isfactions: Dost thou think that thou canst live without them?" But the longing for spiritual freedom was the stronger. He prayed, flinging himself beneath a fig-tree in the garden. "Not indeed in these words, yet to this effect, spake I much unto Thee: 'But Thou, O Lord, how long? .. How long? To-morrow and to-morrow? Why not now? Why is there not this hour an end of my uncleanliness?" 15 Augustine's nature was convulsed by a crisis of utmost violence of emotion. What followed may best be told in his own words: 16 "I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo, I heard the voice as of a boy or girl, I know not which, coming from a neighboring house, chanting and oft repeating: 'Take up and read; take up and read.' Immediately my countenance was changed, and I began most earnestly to consider whether it was usual for children in any kind of game to sing such words; nor could I remember ever to have heard the like. So, restraining the torrent of my tears, I rose up, interpreting it in no other way than as a command to me from heaven to open the book, and to read the first chapter I should light upon. So quickly I returned to the place where Alypius was sitting; for there I had put down the volume of the Apostles when I rose thence. I grasped, opened, and in silence read that paragraph on which my eyes first fell: 'Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof' (Romans 13:13, 14). No further would I read, nor did I need, for instantly, as the sentence ended,- by a light, as it were, of security infused into my heart,— all the gloom of doubt vanished away." To Augustine it was an abiding and life-long transformation. It involved the forgiveness of his sins; but it was a boon far greater than that. It freed his will from its pre 15 Confessions, 8:12. 16 Confessions, 8:12. vious bondage, and infused power now to turn from all lower aims to God. God had wrought, by almighty power, a transformation in him which no strength of his own could have effected. From this standpoint of a divinely effected renewal of will, a rescue from bondage,― Augustine henceforth viewed salvation. His nature was set free for that delight in God for which he had been made. The student of mystical experiences has noted Augustine's conviction that the voice like that of a child heard by him was divinely sent. It was an "audition." Yet he must have been impressed also with the simple and unadorned way in which Augustine narrates the incident. Augustine was not incredulous of the miraculous. He believed that miracles, even the cure of blindness 17 and raising from the dead,18 had taken place, not infrequently, in his own days. In the account of his own crucial experience he speaks with a brevity and directness that carry conviction that the event was absolutely real to him and has been fully told. Whatever weight may be laid upon the intensity of the emotional struggle through which Augustine was passing as explaining his experience, there can be no doubt that he believed that he heard the command, "Take up and read"; and was convinced that the admonition was of divine origin. That the voice was that of a child in ordinary play, and the experience that of a coincidence, was a thought that occurred to Augustine himself, only to be rejected by him because he knew of no game in which such words were used. Whether or no the modern investigator will think coincidence the true explanation will probably depend on his temperament and prepossessions. Thenceforth, for Augustine, God is not only the basis of all reality; He is the center of all true life. In comparison with Him all is emptiness and shadow. "Thou 17 Confessions, 9:7. 18 City of God, 22:8. hast formed us for Thyself and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee," 19 is a phrase in which Augustine summed up his mystic view of man's true relation to God. It is Neoplatonism in an interpretation of Christian experience. "The happy life is this, to rejoice unto Thee, in Thee, and for Thee; this it is, and there is no other." 20 This mystical sense of God, not divined from logical demonstration, but from an immediate consciousness of His relation to the human soul, was Augustine's most abiding contribution to the interpretation of religion. It is one that makes religion in its last analysis not a belief, not an intellectual conviction, not a rule of life, though all these flow from religion, but a personal relationship. From this new relationship between the soul and God, right conduct necessarily ensues. This was the result, that I willed not to do what I willed, but willed to do what Thou willedst." 21 Augustine came to his goal through many wanderings and much anguish of spirit; but that goal, when reached, was nothing less than a knowledge of God, an enjoyment of God, and an over-ruling of his will by that of God, which were to him abiding joy, contentment and rest. This experience he mediated to those who came after him, and therefore Augustine has never ceased to be a power in the Christian church far beyond the acceptance of his theological interpretations. This experience was fundamentally mystical, and Augustine therefore deserves to rank among the greatest of the Christian mystics. 19 Confessions, 1:1. MYSTICISM IN ISLAM CHARLES CUTLER TORREY I Students of Islam have expressed widely different views as to the extent to which mysticism enters into it as a characteristic element. Some have asserted that it is of all the great religions of the world the one in which mysticism holds the smallest place, and that the so-called Mohammedan mystics who are many really stand, and have always stood, outside the circle of genuine Mohammedanism. Others, coming from a study of the practice of the religion rather than of its theory, have said that every devout Muslim is a true mystic. Each of these two extreme statements has its justification, but the latter comes much nearer the truth than the former. Orthodox Mohammedanism does rest, formally, on a single strange book and the personal example of the peculiar man who was its author, that is, on the Koran and the Sunna; and it is certain that neither of the two seems well fitted to call forth that variety of religious experience in which the worshipper draws very near to God, whether in contemplation or in emotion. On the other hand, no great religion can be limited to the pattern of its beginnings, nor to the content of its formal orthodoxy. Several factors have combined, in varying measure, to produce this type of religious experience in Islam. First, there is the faith as it has developed along its main traditional lines, from century to century, presenting a more or less homogeneous body of belief and experience shared in by the typical Muslim. Islam had its own mystics even in its least promising days, when it was still the crude faith of Arab tribes. Moreover, it can be shown that the Koran and the life of the Prophet, even in the light of critical study, provide more than a germ of mysticism, though generally far enough removed from this attitude of mind and heart. Other factors needing to be taken into account are local or racial tendencies and customs, for Islam has spread far and taken on many shades of color. The various eastern lands possess their distinct types of thought and emotion, which no superimposed religion can greatly affect. The Greek is religious in a Greek way, whatever the nature of his creed. A native of China thinks and feels as a Chinaman, whether he is a Buddhist, a Methodist, or a Muslim. As for the Arab, if his theology sometimes looks like elementary mathematics, his religion often seems like wildfire. Persia and India, as will appear, made their characteristic contributions to that side of Mohammedan thought and life with which we are here concerned. Another factor from the outside is the influence of other religions. Christianity, in particular, has been potent in encouraging and shaping Mohammedan mysticism, both through its philosophy and still more through the example of its hermits and saints. Lastly, there is the universal tendency of the human soul in its devout moods. This factor, the need of human nature everywhere, has played a more important part in this religious development than we often realize. It can produce, and has in fact produced, a true mysticism of some sort on every kind of Mohammedan soil, in the natural development of the faith with its important by-products. We look for what might be expected as the fruit of Islam, and generally find it; but along with it we often see the religion of a deep inner experience, with all its warmth and excitement. It is interesting to see how this was sometimes brought forward in medieval Islam, as in mediæval |