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Studies in Mystical Religion STUDIES IN MYSTICAL RELIGION RUFUS M. pNES, M.A., D.Litt. HAVEEFORD COLLEGE, U.S.A. MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1909 7 tt'^tTT^^ ft.<a.'?^H«>'^'^ ^^ — PREFACE No one doubts to-day that one of the main approaches to the meaning of religion is through the nature of the soul of man. It would no doubt be a mistake to push the method of the inner way to the exclusion of all other methods of studying religion, but it is certain that no- body can tell us what religion is until he has sounded the deeps within man, and has dealt with the testimony of personal consciousness. The mystics have in all ages and in all lands semper et ubique—been intent on finding a direct way to God. They have been voices, often crying in the wilder- ness, announcing the nearness of God, and calling men from the folly of seeking Him where, from the nature of the case, he could not be found. Their message strikes a note which appeals profoundly to our generation, and for obvious reasons there has been a revival of interest in them. I hope these studies of mine will contribute to this interest, and will throw positive light on the problems of mystical religion. I have had before me, in all my labour on this volume, the desire to make my work advance the plans of my beloved friend John Wilhelm Rowntree, who is now in the unseen realm. He had set before himself as part of vi MYSTICAL RELIGION a larger purpose the task of writing the history of Quakerism, treating it as an experiment in spiritual religion, and even before I knew of his plans, I had chosen as my special field a study of the mystics of ancient and modern times. We each felt that our work was toward the same end, and we spent many joyous hours telling each other of our literary dreams, always putting all our emphasis on the way in which these unborn books of ours were to minister to the larger spiritual life of our age. His books, alas, must remain unwritten ! We who were his friends know, though the world never can, what power they would have revealed. "The world which credits what is done Is dark to all that might have been." Some of us who loved him are resolved that his work, so far as possible, shall go on to completion, and I have made my volume function, in every way I could do so, toward the fulfilling of his interrupted plans. There is no sectarian cast or bias in it, but it does prepare the way for an intelligent comprehension of the appearance in the English commonwealth of a society of Christians who seriously undertook to live by the Light within, and whose story will be told in later volumes. I am under weighty obligations to many persons who have read and criticized some of the chapters. I desire to make particular mention of Professor Robert S. Franks, Principal T. M. Lindsay, William R. Inge, D.D., Hastings Professor Rashdall, Dr. J. Rendel Harris, T, Edmund Harvey, Joan M. Fry, and William Charles Braithwaite. I wish to express my debt also to Emily J. Hart, who assisted me in some of my researches. PREFACE vii though she did not live to see the work completed. My greatest debt is due my dear wife, who has rendered invaluable help at every stage of my work, particularly in the sections dealing with German mystics, in the proof- reading, and in the preparation of the Index. Haverford, Pennsylvania. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION PAGE The Nature and Value of First-hand Experience in Religion ......... xiii CHAPTER I The Mystical Element in Primitive Christianity i CHAPTER II Ministry and Organization in the Early Church . 20 CHAPTER III MoNTANisM : A Return to Prophecy . -37 CHAPTER IV Roots of Mysticism in Classical Literature . 57 CHAPTER V Mysticism in the Church Fathers .... 80 CHAPTER VI Dionysius, "the Areopagite" ..... 98 ix X MYSTICAL RELIGION CHAPTER VII PAGE A Great Light in the Dark Ages—John the Scot, • CALLED ERIGENA . -113 CHAPTER VIII The Waldenses, an Anti-Sacerdotal Sect . .130 CHAPTER IX St. Francis and the "Spiritual Franciscans" . -150 CHAPTER X A Group of Pantheistical Mystics . .178 CHAPTER XI Brotherhood Groups in the Thirteenth Century . 196 CHAPTER XII (/ Meister Eckhart . .217 CHAPTER XIII The Friends of God 242 - CHAPTER XIV The Brethren of the Common Life .... 298 CHAPTER XV The Pre-Reformation in England—Wyclif and the Lollards 333 CONTENTS xi CHAPTER XVI PAGE The Anabaptists ........ 369 CHAPTER XVn Anabaptism in England 396 CHAPTER XVni The Family of Love 428 CHAPTER XIX The Seekers and the Ranters 449 CHAPTER XX Individual Mystics in the Period of the English Commonwealth . - . .482 APPENDIX 501 INDEX . 