ike subterranean
waters. There, under the surging heat of innate instincts, a living
spring has burst forth, growing and bubbling in the obscurity; let a
shock or a fissure intervene and it suddenly sprouts up and forces its
way above the surface; the man who has this within him and in whom it
overflows is amazed at the inundation and no longer recognizes himself;
the visible field of his conscience is completely changed and renewed;
in place of his former and vacillating and scattered thoughts he finds
an irresistible and coherent belief, a precise conception, and intense
picture, a passionate affirmation, sometimes even positive perceptions
of a species apart and which come to him not from without but from
within, not alone mere mental suggestions, like the dialogues of
the "Imitation" and the "intellectual locutions" of the mystics, but
veritable physical sensations like the details of the visions of Saint
Theresa, the articulate voices of Joan of Arc and the bodily stigmata of
Saint Francis.

In the first century, this beyond discovered by the mystic faculty was
the kingdom of God, opposed to the kingdoms of this world;[5318] these
kingdoms, in the eyes of those who revealed them, were worthless;
through the keen insight of the moral and social instinct, these large,
generous and simple hearts had divined the internal defect of all the
societies or States of the century. Egoism in these was too great;
there was in them a lack of charity,[5319] the faculty of loving another
equally with one's self, and thus of loving, not only a few, but all
men, whoever they might be, simply because they were men, and especially
the meek, the humble and the poor; in other words, the voluntary
repression of the appetites by which the individual makes of himself a
center and subordinates other lives to himself, the renunciation of "the
lusts of the flesh, of the eyes and of vanity, the insolence of wealth
and luxury, of force and of power."[5320]--Opposed to and in contrast
with this human order of things, the idea of a divine order of things
was born and developed itself--a Heavenly Father, his reign in heaven,
and very soon, perhaps on the morrow, his reign here below; his son
descending to the earth to establish his reign and dying on the cross
for the salvation of men; after him, his Spirits, sent by him, the
inward breath which animates his disciples and continues his work; all
men brethren and beloved children of the same common