CHAPTER VII
HOW PAUL NOURISHED THE MYSTICAL LIFE.
MYSTICAL states are often artificially produced. The whirling dervish and the old-time revivalist--the one on himself, the other on his audience--seek to work up that psychological condition of passivity which some types
of mystics regard as indispensable to spiritual impression and receptivity. The Hindoo mystics in their efforts to attain Yoga--the complete union of the human with the Divine--make use of elaborate exercises, including posturings,
breathings, and fastings, to develop concentration and self-control. Mystical writers have often prepared manuals recommending exercises by which the distractions of the lower nature may be overcome, and concentration upon spiritual things secured. With Paul there was an utter absence of all such mechanical methods. In the development of the mystical life he eschewed everything that was forced or artificial. He laid down no formal system of spiritual exercises, but depended entirely upon the ordinary means of grace. Many of the rules by which he was guided can only be learned inferentially. We feel warranted in saying that he nourished the mystical life in the following ways:1. By Prayer.--He was a man of prayer. Prayer was a working force in his life. He prayed not only at the great crises in his life when emergencies arose which he could not meet, or when pressed down upon his knees by a weight of trouble, but at all times. He enjoins others to be "instant in prayer" (Rom. xii. 13), to "pray without ceasing" (I Thess. v. 17); and we are warranted in assuming that he himself lived in habitual communion with God. Not that he was always in the act of prayer, but running through his life was that holy desire for himself and others which constitutes the very breath and essence of prayer. To desire is to pray. And St. Anthony, who places unconscious prayer the highest, says, "We pray as much as we desire, and we desire as much as we love." But anyone that has the firm grip upon the divine personality that Paul had, will sooner or later pass over from the prayer of quiet to the prayer which expresses itself in strong crying unto God. It is only when the sense of the divine personality is dim that the lips remain
silent. Those who know God's name will love to repeat it. A traveller once asked an old Hopi Indian, whom he saw praying for half an hour, as he stood at the door of his house looking over the mesa, what he said when he prayed.
He answered--" Nothing." He simply opened his soul to God. Had the Great Spirit been to that Indian a living Person instead of an undefined presence, he would have tried to pray to Him in words. His wordless prayer was not worthless, because it betokened a reverential and receptive attitude of soul; and God is said to "hear the desire of the humble" (Ps. xxxvii. io); but his prayer would have meant more if it had found voice, and had assumed the form of distinct and definite supplication. Paul makes the talking of man with God a mark of conscious sonship. " We received the Spirit of adoption," he says, "whereby we cry, Abba, Father" (Rom. viii. 15). When the heart prays, prayer is real; when heart and mouth pray together, prayer is complete.If prayer be looked upon at its lowest level, as the means of getting things, we find that in Paul's case it did not always work; but if it be looked upon at its highest level, as the means of getting God into the life, it never miscarried. Subtending every prayer for material benefits was the desire that the material be subordinated to the spiritual, and that the decision as to what was for the best be left to the All-Wise. Nothing was wanted that did not minister to the soul's
good, and promote the growth of "soul wings," so that he might ascend into the secret place of the Most High and gather dynamic force for life's activities. Prayer was practiced that the vision might come which lightens the task; and that the heavens might be opened, that out of them the divine fire might leap upon the altar of the heart to make it ready for the daily sacrifice.The place of prayer in Paul's life would, however, be inadequately presented, unless to the conception of prayer as a force working upon himself, either reflexively or by the direct action of God, be added the conception of prayer as a social force working good to others. He speaks of himself as "labouring fervently" for others "in prayer" (Col. iv. 12). He had an unshaken conviction that his prayers conveyed help to others, and that he was helped by the prayers of others. Hence the frequent assurance given in his letters that he was praying for those to whom he wrote. Hence, too, his oft-repeated request, "Brethren, pray for us." Into the philosophy of the power of prayer he does not inquire. Whether he considered it a sort of telepathic power given to the praying soul, and going from him to the person prayed for; or whether he considered it a power brought into exercise by moving the arm that modes the universe, he does not declare. One thing, however, he makes clear, and that is, that he considered prayer a divinely appointed means for the enlargement of human influence. Carlyle says, ~`To work is to pray"; Paul would have said, "To pray is to work." From this kind of work no one is shut out. They also serve who only kneel and pray. In Paul's own experience prayer was a form of social service. He felt bound to pray for others. His praying was as free from selfishness as his living. It lifted him up into the universal. He prayed "for all saints" (Eph. vi. i8); "for all men" (I Tim.
