Nor gott hee more

Than when hee left earth and sea For heaven’s shore.

Don’t you think that is rather sweet?

I enclose a bit of MS. for you to deal with at your leisure. Please make one carbon copy and begin each “station” on a separate page.

There is no hurry. I will send you more as or when I do it and you can send me the whole thing together when finished. I have not done nearly so much as I intended of it whilst I have been here and shall probably do less in the Ardennes!

As it is a specially private document would you please take particular precautions to avoid any human eye falling on it whilst it is in your charge? And forget its existence afterwards, as quickly as you can? I do not know yet whether I shall print it or just keep it to administer privately; but if it is published, it will not be in my own name—so consider yourself sworn to secrecy by many deadly oaths. But I shall be very grateful for criticisms however violent. I am afraid it is scrappy and sentimental and full of vain repetitions: altogether quite different from what I intended it to be. Goodbye.

Thursday night [1909].

To THE SAME.

Do not worry because you and Miss G … take different views of spiritual exercises. These things all become shams the minute they are allowed to be expressions of other people’s opinions instead of your own personality. For this reason I am not going to tell you how often I think you ought to receive Holy communion. But—if you feel a month is a long stretch, why wait a month? There is certainly no virtue in so doing. And there is a virtue in the frequency with which acts of pure love are renewed. The point in frequent communion is exactly the same as in frequent prayer or frequent attendance at Mass—and if you began to space those out at rare intervals, you would soon find yourself going backward. But have the thing out with yourself and find out what your own needs and dispositions are and do not let yourself be swayed by spiritual gossip—one of the most corrupting vices open to religious people!

Your other troubles you share with everybody who has any inner life at all—bar the Saints—at least, with all I have ever known, e.g.

the constant and steady self-seeking although we know we are fools to do it, and the strange conviction that we are “losing the spirit of prayer” and slithering backwards in spite of our desire to run hard uphill! If by losing the spirit of prayer you mean losing the heavenly sensations of deep devotion I am afraid that does not matter a scrap. The more you are kept on the strain and the harder it is, the better. But these are the “harsh and repulsive doctrines”

which you do not like! I think it is a very good plan to keep a diary of faults as a practical check, so long as you do not brood over the result. I believe almost the only way in practice to check self-seeking is to deliberately force yourself to do actual and concrete things in the opposite direction, however little emotional fervour you can put into them. On the religious side, intercession is excellent in this respect: one is always tempted to put in all the time in personal communications of deep interest and importance to oneself! And to make whole-heartedly a spiritual communion in the interests of another person is a really unselfsh as well as a difficult act!

I think you are really getting on all right: but you must be prepared for a steady dying down of glamour and a throwing of you more and more on the normal resources of life. If your prayers really do the day’s work for you—what more do you want? Not just deriving pleasure surely? Read the 2nd book of the Imitatio.

It will do you a world of good!

I cannot write any more. Jacob has just jumped on my knee and is rubbing violently!

Wednesday [1909].

To THE SAME.

Here is a little scrappit of a chapter: the next is still under revision. I think although this is so short, it goes best by itself as an Introduction to the Second Part. I hope you are keeping an account against me: you must, are to, and shall. Then, when it has come to a reasonable sum I can pay it by cheque.

I am afraid I do not think the sense of “having no objective” is a bit bad for you. Remember, lots of people go through their whole lives without having, at all, the consolations which you have been calmly regarding as normal. And no one—not even the Saints—go through their lives without having the experience you are having now.

“There be many Christians most like unto young sailors, who think the shore and the whole land doth move, when the ship and they themselves are moved; just so not a few do imagine that God moveth and saileth and changeth places, because their giddy souls are under sail and subject to alteration, ebb and flow.”

How do you like that? Here is another from the same.

“Hiding of His Face is wise love; His love is not fond, doting and reasonless … nay, His bairns must often have the frosty cold side of the hill, and set down both their bare feet amongst the thorns: His love hath eyes, and in the meantime is looking on. Our pride must have winter weather.” Goodbye.

