Christian Mysticism Part 4

There is another feature in St. John's Gospel which shows his affinity to Mysticism, though of a different kind from that which we have been considering. I mean his fondness for using visible things and events as symbols. This objective kind of Mysticism will form the subject of my last two Lectures, and I will here only antic.i.p.ate so far as to say that the belief which underlies it is that "everything, in being what it is, is symbolic of something more." The Fourth Gospel is steeped in symbolism of this kind. The eight miracles which St. John selects are obviously chosen for their symbolic value; indeed, he seems to regard them mainly as acted parables. His favourite word for miracles is [Greek: semeia], "signs" or "symbols." It is true that he also calls them "works," but this is not to distinguish them as supernatural. All Christ's actions are "works," as parts of His one "work." As evidences of His Divinity, such "works" are inferior to His "words," being symbolic and external. Only those who cannot believe on the evidence of the words and their echo in the heart, may strengthen their weak faith by the miracles. But "blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed." And besides these "signs," we have, in place of the Synoptic parables, a wealth of allegories, in which Christ is symbolised as the Bread of Life, the Light of the World, the Door of the Sheep, the good Shepherd, the Way, and the true Vine. Wind and water are also made to play their part. Moreover, there is much un.o.btrusive symbolism in descriptive phrases, as when he says that Nicodemus came by night, that Judas went out into the night, and that blood and water flowed from our Lord's side; and the was.h.i.+ng of the disciples' feet was a symbolic act which the disciples were to understand hereafter. Thus all things in the world may remind us of Him who made them, and who is their sustaining life.

In treating of St. John, it was necessary to protest against the tendency of some commentators to interpret him simply as a speculative mystic of the Alexandrian type. But when we turn to St. Paul, we find reason to think that this side of his theology has been very much underestimated, and that the distinctive features of Mysticism are even more marked in him than in St. John. This is not surprising, for our blessed Lord's discourses, in which nearly all the doctrinal teaching of St. John is contained, are for all Christians; they rise above the oppositions which must always divide human thought and human thinkers. In St. Paul, large-minded as he was, and inspired as we believe him to be, we may be allowed to see an example of that particular type which we are considering.

St. Paul states in the clearest manner that Christ _appeared_ to him, and that this revelation was the foundation of his Christianity and apostolic commission. "Neither did I receive the Gospel from man,[71]"

he says, "nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ." It appears that he did not at first[72] think it necessary to "confer with flesh and blood"--to collect evidence about our Lord's ministry, His death and resurrection; he had "seen" and felt Him, and that was enough. "It was the good pleasure of G.o.d to reveal His Son in me,[73]" he says simply, using the favourite mystical phraseology. The study of "evidences," in the usual sense of the term in apologetics, he rejects with distrust and contempt.[74]

External revelation cannot make a man religious. It can put nothing new into him. If there is nothing answering to it in his mind, it will profit him nothing. Nor can philosophy make a man religious. "Man's wisdom," "the wisdom of the world," is of no avail to find spiritual truth. "G.o.d chose the foolish things of the world, to put to shame them that are wise." "The word of the Cross is, to them that are peris.h.i.+ng, foolishness." By this language he, of course, does not mean that Christianity is irrational, and therefore to be believed on authority. That would be to lay its foundation upon external evidences, and nothing could be further from the whole bent of his teaching. What he does mean, and say very clearly, is that the carnal mind is disqualified from understanding Divine truths; "it cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned." He who has not raised himself above "the world," that is, the interests and ideals of human society as it organises itself apart from G.o.d, and above "the flesh,"

that is, the things which seem desirable to the "average sensual man,"

