Henry William Clark

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is not an attitude of the intellect, nor an attitude substituted for an attitude of the intellect, but an attitude of the whole nature, an attitude — or, more accurately, a movement, a development — of life. It is not a knowing God, but a climbing into God on the part of man, a descent into man on the part of God. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”