CHAPTER VI.
A PRACTICAL MYSTIC.
SOME time ago Lord Rosebery described Oliver Cromwell by the felicitous phrase, "a practical mystic." This description might be applied to the Apostle Paul. He was in an emphatic sense a practical mystic. "His mysticism was the safeguard of his logic, and his intense practicality was the safeguard of his mysticism." He was a man of vision, yet not a visionary man; a man of insight, yet a man of foresight; a man of faith, yet a man of affairs; a man whose vision of the heavenly Jerusalem did not shut out of sight the earthly Jerusalem; a man whose enjoyment of his heavenly citizenship did not hinder him in the performance of the duties of his earthly citizenship; a man who "summered high in bliss upon the hills of God," and who toiled and sacrificed in his Master's cause on earth.That mystics have often been unpractical goes without the saying. Indeed, to the common mind a mystic has come to mean one who is dreamy, moonstruck, speculative, unpractical. But there are mystics and mystics. Paul was a mystic of the first water, but his mysticism had hands and feet. He had revelations "exceeding great "--revelations which carried him into the limitless ; and if for a time his toils were forgotten, and he seemed to be free from the burden of his responsibilities, the downward pull of duty was soon felt. Yet he was doubtless a better man and a better minister of Christ because of these revelations. By "the abundance of revelations" his abundant labours were made the lighter. Nor was his experience exceptional:
"There are in this loud stunning tide
Of human care and crime,
With whom the melodies abide
Of the everlasting chime;
Who carry music in their heart
Through dusky lane and wrangling mart;
Plying their task with busier feet,
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat."Of St. Ignatius, Professor James says, "He was a mystic, but his mysticism made him essentially one of the most powerfully practical human engines that ever lived." St. Bernard, who transformed the valley of Wormwood--
so called because it was the covert of fierce banditti--into Clairvaux or Brightdale, with its famous abbey, which in those days of unrest became a refuge for the oppressed, was a practical mystic. The German mystics, Eckhart and
Tauler, who struck the spark that kindled the Reformation, were practical mystics. Eckhart was distinguished for his work of social and civic reform; and when, in 1348, the Black Death raged in Strasburg, and the city was deserted
by all who could leave it, Tauler remained at his post, comforting the terror-stricken and caring for the sick. Luther, who drank deep at the fountain of mysticism, as his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians abundantly shows, was, as the world knows, a man whose life was spent in ceaseless activity. The Spanish mystics, St. Theresa and St. Juan of the Cross, lived lives of beneficent and self-denying service, and were angels of mercy to the miserable. Of
William Law, the English mystic, his biographer says that his life was wholly given to devotion and charity. General Gordon was a mystic of the mystics, and his life was filled to the brim with heroic and unselfish deeds. It is a groundless assumption that sitting in heavenly places with Christ is incompatible with walking with Him in earthly places. The Lord takes His own up with Him into the holy mount, not that they may stay there, but that they may be fitted by what they see for the work which awaits them in the plain below.1. It was the aim 0/ Paul, as a practical mystic, to unite the active and passive elements in his life.--He did not sink into "a peace like that of Lethe's deadly calm"; he did not abandon himself to religious delights to the neglect of religious duties; he did not sit in silent meditation, dreaming his life away, oblivious to the stern demands of the hour; he did not linger to enjoy the vision when the call of duty sounded; the music of the heavenly choirs which fell upon
his ears did not drown the bitter cry of the disconsolate and the needy; his waiting upon God did not interfere with his working for God; the submission of his will to God did not put a check upon the forth-putting of his will in the service of man. Contrariwise, the contemplation of divine things quickened rather than paralysed his activity. It roused him to ethical energy, and led him on to ethical endeavour. In "energising towards the Eternal Mind," he at the same time energised towards humanity. If he soared high, he did not lose himself in the clouds. From his loftiest flights he came back to the solid earth. The vision which he beheld had an ennobling influence upon his life. It was because he mounted up with the wings of an eagle that he was able to run on God's errands without being weary, and walk in the
way of arduous service without being faint. We have a striking instance of a sudden descent from a lofty flight of speculation to the performance of present duty, when we connect the close of the 15th chapter of 1st Corinthians
with the beginning of the i6th chapter. The break between the chapters is an unfortunate one. Paul had been speaking of the resurrection and the life beyond; he had been declaring that the corruptible body must put on incorruption, and that death must be swallowed up in victory, when, after a jubilant outburst of triumph, he makes an abrupt application of his argument by saying, "Now, concerning the collection for the saints." It is as if he had said, "If you believe in the resurrection of the dead and in the life to come; if you believe in the certainty of the eternal reward,--how is that belief going to affect your conduct, and especially, how is it going to affect your contribution to the poor saints at Jerusalem ?" Paul was evidently afraid that the vision of the future which he had given might lead to a transfer of interest from this world to the next, and he wished to prevent any life being wasted in star-gazing. As a practical mystic, he was anxious to have the vision of the future contribute to the improvement of the life of the present.The best of the mystics were always mindful to combine contemplation and action, and to emphasise the practical side of things. "What a man has taken in in contemplation, that he pours out in love," remarks Master Eckhart. Again
