings
of John Cordelier. Not even the most reluctant mystic, however,
can altogether escape some such process of elimination of
the external Christ; by virtue of the very fact that he will
not have anything in his religion which he does not find within
himself he must sooner or later "pass beyond Christ."
We
do not like Wilhelm Herrmann's rationalism any better than
we like mysticism, and we would as soon have no Christ at
all as the Christ Herrmann gives us. But Herrmann tells the
exact truth when he explains in well-chosen words that "the
piety of the mystic is such that at the highest point to which
it leads Christ must vanish from the soul along with all else
that is external." "When he has found God," he explains again,
"the mystic has left Christ behind." At the best, Christ can
be to the mystic but the model mystic, not Himself the Way
as He declared of Himself, but only a traveler along with
us upon the common way. So Miss Underhill elaborately depicts
Him, but not she alone. Soderblom says of von Hugel that Jesus
is to him "merely a high point in the religious development
to which man must aspire." "He has no eye," he adds, "for
the unique personal power which His figure exercises on man."
This applies to the whole class. But much more than this needs
to be said. Christ may be the mystic's brother. He may possibly
even be his exemplar and leader, although He is not always
recognized as such. What He cannot by any possibility be is
his Savior. Is not God within him? And has he not merely to
sink within himself to sink himself into God? He has no need
of "salvation" and allows no place for it.
We
hear much of the revolt of mysticism against the forensic
theory of the atonement and imputed righteousness. This is
a mere euphemism for its revolt against all "atonement" and
all "justification." The whole external side of the Christian
salvation simply falls away. In the same euphemistic language
Miss Underhill declares that "nothing done for us, or exhibited
to us, can have the significance of that which is done in
us." She means that it has no significance for us at all.
Even a William Law can say: "Christ given for us is neither
more nor less than Christ given into us. He is in no other
sense our full, perfect, and sufficient Atonement, than as
His nature and spirit are born and formed in us." The cross
and all that the cross stands for are abolished; it becomes
at best but a symbol of a general law - per aspera ad astra.
"There is but one salvation for all mankind," says Law, "and
the way to it is one; and that is the desire of the soul turned
to God. This desire brings the soul to God and God into the
soul: it unites with God, it cooperates with God, and is one
life with God." If Christ is still spoken of, and His death
and resurrection and ascension, and all the currents of religious
feeling still turn to Him, that is because Christians must
so speak and feel. The same experiences may be had under other
skies and will under them express themselves in other terms
appropriate to the traditions of those other times and places.
That Christian mysticism is Christ mysticism, seeking and
finding Christ within and referring all its ecstasies to Him,
is thus only an accident. And even the functions of this Christ
within us, which alone it knows, are degraded far below those
of the Christ within us of the Christian revelation.
The
great thing about the indwelling Christ of the Christian revelation
is that He comes to us in His Spirit with creative power.
Veni, creator Spiritus, we sing, and we look to be new creatures,
created in Christ Jesus into newness of life. The mystic will
allow, not a resurrection from the dead, but only an awakening
from sleep. Christ enters the heart not to produce something
new but to arouse what was dormant, what has belonged to man
as man from the beginning and only needs to be set to work.
"If Christ was to raise a new life like His own in every man,"
writes Law, "then every man must have had originally in the
inmost spirit of his life a seed of Christ, or Christ as a
seed of heaven, lying there in a state of insensibility, out
of which it could not arise but by the mediatorial power of
Christ." He cannot conceive of Christ bringing anything new;
what Christ seems to bring he really finds already there.
"The Word of God," he says, "is the hidden treasure of every
human soul, immured under flesh and blood, till as a daystar
it arises in our hearts and changes the son of an earthly
Adam into a son of God." Nothing is brought to us; what is
already in us is only "brought out," and what is already in
us - in every man - is "the Word of God." This is Christ mysticism;
that is to say, it is the mysticism in which the divinity
which is in every man by nature is called Christ - rather
than, say, Brahm or Allah, or what not.
Even
in such a movement as that represented by Bishop Chandler's
Cult of the Passing Moment, the disintegrating operation of
mysticism on historical Christianity - which is all the Christianity
there is - is seen at work. Bishop Chandler himself, we are
thankful to say, exalts the cross and thinks of it as a creative
influence in the lives of men. But this only exemplifies the
want of logical consistency, which indeed is the boast of
the school which he represents. If our one rule of life is
to be the spiritual improvement of the impressions of the
moment, and we are to follow these blindly whithersoever they
lead with no steadying, not to say guidance, derived from
the great Revelation of the past, there can be but one issue.
We are simply substituting our own passing impulses, interpreted
as inspirations, for the one final revelation of God as the
guide of life; that God has spoken once for all for the guidance
of His people is forgotten; His great corporate provision
for His people is cast aside; and we are adrift upon the billows
of merely subjective feeling.
We
see that it is not merely Christ and His cross, then, which
may be neglected, as external things belonging to time and
space. God Himself, speaking in His Word, may be forgotten
in "the cult of the passing moment." We are reminded that
there have been mystics who have not scrupled openly to contrast
even the God without them with the God within, and to speak
in such fashion as to be understood (or misunderstood) as
counseling divesting ourselves of God Himself and turning
only to the inwardly shining light. No doubt they did not
mean all that their words may be pressed into seeming to say.
Nevertheless, their words may stand for us as a kind of symbol
of the whole mystical conception, with the exaggerated value
which it sets upon the personal feelings and its contempt
for all that is external to the individual's spirit, even
though it must be allowed that this excludes all that makes
Christianity the religion of salvation for a lost world the
cross, Christ Himself, and the God and Father of our Lord
and Savior. Jesus Christ who in His love gave His Son to die
for sinners.
The
issue which mysticism creates is thus just the issue of Christianity.
The question which it raises is, whether we need, whether
we have, a provision in the blood of Christ for our sins;
or whether we, each of us, possess within ourselves all that
can be required for time and for eternity. Both of these things
cannot be true, and obviously tertium non datur. We may be
mystics, or we may be Christians. We cannot be both. And the
pretension of being both usually merely veils defection from
Christianity. Mysticism baptized with the name of Christianity
is not thereby made Christianity. A rose by any other name
will smell as sweet. But it does not follow that whatever
we choose to call a rose will possess the rose's fragrance.
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