Oct. 1, 1909.

To THE SAME.

Thank you ever so much for troubling to get The Gospel of Play for me to see. … It is perfectly splendid I think: and so is The Gospel and Human Needs which I have just got and am reading. I love his insistence on the romantic note, don’t you? And think of it coming from a person who was described to me by one of his intimate friends as being, before his conversion, “a typical College Don, with no soul above savouries.”

I send another bit of MS., though with diffidence, as you seem to find it so depressing! Yes! I do think all kinds of pain and struggle and all un-easy things done with effort, are or can be what I mean by the Way of the Cross. All people who live honestly, intensely and sincerely are treading it in spite of themselves: but it is better to know what one is about. I suppose taken alone it does seem rather an austere view of the universe: but I am sick of the feather-bed and dry champagne type of religion, aren’t you? That is not “having life more abundantly” anyhow. And surely when it is patent that we are all being kept on the drive (unless we deliberately stagnate) and the whole world and all in it is kept on the drive, and that we are forced to spend our lives and use our energies in humiliating ugly sorts of ways, it is a source of exaltation not of melancholy to know that in this too we are accompanying the Spirit of Christ.

You write as if you were a bit low-spirited somehow. I hope you are not really. And don’t look on reading the Column of Dust as a solemn and saddening ceremonial! It has not been written in that spirit, I assure you—nor am I the pious and pain-enduring invalid you seem to suppose. Do get these ideas out of your head! NO, everybody does not “find my works painful!” Some find them dull and some eccentric—and others read their own prepossessions into them!! They don’t tear themselves into ribbons over them anyhow—and neither do I. I just write what comes into my head and leave the result to luck.

Luxembourg went on being nice to the very end. We went to Echternach and saw St. Willibrod’s very gilded and objectionable shrine, and to Vianden, and for lots of splendid walks in the hills. Then we had 5

days at Houffalize and 5 more at St. Hubert (and I saw a stag in the forest, quite a sudden miraculous-looking one) and then stayed at Louvain on our way back. The Early Flemish pictures in the Cathedral are splendid and there is a most beautiful Gothic tabernacle for the Blessed Sacrament which stands on the north of the sanctuary, a little building all of itself, with a tall fretted spire. The woodcarving in some of the churches is wonderful even for Belgium, and altogether it is a distinctly fascinating old town.

The nicest scenery—at least the wildest—was at St. Hubert—miles of forest and moorland of unimaginable variety of shape.

Quite a large pilgrimage arrived whilst we were there, and came up the hill to the Abbey in procession, reciting the Rosary. I went in to the pilgrim Mass, but the atmosphere they created was too much for my enthusiasm and I ignominiously crept out at the Gospel! They say sometimes immense pilgrimages come there from Germany, on foot all the way.

The parish priest showed me St. Hubert’s stole, which is supposed to have been brought to him from heaven by an angel. He rather spoilt the effect by saying, “It is a fine example of 6th century Byzantine weaving”—and it was.

I am extremely well and strong now. So there!

Dec. 1, 1909.

To THE SAME.

… I am glad Ecstasy is not entirely illegible. I have done it very badly I think: it was altogether too much for me—just piecing things together and guessing in the dark. But I have been working very poorly lately and now can hardly work at all, which is dreadful waste of time when one is shut up in the house. The book gets more and more difficult. I am past all the stages at which scraps of experience could guide one, and can only rely on sympathetic imagination, which is not always safe. Now I am doing the Dark Night of the Soul for which the chief authorities seem to be that gushing Madame Guyon who spent seven years in it, and Suso whose taste for consolations and annoyance when they were withdrawn will be rather congenial to you!!! Isn’t that horrid of me? But prisoners do get malicious.