does not possess in himself that element which can be a.s.similated by Divine grace. The "mystery" of the wisdom of G.o.d is necessarily hidden from him. St. Paul uses the word "mystery" in very much the same sense which St. Chrysostom[75] gives to it in the following careful definition: "A mystery is that which is everywhere proclaimed, but which is not understood by those who have not right judgment. It is revealed, not by cleverness, but by the Holy Ghost, as we are able to receive it. And so we may call a mystery a secret ([Greek: aporreton]), for even to the faithful it is not committed in all its fulness and clearness." In St. Paul the word is nearly always found in connexion with words denoting revelation or publication[76]. The preacher of the Gospel is a hierophant, but the Christian mysteries are freely communicated to all who can receive them. For many ages these truths were "hid in G.o.d,[77]" but now all men may be "illuminated,[78]" if they will fulfil the necessary conditions of initiation. These are to "cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit,[79]" and to have love, without which all else will be unavailing. But there are degrees of initiation. "We speak wisdom among the perfect," he says (the [Greek: teleioi] are the fully initiated); but the carnal must still be fed with milk. Growth in knowledge, growth in grace, and growth in love, are so frequently mentioned together, that we must understand the apostle to mean that they are almost inseparable. But this knowledge, grace, and love is itself the work of the indwelling G.o.d, who is thus in a sense the organ as well as the object of the spiritual life. "The Spirit searcheth all things," he says, "yea, the deep things of G.o.d." The man who has the Spirit dwelling in him "has the mind of Christ." "He that is spiritual judgeth all things," and is himself "judged of no man."

It is, we must admit frankly, a dangerous claim, and one which may easily be subversive of all discipline. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty"; but such liberty may become a cloak of maliciousness. The fact is that St. Paul had himself trusted in "the Law," and it had led him into grievous error. As usually happens in such cases, his recoil from it was almost violent. He exalts the inner light into an absolute criterion of right and wrong, that no corner of the moral life may remain in bondage to Pharisaism. The crucifixion of the Lord Jesus and the stoning of Stephen were a crus.h.i.+ng condemnation of legal and ceremonial righteousness; the law written in the heart of man, or rather spoken there by the living voice of the Holy Spirit, could never so mislead men as to make them think that they were doing G.o.d service by condemning and killing the just. Such memories might well lead St. Paul to use language capable of giving encouragement even to fanatical Anabaptists. But it is significant that the boldest claims on behalf of liberty all occur in the _earlier_ Epistles.

The subject of St. Paul's visions and revelations is one of great difficulty. In the Acts we have full accounts of the appearance in the sky which caused, or immediately preceded, his conversion. It is quite clear that St. Paul himself regarded this as an appearance of the same kind as the other Christophanies granted to apostles and "brethren,"

and of a different kind from such visions as might be seen by any Christian. It was an unique favour, conferring upon him the apostolic prerogatives of an eye-witness. Other pa.s.sages in the Acts show that during his missionary journeys St. Paul saw visions and heard voices, and that he believed himself to be guided by the "Spirit of Jesus."

Lastly, in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians he records that "more than fourteen years ago" he was in an ecstasy, in which he was "caught up into the third heaven," and saw things unutterable. The form in which this experience is narrated suggests a recollection of Rabbinical pseudo-science; the substance of the vision St. Paul will not reveal, nor will he claim its authority for any of his teaching.[80] These recorded experiences are of great psychological interest; but, as I said in my last Lecture, they do not seem to me to belong to the essence of Mysticism.

Another mystical idea, which is never absent from the mind of St.

Paul, is that the individual Christian must live through, and experience personally, the redemptive process of Christ. The life, death, and resurrection of Christ were for him the revelation of a law, the law of redemption through suffering. The victory over sin and death was won _for_ us; but it must also be won _in_ us. The process is an universal law, not a mere event in the past.[81] It has been exemplified in history, which is a progressive unfurling or revelation of a great mystery, the meaning of which is now at last made plain in Christ.[82] And it must also appear in each human life. "We were buried with Him," says St. Paul to the Romans,[83] "through baptism into death," "that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life." And again,[84] "If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in you." And, "If ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above.[85]"

The law of redemption, which St. Paul considers to have been triumphantly summed up by the death and resurrection of Christ,[86]

would hardly be proved to be an universal law if the Pauline Christ were only the "heavenly man," as some critics have a.s.serted. St.