ii. i). His sympathies girdled the globe. The vibrations of his benevolent desire went rippling out to earth's remotest bound. His prayer was as wide in its sweep as the thought and love of God; as high in its reach as the throne of Eternal Power; as deep in its reach as the inmost springs of motive in the heart of man. And nothing brought him into more practical union with God, and steeped his spirit more in divine influences, than praying for those whom God was bent on blessing.2. By Meditation.--Paul, as we have already seen, began his Christian life by retreating into a desert, not for the purpose of staying there, but to nourish his inner life by meditation and prayer, that he might be better fitted for the
work that awaited him in the world. The time spent in solitude, in communion with his own soul and with God, was not lost. By it his newly awakened life was quickly developed, and he became "strong in the grace which is in Christ
Jesus." We are not told of any prolonged seasons of retirement in the busy years that followed, yet we cannot doubt that he snatched many hours for meditation from his crowded life; for how could he have kept giving out if he had not also been taking in? In the present day we need longer and more frequent parentheses for meditation. We live too fast ; our religious life has not time to take deep root. We ought more frequently to let go the oar of toil. We ought to find more time to think--more time to consider what lies beneath the surface of things. We ought to cultivate the mystic's habit of looking at the inside of things, that we may live more deeply and more worthily. Meditation to be profitable must not be day- dreaming, the wandering of mind into space, or blank vacancy of thought. It must be a state of active, earnest thoughtfulness in which the mind is fixed upon the higher side of things. The Eastern mystic sits gazing into vacancy, and his life becomes as vacant as his mind. Some mystics of a still lower type who sit looking fixedly at the point of their nose, or at their navel, become unspeakably degraded. Meditation to be elevating must be employed upon lofty thoughts. Its objects must also be real; for the soul can be nourished only by reality. * Every attempt to appease its hunger by turning its attention to the picture of a richly-spread table is vain. No better rule has ever been
laid down as a guide to meditation than that contained in Paul's words, "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things" (Phil. iv. 8). These are the things of which account must be taken; these are the things upon which we are to ruminate; these are the things which present the lofty ideal which we are to cherish and follow.Strong effort is needed to concentrate the mind in the hours of meditation, that every thought may be "brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ" (II Cor. x. 5). A man is not master of himself if he is carried away by every passing thought like a feather caught in the wind. He is master of himself only when under Christ he is master of his thoughts. Every man should keep his heart with all diligence as a well-guarded garrison. He should scrutinise every thought that comes knocking for admission. To no evil thought, however attractive it may appear, should he give the slightest bit of heart room, but should resolutely bar it out as an intruder and a traitor. Only thoughts which are pure and holy should be welcomed. The heart must ever be pre-empted for goodness; and the example followed of the painter who refused to look at a bad picture lest he might catch some of its imperfections. For be it remembered that thought is generative of deed; and a man's character will always be determined by the habitual trend of his thoughts.
