Christian Mysticism by William Ralph Inge

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She tells us herself that her reading of St. Augustine's
_Confessions_, at the age of forty-one, was a turning-point in her
life. "When I came to his conversion," she says, "and read how he
heard the voice in the garden, it was just as if the Lord called me."
It was after this that she began again to see visions--or rather to
have a sudden sense of the presence of God, with a suspension of all
the faculties. In these trances she generally heard Divine
"locutions." She says that "the words were very clearly formed, and
unmistakable, though not heard by the bodily ear. They are quite
unlike the words framed by the imagination, which are muffled" (_cosa
sorda_). She describes her visions of Christ very carefully. First He
stood beside her while she was in prayer, and she heard and saw Him,
"though not with the eyes of the body, nor of the soul." Then by
degrees "His sacred humanity was completely manifested to me, as it is
painted after the Resurrection." (This last sentence suggests that
sacred pictures, lovingly gazed at, may have been the source of some
of her visions.) Her superiors tried to persuade her that they were
delusions; but she replied, "If they who said this told me that a
person who had just finished speaking to me, whom I knew well, was not
that person, but they knew that I fancied it, doubtless I should
believe them, rather than what I had seen; but if this person left
behind him some jewels as pledges of his great love, and I found
myself rich having been poor, I could not believe it if I wished. And
these jewels I could show them. For all who knew me saw clearly that
my soul was changed; the difference was great and palpable." The
answer shows that for Teresa the question was not whether the
manifestations were "subjective" or "objective," but whether they were
sent by God or Satan.

One of the best chapters in her autobiography, and perhaps the most
interesting from our present point of view, is the allegory under
which she describes the different kinds of prayer. The simile is not
original--it appears in St. Augustine and others; but it is more fully
worked out by St. Teresa, who tells us "it has always been a great
delight to me to think of my soul as a garden, and of the Lord as
walking in it." So here she says, "Our soul is like a garden, rough
and unfruitful, out of which God plucks the weeds, and plants flowers,
which we have to water by prayer. There are four ways of doing
this--First, by drawing the water from a well; this is the earliest
and most laborious process. Secondly, by a water-wheel which has its
rim hung round with little buckets. Third, by causing a stream to flow
through it. Fourth, by rain from heaven. The first is ordinary prayer,
which is often attended by great sweetness and comfort. But sometimes
the well is dry. What then? The love of God does not consist in being
able to weep, nor yet in delights and tenderness, but in serving with
justice, courage, and humility. The other seems to me rather to
receive than to give. The second is the prayer of quiet, when the soul
understands that God is so near to her that she need not talk aloud to
Him." In this stage the Will is absorbed, but the Understanding and
Memory are still active. (Teresa, following the scholastic mystics,
makes these the three faculties of the soul.) In the third stage God
becomes, as it were, the Gardener. "It is a sleep of the faculties,
which are not entirely suspended, nor yet do they understand how they
work." In the fourth stage, the soul labours not at all; all the
faculties are quiescent. As she pondered how she might describe this
state, "the Lord said these words to me: She (the soul) unmakes
herself, my daughter, to bring herself closer to Me. It is no more she
that lives, but I. As she cannot comprehend what she sees,
understanding she ceases to understand." Years after she had attained
this fourth stage, Teresa experienced what the mystics call "the great
dereliction," a sense of ineffable loneliness and desolation, which
nevertheless is the path to incomparable happiness. It was accompanied
by a kind of catalepsy, with muscular rigidity and cessation of the
pulses.

These intense joys and sorrows of the spirit are the chief events of
Teresa's life for eight or ten years. They are followed by a period of
extreme practical activity, when she devoted herself to organising
communities of bare-footed Carmelites, whose austerity and devotion
were to revive the glories of primitive Christianity. In this work she
showed not only energy, but worldly wisdom and tact in no common
degree. Her visions had certainly not impaired her powers as an
organiser and ruler of men and women. Her labours continued without
intermission till, at the age of sixty-seven, she was struck down by
her last illness. "This _saint_ will be no longer wanted," she said,
with a sparkle of her old vivacity, when she knew that she was to die.

