This modern mysticism is very much entangled with theories about the
cure of bodily disease by suggestion; and it is fair to warn those
who are unacquainted with the books of this sect that they will find
much fantastic superstition mixed with a stimulating faith in the
inner light as the voice of God.
But whatever may be the course of this particular movement there can
be no doubt that the Americans, like ourselves, are only at the
beginning of a great revival of mystical religion. The movement will
probably follow the same course as the mediaeval movement in
Germany, with which this little book is concerned. It will have its
philosophical supportees, who will press their speculation to the
verge of Pantheism, perhaps reviving the Logos-cosmology of the
Christian Alexandrians under the form of the pan-psychism of Lotze
and Fechner. It will have its evangelists like Tauler, who will
carry to our crowded town populations the glad tidings that the
kingdom of God is not here or there, but within the hearts of all
who will seek for it within them. It will assuredly attract some to
a life of solitary contemplation; while others, intellectually
weaker or less serious, will follow the various theosophical and
theurgical delusions which, from the days of Iamblichus downward,
have dogged the heels of mysticism. For the "False Light" against
which the "Theologia Germanica" warns us is as dangerous as ever; we
may even live to see some new "Brethren of the Free Spirit" turning
their liberty into a cloak of licentiousness. If so, the world will
soon whistle back the disciplinarian with his traditions of the
elders; prophesying will once more be suppressed and discredited,
and a new crystallising process will begin. But before that time
comes some changes may possibly take place in the external
proportions of Christian orthodoxy. The appearance of a vigorous
body of faith, standing firmly on its own feet, may even have the
effect of relegating to the sphere of pious opinion some tenets
which have hitherto "seemed to be pillars."
For these periodical returns to the "fresh springs" of religion
never leave the tradition exactly where it was before. The German
movement of the fourteenth century made the Reformation inevitable,
and our own age may be inaugurating a change no less momentous,
which will restore in the twentieth century some of the features of
Apostolic Christianity.
LIGHT, LIFE AND LOVE
ECKHART
GOD
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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