CHAPTER II.
A RELIGIOUS MYSTIC.
MYSTICISM may be divided into two parts, namely, philosophical and religious. "Religious mysticism," as Professor James truly says, "is only one half of mysticism." Philosophical or speculative mysticism was cradled in Eastern pantheism. Its central conception is that of an all-pervading presence, in which all things are one. It makes all things the
manifestation of the divine unity. The philosophical monism of the East passed over into Europe, and found definite embodiment in the philosophy of Plato. Afterwards it entered into Christianity through Neo-Platonism. With Plato
the human soul was looked upon as a part of the divine nature, a spark from the eternal fire, an angel imprisoned in a house of clay. The chief end of life was made to consist of freeing the soul from the darkness and bondage to which it has been subjected. This emancipation might be obtained in two ways--by crushing out all animal desire, or by withdrawing the soul from all objects of sense and fixing its contemplation upon sublunary things, so that it may sit in heavenly places, while the body wallows in the mire of sensuality.Both methods are equally ruinous. They push a philosophy, which has in it a great element of truth, to the point where it becomes "procuress to the Lords of hell." The smothered appetites and passions are not extinguished, but may flare up at any moment under a sudden gust of temptation. The pendulum which has swung to the extreme of spiritual ecstasy may swing back to the extreme of sensual desire. The soul of man is not made in watertight compartments. The division walls which exist between flesh and spirit may unexpectedly give way, and the purity of the soul be ineffaceably stained by the impurity of the flesh.
Great harm has often come from confounding philosophical mysticism with religious mysticism. The two are radically distinct in their spirit and aims. The philosophic mystic covets knowledge, the religious mystic covets holiness; with
the one knowledge is an end, with the other it is a mean to an end. With the philosophical mystic the main object of quest is the essential essence and ultimate reality of things; with the religious mystic the main object of quest is actual and immediate contact with God,-- be seeks to come face to face with God, meeting Him as spirit with spirit, with nothing standing between. If the philosophical mystic seeks God at all, he seeks Him as the ultimate principle of things, or as the solution of the riddle of the universe, and not as a living, loving, personal being, with whom he can hold communion; he seeks Him that he may wonder, not that he may worship; he seeks Him for the gratification of the intellect, not for the satisfaction of the heart. He that is least in the kingdom of religious mysticism is greater than he who is highest in the kingdom of philosophical mysticism. He belongs to a higher spiritual grade.Paul was a religious mystic. With the occult systems of Eastern pantheism he had no sympathy whatever. His mysticism was to him some- thing more than a philosophy. It was a religion. It was the thing by which he lived. He sought God with a moral intent. God was to him more than an intellectual necessity; He was the resting-place of his heart.
I. As a religious mystic Paul was struck through and through with the sense o/the existence of the living God.--To him God was "the absolute Principle of all reality," the ultimate ground of being, on whom all things rest, and in whom
all things live. In His presence, as the deep and awful mystery of the universe, he stood with bared head and with trembling heart, exclaiming, "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past tracing out! " (Rom. xi. 33).Paul's reverence came from his recognition of something inscrutable in God. What was revealed was only a small part of what was unrevealed. His thoughts ever rose from the manifested to the unmanifested God. God was better than his best thought of Him, greater than his greatest thought of Him. Although in one sense lofty and remote, He was in another sense so close and intimate that He was the very element in which he lived. He was surrounded by Him as the pebble in the brook is surrounded by water. This truth he distinctly declares in his sermon on the Hill of Mars to the men of Athens; when, standing upon purely naturalistic ground, he says of the Most High, "He is not far from each one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts xvii. 28). Here he speaks in the language of a true mystic. He looks upon all life as "embraced in the essential essence" of the Godhead. God is the enveloping atmosphere from which all men draw their life; the spring of all their activity; the source of their very existence. Pantheistic, do you say? Yes, but after a sane and scientific fashion.
