As to his attitude toward mysticism, there is a word to say. In the long history of religious thought those who have revolted against metaphysical interpretation, orthodox or unorthodox, have usually taken refuge in mysticism. Hither the prophet Augustine takes refuge when he would flee the ecclesiastic Augustine, himself. The Brethren of the Free Spirit, Tauler, à Kempis, Suso, the author of the _Theologia Germanica_, Molinos, Madame Gayon, illustrate the thing we mean. Ritschl had seen much of mysticism in pietist circles. He knew the history of the movement well. What impressed his sane mind was the fact that unhealthy minds have often claimed, as their revelation from God, an experience which might, with more truth, be assigned to almost any other source. He desired to cut off the possibility of what seemed to him often a tragic delusion. The margin of any mystical movement stretches out toward monstrosities and absurdities. For that matter, what prevents a Buddhist from declaring his thoughts and feelings to be Christianity? Indeed, Ritschl asks, why is not Buddhism as good as such Christianity? He is, therefore, suspicious of revelations which have nothing by which they can be measured and checked. The claim of mystics that they came, in communion with God, to the point where they have no need of Christ, seemed to him impious. There is no way of knowing that we are in fellowship with God, except by comparing what we feel that this fellowship has given us, with that which we historically learn that the fellowship with God gave to Christ. This is the sense and this the connexion in which Ritschl says that we cannot come to God save in and through the historic Christ as he is given us in the Gospels. The inner life, at least, which is there depicted for us is, in this outward and authoritative sense, our norm and guide.