3. By detachment from outward things.--This inward detachment or insulation will often be best secured when accompanied by outward separation. But not always. Sometimes the divine call is, "Come ye out from among them,
and be ye separate" ; and sometimes it is, Stay among them, and be ye separate. When opportunities for retirement are denied, we must imitate St. Catherine of Siena, who is said to have made "a little interior oratory within her own soul." In the midst of the rush of business and the mad whirl of social life, the soul can retire within itself, and, shutting its noiseless doors, be alone with God. In words of wise admonition St. Francis de Sales writes, "Remember to make occasional retreats into the solitude of your heart, while outwardly engaged in business or conversation. This mental solitude cannot be prevented by the multitude of those who are about you, for they are not about your heart, but about your body; so your heart may remain above, in the presence of God alone." Paul, in his strenuous life, must often have left the multitude at the tent door that he might commune with Him who is invisible; but oftener, when forced to remain in the heart of the world's tumult, he must have curtained off a little corner of his soul in which to commune with the ever-present Father.When outward separation from the world is sought, care must be taken to avoid the mistake, common to the mystics, into which St. Theresa falls when she says, " It seems our Lord wishes that we should separate ourselves from every-
thing, so as His Majesty may draw nearer to us Himself." Not from "everything," surely! but from everything sinful; and from everything not sinful when it would hinder our fellowship with Him.To let go the world easily we must hold it loosely. Writing in view of the troubled condition of the times, Paul admonishes--" This I say, brethren, the time is shortened that henceforth both they that have wives may be as if they had none; and those that weep, as though they wept not; and those that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and those that buy, as though they possessed not; and those that use the world, as not using it to the full: for the fashion of
this world passeth away" (I Cor. vii. 29-31). In these words there is this element of permanent truth--that the things of this world must not be allowed to interfere with the soul's progress. Often the soul is like a ship with sails set and anchor unlifted; or like a balloon which is inflated with gas, and straining to ascend, but the rope that holds it down to earth is not re- leased. There is some secret attachment that needs to be cut before it can pursue its onward and upward course.But detachment from earthly things is not enough; with it must go stronger attachment to heavenly things. The hold upon the things of the world is to be loosened, that the hold upon the things of the spirit realm may be tightened.
"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers."We need to get oftener away from it; and when we enter our closet and shut to the door, we must be on our guard least we shut it in with us. The rule of the mystics, "Shut the door of the senses and open the inward windows of the soul," is a good one if only it be widened into, "Shut the door of the senses and open the inward and upward windows of the soul." Let each one say:
"I'll build all inward--not a light shall ope
The common outway.
I'll therefore live in dark, and all my light,
Like ancient temples, let in at the top."4. By Silence.--Paul learned to enter into the secret places of the soul and listen in silence. He did not "lie asleep in nothingness." When speech failed he was mentally alive. His ear was attuned to catch the faintest whisperings of "the still small voice." When the vision tarried he waited for it patiently and silently. With "the peace of God which passeth understanding" enveloping his soul, he lay quiet and still as a babe upon his mother's breast. His peace was not only "with God," it was in God. Abiding in God's great peace, the divine image was reflected in his heart as the clouds
are reflected upon the unruffled surface of the lake.It is in this attitude of patient, silent waiting that the mystic vision comes. The early Quakers waited in silence "on the springing of the life"--the breaking forth of the fountain of inspiration in their hearts; nor did they wait in vain. We are enjoined to "be silent to the Lord" (Ps. xxxvii. 7); to be still before Him; not polluting the air with our complaints; and
instead of always speaking to Him, allowing Him sometimes to speak to us. Dumbness will quicken hearing. It will also lead to that condition of soul in which the moulding power of God is operative. Luther's translation of the text just quoted is, "Be silent unto the Lord, and let Him mould you." In the silence great throughts are bred. The dews distil from quiet skies. " Silence is the mother of truth." When the babblement of the world has been excluded, the bandage of sense falls from the eyes, and things appear in their naked reality. By the man who dwells in the divine stillness things are seen which from other eyes are hid, and things are heard which are to other ears inaudible.In "The Three Silences" of Molinos, translated by Longfellow, the element of passivity which enters into silence is brought into view:
"Three silences there are; the first of speech,
The second of desire, the third of thought."When the highest silence is reached, man has ceased to "commune with his own heart"; he has closed his ear to all self-suggestion whatsoever, and has turned it heavenward, saying, "Speak, Lord: for Thy servant heareth." He hears God's voice distinctly, because he has ceased to listen to his own. Within the secret "oratory" in his soul God alone is heard to speak. Does not this explain why many fail to hear the voice of God speaking within them? They are too much occupied listening to the voices of earth to hear the voice that speaketh from heaven. "We must lend an attentive ear," says Fenelon, " for God's voice is soft and still, and is only heard by those who hear nothing else. Ah, how rare it is to find a soul still enough to hear God speak!"
