CHAPTER V.
A RATIONAL MYSTIC.
THE direct vision and conscious experience of truth after which the mystic aspires is supra-rational ; but it is neither irrational, unrational, nor contra-rational. It goes beyond reason, but it is not contrary to it. "The pure in heart see God "--the conception of God which comes to them is not something which they have reasoned out, but something which they have seen. "All minds," says Emerson, "open into the infinite mind," and there are other doors through which they open besides that of reason. It is a wise warning of Horatio W. Dresser, that "the rationalist who disparages all mystics as fanatics may be condemning one half of life's reality; while the mystic who discounts reason may thereby defeat his entire object as a public teacher." 1 The bridge that spans the river of spiritual truth does not rest upon a single pier. On the hither side it rests upon reason; on the thither side it rests upon mysticism.1 Man and the Divine Order, p. 21.
Professor James distinguishes between the mystical consciousness which gives "direct perception of the invisible," and "the non-mystical or rationalistic consciousness which is based on the understanding or senses alone," and regards them as opening different orders or kinds of truth, possessing different functions. This splitting up of consciousness into two separate parts, with separate spheres of operation, is as unscientific as it is confusing. Man has one consciousness which he may turn in different directions. In object not in kind the difference lies between the mystical and the rationalistic consciousness. We must therefore refuse to juggle with the idea of a double consciousness, and to act like a dexterous thimble-rigger who challenges the onlookers to indicate under which cover the illusive fact is to be found.
Between reason arid the experiences of the mystical consciousness there is no incongruity. Man is a rational being, and it is incumbent upon him that he think and act rationally, and that he live the life of a rational being. His religion ought to be a reasonable religion. To accept an unreasonable religion would be to do violence to his nature. He is to be able to give to every man that asketh him "a reason for the hope that is in him" (I Pet. iii. 15); the service which he is to render unto God is "a reasonable service" (Rom. xii. 1). Any revelation addressed to him must appeal to his reason; and hence by his reason it is to be judged. "I speak as to wise men," says Paul; "judge ye what I say." And again, "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good" (I Thess. V. 21). Because rationality is characteristic of revelation, John Locke is justified in saying, "He that would take away reason to make room for revelation puts out the light of both, and does much the same as if he would persuade a man to put out his eyes the better to receive the
remote light of an invisible star by telescope." The Cambridge Platonists were right in contending that to go against reason is to go against God; that " the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, lighted by God, and lighting man to God;" and that man's very intuitions are "rooted in the latent reason."Nor are reason and faith to be opposed to each other; for faith, as Pascal puts it, is " the highest act of reason." And "if reason contradicts a dictum," according to Jeremy Taylor, "it is not of the household of faith." But reason does not go far enough. Sooner or later it brings us to a dead wall. In that wall the modern psychologist breaks open a door for faith. Behind the wall is a new realm of things which he cannot explain, but the existence of which he is forced to admit. The Neo-Platonists felt the same difficulty. Their position Vaughan describes in the words, "They are logicians as well as poets; they are not mystics till they have first been rationalists; and they have recourse at last to mysticism only to carry them whither they find reason cannot mount." 1
1 Hours with the Mystics, vol. i. p. 78.
Professor James treats mystical experiences as realities, and hence as proper subjects for scientific study. He takes the ground that the soul is open to invasion from a spiritual universe by which it is surrounded, and that the impressions which it receives from that universe "are as convincing to those who have them as any direct, sensible experience can be; and they are, as a rule, much more convincing than results established by logic ever are." Yet the moment that these mystical experiences in which "reason has been turned into light" are put into the crucible, the test to which they are subjected is that of their rationality. Convinced that they are real, we ask, are they also rational? Do
they rest on rational grounds? Even if some parts of them are above reason, in the sense that we cannot comprehend their full significance, their rationality will be recognised just so far as they are known. The far end of every spirit
problem fades away into impenetrable darkness, but the end that is nearest us must in some measure be known, or how could we speak of it at all? And just because all truth is one, what lies beyond our ken must agree with what we
know. The boundary-line of to-day may be crossed to-morrow; and what will then be discovered in the region which is now terra incognita will be in harmony with what we already know. We live in a rational universe in which "truth must be real in order to be rational, and rational in order to be real."1. As a rational mystic Paul was logical as well as mystical.--He reasoned things out. He was never satisfied until he found a basis for faith in knowledge. He sought "full assurance of understanding" (Col. ii. 2). He strove to be "enriched with all knowledge" (I Cor. 1. 5), "to abound more and more in knowledge" (Phil. i. g); to be "filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and under-standing" (Col.1. 9). His intellectual training fitted him to weigh evidence. He accepted the claims of Christ at first only on the clearest evidence that He was risen. In his loftiest mystical flights he never lost his intellectual sanity; he never, like Tertullian, fell back upon the absurd position that the impossible is to be accepted because it is the impossible. He was ready to turn the white light of reason upon his most transcendent experiences, to discover if possible the ground upon which they rested. His mystical consciousness was also a rational consciousness.
