The Mystics Of The Church

Mysticism In The Bible
Mysticism In The Early Church
The Early Middle Ages
Franciscan Mysticism
English Mediaeval Mystics
German And Flemish Mysticism
The Two Catherines
Spanish Mysticism
French Seventeenth-Century Mysticism
Some Protestant Mystics
Conclusion Modern Mystics

¿Mystic¿ and "Mysticism¿ are words which meet us constantly in all books that deal with religious experience; and indeed in many books which do not treat of religion at all. They are generally so vaguely and loosely used that they convey no precise meaning to our minds, and have now come to be perhaps the most ambiguous terms in the whole vocabulary of religion. Any vague sense of spiritual things, any sort of symbolism, any hazily allegorical painting, any poetry which deals with the soul ¿ worse than that, all sorts of superstitions and magical practices ¿ may be, and often are, described as ¿mystical.¿ A word so generalized seems almost to have lost its meaning; and indeed, not one of these uses of ¿Mysticism¿ is correct, though the persons to whom they are applied may in some instances be mystics.

Mysticism, according to its historical and psychological definitions, is the direct intuition or experience of God; and a mystic is a person who has, to a greater or less degree, such a direct experience ¿ one whose religion and life are centred, not merely on an accepted belief or practice, but on that which he regards as first-hand personal knowledge. In Greek religion, from which the word comes to us, the mystae were those initiates of the ¿mysteries¿ who were believed to have received the vision of the god, and with it a new and higher life. When the Christian Church adopted this term it adopted, too, this its original meaning. The Christian mystic therefore is one for whom God and Christ are not merely objects of belief, but living facts experimentally known at first-hand; and mysticism for him becomes, in so far as he responds to its demands, a life based on this conscious communion with God. It is found in experience that this communion, in all its varying forms and degrees, is always a communion of love; and, in its perfection, so intimate and all-pervading that the word ¿union¿ describes it best. When St. Augustine said, ¿My life shall be a real life, being wholly full of Thee,¿ he described in these words the ideal of a true Christian mysticism.

Such a general definition as this evidently needs much more explanation if we are to grasp all that it means. It shows us that mysticism represents the very soul of religion; that it is, in fact, another name for that which is sometimes called the ¿spiritual life,¿ and that no Church in which it is not present truly lives. Not only the act of contemplation, the vision or state of consciousness in which the soul of the great mystic realizes God, but many humbler and dimmer experiences of prayer, in which the little human spirit truly feels the presence of the Divine Spirit and Love, must be included in it. We cannot say that there is a separate ¿mystical sense,¿ which some men have and some have not, but rather that every human soul has a certain latent capacity for God, and that in some this capacity is realized with an astonishing richness. Such a realization may be of many kinds and degrees ¿ personal or impersonal, abrupt and ecstatic, or peaceful and continuous. This will depend partly on the temperament of the mystic, and partly on his religious background and education.

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