Henry William Clark

“ The mystical experience, read thus, is at once perceived to be not a matter of knowledge, nor a substitute for knowledge; and the effort to attain it is in no wise an effort that aims at taking reason's place. Of course, if that close fellowship between God and man, after which mysticism strives, be once established, man will necessarily know more of the God with whom he is made one; and thus, incidentally, mysticism may come, over and above being what in its own essence it is, to be a feeder and enricher of the mind. But primarily, the mystical experience is not a matter of the mind. ”

“ A reading of the New Testament that is unprejudiced and open-eyed finds it the most mystical book in all the world. Theology may have missed the fact not seldom — and may have missed it, partly, because mysticism's wrong account of itself has failed to waken New Testament echoes as mysticism's right account of itself cannot fail to waken them. With a mysticism which understands itself mistakenly the New Testament has nothing to do; a mysticism which is merely a substitute for knowledge, and which repays reason's scorn with scorn, has no kinship with New Testament religion ”

“ And they would admit, on the other hand, that if those instincts of our nature which seem to cry for something outside of ourselves on which they may take hold and in whose answering clasp they may find their complement — those aspirations and variously named (or unnamed) movements which so often go forth from the busy harbor of our inner life as if outward bound upon an unknown sea — that if all these may be legitimately interpreted in a religious sense at all, it is to something like real and intimate union with God that they point. ”

“ In order to obtain for thought the unity which we demand, we must first develop the real and final unity of life. Or, as previously said, it is the final fact of things, constructed or in process of construction, that reason requires to come upon or to have presented to it, if it is to reach a view of things in which it can rest. Reason itself calls to man, "Be something more than you are — make the final fact — in order that I may write the last chapter of my book, and not be put to shame." ”

“ That kind of unity is like the unity reached by repeated striking of the same note on the keyboard of the piano. It is mere similarity of pattern; and you do not, by having a number of things exactly alike, make one whole. A unity in the pattern implies no unity of essential being. Reason demands, for its own satisfaction, a unity of a deeper and more vital kind. ”

“ In the mystical experience, life, and all that led up to it, gives itself up once more to the God from whom it came; and God takes into himself once more the life, with all that led up to it, to which he gave birth. It is the process of things which has been brought up, may one say, to its semi-final stage in the personality of man, now seeking and finding its goal, accomplishing the last stage of all, linking itself up with the personality of God, whence it originally set out, and so making itself rounded and complete. ”

“ And, taking the mere facts of the situation, a force acting from without the man — a reinforcement of man's power from beyond himself — is at the very least a thing to be desired. For, aiming at the mystical experience as described, we find ourselves with a retarding and depressing weight in our own nature to lift, with the divine life into which we want to climb so far away, and with a movement away from, rather than toward, the divine life always incipient, and often accentuated, within. ”

“ On the true conception of mysticism, the connection is not only possible, but necessary. Mysticism not only permits the New Testament evangelicalism, but demands it. Interpreting itself truly, mysticism, we have seen, tenders itself not as a method of knowledge, but as a movement of life. But having thus corrected one mistake in the statement of its programme, mysticism is forced on inevitably to the correction of another; and the stress which it has often laid upon "contemplation" as the means of union with God must yield to something else. ”

“ Here the process of things, having got as far as man, is linked up into one whole as man climbs up into God. Through the mystical experience the completely unified system which reason insists upon having is brought about — not perceived but brought about. The mystical experience finishes, one may venture to say, the creative process, and car- ries things back to God. Mysticism, then, when it understands itself aright and explains itself truly, remains entirely reasonable just because it does not attempt to substitute itself for reason, but does what, according to reason, requires to be done. ”

“ What the true answer of mysticism to the taunt flung at it by reason would have been — the answer by the making of which mysticism would have robbed reason of its arms — we shall presently come to understand. For the moment it may suffice to say that mysticism, rightly interpreted, does not take the place of reason at all; and it is on some such line as this that mysticism should have replied when reason complained or sneered, so repudiating the alternative — as between mysticism or reason — which reason has assiduously pushed to the front. ”

“ When mysticism quits its mistaken self-interpretation and moves on to surer ground New Testament Christianity, in our conception of it, hoists an answering signal, and moves in its turn to meet mysticism there.
For let the phrases wherein the mystical experience was described be recalled. Mysticism is a climbing into God on the part of man, a descent into man on the part of God — that is the sum of them all. But if this be a right description of the mystical experience, it is also a right description of the experience declared in the New Testament to be religion's goal. ”

“ Undoubtedly mysticism has been right in declaring that religion is ultimately and essentially a losing of self in God — that the significance of religion is not exhausted in any grasp which the mind may fling round facts about God, nor in any adjustment of an external kind which a man may make in his attitude towards God, nor in any change in man's judicial standing before the sight of God, but is a far deeper thing. ”

“ In the nature of the case, the new cosmic event takes place by degrees, in instalments, as it were, since the individual members of the race, in whom life as it is is embodied, ascend only separately and at too rare intervals into the mystical experience which is life as it is destined to be. But this must not blind our eyes to the fact that every single instance of a genuine mystical experience is another instalment of the one movement which life in its evolution is next called upon to make. ”

