mystics of the fourteenth century. In a passage of the "Supersensual Life," which recalls Plato's famous myth of the charioteer and the white and black horses, he says: “Know then that there are in thy soul two wills, an inferior will which is for drawing thee to things without and below; and a superior will which is for drawing thee to things within and above." To these two wills correspond the two eyes, and they must all be brought into harmony, just as the eyes of the natural man move in harmony with the will.

We still find an echo of the via negativa in Boehme, where the Master tells the Disciple:

Where the way is hardest there go thou; and what the world casteth away, that take thou up. What the world doth, that do thou not; but in all things walk thou contrary to the world. So thou comest the nearest way to that which thou art seeking!

Yet the influence of Luther was strong on Boehme, and he could not agree with the mediæval mystics that true religion consists in fleeing from the world. "For while thou

art in the world," he says, "and hast an honest employment, thou art certainly by the order of Providence obliged to labor in it, and to finish the work given thee, according to thy best ability, without repining in the least; seeking out and manifesting for God's glory, the wonders of nature and art."

Centuries before this Plotinus had said in his repudiation of the Gnostics, that the world though imperfect and far inferior to the intelligible world, yet is beautiful because it is the work of God. So Boehme says, "Let nature be what it will, it is all the work and art of God. And let the art be what it will, it is still God's work and art, rather than any other art or cunning of man. And all, both in art and nature serve but abundantly to manifest the wonderful works of God, that he for all and in all may be glorified. Yea, all serveth, if thou knowest rightly how to use them, only to recollect thee more inwards, and to draw thy spirit into that majestic light, wherein the original patterns and forms of things visible are to be seen. Keep therefore in the cen

tre, and stir not from the presence of God, revealed in the soul; let the world and the devil make never so great a noise and bustle to draw thee out, mind them not; they cannot hurt thee. Let the hands or the head be at labor, thy heart ought nevertheless to rest in God."

Finally Boehme strikes the note of modern religious transcendentalism, in making Christ the medium of the personal communion of the soul with God; for it is only by entering fully into the will of our Savior Jesus Christ, and therein bringing the eye of time into the eye of eternity; and then descending, by means of these united, through the light of God into the light of nature, that men can arrive at the unity of vision or uniformity of will.

CHAPTER IX.

THE PIETISTIC MOVEMENT AND ITS

INFLUENCE.

THE religious transcendental sense in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though not without witnesses in other lands, was especially prominent in Germany. It was a reaction against conventional religion and cold orthodoxy, whether in Protestant or Catholic countries; in the former against the letter of the law, in the latter against the influence of the Jesuits. In Spain, especially, it was one of the results of the Council of Trent and the Counter Reformation. Here it found extraordinary expression in the persons of Saint Therese and St. John of the Cross. Both of these highly influential reformers are completely at one, in many respects, with the mediæval saints and mystics who lived before the

Reformation; and we find repeated, especially in the life of Ste. Therese, all the striking phenomena we have already discussed.

One of the most interesting figures in this Quietistic movement was Miguel de Molinos, who though a Spaniard by birth, lived much of his life in Italy, where he won high favor at first, living at the Vatican in intimate relations with the Pope; but afterwards, being persecuted by the Jesuits, was cast into prison, where he died, his only crime being that he believed in and preached a genuine heart religion. His "Guida Spirituale," published in 1675, had a prodigious influence over all Europe.

The most famous of all these Quietists, however, was Madame Guyon, who, after a youth of wretchedness, especially after her unfortunate early marriage, sought comfort and help from a Franciscan Friar, who said to her:

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Madame, you are disappointed and perplexed because you seek without what you have within. Accustom yourself to seek God in your heart, and you will find Him." We have no time here to discuss her life after this, the