he says, " It is better to feed the hungry than to see even such visions as Paul saw." To the same effect are the words of Tauler, " Spiritual enjoyments are the food of the soul, and are only to be taken for nourishment and support to help us in our outward work." To which he adds, "Works of love are more acceptable unto God than lofty contemplation."2. As a practical mystic Paul retained through all the changes in his life an unbroken sense of his own personality .--His consciousness of self was the one permanent fact in his experience. Feeling might fluctuate, opinions change, choices be reversed, but the thinking, feeling, willing entity behind remained for ever the same. In such a casual remark as, "I was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious" (I Tim. 1. 13), the continuity of personality is clearly implied. Morally he was no longer the man he once was, but in all the essential elements of his selfhood he had remained unchanged. Personal identity had continued, and he knew himself to be the same man since this moral change that he was before. His sense of personality was something that no inward and outward changes in his life
could affect. It continued as distinct from its outward forms of expression as the musician from the instrument upon which he plays. He could no more get away from himself than he could jump over his own shadow.What is called the awakening of consciousness is simply the awakening of man to the sense of his selfhood. Tennyson describes how this awakening comes:
"The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that `this is I':
But as he grows he gathers much,
And finds the use of `I,' and `me,'
And finds `I am not what I see,
And other than the things I touch.'"When man comes to himself he comes to know that he is a separate being; he gains at once and for ever a sense of individual existence. Nor does this come by a process of reasoning or demonstration, but by direct intuition. The way of self-awakening is not the one pointed out in the famous dictum of Descartes, "I think, therefore I am." That dictum postulates rationality, and from that deduces personality; but man awakens to the fact that he is a personal being before he awakens to the fact that he is a rational being. Hence we ought to reverse the dictum of Descartes, and say, "I am, therefore I think." The simple consciousness of self is the innermost, the primary fact of consciousness.
Without the sense of unbroken self-consciousness there could be no individual progress; for in no other way could we build upon the experience of the past, and carry forward into to-morrow the gains of to-day. It ensures that nothing will be lost, and that in a deepened and enriched personality will be found a true life's best reward. It is here that the weakness of Eastern mysticism lies. By making absorption in the divine life the goal of existence; by seeking to lose self in God as a drop of water is lost in the goblet of wine into which it falls,-- it benumbs the faculties of the soul, begets stagnation of life, and converts man into a moral mummy. To these results the vaunted Yogi doctrine of the Hindoo leads. It cultivates "a passion for nonentity," the fruits of which appear in the moribund religious life of the
India of to-day.There is nothing which the practical mystic dreads and shuns more than the via negativa of the philosophical and speculative mystics, which leads through darkness into "nothingness"; and which is described by Inge as "an attempt to reach the universal by wiping out all the boundary-lines of the particular, and to gain infinity by reducing self and the world to
zero." 1 On the other hand, he seeks to tread the via affirmativa of positive conviction in the inviolability of personality, human and divine. He does not believe that the soul melts away like a snowflake when it soars upward into the heavenly light; that spiritual form is lost in the divine substance, and that the operations of the soul end in a swoon. He looks for the consummation of his religious life not in a vacancy but in fulness, not in the loss of personality but in its enlargement. He knows that the attaining "unto all the fulness of God" (Eph. iii. 19), which Paul sets forth as the end of Christian striving, carries with it, and implies, the attaining unto all the fulness of self; and that the losing of one's life in God is the true and only way of finding it.Whatever may be involved in the closest relationship of spirit with spirit, Dr. Rashdall is undoubtedly correct in affirming that "two spirits thinking and speaking alike will be for ever two and not one. Communion implies the existence of two spirits, and is destroyed when the union between them passes into identity." 2 Realising this, the practical mystic does not forget that while one with God he is a separate and distinct being; that he is under
obligation to keep his individuality intact; to keep a firm hold of the rudder of his soul; to hold himself to strict account; to remember that he has an individual life to live, an individual work to do, an individual destiny to win. Living in God he at the same time lives his own life, ever careful that the crown which is won by fidelity to personal ideals be not
snatched away.1 Christian Mysticism, p. g8.
