but they do not rise haphazard: they shew a strange, a balanced beauty of line and light and shade, as convincing, if not as clear in its intention as the sunrise-lines and colouring of the euphrasy flower at our feet. We hear as we walk the wandering sound of “the vagrant, casual wind,” but there is something in its rise and fall, and rising again, that has kinship with the flow and ebb and onrush of the lingering, punctual waves on the shore. Sursum Corda.
PART III. THE THEME OF THE BOOK
“THE phase of thought or feeling which we call Mysticism has its origin in... that dim consciousness of the beyond which is part of our nature as human beings…. Mysticism arises when we try to bring this higher consciousness into relation with the other contents of our minds. Religious Mysticism may be defined as the attempt to realise the presence of the living God in the soul and in nature, or, more generally, as the attempt to realise in thought and feeling, the immanence of the temporal in the eternal, and of the eternal in the temporal.”—W. R. Inge, Christian Mysticism. The Bampton Lectures for 1900, p. 4.
“What is Paradise? All things that are; for all are goodly and pleasant and therefore may fitly be called a Paradise. It is said also that Paradise is an outer Court of Heaven. Even so this world is an outer court of the eternal, or of Eternity, and especially whatever in time, or any temporal creature manifesteth or remindeth us of God or Eternity; for the creature is a guide and a path to God and Eternity.”{23} “God is althing that is gode, as to my sight,” says Julian, “and the godenes that althing hath, it is He” (viii.).
“Truth seeth God,” and every man exercising the human gift of Reason may in the sight and in the seeing of truths, attain to some sight of God as Truth. But “Wisdom beholdeth God” and although the enlightenment of the Spirit of Wisdom for the discernment of vital truth is a grace that is granted in needful measure to him that seeks to be guided by it, it is perhaps those receivers of grace that are mystics by nature and habit that are the most ready in reaching forward while still on earth to Wisdom’s fullest and most immediate beholding of God as All in all. For theirs in the largest (and it may be the highest) efficiency, and in the fullest accordance with man’s first gift of “Reason Natural,” is the further gift that Julian calls “Mind”: the gift of a certain spiritual sensitiveness whereby they are quick to take impression of eternal things unseen (seeing them either within or beyond the things of time that are seen) with surrender of self to partake of their life. For in this Beholding of Wisdom, response of the heart in purity and insight of the imagination in faith enhance each other, while the vision of the soul through both takes clearness.
The mystic, who sees the wide-ruling oneness of God with all that is good—and thus, as the Mystics say, with all that is,—may begin at any point the beholding of Goodness and therein the beholding of God. “He is in the mydde poynt of all thyng, and all He doeth” (xi.). It is in the way of those thus fully endowed for the reaching to truth in its highest wisdom here, while they walk amongst the many manifestations of earth, to take them as delicate partial signs instinct with a single meaning. Here is mystical perception:—
“To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour”;{24}
by a blackbird’s sudden song overhear, “in woodlands within,” a joy out of the heart of the Life of life.{25} Speaking of the spiritual sight Julian relates: “I saw God in a point,—by which sight I saw that He is in all things.” To the mystical soul, quiet to listen to “the music of the spheres,” all sweetaccordant sounds are singing Holy, Holy, Holy; to the mystical soul, “full of eyes within”—like those Creatures of Life seen on the plain by the prophet of the Law of Life as renewed for Hope, and seen in the heights by the herald of the Evangel of life as fulfilled in Love—all symmetrical sights are as doors that are opened in Heaven. But it is most of all in the music and the symmetry made of adverse life and death by the power of love, as this is seen from highest to lowest, from lowest to highest, that the Revelation of God as Love that is All in all is received. And looking thereon in the highest manifestation, the manifestation of Christ, which is made for all men, the mystics meet other beholders, who are not called “mystics,” yet who have not merely in greater or less degree, with them, the common gift of Reason, but, after their different manner and in their own share, the gift of the feeling “Mind.” For both from the seeing of Truth and from the beholding of Wisdom comes the “holy wondering delight in God” that is simply delight of love in Love. So they of the East and they of the West sit down together to partake of the Bread and the Wine of the Table of God in His Kingdom.
There is no other than one Food of the Divine Life consecrated and made ready and offered to man for his human spirit to feed on; but the Christian mystic finds an offering of that Food, which is the sanctified Life of the Christ of God, not only in its constant presentment to the spirit alone, by the Spirit of God through Christ. To him, as to other Christians, the sight and the offering of the Life in God is given in that memorial, mediate, expectant Sacrament consecrated for the spirit’s nurture through those elected Symbols of sense that are the most perfect and sacred symbols because in their earlier, natural use they most immediately minister to the whole human life on earth of the Giver and of the receivers. But along with this chosen Sacrament, and as one with it, there is shewn to the mystic the Life Divine in diverse manners of working: he sees God’s Christ from afar, fore-sees the Eucharistic Sacrament of His most sacred Death and Life, now raised in the Bread and the Wine on high,—seeing its promise low in the ground in the earliest, ageless life of the wheat and the vine: seed cast away, bruised corn of wheat, and dying Body, and broken Bread, and daily obedience; a hidden root, crushed fruit of the vine, and Blood poured forth, and uplifted Wine, and joy of Love over Death: one Life.
Sometimes there is for the mystics a partaking of these lesser “wayside sacraments,” sometimes a turning aside from their symbols; sometimes the old song of life in the lower creation awakens singing, sometimes it scarcely is heard. But always the spirit of nature’s signs as interpreted in Man, above all in Christ, lays its claim on the soul; always as sung by the chorus of human spirits that live on the “Righteousness, Peace, and Joy” of the Will of God, the New Song of Life through Death has in it a summons and receives from one and another here, passing through much tribulation, its fuller concord of human achievement, or at least the desirous Amen. So whether the mystic dwell much or little with the sights and sounds of sense, those things that are seen and heard by the soul bear to him the command of his home, and the merest doorway glimpses, the echoes most distant, making their proffer of more and more within and beyond, say Come.
“I give you the end of a golden string:
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven’s Gate,
Built in Jerusalem wall.”{26}
(Although this “following on to know,” this winding of the truth caught hold of into a “perfect round” of thought and will and life, is probably not more easy for the mystics than for other people.
“Amore, amor, tu sei cerchio rotondo!”{27})
God is in all; but “our soul may never have rest in things that are beneath itself” (lxvii.). “Well I wot,” says Julian, “that heaven and earth and all that is made is great and large, fair and good,” yet “all that is made” is seen as a little thing, the size of a hazel nut, held in the palm of her hand, when along with it her spiritual sight beholds the Maker. And though we may find the Maker in all things, we find Him, both as Maker and Restorer, first and best, First and Last, in the soul. There He is Alpha, there Omega. “It is readier to us to come
