Part 8
“Oh Bride, in virgin chastity, Is the Love of God made ready for thee.”
And the soul says:
“Even so; yet though high and pure it be, That path is not the highest for me.”
And the senses:
“In the blood of the martyred saints May’st thou refresh thy soul that faints.”
And the soul:
“I have been martyred so many a day, I cannot now tread in that way.”
And the senses:
“By the wise Confessors’ side, The pure in heart love to abide.”
And the soul:
“And their counsel will I obey, Both when I go and when I stay; And yet I cannot walk their way.”
And the senses:
“In the Apostles’ wisdom pure, May’st thou find a refuge sure.”
And the soul:
“I have their wisdom here in my heart, And with it I choose the better part.”
And the senses:
“O Bride, the angels are fair and bright, Full of God’s love, full of God’s light; Would’st thou refresh thee, mount to their height.”
And the soul:
“The angel’s joy is but heartache to me, If their Lord and my Bridegroom I do not see.”
And the senses:
“In holy penance refresh thee and save, That God to St. John Baptist gave.”
And the soul:
“I am ready for pain, ready for grief, Yet the combat of love is first and chief.”
And the senses:
“O Bride, would’st thou refreshèd be, So bend thee to the Virgin’s knee, To the little Babe, and taste and see The milk of joy from the Maid’s breast, That the angels drink, in unearthly rest.”
And the soul:
“It is but a childish love indeed, Babes to cradle, babes to feed; I am a fair, a full-grown bride, I must haste to my Lover’s side.”
And the senses:
“O bride, if thou goest thou shalt find, That we are utterly dazzled and blind. Such fiery heat in God doth dwell— Thou thyself knowest it well— That all the flame and all the glow Which in Heaven above and the Saints below Burneth and shineth—all doth flow From God Himself. His divine breath Sighed by the Spirit’s wisdom and power, Through His human lips, born to death, —Who may abide it, e’en for an hour?”
And the soul says:
“The fish in the water cannot drown, The bird in the air cannot sink down, Gold in the fire cannot decay, But shineth fairer and clearer alway. To all creatures God doth give, After their own natures to live. How can I bind my nature’s wings? I must haste to my God before all things; My God, by His nature my Father above, My Brother in His humanity, My Bridegroom in His ardent love, And I His from Eternity. Think ye, that Fire must utterly slay my soul? Nay—fierce He can scorch—then tenderly cool and console.”
“And so did the utterly loved go in to the utterly lovely; into the secret chamber of the Pure Divinity. And there she found the resting place of love, and the home of love, and the Divine Humanity that awaited her.”
And the soul said:
“Lord, God, I am now a naked soul And Thou art arrayed all gloriously: We are Two in One, we have reached the goal, Immortal rapture that cannot die. Now, a blessed silence doth o’er us flow, Both wills together would have it so. He is given to her, she is given to Him,— What now shall befall her, the soul doth know— And therefore am I consoled.”
This is the end of all mysticism. It is the term to which all the artistic efforts of the mystics have striven to lead the hearts of other men.
Footnote 1:
For the verse-translations in the following extracts I am indebted to the great skill and kindness of Mrs. Theodore Beck, who, possessing a special talent for this difficult art, has most generously made for me these versions of Mechthild’s poetry.
THE EDUCATION OF THE SPIRIT
The old mystics were fond of saying that “Man is a made trinity, like to the unmade Blessed Trinity.” That particular form of words comes to us from Julian of Norwich; but it expresses a thought which we often meet in the spiritual writers of the Middle Ages. Further, these writers were disposed to find in man’s nature a reflection of the three special characters which theology attributes to the Christian Godhead. They thought that the power of the Father had its image in the physical nature of man: the wisdom of the Son in his reason: the creative vigour of the Holy Spirit in his soul. Some taught also that each of these three aspects of humanity corresponded with one aspect of the triune reality of the universe: the physical world of nature, the mental world of idea, the ultimate world of spirit. The sceptic of course would express this differently, and see in it but one more illustration of the fact that man always makes God in his own image. But without scepticism I think we may explain it thus: that those who have pondered most deeply on the Divine Nature have most easily found in its richness, and have best understood, just those attributes which are most clearly marked in human nature. Man has inevitably been for them a key to God.