2 Contentio Veritatis, p. 36.The personality of man God respects. He wants every man to be himself, and to work out his destiny in his own way. To this thought Browning gives expression in the words:
"God, whose pleasure brought
Man into being, stands away
As it were a hand-breadth off, to give
Room for the newly made man to live,
And look at Him from a place apart,
And use his gifts of brain and heart."3. As a practical mystic Paul was a virile man, robust and manly.--His mysticism was thoroughly sane, and absolutely free from any emasculating, effeminating tendency. He took a man's place in the world, and did a man's work. Now, it must be admitted that mysticism has too often made its appeal to the feminine side of human nature; and when allowed to run to seed it has led to effeminacy of character. We see this tendency exemplified in the Persian and Hindoo mystics. And it is not without significance that one of our modern mystical cults originated with a woman, and is sustained, as similar cults are, mainly by women, or by men in whom the feminine element predominates. A complete character combines in right proportions the feminine and masculine qualities; but in a woman the womanly qualities ought to predominate, and in a man the masculine qualities. A womanly man and a manly woman are equally abnormal. Jacob Boehme describes the ideal human being as "androgynous," that is, as one in whom sex distinctions have been combined; and he holds that Jesus was such a being. In most of the portraits of Jesus the feminine predominates. The ideal portrait is that in which manly strength and womanly tenderness are harmoniously united.
The effeminating tendency in mysticism is something that has to be guarded against. Aware of its existence, Paul rings out the bugle call, "Quit ye like men, be strong" (I Cor. xvi. 13). He insists upon the assiduous cultivation of manliness and strength, and brands the opposite qualities as reproachful to the Christian name.
4. As a practical mystic Paul sought to realise the end of his life not by self-repression, but by self-expression.--He looked upon the body not as the prison, but as the organ of the soul. He recognised the need of putting aside everything that would separate his soul from God, or hinder him in his work. He buffeted his body, beat it black and blue, to bring it into subjection (I Cor. ix. 27), that he might make it the pliant instrument of the soul. He endeavoured to keep the body "under," and keep his spirit on the top. We have no knowledge, however, of his injuring or weakening the body by self-inflicted austerities and tortures, or by fasts and penances, that he might gain occult power. His aim in keeping control over it was that it might be his servant and not his master.
Paul was no ascetic. While he denied the flesh that he might obey the spirit; while he "mortified the flesh, with its affections and desires," that he might attain a higher life,--he did not eschew enjoyment in the proper exercise of the bodily functions. The ascetic rule, "Handle not, nor taste, nor touch" (Col. ii. 22), he condemns as something to which Christian freemen ought not to subject themselves; and over against it he sets the broad principle that sin is found in the heart, and not in the use of external things. He may not always have exercised the liberty which he claimed for others; and we have a suspicion that he was not always as good to himself as he ought to have been; yet his position, that "every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it be received with thanksgiving" (I Tim. iv. 4), is a thoroughly wholesome one. God certainly wants His children to enjoy to the full the good things which He has given them. He grudges them no pleasure that they can get out of them. There is a taint of morbidness in the experience of Augustine, when in his Confessions he deplores the fact that his soul was being enmeshed in the love of earthly things, and expresses the fear that he was taking too much pleasure out of such things as fragrant odours, pleasant tastes, and sweet sounds.1 As if anyone could take too much delight in the things by which the good God is ministering to his
happiness. The moral use of bright things needs to be learned equally with the moral use of dark things; so that creature happiness may be made what it was meant to be--a friend to grace.1 See Book x. chaps. xxii., xxiii., xxiv.
