This Boots belongs to Kumagusu Mino Siata, Wakayama City, Kii, Japan. $1,00 (Dard bed at & shelling)s. Argust 15th, 2348. TAULER AND THE MYSTICS. A. D. 1290-1361. CURIOUS it is to observe how these Common-sense Philosophers, men who brag chiefly of their irrefragable logic, and keep watch and ward, as if this were their special trade, against 'Mysticism,' and 'Visionary Theories,' are themselves obliged to base their whole system on Mysticism, and a Theory; on Faith, in short, and that of a very comprehensive kind; the Faith, namely, either that man's Senses are themselves Divine, or that they afford not only an honest, but a literal representation of the workings of some Divinity. So true is it that for these men also, all knowledge of the visible rests on belief of the invisible and derives its first meaning and certainty therefrom. CARLYLE, Essay on Novalis. SOME HERETICS OF YESTERDAY. I. TAULER AND THE MYSTICS. A. D. 1290-1361. MAN's religion, like himself, combines the seen and temporal with the unseen and eternal. The soul, or spirit, or unseen reality of religion, is something entirely distinct from the visible form in which it is embodied. The two may exist apart, but the normal condition is that of combination in balance and harmony and mutual helpfulness. Religion may exist only as a corpse; and it may exist also only as a disembodied spirit. There may be only the visible appearance, the phenomena of churches and dogmas and sacraments and sermons, without any interior and spiritual reality. There have been, as we know, not only individuals, but whole communities and long ages, in which this has been the case, when religion has been like the fair shell of a nut in which the kernel has completely decayed. And, on the other hand, there may be religion which takes on little or no visible manifestation, no church, no human ministry, no formulated creed, no sacraments, nothing save the spiritual intercourse between man and his God. But as in the human constitution body and soul are intended |