VAUGHAN'S HOURS WITH THE MYSTICS. * BEE/GI017S mysticism is rather a

mood of mind than a theological creed: it may exist in almost any form of belief when fancy and enthusiasm run riot over reason. The profession of Pantheism or Polytheism may be coldly rational; a man with a mystical mind.' may glow in negation, as was the case with Shelley's Atheism in Queen Iliab. The one moral quality essential to a mystic seems i

to be sentiment. There was imagination and enthusiasm enough in Loyale and some other founders of Romish orders ; there was wildness and absurdity enough in the Anabaptists of Germany ; but neither class could properly be called mystics. They all wanted the tender unction. The self-delusion of the human mind is so great, that a mystic might wink at blood guiltiness in others but would scarcely shed blood himself. We should hardly call a man or woman a mystic who aided in an auto da fe. The mys- tic suffers, but does not inflict.

The mental peculiarity of the Mystics renders it difficult to deal with their history. If you present their opinions in their own words, it is setting the reader to do the work of the historian. To catch their warmth, their hazy brilliancy, their Protean obscu- rity, so as to give the reader an idea of their thoughts and style which should be at once terse and bright, and leave the general impression of the original without conveying any more definite idea 'is a very hard task. To subject the whole to logical analy- sis, to draw out with metaphysical exactness the mystical ideas (or, what the analyst considers such) into the form of articles of faith, is to get rid of the mystical character. It is like analyzing cham- pagne : the chemical elements, with their proportionate parts expressed in decimals, may be very instructive, but the wine has We think that in any history of the Mystics, the character- istics of the age and biographical notices of the leaders should be prominent features, to enable the reader to understand the origin of the mysticism and the form it takes. As there is always in the world a large number of good-feeling persons whose reason runs wild, there is always the material of mystics. In times of quiet, coldness, and seeptieism,they are as it were shut up by the pressure of the social atmosphere around them; It would be difficult, we take it, to get up a genuine camp-meeting just outside of New York city; in the half-solitary settlements of the West and South it is easy enough. When, however, the deadness of the public mind has reached a certain point, the stagnation, and the vices which often accompany it, seem to act as a stimulant : witness many religious " revivals," accompanied with more or less of wild enthusiasm,—as among the Methodists of the last century. Without a clear conception of the state of public opinion, we do not realize the truth and the reasonableness of unreason, or the particular mode it takes. A knowledge of the genius and out- ward circumstances of the leading mystics is necessary as an ac- companiment to the knowledge of opinion. Indeed it is all in all. In philosophy, the principles are everything, the philosopher nothing. In mysticism, the mystic is everything, the notions when really intelligible are very secondary. True mysticism mostly perishes with the originators. Fox the Quaker was a mystic, some of the early Methodists were mystics ; but there is little mysticism in modern Wesleyanism. or Quakerism. The most celebrated of the Mystics, Madame Guyon, cannot be said to have founded a sect at all.

In this view of the subject, Mr. Vaughan often deals too much with such deductions as he can draw from the mystical writings, and too little with the authors themselves ; so that his Hours with the Mystics is rather a literary than a lifelike production. Possibly he includes too much under the head. There have doubtless been mystics in India ; we doubt whether the Hindoo work the Bagvat- Gita can properly be called a mystic writing, unless we range in that category every wild, rhapsodical production, of a philosophi- cal or moral kind, which is opposed to European sentiments. That there is mysticism in the fundamental doctrine of Budhism may be true in a certain sense : the idea of everything being part of God—" emanating" from God, and finally returning to God_ is definite as a logical proposition but is not easily realized by the mind in the moans operandi ; and it leads to vagueness in medi- . tatioU and aspiration. The mixture of Platonism and Polytheism superadded to Christianity by some of the early Fathers also in- duces a species of mysticism ; but this seems to us dogmatism rather than mysticism—speculation, not feeling. The dirty and • Hours with the Mystics : a contribution to the History of Religious Opinion. By Robert Alfred Vaughan, B.A. In two volumes. Published by Parker and Son.

repulsive mortification of the anchorites, with St. Anthony at their head, is fanatical aseeticistiT Wanting in all the characteristics which separate mysticism from wild or ignorant superstition. But all this is only an opinion which we should not care to sup- port,by controversy; Having dismissed the East and the ancients, Mr. Vaughan next proceeds to the mystics of the middle ages. These he discusses at a length properly proportioned to his general scale, but hardly with a fulness equal to their importance in the history of mysti- cism; for it is there perhaps, as a. class,. that we meet with the mystic writers. In the age of the Reformation he again wanders from his true subject, according to our notions of it. Cornelius . Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Jacob Behmen, were rather natural phi- losophers or metaphysicians than religious mystics, if in fact they had not touches of the adventurer or charlatan. The Mystics of Spain, the Quietists of France with Madame Guyon at their head, are the genuine article. Swedenborg probably verges upon the counterfeit. Our author confines Mysticism in England to George Fox and the Ranters of his age; though some of the early fol- lowers of Whitefield and Wesley appear to us to be truer Mystics, while their indirect influence upon the Church of England was as remarkable as anything in the history of the subject. A. short notice of " Persian Mysticism in the Middle Ages" .completes the subject ; this last sect, by the by, rather exhibiting an ana- creontic transcendentalism than a religious enthusiasm. How much or how little of the topics handled by Mr. Vaughan is really embraced in his subject, is a point on which readers will differ, and after all is rather a theoretical than a practical matter. There is less doubt about the defects of his plan and treatment. The form of dialogue which he adopts is well fitted to give

