St. John of the Cross

WITH these two volumes Professor Allison Peers completes a great work of scholarship, most admirably performed ; and

English students of mysticism—at last put in possession of a • lucid and strictly accurate translation—may for the first time appreciate the soaring genius of one of the greatest of Christian contemplatives and mystical poets. It is a curious com- mentary on the supposed modern interest in mysticism that the name of St. John of the Cross is commonly linked with one of the shortest and least attractive of his works. For most people, he is the austere and gloomy Carmelite who wrote of the " dark night of the soul "—a term which is constantly quoted but seldom understood—or at best the exacting guide

to the difficult " ascent of Mount Carmel." These valuable but rather intimidating works—or rather work, for Mount Carmel and The Dark Night are really two parts of a single treatise on the spiritual life—are always the first of his writings to be examined, and unfortunately few go beyond them. But these books, which were deliberately composed for the purposes of instruction, and really addressed—as the late Abbot Chapman pointed out—to beginners, give little indication of St. John's true splendour. They hardly reveal

the passionate lover of Reality, for whom the quest of God was the one adequate object of life ; still less, the enraptured poet who compares the adventures of his spirit in the uncharted ocean of Eternity with those of the great Spanish navigators, discovering strange islands, untrodden valleys and mighty rivers, which " cause great surprise and wonder in those who see them."

" Mi amado las montailas los vallos solitarios nemorosos las insulas oxtrafias los ries sonorosos el silbo do los sires amorosos."

This is not the ordinary language of religious fervour. It opens before the mind so vast a spiritual landscape, that within it the small notions of conventional piety are lost. St. John is, indeed, the prince of transcendentalists ; so daring in many of his declarations that, had he lived in the thirteenth century, he might easily have shared Meister Eckhart's fate. The severity of his ascetic teaching, his drastic detachment,

spring from the intensity of his realism ; the positive quality of his passion for God, and the craving for that " transforming union " of the soul with the Divine which is the proper end of the spiritual quest. They are the directions of a spiritual and psychological expert for the conduct of a life tending only to this goal ; and we only understand their true bearing when we read the poems and commentaries in which that goal is described. These are the Spiritual Canticle and Flame of Living Love, which fill the greater part of the second and third volumes of the Complete Works. The extreme difficulty of the matters discussed, the corrur tion of the older Spanish text, and the timidity (or stupidity) of previous editors, have hitherto successfully concealed the astonishing quality of these writings. Now, however, the combined skill and insight of Professor Peers has brought theta within the reach—though hardly within the comprehension-- of all those to whom the masterpieces of spiritual literature

make an appeal. Here turn by turn St. John describes with the splendour of a poet and the precision of a spiritual realist

that Living Love which is the soul's objective, and the most subtle experiences of that soul's interior life. Even th000

who do not share his convictions or care for the subject' matter of his work cannot fail to recognise here the skill of a great literary artist, persuading language to suggest those delicate impressions of the spirit which lie beyond the resources of speech. Thus, of the beginnings of the contenv plative state, when formal meditation becomes impossible to the mind and is replaced by a more generalised apprehension of God, he says in a passage containing material of interest to psychology as well as to religion :

" The soul cannot meditate any more or find any help in the senses ; for the senses remain in a state of aridity, inasmuch as thatr treasure is transformed into spirit, and no longer falls a Rhin the capacity of sense. And, as all the operations which the soul can perform on its own account naturally depend upon sense only, it follows that God is the agent in this state and the soul is the recipient ; for the soul behaves only as one that receives and as one in whom those things are being wrought . . . And the soul boo then to walk with loving awareness of God, without performing specific acts, but conducting itself, as we have said, passively, and having no diligence of its own, but possessing this simple, pure and loving awareness; as otio that opens his eyes with the awareness Of love.

This passage, and others like it, are by no means to be taken as evidence that the mystic's life of " loving awareness " iS merely an oblique emotional enjoyment. The series of maximO which St. John gave to his numerous pupils and penitents, admirable in their terseness and uncomfortably clear in their demands, show plainly enough that it is, on tbe contrary, heroism.

" Love consists not in fooling great things, but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved.

. We must measure our trials by ourselves, and not ourselves by our trials.

To be prepared to lose and see all others win, belongs to valiant souls, to generous bosoms, and to liberal hearts."

A chief technical interest of these two volumes consistO in the fact that the Spiritual Canticle and the Flame of Living Love each exists in two versions ; and both, for the first time, arc here printed in full, so that English readers can form their own opinion on the controversies which have raged around them. As regards the Spiritual Canticle the difference between the two texts is considerable and the questions raised are of

real importance. In spite of the strongly expressed views of Dons Chevallier, its latest and most erudite French editor, Most students of St. John will probably feel that Professor Peers has made a good case for the authenticity of the longer