and holy quiet. The very causes which doubt the mystics aimed at a nearness to compelled the stoic to betake himself to God; no doubt they felt that the one suhis ideal of a wise man, who is self-suf- preme moment in each one's life was that ficient within himself, and to turn his in which all else fading behind it, the back upon a universe where disorder man is conscious of two things only, God reigned, begat the individualism of the the Almighty, and himself in His presmystic, and thus the paradoxes of the ence; but the passage of the soul to such stoic and the allegorizing tendencies of a standing, and its action when there, are the mystic spring from the same source. not described in the same way by the I need hardly say, that this comparison mystic and by the Reformation theobetween the mystics and the stoics, re-logian. The mystic, keeping within the fers to one point only in the doctrines of circle of the soul, shows how the perturbeach the individualism which made ing and distracting and blinding affecthem turn from external fact to inward tions of sense may be removed until the idea. On all other points save this no inmost essence of the soul, the scintilla, comparison is possible. For there is or spark of the divine presence, is face to pervading the whole of the mystical the- face with the brightness from whence it ology an intense and devout spirituality, emanated; the Reformation theologian, which marks it off from any pagan phil-going beyond man and his helplessness osophy, however refined. "There is in things spiritual, describes the awakennothing," as Dorner says, "more charac-ing, enlightening, and guiding influence teristic of mysticism than that it will not of the Holy Spirit. The mystic, keeping stop short at the means, but seeks com- within the circle of the soul, shows how munion with God Himself-contact of the soul with Him. The sensible tangibleness of divine ordinances does not satisfy it; it seeks the spiritual certainty of God, its salvation, through the present living God, not merely through past actions which may have become mere symbols of His presence; it seeks that the soul may, above all, rejoice in its God." But the point here insisted on is, that the same circumstances which made the stoics betake themselves to an ideal life, instead of actively helping to make real life better than it was, led the mystics to seek this near and intimate fellowship with God by one particular way - by despising all external aid as mechanical, and, therefore, unspiritual, and seeking that help alone which was to be found within their own individual souls.

the scintilla, or spark of the divine presence within man, when once brought face to face with God, who is its home, seeks to lose itself again in that brightness by renouncing all individuality, as the wave does when it sinks to the surface of the ocean; the Reformation theologian again going beyond man, describes how man, brought into the presence of God, seeks to have fellowship with Him by renouncing all merit of his own, in order to rest on the merit of the Christ of this God in whose presence he is; or, as Ritschl says, "The problem of the mystic is how to get rid of his individuality, as created, in order to attain union with God and absorption into His Being. And this is quite distinct from the Reformation problem how to remove one's own merit, in order to gain by confidence in Christ's Nowhere is this seen better than in the merit a standing before God and peace of way, to select one instance, in which the conscience, in spite of the sense of sin." mystics treat what must ever be the cen- The religious task of the mystic is based. tral idea of every theology — the idea of upon a comparison, not between sinner atonement. They rejected the old Catho- and lawgiver, but between creature and lic theory as too mechanical and external, Creator, and designs to do away with the but they could not conceive of any theory distance which the fact of creation estabwhich, while it was spiritual, was yet exter-lishes between the two; and the whole nal and objective, and so they did not attempt to frame any such theory; their idea of atonement could have no basis outside the individual soul, whether of historical fact or external ordinance. And so, in their hands, the theory of atonement became a doctrine of self-renunciation, or a statement of the means by which all the impediments lying between the inmost core of the human soul, and God, its Maker, may be removed. No

means for the accomplishment of this task are to be found within the circle of man's being, and need not be sought. for in external ordinance or event of his-tory.*

It may be objected to this that many of the mystics. set great store by the sacraments, and especially the sacrament of the Supper; and that in the doctrine of the sacraments and the benefits flowing from them there is a recognition of a doctrine of the atonement, which presupposes the historical death of Christ, the necessity of an objective ordinance, and of an external

