...

would have granted that to His Son, Jesus Christ. But we find that in His humanity there was no other thing of which Christ had so much as of sorrow. . . . If there had been anything nobler than sorrow then God would therewith have redeemed man." 19 It was not a stoic, "bloody but unbowed," who spoke the following message, it was a man whom God had brought very close to His loving heart: That a man has a restful and peaceful life in God is good. That a man endures a painful life in patience, that is better; but that a man has his rest in the midst of a painful life, that is the best of all." 20

Nowhere does Eckhart reveal more depth of insight than in the way he deals with time and space, but it is difficult to see how his listeners could have understood him as he took them into such breathless regions. Eternity never means for him something which begins after time ends, or mere endless time, or a going on forever. Eternity is an all-containing, all-inclusive, indivisible Now. "The Now in which God made the world is as near the present time as is the now in which I am speaking; and the Last Day is as near that Now as is our yesterday. Everything that God does is an everpresent Now (in eime gegenwürtigen nu)." 21 We live so much on the lower plane of passive reason with its discursive methods of spreading everything out in space and ticking it off in a clock-time succession that we fail to grasp things as they really are in a miteinander experience, i. e., as taking place in one integral whole of reality, the way for instance that we experience music and visible beauty. The Eternal Birth is an ascent from this lower plain of life to that table-land level where the soul sees spiritual things spiritually.

It is true in one sense that Eckhart was a quietist, even

10 Ibid. 335.

20 Ibid. p. 221.

21 Pfeiffer, op. cit., p. 266.

that he was a father of quietists. He had no faith in the capacities of "mere man" (if there is any such being). He depreciated the "creature." He preached against the exercise of confidence in the finite self. He threw everybody back upon the work which God Himself works through the soul when man gets his creaturely self out of the way, removes the hindrances and allows God to act unimpeded. But this does not mean passivity, stagnation or cessation of action. It means action on a higher level, under higher guidance and direction. Instead of acting for petty ends and selfish aims, one now becomes a channel for the purpose of God to flow through. "All that a man receives through contemplation he must pour out in love."

It seems to me unimportant to discuss at length the distinction which Eckhart made between the Godhead and God. This was a common feature of systems which came under the influence of Plotinus, as Eckhart's did. The logic of these systems of thought seemed forced to go back to an absolute Reality, and in order to get an infinite, all-perfect Source, they felt compelled to retreat beyond all that was finite, all that was manifested or expressed, beyond all that could be defined, therefore beyond self-consciousness, will-purpose and all we mean by personality. They had to begin with a blank infinite, an absolute that was super-everything. The attainment of the conception of a concrete infinite is one of the supreme achievements of modern philosophy, and we shall not need to charge it up against Plotinus, Eckhart and Boehme that they found themselves forced to take refuge in the One, the Alone, the Undifferentiated Godhead (die ungenaturte natur). Their triumph consists in having attained such a degree of spiritual life and positive goodness when they were forced to work with such stubborn abstract concepts. Would that with our better equipment of intellectual furnishings we could equal them in dedication of spirit and holiness of life!

THE MYSTICISM OF SAINT THERESA1

GEORGE WARREN RICHARDS

In a study of the mysticism of St. Theresa 2 we shall have to take account of those facts and incidents in her life and times which had a bearing on her religious experience. She was born at Avila, in Old Castile, Spain, March 28th, 1515, and she died at Alva, in Leon, Spain, October 4th, 1582. Through the place of birth, she became a Spaniard, a Roman Catholic, and a counter-reformer. She was predisposed by her Spanish blood to a mystical type of piety. Rousselot says: "Mysticism is the philosophy of Spain." It was the land of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, and of John of the Cross, Rome's "consummate ascetic." Both were contemporaries of St. Theresa and the three had mystical experiences though in different degrees.