It is this morbid fear of taking too much enjoyment out of life that has often driven the mystic into the wildest excesses. Instead of controlling appetite, he has often tried to repress it, with the result that the pent-up waters have broken their frail embankment, and have rushed forth on their work of ruin. Outraged nature takes revenge; and the refractory body, unable to tempt the soul on the side of its strength, tempts it on the side of its weakness. One rebound is apt to follow another, and there is often but a step between the tensest self-repression and unbridled licence. One of the saddest chapters in the history of religion is that which deals with the sudden plunges which have been taken from asceticism into animalism. The pillar saint has become a debauchee; the hermit has exchanged his shirt of hair and crust of bread for fine linen and sumptuous fare; the devotee has turned his orisons into bacchanalian songs. Poor weak mortals have got too near the sun, and the wax by which their wings were fastened on, being melted, they have suffered an inglorious fall. Under severe strain artificial religion snaps. Where there has been outward reform without inward regeneration, the sow that was washed returns to her wallowing in the mire. It is
only when the sow has been transformed into a sheep that the green pastures are found to be permanently satisfying.There are two kinds of the Christian life which from the beginning have been frequently set in opposition to one another, namely, the ideals of renunciation and consecration, or of self-denial and self-development. These ideals,
instead of being opposed, ought to be united into one.Christianity demands renunciation. There are things to be given up, to be forsaken; things to be renounced. What are they? Not alone things which are wrong and sinful, but also things which, although allowable and right, hinder the progress of the soul. The choice has often to be made between the rugged steep of self-denial and the easy descent of sinful pleasure. But the mistake of monasticism has to be guarded against, of taking this half of religion for the whole, or there will be developed a maimed, lop-sided, poverty-stricken life, which is a travesty upon the true Christian ideal.
The term "consecration" presents the other and positive side of the Christian life; and this is fortunately the side upon which the emphasis is being put in the present day. In a full- rounded Christian life renunciation is followed by consecration; the denial of self by the offering of self; the giving up of all for God by the giving up of all to God. It is not by self-limitation and self-repression alone, but also by self-expansion and self-expression, that the true life is
reached. Something is crushed out and Something is developed; something laid down, and something taken up. The "leave all" of the Master is joined with His "follow Me." The two taken together make up the sum of Christian duty.It is interesting to note that what is called the new pedagogy is giving emphasis to the idea of self-expression as the leading idea in education. And it is doing so with the sense of having made a new discovery. The idea is as old as religion. It is a distinctive note in Christianity that self-denial is worthless unless combined with self-culture. The goal of Christianity is a large, rich life, in which the two ideals of renunciation and consecration are blended into one like the hues of the rainbow.
5. As a practical mystic Paul kept himself in vital touch with the world and its affairs, while keeping aloof from them in Spirit and aim.--He established with the world as many helpful relations as possible. He was in the heart of its life; in the thick of its conflicts. He fought on its great fields of battle; and as we read his Epistles we can hear the ring of his sword upon the shield of his enemy. His graces were not those of the cloister. Grown in silence, they become strong and firm by battling with the winds of heaven. His interest in men kept his religion from becoming solitary and egoistic.
The other-worldliness by which it was characterised was balanced by a this-worldliness. If no man ever lived more above the world, no man ever lived more in the world.His separation from the world was moral. He walked with wary steps through its muddy places, keeping his garments unspotted that the consciousness of sin might ,not separate between him and God. His call to his brethren was, "Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; and I will receive you, and ye shall be to Me sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty" (II Cor. vi. 17, 18). This call to separation from all that was unclean and defiling had a special pertinence to those who had just come out of heathenism, but in its spirit it is applicable to Christians of every age. Evil associations and hurtful entanglements the Christian is to avoid. With "the unfruitful works of darkness" he is to have no fellowship whatsoever.
