says that those whom Judas led to seize Jesus did not know who He was,
for the darkness of their own souls was projected on His features.[38]
And Dante, in a very beautiful passage, says that he felt that he was
rising into a higher circle, because he saw Beatrice's face becoming
more beautiful.[39]

This view of reality, as a vista which is opened gradually to the
eyes of the climber up the holy mount, is very near to the heart of
Mysticism. It rests on the faith that the ideal not only ought to be,
but _is_ the real. It has been applied by some, notably by that
earnest but fantastic thinker, James Hinton, as offering a solution of
the problem of evil. We shall encounter attempts to deal with this
great difficulty in several of the Christian mystics. The problem
among the speculative writers was how to reconcile the Absolute of
philosophy, who is above all distinctions,[40] with the God of
religion, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. They could not
allow that evil has a substantial existence apart from God, for fear
of being entangled in an insoluble Dualism. But if evil is derived
from God, how can God be good? We shall find that the prevailing view
was that "Evil has no substance." "There is nothing," says Gregory of
Nyssa, "which falls outside of the Divine nature, except moral evil
alone. And this, we may say paradoxically, has its being in not-being.
For the genesis of moral evil is simply the privation of being.[41]
That which, properly speaking, exists, is the nature of the good." The
Divine nature, in other words, is that which excludes nothing, and
contradicts nothing, except those attributes which are contrary to the
nature of reality; it is that which harmonises everything except
discord, which loves everything except hatred, verifies everything
except falsehood, and beautifies everything except ugliness. Thus that
which falls outside the notion of God, proves on examination to be
not merely unreal, but unreality as such. But the relation of evil to
the Absolute is not a religious problem. To our experience, evil
exists as a positive force not subject to the law of God, though
constantly overruled and made an instrument of good. On this subject
we must say more later. Here I need only add that a sunny confidence
in the ultimate triumph of good shines from the writings of most of
the mystics, especially, I think, in our own countrymen. The Cambridge
Platonists are all optimistic; and in the beaut