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! Is not the history of mysticism bright with stories of dazzling spiritual enterprise, sombre with tragedies of the soul, stored with records of the achievements and the woes of martyrdom and saintship? Has it not reconciled, as by enchantment, the most opposite extremes of theory and practice? See it, in theory, verging repeatedly on pantheism, ego-theism, nihilism. See it, in practice, producing some of the most glorious examples of humility, benevolence, and untiring self-devotion. Has it not commanded, with its indescribable fascination, the most powerful natures and the most feeble—minds lofty with a noble disdain of life, or low with a weak disgust of it? If the self-torture it enacts seems hideous to our sobriety, what an attraction in its reward! It lays waste the soul with purgatorial pains—but it is to leave nothing there on which any fire may kindle after death. What a promise!—a perfect sanctification, a divine calm, fruition of heaven while yet upon the earth! ATHERTON. Go on, Willoughby, I like your enthusiasm. Think of its adventures, too. WILLOUGHBY. Aye, its adventures—both persecuted and canonized by kings and pontiffs; one age enrolling the mystic among the saints, another committing him to the inquisitor’s torch, or entombing him in the Bastille. And the principle indestructible after all—some minds always who must be religious mystically or not at all. ATHERTON. I thought we might this evening enquire into the causes which tend continually to reproduce this religious phenomenon. You have suggested some already. Certain states of society have always fostered it. There have been times when all the real religion existing in a country appears to have been confined to its mystics. WILLOUGHBY. In such an hour, how mysticism rises and does its deeds of spiritual chivalry—— GOWER. Alas! Quixotic enough, sometimes. WILLOUGHBY. How conspicuous, then, grows this inward devotion!—even the secular historian is compelled to say a word about it—— ATHERTON. And a sorry, superficial verdict he gives, too often. WILLOUGHBY. How loud its protest against literalism, formality, scholasticism, human ordinances! what a strenuous reaction against the corruptions of priestcraft!