2. Johannine mysticism. — ' The greatest monu- ment of most genuine appreciation of St. Paul's mysticism ... is the Gospel and the Epistles of St. John' (Deissmann, St. Paul, Eng. tr., London, 1912, p. 133). The two apostles agree in giving prominence to the mystic idea of the believer's oneness with Christ, to the pre-eminence of Love, and to the Holy Spirit as the Source of knowledge of the things of God, the Giver and Sustainer of spiritual life, and the witness to the Divine son- ship of believers. St. John's chief contributions to the mystical element in religion are (1) that by his insistence on a historical revelation in time ' he counterpoises the strong mystical tendency in succeeding ages to regard the Gospel story as a kind of drama,' as though the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ took place within the soul ; ' Yet he views what he holds as historical under so mystical an aspect, that it would be right to say that for him all life is sacramental ; above all, the Life of lives' (Fleming, op. cit. p. 38); (2) that, by his use of symbols in the expression of mystical thought, he so treats the words and works of Christ as to ensure that 'all things in the world may remind us of Him who made them, and who is theii" sustaining life' (Inge, op. cit. p. 59).
3. Mysticism of other NT writers. — The mystical element in the remaining NT Epistles is of minor importance. In the Epistle to the Hebrews visible things are regarded as symbols of invisible realities of the spiritual world ; the mystic conception of life as an exile and a pilgrimage also has a place (He U""- 13'»; cf. 1 P 1" 2"). 'St. Peter, who shares the Johannine conception as to the " iiuoi- ruptible seed," echoes the thoughtof both St. John and St. Paul as to the timelessness of the redemp- tive process ' (Fleming, op. cit. p. 44).
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As regards the mystical element in the writings of apostolic men before the close of the 1st cent, it is sufficient to say that the judgment of Kufus Jones as to the Church Fatliers in general apjilies especially to this early period : 'The Fathers were not "mystics" in the ordinary sense of the word. Their type of religion was mainly objective and historical, rather than subjective and inward ' (op. cit. p. 80).
4. Christ 'the true mystic.'— When Moberly asserts that ' it is Christ who is the true mystic,' he is referring to the disproportionate emphasis which mystics of various schools (ascetic, contem- plative, symbolic, etc.) have laid upon their own aspect of truth, and he claims that ' one and all the exaggerations find their full correction in the Person of the Incarnate, our Lord Jesus Christ ; for all the exaggerations are partial lights from the full splendour of the presence of His Spirit, which is the ideal meaning of Christian person- ality.' To those who hesitate to speak of Christ as the true mystic, Moberly says : ' If the mode of expression be preferred, it is He who alone has realized all that mysticism and mystics have aimed at. . . . In Him this perfect realization evidently means a harmony, a sanity, a fitly pro- portioned completeness. ... In being the ideal of mysticism, it is also the ideal of general, and of practical, and of aW, Christian experience' (op. cit. p. 314). When the Synoptic narratives are read in this light, the main elements of mysticism are found therein. Miss Underbill is more ambitious, and strives to show that the characteristic experi- ences of great mystics, as, e.g., Suso and Teresa, ' are found in a heightened form in the life of their Master' (op. cit. p. 77). This involves some straining of the records and the anachronistic application to our Lord's experiences of mediieval phraseology. But it remains true that although ' the first three Gospels are not written in the religious dialect of Mysticism,' yet in the earliest accounts of the teaching of Christ ' the vision of God is promised . . . only to those who are pure in heart,' the inwardness of the blessings of His Kingdom is emphasized, and He identifies Himself
with the least of Mis brethren. In the Synoptists is also found ' the law of gain through loss, of life through death, — which is tlie corner-stone of mys- tical (and, many have said, of Christian) ethics' (Inge, op. cit. p. 44).
Of mysticism which is impatient of the historical facts which are the foundation of the Christian religion and has no need of (^hrist as Mediator, the apostolic writers know nothing. P. T. Forsyth, who has no sympathy with mysticism of this type (cf. EjcpT v. [1893-94] 401fi'.), has, nevertheless, said : ' We need more mystic souls and mystic liours. But the true mysticism is not raptly dwell- ing in the mystery of God, it is really living on His miracle. . . . And the only mysticism with a lease of life is that which surrounds the moral miracle which makes Christianity in the end evangelical or nothing. It is the mysticism of the cross' (The Principle of Authority, London, 1912, p. 465). Christian mysticism, as understood by the apostles, is also the mysticism of the S])irit. ' The Christianity which is content to remain " non-mystical " is impoverished at the very centre of its being. All Christians profess belief in the Holy Ghost. Had only all Christians understood, and lived up to, their belief, they would all have been mystics' (Moberly, op. cit. p. 316).