Under all conditions Paul seems to have been aware of God. He had a sense of the divine life enfolding his own. He enjoyed not merely occasional flashes of the consciousness of God's presence, he dwelt with Him, he walked with Him, he talked with Him "face toward face." He had what the old Puritan Fathers were wont to call "a realising sense
of the divine presence"; or what the Quakers called "an experience of God"; or what the mystics called " a sweet fruition of God." Like Brother Lawrence of a later day, he lived in the practice of the Divine presence until he became
as conscious of God as he was of himself.In one of the crises of his life, when he was deserted by his friends, he testifies, " the Lord stood by me, and strengthened me " (II Tim. iv. 17). When told that he must go to Rome and witness for the Master before Caesar, it is recorded that "the Lord stood by him, and said, Be of good cheer" (Acts xxiii. 11). The exact nature of these theophanies we are not careful to determine. They at least show that Paul enjoyed a vivid realisation of God's immediate presence; a vital sense of personal relationship; and that something went from God into him, giving him strength and comfort in the conflict of life. He felt upon him and around him the movement of God--the surging tides of the Spirit; and opening his soul to the in-breaking, in-rushing waters, he became filled with the life of God as the bays
of the ocean are filled with its in-sweeping tide. How did he gain assuring evidence of the divine in-filling presence? As the underground roots gain evidence that spring has come by a thrill of life; or as a man gains evidence of the sun's
existence when he is experiencing its light and warmth.2. In Paul's scheme of thought, God was both transcendent and immanent.--He was looked upon as distinct from the world, and yet in it; above it, and yet within it; throned above the highest heavens, yet filling the universe with His presence. We find the blending of these two conceptions in his words, "One God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all" (Eph. iv. 6). These are profound words. They present God as the supreme unity. The unity of God was an essential postulate of all Paul's thinking. He was no tn-theist. He believed in "one God," who is variously
manifested. In this text God is set forth not as an abstraction or principle, but as a living, self-conscious Being. He is "over all "; above them, and beyond them, looking down upon them, lovingly bending over them, a personal friend to whom they can pray, a Being whose love can satisfy their soul's deepest wants. He is "through all," filling the universe with His pervasive life, the vivifying power in nature, the fountain of spiritual life in man. He is " in all," dwelling in all souls as the immanent ground of their life, and making it possible that they rise up into the enjoyment of conscious fellowship with Him.Very important is the added thought that the one God who is over all, through all, and in all is "the God and Father of all." "God" is the common name; it is a name into which almost anything can be read, a name which may even be impersonal; Father is a name which implies personal and affectional relations. It embodies the highest conception of God which can be gathered from our knowledge of earthly relationships. It is the divine name which constituted the most distinct contribution of Jesus to religious thought. Before His coming the term " father" was sometimes used in
reference to God, but generally in a poetic sense. The Father of Jesus was not the limited tribal~father of the Hebrew, nor the impersonal "Heaven-Father" of the Hindoo, nor the vague "Father and Framer of the universe" of Plato; He was a living being, holding close and personal relations with all the sons of men. This is Paul's conception of God; and it is a conception which must be carried over, whether we think of Him as transcendent or immanent. The poet Tennyson says that to take it away is to "take away the backbone of the world." The God who is over all is the Father of all; the God who is through all is the Father of all; the God who is in all is the Father of all. This is the God to whom every man may come, claiming a child's place, a child's privileges, a child's blessing."And what though earth and sea His glory do proclaim,
Though on the stars is writ that great and glorious name;
Yea--hear me, Son of man--with tears mine eyes are dim,
I cannot read the word that calls me after Him;
I say it after Thee, with faltering voice and weak,
Father of Jesus Christ--this is the God I seek."One of the baneful mistakes of religious mysticism has been that it has pushed to an extreme the doctrine of the divine immanence, and has repudiated or ignored the doctrine of the divine transcendence, thereby weakening the sense of personality and of sin. This one-sidedness is to be accounted for on the ground that mysticism has generally been a rebound from the thought of a God outside the world. Upon this conception of God the theology of the past has unfortunately been largely built up. God has been looked upon as an absentee, dwelling in a remote heaven, seated upon a throne from which he looks down upon the children of men. The effort of man has been to get near to this
distant being. The cry of the soul has been, "O that Thou wouldest rend the heavens and come down!" Men have sought in every possible way to get on the good side of this august potentate, that they might secure his special
favour and intervention. When Paul spoke of God as one "who is over all, and through all, and in all," he saw Him not merely as a transcendent Being who might come to men, but as the immanent Being who abides for ever near. God was to him the soul of the universe. In the throb of universal life he found the evidence of His pervasive presence. It was the very essence of his creed"That not a breath of life can be,
0 Fount of Being, save from Thee,"and that the controlling power of God, as the indwelling life of man and of the world, must come from within rather than from without.
