The Meaning and Value of Mysticism (Classic Reprint)

Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Meaning and Value of Mysticism I believe, then, that out of the confusion and bitter mental anguish that cloud our souls to-day there is arising a deep and genuine desire for contact with the Eternal, a humble and resolute purpose to have done with pretty illusions and to grip Reality with naked hands. More especially will men everywhere begin to respond to the message of a truly Christian Mysti cism - that is, a Mysticism whose passion for intimacy with God is checked by the Christian sense of sin, based upon a deeply ethical conception of salvation and sanctity, and born of a vision of God as He is in Christ Jesus. Sudden contact with grim realities may, and very likely will, make men even less tolerant of ecclesiastical and theological conventions than they were before, but it will likewise make them more suspicious of the preciosity, mock esotericism, and cheap transcendentalism of fashionable, heterodox cults, and far more open to the appeal of an experience of spiritual immediacy founded upon the realities of the Christian Gospel. The present book is based upon such a reading of the situation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.