I did not mean, though, to be malicious in my suggestions about spiritual gossip. I am sure Miss G–‘s influence must be good—so far as she is a saint: but the more of a saint she is, the more individual her life will be, and the less you will have to gain by comparing her practices with your own. And the more one talks over one’s inward experience and compares it with that of others, the more one cheapens it. It is the most sacred and delicate of possessions and will not bear treatment of that kind. This is what I meant: and not a bit that it was a bad thing to talk of religion in a general way. But it is a bad thing to listen to descriptions of what another person feels, and a worse thing to begin judging your feelings by their standard. Each spiritual life is unique and its personal quality should be above all things respected. Of course if one is interested in religion there is nothing so interesting as talking of it with a sympathetic person: but it is a taste which should not be allowed to get out of hand.

I had tea and Benediction with your “other rival” as you call him, the other day. I do not direct him now: but we are firm friends and discuss things in a detached manner! Christianity is steadily transforming him and teaching him the meaning of life. It seems a really satisfactory conversion so far: particularly when one remembers how different he was before his rebirth.

Have you read Christianity at the Cross Roads yet? And what do you think of it? Wasn’t Punch’s review of the Column (of Dust) beastly?

Quite the nastiest I have had. There have been about 40 now, representing all possible shades of opinion.

St. Thomas, 1909.

To THE SAME.

Scola Cordis* is the most absolutely charming thing I have seen for months: I have been playing with it half the morning and am longing to get to it again. Thank you so much: it seems to me a marvellous act of sacrifice to tear yourself away from it. I do not know what part I like best, the Emblems or the Odes. It is utterly fascinating. I had no idea Quarles was so uniformly fine. Eleanor Gregory put me on to the “vast triangled heart” and I supposed that was far above his general level but it does not seem to be. Didn’t you like the one about the Crown of Thorns? I thought that beautiful. It will go away with me to Eastbourne next week to soothe the terrors of the English Seaside Resort and its disgustingly civilized trimmings!!

Scola Cordis, or the Heart of itself gone away from God, brought back again to Him, and instructed by Him, in XLVIII Emblems. By Christopher Harvey, 1647. Often wrongly attributed to Francis Quarles.

I hope you will like St. Francis de Sales. I had never read this one till a little while ago: when it pleased me well, so I hope it may suit you too. It is more advanced than the Devout Life and less sugary I think!

Have you read Miss Lowndes’ Nuns of Port Royal? It is so interesting. … I think 17th century religion is extraordinarily interesting if one can get inside it. Port Royal, St. Vincent de Paul, St. Francis de Sales, St. Jeanne Francoise de Chantal, and the Quietists for contrast, make a fine group. Do you know Bougeaud’s lives of Vincent de Paul and Jeanne Francoise? Rather fascinating though a little sanctimonious in places.

Hotel Bethell, Rome.

Wednesday night. [London postmark, 10 March, 1910.]

To HUBERT STUART MOORE.

… We have had a splendid day in spite of a sharp hailstorm middle day; and have seen St. Peter’s, and a wee bit of the Vatican, and two other churches. My private opinion about St. Peter’s is that it is frankly hideous and not a bit more religious than St. Paul’s Cathedral. It is perfectly impossible to realize that St. Peter is really buried under that dreadful conglomeration of fancy marbles.

The Vatican felt much more like the real thing, when one was challenged on entering by a Swiss guard with a halberd. It’s all extraordinarily light and airy, pale yellow and white-wash everywhere: in fact, all Rome seems mostly pale yellow. We went hunting for my Mr. Bannister, who wasn’t there to-day, but I am to see him Friday: and incidentally we saw all the people arriving for an audience with the Pope. I don’t know whether I shall get one, as it appears a personal introduction is required. Do you think your Sir Rennell Rodd would be any good for that?

The Vatican is built all uphill in the strangest way. You go in, and up a great state staircase, and then out through a gallery into a great courtyard, and cross that, and then up another staircase into the next wing. All the gallery I went down to the library was lined with early Christian inscriptions from the catacombs on one side, and Pagan ones on the other.

