Christian Mysticism by William Ralph Inge
page 47 of 389 (12%)
page 47 of 389 (12%)
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[Footnote 49: J.P. Richter, _Selina_. Compare, too, Lotze, _Microcosmus_: "Within us lurks a world whose form we imperfectly apprehend, and whose working, when in particular phases it comes under our notice, surprises us with foreshadowings of unknown depths in our being."] [Footnote 50: As Lotze says, "The finite being does not contain in itself the conditions of its own existence." It must struggle to attain to complete personality; or rather, since personality belongs unconditionally only to God, to such a measure of personality as is allotted to us. Eternal life is nothing than the attainment of full personality, a conscious existence in God.] [Footnote 51: J.A. Picton (_The Mystery of Matter_, p. 356) puts the matter well: "Mysticism consists in the spiritual realisation of a grander and a boundless unity, that humbles all self-assertion by dissolving it in a wider glory. It does not follow that the sense of individuality is necessarily weakened. But habitual contemplation of the Divine unity impresses men with the feeling that individuality is phenomenal only. Hence the paradox of Mysticism. For apart from this phenomenal individuality, we should not know our own nothingness, and personal life is good only through the bliss of being lost in God. [Rather, I should say, through the bliss of finding our true life, which is hid with Christ in God.] True religious worship doth not consist in the acknowledgment of a greatness which is estimated by comparison, but rather in the sense of a Being who surpasses all comparison, because He gives to phenomenal existences the only reality they can know. Hence the deepest religious feeling necessarily shrinks from thinking of God as a kind of gigantic Self amidst a host of minor |
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