they are all glorious within. They are truly sons of thunder, and sons
of consolation; they break open the whited sepulchres; they awaken the
heart, and show it its filth and rottenness of death: but they leave
it not till the kingdom of heaven is raised up within it. If a man has
no desire but to be of the spirit of the gospel, to obtain all that
renovation of life and spirit which alone can make him to be in Christ
a new creature, it is a great unhappiness to him to be unacquainted
with these writers, or to pass a day without reading something of what
they wrote."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: It is really time that we took to burning that travesty
of the British character--the John Bull whom our comic papers
represent "guarding his pudding"--instead of Guy Fawkes. Even in the
nineteenth century, amid all the sordid materialism bred of commercial
ascendancy, this country has produced a richer crop of imaginative
literature than any other; and it is significant that, while in
Germany philosophy is falling more and more into the hands of the
empirical school, our own thinkers are nearly all staunch idealists.]

CONTENTS

LECTURE

I. General Characteristics of Mysticism

II. The Mystical Element in the Bible

III. Christian Platonism and Speculative Mysticism--(1) In the East

IV. Christian Platonism and Speculative Mysticism--(2) In the West

V. Practical and Devotional Mysticism

VI. Practical and Devotional Mysticism--_continued_

VII. Nature-Mysticism and Symbolism

VIII. Nature-Mysticism--_continued_

APPENDIX A. Definitions of "Mysticism" and "Mystical Theology"

APPENDIX B. The Greek Mysteries and Christian Mysticism

APPENDIX C. The Doctrine of Deification

APPENDIX D. The Mystical Interpretation of the Song of Solomon

INDEX

LECTURE I

[Greek: "Hemin de apodeikteon hos ep' eutuchia te megiste para Theon
he toiaute mania didotai he de de apodeixis estai deinois men
apistos, sophois de piste"]

PLATO, _Phaedrus_, p. 245.

"_Thoas_. Es spricht kein Gott; es spricht dein eignes Herz.
_Iphigenia_. Sie reden nur durch unser Herz zu uns."

GOETHE, _Iphigenie_.

"Si notre vie est moins qu'une journee
En l'eternel; si l'an qui fait le tour
Chasse nos jours sans espoir de retour;
Si perissable est toute chose nee;
Que songes-tu, mon ame emprisonnee?
Pourquoi te plait l'obscur de notre