mation, to impart a natural air to controversy, and to favour ne- cessary digression, while it furnishes variety and relief. With its advantages dialogue has its drawbacks. It tempts to mere dis-! cussion. " Every position makes way for an argument, and every objection dictates an answer. When two [or more] disputants are engaged upon a complicated and extensive question, the dif- ficulty is not to continue but to end the controversy." Unless in skilful hands, there is a tendency to retard or encumber by too close an imitation of common discourse in its incidental or paren- thetical remarks. This is more especially the case in Hours with the Mystics, because the bias of the author seems towards dis- cussion, not to say sermonizing ; while the nature of the subject required simple exposition, to avoid overlaying what in itself was sufficiently obscure. The choice of his interlocutors is faulty. There are scholars in our Universities whose seeming seclusion does not shut them out from interest in the living world ; there are practitioners in law and physic who retain amid the cares of such business as they have a taste for curious studies. Men of this kind would have been truer dramatic inter- loeutors than Atherton a man of fortune and dilettante historian, Gower an artist, Willoughby a popular writer, together with Mrs. Atherton, her sister, and a country friend or two. There is no consistency between the subject and such speakers ; the contd.- vance intended to lighten has a reverse effect by overlaying. The most marring defect of the book, however, is the substitution of discussion for exposition, already alluded to—of talking about things, instead of explaining them. This, with a sort of effort to be popular, gives to some of the divisions the appearance of articles rather than a work.

All this coexists with great literary merit. The dialogues, distracting as regards mysticism, contain very clever sketches of character, and pleasant pictures of English scenery and elegant life. The biographical notices are also agreeably written ; and, though not successful as reflecting the influence of the age upon the mystic, often bring out some telling traits. The following picture of real suffering, nervous influence, and, no doubt, exag- gerated report, is from the life of St. Theresa, an eminent Spanish mystic.

"Remarkable were the effects of the rapture on the body of the saint. An irrepressible lifting force seemed to carry her off her feet (they preserve the right foot in Rome to this day) : it was the swoop of an eagle; was the grasp of a giant. In vain, she tells us, did she resist. Generaly the head, sometimes the whole body, was supernaturally raised into the air ! On one occasion during a sermon on a high day, in the presence of several ladies of quality, the reckless rapture took her. For in vain had she prayed that these favours might not be made public. She cast herself on the ground: The sisters hastened to hold her down ; yet the upward struggling of the divine potency was manifest to all. Imagine the rush of the sisterhood, the screams of the ladies of quality, the pious ejaculations from the congrega- tion,—watching that knot of swaying forms, wrestling with miracle, and the upturned eyes, or open-mouthed amazement, of the interrupted preacher !

" The state of rapture is frequently accompanied by a certain great pain' (gran pena), a sweet agony and delicious torment, described by Theresa in language as paradoxical as that which Juliet in 'her passion applies to the lover who has slain her cousin-

' Beautiful tyrant ! fiend an

Dove-feathered raven ! wolfish-ravening lamb 1' After some two or three hours' endurance of this combined spiritual and cor- poreal torture, the sisters would find her almost without pulsation, the bones of the arms standing out (las vanillas muy abiertas), her hands stiff and ex- tended : in every joint were the pains of dislocation : she was apparently at the point of death.' " This mysterious pain' is no new thing in the history of mysticism. It is one of the trials of mystical initiation. It is the depth essential to the superhuman height. With St. Theresa, the physical nature contributes to- ward it much more largely than usual ; and m her map of the mystic's pro- gress it is located at a more advanced period of the journey. St. Francis of Assisi lay sick for two years under the preparatory miseries. Catharine of Sienna bore five years of privation, and was tormented by devils beside: For five years, and yet again for more than three times five, Magdalena de Pazzi endured such ' aridity,' that she believed herself forsaken of God: Balthazar Alvarez suffered for sixteen years before he earned his extraor- Binary illumination. Theresa, there can be little doubt, regarded her fainting-fits, hysteria, cramps, and nervous seizures, as divine visitations. In their action and reaction, body and soul were continually injuring each ether. The excitement of hallucination would produce an attack of her dis- order, and the disease again foster the hallucination. Servitude, whether of mind or body, introduces maladies unknown to freedom. Elephantiasis and leprosy—the scourge of modern Greece—were unknown to ancient Hellas: The cloister breeds a family of mental distempers, elsewhere un- heard of."

