MYSTICISM.

HERBERT SPENCER has affirmed that the one essential principle of religion is the sense of mystery. We have about us the visible world of things. Each of these things stands in definite relations with the things about it. These relations we can understand; or at least we can put them into formulas which seem clear to the understanding. But we feel that behind these visible things and these finite relations there is a something which we cannot see, which we cannot put into formulas, and which, thus, we cannot even pretend to understand. This unknowable something is a power present in all things, manifesting itself in all things, the life of all things; but though it is always manifesting itself, it can never make itself known; though so near us, it can never be grasped. It remains ever the infinite, the unknown. The consciousness of the reality of this unknowable power is, according to Spencer, the element peculiar to all religions, the only element that may properly be called religious.

The definition of religion, as given by Herbert Spencer, tells only half the story. There is another element which is essential to religion and which is common to all religions. There is light in religion as well as darkness. If God dwells in the darkness He dwells also in the light, and the darkness and the light are alike filled with His presence. I refer, however, at this time to the position of Herbert Spencer, not to criticize it, not to attempt to supply its deficiency, but to recognize its real though partial truth. The sense of mystery is not the only element of religion, but it is an essential element of it; an element too much lost sight of in these days of brilliant, though largely superficial thought. The religious world owes a debt of gratitude to Herbert Spencer for bringing back to its consciousness so forcibly the great fact of this essential principle of mystery. We are apt to forget that much as we need to know, just so much do we need to feel the presence of the unknowable. We are apt to look upon the mountain of truth only as a ledge to be quarried. We are so busied with our machinery of one sort and another for drilling and blow

ing, for raising and shaping and carrying, so pleased with the smoothly hammered blocks which attest our labor and our skill, that we forget to look up at the sublime vastness of the mountain, at its precipitous sides, at the clouds which veil forever its snowy and inaccessible summit. And yet the mountain in its wholeness may be more helpful to us than in its fragments. All the architecture in which these fragments may be embodied are puny in comparison with it. All the physical luxury to which they may minister is as nothing compared with the vigor which the sense of its sublimity may bring to the spirit. So, also, our square-hewn truths, however fair, however wonderful, are as nothing to the infinitude of truth. The spirit of man needs to feel its strength. It is well that among the finite things about it, it should feel strong, proud and defiant; that it should come to the world as a conqueror to his realm; but it is well also that it should feel the presence of a mightier than it. There are minds to which the sense even of the sublimities of earth would be a salvation. Nowhere does the spirit show its greatness more than in the sense of awe, in the presence of the infinitudes of life and thought, and nowhere does it gain greater strength than in such contemplation. Religion has at all times, and among all nations, recognized this element of the unknowable. "They best know Thee who confess that they do not know Thee," cried the Hindoo; "Canst thou know the Almighty to perfection?" exclaimed the Hebrew. And thus, wherever there has been a religion worthy of the name, there has been this solemn gladness, this bowed exaltation, this mighty helplessness, this blending of the deepest and loftiest of man's nature, which comes from the sense of knowing that which passes knowledge.

While religion has thus openly and triumphantly recognized the element of mystery as essential to its existence, it has, I believe, covertly, recognized the same thing in its ceremonies and creeds. I cannot understand how else many of these extravagant and sometimes even absurd forms and formulas should have taken such a hold upon the hearts of men. Take, for instance, some of the peculiarities of the Roman Catholic service. It seems sometimes absurd to see an ignorant worshipper taking part in a service conducted in a language which he cannot understand. A poor Irish

girl, for instance, worships through the Latin tongue. At least, however, she feels herself in the presence of a mystery behind which is the Divine; and if we take even the loftiest terms that we use in our English prayers, with realistic literalness, if we regard them as simply and wholly true, perhaps our worship may be more imperfect than hers. A divinity that could be wrapt in any terms however fair and sweet would be a living divinity no longer. So also the dimness of the Mediaeval church, its wondrous music with its heights of joy and abysmal depths of sorrow, its architecture with its soaring arches and its gloomy crypts, all combined to force home this sense of mystery upon the soul. The creeds of the Mediaval church bringing together opposites in the same breath, setting at defiance the most fundamental laws of thought and reason, at least brought men into the presence of the unknown, and were doubtless helpful in this respect. I have spoken thus of the Mediaval church, but all religons have had their mysteries. The mysteries of the Greek must have brought a healthful spirit of awe and reverence into the midst of much that was superficial and frivolous in the Greek culture.