5. By concentrating the mind upon heavenly things.--There is everywhere manifest in Paul's experience a certain wistfulness towards the unseen and the eternal. His heart went out to God in ardent desire. He panted for Him as the hart panteth after the water-brooks. He practised the upward look, "the methodical elevation of the soul towards God" of which the mystics make so much. He hungered and thirsted after the things of the Spirit. He sought passionately and persistently "the things which are above." His mind and heart were fixed on what lay within the veil.
The vision of truth comes to those who long for it and centre their thought upon it as Paul did. Openings come to those who wait for them. The veil of sense grows transparent to those who keep looking at it with eager eyes. Wings
are sprouted by heavenly desire. As the stigmata, or marks of the crucifixion of Jesus, are said to have appeared upon the bodies of those who absorbingly mused upon His passion, the marks of His heavenly life appear upon the hearts of those who muse upon His glory. The soul takes on something of what it steadfastly looks at. It also sees what it steadfastly looks for. To those who love His appearing, and yearn for it, the presence of the Lord is manifested; while to those who harden their hearts against Him the revelation of His presence is dark and impenetrable. The light of truth resembles in its effects the morning sun, which sends the owls hooting into seclusion, and awakens the songsters in the grove. Every revelation of truth is a pillar of fire to those who are on the right side of
it, and a pillar of cloud to those who are on the wrong side of it. What a man sees depends upon his spiritual attitude and the intensity of his heart's desire, more than upon the strength of his intellectual powers. The broken-hearted man who looks longingly and constantly to heaven, exclaiming, "Would God that I were there," is the one to whose far-seeing eyes its golden gates appear. The man who panteth after the living God is the one to whom God's satisfying presence is made known. The man who waits and watches for the beatific vision is the one to whom it is given. The palace doors of the King are never opened at the first knock. To the proto-martyr Stephen, heaven was opened
in response to his steadfast gaze. It is "the little more" of concentrated and persistent effort that brings the blessing.6. By the cultivation o/ inward purity.--.Sin darkens the windows of the soul. To the carnal mind the divine mysteries are veiled. "Into a malicious soul wisdom shall not enter, nor dwell in the body that is subject unto sin." "The sun of truth," says John Smith, the English Platonist, "never shines into unpurged souls." The eyes that are washed clean by the tears of repentance begin to see a new light. To those who grow in holiness that light "shineth more and more unto the perfect day." The prime condition for seeing the spiritual is spiritual-mindedness. The city of God, like the fabled
temple of Sangrael, is visible only to the eyes of the pure. The first condition for entering into the mystical union has always been held to be the purging of the heart from all that is not God. This condition is laid down by Paul when he exhorts us to " cleanse ourselves from defilement of flesh and spirit" (II Cor. vii. 1). Outward and inward purity he deemed essential to our coming into the secret place of divine knowledge and fellowship.The mystics have taught that there are three distinct stages in the soul's upward progress by which it is freed from the obscurations caused by the dominance of the lower nature. These they designate the purgative life, the illuminative
life, and the unitive life. Through these stages the soul must pass before it can reach the sunlit heights where it can behold the open vision of the divine glory. These three stages are thus described in Theologia Germanica: "The purification concerneth those who are beginning or repenting, and is brought to pass in a threefold wise; by contrition and sorrow for sin, by full confession, by hearty amendment. The enlightening belongeth to such as are growing, and also taketh place in three ways--to wit, by the eschewal of sin, by the practice of virtue and good works, and by the willing endurance of all manner of temptations and trials. The union belongeth to such as are perfect, and also is brought to pass in three ways--to wit, by pureness and singleness of heart, by love, and by the contemplation of God, the Creator of all things" (chap. xiv.). Here we discover the worm which has too often lain in the heart of mysticism, namely, the idea of purification as something which comes at the beginning of the Christian life, and is to be left behind as the soul rises to higher levels of experience. Not so does Paul teach. He never represents the soul as rising above the need of purification by attaining a whiteness that sin cannot stain. Those who have been made every whit clean in the bath of regeneration, need frequently to wash from their feet the pollutions of earth. They need to be progressively purified. Their purification is not something accomplished once for all. It is often attained through much struggle and pain. The discipline of suffering and sorrow has often to be sent to purify the heart and clarify the vision. The presence of the Son of God is seen from the midst of the burning fiery furnace. From the darkness of the deep valley stars are seen, which were not visible in the glare of the sun on the mountain top. Inward illumination is a costly thing:"By the cross road and none other
Is the mount of vision seen."Every step towards the highest is taken with bleeding feet. Every re-birth of the soul is accomplished by travail pangs. As Browning has said, "When pain ends, gain ends too."
