Henry William Clark

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”