These speculations seem at first sight to have little bearing upon the problems of education. But they are in reality intimately connected with it: for their consideration leads us back to the central fact out of which they have arisen—namely, the abiding truth that man’s deepest exploration of his own nature gives again and again this threefold result, that he feels that his real self-hood and real possibilities are not wholly exhausted by the terms “body” and “mind.” He knows in his best moments another vivid aspect of his being, as strong as these, though often kept below the threshold of his consciousness: the spirit, which informs, yet is distinct from both his body and his mind.
Now the question which all serious educationalists are called upon to ask themselves is this: To what extent does that three-fold analysis of human personality influence our educational schemes? The object of education is to bring out the best and highest powers of the thing educated. Do we, in our education, even attempt to bring out the best and highest powers of the spirit, as we seek to develop those of the body and the mind?
The child as he comes to us is a bundle of physical, mental, and spiritual possibilities. He is related to three distinct yet interpenetrating worlds; all accessible to him, since he is human, and all offering endless opportunities of adventure to him.
“Heaven lies about us in our infancy, Shades of the prison-house begin to close About the growing boy.”
Why should they close; whose fault is it that they do? Does not the fault lie with the poor and grovelling outlook of those to whom this sensitive, plastic thing is confided? Who so badly select and manipulate the bundle of possibilities offered to them, that they often contrive to manufacture a creature ruled by its own physical needs and appetites, its mental and emotional limitations; instead of a free, immortal being, master of its own body and mind. Here is this child, the germ of the future. To a great extent, we can control the way that germ develops; the special characters of the past which it shall transmit. We can have a hand in the shaping of the history that is to be when we have gone: for who can doubt that the controlling factor of history is the physical, mental, or spiritual character of those races that dominate the world? It is in the interplay, tension, and strife of these three universes that history in the last resort consists.
Now, on the eve of a new era, is it not worth while to remind ourselves of this terrific fact? To see whether our plans are so laid as to bring out all the balanced possibilities of the coming man; all his latent powers? We recognize the fact that body and mind must be trained whilst still in a plastic state. We are awake to the results of allowing them to atrophy. Where we find individuals with special powers in one of these directions, we aim at their perfect development; at the production of the athlete, scholar, man of action. But it cannot be said that we are equally on the lookout for special qualities of spirit; that when found, we train them with the same skill and care. Yet if we do not, can we expect to get the very best out of the race? To explore all its potentialities; some, perhaps, still unguessed? We know that the child’s reactions to life will be determined by the mental furniture with which he is equipped. His perceptions, his choice from among the welter of possible impressions surrounding him, will depend on the character of his “apperceiving mass.” Surely then it is our first duty so to equip him that he shall be able to lay hold on those intimations of spirit which are woven into the texture of our sensual universe; to lead him into that mood of receptivity in which the beautiful and the significant, the good and the true, stand out for him from the scene of life and hold his interest. A meadow which to one boy is merely a possible cricket field, to another is a place of romance and adventure, full of friendly life.
The mischief is that whatever our theoretic beliefs, we do not in practice really regard spirit as the chief element of our being; the chief object of our educational care. Our notions about it are shadowy, and have very little influence on our educational schemes. Were it present to us as a vivid reality, we should surely provide our young people with a reasoned philosophy of life in which it is given its place: something which can provide honest answers to the questions of the awakening intelligence, and withstand the hostile criticism which wrecks so much adolescent faith. For ten parents who study the Montessori system of sense training, how many think of consulting those old specialists who taught how the powers of the spirit may be developed and disciplined, and given their true place in human life? How many educationalists realize that prayer, as taught to children, may and should be an exercise which gently develops a whole side of human consciousness that might otherwise be dormant; places it in communication with a real and valid universe awaiting the apprehension of man? How many give the subject the same close, skilled attention that they give, say, to Latin grammar on one hand or physical culture on the other? Those subjects, and many more, have emerged from vagueness into clarity because attention, the cutting point of the human will, has been concentrated upon them. Gradually in these departments an ordered world has been made, and the child or young person put in correspondence with that world. We cannot say that the same has been done for the world of spirit. The majority of the “well-educated” probably pass through life without any knowledge of the science of prayer, with at best the vaguest notions of the hygiene of the soul. Often our religious teachers are themselves no better instructed, and seem unable to offer the growing and hungry spirit any food more heavenly than practical ethics and dogmatic beliefs. Thus a complete world of experience is habitually ignored by us, and one great power of the human trinity allowed to atrophy.