507 — — "The Kingdom of God is Within You."1 O world invisible, we view Thee, O world intangible, we touch Thee, O world unknowable, we know Thee, Inapprehensible, we clutch Thee ! Does the fish soar to find the ocean, The eagle plunge to find the air That we ask of the stars in motion If they have rumor of Thee there ? Not where the wheeling systems darken, And our benumbed conceiving soars ! The drift of pinions, would we barken. Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. The angels keep their ancient places ; Turn but a stone, and start a wing 1 'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces. That miss the many-splendored thing. But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) Cry ; —and upon thy so sore loss Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross. Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter. Cry, —clinging Heaven by the hems ; And lo, Christ walking on the water. Not of Gennesareth, but Thames. ' From the Poems of Francis Thompson, with permission of John Lane Company, Publishers. INTRODUCTION THE NATURE AND VALUE OF FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE IN RELIGION Two great tendencies come into prominence in tiie entire course of religious history,—the tendency, on the one hand, to regard rehgion as something permanent and unchanging, and on the other hand, the equally fundamental tendency to revivify and reshape religion through fresh and spontaneous experiences. It is natural that both tendencies should appear, for religion is both eternal and temporal—it is the child of permanence and change. No religion can live and be a power in this evolving world unless it changes and adjusts itself to its environment, and no religion can minister to the deepest needs of men unless it reveals permanent and time-transcending Realities. Religion has many times lost its power because one of its two essential aspects has been ignored and the other aspect has been pushed to an absurd extreme. It will not do to forget or to overlook the advantages of habit, custom, and system—the storage of the gains of the race. The tendency to value what has worked well furthers order and stability, and keeps the future organic with the past The conserving spirit, like an invisible mortar, binds the ages together and makes possible one humanity. It is the very basis of our social morality and the ground of all our corporate activities. xiv MYSTICAL RELIGION But, on the other hand, as soon as religion has closed up " the east window of divine surprise," and is turned into a mechanism of habit, custom, and system, it is killed. Religion thus grown formal and mechanical, though it may still have a disciplinary function in society, is no longer religion in the primary sense. The spring of joy which characterizes true religion has disappeared, the heightening, propulsive tone has vanished. It may linger on as a vestigial superstition, or a semi-automatic performance, but it is live religion only so long as it issues from the centre of personal consciousness and has the throb of personal experience in it. 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, persons who have shifted the line of march and brought new energies into play, because they have gained new visions and new insights. The Church, it is true, has never in any period quite sunk to the level of tradition and the automatism of habit, for it has always had beneath its system of organiza- tion and dogma a current, more or less hidden and subterranean, of vital, inward, spiritual religion, dependent for its power of conviction, not on books, councils, hierarchies or creeds,—not upon anything kept in cold storage,—but on the soul's experiences of eternal Realities. But the main weakness of organized Christianity has been the tendency to settle into a " sacred " form and system. Our generation has grown weary of ancient traditions and accumulated systems. We have discovered new worlds in all directions by following the sure path of experience, and we can never again settle down with a naive and childlike trust in the house which the past has builded. Our first question in any field is, not What do the scribes and schoolmen say ? not What is the unbroken INTRODUCTION xv tradition ? but, What are the facts ? What data does ex- " perience furnish ? This shifting of centre from " authority to " experience " runs through all the pursuits of the human spirit in the modern world, and, as would be expected, religion has been profoundly affected by it. In religion as in other fields of inquiry, the questions of moment have come to be those which deal with life.
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