This afternoon we went to St. Maria Maggiore, such a splendid basilica, long and straight, with antique marble columns from some temple, and 4th century mosaics over them; and in the apse beautiful 12th century ones. It was really impressive and beautiful. After that we went to St. Pudenziana, at the foot of the Esquiline, and sunk right below the road to the level of old Rome. It is on the site of the house of Pudens where St. Peter stayed, and to whom Paul sent his love at the end of the Epistle to Timothy, and the old mosaic pavement of the house, which he may have trod on, forms the floor of one part still. It’s quite a little church and rather mangy, but over the altar is one of the loveliest mosaics I have ever seen, done in 350, and pure classical. Not stiff and Byzantine a bit. Altogether it was a most thrilling place, and it seemed so odd to see it tucked away like that almost under a lively modern street.

All the different patterned monks and seminarists who swarm in the streets are a joy to behold, especially the Greek students who wear the most beautiful blue clothes with orange sashes.

I’m so sleepy I must leave off. Good night, darling. All my love.

Hotel Bethell, Rome.

Friday afternoon [March, 1910].

To THE SAME.

I’m getting quite blase about 7th and 8th century things; they seem quite modern here. To-day I’ve been down into the excavations underneath the church of St. Cecilia: and there are her 3rd century house, and two others, all the rooms and some of the mosaic pavements still intact, and even the little household shrine of the family before they became Christians, still there, with the figure of Minerva on it. Most of the churches have been dreadfully spoilt with awful 17th and 18th century decorations and additions; and you see appalling stucco and gilt ornaments side by side with the antique mosaics. I went into one, however, to-day which is a perfect little beauty: an early Christian basilica in full working order, with the raised “schola cantorum” in the middle, with its marble screens round it, and the two little pulpits and great marble and mosaic Easter candlestick, and the altar standing right out in the church under a canopy, and the presbyter’s throne behind it in the extreme east of the apse. And the whole floor is of marble mosaic, purple, white and green. It’s a little jewel, in a deserted square on the banks of the Tiber, and close to it two little temples, a round one and a square one, which have been turned into Christian shrines!

Robert Hugh [Benson] has sent me via Jack [Herbert] an introduction to the English church here, through whom I may get my audience with the Pope. Very magnanimous of him considering how little credit he has got out of me! It’s very difficult to get an audience it seems and personal introduction by a Catholic is essential. They are rather weary at the Vatican of being made a sideshow for inquisitive Protestants, and I don’t wonder at it! When one is here and has felt the atmosphere of the place one ceases to feel surprised at the fuss about the temporal power, and the Pope submitting to imprisonment in the Vatican rather than give it up. When you go about everywhere and see how completely Christian Rome is the Pope’s city and how every great building and fountain is inscribed with the Pontifex Maximus who did it, you do feel it is absolutely a thing in itself, and they are the true heirs of the Pontifex Maximus who used to light the fire of Vesta every year; and that it is a mere farce to pretend that the place is simply the capital of modern Italy. All the modern part is so odiously shoddy too, so put on from outside. My love to the Felis Florophagus—how has his appetite been lately?

Hotel Bethell, Rome.

Friday afternoon [1910].

To THE SAME.

All yesterday morning we spent in the Forum as my card said. It really is fascinating, and most picturesque, as the Palatine Hill, with ilexes, edges one side of it, and old buildings and temples turned into churches the other, and you look right down it and the Arch of Titus and the Colosseum. The most fascinating part is the wee little round Temple of Vesta, just big enough for the sacred fire and the Vestal who was attending to it, and the house and garden where the Vestal Virgins lived. There were only 6 of them but their premises seem to have taken up half the forum. They had a big sort of cloister with three cisterns for rain water because they were not allowed to touch water out of any aqueduct; and all round it were statues of celebrated Vestals. The pedestals are there still and a few statues, rather smashed up. There are also the places where Virginia was killed, and where Julius Caesar was cremated and his temple put up. What is most fascinating is, that right under the hill a complete 7th century Christian church which had been made out of the inside of the library of Augustus Caesar has been dug out, all complete with its frescoes on its walls. No one seems to quite know how many centuries it has been buried, but there it is all intact except the roof; a temporary one has been put on, just to keep the weather off. There is one of the very early frescoes of the Crucifixion with Christ in a long blue robe, and a wonderful set of the early Popes all round the wall.