Paul's teaching about the Person of Christ was really almost identical with the Logos doctrine as we find it in St. John's prologue, and as it was developed by the mystical philosophy of a later period. Not only is His pre-existence "in the form of G.o.d" clearly taught,[87] but He is the agent in the creation of the universe, the vital principle upholding and pervading all that exists. "The Son," we read in the Epistle to the Colossians,[88] "is the image of the invisible G.o.d, the firstborn of all creation; for in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth; all things have been created through Him, and unto Him; and He is before all things, and in Him all things consist" (that is, "hold together," as the margin of the Revised Version explains it). "All things are summed up in Christ," he says to the Ephesians.[89] "Christ is _all_ and in all," we read again in the Colossians.[90] And in that bold and difficult pa.s.sage of the 15th chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians he speaks of the "reign" of Christ as coextensive with the world's history. When time shall end, and all evil shall be subdued to good, Christ "will deliver up the kingdom to G.o.d, even the Father," "that G.o.d may be all in all.[91]" Very important, too, is the verse in which he says that the Israelites in the wilderness "drank of that spiritual rock which followed them, and that rock was Christ.[92]" It reminds us of Clement's language about the Son as the Light which broods over all history.

The pa.s.sage from the Colossians, which I quoted just now, contains another mystical idea besides that of Christ as the universal source and centre of life. He is, we are told, "the Image of the invisible G.o.d," and all created beings are, in their several capacities, images of Him. Man is essentially "the image and glory of G.o.d";[93] the "perfect man" is he who has come "to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.[94]" This is our _nature_, in the Aristotelian sense of completed normal development; but to reach it we have to slay the false self, the old man, which is informed by an actively maleficent agency, "flesh" which is hostile to "spirit." This latter conception does not at present concern us; what we have to notice is the description of the upward path as an inner transit from the false isolation of the natural man into a state in which it is possible to say, "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.[95]" In the Epistle to the Galatians he uses the favourite mystical phrase, "until Christ be formed in you";[96] and in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians[97] he employs a most beautiful expression in describing the process, reverting to the figure of the "mirror," dear to Mysticism, which he had already used in the First Epistle: "We all with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory." Other pa.s.sages, which refer primarily to the future state, are valuable as showing that St. Paul lends no countenance to that abstract idea of eternal life as freedom from all earthly conditions, which has misled so many mystics. Our hope, when the earthly house of our tabernacle is dissolved, is not that we may be unclothed, but that we may be _clothed upon_ with our heavenly habitation. The body of our humiliation is to be changed and glorified, according to the mighty working whereby G.o.d is able to subdue all things unto Himself. And therefore our whole spirit and soul _and body_ must be preserved blameless; for the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, not the prison-house of a soul which will one day escape out of its cage and fly away.

St. Paul's conception of Christ as the Life as well as the Light of the world has two consequences besides those which have been already mentioned. In the first place, it is fatal to religious individualism.

The close unity which joins us to Christ is not so much a unity of the individual soul with the heavenly Christ, as an organic unity of all men, or, since many refuse their privileges, of all Christians, with their Lord. "We, being many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.[98]" There must be "no schism in the body,[99]" but each member must perform its allotted function. St.

Augustine is thoroughly in agreement with St. Paul when he speaks of Christ and the Church as "unus Christus." Not that Christ is "divided," so that He cannot be fully present to any individual--that is an error which St. Paul, St. Augustine, and the later mystics all condemn; but as the individual cannot reach his real personality as an isolated unit, he cannot, as an isolated unit, attain to full communion with Christ.

The second point is one which may seem to be of subordinate importance, but it will, I think, awaken more interest in the future than it has done in the past. In the 8th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul clearly teaches that the victory of Christ over sin and death is of import, not only to humanity, but to the whole of creation, which now groans and travails in pain together, but which shall one day be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of G.o.d. This recognition of the spirituality of matter, and of the unity of all nature in Christ, is one which we ought to be thankful to find in the New Testament. It will be my pleasant task, in the last two Lectures of this course, to show how the later school of mystics prized it.

The foregoing a.n.a.lysis of St. Paul's teaching has, I hope, justified the statement that all the essentials of Mysticism are to be found in his Epistles. But there are also two points in which his authority has been claimed for false and mischievous developments of Mysticism.

These two points it will be well to consider before leaving the subject.

The first is a contempt for the historical framework of Christianity.

