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completeness in the world towards which the other, if true to itself, must ever be stretching forth. Judaism, as exemplified in Job and Ecclesiastes, obtained this finality by an indifference to the opposition between good and evil, which was fortified by a belief in God, who "knew better." In its modern development, philosophy has reacted on religion, and has persuaded it that this attitude is unworthy. And so the religious man, thanks to his speculative brother, must to-day adopt an even more optimistic creed which, in his turn, the thinker is now laboriously working to justify. God cannot be any longer viewed as a mere power operating in the world. Humanity has found a truth more adequate to the conception of deity than this. While the consecrated life of Christ cannot, and was never meant to, reverse "laws of nature," it nevertheless incarnates that kind of career in devotion to which man takes doubt and sin, difficulty and evil, as incidents in a more or less successful attempt to become what Jesus altogether was. Death has no sting if life bear its own justification, and such is borne only when Christ is an immanent principle energising on all sides for ideal goodness. His office was to render doubt concerning a perfect spiritual state impossible. Here he fulfilled the expectation of Job and Koheleth by proving that for the ideal, when predominant in a man, evil exists to be overcome, and sin to be repented. And so, to the modern Christian theist, the appearance of temporal damnation holds the promise of eternal salvation. The defeat of the real bad by the ideal good, the assuaging of misery by devotion to the miserable, who can themselves be made to become spiritual successes, supply vocations which reveal the depths of man's nature,

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as they are ends that the very existence of this nature implies. Innocence, broken by pessimism, truly cannot be retained. So much the better for humanity. Virtue accompanies temptation, which springs from every form of difficulty; and the reduction of obstacles can only be wrought out by men. One, indeed, has finished this work in his life, and, by recognising God in him, we find deity in ourselves. But deity with a mission. And every mission partakes in the characteristics alike of pessimism and optimism. The simple fact of its existence testifies to the latter, the very requisites of its realisation witness to the former. The modern man must needs fight under the ægis of the Holy One of the Jews. He so battles with certainty of ultimate success, in the name of Jesus alone. For the sinlessness of Christ does not mean absence of evil, but assurance that, despite evil, good, as exemplified in a consecrated life, is the mightier, because infinitely the more permanent, force. The devil, or unideal, cannot even "mend broken pots." God, or the ideal, may sow dragon's teeth, they cannot but spring forth men. Bad deeds possess no missionary power, but good deeds, varying in reproductive energy in the ratio of their immanent goodness, are destined to monopolise eternity. Yet, these ideals wait upon human disposition. God needs the aid of the pure in heart. If Job and Koheleth did not know this fully, those who live in the light of the one personal "servant of the Lord" stray in no such darkness. With Job suffering made the man; now all who care to learn can know what manner of man suffering essentially cannot touch. Life is capable of cheating only those who, in the deepest sense, have never been alive.

MEDIEVAL MYSTICISM.

I. Introductory: the Mystical Movement.

THE course of medieval civilisation ran along two main lines. The lordship of society was divided between the world-priest, the Bishop of Rome, and the world-monarch, the rightfully crowned Ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. In many respects a mere theory, this division between Church and World had momentous practical results. Together these lords constituted, as it were, the copestone of an immense edifice in which each separate part was related to, and dependent upon, every other. The system of the Latin Church had, in process of time, come to be a firmly welded organisation. It was the hammer of European society, compelling no mean amount of order, some education, and marvellous obedience from the barbaric materials which, in the years succeeding the fall of the old Roman State, disintegrated the community as it then was. Feudalism, though of later growth, came to exercise irresistible control over almost all the relations of secular and civil life. Dissociated in avowed aim, and

employing the most diverse methods, these two dominant powers were, nevertheless, not without inner connection. In particular, they both tended to treat with but scant consideration man viewed as an inviolable person, possessed by his very nature of inalienable moral and religious rights. Status, not personal worth, was the standard of social value applied by Church and World alike. According to the ecclesiastical theory, the most corrupt of the clergy was, simply in virtue of his office, superior to the saintliest knight or noble. In the hierarchy of Feudalism, the accident of birth determined the grade of individual excellence. For it is to be remembered that the Feudal system was a social, and in small part a political, organisation.

In this way personal character, on which we now set such high store, received little of its rightful recognition. A far-reaching code of external rules was applied to saint and sinner indifferently. The class to which the man belonged, his profession, or other purely accidental circumstance, rated his value in the eyes of his fellows. Narrow limits only remained within which men might be appraised at their own true. worth; the heart received little heed; outer forms, admirably calculated, no doubt, to associate masses otherwise disconnected, were commonly wielded without reference to personal taste, attainment, or character. In short, the barbarism, which knows not the value of man as man, was civilising itself according to its own still barbaric methods. For a time this "protest of barbarism against itself" was certainly productive of progress. But from its very nature it could not continue for ever. Socially, and even more emphatically as concerned religion and morals, it contained

the seeds of its own destruction. "The angel's state, where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing," can never be reached by means of any external machinery, no matter how good. What is outside of us must always act upon us by compulsion. To be perfect, in the smallest measure, after the one pattern, we must be free to live his life over again, according as we have capacity. Personal holiness and personal worth are the only standards whereby the upward progress of any man may be adequately judged. For according as the individual ideal is, so will the life and character be. This, the intense reality of religious or moral convictions to those who are possessed of them, is the universal element in human nature to which the Mystics appeal. Questions of holiness and faith have a personal reference peculiar to themselves. At a time when circumstances were apt to obscure this aspect of the more excellent way, the Sermons of Eckhart and Tauler, and especially the 'Imitation of Christ,' came, not merely as a revelation, but also ast a message of gladness to all, and they were then many, with whom religion was a vital matter.

Society in its mediæval stage of necessity tended to disregard this personal element in any soul-life worthy of the name. The temporary subordination of the in- | dividual was essential to the reconstruction of Europe after the downfall of the Roman polity. In due time, however, certain sensitive spirits began to experience a want, and this, when it found expression, marked the near approach of a new era. On one line Mechtild of Magdeburg, Sister Katrei of Strassburg, John Tauler, Suso, and Geert de Groot; on another, Master Eckhart and Ruysbroeck; on a third, Gerson, the famous Chan

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