In a complete scheme of religious thought these two conceptions of God are united. Transcendence and immanence are two hemispheres Which, when joined together, form the full and Complete conception of God. The tendency is
for sinful men to put God far away, to banish Him to some distant heaven, to remove Him as far as possible from their lives ; hence the value of Paul's mystical message touching the universality of the divine presence, and especially of
the presence of God in the heart of man. It opposes the ecclesiasticism which conceives of God as a transcendental being to be known only through an outward supernatural revelation; and stands for the relation of the individual soul to God; claiming, as Dr. Caird has done, that room ought to be made within the consciousness of man for the consciousness of God. With this agree the words of Eckhart, the Father of German mysticism, "God is nigh unto us, but we are far from Him; God is within, but we are without; God is at home, but we are strangers." To the same effect are the words of Fenelon, the French mystic, "Thou art, 0 Father, so really within ourselves, where we seldom or never
look, that Thou art to us a hidden God." This has ever been the distinctive testimony of religious mysticism; and it is one of the neglected truths which the present age is recovering. It is at present a vital centre of reorganisation in Christian doctrine. It brings God closer to the world; it shows that man is not alien to God, but that in Him he has his true life; it shows that "there is between all men and the Infinite an indestructible affinity, an essential answer--ableness as of the image of the original" ; 1 it reveals within man an ever - flowing spring of goodness, and shows that man, instead of being religious from outward pressure, is religious from inward impulsion. It has also very obvious sociological applications. But that which gives it the greatest value to many is that it dignifies human nature, and glorifies the whole of human life. It makes God as truly present with the humblest man as He was with Moses on the Mount. It fills the common life full of God. It errs, however, when it falls into a pantheistic identification of nature with God, or of man with God. From this tendency even Eckhart was not altogether free, as is evident from his words to the effect that "in its true existence every creature is not only a revelation of God but a part of Him, and that the true object of life is to strip off all illusions and deceptions, and return into the one great being of God." A balanced system of thought like that of Paul's, while recognising the divine life of the immanent God as flowing continually into the world, holds firmly to the twin ideas of divine personality, and the personal conscious communion of man with God as that of a child with a father; it sees in man's deepest yearnings a cry for the love and fellowship of the Eternal Father; it sees in God not only a Presence melting through our moods, but also a Presence objective to our souls, an object of faith, of love, and of adoring reverence.1 Ultimate Conceptions of Faith, George A. Gordon, p. i8i.
3. As a religious mystic he believed that he possessed "a perception of the Infinite." --He was "a God-seeing man"; a man who saw God in everything, and everything in God. He endured the heaviest trials, and fulfilled the hardest tasks,
"as seeing Him who is invisible." The God who "stood by him," stood out before his mental eye as a living reality. His perception of God was not a thing of inference, but of immediate and personal knowledge; or rather of intuition, For, as Romanes has said, "God is knowable (if knowable at all) by intuition, not by reason." 1 When he spoke of "knowing God," he meant something more than knowing about Him; he meant knowing God Himself in the essential qualities of His character, but not in His essential essence; for in that sense he speaks of Him as "the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, who only bath immortality, dwelling in light unapproachable, whom no one hath seen nor can see" (I Tim. vi. 15, 16). The vision of God which he regarded as possible, having a moral quality, is given to him who keeps the windows of his soul clear and bright. This is in accordance with the Master's words, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God"; of which words those of the Apostle John, "He that doeth evil hath not seen God" (3 Ep. II), are an echo. It is also in harmony with the entire trend of God's historical revelation to man; which shows that He makes special disclosures of Himself to those who are prepared to receive them.1 Thoughts on Religion, p. 146.
