jour,
Si, pour voler en un plus clair sejour,
Tu as au dos l'aile bien empennee!
La est le bien que tout esprit desire,
La, le repos ou tout le monde aspire,
La est l'amour, la le plaisir encore!
La, o mon ame, au plus haut ciel guidee,
Tu y pourras reconnaitre l'idee
De la beaute qu'en ce monde j'adore!"

OLD POET.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MYSTICISM

"Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest
what we shall be. We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be
like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is."--I JOHN iii. 2, 3.

No word in our language--not even "Socialism"--has been employed more
loosely than "Mysticism." Sometimes it is used as an equivalent for
symbolism or allegorism, sometimes for theosophy or occult science;
and sometimes it merely suggests the mental state of a dreamer, or
vague and fantastic opinions about God and the world. In Roman
Catholic writers, "mystical phenomena" mean supernatural suspensions
of physical law. Even those writers who have made a special study of
the subject, show by their definitions of the word how uncertain is
its connotation.[2] It is therefore necessary that I should make clear
at the outset what I understand by the term, and what aspects of
religious life and thought I intend to deal with in these Lectures.

The history of the _word_ begins in close connexion with the Greek
mysteries.[3] A mystic [Greek: mystes] is one who has been, or is
being, initiated into some esoteric knowledge of Divine things, about
which he must keep his mouth shut ([Greek: myein]); or, possibly, he is
one whose _eyes_ are still shut, one who is not yet an [Greek:
epoptes].[4] The word was taken over, with other technical terms of
the mysteries, by the Neoplatonists, who found in the existing
mysteriosophy a discipline, worship, and rule of life congenial to
their speculative views. But as the tendency towards quietism and
introspection increased among them, another derivation for "Mysticism"
was found--it was explained to mean deliberately shutting the eyes to
all external things.[5] We shall see in the sequel how this later
Neoplatonism passed almost entire into Christianity, and, while
forming the basis of mediaeval Mysticism, caused a false association to
cling to the word even down to the Reformation.[6]

The phase of thought or feeling which we call Mysticism has its
origin in that which is the raw material of all r