Born into a devout Catholic home, she grew up and remained through her life a loyal child of the church. She never consciously diverted to a hair's breadth from the

1" Of late it has been the fashion to write her name Teresa or Teresia, without "h," not only in Spanish and Italian where the "h" could have no place, but also in French, German, and Latin, which ought to preserve the etymological spelling. As it is derived from a Greek name, Tharasia, the saintly wife of St. Paulinus of Nola, it should be written Theresia in German and Latin, and Thérèse in French." Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 14, p. 516.

2 Her full name was Doña Teresa Sanchez Cepeda Davila y Ahumada. In the monastery of the Incarnation she was known for twenty-eight years as Doña Teresa. When in 1563 she entered the Monastery of St. Joseph, of the Reform of the Carmelites, she took the name of Teresa of Jesus.

3 Autobiography, chap. 1, 2, note 2.

4 Les Mystiques Espagnols, p. 3, quoted by Inge, Christian Mysticism, Oxford, 1899, p. 213.

213

teachings of Rome or the directions of her superiors. She repeatedly avows her subservience to the dictates of authority. "I submit myself in everything to the teaching of the Holy Mother Church of Rome.” 5 Even when there was a contradiction between the command of her Lord and the direction of her confessor, she obeyed the latter instead of the former. At such a time our Lord Himself told me to obey my confessor. His Majesty afterwards would change the mind of the confessor, so that he would have me to do what he had forbidden before." 6

8

The Reformation, also, gave direction to her life. One of her biographers significantly says that she was born in 1515 "when Luther was secreting the poison which he vomited out two years later." In her mature years she traced the cause of the rise of Protestantism to the relaxation of discipline within the religious orders. Thereupon she proceeded, in the face of bitter opposition, to reform the Order of the Carmelites by founding new convents in which the more rigorous discipline of the original rule of the Order was enforced. In this way she became a factor in the Counter-Reformation. She nurtured her aversion against "the Lutherans," including of course all Protestants, unto the day of her death. In the last paragraph of The Interior Castle she exhorts the reader, saying: "every time you read this book, to praise His Majesty exceedingly, and beg of Him to advance His Church, to enlighten the Lutherans, and to obtain the pardon of my sins."

Her parentage, her physical and mental traits, and her early training and adventures were formative factors in the religious life of her mature years. She came of noble ancestry. She describes her parents as "devout and God

5 The Book of the Foundations, Prologue, 6; also Interior Castle, pp. 24, 233; Autobiography, chap. 30, 14.

6 Autobiography, chap. 26, 6; Relation, VII, 15.

7 Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th edition, Vol. 23, p. 301.

8 Autobiography, 7, 9.

fearing." Her father was a man of great charity towards the poor and compassion for the sick and for servants." He was very much given to the reading of good books" and "his life was most pure." Her mother was of delicate health, "possessing great beauty," though "never making any account of it." She was singularly pure in all her ways." Her carefulness to make us say our prayers and to bring us up devout to our Lady and to certain saints, began to make me think seriously when I was, I believe, six or seven years old." From her mother she seems to have inherited both a frail body and a highly susceptible imagination.9

I

Notwithstanding her prodigious labors, 10 her writing of books, founding of monasteries, and constant journeys, she was weighed down from youth on with grievous infirmities. My bodily sufferings," she writes, "were unendurable. have undergone most painful sufferings in this life, and, as the physicians say, the greatest that can be borne, such as the contraction of my sinews when I was paralyzed." 11 Again, "I have been suffering for twenty years from sickness every morning, so that I could not take any food till past midday." She speaks of "fainting fits," "disease of the heart,' noise and weakness in her head." 14

12

"13"

Several instances in her childhood give evidence of her sensitive nature, vacillating mind, and innate religious disposition. Following the example of her mother and behind

9 For the facts relating to parents and childhood, see Autobiography, chap 1.

10 From 1561 to 1582 she founded directly or indirectly sixteen convents and fourteen monasteries, each of the Carmelite Order with rigorous discipline in distinction from the Carmelites with a mitigated rule. The former were known as Discalzos (Barefooted); the latter as Calzados (Sandaled).

11 Autobiography, 32, 3.

12 Autobiography, chap. 7, 18. 13 Autobiography, chap. 4, 6. 14 Preface of Interior Castle.