It is not my purpose in these Lectures to attempt a historical survey
of Christian Mysticism. To attempt this, within the narrow limits of
eight Lectures, would oblige me to give a mere skeleton of the
subject, which would be of no value, and of very little interest. The
aim which I have set before myself is to give a clear presentation of
an important type of Christian life and thought, in the hope that it
may suggest to us a way towards the solution of some difficulties
which at present agitate and divide us. The path is beset with
pitfalls on either side, as will be abundantly clear when we consider
the startling expressions which Mysticism has often found for itself.
But though I have not attempted to give even an outline of the history
of Mysticism, I feel that the best and safest way of studying this or
any type of religion is to consider it in the light of its historical
development, and of the forms which it has actually assumed. And so I
have tried to set these Lectures in a historical framework, and, in
choosing prominent figures as representatives of the chief kinds of
Mysticism, to observe, so far as possible, the chronological order.
The present Lecture will carry us down to the Pseudo-Dionysius, the
influence of whose writings during the next thousand years can hardly
be overestimated. But if we are to understand how a system of
speculative Mysticism, of an Asiatic rather than European type, came
to be accepted as the work of a convert of St. Paul, and invested with
semi-apostolic authority, we must pause for a few minutes to let our
eyes rest on the phenomenon called Alexandrianism, which fills a large
place in the history of the early Church.

We have seen how St. Paul speaks of a _Gnosis_ or higher knowledge,
which can be taught with safety only to the "perfect" or "fully
initiated";[110] and he by no means rejects such expressions as the
_Pleroma_ (the totality of the Divine attributes), which were