as Aquinas that "to love God _secundum se_ is more meritorious
than to love our neighbour.[315]" All this is not of the essence of
Mysticism, but belongs to mediaeval Catholicism. It was probably a
necessary stage through which Christianity, and Mysticism with it, had
to pass. The vain quest of an abstract spirituality at any rate
liberated the religious life from many base associations; the
"negative road" is after all the holy path of self-sacrifice; and the
maltreatment of the body, which began among the hermits of the
Thebaid, was largely based on an instinctive recoil against the poison
of sensuality, which had helped to destroy the old civilisation. But
the resuscitation of mediaeval Mysticism after the Renaissance was an
anachronism; and except in the fighting days of the sixteenth century,
it was not likely to appeal to the manliest or most intelligent
spirits. The world-ruling papal polity, with its incomparable army of
officials, bound to poverty and celibacy, and therefore invulnerable,
was a _reductio ad absurdum_ of its world-renouncing doctrines, which
Europe was not likely to forget. Introspective Mysticism had done its
work--a work of great service to the human race. It had explored all
the recesses of the lonely heart, and had wrestled with the angel of
God through the terrors of the spiritual night even till the morning.
"Tell me now Thy name" ... "I will not let Thee go until Thou bless
me." These had been the two demands of the contemplative mystic--the
only rewards which his soul craved in return for the sacrifice of
every earthly delight. The reward was worth the sacrifice; but "God
reveals Himself in many ways," and the spiritual Christianity of the
modern epoch is called rather to the consecration of art, science, and
social life than to lonely contemplation. In my last two Lectures I
hope to show how an important school of mystics, chiefly between the
Renaissance and our own day, have turned to the religious study of
nature, and have found there the same illumination which the mediaeval
ascetics drew from the deep wells of their inner consciousness.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 284: Rousselot, _Les Mystiques Espagnols_, p. 3.]

[Footnote 285: Among the latter must be mentioned the growth of
Scotist Nominalism, on which see a note on p. 187. Ritschl was the
first to point out how strongly Nominalism influenced the later
Mysticism, by giving it its quietistic character. See Harnack,
_History of Dogma