exts have now been cleared away, so that we can
at last read our Bible as its authors intended it to be read.[345]

Theosophical and magical Mysticism culminated in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Just as the idealism of Plotinus lost itself in
the theurgic system of Iamblichus, so the doctrine of Divine immanence
preached by Eckhart and his school was followed by the Nature-Mysticism
of Cornelius Agrippa[346] and Paracelsus.[347] The "negative road" had
been discredited by Luther's invective, and Mysticism, instead of
shutting her eyes to the world of phenomena, stretched forth her hands
to conquer and annex it. The old theory of a World-Spirit, the
pulsations of whose heart are felt in all the life of the universe, came
once more into favour. Through all phenomena, it was believed, runs an
intricate network of sympathies and antipathies, the threads of which,
could they be disentangled, would furnish us with a clue through all the
labyrinths of natural and supernatural science. The age was impatient to
enter on the inheritance from which humanity had long been debarred; the
methods of experimental science seemed tame and slow; and so we find,
especially in Germany, an extraordinary outburst of Nature-Mysticism--
astrology, white magic, alchemy, necromancy, and what not--such as
Christianity had not witnessed before. These pseudo-sciences (with which
was mingled much real progress in medicine, natural history, and kindred
sciences) were divided under three provinces or "vincula"--those of the
Spiritual World, which were mainly magical invocations, diagrams, and
signs; those of the Celestial World, which were taught by astrology; and
those of the Elemental World, which consisted in the sympathetic
influence of material objects upon each other. These secrets (it was
held) are all discoverable by man; for man is a microcosm, or epitome of
the universe, and there is nothing in it with which he cannot claim an
affinity. In knowing himself, he knows both God and all the other works
that God has made.

The subject of Nature-Mysticism is a fascinating one; but I must here
confine myself to its religious aspects. An attempt was soon made, by
Valentine Weigel (1533-1588), Lutheran pastor at Tschopau, to bring
together the new objective Mysticism--freed from its superstitious
elements--and the traditional subjective Mysticism which the Middle
Ages had handed down from Dionysius and the Neoplatonists. Weigel's
cosmology