MEDIAEVAL MYSTICISM.

IN the preceding pages we have discussed. the sense of the Infinite as it has shown itself in nature, Romantic love, and in that form of philosophy known as Neo-Platonism, the influence of which we have endeavored to trace down to the present. The true field of the transcendental sense, however, is religion; and nowhere has it produced fairer fruit, together with much extravagance, as in Christianity.

There have been various definitions of religion; to Kant it is only the function which strengthens the will as a power to will the good; to Schleiermacher it is a "consciousness of dependence on something which though it determines us, we cannot determine in our turn;" to Sabatier it is a commerce, a con

scious and willed relation into which the soul in distress at the conflict between the consciousness of the ego and the experience of the world, enters with the mysterious power, on which it feels that it and its destiny depend; while Max Müller defines it “as a mental faculty, which independent of, nay, in spite of sense and reason, enables man to apprehend the Infinite under different names and under varying disguises. Without that faculty, no religion would be possible; and if we will but listen attentively, we can hear in all religions a groaning of the spirit, a struggle to conceive the inconceivable, to utter the unutterable, a longing after the Infinite, a love of God."

This latter definition might perhaps be thought to go too far in making religion identical with the sense of the Infinite; for it leaves out a very large part of what goes to make up all religions, forms and ceremonies, complicated systems of theology, codes of morals, and rules of conduct. Yet these are all external, and do not touch the deeper

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nature of man. For after all the fundamental essence of religion is the personal experience of a soul that feels and knows that God communes with him, that there is a spiritual world, and that from this spiritual world, there flows into the soul the divine love and power.

In all times it is the transcendental element which gives to religion its reality. However it may be crowded back by form and lifeless orthodoxy, it ever returns; and as we study the history of the past, we find periods in which formalism has been predominant inevitably followed by those in which the spirit pervades all minds. Revivals, as they are called, are only the claims of the transcendental sense for recognition in the religious life. Whether in the saints of the Middle Ages, in Pietist of the seventeenth century, in Quaker and Methodist of our own times, the essential feature of all emotional or personal religion is a realizing sense of the Infinite.

Of course it is not the place here to discuss, even in barest outline, the development of Christian dogma and ecclesiastical forms.

Our object is only to cast a glance at the way in which the transcendental sense expressed itself throughout the Christian world during the Middle Ages. In the first place the great Founder of our holy religion was Himself filled through and through with the sense of the Infinite; though "his eye rested kindly on the whole world and he saw it as it was, in all its varied and changing colors, yet his gaze penetrated the veil of the earthly and he recognized everywhere the hand of the living God."

The sense of the presence of the Father was with him constantly, and only once did he doubt, in the last bitter hour on the cross, when for a moment the agony of pain closed in about him, and he cried: "My God, my God! Why has thou forsaken me?"

Just as the highest message of art is through the transcendental sense, just as the contemplation of nature led Wordsworth to mystical experiences, just as the "high seriousness" of all lofty poetry lies in the suggestion of the Eternal and Infinite, so the deepest religious experiences of humanity are based on the

same elements.

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And in this aspect of religion it has never advanced beyond the teaching of the founder of Christianity,—the teaching that is of "the kingdom of God and its coming; God the father and the infinite value of the human soul; the higher righteousness and the commandment of love. message is so great and powerful because so simple and yet so rich; so simple as to be exhausted in each of the leading thoughts he uttered; so rich that every one of these thoughts seems inexhaustible and the full meaning of the sayings and parables beyond our reach. His words speak to us across the ages with the freshness of the present. The kingdom of God comes by coming to the individual, by entering into his soul and laying hold of it. It is the rule of the holy God in the heart of the individual; it is God himself in his power. This is seen in all Jesus' parables. It is not a question of angels and devils, thrones and principalities, but of God and the soul, the soul and its God."

In this excellent summary of the essential