STUDIES IN MYSTICAL RELIGION.*

MR. RUFUS JONES'S" Studies" are full of charm and interest. The writer leads us through some of those byways of Christi- anity lying outside the beaten track marked out by the Church for her sons to walk in,—byways into which from time to time the Vicar of Christ, moved by some provocation

hardly to be understood by minds of to-day, sent a punitive expedition to harry the wayfaring men.

Mr. Jones, while he admits that "it will not do to forget or to overlook the advantages of habit, custom, and system—the storage of the gains of the race," declares that a religion can truly be said to be alive only so long as it has "the throb of personal experience in it." While the Church "has always had beneath its system of organization and dogma a current, more or less hidden and subterranean, of vital, inward, spiritual religion," yet "the creative periods in religious progress have come when the crust of custom, the mechanism of habit, has been broken up by the impact of persons who were capable of fresh and original experiences." These periods and these persons have a special interest for all those who think about religion in a day when a constantly increasing number of Christians are anxiously considering to what extent the ruined temple of authority can be restored by the facts of spiritual perception, individual and collective.

About the abnormal psychic conditions to which many Mystics have been liable our author tells us little. Religious pathology does not interest him. He has no sympathy with the men who spent their time "in striving after a spiritual vacuum," "sitting idly with inverted eyes and waiting for a formless vision." He deals with what is wholesome and sane, with what in a greater or less degree is common to us all. He shares the conviction of Plato that "the soul has in itself an eye for Divine reality, and that the mind has a natural capacity for beatific vision." Most men, not materialists, would admit with Matthew Arnold that there are moments when "A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,"

when, as our author says, "Divine suggestions come to human eonscionsness," and we realise that we are "allied to a Being who guarantees the ultimate goodness of the world."

Mysticism when running to seed has produced, no doubt, a low morality. So, for that matter, has dogmatism. But the intense desire for a more direct relation to God, the realisation of the inadequacy of ceremonial and theological religion to satisfy the needs of the soul, has as a rule betokened an awakened conscience. "There are as many unveilings of God as there are saintly souls," said the Irish Mystic of the ninth century known as John the Scot. "Sin," he declared, "is always due to absence of God—that is to say, to ignorance of the truth." It has no part in the eternal order, and must vanish "when that which is in part' comes home into the one unity—God." There is a steady testimony, Mr. Jones points out, from first to last, to the strict moral character of the Waldenses, whom our author considers to have been per- meated by Mysticism, insisting as they did upon the sufficiency of the Divine Spirit to save the human soul without inter- mediaries, ceremonial, or formulae. It is curious to notice how very near some of the branches of this widespread and long- lived heretical tree approached to the revival of Mysticism which we now call Modernism. They accepted, it was urged, the common doctrines of Christianity metaphorically :—

" They pretend," said a contemporary critic, "that every man is a Son of God in the same manner that Christ was. Christ had God or the Holy Spirit for soul, and they say that other men also have. They believe in the incarnation, the birth, the passion, and the resurrection of Christ, but they mean by it the Spiritual conception, Spiritual birth, Spiritual resurrection of the perfect man."

Later on Tauler, a Mystic who perhaps never left the Roman Church, yet belonged in spirit to those outside the pale, used words which might to-day make part of a Modernist

manifesto :- "I received the privilege of belonging to my Order from the grace of God and from the holy Church. It is from both that I

in,lfgetieal Religion. By Bans IL Jones, MA., D.Litt. London: Macmillan and Co. [12s. net.] have this hat, this coat, my dignity as priest, my right to preach and to hear confession If the holy Church wishes to deprive us of the external sacrament, we must submit. But nobody can take from us the privilege of Wring the sacrament spiritually."

This strong belief in the Divine Sonship and in the infinite power of the Spirit undoubtedly led the saner among the heretical Mystics to lead good lives. Here is the testimony of a heresy-hunter of the thirteenth century :—

" Heretics are recognizable by their customs and speech, for they are modest and well regulated. They take no pride in their garments, which are neither costly nor vile. They do not engage in trade, to avoid lies, and oaths, and frauds, but live by their labours as mechanics—their teachers are cobblers. They do not accumulate wealth, but are content with necessaries. They are &este, and temperate in meat and drink. They do not frequent taverns or dances or other vanities. They restrain themselves from anger. They are always at work ; they teach and learn and consequently pray but little. They are to be known by their modesty and precision of speech, avoiding scurrility and detraction, light words, lies, and oaths."

Later on in the fourteenth century that great believer in divine possession, Eckhart, warns his followers to keep out of the slough of Antinomianism "It is necessary to be on the guard against false wisdom, against believing that one can sin without fear of consequences. One is never free of consequences until he is free of sin. When one is free of sin, then only do the consequences of sin disappear."

No heretical sect since Christianity began has had such a martyrology as the Anabaptists. On the other hand, one must admit that no sect has been more open to criticism from the clerical point of view. For many, however, of its greater men and saner communities Mr. Jones makes out a very good case. At the first they were worthy of all sympathy

read,

"little At the beginning of the Reformation, we

" little societies of 'believers' sprang up almost spontaneously in Berne, Basle, Appenzel, St. Gall, and in other places. The movement, even in Switzerland, where it was thoroughly sane, had a powerful social aspect as well as a religious aspect. Its leaders had an intense humanitarian spirit, a passionate love for the common man,' and they spoke to the condition' of the oppressed and the heavy-laden."

Even their enemies admitted their good lives, and regretted the prejudice in their favour created by their virtues among the common people :—

"For the people said : Let others say what they will of the Dippers we see in them nothing but what is excellent, and hear from them nothing else but that we should not swear and do no one wrong, that everyone ought to do what is right, and everyone must live godly and holy lives ; we see no wickedness in them.' Thus they deceived many people in this land."

Certainly the so-called " deception " is a strange testimony to that inner light which made the Anabaptists assert that the doctrine of reprobation must be untrue because it was

unjust. "No man begetteth a child for the gallows, and no potter maketh a pot to break it."

Mr. Jones's book ends with the Commonwealth. The last

company of Mystics of whom he gives us a picture are the Seekers, whom Cromwell declared to be the next best

sect to the Finders. Gerrard Winstardey, the author of a pamphlet called The Breaking of the Day of God, makes in 1648 a beautiful allusion to these uncertain folk, who waited in Quaker-like patience for a further revelation. "Think it not strange," he writes, "to see many of the Saints of God at a stand in the wilderness, and at a loss, and so waiting upon God to discover Himself to them." John Jackson, whom

Baxter describes as "one of the sound sort of Seekers," gives the following account of their way of life :—

" Firstly, they seek the mind of God in the Scriptures. Secondly, they judge that prayer and alms are to be attended to, and for this purpose they come together into some place on the First-days as their hearts are drawn forth and opportunity offers. They then seek, firstly, that they may be instruments in the hand of the Lord to stir up the grace of God in one another, by mutual conference and communication of experience ; and secondly, to • wait for a further revelation They behave themselves as persons who have neither the power nor the gift to go before one another by way of eminency or authority, but as sheep unfolded, and as soldiers unrallied, waiting for a time of gathering. They acknowledge no other visible teacher but the Word and works of God, on whom they wait, for the grace which is to be brought at the revelation of Jesus Christ."

A popular book dealing from an unprejudiced standpoint with the historical heresies is very much wanted just now.

For such reading Mr. Rufus Jones has whetted the appetite of all those into whose hands his Studies may fail.