With Paul faith is "a supra-rational faculty" --a measure of which God has dealt out to every man (I Cor. xii. 9). It is that power by which we pierce the veil of sense which hides the spiritual from us. It is spiritual vision, spiritual perception, the power of spiritual discernment. It has been well defined as "an interior power by which God may be more truly known than external objects are known by the bodily senses." 1 We speak of it in popular language as the eye of the soul, or as the window by which we look out upon the spiritual universe which surrounds us. In the words, "We walk by faith and not by sight" (II Cor. v. 7), Paul runs a contrast between spiritual and bodily vision. In treading the heavenly way, we walk not by what the eye of the body sees, but by what the eye of faith sees. Faith is that power which in its upward flight
"bids the sense good-bye,
Lifting the spirit at a bound
Beyond the frontiers of the eye."It is to the spiritual world what sight is to the natural world. It sees the unseen, and brings its glories into the soul. It is "the substance of" (literally, that which stands under) "things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen." Its ultimate object is not the Bible, but the God of the Bible. It ever exclaims,
"Beyond the sacred page, I see Thee, Lord !"
Not merely in, but through the Word it sees God. He is the supreme object of its quest, and it dares not halt until it finds Him.
1 Dr. James Morison, Saving Faith, p. 6o.
The wider term "revelation" which Paul so frequently employs in reference to God, carries with it the idea of the unveiling to sight of that which is hidden. God "shows" Himself to man. When He is seen, when He is known, the divine
life begins. So that Auguste Sabatier is correct in defining religion as "simply the subjective revelation of God in man." 1 Max Muller, in the beginning of his studies in comparative religion, found in "the perception of the Infinite" "the source of all religion, human and divine"; but afterwards he modified his position, saying that the source of religion is found in " a groaning of the spirit, a struggle to conceive the inconceivable." 2 There is no antagonism whatever between these two positions. The longing of man after the knowledge of the Infinite must be measurably met before there is any religious life; the sense of divine dependence, in which Schleiermacher discovers the root of all religion, must lead to the discovery of something upon which to lean; man must worship what he finds. So that we may reverse the words which Pascal represents God as addressing to man, "Thou wouldst not seek Me hadst thou not already found Me," and say, "Thou wouldst not seek Me had I not already found thee." For God must ever answer man's quest. His
half concealments are for the purpose of whetting the desire for more perfect knowledge. It was to Paul the very essence of God's moral life that He should be self-revealing--self-communicating; and it was his constant plaint that so many turn away their eyes from beholding the revelations of "the glory of the incorruptible God," which is ever being vouchsafed to man.1 Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion, p. 34.
2 Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Religions of India, p. 23.4. As a religious mystic Paul sought direct communion with God.--The end for which he tried to get near the God who is behind all things was that he might enter into personal fellowship with Him. God was to him a wise and powerful
Being who honoured him with His friendship. He brought to Him all the burdens of his heart, arid laid them at His feet. He lived in the very atmosphere of His presence, praying to Him Without ceasing" (I Thess. v. 17). Even in his most active hours his soul was upon its knees. His prayer was sometimes ejaculatory, but oftener it was voiceless, consisting of "the heart's desire" unvocalised. Through the whole of his life it ran like an underground stream, coming only occasionally to the surface, but everywhere revealing itself by the upspringing verdure which followed in its course.The habit of prayer gave to Paul a strong grip upon the personality of God,--a thing which many mystics have, to their sorrow, lost. The one with whom he held communion was "the living God," from whose love no one could ever
separate him. When the storm fell he buried his head in God's bosom; when it was over he sunned his soul in the light of His countenance. In the heavens which bent above him there was a listening ear and an all-seeing eye. He possessed in full measure that sense of divine personality without which prayer is an absurdity. For, as Dr. Maudsley has said, "When a personal Deity has gradually dislimned, evaporated into formless mist, and finally melted away into impersonal absolute, naturally the difficulty for mankind will be how to love It which is no longer Him, and to pray to It as to Him." 1 This consummation Dr. Maudsley cannot contemplate without a tinge of sadness; by most it cannot be contemplated without dismay.1 Natural Causes and Natural Seensings, p. 545.
When the mediaeval Church had emphasised the distance between man and God, the German mystics rendered an invaluable service by restoring the Pauline doctrine of "the intimacy and immediacy" of divine union and communion;
and Luther, who drank deep at the well of mysticism, made as the regnant thought of his teaching " the natural affinity of the soul, through all its sin, for God, and of God for the human soul; and the consequent possibility of an immediate relation between the two." 1 This doctrine of the direct communion of the soul with God the Church of to-day needs to recover, that reviving streams may break out in desert places --causing them to blossom as the rose.1 Personality Human and Divine, R. J. Illingworth, M.A., p.17.
