MYSTICISM (Gr. mustikos, mystical), it term used with considerable vagueness, but implying dint general in Might to higher and more intimate comimmieation with the divine, to which, in most religions, ancient and modern, certain individuals or classes have laid claim. In the Platonic philosophy, and in the eastern systems, 11c m which that philosophy is derived. the human soul being regarded as a portion of the divine nature, it is held to be the great end of life to free the soul from the entharrasS. ment and mental darkness in which it is held by the material trammels of the be ly in which it is imprisoned. In the pursuit of this end. two very opposite courses were adopted: the first, that of spiritual purification, partly by repreenting the natural appe tites and weakening the sensual impulses by corporeal austerities, partly by elevating I he soul through intense contemplation and withdrawal from the outward objects of sense; the other, that of regarding the soul as superior to the body. independent of its animal impulses, incapable, from its higher origin, of being affected by its outward actions, or sullied by contact with the corruption in which its lower nature love to wallow. A similar clement of mysticism, which, in truth, most form in some sense a constituent of every religions system, is traceable in the early doctrinal history of Christianity. and the career of .Christian mysticism also divides itself into the same twofold Milne. Among the early sects external to the church, we trace the first in the system of Titian and of the Eueratites, while the second finds its parallel in the Syrian gnosties, in Car poerates, Bardisancs, and in one form at least of the iNieolaitie heie.sy. Within the Christian church there never has been wanting a continuous manifestation of the mysti cal clement. The language of St. Paul in Gal. ii. 20, and in 2d Cor. xii. 2, and many expressions in the Apocalypse, may be taken as the exponents of Christian mysticism, the highest aspiration of which has ever been toward that state in 'which the Christian " no longer liveth, but Christ liveth in him." And although no regular scheme of mys ticism can be found in the early fathers, yet the writings of Hermes the shepherd, the epistles of St. Ignatius, the works of St. Clement of Alexandria, the expositions of Ori
gen, and above all, the confessions of St. Augustine, abound with outpourings of the true spirit of Christian mysticism. It is curious that the first systematic exposition of its principles is said to be in the works of the pseudo-Dionysins the Areopagite; but it was not till the days of the Scholastics that it received its first development, when the mystic life was resolved into its three stages, viz., of purification, of illumination, and of ecstatic union with God and absorption in divine contemplation. It was npon the explanation of this third stage that the great division of the medieval mystic schools turned ; sonic of them explaining the union with God in a pantheistic or semi pantheistic sense, and thereby annihilating the individual will, and almost the personal action of man in the state of ecstasy; others, with St. Bernard, fully preserving both the individuality and the freedom of man, even in the highest spiritual with his Creator. Of the former, many, as the nesychasts (q.v.) in the Greek church, and the brethren of the free spirit (q.v.) and the Beghards in the Latin, drew from these mystical doctrines the most revolting moral consequences; in others, as Tallier, Ruysbroek, Ekkart, the error does not seem to have gone beyond time sphere of speculation. The writings of Thomas 3 Kempis (q.v.), of St. Cntherine of Siena, of St. John of the cress, and of St. Teresa, may perhaps be taken as the most characteristic representations of the more modern form of the traditionary mysticism which has come down from the mystics of the middle ages.
The later history of mysticism in the Roman Catholic church will be found under the heads of FENDLON, MADAME GUYON, MOLTNOS, and Quarrtsm. The most remarkable followers of the same or kindred doctrines in the Protestant communions are Jacob Bohme (q.v.) of Grirlith, Emmanuel Swedenborg (q.v.), and the celebrated William Law (q.v.)