It is not worth while to give a detailed account of St. Teresa's
mystical theology. Its cardinal points are that the religious life
consists in complete conformity to the will of God, so that at last
the human will becomes purely "passive" and "at rest"; and the belief
in Christ as the sole ground of salvation, on which subject she uses
language which is curiously like that of the Lutheran Reformers. Her
teaching about passivity and the "prayer of quiet" is identical with
that which the Pope afterwards condemned in Molinos; but it is only
fair to remember that Teresa was not canonised for her theology, but
for her life, and that the Roman Church is not committed to every
doctrine which can be found in the writings of her saints. The real
character of St. Teresa's piety may be seen best in some of her
prayers, such as this which follows:--

"O Lord, how utterly different are Thy thoughts from our thoughts!
From a soul which is firmly resolved to love Thee alone, and which has
surrendered her whole will into Thy hands, Thou demandest only that
she should hearken, strive earnestly to serve Thee, and desire only to
promote Thine honour. She need seek and choose no path, for Thou
doest that for her, and her will follows Thine; while Thou, O Lord,
takest care to bring her to fuller perfection."

In theory, it may not be easy to reconcile "earnest striving" with
complete surrender and abrogation of the will, but the logic of the
heart does not find them incompatible. Perhaps no one has spoken
better on this matter than the Rabbi Gamaliel, of whom it is reported
that he prayed, "O Lord, grant that I may do Thy will as if it were my
will, that Thou mayest do my will as if it were Thy will." But
quietistic Mysticism often puts the matter on a wrong basis. Self-will
is to be annihilated, not (as St. Teresa sometimes implies) because
our thoughts are so utterly different from God's thoughts that they
cannot exist in the same mind, but because self-interest sets up an
unnatural antagonism between them. The will, like the other faculties,
only realises itself in its fulness when God worketh in us both to
will and to do of His good pleasure.

St. Juan of the Cross, the fellow-workman of St. Teresa in the reform
of monasteries, is a still more perfect example of the Spanish type of
Mysticism. His fame has never been so great as hers; for while
Teresa's character remained human and lovable in the midst of all her
austerities, Juan carried self-abnegation to a fanatical extreme, and
presents the life of holiness in a grim and repellent aspect. In his
disdain of all compromise between the claims of God and the world, he
welcomes every kind of suffering, and bids us choose always that which
is most painful, difficult, and humiliating. His own life was divided
between terrible mortifications and strenuous labour in the
foundation of monasteries. Though his books show a tendency to
Quietism, his character was one of fiery energy and unresting
industry. Houses of "discalced" Carmelites sprang up all over Spain as
the result of his labours. These monks and nuns slept upon bare
boards, fasted eight months in the year, never ate meat, and wore the
same serge dress in winter and summer. In some of these new
foundations the Brethren even vied with each other in adding voluntary
austerities to this severe rule. It was all part of the campaign
against Protestantism. The worldliness and luxury of the Renaissance
period were to be atoned for by a return to the purity and devotion of
earlier centuries. The older Catholic ideal--the mediaeval type of
Christianity--was to be restored in all its completeness in the
seventeenth century. This essentially militant character of the
movement among the Carmelites must not be lost sight of: the two great
Spanish mystics were before all things champions of the
counter-Reformation.

The two chief works of St. Juan are _The Ascent of Mount Carmel_, and
_The Obscure Night of the Soul_. Both are treatises on quietistic
Mysticism of a peculiar type. At the beginning of _La Subida de Monte
Carmelo_ he says, "The journey of the soul to the Divine union is
called _night_ for three reasons: the point of departure is privation
of all desire, and complete detachment from the world; the road is by
faith, which is like night to the intellect; the goal, which is God,
is incomprehensible while we are in this life."

The soul in its ascent passes from one realm of darkness to another.
First there is the "night of sense," in which the things of earth
become dark to her. This must needs be traversed, for "the creatures
are only the crumbs that fall from God's table, and none but dogs will
turn to pick them up." "One desire only doth God allow--that of
obeying Him, and carrying the Cross." All other desires weaken,
torment, blind, and pollute the soul. Until we are completely detached
from all such, we cannot love God. "When thou dwellest upon anything,
thou hast ceased to cast thyself upon the All." "If thou wilt keep
anything with the All, thou hast not thy treasure simply in God."
"Empty thy spirit of all created things, and thou wilt walk in the
Divine light, for God resembles no created thing." Such is the method
of traversing the "night of sense." Even at this early stage the forms
and symbols of eternity, which others have found in the visible works
of God, are discarded as useless. "God has no resemblance to any
creature." The dualism or acosmism of mediaeval thought has seldom
found a harsher expression.

