Christian Mysticism. William Ralph Inge

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СКАЧАТЬ which is upheld by the power and the Word of God." He also holds that the sun and stars are spiritual beings. St. Augustine, too (De Civitate Dei, iv. 12, vii. 5), regards the universe as a living organism; and the doctrine reappears much later in Giordano Bruno. According to this theory, we are subsidiary members of an all-embracing organism, and there may be intermediate will-centres between our own and that of the universal Ego. Among modern systems, that of Fechner is the one which seems to be most in accordance with these speculations. He views life under the figure of a number of concentric circles of consciousness, within an all-embracing circle which represents the consciousness of God.]

      [Footnote 48: [Greek: psuchês peirata ouk an exeuroio pasan epiporeuomenos hodon outô bathyn logon echei], Frag. 71.]

      [Footnote 49: J.P. Richter, Selina. Compare, too, Lotze, Microcosmus: "Within us lurks a world whose form we imperfectly apprehend, and whose working, when in particular phases it comes under our notice, surprises us with foreshadowings of unknown depths in our being."]

      [Footnote 50: As Lotze says, "The finite being does not contain in itself the conditions of its own existence." It must struggle to attain to complete personality; or rather, since personality belongs unconditionally only to God, to such a measure of personality as is allotted to us. Eternal life is nothing than the attainment of full personality, a conscious existence in God.]

      [Footnote 51: J.A. Picton (The Mystery of Matter, p. 356) puts the matter well: "Mysticism consists in the spiritual realisation of a grander and a boundless unity, that humbles all self-assertion by dissolving it in a wider glory. It does not follow that the sense of individuality is necessarily weakened. But habitual contemplation of the Divine unity impresses men with the feeling that individuality is phenomenal only. Hence the paradox of Mysticism. For apart from this phenomenal individuality, we should not know our own nothingness, and personal life is good only through the bliss of being lost in God. [Rather, I should say, through the bliss of finding our true life, which is hid with Christ in God.] True religious worship doth not consist in the acknowledgment of a greatness which is estimated by comparison, but rather in the sense of a Being who surpasses all comparison, because He gives to phenomenal existences the only reality they can know. Hence the deepest religious feeling necessarily shrinks from thinking of God as a kind of gigantic Self amidst a host of minor selves. The very thought of such a thing is a mockery of the profoundest devotion."]

      [Footnote 52: See, further, Appendix C, pp. 366–7.]

      [Footnote 53: [Greek: hena genesthai ton anthrôpon dei]: Pythagoras quoted by Clement. Cf. Plotinus, Enn. vi. 9. I, [Greek: kai hugieia de, hotan eis hen syntachthê to sôma, kai kallos hotan hê tou henos ta moria kataschê physis, kai aretê de psychês hotan eis hen kai eis mian homologian henôthê].]

      [Footnote 54: Proclus, in Tim. 83. 265.]

      [Footnote 55: Aug. Ep. 187. 19: "Deus totus adesse rebus omnibus potest, et singulis totus, quamvis in quibus habitat habeant eum pro suæ capacitatis diversitate, alii amplius, alii minus." More clearly still, Bonaventura, Itin. ment. ad Deum, 5: "Totum intra omnia, et totum extra: ac per hoc est sphæra intelligibilis, cuius centrum est ubique, et circumferentia nusquam."]

LECTURE II

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      [Greek: "To eu zên edidaxen epiphaneis ôs didaskalos, hina to aei zên husteron ôs theos chorêgêsê."]

      CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA.

      "But souls that of His own good life partake

       He loves as His own self: dear as His eye

       They are to Him; He'll never them forsake:

       When they shall die, then God Himself shall die:

       They live, they live in blest eternity."

      HENRY MORE.

      "Amor Patris Filiique,

       Par amborum, et utrique

       Compar et consimilis:

       Cuncta reples, cuncta foves,

       Astra regis, coelum moves,

       Permanens immobilis.

      "Te docente nil obscurum,

       Te præsente nil impurum;

       Sub tua præsentia

       Gloriatur mens iucunda;

       Per te læta, per te munda

       Gaudet conscientia.

      "Consolator et fundator,

       Habitator et amator

       Cordium humilium;

       Pelle mala, terge sordes,

       Et discordes fac concordes,

       Et affer præsidium."

      ADAM OF ST. VICTOR

      THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE

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      "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all the fulness of God."—EPH. iii. 17–19.

      The task which now lies before me is to consider how far that type of religion and religious philosophy, which I tried in my last Lecture to depict in outline, is represented in and sanctioned by Holy Scripture. I shall devote most of my time to the New Testament, for we shall not find very much to help us in the Old. The Jewish mind and character, in spite of its deeply religious bent, was alien to Mysticism. In the first place, the religion of Israel, passing from what has been called Henotheism—the worship of a national God—to true Monotheism, always maintained a rigid notion of individuality, both human and Divine. Even prophecy, which is mystical in its essence, was in the early period conceived as unmystically as possible, Balaam is merely a mouthpiece of God; his message is external to his personality, which remains antagonistic to it. And, secondly, the Jewish doctrine of ideas was different from the Platonic. The Jew believed that the world, and the whole course of history, existed from all eternity in the mind of God, but as an unrealised purpose, which was actualised by degrees as the scroll of events was unfurled. There was no notion that the visible was in any way inferior to the invisible, or lacking in reality. Even in its later phases, after it had been partially Hellenised, Jewish idealism tended to crystallise as Chiliasm, or in "Apocalypses," and not, like Platonism, in the dream of a perfect world existing "yonder." In fact, the Jewish view of the external world was mainly that of naïve realism, but strongly pervaded by belief in an Almighty King and Judge. Moreover, the Jew had little sense of the Divine in nature: it was the power of God over nature which he was jealous to maintain. The majesty of the elemental forces was extolled in order to magnify the greater power of Him who made and could unmake them, and whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain. The weakness СКАЧАТЬ