Prev | Current Page 103 | Next

Spurgeon, Caroline F. E., 1869-1942

"Mysticism in English Literature"

[2]
All life, whether physical or spiritual, means a death to some previous
condition, and must be generated in pain. 6 1: _An Appeal, Works_,
vol. vi. pp. 166. 2 _Ibid._, p, 82.
If this mystical view of Fire be clear, it will be easy enough to
follow what Law says about Light and Darkness, or Air, Water, and Earth,
interpreting them all in the same way as "eternal Things become gross,
finite, measurable, divisible, and transitory."[47]
_The Spirit of Prayer_ is of all Law's works the one most steeped in
mystic ardour, and it possesses a charm, a melody of rhythm, and an
imaginative quality rarely to be found in his earlier work. It should be
read by those who would see Law under a little known aspect, and who do
not realise that we have an English mystic who expresses, with a
strength and beauty which Plotinus himself has rarely surpassed, the
longing of the soul for union with the Divine.
Burke, Coleridge, and Carlyle are three very different writers who are
alike in the mystical foundations of their belief, and who, through
their writings, for over a hundred years in England carry on the
mystical attitude and diffuse much mystical thought.
Burke, the greatest and most philosophic of English statesmen, was so
largely because of his mystic spirit and imagination.


Pages:
91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115