The essentials of mysticism, and other essaysUnderhill, Evelyn
Religion
The essentials of mysticism, and other essays
Underhill, Evelyn
Mysticism
On the rebel side we have, of course, the leaders of many dead heresies
and sects. The Montanists of the second century, with their claim to
direct inspiration, their cult of ecstatic phenomena and prophetic
speech; the numerous mystical heretics and illuminati of the Middle
Ages, often preaching the most extravagant doctrines and always claiming
for them divine authority—for instance, the Brethren of the Free Spirit,
who claimed the possession of the Holy Ghost as an excuse not only for
theological, but also for moral aberrations. Later, there are the
Quietists, a particularly poisonous brand of unbalanced contemplatives;
and, contemporary with their revolt against Catholic forms and
authorities, innumerable mystical revolts against Protestant forms and
authorities, the very names of whose originators are now almost
forgotten. Amongst these two mighty figures stand up: Jacob Boehme and
George Fox. But we must remember as regards Boehme that, although he
certainly spoke with great violence against the error of confusing
external acceptance of religion with internal adherence to God,
“historical Christians” with “new men,” he never disowned the Lutheran
Church within which he was born. On the contrary, it was that church
which persecuted and finally disowned him. As to that great and strange
genius, George Fox, who aimed at nothing less than a world religion of a
mystical type, the free and conscious contact of every soul with the
Spirit of God, I believe that any unbiassed student of his Journal must
allow that, enormous as his achievement was, it might have been far
greater had his violent sense of vocation, his remarkable spiritual
gifts, been disciplined and controlled by the corporate consciousness as
expressed in institutional religion. Then some of the energy which he
expended in denunciations of steeple-houses might have been employed in
healing the disharmony between the visible and invisible church; helping
that vision of the Eternal by which he was possessed to find concrete
expression within traditional forms. Here, as elsewhere, the Inner Light
would have burned with a better and a truer flame had it submitted to
the limitations of a lamp.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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