But instead of living in the world while living above it, the mystic has often withdrawn from it altogether, immuring himself in a cloister or monastery, thus robbing the world of the service of his life. The monastical ideal of a literal withdrawal from the world has found its most persuasive advocate in Thomas a Kempis-- who, however, was not, strictly speaking, a mystic, although generally so classed. His Imitation of Christ is the fairest flower of monasticism,
out of which it grew like a pure lily from the mud at the bottom of a lake. In spite of its self - centred individualism, its morbid introspectiveness, and its substitution of abjectness for humility, it has been prized and read by succeeding generations, because it is a heart-book, written in the life-blood of an earnest soul; and because it searches as with an electric light the hidden corners of the human heart.Quietism marked the mystical extreme which we are now considering. It was characterised by a passionlessness which was generally the result of a reaction from overwrought nerves during a state of ecstasy. Such a noble saint
as Madame Guyon shows its harmful tendencies. Her life of trust was beautiful; but it was united with a habitual self-inspection which paralysed the will, and with an indifference to earth's joys and sorrows which was hardly consistent with a spiritual interpretation of life. The mood of mind to which "all scenes alike engaging prove," is saved from being one of unholy indifference only by union with the Eternal Will. A healthy-minded Christian will enjoy "the
harvest of a quiet eye," as he looks upon the good things of life; he will look without more than he looks within; instead of withdrawing into himself, as the tortoise into its shell, he will throw himself into things. Retirement from the world, that God may be sought in the silence of the soul, will be to him only an occasional experience. His separation from the world will be a thing of spirit more than of formal deed. He will learn to find God in the thick of the world's
activities just as readily as in places of deep seclusion.Nowhere is the practical bent of Paul's mysticism more clearly seen than in his appreciation of the outwardness of religion. He lived by the things that flowed out as well as by the things that flowed in. While keeping the heart with all diligence, because out of it were the streams of life, he kept watch of his conduct with all diligence, because in it his inner life was expressed. Well he knew that the surest way to dissipate feeling is to become absorbed in its contemplation, and that the surest way to nourish and strengthen it is to translate it into deeds. The feeling that is not turned to practical account soon evaporates. It was upon this rock that the mysticism of Amiel was split. He had distinct mystical experience, of the value of which he was far from satisfied. Let him describe its nature: "Like a dream
which trembles and dies at the first glimmer of dawn, all my past, all my present, dissolve in me, and fall away from my consciousness at the moment when it returns upon itself. I feel myself stripped and empty, like a convalescent
who remembers nothing. My travels, my reading, my studies, my projects, my hopes have faded from my mind. It is a singular state. My faculties drop away from me like a cloak that one takes off, like the chrysalis case of a larva. I behold my own unclothing; I forget, still more than I am forgotten; I pass gently into the grave while still living, and I feel as it were the indescribable peace of annihilation, and the divine quiet of Nirvana." 1 This was the experience of one who dived into his soul and rose unhealect; one who withdrew from the world instead of trying to improve it; one who kept gnawing at his heart instead of going out into the world battling like a giant with its living problems. He consumed his own smoke instead of giving the pent-up fires vent in beneficent activities. No wonder his ecstatic experience was unsatisfactory; and it did not make things better that he had the insight to see the reason for its unsatisfactoriness, and to look upon the pleasure of it as deadly, like the use of opium or hasheesh, "a kind of slow suicide, inferior in all respects to the joys of action, to the sweetness of love, to the beauty of enthusiasm, to the sacred savour of accomplished duty." The experience of Amid shows that it is a perilous thing to separate doing from feeling. The emotion that is unexpressed in action dies. The overt act is needed to strengthen the secret feeling.1 Journal Intime, pp. 90, 91.
6. As a practical mystic Paul valued inward experiences in pro portion as they generated spiritual force.--He had no morbid craving for ecstasies; for he knew that in themselves they did not make him better or worse, and that they were of value only as they served to promote ethical ends. This has ever been the mark of the true mystic. His search after God has had behind it an ethical impulse; his effort to enter into the divine unity has been at bottom an effort to be morally one with God; he has sought for hidden things, that with them he might enrich his life; he has gone to spy out the land of promise, that he might bring back clusters of the grapes of Eschol. The words of Paul in I Cor. xii. 7, "To each one has been given the manifestation of the Spirit to profit withal," which have been freely rendered in the Twentieth Century New Testament, "Spiritual illumination is in each instance given for some good purpose," show that God has a practical object in view in every experience of the Spirit's presence and power which He gives. And this practical object the true mystic seeks to realise. With him the end of religion does not consist in getting experiences, but in getting more of God into his life through whatever experiences may come to him. Mystical experiences are means, not ends. If they do not serve an ethical purpose they are a snare and a delusion.
