Inge, Christian Mysticism, 21—“Harnack speaks of mysticism as rationalism applied to a sphere above reason. He should have said reason applied to a sphere above rationalism. Its fundamental doctrine is the unity of all existence. Man can realize his individuality only by transcending it and finding himself in the larger unity of God’s being. Man is a microcosm. He recapitulates the race, the universe, Christ himself.” _Ibid._, 5—Mysticism is “the attempt to realize in thought and feeling the immanence of the temporal in the eternal, and of the eternal in the temporal. It implies (1) that the soul can see and perceive spiritual truth; (2) that man, in order to know God, must be a partaker of the divine nature; (3) that without holiness no man can see the Lord; (4) that the true hierophant of the mysteries of God is love. The ‘scala perfectionis’ is (_a_) the purgative life; (_b_) the illuminative life; (_c_) the unitive life.” Stevens, Johannine Theology, 239, 240—“The mysticism of John ... is not a subjective mysticism which absorbs the soul in self-contemplation and revery, but an objective and rational mysticism, which lives in a world of realities, apprehends divinely revealed truth, and bases its experience upon it. It is a mysticism which feeds, not upon its own feelings and fancies, but upon Christ. It involves an acceptance of him, and a life of obedience to him. Its motto is: Abiding in Christ.” As the power press cannot dispense with the type, so the Spirit of God does not dispense with Christ’s external revelations in nature and in Scripture. E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 364—“The word of God is a form or mould, into which the Holy Spirit delivers us when he creates us anew”; _cf.__ Rom. 6:17—_“ye became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching whereunto ye were delivered.” B. False mysticism.—Mysticism, however, as the term is commonly used, errs in holding to the attainment of religious knowledge by direct communication from God, and by passive absorption of the human activities into the divine. It either partially or wholly loses sight of (_a_) the outward organs of revelation, nature and the Scriptures; (_b_) the activity of the human powers in the reception of all religious knowledge; (_c_) the personality of man, and, by consequence, the personality of God.