Hotel Bethell, Rome.

Feast of St. Joseph, 19 March, 1910.

To J. A. HERBERT.

My dear Friend, indeed, far from “minding” I am deeply grateful to you and R.H.B., for I don’t think I should have got an audience without you! As it is, I went down to St. Silvestro this morning and Robert Hugh’s name acted like a charm; and this evening I am to present my letter of introduction at the Vatican. I have written to thank Robert Hugh this afternoon.

Robert Hugh Benson.

We have not seen any great ceremonies yet of course; I am going to see the palms blessed at the Lateran tomorrow, and the enthronement of the Grand Penitentiary in the afternoon. The shrines of the saints, I grieve to say, are highly unimpressive. That of St.

Cecilia has been “adorned” by Cardinal Rampolla with Neo-Byzantine mosaics, mostly gold, white and pale blue, till it looks like a very cheap Christmas card—all the more distressing as it is actually in her 3rd century house, the rooms of which form the crypt. St.

Peter’s is even more hopelessly un-Petrine. He is about the last person one can think of in connection with that horrid monstrosity.

On Monday morning I am going round the Vatican Library with Mr.

Bannister and am looking forward to it immensely. We have not met yet but have exchanged several letters. There is some very early Christian glass in the library museum which he is going to show me.

Next week will be one violent effort to fit in as many ceremonies, exhibitions of relics, etc., as one can. I am torn between the attractions of the Latin, Byzantine and Armenian rites! I went to a Byzantine Mass this morning, and it was a most wonderful sight. One felt centuries away when one saw the deacon with his crossed stole, with one hand held up, standing before the iconostasis like a 10th century announcing angel. And there were extraordinary persons in long gold dalmatics who bowed down and touched the earth each time they crossed themselves. And it is so wonderful when every now and then the veil of the iconostasis is suddenly withdrawn, and you see the priest inside holding up the Host!

The streets are agreeably full of monks and nuns and seminarists but the “atmosphere” of the modern city is horrid. If I lived here I should become a violent partisan of the temporal power. It is horribly sad to see all the squares and fountains inscribed with the name of the Pontifex Maximus who made or beautified them, and know that Pius X will never be commemorated like that.

Hotel Bethell, Rome.

Saturday in Easter Week [1910].

To HUBERT STUART MOORE.

… Now I must tell you about my audience. I went with a weird old female staying here who was having one the same day and we arrived at the Vatican pretty early and walked up I don’t know how many hundred stairs. At all the corners there were lovely mediaeval servants in crimson damask doublets and the Swiss Guard in their full dress at the entrance of the throne room. The throne room is immense, all hung with crimson silk, and with a frescoed ceiling, and at one end the gold throne Venice gave him when he was made Pope. There were chairs all round the edge and we sat patiently and watched the people arrive—such a mixed lot, every country in the world I should think. There was a Canadian sitting next me and beyond two Greeks, and a French lady the other side. Presently an officer of the Noble Guard came in and picked out a few favoured people who were having private audiences. The room got fearfully full and we saw there would be no possibility of each person kissing the Pope’s hand. Then some purple ecclesiastics came and made us all close up into a big semi-circle round the throne. Fortunately we were near the front or would have seen nothing. Then the Papal Guard came in and then the Pope in his white things and ascended the throne so quietly and simply that he was there before one had noticed him. He has a beautiful voice and gives one an intense impression of great holiness, kindness and simplicity. He made us a little speech in Italian saying he thanked everyone for their kindness in coming to see him, and that he blessed us, our families and friends, but we must remember that only those who were trying to live good and Christian lives, etc., were capable of receiving the blessing. Then he gave the full blessing, very elaborate, to all the rosaries, etc., which had been brought to receive it: made the sign of the Cross over us: and went quietly away. There was a rush when he descended the throne to try and kiss his hand but I was not quite near enough to manage it. …

Pius X.