If we accept Dr. Moberly's definition of mysticism as "the experience of the Holy Spirit," or "the realisation of the spirit of holiness," 1 its ethical aim is at once apparent. But, unfortunately, attention has been generally fixed upon its outward forms,--and especially upon its aberrant forms,--and its essential spirit has in consequence been overlooked. Essential mysticism is not something separate and apart from ordinary Christian experience, but is merely a phase of it. It is the interior side of religion. It expresses itself in a constant struggle to free the soul from everything that alienates it from God; and it is valued just in so far as it purifies motive, quickens love, elevates character, and
brings the moral life into oneness with the mind, and heart, and will of God.1 Atonement and Personality, p. 312.
7. As a practical mystic Paul did not substitute the concrete for the abstract, the indefinite for the infinite.--He valued both the body and the soul of truth.
The prevailing tendency has been to over-value the body of truth. For it is with the body and soul of truth as it is with the body and soul of a man, the body gets the first attention, because it is more tangible and more in evidence than the soul; yet the body of truth is of value only because of the soul which it contains and by which it is animated. Forms of truth, from which the spirit has fled, are like the clothes from which the child has slipped out into the unseen--precious mementoes of a life that is gone. But there are forms of truth which are like the clothes which cover the living child. They are precious not for uses which they once served, but for uses which they are now serving.
There is in the present day, in some quarters, a strong tendency to undervalue the body of truth. All the concrete forms in which the truth has been expressed and preserved, and by which it is communicated, are treated as of
small account. Now to some, visible signs are less necessary than to others, but no one can dispense with them altogether. God is present everywhere, and we do not need the Bible in order to reach Him; but we do need it in order to know Him. Men cry to God as Jacob did to the angel, " I beseech thee, tell me thy name." To know his name is to know his nature. What would we really know of God's nature, if Jesus had not made known His name
of "Father" ?Many who dare not cast aside altogether the concrete forms of truth in which God has revealed Himself to His children, treat them in an unfair way. They make the words of Scripture as a sort of magician's hat, out of which are brought things which fill with astonishment the simple-minded reader. Their fantastic interpretations are justly to be regarded with suspicion. Hidden meanings are got at too great expense when they are got by "handling the word of God deceitfully." No interpretation will stand which does not deal honestly with the actual words of Scripture.
But the search after the spiritual must be sympathised with, for it is the search after reality. Men want to be brought into contact with the eternal verities; they want to get through the evanescent form to the abiding substance; they want to get through the loam, and sand, and gravel to the living water that flows beneath. When we go to the bottom of such modern movements as Christian Science and Theosophy, it will be found that they are largely reactions from the sterile teachings of the Church. They have been born of the effort to reach the soul of truth. With doctrinal teaching which builds up its system of truth like a row of bricks, there are many who have no sympathy whatever. Logic fails to convince them. They need the flashing light of intuition, the mystic touch of life upon life, to bring conviction. To the deepest needs of these spiritually-minded children the Church has failed to minister. She has given them a stone when they have asked for bread; and with sorrow of heart they have been forced to go elsewhere for the food she has denied them. She has extended her hand to them, but when they have touched it they have found it cold and clammy as the hand of a corpse, and have let it drop, seeking elsewhere the warm friendly hand of a living helper and guide. We may smile as we please at the crude philosophisings of these new cults, but there is a serious side to the matter. The fact that they are outside ,the Church indicates that there is something lacking in the Church itself. The Church of the Christ who said, "I am the truth" ; that is, the whole truth, the universal truth, is not fulfilling her ministry to the soul if she does not embrace in her teaching what St. Paul calls the pleroma, or fulness of truth. Nor is she fulfilling her mission unless she holds the balance between the body and soul of truth, giving to each its proper emphasis, and mediating between the extreme which ignores the concrete, and the extreme which holds that exactness as to outward form is the essential thing. Men cannot always be satisfied with a vague and nebulous philosophy which has usurped the place of religion. They need the concrete, that out of it they may construct at the beginning crutches upon which
to lean, and afterwards wings with which to fly. And the Church will best fulfil her mission to all classes when she unites in one the body and soul of truth; subordinating the body to the soul; and leading the thought of men through the outward symbol to the spiritual reality of which it is the temporary expression.