“ One may venture to speak of the mysticism of Jesus, not in the sense that he was himself climbing into the divine life, for he was the divine life, but in the sense that he set himself before men as the One into whom they were to climb. That Christ was in a manner egoistic — may one put it so? — indicates how mystical he meant men to be; for to that egoism of his only mysticism on the part of men could adequately or appropriately respond. ”

“ A real unity — the unity which reason, when it knows itself and its desires, calls for — is a unity vital and organic, a unity wherein the initial Being sends itself forth, passes through stage upon stage, becoming in a sense other than itself in the passing and yet remaining itself all the while, and at last returns upon itself, settles down upon itself, once more. What is demanded is a unity which is a self-contained, rounded whole. The entire process, though projected out of the initial Being, must be within the initial Being, too ”

“ That recognition, already referred to, of a valuable and desirable element in mystical experience — that recognition which practically all men, though they may sheer off from and think extravagant much of the language in which mysticism expresses or expounds itself, are ready to make — is itself strong testimony to mysticism's nearness to the heart of the whole thing. ”

“ What mysticism really aims at, and what mysticism has really reached more or less perfectly in the experience of those who are entitled to the mystic's name, is the acceptance of God by man as the actual, energizing, dynamic source of all that man is — man setting himself in such a God-ward relation that henceforth he is, in regard to all that proceeds from him in the way of activity, emotion, and the rest, mediate instead of immediate, a channel instead of a spring. ”

“ And when reason looks for this latter vision, it cannot attain it, because the wholeness of things is not worked out. Life, as man reveals it, may be traceable downward from its source; but life, in its human individualism, is not using its individualism in order to carry life on to a goal which is one with its source. ”

“ And so, to speak of "rational mysticism and New Testament Christianity" is to venture upon no union of incompatibles after all: it is to bring together three things whose voices blend, and on whose blended voices there comes the sound of a call we ought to hear. For the whole thing has a practical issue — which is this. Only in driving our religious life up to the mystical heights do we render it at the same time most reasonable and most in accord with the New Testament scheme ”

“ It is more than a relation between man and God: it is a relation wherein there is no more between: ay, it is more than a relation — it is a mingling, a threading together, a lying down of the man upon God, a folding of God round every part of the man. ”

“ But this is precisely what thought, reason, cannot do, because the ultimate stage is not reached. In man, as thought discerns him, life is still as it were a loose thread, and is not bound back to the beginning of things again. No mere accounting for man puts this right. You may account for man, theorize as satisfactorily as you like as to how he came to be ”

“ If mysticism, rightly understanding itself, finds that it has become truly rational because it creates the ultimate fact which somewhere or other reason needs to come upon in order to make its own system complete, does it also find itself in line with the religion expounded and prescribed on the New Testament page? ”

“ Is it possible for the religious man to feel that 'immersion of his entire being in the eternal tides ' which was spoken of earlier, and at the same time to keep a hold upon all the apparatus of truth which gathers round the evangelical idea of reconciliation with God? ”

“ It is an anticipatory experience, on the part of the mystic's individual life, of that condition of things which is to be the goal of the world-process; it is, in fact, that condition of things beginning to be realized. ”

“ They would admit, on the one hand, that if religion calls for anything at all, it calls for much more than a merely external relationship between man and God, however many faculties of human nature that relationship may cover, and however carefully that relationship may be maintained and cultivated once it is made. ”

“ New Testament Christianity need have no fear that for him who understands the mystical experience aright one jot or tittle of the religious programme it inculcates will pass away. It is just in that programme that the needed secret will be found. And the religious man, longing for the warmth of the mystic's experience, yet wondering whether in seeking it he may not be divorcing himself from the primary essentials of a true Christian life, may set his misgivings at rest. ”

“ In asserting it, therefore, you declare yourself more powerful than I am in my own particular field, come in as a sort of confident but unauthorized amateur where the regular practitioner confesses himself baffled, and set up a preposterous claim which I cannot for a moment allow." Mysticism's mistake has been that it has so frequently answered taunt with taunt, and in its indignation has missed the right reply. ”

“ A "movement of life" means a real activity, and implies either something actually done by man's life for itself, or something actually done upon man's life from beyond itself, in order that the necessary movement may be made: if man is to climb into God, the problem at once becomes one which no method of "contemplation" can solve ”

“ When it talks of salvation in Christ, it recognizes that there must be a force, either within me or without me, under whose impulsive power I am to climb into the life of God, and, because the force within me is baffled, points me to a force without. ”

“ In reply to reason's attempt to rule mysticism out, mysticism has attempted to rule reason out in its turn: it has willingly occupied the false position into which reason has been eager to thrust it, and, as previously suggested, has given a wrong account of itself and of its rdle. ”

“ For if he understand the mystical experience truly, he will through his pursuit of it come to see all the vaster significance in the great New Testament truths of sin, and faith, and incarnation, and Christ, and Cross. ”

“ We are proceeding throughout this paper, let it be remembered, upon the idea that if we begin from a revised apprehension of what mysticism in its essence really is, we may find ourselves started upon the road to that ultimate reconciliation of seeming incompatibles which we desire. ”