2. As a rational mystic Paul tested his subjective experience by objective revelation. -- He followed the principle, "To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because they have no light in them" (Isa. viii. 20). He was not like those mystics whose only Scriptures are themselves. He saw that the objective and subjective sides of religion are supplemental; that they are the under and upper hemispheres of one globe; that between objective truth and subjective experience there is an inseparable connection. He saw that only when a Christian is rooted and grounded in the knowledge of the historical Christ does he grow up into Him in all things; that the religion that neglects the objective has nothing to live upon, and becomes arid and dead. Hence he put a high value upon the study of the Scriptures, and upon using correctly the form of "healthful teaching." He was as far as possible from occupying the position of George Fox, who regarded all learning as futile because of the sufficiency of the inner light. He enjoins Timothy, his son in the gospel, to "give heed to reading," to "abide in the teaching of the sacred writings," and to guard "the good deposit" of truth which had been committed to him. Hence, too, he made it his constant aim in preaching to set forth the objective gospel out of which all the fruits of righteousness spring; for he knew that Christian experience is not self-originated, and that neither does it come from "imageless contemplation" ; but that it comes from contemplation of the manifested Christ, who is the light and the life of men--their life because their light.
It is a great misfortune when, for any cause, the historical element in the Christian religion is disparaged. Destroy the historicity of the events which gave Christian experience birth, or break connection with them, and it will not long survive. The argument of Dr. Dale, that faith might live upon the strength of the apostolic testimony to the power of the risen Christ, without the picture of the earthly Christ in the Gospels, is broken on the facts of history. Whenever the eyes of the soul have been turned wholly inward, and faith has not been nourished by contemplation of the historic facts of Christianity, religious life has withered at the roots.
3. As a rational mystic Paul linked his experience on to that of his fellow -believers.--He maintained as stoutly as Luther did afterwards, that each one must find the truth for himself. In the first-hand knowledge of the living Christ he placed the ultimate ground of certainty. The inward witness of His presence was the white stone, upon which is written a new name which no man knoweth, save he that receiveth it. To this separate and independent witness, this witness which is peculiarly his own, every Christian must turn when assailed by doubt. He must "examine himself, whether he be in the faith" (2 Cor. xiii. 5). He must make his own consciousness the final court of appeal. This is the position taken by Professor James when he says that "mystical states, when well developed, usually are, and have the right to be, absolutely authoritative over those to whom they come; but no authority emanates from them which should make it a duty for those who stand outside of them to accept them uncritically." 1 The external witness to Himself that God has given all men possess; the inward self evidencing witness is enjoyed by those who accept the outward witness. "He that believeth hath the witness in himself."
I The Varieties 0f Religious Experience, p. 422.
But while every man must find the truth for himself, he must seek for confirmation of what he finds in the experience of others. As he corrects the illusions of sense by general experience, he must correct the illusions of the soul in the same way. The essential thing in his experience is not what he possesses apart from others, but what he shares with others. Any. one may well question the validity of his experience if he stands alone. Recognising the weakness of egoistic mysticism, Paul, when speaking of what was outside the range of ordinary experience, uses the singular pronoun,
but when speaking of what was general in Christian experience he uses the plural. Again and again he employs the expression "we know," to signify that his individual experience was verified by the experience of the whole body of
believers. He walked with his fellow-Christians as far as they were able to accompany him; and if for a season he left them to ascend the mount alone, up to its cloud-encircled heights, he soon rejoined them, trudging by their side along the dusty road of duty.Ritschl, who disliked pious sentimentality and despised mysticism, distrusted those experiences which make much of a living, personal, present Christ; yet he based his whole system upon the Christian consciousness; which, however, he generally narrowed down to mean the individual Christian consciousness. But no single experience can ever supply the criterion of truth. When the search is made for what is essential, the whole sweep of Christian experience must
be taken into account. The faith which a man works out alone he must finally test by "the collective experience of the Christian community."4. As a rational mystic Paul held that all the mysteries of religion are open and verifiable.--The Christian religion has its mysteries--things beyond the power of human penetration--things which could not have been known apart from a special revelation. Its mysteries, unlike those of Greece and Rome, which were known only to the initiated, are open to all. "Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God" (Matt. xiii. ii), was said by Jesus to the whole body of believers. From the hidden things of the spiritual kingdom the veil has been lifted, so that to everyone who meets the open vision with an open heart, the secrets of God stand disclosed.
