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 Christianity, by the reaction against extreme scholasticism. As for Mohammed himself, his habitual attitude of mind was not at all that of a mystic; and he is ordinarily included in discussions of this particular subject chiefly by reason of certain remarkable psychic phenomena which are characteristic of that elusive being Mohammed the Prophet rather than of Mohammed the Muslim. The story of his visions and dreams certainly belongs to the literature of mysticism, and is a highly interesting example of its kind. It can hardly be omitted here, though it is not possible to do more than touch upon the subject very briefly. Mohammed, like not a few other of the foremost religious leaders of history, was gifted with a nervous disorder of some sort, the effect of which appeared in various ways. We know that during his public career, that is, from the year 611 or 612 A. D., when he was about forty years old, to the year of his death, 632, he was subject to peculiar seizures, which have sometimes been regarded as epileptic but probably were of a less serious nature. These fits, in regard to which we have the abundant but exaggerated and often plainly untrustworthy testimony of his contemporaries, originally played an important part in the experiences which convinced him that he was given a divine message to his people, and in subsequent times seem regularly to have been connected in some way with the successive utterances which make up the Koran. Whether he had experienced any such seizures in his earlier years we are not informed; but if not actually produced for the first time they must at least have been given a new power by the intense nervous excitement under which he labored for some time previous to his first "revelation." Mohammed's mind was filled with certain ideas which he had obtained directly or indirectly from Jews and Christians: One God, the creator of man and of all things; sin, divine wrath, and the judgment day; heaven and hell; a written revelation sent from God to man for his guidance; a succession of prophets, through whom the messages are sent. Over these ideas he brooded, while his agitation was increased by the fasting and vigils which the well-known habit of Christian ascetics had recommended to him. It was then that there came upon him such attacks as were ordinarily attributed, among the Arabs of his time, to possession by jinns, but which he soon felt certain were manifestations of the power of God working in him, and the means of inspiring him to utter divine messages. The Jews and Christians had been favored in the past; the time had now come for the Arabs to be given their own revelation, and he, Mohammed, was the chosen instrument. The fits were a heaven-sent gift, and it seems quite plain that at this time they came upon him unawares, as the result of his nervous condition; the nature of their continuance in after years how far they were involuntary and how far encouraged or reproduced by his own excited volition - must remain a matter of conjecture. It is not difficult to suppose that such a physical aptitude, once established, could eventually become a habit, to be called upon whenever the circumstances required. This hypothesis agrees best with the mass of testimony which has come down to us, and especially with what we find in every part of the Koran.. We can hardly doubt that a certain apparatus of revelation was very soon recognized by Mohammed, and that it continued to be employed throughout his career, the only variation being presumably in the degree of intensity which the nervous excitement reached. It is sufficiently obvious that the vast majority of Mohammed's outgivings in the Koran were neither produced nor fostered by any trance-like condition. On the other hand, every reader must recognize that their author was not one to whom composition was easy; even the most commonplace and matter-of-fact of his utterances were the fruit of tra |