It would be interesting to consider the nature and the limit of this element of mystery that underlies all religion, to examine the forms under which it confronts us, and the light that comes to us through and around them. It would be interesting to consider the mystery that waits upon the finite soul, by reason of its very finiteness, when it strives to comprehend the infinite; or to examine that mystery which meets us under every form of thought when we strive to reconcile the freedom of man with inevitable and invariable law, or with the all-embracing providence of God; or it would be interesting to drop our plummets farther than sight could reach, down into the dark depths of the mystery of suffering and sin.

My object in this essay is, however, to consider one form of this mystery which underlies all others, and which, so far as the solutions is possible, gives the only hint towards the solution of any of them. I mean that form of mystery which is involved in what is called mysticism.

At

The word mysticism is often used in a very vague manner. first it is probable that it had no very definite signification, except as it referred to whatever was connected with mystery in general,

But as

or with the so-called mysteries of religion in particular. the nature of this mystery and of these mysteries became more apparent, as the vital element of all began to manifest itself more. distinctly from amid the hulls that enveloped it, the words mystic and mysticism assumed a very definite meaning; and this meaning, in spite of much vague and careless use, still belongs to them. The word mysticism, whenever properly used, refers to the fact that all lives, however distinct they may appear, however varied may be their conditions and their ends, are at heart one; that they are the manifestations of a common element; that they all open into this common element and thus into one another. Merely philosophical mysticism calls this common element by one name or another according to the nature of the system. Religious mysticism finds this common element in the life of God. Mysticism then is the recognition of the universal element in all individual forms; religious mysticism finds everywhere the presence and power of the divine life.

Mysticism is so foreign to much of our modern habit of thinking; it is so foreign to our habits of life; it is so foreign to that hard individualism which both our thinking and our living tend to nourish, that it may not be easy for all to enter into the spirit of it, or even to comprehend its meaning. Moreover the word has been associated with so much that is extravagant and absurd that it has somewhat fallen into disrepute. Those, most often, have been known as mystics in whom mysticism has run riot. But in spite of modern atomism and individualism, in spite of former extravagance and fanaticism, mysticism expresses the profoundest fact of our being. All the greatest thinkers and seers of the world have been more or less imbued with it. Modern creed makers and creed holders may disown it; but the religious founders, those on whose mighty foundations the creed makers rear their shapeless and unsubstantial fabrics, wrought from the intuition and the inspiration of the mystical view of life.

However distinct our little individual lives may seem, these mighty thinkers and seers have perceived that they had a common root and a common substance. Within and beneath all existences. there is the being from which all spring and in which they all exist. We ask the leaf, Are you complete in yourself? and the leaf

answers, No, my life is in the branches. We ask the branch, and the branch answers, No, my life is in the trunk. We ask the trunk, and it answers, No, my life is in the root. We ask the root, and it answers, No, my life is in the trunk and the branches and the leaves; keep the branches stripped of leaves and I shall die. So is it with the great tree of being. Nothing is completely and merely individual. All are expressions, higher and lower, of a common life.

Illustrations of this fact may be found in the comparatively superficial relations of life in those realms which seem intermediate between the body and the mind. The relations of which I here speak are those which connect one life with another. They show a relation which is deeper than any that the senses can account for, and thus manifest a direct communication between one life and another. We see this in the great pulses of feeling which thrill through communities and assemblies. On a large scale we see it in the frenzy of a nation, a state of things which has found its most striking exemplification in the history of France; on a smaller scale we see it in the enthusiasm or excitement of any crowd. There are occasions in which the calmest and most balanced mind is drawn into the common whirl and tumult of feeling, not form anything that has been said or done, but because the depths of the spirit are stirred by the mighty movements in the life about it. Such a common movement may be found, for instance, in the enthusiasm of the camp-meeting, which becomes filled with a common terror or a common fervor; and in the rout of some great army when a strange and inexeplicable panic spreads from heart to heart. Such mighty stirrings of the common life suggest to us the movements of the sea. The fury of the waves is felt in every cove and inlet, however sheltered, that has a communication open with the ocean. When a great tidal wave sweeps over the sea the whole line of coast feels its power, and all the rivers that pour into it heave and swell with its influx. So do lives thrill and stir with. the convulsions of the common life about them.

We find examples of this direct relation between life and life in individuals as well as in masses. There are spiritual harmonies and discords from which result much of the happiness or unhappiness of life.