CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM. 



69 



state rather than a place. It lies all about us, closer than 

 breathing ; " There is not much between us and it," as Plotinus 

 says. It is the eternal abiding reality of which this world is 

 the shadow. But we need not try to get rid of the notion of 

 futurity in connexion with heaven. Time is the form of the 

 will. When we regard our lives as the working out of a unitary 

 purpose — a process still going on — we must look forward to the 

 realization of it as lying in the future, as, indeed, it does. We 

 must look upon these finite purposes as being actually and in 

 very truth working themselves out in time, and as taking their 

 final place in the eternal order after they have been accom- 

 plished in time. There are philosophical difficulties, I know, in 

 this conception ; but it is what we cannot help believing if our 

 probation is a reality, if the conflict between good and evil is a 

 reality ; if the time process has a meaning and justification ; if, 

 finally, the attributes of God are creative and active forces, and 

 not merely unmoving qualities, fixed pictures of perfection. 

 Mysticism asserts that this spiritual world, which can be proved 

 to be a necessary truth by philosophy, is given as a fact by the 

 highest experience of the soul. It asserts that we can and do 

 know, in part and at certain times, the eternal spiritual world. 

 We can transcend the limitations of our finite existence ; we 

 can live the life of the hidden man of the heart. Such 

 a life is not foreign to the nature of the soul. The way 

 to it is by love and yearning, which are natural to the soul 

 when she sees glimpses of her father's house and the home from 

 which she has been exiled. The relation between ivravOa and 

 eKel — a philosophical rather than a religious problem — Plotinus 

 says irdvra ivravOa oaa KaKel, and says that the vision is term 

 ov Oea/Jia^ aWd dWo(;'Tp67ro<^ rod ISelv. The entrance into the 

 spiritual life may be compared with the glimpses of a fourth 

 dimension : an entirely new and higher sphere of existence, un- 

 expected before. " The new birth." 'No thinker has empha- 

 sized this more than Eucken. It is the basis of his philosophy. 



We have now answered the question, " What is reality ? " It is 

 the contents of the mind of God, manifested chiefly as perfect 

 goodness, wisdom, and beauty. It is the universe, but not 

 the material universe nor the universe in space and time, 

 but the sum total of created things in closest union with 

 the creative Spirit, without Whom they could not exist for an 

 instant. All that has meaning and value here is there, but 

 transfigured and essentialized. In order to reach this real 

 spiritual world, we must ourselves become real and spiritual. 

 We can only see what is akin to ourselves. There- 



