kingdom of that final kiss
That seized thy parting soul and seal'd thee His;
By all the heavens thou hast in Him,
Fair sister of the seraphim!
By all of Him we have in Thee,
Leave nothing of myself in me:
Let me so read thy life, that I
Unto all life of mine may die."

CRASHAW, _On St. Teresa_.

"In a dark night,
Burning with ecstasies wherein I fell,
Oh happy plight,
Unheard I left the house wherein I dwell,
The inmates sleeping peacefully and well.

"Secure from sight;
By unknown ways, in unknown robes concealed,
Oh happy plight;
And to no eye revealed,
My home in sleep as in the tomb was sealed.

"Sweet night, in whose blessed fold
No human eye beheld me, and mine eye
None could behold.
Only for Guide had I
His Face whom I desired so ardently."

ST. JUAN OF THE CROSS (translated by Hutchings).

PRACTICAL AND DEVOTIONAL MYSTICISM--_continued_

"Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I
desire beside Thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the
strength of my heart, and my portion for ever."--Ps. lxxiii. 25, 26.

We have seen that the leaders of the Reformation in Germany thrust
aside speculative Mysticism with impatience. Nor did Christian
Platonism fare much better in the Latin countries. There were students
of Plotinus in Italy in the sixteenth century, who fancied that a
revival of humane letters, and a better acquaintance with philosophy,
were the best means of combating the barbaric enthusiasms of the
North. But these Italian Neoplatonists had, for the most part, no deep
religious feelings, and they did not exhibit in their lives that
severity which the Alexandrian philosophers had practised. And so,
when Rome had need of a Catholic mystical revival to stem the tide of
Protestantism, she could not find what she required among the scholars
and philosophers of the Papal court. The Mysticism of the
counter-Reformation had its centre in Spain.

It has been said that "Mysticism is the philosophy of Spain.[284]"
This does not mean that idealistic philosophy flourished in the
Peninsula, for the Spanish race has never shown any taste for
metaphysics. The Mysticism of Spain is psychological; its point of
departure is not the notion of Being or of Unity, but the human soul
seeking reconcilation with God. We need not be on our guard against
p