We are just beginning as educators to pay ordered attention to that fringe-world in which sense, intellect, and spirit all have a part: I mean the world of æsthetic apprehension. It cannot be denied that the result has been, for many of the young people now growing up, an immense enlargement and enrichment of life. Look at one of the most striking intellectual characteristics of the last few years: the rapid growth of the taste and need for poetry, the amount of it that is written, the way in which it seems to supply a necessary outlet for young Englishmen in the present day. Look at the mass of verse which was composed, under conditions of utmost horror, on the battlefields; poetry the most pathetic in the world, in which we see the passionate effort of spirit to find adjustment, its assertion of unconquerable power, even in the teeth of this overwhelming manifestation of brute force. There is the power of the future: the spirit of beauty and truth seeking for utterance. There is that quickening spring, bubbling up afresh in every generation; and ready, if we will help it to find expression, to transfigure our human life.
There is a common idea that the spiritual life means something pious and mawkish: not very desirable in girls, and most objectionable in boys. It is strange that this notion, which both the Jewish and Christian Scriptures so emphatically contradict, should ever have grown up amongst us. The spirit, says St. Paul, is not a spirit of fearfulness; it is “a spirit of Power and Love and Discipline”—qualities that make for vigour and manliness of the best type. It is the very source of our energies, both natural and supernatural. The mystics sometimes called it our “life-giving life,” and modern psychologists are beginning to discover that it is, in the most literal sense, our “health’s eternal spring.” People say, “Come, Holy Spirit”; as if it were something foreign to us: yet it comes perpetually in every baby born into the world, for each new human life entering the temporal order implies a new influx or, least, a new manifestation of spirit. But, when spirit is thus wedded to mind and body to form human nature, it is submitted to the law governing human nature: the law of freedom. It is ours, to develop or stunt as we please. Its mighty powers are not pressed on an unwilling race, but given us in germ to deal with as we will. Parents are responsible for giving it every opportunity of development, the food, the light, the nurture that all growing things require—in fact, for its education: a great honour, and a great responsibility.
If we are asked wherein such education should consist, I think we must reply that its demands are not satisfied by teaching the child any series of religious doctrines divorced from practical experience. He is full of energies demanding expression. Our object is so to train those energies that they shall attain their full power and right balance; and enable him to set up relations with the spiritual world in which he truly lives. The first phase in this education will consist in a definite moral training, which is like the tilling and preparation of the earth in which the spiritual plant is to grow: and as regarding the special objects of this training I will take the definition of a great spiritual writer, a definition remarkable for its sanity and moderation: “If we would discover and know that Kingdom of God which is hidden in us, we must lead a life that is virtuous within, well ordered without, and fulfilled with true charity.” What does that imply? It implies the cultivation of self-control, order, and disinterestedness. Order is a quality which all spiritual writers hold in great esteem; for they are far from being the ecstatic, unbalanced, and mood-ridden creatures of popular fancy. Now the untrained child has all the disorderly ways, the uncontrolled and self-interested instincts of the primitive man. He is a vigorous young animal, reacting promptly and completely to the stimulus of fear or of greed. The history of human society, the gradual exchange of license for law, self-interest for group-interest, spasmodic activity for orderly diligence must be repeated in him if he is to take his place in that human society. But if we would also prepare in him the way of spirit, the aim of this training must be something higher than that convenient social morality, that spirit of fair play, truth, justice, mutual tolerance, which public school discipline seeks to develop. That morality is relative and utilitarian. The morality in which alone the life of the spirit can flourish is absolute and ideal. It is sought, not because it makes life secure, or promotes the greatest happiness of the greatest number, but for its own sake. Yet in spite of this, the social order, in the form in which the child comes in contact with it, may be made one of the best instruments for producing those characters demanded by the spiritual life. For what, after all, is the exchanging of self-interest for group-interests but the beginning of love? And what is at the root of the spirit of give and take but humility? See how the approaches to the spiritual kingdom are found in the midst of the common life: what easy opportunity we have of initiating our children into these central virtues of the soul. The spiritual writers tell us that from love and humility all other virtues come; that on the moral side nothing else is required of us. And we, if we train wisely, may lead the young into them so gently and yet so deeply that their instinctive attitude to existence will be that of humbleness and love; and they will be spared the conflict and difficult reformation of those who wake to spiritual realities in later life.