7. By Self-surrender.--The surrender of Paul to his divine Lord when He appeared to him in the way, was the initial act in what became a life-long surrender. Before the invisible presence of the living Christ he ever bowed, confessing
His Lordship, and giving to Him undisputed sway over his entire life. His surrender was definite and irreversible from the first, and became more complete as the years passed. Out of it came all his enlarging experiences of the Christian life.Without this surrender of self--this renunciation of personal aims and desires, this sinking of the will in the will of God, there can be no experience of the deeper things of religion. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him. From the soul that is pressing inward to the inmost place in God's temple a larger sacrifice is demanded at each succeeding gate. This is the reason why souls are halted in their quest. They are unwilling to pay the price. They are willing enough to pay something, but they are not prepared to pay the uttermost farthing. "God's desire," says Madame Guyon,--of whom Dr. Moule speaks as "the saintly and suffering apostoless of self-surrender, "--" is to give Himself unto His creatures, according to the capacity which He hath placed in them; and yet, alas! men are afraid to surrender themselves to God; they are afraid to possess Him, and to dispose themselves for the Divine union."
For many there is no harder thing than to "dispose themselves," or set themselves in order, that they may possess God and be possessed by Him. The first and greatest struggle that God has with His children is to get them to give up their wills to His. Until that is done there can be no development of character. Those who would experience the fulness of His enlightening and renewing presence are required to yield to Him in everything, and put out of the way all that would hinder His working in them. It is the surrendered soul that He occupies; it is the emptied soul that He fills; it is the plastic soul that He stamps with His image. The words of Paul, "Yield yourselves unto God as those who are alive from the dead," express an essential condition of divine occupancy. The same idea is brought out in another form in
Rom. xii. I, 2, which form the nexus between the doctrinal and practical parts of Paul's Epistle. "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, well-pleasing unto God, which is your spiritual worship. And be not fashioned according to this age: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God." Those who have made the great surrender of self in its totality are here enjoined to seek for inward renewal, in order that they may prove, in an experimental way, what the will of God really is, and know the blessedness of living in obedience to it. The knowledge of God's will, which is the ultimate object of human quest, is promised, not on the ground of intellectual attainment, but on the ground of the possession of submissive and obedient hearts.When the soul is fully surrendered to God, a point is reached at which all struggling ceases, and the movement of God is waited for. The poet Wordsworth, to whom was given the mystic's flashing intuition, not only makes passivity of soul a necessary condition of receiving divine communications, but holds that the divine message may come when it is not being definitely sought:
"Think you `mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come
But we must still be seeking?