I went out to St. Lorenzo yesterday morning where SS. Lawrence and Stephen are buried. Such a beautiful basilica, right away from everywhere, standing by the side of the road in a clump of cypresses and a flock of sheep feeding in front of it. The choir is the 6th century church, and the nave the 13th century church tacked on.

There was hardly anyone there but a nice brown Cistercian lay-brother who gave me pious cards; and it seemed so peaceful and far from the world.

Hotel Flora, Rome.

9 April, 1910.

To THE SAME.

… Yesterday I had a rather nice solitary prowl on the Coehan Hill—in fact, very nice. It’s a lovely solitary place, beyond the Colosseum, with nothing but a few old churches and convents and a farm-housey villa garden or two and steep paved roads with old archways over them and little views of the mountains here and there.

I went into four old churches—one I’d seen before but not the others. I think I most enjoyed St. Gregorio; it has been rather rebuilt and done up, but there are a lot of nice things in it and as there was a sudden downpour of rain just then I was there some time and saw it at my ease. Tell Dickums [Richard, her cat] that it is built on the site of the house in which Gregory the Great retired from the world in the 6th century, taking with him nothing but his favourite cat: so I was very pleased to see, in one of the front chairs in the nave, a very nice black and white cat, sleeping soundly. The old woman who was bossing about told me it always slept there, and during Mass was often curled up in the sanctuary. As St.

Gregory was a Benedictine and wore black and the church is now kept by Camaldolese monks who wear white, the cat was rather suitably coloured wasn’t it? I felt I was stroking quite a reverend piece of church furniture.

I saw the “miraculous” picture of the Virgin which St. Gregory thought talked to him when he was meditating before it—it’s very beautiful and alive, and I’m not surprised he thought it!—and the splendid marble table sitting on the backs of lions, where he used to have twelve beggars to dinner every day. One day a 13th came in and insisted on joining the party, and when Gregory looked at him attentively, he saw that he was an angel! What with that, and the cat, and Gregorian music, and the “Non angli sed angeli” I think he was a really nice saint….

Good night, darling. I am all right and resigned without being mournful, and seeing some nice things, but I do wish you were here.

Rome.

April 12, 1910.

To M.R.

I am so sorry to have left you unanswered all these days but you see we are still here—and for no very pleasant reason. Mother fell ill when we had been in Rome quite a few days and is only this week beginning to go about again, so travelling has been an impossibility. We leave this day week for Como and shall get back to England towards the end of the month. Husband, work and garden all call for my presence, but there has been no help for it! Fortunately her illness was at no time dangerous though trying: and we had a most delightful Blue Sister of the English “Little Company of Mary”

to nurse her. Being forcibly exiled from the sick-room in the mornings, I have rambled about and done a good deal of desultory sight-seeing and also managed, though with some difficulty, to get an audience of the Pope! It was enormously impressive, not on account of any state or ceremony, but entirely by reason of his personality. I never received such an impression of sanctity from anyone before. Whatever muddles he may make intellectually or politically, spiritually he is equal to his position. I do not think anyone who had been in his atmosphere could doubt it.

I also, quite by chance, saw three monks make their final vows and receive their cowls at the shrine of St. Paul, which was rather nice: and have made pilgrimages to almost all the spots connected with him and St. Peter, and gone up the Scala Santa on my knees (

very painful) and seen more relics than there is time to tell of! I did not read Livy, but managed to appreciate the spring in the Forum where Castor and Pollux watered their horses before disappearing into heaven, all the same! But though the classical things are the most beautiful—the Forum and Palatine are a dream of loveliness now the trees are out and the roses and irises in flower—I still like the Christian things best.