In the night of sense, the understanding and reason are not blind; but
in the second night, the night of faith, "all is darkness." "Faith is
midnight"; it is the deepest darkness that we have to pass; for in the
"third night, the night of memory and will," the dawn is at hand.
"Faith" he defines as "the assent of the soul to what we have
heard"--as a blind man would receive a statement about the colour of
an object. We must be totally blind, "for a partially blind man will
not commit himself wholly to his guide." Thus for St. Juan the whole
content of revelation is removed from the scope of the reason, and is
treated as something communicated from outside. We have, indeed,
travelled far from St. Clement's happy confidence in the guidance of
reason, and Eckhart's independence of tradition. The soul has three
faculties--intellect, memory, and will. The imagination (_fantasia_)
is a link between the sensitive and reasoning powers, and comes
between the intellect and memory.[298] Of these faculties, "faith (he
says) blinds the intellect, hope the memory, and love the will." He
adds, "to all that is not God"; but "God in this life is like night."
He blames those who think it enough to deny themselves "without
annihilating themselves," and those who "seek for satisfaction in
God." This last is "spiritual gluttony." "We ought to seek for
bitterness rather than sweetness in God," and "to choose what is most
disagreeable, whether proceeding from God or the world." "The way of
God consisteth not in ways of devotion or sweetness, though these may
be necessary to beginners, but in giving ourselves up to suffer." And
so we must fly from all "mystical phenomena" (supernatural
manifestations to the sight, hearing, and the other senses) "without
examining whether they be good or evil." "For bodily sensations bear
no proportion to spiritual things"; since the distance "between God
and the creature is infinite," "there is no essential likeness or
communion between them." Visions are at best "childish toys"; "the fly
that touches honey cannot fly," he says; and the probability is that
they come from the devil. For "neither the creatures, nor intellectual
perceptions, natural or supernatural, can bring us to God, there
being no proportion between them. Created things cannot serve as a
ladder; they are only a hindrance and a snare."

There is something heroic in this sombre interpretation of the maxim
of our Lord, "Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he
hath, he cannot be My disciple." All that he hath--"yea, and his own
life also"--intellect, reason, and memory--all that is most Divine in
our nature--are cast down in absolute surrender at the feet of Him who
"made darkness His secret place, His pavilion round about Him with
dark water, and thick clouds to cover Him.[299]"

In the "third night"--that of memory and will--the soul sinks into a
holy inertia and oblivion (_santa ociosidad y olvido_), in which the
flight of time is unfelt, and the mind is unconscious of all
particular thoughts. St. Juan seems here to have brought us to
something like the torpor of the Indian Yogi or of the hesychasts of
Mount Athos. But he does not intend us to regard this state of trance
as permanent or final. It is the last watch of the night before the
dawn of the supernatural state, in which the human faculties are
turned into Divine attributes, and by a complete transformation the
soul, which was "at the opposite extreme" to God, "becomes, by
participation, God." In this beatific state "one might say, in a
sense, that the soul gives God to God, for she gives to God all that
she receives of God; and He gives Himself to her. This is the
mystical love-gift, wherewith the soul repayeth all her debt." This
is the infinite reward of the soul who has refused to be content with
anything short of infinity (_no se llenan menos que con lo Infinito_).
With what yearning this blessed hope inspired St. Juan, is shown in
the following beautiful prayer, which is a good example of the
eloquence, born of intense emotion, which we find here and there in
his pages: "O sweetest love of God, too little known; he who has found
Thee is at rest; let everything be changed, O God, that we may rest in
Thee. Everywhere with Thee, O my God, everywhere all things with Thee;
as I wish, O my Love, all for Thee, nothing for me--nothing for me,
everything for Thee. All sweetness and delight for Thee, none for
me--all bitterness and trouble for me, none for Thee. O my God, how
sweet to me Thy presence, who art the supreme Good! I will draw near
to Thee in silence, and will uncover Thy feet,[300] that it may please
Thee to unite me to Thyself, making my soul Thy bride; I will rejoice
in nothing till I am in Thine arms. O Lord, I beseech Thee, leave me
not for a moment, because I know not the value of mine own soul."