Nor less I deem that there are powers
`Which of themselves our minds impress,
And we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness."The contention is true; and yet the application outruns the argument; for the wise passivity in which the mind feeds itself is hardly passivity at all. It is certainly not the passivity of absolute quietude. It is presumably a condition in
which the soul remains sensitive to spiritual impressions, welcomes divine communications when they come, and answers the divine voice when it speaks. That is indeed "a wise passiveness." And it is the only kind of passiveness which, within the religious sphere of things, possesses any value. It implies that the soul is keeping open door for God, and is consciously giving itself up to Him, that He may work within it the good pleasure of His will.8. By appropriating the Divine.--Receptivity must cease to be passive and become active. To be "strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might" (Eph. vi. io), the soul must not merely follow God with open face, as the sunflower follows the sun; or stand under the shower of His heavenly grace soaking it in at every pore: it must consciously reach out after Him; take Him into itself; inbreathe His spirit ; drink from the fountain of His power, and feed upon the bread of His eternal love. The duty of this active receptiveness is suggested by the imperative form of the words, "Be filled with the Spirit" (Eph. v. i8). The fulness of the Spirit is attainable by all, being dependent upon the fulness of faith. What anyone has is never the measure of the Spirit's power, for His power is infinite,--it is merely the measure of his own limited faith. The Spirit's inflowing stops only when faith stops. "According to your faith be it unto you," is the law which determines the measure in which any man receives the divine.
Perhaps nowhere is the act of spiritual appropriation more graphically set forth by Paul than in his mystical utterance, "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. xiii. 14). To put on Christ means something more than to slavishly imitate His outward life; it means to appropriate His spirit; to wrap it about oneself as a garment; to clothe oneself with it from head to foot; to cover oneself with it so completely that self may be hidden and Christ alone be seen. When self is thus displaced by Christ, "the orison of union" is reached, in which, according to St. Teresa, "the soul is fully awake as regards God, and wholly asleep as regards things of this world and in respect to herself."
By the affirmation and reaffirmation of the truths by which the spirit lives, the act of appropriating faith is strengthened. Faith should lay her hand upon a thing, and keep saying, "This is mine," until the sense of self-possession grows clear and strong. It is in this way that we are to understand Paul's words, "Reckon ye yourselves dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. vii. ii). That is, count the old sinful, wilful, selfish, self-loving, self-seeking nature as dead, even if you feel it stirring within you. Keep on repeating its death sentence; do not accord to it the claims of the living; pay no attention what ever to its solicitations; but, on the other hand, count your higher nature as alive through the quickening power of Christ, even if no motion of life be felt ; if the ground above be frozen, keep on declaring that there is life in the roots ; anticipate in winter the coming of spring; expect to see the divine life within you cut through the clods, and grow towards God; look forward confidently to a time of flowering and fruiting.
But faith is never entirely anticipatory. It experiences in part the things it hopes for. It enjoys earnests of the coming inheritance. It dips its cup into an infinite ocean, and drinks according to its capacity to receive. Yet what does the largest faith appropriate in proportion to the boundless resources at its command? It has not to go far before losing itself in the illimitable.
9. By cultivating dependence upon the Divine.-- No man ever denuded himself more completely of self-sufficiency than Paul. He reached that condition described by Jacob Boehme, in which the soul saith, "I have nothing, for I am utterly stripped and naked; I can do nothing, for I have no manner of power, but am as water poured out; I am nothing, for all that I am is no more than an image of Being, and only God is to me I AM; and so sitting down in my own nothing- ness, I give glory to the eternal Being, and will nothing of myself, that so God may be all in me, being unto me my God and all things." "I know," says Paul, "that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing" (Rom. vii. i8). All that was good in him was what he had "received of God" (I\ Cor. iv. 7). In God were the springs of his moral life. In himself were weakness and sin. In God were strength and holiness. Congruous with his teaching is the saying of Cardinal Manning, "Wherever you behold a good thing, there you see the working of the Holy Ghost."