5. As a religious mystic Paul cultivated a sense of contact with the unseen and the eternal.-- The spiritual world was to him the background of this earthly life. He felt that he lived in two worlds, an outward phenomenal world and a supersensible world which impinges upon it, and to which it opens out. The visible, instead of being the real, was only the sign of the real. Underneath the visible lay the invisible; underneath the phenomenal lay the real. The one Was the passing shadow, the other the abiding Substance of which the phenomenal was but "a blurred reflection." This thought Paul brings clearly out in the statement, "the fashion of this world passeth away" (I Cor. vii. 31). Everything in the external world that has form and shape, everything that the eye can see, is undergoing constant transmutation, and shall finally pass away. Time is stripping off the world's outward dress, and only the life within,, the essence of things, shall remain. The spiritual alone is eternal.
This truth was looked upon by Paul from a purely ethical point of view. Because this world is a passing show, life's trials were to ù him as the small dust on the balance. He contemplated its dissolution without foreboding, inasmuch as he is not looking "at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Cor. iv. 18). The unseen universe he interpreted spiritually, and believed that, like the world he saw, it involved spiritual relationships and existed for spiritual ends.
It is in the spiritual interpretation of the universe that William Ralph Inge finds the essential thing in mysticism. In his masterly book on Christian Mysticism, which, in spite of a pervading spirit of unsympathetic mistrust, supersedes all that has been written on the subject, starting from the premise that our consciousness of the life beyond is the raw material of all religion, he defines religion as being "the attempt to realise in thought and feeling the immanence of the temporal in the eternal." 1 This definition, although lacking in comprehensiveness, as a definition of religious mysticism
in general, lays hold of one of its essential elements It gives a religious interpretation to nature, making it lie embosomed within the circle of the spiritual world. It also gives a religious interpretation to life; freeing it from the dominance of gross materialism; according to man his rightful place as a spiritual being, dwelling in a spiritual universe, and making the consciousness of his relation to his spiritual habitat his highest privilege and glory.1 P.5
Man is thus looked upon as under " the power of an endless life." He is in eternity now as much as he ever shall be. Heaven is not beyond the sky, nor is hell an abyss beneath his feet; they are present conditions into which he can enter ; or, if you will, they are conditions `which now may enter him. With the half materialistic and half mystic Persian poet, Omar Khayyam, he can say:
"I sent my soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of the After-life to spell,
And by and by my soul returned to me
And answered, "I Myself am heaven and hell."Yet the after-life is not to be overlooked. In Paul's thought it occupied a large place. But the vision of it is veiled. The medium through which it is seen is opaque. Adopting a popular illusion, "which regards the object, really seen behind a mirror, as seen through it," Paul says, "We see through a mirror darkly" (I Cor. xiii. 12). This metaphor, which afterwards became a favourite one with the mystics, indicates that the reflection of heavenly things is at best dim and obscure, like the objects seen in an ancient mirror. We see them in a half-light, as standing in a mist. We know them only "in part." The similitudes which are employed to set them forth conceal more of truth than they reveal. God could not reveal them all at once, nor could we take them in all at once. The light in which we see them is one that "shineth more and more unto the perfect day."
The heavenly world responds to those who seek it. It bends low to every aspiring soul. Between man and the unseen world there exists the same "indestructible affinity and essential answerableness" that exists between man and God. Jesus called heaven the Father's house; and in the Father's house all His children will feel at home. It was made for them and they for it. Paul says "our citizenship is in heaven" (Phil. iii. 20). To it we belong. Into its employments and enjoyments we shall naturally fit. We shall find ourselves in unison with its moral order. And now when we see it from afar we long for it as the goal of our hopes (Col. 1:5), the ultimate object of our desires (II Tim. iv. i8).
Sometimes the heavenly vision comes into greater distinctness late in life:
"`Tis the sunset of life gives us mystical lore."
"In the evening time there is the vision":
"The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made."