In treating of the Middle Ages, Mr. Vaughan introduces, by means of a fictitious autobiographical journal, not only sketches of mystic preachers, but some of the remarkable events of the period. Strictly these things are often deviations from his subject, but to many they will be more interesting than the mystical doctrines. Such, for instance, is the description of the Black Death, followed by this account of the persecution of the Jews, who were accused of causing it.

" In a frenzy of terror and revenge the people fell upon the miserable Jews. They were accused of poisoning the wells, and every heart was steeled against them. Fear seemed to render all classes more ferocious, and the man who might sicken and die tomorrow found a wretched com- pensation in inflicting death today on the imagined authors of his danger. Toledo was supposed to be the centre of an atrocious scheme by which the Jews were to depopulate Christendom. At Chillon, several Jews, some after torture and some in terror of it, confessed that they bad received poison for

that purpose. It was a black and redpowder, made partly from a basilisk,and sent in the mummy of an egg. The deposition of the Jews arrested at

Neustadt was sent by the castellan of Chillon to Strasburg. Bishops, nobles, and chief citizens held a diet at Binnefield in Alsace, to concert measures of persecution. The deputies of Strasburg, to their honour be it spoken, de- clared that nothing had been proved against the Jews. Their bishop was the most pitiless advocate of massacre. The result was a league of priests, lords, and people, to slay or banish every Jew. In some places the sena- tors and burgomasters were disposed to mercy or to justice. The Pope and the Emperor raised their voices, alike in vain, in behalf of the victims. Some Christians, who had sought from pity or from avarice to save them, perished in the same flames. The noble of whom they bought protection was stigmatized as a Jew-master, execrated by the populace, at the mercy of his enemies. No power could stem the torrent. The people had tasted blood ; the priest had no mercy for the murderers of the Lord ; the baron had debts easily discharged by the death of his creditor. At Strasburg a monster scaffold was erected in the Jewish burial-ground, and two thousand were burnt alive. At Basle all the Jews were burnt together in a wooden edifice erected for the purpose. At Spires they set their quarter in flames, and perished by their own hands. A guard kept out the populace while men commissioned by the Senate hunted for treasure among the smoking ruins. The corrupting bodies of those slain in the streets were put up in empty wine-casks and trundled into the Rhine. When the rage for slaugh- ter had subsided, hands red with Hebrew blood were piously employed in building belfries and repairing churches with Jewish tombstones and the materials of Jewish houses."

Although the English mystics of the last century and the en- thusiasts of America in the present day are passed over, Mr. Vaughan comes still closer to the instant, ty introducing Emer- son, as a sort of pendant or vis-a-vis to the rather Epicurean mystics of Persia.

"The second representative of the West, who must assist towards our comparative estimate of Pantheistic mysticisuf in its poetical form, is Mr. Emerson, the American essayist. Whether in prose or verse he is chief singer of his time at the high court of Mysticism. He belongs more to the East than to the West—true brother of those Sufis with whose doctrine he has so much in common. Luxuriant in fancy, impulsive, dogmatic, darkly oracular, he does not reason. His majestic monologue may not be inter- rupted by a question. His inspiration disdains argument. He delights to lavish his varied and brilliant resources upon some defiant paradox, and never more than when that paradox is engaged in behalf of an optimism ex- treme enough to provoke another Voltaire to write another Candide. He displays in its perfection the fantastic incoherence of the ' God-intoxicated '

man.

"In comparing Emerson with the Sufis, it may be as well to state that he does not believe in Mohammed and receive the Koran in a manner which would satisfy an orthodox Mussulman: Yet he does so (if words have mean- ing) much after the same fashion in which he believes in Christ and receives the Bible. Mohammed and Jesus are both, to him, extraordinary religious geniuses—the Bible and the Koran both antiquated books. He looks with serene indifference on all the forms of positive religion. He would agree perfectly with those Sufis who proclaimed the difference between the Church and the Mosque of little moment. The distance between the Crescent and the Cross is, with him, one of degree—their dispute rather a question of in- dividual or national taste than a controversy between a religion with evi- dence and a religion without. "In the nineteenth century, and in America, the doctrine of Emanation and the ascetic practice of the East can find no place. But the Pantheism of Germany is less elevated than that of Persia, in proportion as it is more de- veloped. The tendency of the former is to assign reality only to God the tendency of the latter is to assign reality only to the mind of man. The Sufi strove to lose humanity in Deity ; Emerson dissolves Deity in humanity. The Orientals are nearer to Theism, and the moderns farther from it, than they sometimes seem. That primal Unity which the Sufi, like the Nee-Platonist, posits at the summit of all things, to ray forth the world of Appearance, may possibly retain some vestige of personality. But the Over-Soul of Emerson, whose organs of respiration are men of ge- nius, can acquire personality only in the individual man. The Persian as- pired to reach a divinity above him by self-conquest ; the American seeks to realize a divinity within him by self-will. Self-annihilation is the watch- word of the one ; self-assertion that of the other."