that
it is very difficult to mint it into the universal coinage of the
world. The recovery of faith, after some catastrophic bankruptcy of
spiritual values, as with Job or Dante or Faust, cannot be described in
analytic steps. The loss of faith in the rationality of the universe,
the collapse of the "beautiful world" within, can be told step by step;
the process of integration and reconstruction, on the other hand,
always remains somewhat of a mystery, though it is plain enough that a
new and richer inner world has been found. So, too, with Mysticism.
The experience itself may, and often does, bring to the recipient an
indubitable certainty of spiritual realities, revealing themselves
within his own spirit, and, furthermore, it is often productive of
permanent life-results, such as augmented conviction, heightened tone
of joy, increased unification of personality, intense moral passion and
larger conquering power, but he, nevertheless, finds it a baffling
matter to draw from his mystical experience concrete information about
the nature and character of God, or to supply, from the experience
alone, definite contributions that can become part of the common
spiritual inheritance of the race.

The soul
Remembering how she felt, but _what_ she felt
Remembering not, retains an obscure sense
Of possible sublimity.[10]

{xxiv}

There can be, I think, no doubt that the persons whom we call mystics
have enormously added to the richness of our conception of God, or that
they have made impressive contributions to the capital stock of our
religious knowledge. But I question whether these increments of
knowledge can be fairly traced to "information" which has entered the
world through the secret door of mystical "openings." The conception
of God by which we live, and our knowledge of eternal life, are in the
main not formed of the material which has mysteriously dropped into the
world by means of "sudden incursions," or "oracular communications"
through persons of extraordinary psychical disposition. What we get
from the mystic, or from the prophet, is not his "experience" but his
interpretation, and as soon as he begins to _interpret_, he does so by
means of the group-material which the race has gathered in its
corporate experience through the ages. The valuable _content_ of his
message, so far as he succeeds in delivering one, the ideas with which
his words are freighted, bear t