He found in God the ground of the inner life. In a remarkable passage he speaks of God, after a mystical fashion, as in and behind all our mental processes. "Not that we are sufficient as of ourselves to think any thing of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God" (II Cor. in. 5). That is, our sufficiency to think rightly is of God. God works upon our intellects as truly as He works upon our hearts and wills. He gives power to think as well as to love and act. There
is something which comes from Him welling up into our minds, pressing its way through the multitude of our thoughts, giving direction and form to all our thinking, just in proportion as we yield to it. It has been the folly of the Church that she has separated God from the intellect, failing to see that He has as much to do with it as with any other part of man's spiritual nature. She has characterised the religion of the intellect as cold, and the religion of the heart as warm;
failing to see that coldness or warmth is in either case the result of the absence or presence of God. A divinely moved intellect is warm; a heart from which God is shut out is cold.Paul also found in God the strength he needed to meet all the demands of the Christian life. When oppressed with weakness, or when weighted down with onerous duties, he found beneath him a sustaining, enabling power. Mark his declaration, "I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me" (Phil. iv. is); not all things absolutely, but all things within the sphere of personal obligation. And again, "By the grace of God I am what I am: and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not void; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me" (1 Cor. xv.io). God's grace stood in his thought for the sum-total of the gracious influences by which he was inspired and empowered. Piling up one qualifying phrase upon another to show the adequacy of divine grace unto the ends for which it is given, he says, " God is able to make all grace abound unto you; that ye having always all sufficiency in all things, may abound unto every good work" (II Cor. ix. 8). To his own fainting heart was
given the comforting assurance, "My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness" (II Cor. xii. 9). And so completely was he emptied of self, so thoroughly had he learned the lesson of dependence, that he adds, "Most gladly will I rather glory in my weaknesses that the strength of Christ may rest upon me"; literally, that it may "cover" me, or "spread a tabernacle over me." Tabernacled in divine strength; what a mystical flight of fancy! And yet how precious the truth which that figure conveys!10. By co-operating with the Divine. --The necessity for uniting self-activity with the movement of God within the soul is brought strikingly out in the words of Paul: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure" (Phil. ii. 12, 13). His argument is, that because God is at work at the centre of being, touching the springs of motive, arousing and energising the moral nature, personal effort is to be intensified rather than slackened. Man is not to do less but more to work out his own salvation, seeing that God is working in him and with him to the same end, reinforcing his feeble effort so as to render failure impossible. He is not to work, as he has sometimes been told to do, as if everything depended upon himself. For it does not. More depends upon his divine Ally than upon himself; and in the final result it is what his divine Ally does that tells. Everyone who is trying to carve his character into the image of Christ has a power behind him guiding his bungling fingers, and so much of God enters into the finished product that Paul describes it as "His workmanship"
(Eph. ii. io). Yet in its own place man's part is just as important as God's; and since it is the only part that is ever left undone, the pertinency of Paul's exhortation is obvious.What God does in us has for its end something He wants to do by us. He works in us, strengthening us "with power through His Spirit in the inward man" (Eph. iii. io), to make us "perfect in every good work to do His will" (Heb. xiii. 21). He imparts to us His own holy energy that we may do His works. It is our glory that we can be His "co-workers" "labouring together with Him" for the accomplishment of a common end. This union in action is possible because of oneness of nature it becomes actual only when there is oneness of aim. For how can two work together unless they be agreed? Upon man's co-operation God waits, there being many things which He cannot do without him. The influence which He exerts upon him to bring him into partnership with Him, is moral and suasive; for men are not His blind instruments, but His free and intelligent agents. Whenever anyone responds to His call to service, He works with him, and blesses his labours. Paul's declaration, "I planted, Apollos watered, and God gave the increase" (I Cor. iii. 6), expresses the undeviating principle of divine co-operation. The response of God to man's feeblest effort is never problematical. His increase always follows the planting and watering.
So thoroughly does the divine blend into the human, that no line of demarcation can be drawn between them. Their joint action is as the work of one. And so completely does God conceal His movements, that although He is always working with us, He appears to have gone into a far country, leaving us to work out the problem of our life alone. The human actor often appears to be the only one at work. God is content to be the silent partner. He is more anxious to be used than to be praised. He makes Himself so widely available that there need be no sense of separation from Him in any of the lawful activities of life. To such a high plane of copartnership with Him is it possible to rise, that the deeds which seem most our own may be the very deeds in ~which He most fully realises Himself; so that when we are most conscious of living our own lives, Christ may be most fully living Himself over again in us. This was no doubt Paul's experience when he exclaimed, "For to me to live is Christ" (Phil. 1. 21).
