PERVERSIONS OF MYSTICISM. 9 It would not be possible for me to give, within the compass of a brief lecture, any adequate and discriminating review of the character and results of the mysticism of the fourteenth century. I must content myself with quoting from Mr. Vaughan a single sentence: "The memorable step of progress (made by Tauler and his companions) is briefly indicated by saying that they substituted the idea of the immanence of God in the world for the idea of the emanation of the world from God." 1 And it is easy to see how this new thought—an old thought now, and one that has grown very precious to the Christian worldwould, in its first freshness and impressiveness, be likely to be perverted and parodied and made the pretext both for theoretical error and vicious practice. "All things are in God and all things are God," said Master Eckart. "All creatures in themselves are naught: all creatures are a speaking or utterance of God." "Simple people conceive that we are to see God as if He stood on that side and we on this. It is not so; God and I are one in the act of my perceiving Him." It is easy to see how such statements as these could be misconstrued and perverted; how they might be interpreted as a deification of the creature, and the exaltation of self-will might be construed as an expression of the will of God; how all distinction between good and evil, virtue and vice, might be swept away, and all external conduct become a matter of indifference. Nay, let these utterances be hardened into intellectual dogma, and they are the most dangerous of falsehoods. If God is thus unqualifiedly in all created things, and all things are filled with Him, then my will, whatever it be, is but the putting 1 Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics, book vi., ch. 6. forth of His will, and my act is the act of God Himself. But the loftier the truth, the baser the parody of which it is susceptible. The devil, says St. Augustine, is but the ape of God. The little that we know about Tauler's personal history after he returned to Strasburg and began to exercise his vocation as a preaching friar may be gathered about three events, and, meagre as it is, will be quite sufficient to show us what manner of man he These events are, was. 1. His defiance of the papal ban. 2. His conversion. 3. The advent of the plague usually known as the Black Death. was one, 1. "According to medieval notions, Christendom one church and one political state. The whole ecclesiastical power centred in the Pope, who was the world-priest. And the whole civil power centred in the Emperor, who was the world-king." 1 The Pope was chosen by the college of cardinals. The Emperor was similarly chosen by a number of princes called Electors, though, after his choice by electors, the Emperor had to be approved and acknowledged by the Pope. Sometimes there was a contested election in either case, -two popes claiming the papal tiara, two emperors claiming the imperial crown. the year 1314 this state of things occurred in the empire; Frederick of Austria and Louis of Bavaria both claimed the election, and both were crowned, and for eight weary years there was a contest between them for the undivided power. The people were divided in their sentiments. The Pope could recognize but one of the claimants, and Frederick was his favorite. The 1 Dr. T. M. Lindsay, Reformation, p. 178. In burghers of Strasburg declared for Louis, and thought that the Pope had no right to interfere in civil affairs. He had his own throne at Rome; let him attend to his business and rule the church. And so the Pope said, "Strasburg shall be put under the ban, and all cities, towns, and individuals who acknowledge Louis for their emperor." We must not forget what this meant. It closed the doors of all the churches. It forbade the preaching of the gospel to those who were under the interdict, though if the Pope were right and the people wrong, one would think that they needed preaching all the more. It refused the sacra ments to Christian people; it compelled the wicked and lawless to go unadmonished. It reduced society, as far as possible, to the condition of paganism. The sick could receive no comfort, and the dying no assurance of absolution. And poor as the aid and comfort of the church were in those days to the weary and the heavy-laden, they were yet far better than none. The priests and the monks took their departure to other towns and provinces which sided with the Pope, in order to avoid excommunication. In a word, the multitudes of the poor and the ignorant were made to suffer for the offenses of their superiors; and if the ban were deserved at all, it was made to press the heaviest where it was least deserved and most feared.1 Through 1 "That awful doom which canons tell all this long and fearful contest, in which the Pope's curse hung like a thunder-cloud over Alsatia, Tauler shrank not for a moment from his customary labors. The heavens were clear over his head. In the fear of God and the love of man all lower fear vanished away. The church door of his convent was not to be nailed up. Day after day he went about encouraging the fearful, consoling the sorrowing, telling men everywhere of the love of God, endeavoring in every way to vary and multiply his labors so as far as possible to fill the places deserted by his brethren. He was the good shepherd of his own flock and of all the shepherdless flocks that he could reach by his voice or his pen. God's gentleness made him great in that fearful time, very great. If we knew nothing else about him than this, this alone would glorify him as a star of the first magnitude in that dark night of the Middle Ages. Strong and tender, brave and Christly man, John Tauler! There is no sainthood since apostolic days that can outrival thine! He addressed a letter to his brother-priests about this time, urging them to Bans all who aid thee in the strife, Nay, each whose succor cold and scant Haunts thee while living, — and, when dead, Dwells on thy yet devoted head; Rends Honor's scutcheon from thy hearse, Stills o'er thy bier the holy verse, And spurns thy corpse from hallowed ground, Flung like vile carrion to the hound; Such is the dire and desperate doom For sacrilege decreed by Rome." - Lord of the Isles. Sir Walter's picture, so far from being overdrawn, is tamer than the facts would warrant, through the exigencies of rhyme and metre. For a description less bizarre, but really more adequate, see Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Sonnets, part I., xxxvi. comfort the people, and keep on preaching and administering the sacraments. "For," he says, "ye are bound to visit and console the sick, remembering the bitter pain and death of Christ, who hath made satisfaction, not for your sins only, but also for those of the whole world; who doth represent us all before God, so that if one falleth innocently under the ban, no pope can shut him out of heaven. Ye should, therefore, give absolution to such as wish therefor, giving heed rather to the bidding of Christ and his apostles than to the ban, which is issued only out of malice and avarice." "Those who hold the true Christian faith, and sin only against the person of the Pope, are no heretics. Those rather are real heretics who obstinately refuse to repent and forsake their sins: for let a man have been what he may, if he will so do, he cannot be cast out of the true church. Through Christ, the truly penitent thief, murderer, traitor, adulterer, all may have forgiveness. Such as God beholdeth under an unrighteous ban, He will turn for them the curse into a blessing." Luther himself uttered no braver words than these, two hundred years later, at Worms or Wittenberg. 2. His greatness appears in another way, though perhaps quite as significantly, in the crisis of his life, which is commonly called his conversion, which occurred in 1340, when Tauler was fifty years of age. His humility and childlikeness of spirit were as conspicuous in this as was his bravery in his treatment of the ban. He had been preaching now for many years, and his fame had gone far and wide. and loved as a good and holy man. one day in his audience a stranger,1 1 Nicholas of Basle. He was known There appeared who heard the |