Such faith, hope, and love were suffered to cast gleams of light upon
the saint's gloomy and thorn-strewn path. But nevertheless the text of
which we are most often reminded in reading his pages is the verse of
Amos: "Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness and not light? even
very dark, and no brightness in it?" It is a terrible view of life and
duty--that we are to denude ourselves of everything that makes us
citizens of the world--that _nothing_ which is natural is capable of
entering into relations with God--that all which is human must die,
and have its place taken by supernatural infusion. St. Juan follows to
the end the "negative road" of Dionysius, without troubling himself at
all with the transcendental metaphysics of Neoplatonism. His nihilism
or acosmism is not the result of abstracting from the notion of Being
or of unity; its basis is psychological. It is "subjective" religion
carried _almost_ to its logical conclusion. The Neoplatonists were led
on by the hope of finding a reconciliation between philosophy and
positive religion; but no such problems ever presented themselves to
the Spaniards. We hear nothing of the relation of the creation to God,
or _why_ the contemplation of it should only hinder instead of helping
us to know its Maker. The world simply does not exist for St. Juan;
nothing exists save God and human souls. The great human society has
no interest for him; he would have us cut ourselves completely adrift
from the aims and aspirations of civilised humanity, and, "since
nothing but the Infinite can satisfy us," to accept nothing until our
nothingness is filled with the Infinite. He does not escape from the
quietistic attitude of passive expectancy which belongs to this view
of life; and it is only by a glaring inconsistency that he attaches
any value to the ecclesiastical symbolism, which rests on a very
different basis from that of his teaching. But St. Juan's Mysticism
brought him no intellectual emancipation, either for good or evil.
Faith with him was the antithesis, not to _sight_, as in the Bible,
but to reason. The sacrifice of reason was part of the crucifixion of
the old man. And so he remained in an attitude of complete
subservience to Church tradition and authority, and even to his
"director," an intermediary who is constantly mentioned by these
post-Reformation mystics. Even this unqualified submissiveness did not
preserve him from persecution during his lifetime, and suspicion
afterwards. His books were only authorised twenty-seven years after
his death, which occurred in 1591; and his beatification was delayed
till 1674. His orthodoxy was defended largely by references to St.
Teresa, who had already been canonised. But it could not be denied
that the quietists of the next century might find much support for
their controverted doctrines in both writers.

St. Juan's ideal of saintliness was as much of an anachronism as his
scheme of Church reform. But no one ever climbed the rugged peaks of
Mount Carmel with more heroic courage and patience. His life shows
what tremendous moral force is generated by complete self-surrender to
God. And happily neither his failure to read the signs of the times,
nor his one-sided and defective grasp of Christian truth, could
deprive him of the reward of his life of sacrifice--the reward, I
mean, of feeling his fellowship with Christ in suffering. He sold "all
that he had" to gain the pearl of great price, and the surrender was
not made in vain.

The later Roman Catholic mystics, though they include some beautiful
and lovable characters, do not develop any further the type which we
have found in St. Teresa and St. Juan. St. Francis de Sales has been a
favourite devotional writer with thousands in this country. He
presents the Spanish Mysticism softened and polished into a graceful
and winning pietism, such as might refine and elevate the lives of
the "honourable women" who consulted him. The errors of the quietists
certainly receive some countenance from parts of his writings, but
they are neutralised by maxims of a different tendency, borrowed
eclectically from other sources.[301]

A more consistent and less fortunate follower of St. Teresa was Miguel
de Molinos, a Spanish priest, who came to Rome about 1670. His piety
and learning won him the favour of Pope Innocent XI., who, according
to Bishop Burnet, "lodged him in an apartment of the palace, and put
many singular marks of his esteem upon him." In 1675 he published in
Italian his _Spiritual Guide_, a mystical treatise of great interest.