Paul makes frequent use of the term "mystery," not in the ordinary sense of something incomprehensible to ordinary intelligence, but in the sense indicated of something once hidden which has now been revealed. He declares that the end for which he was made a minister of Christ was "to fulfil the word of God; even the mystery which hath been hid from all ages and generations, but now hath it been manifested to His saints: to whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col.1. 26, 27). He speaks of the evangel which he preached as "the revelation of the mystery, which hath been kept
in silence through times eternal, but now is manifested, and through the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandments of the eternal God, is made known unto all the nations unto obedience to the faith" (Rom. xvi. 25, 26). Gratefully he declares, "Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; and to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery, which from all ages hath been hid in God, who created all things" (Eph. iii. 8, 9). During his imprisonment in Rome he longed for new opportunities "to speak the mystery of Christ" (Col. - iv. 4). And when he unfolded the doctrine of the resurrection, he referred to it as something which was formerly concealed, but was now opened up that all might know it, saying, "Behold, I tell you a mystery" (1 Cor. xv. 51).But although the veil has been lifted up from the things of the heavenly kingdom, so that they are open to all, there are some who see them more clearly, and have a deeper insight into them, than others. Elisha saw things on the mountain side at Dothan which his servant did not see until his eyes were opened; and some Christians to-day see things which from other eyes are hid. In one of his most mystical utterances Paul indicates that there is a degree of knowledge attained by those who are specially illumined. "We speak wisdom," he says, "among the perfect"; that is, among "the
fully initiated," or "full grown"; "yet a wisdom not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, which are coming to nought: but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom that hath been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds unto our glory" (I Cor. ii. 6, 7). This secret wisdom of God, which must have for ever remained unknown except for revelation, and which is revealed to all Christians, but which is known by some more than others, consisted in the glory of the Messianic kingdom. Of the nature of that kingdom the princes of this world were ignorant. "Had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory," but would have accorded to Him more than royal honours. The uncanonical quotation, "Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man, whatsoever things God prepared for them that love Him," refers not to things prepared in heaven, but to the blessings and glories of the Messianic kingdom into the possession of which Christians now may enter. Of these blessings and glories it is said, "Unto us God revealed them through the Spirit." The Spirit through whom these communications are made is represented as coming from God, and hence as "knowing all things; yea, the depths of God "--the exhaustless treasures of His kingdom; and as making them known that Christians "might know the things that are freely given them of God." These divine secrets, touching the Messianic kingdom, which are revealed by the
Spirit, are declared "not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth." They are given in the inward language of the soul, and are not understood by the natural man, but only by the spiritual man; for he alone
holds the key to their interpretation.The broad principle which Paul lays down is that spiritual truth needs more than intellectual comprehension. It cannot be proved by the same tests which are applied to a problem of Euclid. There is a spiritual as well as a rational verification of truth. In the declaration, "with the heart man believeth unto righteousness" (Rom. x. 10), Paul does not draw a sharp distinction between the emotions and the cognitive faculties; by "the heart" he means the whole inner nature--reason, feeling, and will combined; yet the choice of this word shows that he is looking at the ethical side of faith. When truth has a moral quality, its acceptance is conditioned on the state of the heart. Spiritual - mindedness is a condition of illumination. The things that lie beyond the sphere of the senses are said to be prepared by God "for them that love Him." "We must love divine things before we can know them," says Pascal. To the same effect are the words of Inge: "The true hierophant of the mysteries of God is love." To which may be added the saying of Clement: "The more a man loves, the more deeply does he penetrate into God."
The Christian initiates are not a favoured class; nor are they necessarily those of large intellectual equipment. They are those who have opened their hearts to the truth in love, in humility, and in sincerity. They are often babes to whose simplicity of heart things are revealed which are" hid from the wise and understanding" (Luke x. 21). The distinction which Paul draws between the carnal and the spiritual Christian does not indicate a difference in order, but in grade. The carnal Christian is one who is not dominated by the Spirit; the spiritual Christian is one who has yielded to the Spirit's action on his heart, and is being led by him into all the truth; the carnal Christian lives in the basement of his nature, the spiritual Christian lives in the upper chamber, through whose crystal dome he sees the shining heavens.