It is not difficult to see how an indi- explain or account for the fact. In our vidualist theology of this kind tended to opinion it will be very difficult indeed to destroy the old Catholic Church; its one show any very thorough-going connectendency, as regards that Church, was to tion between two tendencies so unlike. disintegrate it and break it up into a The leaders of the Reformation certainly mass of isolated individual worshippers, sought to do away with much of the exwithout organic coherence of any kind. ternality and mechanical routine of cereBut it is very difficult to understand how mony which the old Catholic Church men like Dorner and Ullmann can see in placed between the worshipper and God, mysticism a positive element of prepara- and they longed for a near approach to tion for the Reformation; and I am per- God Himself, as much as did the theolosuaded, if Luther had never asserted, gians of the mystical school; but they with all the strength of utterance for tried to get rid of the mechanical, and, at which he is famous, that, next to the the same time, preserve the objective or Bible and St. Augustine, he was indebted historical in worship, and theology. The for most of what he knew about "God, main conception with the Reformation Christ, man, and all things," to that theologians was not individualist; they "noble little book," the "Deutsche The-had ever in view a Church—a commuologie," we should not have heard so nity of believers-not single, solitary much about the intimate relation sub- worshippers. The principle of the Resisting between the medieval mystics formers was not the right of private and the Reformation theology. Luther, judgment, but the responsibility of private undoubtedly and deservedly, held the judgment, a social and not an individual "Deutsche Theologie" in high estima-idea. They aimed at the reformation, tion. He caused the book to be repub- not the disintegration, of the Church. lished, giving it a new title, and intro- Their idea was, that the organic undyduced it with a characteristic preface;ing Church of God had for a period been but it is impossible to attach any scientific accuracy to Luther's statement of the effect of this book upon him. No one asserts that Occam, Gabriel Biel, or Peter d'Ailly were reformers before the Reformation, or that their theology contained in embryo the Reformation doc-of every earnest Christian, they held, was trine; and yet, though the fact has been too often overlooked, Luther was never weary of praising Occam, and called him constantly "mein lieber Meister," while he so highly esteemed the writings of Biel and d'Ailly, that his biographers assure us he had by heart the whole of the bulky volumes which contain them. Luther's statement was just what a greathearted grateful man, like Luther, would say about any book or man who had taught The fundamental idea of Reformation him a great deal and done him good. And theology was not the intense individualism Dorner has fallen into the grave misap- of the mystics, but a faith as intense in prehension of taking Luther's declaration the community of the faithful, an earnest as a careful historical account of the gen-belief in the common life of believers in esis of his opinions. He seems to have the Spirit of God, and in a commonwealth considered it to have been a fact that of believers which was so true and real Luther's theology, and, therefore, the theology of the Reformation, had its source in the Deutsche Theologie," and in medieval mysticism, and that all that remained for him, or any critic, was to

ecclesiastical organization; but, in point of fact, very little stress can be laid upon what the mystics say about the sacraments. Their utterances on this point are generally vague and often contradictory, and the most common opinion seems to have been that the sacraments were eminently useful only while men lived the external or imperfect Christian life.

enslaved by an anti-Christian hierarchy, who had usurped the name and functions which belonged to the whole body of the people of God, who, taught and inspired by the Spirit of God, were in possession of the Word and sacraments. The duty

to get rid of this incubus, which preyed on and concealed under its hideous shade the true historical church of God, and help to bring it back to its old form and standing, as the Jewish nation was brought back from the captivity in Babylon; for this is the idea expressed in the title of Luther's great polemical tract "The Babylonish Captivity of the Church of God."

and abiding that it did not need that outward mechanism which formed the organic structure of the old Catholic Church. If the external and mechanical ecclesiasticism of the Church, and its seemingly hopeless break-down, caused the mystics to despair of a commonwealth of believers, and betake themselves to a despairing individualism, it forced the Reformation theologians to penetrate beneath the surface of events,

and discern under the changing, tossing' strength the same fundamental weaksurface stream, the steady, strong and nesses, and always carrying within it the silent rush of the great tide beneath, and same seeds of failure and decay. Mystiso led them to exchange a mechanical cism has never been a permanent influence for a spiritual, yet no less real and objec- within the Church of Christ, and never tive, Catholicity. The one aim of Re- can be. Its contempt for the historical formation theology was to preserve the brings with it its own punishment. They communal or churchly life of the believer, who know not the divine meaning of hisand yet do away with that external and tory can never make history, whether of mechanical structure which had proved nations or creeds; and each new sect of such a hindrance to spiritual well-being. mystics perishes, it may be much regretIt does not belong to my present purpose ted, but little missed, by the age in which to show how this idea of a spiritual and it has suddenly bloomed, come to fruition, yet real objectivity pervaded the whole and died. of the Reformation theology, and how it led its theologians to their ideas of the historical character of revelation, of the plan of redemption, and of the corporate life of the Church; how it led to a scientific interpretation of Scripture, as historical, to a spiritual but objective theory of justification, and to the scientific study of Church history. Still less is it my purpose to discuss how far the actual doctrines of that theology succeeded or failed in embodying their fundamental ideas. My intention has only been to point out the irreconcilable and fundamental difference between the theology of the mystics and the theology of the Reformation.

From Blackwood's Magazine. THE STORY OF VALENTINE; AND HIS BROTHER.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

VALENTINE, poor boy, was in his room dressing for dinner, fearing and knowing nothing of all that was happening, when Violet made that hapless visit to throw herself on Lady Eskside's mercy. He was whistling softly before his glass, tying his necktie and chafing at the thought that to-morrow must again be a blank day on which he could not see her

Mysticism, with its hopelessness of all organic life and its weak impulse to soli--and that only after the election could tary individualism, is at best, even with all everything be settled. He was uneasy its excellencies, a theology of despair; and restless, he did not know why, with the past is all disappointment, and, as for a sensation of something in the air which the future, it has none. The theology of he did not understand, but which made the Reformation, with its hopeful recogni- him by moments vaguely unhappy. When tion of a common organic life of the faith- he began to dress he had seen from his ful deep down beneath the surface disin- window, or thought he saw, old Jean Moftegration, and its strong impulse to histor-fatt, with a huge umbrella, standing at the ical theology and a new Church life, was, with all its faults, a theology of hope; the past was full of encouragement, even at its darkest periods, and the future was its own.

