founder of neo-Platonism, is true of mysticism generally and it is illustrated by the great mystical movement which arose in Germany in the fourteenth century. The movement is associated chiefly with Strasburg and Cologne and other cities in the region of the Rhine. Its founder was Meister Eckhart, and its best literary expression is in the Sermons of John Tauler and in the anonymous work which has sometimes, but apparently without sufficient reason, been ascribed to him, the Theologia Germanica. Both Eckhart and Tauler were Dominican friars, and it is not unlikely that their teaching was in part a reaction against the somewhat arid scholasticism which had established itself within that order. At any rate, there was room for a movement that made a direct appeal to the soul, and which found God immediately through intuition and the faith that worketh by love, rather than at the end of a process of reasoning, or as an inference from data supplied by the senses. Tauler was born at Strasburg. There is uncertainty as to the date of his birth, but it was probably about 1300. In his boyhood he became a novice in the Dominican convent in his native city, and he remained there for ten years. At the end of that time he was sent for further study to Cologne, where he spent four years. It used to be thought that he had studied also at Paris, but that does not seem to have been the case. Paris was then the seat of the scholastic philosophy; and from one of his sermons we gather that Tauler did not feel drawn to that kind of teaching. "Great doctors of Paris," he says, " read ponderous books, and turn over many pages. The Friends of God read the living Book where everything is life." In those years of study, however, he seems to have become deeply read in the writings of Augustine, of the pseudo-Dionysius, and of Bernard; but the greatest influence upon him was that of Eckhart, to whose sermons and lectures he probably listened both at Strasburg and at Cologne. Eckhart's teaching was arousing great popular interest, and arousing too in some quarters the suspicion of heresy, on which account it-or rather some of it-was condemned by the ecclesiastical authorities two years after his death. For the charge of pantheism that was brought against Eckhart, there seems to have been real ground; and pantheism is a form of religious philosophy with which mysticism, with its insistence on the unity of things, has a strong affinity. "God," says Eckhart, "has the substance of all things in himself." "All things are in God, and all things are God." And here are some other characteristic sayings of his : "Consciously or unconsciously all things seek their proper place. The stone cannot cease moving till it touch the earth; the fire rises up to heaven; thus a loving soul can never rest but in God; and so we may say God has given to all things their proper place-to the fish the water, to the bird the air, to the soul the Godhead." "Simple souls 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." "If the soul is to know God, it must forget itself and lose itself, for as long as it contemplates itself it cannot contemplate God. When it has lost itself and everything in God; when it attains to the knowledge of him, it finds also everything which it had abandoned complete in God." "The divine light permeates the soul, and lifts it above the turmoil of temporal things to rest in God. ... Love works the likeness of God into the soul. The peace, freedom and blessedness of all souls consist in their abiding in God's will. Towards this union with God for which it was created the soul strives perpetually."2 Such was the kind of teaching that met with an enthusiastic response in the mind and heart of John Tauler; and it strikes the keynote of his own mystical doctrine. If we assume that he was born in 1300, he would be about 30 when Meister Eckhart died. He became a great preacher, drawing crowds of eager listeners, and became the leader of those who called themselves the Friends of God-a large and loosely organised society of priests and laity, who had been influenced by Eckhart and whose religion was one of union with God, and with all who seek to do God's will. There is much true liberalism of thought in the literature of these Friends of God, though they were all loyal Catholics. Thus in one of their publications, The Book of the Nine Rocks, we read: "If a Jew or a Mohammedan fears God from the depths of his heart, and leads a good and simple life; if he does not know any better religion than the one in which he was born; if he is ready to obey God in case He reveals a better faith than his own, why should not such an one be dearer to God than wicked and impious Christians' who, though they have received baptism, wilfully disobey the commands 1 Sermon on "The Nearness of the Kingdom." of God? When God finds a good Jew or Mohammedan of pure life he feels a thrill of love and infinite pity for him, no matter in what part of the earth he lives, and God will find some way of saving him unknown to us. If baptism cannot be conferred upon him, though he has a desire for it, God can baptise him in the holy desire of his will, and there are in the eternal world many good pagans who have been received in this way." Such sentiments would be remarkable in almost any Christian century; and they show how deeply the religion of those fourteenth century Friends of God was rooted and grounded in love, and how truly it was a religion of the spirit. The movement found its most exquisite literary expression in the book called the Theologia Germanica. The great saying of its unknown author, "I would fain be to the Eternal Goodness what his own hand is to a man has been the motto of many a noble life. The book gave fresh utterance to St. Bernard's doctrine that our love of God must be a pure disinterested love. It does not set self-realisation as the chief end of existence. "So long," it says, as a man seeketh his own will and his own highest good, because it is his and for his own sake, he will never find it. For so long as he doeth this, he is seeking himself, and dreameth that he is himself the highest good. But whoever seeketh, loveth, and pursueth goodness as goodness and for the sake of goodness, not for the love of the I, me, mine, self, and the like, he will find the highest good, for he seeketh it aright.' (Chapter xliv.) The quality of the Theologia Germanica, and the spirit that animated the Friends of God, may be further illustrated by this passage: " " " "Wherever a man hath been made a partaker of the divine nature, in him is fulfilled the best and noblest life and the worthiest in God's eyes. And of that eternal love which loveth goodness as goodness and for the sake of goodness, a true noble Christ-like life is so greatly beloved, that it will never be forsaken or cast off. Where a man has tasted this life, it is impossible for him ever to part with it, were he to live until the judgment day. . . . This is one answer to the question, 'If a man, by putting on Christ's life, can get nothing more than he hath already and serve no end, what good will it do him? ' This life is not chosen to serve any end, or to get anything by it, but for love of its nobleness, and because God loveth and esteemeth it so greatly. And whoever saith that he hath had enough of it, and may now lay it aside, hath never tasted nor known it; for he who hath truly felt or tasted it can never give it up again. And he who hath put on the life of Christ with the intent to win or deserve ought thereby, hath taken it up as an hireling, and not for love, and is altogether without it. For he who doth not take it up for love, hath none of it at all; he may dream indeed that he hath put it on, but he is deceived. Christ did not live such a life as his for the sake of reward, but out of love; and love maketh such a life light and taketh away all its hardships; so that it becometh sweet and is gladly endured. But to him that hath not put it on from love, but hath done so, as he dreameth, for the sake of reward, it is utterly bitter and a weariness, and he would fain be quit of it. And it is a sure token of an hireling, that he wisheth his work were at an end. But he who truly loveth it, is not offended at its toil nor the length of time it lasteth. Therefore it is written: To serve God |