We have already seen how strongly St. John warns us against this perversion of spiritual religion. But those numerous sects and individual thinkers who have disregarded this warning, have often appealed to the authority of St. Paul, who in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians says, "Even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more." Here, they say, is a distinct admission that the wors.h.i.+p of the historical Christ, "the man Christ Jesus," is a stage to be pa.s.sed through and then left behind. There is just this substratum of truth in a very mischievous error, that St.

Paul _does_ tell us[100] that he _began_ to teach the Corinthians by giving them in the simplest possible form the story of "Jesus Christ and Him crucified." The "mysteries" of the faith, the "wisdom" which only the "perfect" can understand, were deferred till the converts had learned their first lessons. But if we look at the pa.s.sage in question, which has shocked and perplexed many good Christians, we shall find that St. Paul is not drawing a contrast between the earthly and the heavenly Christ, bidding us wors.h.i.+p the Second Person of the Trinity, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, and to cease to contemplate the Cross on Calvary. He is distinguis.h.i.+ng rather between the sensuous presentation of the facts of Christ's life, and a deeper realisation of their import. It should be our aim to "know no man after the flesh"; that is to say, we should try to think of human beings as what they are, immortal spirits, sharers with us of a common life and a common hope, not as what they appear to our eyes. And the same principle applies to our thoughts about Christ. To know Christ after the flesh is to know Him, not as man, but as _a_ man. St. Paul in this verse condemns all religious materialism, whether it take the form of hysterical meditation upon the physical details of the pa.s.sion, or of an over-curious interest in the manner of the resurrection. There is no trace whatever in St. Paul of any aspiration to rise above Christ to the contemplation of the Absolute--to treat Him as only a step in the ladder. This is an error of false Mysticism; the true mystic follows St. Paul in choosing as his ultimate goal the fulness of Christ, and not the emptiness of the undifferentiated G.o.dhead.

The second point in which St. Paul has been supposed to sanction an exaggerated form of Mysticism, is his extreme disparagement of external religion--of forms and ceremonies and holy days and the like.

"One man hath faith to eat all things; but he that is weak eateth herbs.[101]" "One man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day alike." "He that eateth, eateth unto the Lord, and giveth G.o.d thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth G.o.d thanks." "Why turn ye back to the weak and beggarly rudiments, whereunto ye desire to be in bondage again? Ye observe days, and months, and seasons, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed labour upon you in vain.[102]" "Why do ye subject yourselves to ordinances, handle not, nor taste, nor touch, after the precepts and doctrines of men?[103]" These are strongly-worded pa.s.sages, and I have no wish to attenuate their significance. Any Christian priest who puts the observance of human ordinances-- fast-days, for example--at all on the same level as such duties as charity, generosity, or purity, is teaching, not Christianity, but that debased Judaism against which St. Paul waged an unceasing polemic, and which is one of those dead religions which has to be killed again in almost every generation.[104] But we must not forget that these vigorous denunciations _do_ occur in a polemic against Judaism. They bear the stamp of the time at which they were written perhaps more than any other part of St. Paul's Epistles, except those thoughts which were connected with his belief in the approaching end of the world. St. Paul certainly did not intend his Christian converts to be anarchists in religious matters. There is evidence, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, that his spiritual presentation of Christianity had already been made an excuse for disorderly licence. The usual symptoms of degenerate Mysticism had appeared at Corinth. There were men there who called themselves "spiritual persons[105]" or prophets, and showed an arrogant independence; there were others who wished to start sects of their own; others who carried antinomianism into the sphere of morals; others who prided themselves on various "spiritual gifts." As regards the last cla.s.s, we are rather surprised at the half-sanction which the apostle gives to what reads like primitive Irvingism;[106] but he was evidently prepared to enforce discipline with a strong hand. Still, it may be fairly said that he trusts mainly to his personal ascendancy, and to his teaching about the organic unity of the Christian body, to preserve or restore due discipline and cohesion. There have been hardly any religious leaders, if we except George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, who have valued ceremonies so little. In this, again, he is a genuine mystic.