Nor does Paul claim for the Christian initiates, as many mystics have done, a higher kind of knowledge than ordinary Christians possess. All that he claims is that they possess a larger measure of knowledge; that they have gained for themselves a higher degree in the school of Christ; that they have appropriated to themselves a larger portion of the inheritance which belongs to all alike. The deeper experience into which they have come is not like the esoteric doctrines of the Gnostics, which were capable of being apprehended only by the intellectual elite, but is something which every Christian can attain for himself, if he will only supply the conditions.
The possibility of all attaining unto the knowledge of the divine mysteries is implied in the affirmation of Paul, "We have the mind of Christ" (I Cor. ii. i6). The mind of Christ has been revealed in His words, in His deeds, and in His life, in order that all might possess it. Christ turned Himself inside out. He gave His mind to the world as no one else ever did. And now we can look at things through His eyes. We can know what He thought about Himself, about God, about man, about sin, about redemption, about the kingdom of God, and about the future life. His mind is to us
the measure of truth. When we come to know it, inquiry is pushed no further, for ultimate truth has been reached. The consciousness of Jesus is the light in which all divine mysteries are irradiated.The mind of Christ is the present possession of the Church. A sad day will it be for the Church if the mind of Paul regarding Christ should be substituted for the mind of Christ. While anxious to know what a master mind like that of Paul thought of Christ, she must be still more anxious to know what Christ thought. A first-hand knowledge and experience of Christ she cannot afford to miss. The Church of to-day is to stand where Paul himself stood, and find out for herself what Christ Himself thought, that in His thought she may rest as the final ground of authority for truth, and by it she may be guided as the true light which shows the feet of mortals the way through this world of shadows into the land of cloudless skies.
5. As a rational mystic Paul holds to truths which his exuberant fancy sometimes darkens. --In the sphere of symbolical mysticism he often makes use of metaphors which are sorely strained; but they are never irrational. He runs along the edge of the precipice without toppling over. Especially is this true in his imaginative interpretation of historical events. He looks at things with the eye of a poet, and indulges to the full in a poet's licence. As a true mystic he believes that everything we see is the symbol of something unseen; that there is always a circle within a circle; that a religious symbol is simply the sign of something, higher; that truth had to be revealed in images, similitudes, and types; and that in the inner spirit and not in outward forms is to be found the essence of religion.
A great service was rendered by Swedenborg to the Church in the development of this element in Paul's teaching by the doctrine of correspondences. To the Swedish seer everything visible is the image of an invisible reality; the world of nature an analogue of the world of spirit. His teaching accentuates the question:
"What if earth
Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein
Each to each other like, more than on earth is thought?"In the rites of the Christian as well as of the Jewish religion, he sees shadows of heavenly things, "the patterns of things in the heavens" and if he sometimes errs in interpreting the literal as symbolical, and the symbolical as literal, he furnishes an important clue to the right understanding of the figurative language of Scripture.
There are large portions of Paul's writings which open themselves only to those who have the mystical key. They are to be interpreted according to their internal sense. The allegory of the two Adams in I Cor. xv. 45-49 is an instance. "The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; then that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth earthy; the second man is of heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, so we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." Upon this double headship of the race was built up the federal theology with its correlated doctrines of vicarious sin and vicarious righteousness; but Paul's words could no more bear the weight which that system laid upon them, than they can bear the weight of the more modern idea of " the man from heaven," or "the heavenly man," as a middle term denoting merely "the heavenly origin characterising the nature of the whole person." The two Adams are type and
antitype; from the one comes our natural inheritance, from the other our spiritual inheritance; from the one comes physical death, from the other comes resurrection power: "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made
alive" (Rom. v. 14). The first Adam is the type of what is mortal and perishing, he is "a living soul," part of the universal life into which he returns; the second Adam is "a life-giving spirit," deathless in being, and all-pervasive
in His quickening power: the first Adam is the world-type whose likeness all men bear; the second Adam is the spiritual archetype of humanity, into whose glorious image every Christian is yet to be transformed: the first Adam is the head of a sinful, dying race; the second Adam is the head of a new humanity in which His restoring power is as far-reaching as was the ruinous effect of the first man's sin: "for as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous" (Rom. V. 19). Throughout the entire antithesis, redemption is looked upon by Paul as a racial act. The crown of victorious power is put upon the head of the second Adam. In Him the whole race enters upon an upward plane by becoming the subject of a new heredity.After the Rabbinical fashion, Paul, in contrasting the law and the Gospel, makes use of historical matter in an allegorical rather than in a literal sense. His argument runs, "Abraham had two sons, one by the handmaid, and one by