WALLER.The veil of sense grows thinner as the realities of the eternal world draw nearer; the glory streams from the open gate, and the light that never was on sea or land floods the soul. Leaning upon his battered shield, when the conflict of life was over, the aged warrior Paul, with happy memories of the past and with entrancing prospects for the future, exclaimed, "I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come. I have fought the good fight, I have
finished the course, I have kept the faith : henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not only to me, but also to all them that love His appearing"
(2 Tim. iv. 6-8). This experience of the spirit world comes when the hand of death is locking up the senses, and the soul is being prepared for its great awakening. ThenThat the transition may not be too sudden, God gives fore-gleams of what is coming; and as the soul lingers on the borderland where two worlds meet, he is partly in the one before he is altogether out of the other. As earth recedes"There is a murmur in the soul
That tells of the world to be,
As travellers hear the billows roll
Before they reach the sea."
and heaven draws nearer, he may be heard saying:"I hear a voice you cannot hear,
Which says, I must not stay;
I see a hand you cannot see,
Which beckons me away."And as he closes his eyes upon this world "flights of angels sing him to his rest."
6. As a religious mystic Paul tells of an extra-ordinary revelation with which God had favoured him.--This happened about six years after his conversion. Speaking of himself, modestly and hesitatingly, in the third person; and speaking
at all only because he was forced to do so in order to' repel the charge that he was not a divinely called apostle, he says, "I must needs glory, though it is not expedient; but I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I know not; God knoweth), such a one caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a man (whether in the body, or apart from the body, I know not; God knoweth), how that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not, lawful for a man to utter" (2 Cor. xii. 1-4). The nature of this experience was to Paul himself incomprehensible. In all probability it was a state of trance. To speak of it as an epileptic fit is to treat it with disdain, and to put it outside the circle of religious consideration. Connected with it there were doubtless certain pathological conditions, but these concern the psychological expert more than the theologian. During its continuance there was a suspension of normal consciousness. "In that ecstasy," says Meyer, "his lower consciousness had so utterly fallen into abeyance, that he could not afterwards tell whether this had taken place by means of a temporary withdrawal of his spirit, or whether his whole person, body included, had been snatched away." And inasmuch as self-activity had ceased, he dared not boast. He was simply the sensitive plate upon which heavenly things impressed their image, the conducting wire along which the Divine Mind flashed its message. He made no use of this experience as the means of convincing others. For fourteen years he had kept silent about it. It was something which had been given to him alone, to confirm his faith, and inspire him with courage and
hope in his arduous work. It was the white stone of which St. John speaks, on which there is "a new name written, which no man knoweth but he that receiveth it " (Rev. ii. 17). For one glorious hour he had stood upon the heights;
and for years afterwards the remembrance of that rapturous experience abode in his memory as the fragrance of precious ointment.The reference to current conceptions of "the third heaven" and "Paradise" show that the colouring of his vision was derived from his Jewish environment, just as our dreams are coloured by waking thoughts; but the substance of the vision transcended all the ordinary forms of thought. Hence it was "unspeakable," and "not lawful for a man to utter." His lips were sealed, as were the lips of Lazarus after he had been called back from the place of the dead, partly because the things which he had seen and heard transcended the power of human language to express, and also because they belonged to those deep experiences of which Frederick W. Robertson aptly says, "There are transfiguration moments, bridal hours of the soul; and not easily forgiven are those who would utter the secrets of its high intercourse with their Lord. There is a certain spiritual indelicacy in persons that cannot perceive that not everything which is a matter of experience and knowledge is therefore a subject for conversation. You cannot discuss such' subjects without vulgarising them." 1 Another reason why he forebore to tell the great secrets of the universe
that had been disclosed to him, was lest anyone should account of him above what he saw him to be, or heard from him. Reverting to his previous form of address, in the first person, he says, "By reason of the exceeding greatness of the revelations--wherefore, that I should not be exalted overmuch, there was given unto me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, that I should not be exalted over-much" (2 Cor. xii. 7). This humbling affliction,
whatever was its nature, did its work. It saved him from spiritual pride, of which he was in great danger, because of the honour which had been accorded him. It reminded him of his frailty, and caused him to cling for support to the Everlasting arm. Thrice he prayed that this infirmity might be taken away, but his prayer was not granted, because it was as much needed as the ballast of a balloon, which keeps it from ascending into rarefied air, in which no mortal can live. Over this infirmity Paul triumphed, making it redound to his spiritual profit; but to the end he had, as Robertson remarks, "a divided experience of two selves, two Pauls, one Paul in the third heaven, enjoying beatific
visions; another yet on earth, struggling, tempted, tried, and buffeted by Satan."1 Expository Lectures on Corinthians, in loco.