It is marvellous to be in the very centre of the Western tradition and see it all spread before one from the earliest catacombs right through the basilica period—and oh! such marvellous mosaics, from the 4th century to the 15th—and up to the present day! I had rather a fortunate introduction to a learned Cistercian monk who lives at —and for—the Catacomb of St. Callistus: and he took me through it, and showed me the very beginnings of Eucharistic symbolism in the paintings of the primitive sacrament-chapels. The obvious deductions, particularly as to the sacrificial character of the earliest form, and the offering of Mass for the dead, must be “awkward facts” for Protestant theologians!

You have my deepest sympathy in your uncertainties about that question of kneeling down under the eyes of one’s companions when visiting churches! The same problem perenially haunts me: and like you, I usually end in a compromise! I certainly would not in any company pass an altar of the Blessed Sacrament without kneeling: but apart from this, I really think there is something to be said in favour of varying one’s practical according to one’s company. After all, the object of kneeling down is to pray—and it is not easy to do this under the amazed eyes of one’s fellow-creatures! I think there is a legitimate reserve and shyness in religion which is not cowardice any more than refusing to kiss anyone you love in public would be cowardice. Also, many people would really be made horribly uncomfortable and embarrassed if you did kneel down when you went into a church with them; and I don’t know why you should upset them like that. Personally I detest seeing churches with people! But when it has to be, of two evils I think it is better to sink one’s individuality and go quietly round rather than make a disconcerting exhibition of piety. But I fear this solution will not appeal to you!

Rome.

Thursday [1910].

To HUBERT STUART MOORE.

I do hope you haven’t been worried by this tiresome and idiotic upset of our plans! It really does seem as though bad luck pursued us all the time doesn’t it? And over this particular delay I feel specially savage because I am certain it’s not necessary. However it will only have made 5 days difference and it’s practically certain that on Saturday you will see me once more! You see when my cold suddenly got bad (I got a chill hurrying after a cab in the sun I think) it exhibited itself as violent rheumatism and then went on my chest. The Sister after a day of this coaxed me to see a lady doctor she knew, as I cordially disliked the doctor the Missis had.

Unfortunately I consented and the tiresome creature though a very agreeable woman has turned out to be one of those terrible scientific hospital products who treat everything as an illness and by rule! Having found my bronchial tubes rather stuffy she at once called it bronchitis and I have now been kept 5 days in bed and simply starved—nothing to eat but milk and a little soup—all for a common cold! Can you imagine anything more utterly exasperating?

Even the Missis thinks it absurd but these two women take not the slightest notice of either of us! Of course I suppose after an involuntary hunger strike like this I shall feel weak when I do get up tomorrow—which is annoying just before a-long journey! I can tell you I feel very much off lady doctors. The poor Missis is bearing it well though of course she is having a very dull time—no one to go about with but Sister, and she may never drive in an open cab! She goes out for little walks and buys post cards but cannot be prevailed on to go far afield. She ought of course to be taken each day for a drive outside the walls, and would be if I could go about with her.

Her mother.

She came back from her shopping this morning triumphantly bearing 6

postcard reproductions of “the Greek pugilist resting in the ring”

under the full impression that she had bought the Moses of Michelangelo!

Savernake Forest Hotel, Nr. Marlborough, Wilts.

Thursday [May, 1910].

To J. A. HERBERT.

Your letter has just reached me here. I am so sorry but we do not come home till Monday: or I would have liked so very much to have been allowed to be present at Rose’s First communion and Confirmation. It is very kind of you indeed to suggest it.