the free-woman. Howbeit the son by the handmaid is born after the flesh; but the son by the free-woman is born through promise. Which things contain an allegory; for these women are two covenants, one from Mount Sinai, bearing children unto bondage, which is Hagar" (Gal. iv. 22--24). Hagar the mother of Ishmael and Sarah the mother of Isaac are taken to represent two opposing religious ideals. The one "answereth to the Jerusalem which now is,"
the other to "the Jerusalem which is above "--the centre of the Messianic kingdom in its glorious realisation; the one is founded upon a covenant of law, the other upon a covenant of grace; the one appeals to fear, the other to love; the one gendereth to bondage, the other leads to freedom. It is generally admitted that Paul's allegory fails to hold water; and that the argument drawn from it is far-fetched, and far from convincing. Luther says of it frankly that it is "too weak to stand the test." Yet the truth for which Paul contends is independent of its setting; and it is of inestimable value to-day as an antidote to the Judaizing tendency to enthrone the letter and change a religion of love into a religion of law. It is also in perfect harmony with the dualistic psychology which plays such a prominent part in his teaching. These two types -- the legalist and the emancipated hristian--often recur. Between them there is eternal antagonism, unceasing conflict; for "he that is born after the flesh" still persecutes "him that is born after the Spirit." But there is comfort in the assurance with which Paul ends his allegory, that "the son of the handmaid shall not inherit with the son of the free-woman," for to the children of the free the future belongs.In the mystical allusion to the one seed and the many seeds in Gal. iii. 15, 17, Paul admits that he speaks "after the manner of men." The point he seeks to establish is, that if a human covenant when once it has been legally confirmed
stands inviolate in spite of additions which may be made to it, so the Abrahamic covenant made and ratified of old by God cannot be annulled by the law coming after. His argument is, "Now to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one. And to thy seed, which is Christ." The bearing of these words upon the point at issue it is difficult, if not impossible, to see. One explanation is to the effect that the one seed refers to the Jewish people to whom the promise was originally given, and the many seeds to the aggregation of believers making un the mystical body of Christ. Another, and perhaps a more reasonable explanation, is that the promise made to Abraham and his seed did not extend to all the varied seeds that might come from his loins, but was limited to one line of descent, namely, the one from which Christ came according to the flesh. Dr. Doddridge takes this view, and remarks that it is presented by Paul "in bad Greek, but with good sense and reason." By some the title "Christ" is used in a mystical sense, to denote Christ and His Church; as in the text, "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ" (I Cor. xii. 12). It is better, however, to regard the term "seed" as applied to Christ as a collective term signifying not "Jesus in individual humanity, but the Messiah so promised" (Eadie). To this it must be added that the benefits of the Abrahamic covenant which was fulfilled in Christ, extend to all His people; so that Paul could say of uncircumcised Gentiles, "If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" (Gal. iii. 29). In this way the promise originally made to Abraham, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (Gen. xxii. i8), finds its largest possible fulfilment.These instances of Paul's symbolical mysticism suffice to show that even when his logic limps, and his metaphors are ridden almost to death, his thought moves on to its destined goal. He has very little of the historical imagination which
invests old scenes with new life; he has interest in historical things only as they suggest some underlying spiritual truth. The Old Testament writings are "living oracles." The proof that they are "God-breathed" is that they are spiritually profitable (II Tim. iii. i6); their value is found in their hidden sense. "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life" (II Cor. iii. 6). In accordance with this principle of interpretation, Moses is a type of Christ; the passover, which was the means of Israel's deliverance from Egypt, is the type of the deliverance of the race from sin' by "Christ our passover, who hath been sacrificed for us" (I Cor. v. 7); the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea is a type of baptism--the watery walls, by which the fleeing Israelites were besprayed, being walls of separation from the past; the manna that came from the skies and the water that flowed from the smitten rock are the types of spiritual meat and drink; the sacrifices offered up upon Jewish altars are types of the sacrifices of self, offered first by Christ and then by the Christian; the temple at Jerusalem is the type of the body, and of the mystic temple of redeemed souls. In everything there is a double meaning,--the literal and the spiritual,--and if the things that he saw were not always there to see, they were none the less true on that account. In interpreting Paul's symbolical mysticism, just as in interpreting AEsop's fables, it is necessary to distinguish between fact and truth.6. As a rational mystic Paul gave himself to the cultivation of what was normal and healthy in Christian experience. There is a prevailing idea that mystical experience is something abnormal; that it belongs to an unhealthy and badly-
balanced temperament. The experience of Paul shows that this is not necessarily the case. There was not a thread of morbidness in his nature. He was characterised by healthy-mindedness. He avoided excesses. He was no "faddist."