Molinos begins by saying that there are two ways to the knowledge of
God--meditation or discursive thought, and "pure faith" or
contemplation. Contemplation has two stages, active and passive, the
latter being the higher.[302] Meditation he also calls the "exterior
road"; it is good for beginners, he says, but can never lead to
perfection. The "interior road," the goal of which is union with God,
consists in complete resignation to the will of God, annihilation of
all self-will, and an unruffled tranquillity or passivity of soul,
until the mystical grace is supernaturally "infused." Then "we shall
sink and lose ourselves in the immeasurable sea of God's infinite
goodness, and rest there steadfast and immovable.[303]" He gives a
list of tokens by which we may know that we are called from meditation
to contemplation; and enumerates four means, which lead to perfection
and inward peace--prayer, obedience, frequent communions, and inner
mortification. The best kind of prayer is the prayer of silence;[304]
and there are three silences, that of words, that of desires, and that
of thought. In the last and highest the mind is a blank, and God alone
speaks to the soul.[305] With the curious passion for subdivision
which we find in nearly all Romish mystics, he distinguishes three
kinds of "infusa contemplazione"--(1) satiety, when the soul is filled
with God and conceives a hatred for all worldly things; (2) "un
mentale eccesso" or elevation of the soul, born of Divine love and its
satiety; (3) "security." In this state the soul would willingly even
go to hell, if it were God's will. "Happy is the state of that soul
which has slain and annihilated itself." It lives no longer in itself,
for God lives in it. "With all truth we may say that it is deified."

Molinos follows St. Juan of the Cross in disparaging visions, which
he says are often snares of the devil. And, like him, he says much of
the "horrible temptations and torments, worse than any which the
martyrs of the early Church underwent," which form part of "purgative
contemplation." He resembles the Spanish mystics also in his
insistence on outward observances, especially "daily communion, when
possible," but thinks frequent confession unnecessary, except for
beginners.

"The book was no sooner printed," says Bishop Burnet, "than it was
much read and highly esteemed, both in Italy and Spain. The
acquaintance of the author came to be much desired. Those who seemed
in the greatest credit at Rome seemed to value themselves upon his
friendship. Letters were writ to him from all places, so that a
correspondence was settled between him and those who approved of his
method, in many different places of Europe." "It grew so much to be
the vogue in Rome, that all the nuns, except those who had Jesuits to
their confessors, began to lay aside their rosaries and other
devotions, and to give themselves much to the practice of mental
prayer."

Molinos had written with the object of "breaking the fetters" which
hindered souls in their upward course. Unfortunately for himself, he
also loosened some of the fetters in which the Roman priesthood
desires to keep the laity[306]. And so, instead of the honours which
had been grudgingly and suspiciously bestowed on his predecessors,
Molinos ended his days in a dungeon[307]. His condemnation was
followed by a sharp persecution of his followers in Italy, who had
become very numerous; and, in France, Bossuet procured the
condemnation and imprisonment of Madame Guyon, a lady of high
character and abilities, who was the centre of a group of quietists.
Madame de Guyon need not detain us here. Her Mysticism is identical
with that of Saint Teresa, except that she was no visionary, and that
her character was softer and less masculine. Her attractive
personality, and the cruel and unjust treatment which she experienced
during the greater part of her life, arouse the sympathy of all who
read her story; but since my present object is not to exhibit a
portrait gallery of eminent mystics, but to investigate the chief
types of mystical thought, it will not be necessary for me to describe
her life or make extracts from her writings. The character of her
quietism may be illustrated by one example--the hymn on "The
Acquiescence of Pure Love," translated by Cowper:--

"Love! if Thy destined sacrifice am I,
Come, slay thy victim, and prepare Thy fires;
Plunged in Thy depths of mercy, let me die
The death which every soul that loves desires!

"I watch my hours, and see them fleet away;
The time is long that I have languished here;
Yet all my thoughts Thy purposes obey,
With no reluctance, cheerful and sincere.

"To me 'tis equal, whether Love ordain
My life or death, appoint me pain or ease
My soul perceives no real ill in pain;
In ease or health no real good she sees.

"One Good she covets, and that Good alone;
To choose Thy will, from selfish bias free
And to prefer a cottage to a throne,
And grief to comfort, if it pleases Thee.

"That we should bear the cross is Thy command
Die to the world, and live to self no more;
Suffer unmoved beneath the rudest hand,
As pleased when shipwrecked as when safe on shore."

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