Of the other books of the New Testament it is not necessary to say much. The Epistle to the Hebrews cannot be the work of St. Paul. It shows strong traces of Jewish Alexandrianism; indeed, the writer seems to have been well acquainted with the Book of Wisdom and with Philo. Alexandrian idealism is always ready to pa.s.s into speculative Mysticism, but the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews can hardly be called mystical in the sense in which St. Paul was a mystic. The most interesting side of his theology, from our present point of view, is the way in which he combines his view of religious ordinances as types and adumbrations of higher spiritual truths, with a comprehensive view of history as a progressive realisation of a Divine scheme. The keynote of the book is that mankind has been educated partly by ceremonial laws and partly by "promises." Systems of laws and ordinances, of which the Jewish Law is the chief example, have their place in history. They rightly claim obedience until the practical lessons which they can teach have been learned, and until the higher truths which they conceal under the protecting husk of symbolism can be apprehended without disguise. Then their task is done, and mankind is no longer bound by them. In the same way, the "promises" which were made under the old dispensation proved to be only symbols of deeper and more spiritual blessings, which in the moral childhood of humanity would not have appeared desirable; they were (not delusions, but) _illusions_, "G.o.d having prepared some better thing" to take their place. The doctrine is one of profound and far-reaching importance. In this Epistle it is certainly connected with the idealistic thought that all visible things are symbols, and that every truth apprehended by finite intelligences must be only the husk of a deeper truth. We may therefore claim the Epistle to the Hebrews as containing in outline a Christian philosophy of history, based upon a doctrine of symbols which has much in common with some later developments of Mysticism.

In the Apocalypse, whoever the author may be, we find little or nothing of the characteristic Johannine Mysticism, and the influence of its vivid allegorical pictures has been less potent in this branch of theology than might perhaps have been expected.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 56: In referring thus to the Book of Job, I rest nothing on any theory as to its date. Whenever it was written, it ill.u.s.trates that view of the relation of man to G.o.d with which Mysticism can never be content. But, of course, the antagonism between our personal claims and the laws of the universe must be done justice to before it can be surmounted.]

[Footnote 57: Jer. x.x.xi. 31-34.]

[Footnote 58: Isa. x.x.xiii. 14-17.]

[Footnote 59: See Appendix D, on the devotional use of the Song of Solomon.]

[Footnote 60: Leathes, _The Witness of St. John to Christ_, p. 244.]

[Footnote 61: The punctuation now generally adopted was invented (probably) by the Antiochenes, who were afraid that the words "without Him was not anything made" might, if unqualified, be taken to include the Holy Spirit. Cyril of Alexandria comments on the older punctuation, but explains the verse wrongly. "The Word, as Life by nature, was in the things which have become, mingling Himself by partic.i.p.ation in the things that are." Bp. Westcott objects to this, that "the one life is regarded as dispersed." Cyril, however, guards against this misconception ([Greek: ou kata merismon tina kai alloiosin]). He says that created things share in "the one life as they are able." But some of his expressions are objectionable, as they seem to a.s.sume a material substratum, animated _ab extra_ by an infusion of the Logos. Augustine's commentary on the verse is based on the well-known pa.s.sage of Plato's _Republic_ about the "ideal bed." "Arca in opere non est vita; arca in arte vita est. Sic Sapientia Dei, per quam facta sunt omnia, secundum artem continet omnia antequam fabricat omnia. Quae fiunt ... foris corpora sunt, in arte vita sunt." Those who accept the common authors.h.i.+p of the Gospel and the Apocalypse will find a confirmation of the view that [Greek: en] refers to ideal, extra-temporal existence, in Rev. iv. 11: "Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they _were_ ([Greek: esan] is the true reading) and were created." There is also a very interesting pa.s.sage in Eusebius (_Proep. Ev._ xi. 19): [Greek: kai outos ara en ho logos kath' hon aei onta ta gignomena egeneto, hosper Herakleitos an axioseie.] This is so near to the words of St. John's prologue as to suggest that the apostle, writing at Ephesus, is here referring deliberately to the lofty doctrine of the great Ephesian idealist, whom Justin claims as a Christian before Christ, and whom Clement quotes several times with respect.]

[Footnote 62: It will be seen that I a.s.sume that the first Epistle is the work of the evangelist.]