The exceptional things in his experience he kept locked up in his own heart. He knew that every form of religious life has its dangers, and that a full cup is easily spilled. Even when "intoxicated with the Spirit," he kept his poise. No one ever held the wayward impulses of his higher and his lower natures more firmly in check. Under God, he was master of himself.Alas! the history of mysticism furnishes abundant evidence of a tendency to the abnormal and the unhealthy. There is a short step between ripeness and rottenness. "Thin partitions do the parts divide " between the spiritual and the sensuous. Many mystics have been spiritual wantons, ravished with love divine. They have found in the Song of Solomon a vehicle of expression for an amorousness which they imagined to be all of heaven, but from which erotic elements were not wholly absent. Their "spiritual nuptials" and "divine caresses" had often the suggestion of a fleshly taint. This tendency has been especially strong among the Roman Catholic mystics. That modern religionists are not altogether free from it is evidenced by the popularity of a hymn like the following:
"Safe in the arms of Jesus,
Safe on His gentle breast
There by His love o'ershaded,
Sweetly my soul shall rest."Others than the mystics are apt to become "the victims of sensuous metaphor," and the utmost vigilance is demanded to guard against a danger to which the soul is most exposed when in its highest moods.
7. As a rational mystic Paul grounded his belief in spiritual phenomena upon the testimony of consciousness.--He accepted the validity of the testimony of consciousness regarding things that transcended the sphere of the senses. Experience was to him the basis of certainty. He never went behind the record of his own consciousness. What he himself knew and experienced of God and of Christ was something of which he could never be dispossessed.
Mysticism has always sought in the conscious self a ground of certainty which the Church has failed to give. It has sprung from the effort of man to get behind the phenomenal to the hidden soul and principle of things. It expresses the
search of man for the inward reality wrapped up in the outward symbol, and for the living heart of the microcosm in which the macrocosm is mirrored.But mysticism believes in the existence of things which lie concealed below the line of consciousness. It believes in a sub-conscious self which "has its springs in the infinite and the eternal"; and whose upwelling tides show that in the deepest depths of his nature man is connected with something which transcends all that he can ever know or experience. The ordinary consciousness is a solitary rock jutting up out of dark and silent depths. The consciousness which lies below it--the subliminal self of the modern psychologist--is the transcendental consciousness to which Kant relegated the forms of knowledge which transcend experience. Referring to this unexplored domain, Richter says, "We attribute far too small dimensions to the rich empire of self if we omit from it the unconscious region, which resembles a dual continent. The world which our memory peoples only reveals in its revolution a few luminous points at a time, while its immense and teeming mass remains in shade." For the first sign of emergence of things from these profound depths the mystic is ever on the watch. He seeks to know the bare and naked truth, the truth in its essence and in its original elements. He wants to be present when cosmos rises out of chaos. He wants to witness every sunrise of the soul. He wants, when the fountain of divine light and life breaks forth, to lie low before the Most High, with nothing to intercept the vision of His glory or to contaminate the stream of His cleansing power which flows into his heart.
8. As a rational mystic Paul did not despise the use of means.--He knew that the scala pertectionis--the ladder of perfection--of which the mystic so fondly speaks, had to have its foot on the solid earth; and that its top was not to
be reached at a single bound, but step by step, with progress painful and slow. He recognised the fact that certain things are of indispensable value as aids to devotion. Anything that was calculated to lift the soul upward, to purge the
inward eyes, to strengthen faith and courage--to bring God nearer, to help him get through the outer crust of religion to the life-sustaining truths beneath, he prized and practised.He valued the Church, its offices and ordinances, its worship and fellowship; he valued "the words of faith and sound doctrine" by which the soul is nourished; he valued subsidiary helps such as the "books and parchments" which he requested Timothy to send to him from Troas, where he had left them; he valued prayer, and lived under the conviction that God's grace was always on tap, ready to flow into his soul at the slightest touch of desire. He knew that spiritual life could be attained and sustained in no other way than in using as means of grace the aids which God has given; and that if the earthen vessels in which the heavenly treasures are conveyed are thrown away, the heavenly treasures themselves will be lost.