This book never had any public dedication. It was the work of the best years of a life offered to God. What was not done for the first edition will not be done now; but let these few lines of the author’s son be an offering to the glory of God—to the memory of his father—to the self-devotion of his mother. In one of the author’s poems is the following verse which is strangely appropriate at this place:— Let us toil on—the work we leave behind us, Though incomplete, God’s hand will yet embalm, And use it some way; and the news will find us In heaven above, and sweeten endless calm. WYCLIFFE VAUGHAN. LITTLEMORE, NEAR OXFORD, _November, 1879_. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. The subject of the present work is one which will generally be thought to need some words of explanation, if not of apology. Mysticism is almost everywhere synonymous with what is most visionary in religion and most obscure in speculation. But a _history_ of Mysticism—old visions and old obscurities—who is bold enough to expect a hearing for that? Is the hopeful present, struggling toward clear intelligence, to pause and hear how, some hundreds of years ago, men made themselves elaborately unintelligible? Is our straining after action and achievement to be relaxed while you relate the way in which Mystics reduced themselves to utter inactivity? While we are rejoicing in escape from superstitious twilight, is it well to recall from Limbo the phantasms of forgotten dreamers, and to people our sunshine with ghostly shadows? And since Mysticism is confessedly more or less a mistake, were it not better to point out to us, if you can, a something true and wise, rather than offer us your portrait of an exaggeration and a folly? Such are some of the questions which it will be natural to ask. The answer is at hand. First of all, Mysticism, though an error, has been associated, for the most part, with a measure of truth so considerable, that its good has greatly outweighed its evil. On this ground alone, its history should be judged of interest. For we grow more hopeful and more charitable as we mark how small a leaven of truth may prove an antidote to error, and how often the genuine fervour of the spirit has all but made good the failures of the intellect.