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198 learning.

Want of Appreciation of Behmen.

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In his natural capacity and outward condition of Life, he was as mean and illiterate as any one that our Lord called to be an Apostle.' 'The poor illiterate Behmen was so merely an instrument of Divine Direction, as to have no ability to think, speak, or write anything but what sprung up in him or came upon him as independently of himself, as a shower of rain falls here or there independently of the place where it falls. His works, being an opening of the Spirit of God working in him, are quite out of the course of man's reasoning wisdom, and proceed no more according to it than the living Plant breathes forth its virtues according to such rules of skill as an Artist must use to set up a painted dead Figure of it,' 2—and to the same effect in innumerable other passages.3

And Law was surely so far right, in thinking that the learned men of his day utterly failed to appreciate the true character and value of Behmen and his writings. We have seen that many of them avowed point-blank, without any circumlocution, that Behmen's inspiration came from the Devil, the source, by the way, from which Wesley, Whitefield, and the early Methodists were frequently said to derive their impulse.*

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Behmen was no Demonosopher' (to adopt Wesley's happy phrase). His motives were perfectly pure and disinterested. His life was perfectly guileless and transparent;

Appeal to all that Doubt, &c., p. 322.

Fragment of a Dialogue by W. Law, prefixed to the translation of Behmen's 'Works' of 1764 falsely attributed to Law. Though these volumes can by no means be depended upon always, there is no doubt whatever that this Dialogue was, as it purports to be, the work of Law. Law's style is unmistakable; it was not to be imitated by any one, and least of all by the translators of this work, of whom more anon.

• See especially the whole of the Second and Third Dialogues in The Way to Divine Knowledge, Law's Works,' vol. vii. pp. 83-251.

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See Bishop Lavington's Enthusiasm of Papists and Methodists compared, passim ; also Bishop Warburton's Doctrine of Grace, passim, &c.

Behmen's Genius.

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and through his wild soul there flashed many noble and elevating thoughts, to which he struggled, and often in vain, to give an imperfect utterance. Those who follow him blindly as a guide will probably fall into intellectual quagmires, from which Law himself did not altogether escape; but those who can see nothing in his writings but the disordered fancies of an unsound mind, have either imperfectly studied them, or else are unable to recognise genius when they meet with it.

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General Remarks on Mysticism.

CHAPTER XII.

'GENERAL REMARKS ON MYSTICISM.

LONG as this digression has already been, it seems necessary to add a few general remarks on Mysticism before returning to the subject of Law's outer life.

It will have been gathered from the preceding pages that I have a deep, but not indiscriminate, admiration for the characters and writings of many of the mystics. And surely their ardent piety, their intense realisation of the Divine Presence, their spiritual-mindedness, their unselfishness, their humility, their calm and serene faith, the refinement, nay, the poetry of their style and matter, their elevating view of the heavenly meaning of outward nature, their cultivation of the inner life, the 'life that is hid with Christ in God,'-and many other points in their system, are worthy of adıniration.

But it may naturally be asked, How is it, if mysticism really be what it has been described as being, that it has not found more favour with a people so religious as the English, on the whole, decidedly are?

It will have been

This question requires an answer. observed that in the foregoing sketch the name of not one single Englishman appears. The sketch, it will be remembered, was confined to those mystics exclusively who influenced William Law; and, though there were many Englishmen of a mystical tendency who would come under that category, and who will therefore be noticed presently,

Vaughan's 'Hours with the Mystics.'

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there was assuredly not one who can fairly be called a mystic proper. It would be too sweeping a statement to assert that there were no English mystics, but they were few and far between. Mysticism is a plant which seems to thrive on English soil hardly better than an Alpen-rose would on the top of Helvellyn. A fair and full account of Christian mysticism is still a want in English literature. Perhaps the most popular English book on the subject-the book from which many who have not made mysticism their special study derive their knowledge of it—is Mr. Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics,' and its popularity is not undeserved. The writer is full of information; he writes cleverly, and evidently desires to do justice to his subject. But his very plan shows that he is hardly in sympathy with it. His work is in the form of a dialogue, or rather of a series of narratives, read by a lawyer, on which the hearers-a country gentleman, his sharp-witted wife, a lively young artist, and a rather flippant young lady-make their comments. The subject is introduced as 'Three friends sat about their after-dinner table, chatting over their wine and walnuts,'-not very favourable circumstances under which to discuss the deep, spiritual thoughts of devoted and self-denying Christians. A good deal of smart badinage goes on over the narratives. Now and then the subject seems likely to be slow, and the ladies cut the performance. The writer loves to quote all the extravagant expressions which mystics, carried away by the heat of devotion, may have used. Those passages in the history of mysticism are chiefly dwelt upon which have a smack of romance about them; such, for example, as the account of Madame Guyon, who, being a fascinating woman with a romantic history, occupies a space far beyond the proportion of her merits. The whole account of Tauler's efforts as a patriot, though it has nothing directly

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Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics.'

to do with mysticism, is given at full length; and the treatise ends very appropriately with the ringing of the marriage bells for the wedding of the lively young artist and the pert young lady.'

This sort of thing is all very well when the subject is like those, for instance, discussed in the 'Noctes Ambrosi

1 Here are one or two specimens of the manner, that the reader may judge for himself whether the description in the text is exaggerated or not.

Gower: Let me bring some prisoners to your bar. Silence in the court there! [Then follows an account of some mystics' views.] Guilty of mysticism, or not?

Atherton: Can you call good evidence to character?

Gower First rate! &c. (I. 27.)

Willoughby: Here's another definition for you : mysticism is the romance of religion. What do you say?

Gower: True to the spirit ; not scientific, I fear.
Willoughby Science be banished! &c. (I. 29.)

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Gower (flourishing a ruler, turning to the four points, and reading with tremendous voice a formula of incantation from Hörst): Lalla Bacheram ! Willoughby (springing upon Gower): Seize him! He's stark, staring mad! Gower: Hands off! were we not to discuss to-night the best possible order for your mystics?

Atherton And a neat little plan I had set up-shaken all to pie at this moment by your madcap antics!

Gower: Thanks, if you please, not reproaches. I was calling help for you; I was summoning the fay.

Willoughby: The fay?

Gower The fay. Down with you in that arm-chair and sit quietly. 1.now that I was this morning reading Anderson's Märchen—all about LukOie, his ways and works, the queer little elf, &c. (I. 39.)

Gower: Don't you think Atherton has a very manuscriptural air to-night? Kate: There is a certain aspect of repletion about him.

Mrs. Atherton: We must bleed him, or the consequences may be serious. What's this? (Pulls a paper out of his pocket.)

Kate: And this? (Pulls out another.)

Willoughby He seems better.

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The MS. is the long account of Tauler. The two impostors in Sir W. Scott's novels, Sir A. Wardour's Dousterswivel and Leicester's Alasco, are instanced as specimens of one kind of mystic (vol. ii. p. 34). Swedenborg is 'the Olympian Jove of mystics '-whatever that may mean (II. 279). And yet the writer admits at the beginning of his work that the mystics were the conservators of the poetry and heart of religion,' and that'their very errors were often such as were possible only to great souls.' (I. 15.)

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