If we may characterize scriptural mysticism, it seems very much akin to mental abilities which we meet frequently in our ordinary intercourse. Take, for example, the prescience of a skilled business man. Nothing is more inadequate than the rules for success laid down by many a man who has himself succeeded in business. Mastery of his rules will not help another to win business success. The reason is that there comes out of prolonged business practice a keen sense of what is likely to happen in the industrial or financial world. The sharpened wits foresee without being able to assign reasons or grounds for the prophecies. So it is with intellects trained to any superior skill. The Duke of Wellington once remarked that he had spent all his life wondering what was on the other side of the hills in front of him, yet the Duke himself came to marvelous skill in guessing what was on the other side. There is also a variety of scientific mysticism, if such an expression may be permitted. The man long trained to the reading of scientific processes develops a quick insight which runs far ahead of reason or proof. The transcendent scientific discoveries have been glimpsed or, rather, sensed before they so reported themselves that they could be seized by formal proof. Now it is a far cry from business men, generals, and scientists to the mysticism of the Scriptures, but when we see the emphasis which the Scriptures place upon constancy in keeping the law and in acting according to divine commandments, we cannot help feeling that biblical mysticism was and is an awareness developed as the life becomes practiced to the doing of religious duty. Think too of the emphasis placed in the Scriptures upon the consecration of the whole life to the truth as cleansing the heart from evil. All this makes for a power to seize truth beyond that possible to formal and systematic reason. Mysticism of this sort is the very height of spiritual power. The Master's word: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," does not refer to merely negative virtue. It means also the power of soul accumulated in the positive doing of good. It means entrance into the life of quick spiritual awareness through the adjustment of the whole nature to the single moral purpose. In all promise of revelation the Scriptures insist upon the importance of keeping upon the basis of solid obedience. The finer the instrument is to be, the more massive must be the foundation. Professor Hocking, of Harvard University, has used a remarkable illustration to enforce this very conception. The scientific instrument, he says, which must be kept freest from distracting influences so that it may make the finest registries must rest upon a foundation broad and deep. So the soul that is to catch the finest stirrings of the divine must rest upon the solidest stones of hard work for the moral purposes of the scriptural Kingdom.