There are many who have had similar experiences to that of Paul, but they say little about them; holding them as secrets between themselves and their Lord. Plotinus, less modest, says that he enjoyed this experience thrice, Paul only once. All that these silent saints care to tell is that in some moment, beautiful and rare--perhaps out of the darkness of deep discouragement--they have caught a glimpse of the gates of gold, and have heard the echo of the heavenly harmonies. They have sat in heavenly places, and have had some personal experience of the heavenly world. Like the German philosopher who said that he believed in hell because he had been there, they believe in heaven because they have been there. The people of Dante's day pointed to him as the man who had been in hell. Paul might have been pointed to as the man who had been in heaven. Nor is he the only one who could bear that witness. There are others to whom this experience has come "in a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon man" (Job xxxiii. 15). At that mystical moment, when the soul is being freed from the restrictions of the body, the glory of the eternal world breaks into it. Of this experience the poet Henry Vaughan has said:
"As Angels in some brighter dreams
call to the soul when man doth sleep;
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep."This heavenly vision by which all men are haunted is given to those alone who are prepared to receive it. But, alas! how many are blind to the vision which God has brought to them! "God speaketh in one way, yea in two, though
man regardeth it not" (Job xxxiii. 14). He enters man by every avenue, seeking to refresh his weary, toil-worn spirit with fore-glimpses of his future inheritance.7. As a religious mystic Paul believed in the existence of good and bad angels, the one class the friends, the other the foes, of the good.--In the working out of this belief he shows the influence of his Rabbinical training. His doctrine of
angelology has a distinctly Jewish flavour. It is difficult, however, to tell just how far he really commits himself to current speculations touching angelic existences. He certainly does not hesitate to make use of popular beliefs for practical ends but he stops short of the fantastic theories in which the imagination of Jewish theologians ran riot. He accepts the idea of ranks of angels elaborated in Apocalyptic literature, and represents " a completely organised life lying outside of material surroundings, and largely independent of it." The region which these hierarchies of spiritual beings people is the upper air. They are near enough to exercise a malign or a benignant influence upon human affairs. To their entrance the world lies open. The soul of man is the prize which holds them at strife. In a remarkable passage Paul uses eight separate terms to describe these unseen forces. "I am persuaded," he says, "that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. viii. 38, 39).
His contention is that all the alien forces in earth and hell marshalled against the Christian shall not be able to dislodge him from his hiding-place in the Eternal Love.Speaking as a Pharisee, Paul openly announced his belief in a resurrection, in angels, and in spirits (see Acts xxiii. 8). He declared also that in his sufferings endured for the kingdom's sake he was "a spectacle to men and to angels"
(I Cor. iv. 9). His fatherly counsels to his spiritual son Timothy he enforces with the words, "I charge thee before the elect angels" (I Tim. v. 21)Äthat is, the holy angels who are the chosen attendants and ministers of God. The Corinthian women he admonishes not to violate the established laws of social decorum by appearing unveiled in public, or praying with head uncovered, "because of the angels" (I Cor. xi. 10)--that is, because of the presence of angels who were spectators of their deeds. Remembering that they were surrounded by a great cloud of unseen witnesses, they were to be careful to do nothing irregular or indecent, so as to excite bad angels to wantonness, or grieve good angels by their unseemly behaviour.The good angels, who are God's agents and man's helpers, perform a great variety of service. Paul says that by their ministration the law was given (Gal. iii. 19). This stamped the Old Covenant as inferior to the New, the latter being given by God direct. Under the Old Testament dispensation God did not come into immediate contact with men, but acted through intermediaries, who carried out the purposes of His will. But although, in the New Testament, the presence of the Holy Spirit is substituted for "the angel of His presence," angels do not pass altogether out. They keep flitting before our view, playing their part as "ministering spirits sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation" (Heb. I. I). Paul himself records that when shipwrecked on his way to appeal to Caesar, "There stood by me an angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, saying, Fear not" (Acts xxvii. 23). This heavenly visitor brought him assurance of Heaven's protection and guidance in the hour of his deep distress. He came to stand between him and danger, and enable him to accomplish his mission to Rome.
