The great religious mystery ultimately became the centre round which even philosophical thought revolved. Henrik Steffens may serve as an example. This writer, in whose character, as Julian Schmidt[13] aptly remarks, "there is an undeniable strain of innate servility," was appointed to conduct the trial of the demagogues in Breslau. It was a task which he accomplished in a spirit at variance with sound human reason and the natural sense of justice, and during its performance he gave expression to the most reactionary religious sentiments, entirely forgetful of the pantheism of his youth. In the essay, _How I Once More Became a Lutheran_, he writes: "The Holy Sacrament is the chief individualising process in Christianity; by its means the whole mystery of the redemption enters in all its fulness into the receptive personality. The fertilising stream of grace, which, since the day of the great regeneration, has flowed through all nature and all history, and which matures us for a blessed future, here takes the form of the Saviour, in order that that which is all in all may be completely present.... By means of the satisfying personal presence of the Saviour, that which the Christian truly believes, that which pervades his whole life, and overcomes death, yet at the same time forces him back into the domain of the senses, here becomes certainty, enjoyment, nourishment. ... To me the communion of the Lord's Supper is the highest, most important, most mysterious of all religious acts; so important does it seem to me, that through it every doctrine acquires unfathomable significance." We see, then, how tremendously important a part this sacrament plays in the Christian mysticism of the period under consideration. There existed a tender, almost an erotic, relation between the faithful and the consecrated elements. True believers were declared to be sensible of the presence of these elements at an extraordinary distance. Read what Görres writes on the subject in the second part of his _Mystik_. "To begin with what is holiest--" he says, "all who have attained to the higher spiritual life are aware, at a prodigious distance, of the presence of the Host." A number of examples of this are given, and we are told in the preface that all the facts instanced are vouched for by numerous witnesses, that these witnesses were the most reliable imaginable, either priests or pious laymen, and that they were particularly favourably situated for making the necessary observations. And we not only learn that saintly believers can detect the Host, no matter where it may be hidden, but that the Host feels such an attraction towards them, that it springs from the priest's hand into their mouths. Sometimes the priest actually feels that it is violently torn out of his hands, drawn like steel by a magnet; and the saintly, in their turn, are so forcibly attracted to the holy substance that they are carried through the air to it.