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As rationalism recognizes too little as coming from God, so mysticism recognizes too much.

A. True mysticism.—We have seen that there is an illumination of the minds of all believers by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, however, makes no new revelation of truth, but uses for his instrument the truth already revealed by Christ in nature and in the Scriptures. The illuminating work of the Spirit is therefore an opening of men's minds to understand Christ's previous revelations. As one initiated into the mysteries of Christianity, every true believer may be called a mystic. True mysticism is that higher knowledge and fellowship which the Holy Spirit gives through the use of nature and Scripture as subordinate and principal means.

“Mystic” = one initiated, from μύω, “to close the eyes”—probably in order that the soul may have inward vision of truth. But divine truth is a “mystery,” not only as something into which one must be initiated, but as ὑπερβάλλουσα τῆς γνώσεως (Eph. 3:19)—surpassing full knowledge, even to the believer; see Meyer on Rom. 11:25—“I would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this mystery.” The Germans have Mystik with a favorable sense, Mysticismus with an unfavorable sense—corresponding respectively to our true and false mysticism. True mysticism is intimated in John 16:13—“the spirit of truth … shall guide you into all the truth”; Eph. 3:9—“dispensation of the mystery”; 1 Cor. 2:10—“unto us God revealed them through the Spirit.” Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 35—“Whenever true religion revives, there is an outcry against mysticism, i.e., higher knowledge, fellowship, activity through the Spirit of God in the heart.” Compare the charge against Paul that he was mad, in Acts 26:24, 25, with his self-vindication in 2 Cor. 5:13—“whether we are beside ourselves, it is unto God.”

Inge, Christian Mysticism, 21—“Harnack speaks of mysticism as rationalism applied to a sphere above reason. He should have said reason applied to a sphere above rationalism. Its fundamental doctrine is the unity of all existence. Man can realize his individuality only by transcending it and finding himself in the larger unity of God's being. Man is a microcosm. He recapitulates the race, the universe, Christ himself.” Ibid., 5—Mysticism is “the attempt to realize in thought and feeling the immanence of the temporal in the eternal, and of the eternal in the temporal. It implies (1) that the soul can see and perceive spiritual truth; (2) that man, in order to know God, must be a partaker of the divine nature; (3) that without holiness no man can see the Lord; (4) that the true hierophant of the mysteries of God is love. The ‘scala perfectionis’is (a) the purgative life; (b) the illuminative life; (c) the unitive life.” Stevens, Johannine Theology, 239, 240—“The mysticism of John … is not a subjective mysticism which absorbs the soul in self-contemplation and revery, but an objective and rational mysticism, which lives in a world of realities, apprehends divinely revealed truth, and bases its experience upon it. It is a mysticism which feeds, not upon its own feelings and fancies, but upon Christ. It involves an acceptance of him, and a life of obedience to him. Its motto is: Abiding in Christ.” As the power press cannot dispense with the type, so the Spirit of God does not dispense with Christ's external revelations in nature and in Scripture. E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 364—“The word of God is a form or mould, into which the Holy Spirit delivers us when he creates us anew”; cf. Rom. 6:17—“ye became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching whereunto ye were delivered.”

B. False mysticism.—Mysticism, however, as the term is commonly used, errs in holding to the attainment of religious knowledge by direct communication from God, and by passive absorption of the human activities into the divine. It either partially or wholly loses sight of (a) the outward organs of revelation, nature and the Scriptures; (b) the activity of the human powers in the reception of all religious knowledge; (c) the personality of man, and, by consequence, the personality of God.

In opposition to false mysticism, we are to remember that the Holy Spirit works through the truth externally revealed in nature and in Scripture (Acts 14:17—“he left not himself without witness”; Rom. 1:20—“the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen”; Acts 7:51—“ye do always resist the Holy Spirit: as your fathers did, so do ye”; Eph. 6:17—“the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”). By this truth already given we are to test all new communications which would contradict or supersede it (1 John 4:1—“believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they are of God”; Eph. 5:10—“proving what is well pleasing unto the Lord”). By these tests we may try Spiritualism, Mormonism, Swedenborgianism. Note the mystical tendency in Francis de Sales, Thomas à Kempis, Madame Guyon, Thomas C. Upham. These writers seem at times to advocate an unwarrantable abnegation of our reason and will, and a “swallowing up of man in God.” But Christ does not deprive us of reason and will; he only takes from us the perverseness of our reason and the selfishness of our will; so reason and will are restored to their normal clearness and strength. Compare Ps. 16:7—“Jehovah, who hath given me counsel; yea, my heart instructeth me in the night seasons”—God teaches his people through the exercise of their own faculties.