Regarding angels who are the foes of the good, Paul has this word of warning and admonition: "Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Wherefore take up the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand" (Eph. vi. 12, 13). In the irrepressible conflict with evil, expressed in all languages and religions, the Apostle made more of the forces of the invisible world than the forces of the visible world. He was more afraid of the unseen adversaries than of evil men who are their agents. To him the unseen forces were formidable and crafty; and instead of ignoring or denying their existence he would have us be vigilant that we be not overcome by their wiles. He does not direct us to fight against windmills, or to thrust our
swords into shadows. He certainly meant to have us regard our unseen antagonists as real. Clothing ourselves in the panoply of heaven, he would have us repel their assaults, never ceasing to wrestle against them until we have put them under our feet.Much has been lost by the Church of to-day in allowing the New Testament doctrine of angels to become a dead letter. A measure of faith in their existence still lingers in the popular belief in guardian angels. The Church still sings:
"Onward, Christian, though the region
Where thou art be drear and lone;
God has set a guardian legion
Very near thee; press thou on."
SAMUEL JOHNSON.We also still occasionally ask that holy angels may guard our pillow in our sleeping hours, and that they may take charge of us when we go forth to the duties of the day. But, as a rule, we look upon the angels as having gone out of
business so far as their relation to mundane things is concerned. To many they have ceased to be living entities, and have become the personification of natural forces. The simple faith expressed in Luther's words, "The dear angels
take our prayers up to heaven, and bring us back the message that our prayers are heard," is largely a thing of the past. If it is a faith well founded, we ought to strive to recover it. If the angels are still really at work within the sphere of earthly influence, we ought to know it. If some of them are our unseen enemies, working for our destruction, we ought to find out their devices, and resist them steadfastly in the faith. If others are our secret allies, upon whom we
can depend when the conflict rages, we ought to welcome their aid, saying:"These are Thy ministers, these dost Thou send,
Help of the helpless ones, man to befriend.
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Still let them succour us, still let them fight,
Lord of angelic hosts, battling for right."
JOSEPH OF THE STUDIUM.8. As a religious mystic Paul saw a vision of
the consummation of God's kingdom on the earth
and in heaven.--Around that mystic vision his
imagination played. In its light he sunned his
soul. He was sure of the future. The ultimate
issue of the present world-struggle was to him
in nowise uncertain. He trusted his deepest
instincts when they told him"that good shall fall
At last--far off--at last, to all;
And every winter change to spring."
TENNYSON.He saw that while in the present stage of the cosmic process "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together until now" (Rom. viii. 22), the travail pains were not to last for ever, or to be endured for nothing; but from them was to come the birth of a new order. He saw that as parts of one harmonious plan all things were working together, and as parts of one beneficent whole they were "working together for good" (Rom. viii. 28).
Behind all things he saw a process of evolution in which everything has its appointed place. He saw, as Emerson did later on, that
"The world was built in order,
And the atoms march in tune."He saw also that all events in human life and history are under divine control, and move on to a destined end.
Before all things he saw a moral goal to which they tend. Dualism prevailed in the present; a ceaseless conflict was going on between the powers of light and darkness, and of good and evil. Out of this conflict--which is essentially
a conflict between the human will and the divine purpose--had come all the tragedies of human life. But, looking far into the future, Paul saw no conflict, he saw no tragedy. He saw the disturbing forces which are now at work lifted up
into the divine unity, and brought into harmony with the divine plan; he saw opposition to the divine will overcome, evil subdued, and goodness victorious; he saw, in short, the realisation of that condition of moral monism in which
God is "all in all" (i Cor. xv. 28).This declaration of Paul touching the consummation of the divine purpose is not "a rhetorical paraphrase for the conception of the all-ness," as Olshausen puts it, but is a definite prophecy and promise that good will be triumph-
ant ; that in the final issue of events the present method of divine administration will be vindicated; that the lost harmony will be restored; and that, however wide the line of deviation from Heaven's predestined plan may be, the circuit will yet be completed which runs from God to God.