Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th CenturiesJones, Rufus M. (Rufus Matthew)
Religion
Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries
Jones, Rufus M. (Rufus Matthew)
Mysticism; Reformers
Mysticism, as a type of religion, has further staked its precious
realities too exclusively upon the functions of what to-day we call the
sub-conscious. Impressed with the divine significance of "inward
bubblings," the mystic has made too slight an account of the testimony
of Reason and the contribution of history. The subconscious functions
are very real and very important aspects of personal life, and can
never again be ignored in any full account of personality. They
influence every thought, feeling, attitude, volition, opinion, mood,
and insight, and are thus operative in all the higher as well as in all
the lower phases of human life and character. Metaphorically, but only
metaphorically, we speak of the sub-conscious as a vast zone, an
indefinable margin, surrounding the narrow focus of attention, and we
may {xxix} figuratively, but only figuratively, call it the subliminal
"region" where all our life-gains, and often the gains of the race, are
garnered. The contributions from this mental underworld are
inestimable--we could not be men without them--but this subconscious
zone is a source of things bad as well as good, things silly as well as
things wise, of rubbish as well as of treasures, and it is diabolical
as well as divine. It seems in rare moments to connect, as though it
were a hidden inland stream, with the "immortal sea which brought us
hither," and we feel at times, through its incomes, as though we were
aware of _tides_ from beyond our own margin. And, in fact, I believe
we are.
But obviously we cannot assume that whatever comes spontaneously out of
the subconscious is divinely given. It mothers strange
offspring--Esaus as well as Jacobs; its openings, its inrushes, its
bubblings must be severely tested. Impulses of many sorts feel
categorically imperative, but some call to deeds of light and some to
deeds of darkness. They cannot be taken at their face value; they must
be judged in some Court which is less capricious and which is guided by
a more universal principle--something _semper et ubique_. A spiritual
religion of the full and complete type will, I believe, have inward,
mystical depth, it will keep vitalized and intensified with its
experiences of divine supplies, and of union and unification with an
environing Spirit, but it must at the same time soundly supplement its
more or less capricious and subjective, and always fragmentary,
mystical insights with the steady and unwavering testimony of Reason,
and no less with the immense objective illumination of History.
III
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