Mysticism can never yield more than it expects to gain. Every mystic, in theory at least (for most of the mystics were nobler in their lives than in their doctrines), lived in himself for himself; and all that others can gain from mysticism is the quickening of the individual heart, and the strengthening of the individua! resolve, and the soothing of the individual sorrow. It can never lead to a great awakening of the common religious life, and can never lay the foundations of a permanent impulse in theology. It has reappeared again and again in all the various branches of the Christian Church, always concealing in the first rush of is

corner of the path which led into the woods, and had sent down his man in great eagerness to ask if any note had come for him, thinking the old woman might have been Love's messenger for lack of a better. But there was no note, and Val consoled himself, in that delicious sense of the poetic elevation of being in love which is so sweet to girls and boys, with thinking that his Violet was so much the centre of his thoughts as to throw her sweet shadow upon everything. Few people fully estimate the happiness of a young lover even when separated from the beloved object, in being able to make such delightful reflections. Val dressed and came down stairs all unconscious of what it was which had made the rain beat in upon the carpet in the drawing-room. "Why, you must have had the windows open! What an idea in such a night with the

wind due west!" he said. But even detail, what he considered as the shame Mary, though she gave him a warning of his family, and had done it like a look which he could not understand, said nothing to him; and dinner passed off as usual, though somehow more quietly. Lord Eskside was tired worn out with his long day's work. "And I am tired too," said my lady; "it is the weather, I suppose. I think we should all go early to bed, to be fresh for to-morrow.' When the gentlemen were left alone, the old lord called Val to him. "We will take our wine in the library; I have a great deal to say to you, my boy," he said, leading the way into his own particular retirement. And then the worst moment of Val's life came to him unawares. He felt already that there was something to be revealed, from the moment they entered the room in which he had always received his admonitions when a child, and which was associated to him- but up to this time how lightly! -with all the clouds and shadows of his early life.

"Sit down here, Val," said the old lord. "You must pluck up a heart, for there's something unpleasant coming. Not of any consequence, or that can affect you seriously- but very unpleasant. Val, in every election there's things of this kind," he continued, slowly unfolding a paper. "I've seen a great deal worse. I've seen ill deeds, that a man had forgotten for twenty or thirty years, raked up to bring shame on his grey hairs. Thank God, there's nothing of that kind possible with you! But it's unpleasant enough, unpleasant enough." "For heaven's sake, sir, tell me what it is at once! Don't keep me in this suspense."

stoic, without showing any emotion; but now he watched Val, tender as a mother over her baby, following the boy's eyes from line to line, his starts of indignation and pain, the furious colour that came over his face, the quick-drawn panting breath which showed the immense constraint he put on himself. Lord Eskside put out his hand once or twice, and laid it on Val's arm with an instinctive caress, which from him was more than an embrace would have been from another. Val took a long time to read it, for the struggle was hard; not that the sense of it did not flash into his mind almost in a moment, with all those curious sensations of familiarity as if it had happened before, or as if we had known and expected it all our lives — which so often attend a great event. When he laid it down at last, he turned to his grandfather, his face partially distorted by that strange dilation of suppressed pain which seems to change every line of the countenance. "This, then, I suppose, was what my father meant," he said.

"Your father! What did he say? Did he warn you? Val, I would not be hard upon your father, but we are reaping the whirlwind, you and me, for the wind he has sown.'

"He told me that all a man's antecedents, all the secrets of his life, were raked up. He should have said, the secrets of other people's lives," said Val, with a short and bitter laugh. Then he added, dropping his voice, "I suppose it is all true."

"All true to the facts, that is the devil"Val," said the old lord, almost stern-ishness of it. Val, can your recollection ly, "no passion, sir! none of your out- carry you further back than your coming bursts! I'll almost think it's true, and here?" that you're not of my race, if you cannot set your teeth and bear it like a man."

After this adjuration, which was very necessary, I think Val would have let himself be torn to pieces sooner than "give way." He read the paper in the dim library, lighted only round the table at which they sat, the wall all dark with books, the dark curtains drawn over the windows, the fire without a glimmer in it. Lord Eskside sat watching the lad from under his shaggy eyebrows. So far as he was himself concerned, the old lord had worn out all capacity of feeling in the work he had gone through that day. He had revealed to his friends, in full

Val shook his head. A deep, hot, crimson flush covered his face. How could he put into shape the vague reminiscences as of a dream of childish wanderings, sports, and troubles? He recollected nothing that could be put into words, and yet something like the confused images of a dream.

"Is she living still my mother?" he said, in a very low voice.

"For all we know," said Lord Eskside. "If she was dead, I think we must have heard somehow. I have often thought you ought to be told, Val. God knows, many a hard hour's thinking it's given me. You had a brother, too. Probably