False mysticism is sometimes present though unrecognized. All expectation of results without the use of means partakes of it. Martineau, Seat of Authority, 288—“The lazy will would like to have the vision while the eye that apprehends it sleeps.”Preaching without preparation is like throwing ourselves down from a pinnacle of the temple and depending on God to send an angel to hold us up. Christian Science would trust to supernatural agencies, while casting aside the natural agencies God has already provided; as if a drowning man should trust to prayer while refusing to seize the rope. Using Scripture “ad aperturam libri” is like guiding one's actions by a throw of the dice. Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 171, note—“Both Charles and John Wesley were agreed in accepting the Moravian method of solving doubts as to some course of action by opening the Bible at hazard and regarding the passage on which the eye first alighted as a revelation of God's will in the matter”; cf. Wedgwood, Life of Wesley, 193; Southey, Life of Wesley, 1:216. J. G. Paton, Life, 2:74—“After many prayers and wrestlings and tears, I went alone before the Lord, and on my knees cast lots, with a solemn appeal to God, and the answer came: ‘Go home!’ ” He did this only once in his life, in overwhelming perplexity, and finding no light from human counsel. “To whomsoever this faith is given,” he says, “let him obey it.”

F. B. Meyer, Christian Living, 18—“It is a mistake to seek a sign from heaven; to run from counsellor to counsellor; to cast a lot; or to trust in some chance coincidence. Not that God may not reveal his will thus; but because it is hardly the behavior of a child with its Father. There is a more excellent way,”—namely, appropriate Christ who is wisdom, and then go forward, sure that we shall be guided, as each new step must be taken, or word spoken, or decision made. Our service is to be “rational service”(Rom. 12:1); blind and arbitrary action is inconsistent with the spirit of Christianity. Such action makes us victims of temporary feeling and a prey to Satanic deception. In cases of perplexity, waiting for light and waiting upon God will commonly enable us to make an intelligent decision, while “whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23).

“False mysticism reached its logical result in the Buddhistic theosophy. In that system man becomes most divine in the extinction of his own personality. Nirvana is reached by the eightfold path of right view, aspiration, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, rapture; and Nirvana is the loss of ability to say: ‘This is I,’ and ‘This is mine.’ Such was Hypatia's attempt, by subjection of self, to be wafted away into the arms of Jove. George Eliot was wrong when she said: ‘The happiest woman has no history.’ Self-denial is not self-effacement. The cracked bell has no individuality. In Christ we become our complete selves.” Col 2:9, 10—“For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in him ye are made full.”

Royce, World and Individual, 2:248, 249—“Assert the spiritual man; abnegate the natural man. The fleshly self is the root of all evil; the spiritual self belongs to a higher realm. But this spiritual self lies at first outside the soul; it becomes ours only by grace. Plato rightly made the eternal Ideas the source of all human truth and goodness. Wisdom comes into a man, like Aristotle's νοῦς.” A. H. Bradford, The Inner Light, in making the direct teaching of the Holy Spirit the sufficient if not the sole source of religious knowledge, seems to us to ignore the principle of evolution in religion. God builds upon the past. His revelation to prophets and apostles constitutes the norm and corrective of our individual experience, even while our experience throws new light upon that revelation. On Mysticism, true and false, see Inge, Christian Mysticism, 4, 5, 11; Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 289–294; Dorner, Geschichte d. prot. Theol., 48–59, 243; Herzog, Encycl., art.: Mystik, by Lange; Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics, 1:199; Morell, Hist. Philos., 58, 191–215, 556–625, 726; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:61–69, 97, 104; Fleming, Vocab. Philos., in voce; Tholuck, Introd. to Blüthensammlung aus der morgenländischen Mystik; William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 379–429.