It is impossible to quote a tithe of the words in John’s Epistles and Gospel which embody the fundamental ideas of Mysticism. Especially do we find in the marvelous words of Jesus reported by John alone, as by the one peculiarly fitted to formulate them, in the thirteenth to the seventeenth chapters of his Gospel, the seeds and roots of all which have been drawn forth by subsequent writers on these profound themes. Plato has been called “the Father of European Mysticism.” Dr. Inge says: “Both the great types of Mystics may appeal to him,—those who try to rise through the visible to the invisible, through nature to God; and those who look upon this earth as a place of banishment, upon material things as a veil which hides God’s face from us, and who bid us seek yonder in the realm of ideas the heart’s true home. Plato teaches that the highest good is the greatest likeness to God; that the greatest happiness is the vision of God; that we should seek holiness, not for the sake of reward, but because it is the health of the soul, while vice is its disease; that goodness is unity and harmony, while evil disintegrates; that it is our duty to rise above the visible and transitory to the invisible and permanent.” The Church has never lacked during its history for those who have followed this line of thought and cultivated this kind of experience. Clement of Alexandria has been called “the Founder of Christian Mysticism,” a Neoplatonist among the Fathers; followed by Dionysius the Areopagite, and a lengthy line of successors, large among whom looms the noble Bernard of Clairvaux, the glory of the twelfth century. Without tracing out the story in detail it will be enough for our purpose to refer briefly to those who, in the few centuries before Fénelon, stood forth most prominently as leaders in this realm of truth, and so prepared the way for him.