Et affer præsidium."

ADAM OF ST. VICTOR



THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE

"That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; to the end that ye,
being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all
the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to
know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled
with all the fulness of God."--EPH. iii. 17-19.


The task which now lies before me is to consider how far that type of
religion and religious philosophy, which I tried in my last Lecture to
depict in outline, is represented in and sanctioned by Holy Scripture.
I shall devote most of my time to the New Testament, for we shall not
find very much to help us in the Old. The Jewish mind and character,
in spite of its deeply religious bent, was alien to Mysticism. In the
first place, the religion of Israel, passing from what has been called
Henotheism--the worship of a national God--to true Monotheism, always
maintained a rigid notion of individuality, both human and Divine.
Even prophecy, which is mystical in its essence, was in the early
period conceived as unmystically as possible, Balaam is merely a
mouthpiece of God; his message is external to his personality, which
remains antagonistic to it. And, secondly, the Jewish doctrine of
ideas was different from the Platonic. The Jew believed that the
world, and the whole course of history, existed from all eternity in