Now humbleness and love, as understood by spiritual persons, are not passive virtues: they are energetic, and show themselves in mind, will, and heart. In the mind, by a constant desirous tendency to, and seeking after, that which is best; in the will by keenness, or, as the mystics would say, by diligence and zeal; in the heart, by an easy suppleness of relation with our fellow men—patience, good temper, sympathy, generosity. Plainly the moral character which makes for spirituality is a moral character which also makes for happiness. Suppose, then, that our moral training has been directed towards this eager, supple state of humbleness and love: what special results may we expect as the personality develops? Spiritual writers tell us to expect certain qualities, which are traditionally called the “seven gifts of the spirit”; and if we study the special nature of these gifts, we see that they are the names of linked characters or powers, which together work an enhancement and clarification of the whole personality—a tuning-up of human nature to fresh levels, a sublimation of its primitive instincts. The first pair of qualities which are to mark our spiritual humanity are called Godliness and Fear. By these are meant that solemn sense of direct relationship with an eternal order, that gravity and awe, which we ought to feel in the presence of the mysteries of the universe; the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom. From these grow the gifts called Knowledge, that is, the power of discerning true from false values, of choosing a good path through the tangled world, and Strength, the steady central control of the diverse forces of the self: perhaps the gift most needed by our distracted generation. “Through the gift of spiritual strength,” says Ruysbroeck, “a man transcends all creaturely things and possesses himself, powerful and free.” This is surely a power which we should desire for the children of the future, and get for them if we can.
We see that the first four gifts of the spirit will govern the adjustment of man to his earthly life: that they will immensely increase the value of his personality in the social order, will clarify his mind and judgment, confer nobility on his aims. The last three gifts—those called Counsel, Understanding and Wisdom—will govern his intercourse with the spiritual order. By Counsel, the spiritual writers mean that inward voice which, as the soul matures, urges us to leave the transitory and seek the eternal: and this not as an act of duty, but as an act of love. When that voice is obeyed, the result is a new spiritual Understanding; which, says Ruysbroeck again, may be “likened to the sunshine, which fills the air with a simple brightness, and lights all forms and shows the distinctions of all colours.” Even so does this spiritual gift irradiate the whole world with a new splendour, and shows us secrets that we never guessed before. Poets know flashes of it, and from it their power proceeds; for it enables its possessor to behold life truly, that is from the angle of God, not from the angle of man.
“Such an one,” says Ruysbroeck, “walks in heaven, and beholds and apprehends the height, the length, the depth, and the breadth, the wisdom and truth, the bounty and unspeakable generosity, which are in God our Lover without number and without limit; for all this is Himself. Then that enlightened man looks down, and beholds himself and all other men and all creatures; and this gift, through the knowledge of truth which is given us in its light, establishes in us a wide-stretching love towards all in common.”
“A wide-stretching love towards all in common.” When we think of this as the ruling character of our future citizens, and so the ruling character of our future world, we begin to see that the education of the spirit may represent a political no less than a transcendental ideal. It alone can bring about that regeneration, working from the heart outwards, of which the prophets of every country have dreamed.
It seems hard to conceive anything beyond this. But there is something. To behold things as they are is not the end: beyond this is that Wisdom which comes not with observation, but is the fruit of intimate communion with Reality. Understanding is perception raised to its highest expression: Wisdom is intuition raised to its highest expression, and directed towards an absolute objective. It is, so far as we know here, the crown and goal of human development; the perfect fruition of love.