[Footnote 63: Westcott on John xiv. 26.]

[Footnote 64: Westcott.]

[Footnote 65: Cf. _Theologia Germanica_, chap. 48: "He who would know before he believeth cometh never to true knowledge.... I speak of a certain truth which it is possible to know by experience, but which ye must believe in before ye know it by experience, else ye will never come to know it truly."]

[Footnote 66: On the second coming of Christ, cf. John v. 25, xxi. 23; I John ii. 28, iii. 2. Scholten goes so far as to expunge v. 25 and 28, 29 as spurious.]

[Footnote 67: The allegation that the Christian persuades himself of a future life because it is the most comfortable belief to hold, seems to me utterly contemptible. Certain views about heaven and h.e.l.l are no doubt traceable to shallow optimism; but the belief in immortality is in itself rather awful than consoling. Besides, what sane man would wish to be deceived in such a matter?]

[Footnote 68: Henry More brings this charge against the Quakers. There are, he says, many good and wholesome things in their teaching, but they mingle with them a "slighting of the history of Christ, and making a mere allegory of it--tending to the utter overthrow of that warrantable, though more external frame of Christianity, which Scripture itself points out to us" (_Mastix, his letter to a Friend_, p. 306).]

[Footnote 69: E.g. Strauss and Grau, quoted in Lilienfeld's _Thoughts on the Social Science of the Future_.]

[Footnote 70: The intense moral dualism of St. John has been felt by many as a discordant note; and though it is not closely connected with his Mysticism, a few words should perhaps be added about it. It has been thought strange that the Logos, who is the life of all things that are, should have to invade His own kingdom to rescue it from its _de facto_ ruler, the Prince of darkness; and stranger yet, that the bulk of mankind should seemingly be "children of the devil," born of the flesh, and incapable of salvation. The difficulty exists, but it has been exaggerated. St. John does not touch either the metaphysical problem of the origin of evil, or predestination in the Calvinistic sense. The vivid contrasts of light and shade in his picture express his judgment on the tragic fate of the Jewish people, The Gospel is not a polemical treatise, but it bears traces of recent conflicts. St.

John wishes to show that the rejection of Christ by the Jews was morally inevitable; that their blindness and their ruin followed naturally from their characters and principles. Looking back on the memories of a long life, he desires to trace the operation of uniform laws in dividing the wheat of humanity from the chaff. He is content to observe how [Greek: ethos anthropo daimon], without speculating on the reason why characters differ. In offering these remarks, I am a.s.suming, what seems to me quite certain, that St. John selected from our Lord's discourses those which suited his particular object, and that in the setting and arrangement he allowed himself a certain amount of liberty.]

[Footnote 71: Gal. i. 12.]

[Footnote 72: 1 Cor. xv. shows that he subsequently satisfied himself of the truth of the other Christophanies.]

[Footnote 73: Gal, i. 15, 16.]

[Footnote 74: 1 Cor. i. and ii.]

[Footnote 75: Chrysostom _in_ I _Cor_., Hom. vii. 2.]

[Footnote 76: See Lightfoot on Col. i. 26.]

[Footnote 77: Eph. iii. 9.]

[Footnote 78: 2 Tim. i. 10 ([Greek: photizein]); cf. Eph. i. 9.]

[Footnote 79: 2 Cor. vii. 1.]

[Footnote 80: In spite of this, he is attacked for this pa.s.sage in the _Pseudo-Clementine Homilies_ (xvii. 19), where "Simon Magus" is asked, "Can anyone be made wise to teach through a vision?"]

[Footnote 81: Compare a beautiful pa.s.sage in R.L. Nettles.h.i.+p's _Remains_: "To live is to die into something more perfect.... G.o.d can only make His work to be truly _His_ work, by eternally dying, sacrificing what is dearest to Him."]

[Footnote 82: Col. i. 26, ii. 2, iv. 3; Eph. iii. 2-9. I have allowed myself to quote from these Epistles because I am myself a believer in their genuineness. The Mysticism of St. Paul might be proved from the undisputed Epistles only, but we should then lose some of the most striking ill.u.s.trations of it.]