Out of this sense of union with God in action--which is a side of the mystical union that many mystics have overlooked --the noblest and most useful lives have been born. Indeed, man rises in the scale of being just in proportion as he realises this practical union. What an immeasurable distance lies between Browning's Caliban as he sprawls in the mud at the door of his cave, dimly dreaming of "the quiet above" which is impotent to help, and a Christian man like Paul, to whom God is a living power within the soul; a power which he can reach, and to which he can unite himself in all his upward struggles, and in all his efforts to make his life productive of good to others. It is when the practical union is fully entered upon, and man gets close to God and becomes bound up with Him in the working out of His eternal purposes, that he attains his highest destiny.1
1 One is surprised to find how completely R. A. Vaughan, in his Hours with the Mystics, ignores the element of divine activity in mystical experience. He even goes the length of defining mysticism as "that form of error which mistakes for a divine manifestation the operation of a merely human faculty." The best he can say of it is that it is "an exaggeration of that aspect of Christianity which is presented to us by St. John" (Vol. I. p. 21). If he had left out the word "exaggeration" and had simply said that Christian Mysticism is that form of Christianity presented to us by St.John, --and by St. Paul,--he would have exactly covered the case.
II.. By embodying the Divine in action.--Action brings enlightenment. In the spiritual as well as in the natural world light is a mode of motion. The soul, like the firefly, glows when on the wing. Those who do Christ's will understand His doctrine. Those who use the truth they have, get more. "Progressive obedience," says Dr.Illingworth, "reacts upon the intellect, and brings progressive insight--insight into the reality of the spiritual life, insight into the power of prayer, insight into the truth of the Christian revelation; and consequent conviction, that as Christians we are in union with God." 1 As the altruistic spirit grows by the practice of altruistic deeds, so mystical experience grows by translating
it into action. If ethically neutral, it fades away and perishes. That Paul's outward labours in the cause of Christ enriched his inner life, we cannot doubt. When out on the path of service, his unseen Lord walked with him, refreshing and strengthening his heart. His experience must often have been similar to that of the old monk who was granted a vision of the glorified Saviour. As he sat in rapt adoration, he heard the convent bell calling him to go and minister to the poor who had gathered at the gate. Without a moment's hesitation he obeyed the summons to duty. When he returned to his cell the vision was still there ; and from its lips came the words, "Hadst thou stayed I must have gone." It is sometimes forgotten that the Master's promise, "Lo, I am with you all the days, even to the consummation of the age" (Matt. XXVIII. 20), is connected with the commission, "Go and make disciples of all the nations." It is to those who obey the call, and not to those who remain behind in idleness, cloying their spiritual appetites with the sweets of religion, that the promise of the Master's abiding presence is given. To them He is inwardly and intimately nigh.1 Christian Character, p. 171.
Unless oxygenised by vigorous exercise, the inner life will become atrophied. In no other way can it be healthfully developed than by engaging in some form of profitable work. The exhortation of Paul to Timothy, "Stir up the gift that
is in thee" (II Tim. 1. 6), implies this ; for the context shows that Timothy was to stir up the smouldering embers of the divine life within him, not by some process of self-excitation, but by attending to certain definite duties from the performance of which he was shrinking back. He was naturally reserved and timid, and lacking in courage. He was in danger of becoming morbidly introspective and self-conscious, and so to restore the balance he was exhorted to force himself out into the field of action, to do unpleasant things; to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. In this way the divine gift which was in him, as part of his inner self, would renew its life, as a banked fire that has been stirred up, so as to give it air and ventilation, will burn in a clear and steady flame.If Paul's own life of intimate fellowship with God and ceaseless activity in the service of man has any lesson to teach, it is that the life within, the life divinely communicated, is fed by the bread of honest toil; that chrismatic gifts increase as they are used; that the emptying of self in the service of humanity is a necessary condition to the obtaining of larger infillings of the Spirit of power. Paul accepted life as it came; finding in every event a means of grace and an opportunity for service. Never did he seek to be freed from the burden of duty, much less from the burden of being. All he sought was strength to bear his burden to the end. Inspired by what he saw in the unseen world around and within him, he toiled bravely on until his task was done, and he entered the heavenly city, in the light of which he had ever walked.