That fortnight’s retreat in the convent does sound rather drastic for one of her small size: I do hope it won’t be too overpowering for her and is sufficiently tempered with fresh air. Still, as you say, it must impress her with the supreme importance of religion: I hope it will impress her with its beauty and lovableness too. But the priest who received her struck me as belonging to the “commercial law in the spiritual world” school of piety. I am quite strong again thank you: am walking 10 to 12 miles a day, and anxious to get back to the vast amount of work I have got to do if my MS. is to be delivered according to contract in September… .

As to toties quoties in this connection, it means, I was told, that you as owner can lend the Cross, with its blessings, to the sick and dying, but must not part with it or the blessing goes. You are real owner, as I took it to the Vatican with “intention” to have it done for you.

50 Campden Hill Square, W.

Sunday [12 June, 1010].

To THE SAME.

I am perfectly ashamed of myself for leaving your various kind postcards unanswered! My only excuse is that I am working very hard against time and everything else seems to get “left.” However, I am on my last chapter now, glory be! and only the ghastly processes of revision and appendix-making will remain. I was very glad to know about the book on liturgies. I had not heard of it. I shall try another paper for the Burlington when this book is off my hands and then it will be very useful. (I think I have got a “find” in connection with Van Eyck’s Adoration of the Lamb; but this is a great secret!)

I wonder whether you have been to the show at the Antiquaries yet.

We went yesterday and I thought it most fascinating. Hubert did not send you a card because he thought you would have more than you wanted. I wonder whether you noticed the lovely little panel of the Fractio Panis amongst the “additional objects.” Not a very usual subject is it? I have seen it in Flemish art of course: and this exhibition seems to show pretty clearly the community of feeling between England and Flanders, don’t you think? In St. Erasmus, for instance. I last saw him, and also the Fractio Panis oddly enough, in the Cathedral of Louvain.

Edmund Gardner has been giving some glorious lectures on Dante’s mysticism at University College. They were highly stimulating but so extremely depressing in their goodness for anyone in the same line of business! A young ladies’ school attended regularly, and sat open-mouthed with a bunny-rabbit expression whilst E.G. discoursed ecstatically about the ladder of contemplation, and the soul’s ascent to the vision of Truth!!

Feb. 7, 1911.

To M.R.

If really what you want from the bottom of your heart is as you say “to do your part in an ordinary decent way,” then you can do it; because this is wholly a matter of the will and has nothing at all to do with what you feel or do not feel, like or do not like. If you go on, in the teeth of reluctance and dreariness, with a rule of life which you know is right and which you have deliberately accepted: then you are doing what you can and no one asks more of you than that. But if you “go off on a pagan holiday”—well, that is deliberate disloyalty and practically a confession that you accepted Christ for what He could give you, not for what you could give Him.

I do not think you have ever made the Cross the centre of your life really. I do not quite know what you have made the centre, but it looks as though it cannot be that. And you have got to, you know.

Nothing else will do. And if you do not accept it deliberately, why then it will be forced on you in some subtle and ingenious way, as it is at the present moment. And by struggling and tiring yourself out, you make it worse and add physical and mental fatigue to your spiritual troubles. Accept what you are having, quite simply and obediently. Take it as it comes. Do not “will” or “want” this or that; however virtuous and edifying your wishes may be. All such willings presuppose that you know better than the Spirit of God. And do not get into a despairing condition. These experiences are a perfectly normal part of the spiritual life: which is not designed on the lines of a “Pleasant Sunday Afternoon.”

As to what you ought to do, it is very difficult to advise anyone else in this sort of condition. But I feel pretty sure you ought not to shirk church and your ordinary times of prayer. Only, do not on any account struggle at all to feel things or get into communion or anything like that. Surrender yourself altogether and be quite quiet. The thing is not in your hands at present. You are just to remain true to your colours. Leave off mental prayer and meditation.

Stick to formal prayer. And it would be well to leave those you ordinarily use, and take for the time to quite fresh ones. I do not know how long you spend in prayer but very likely now you will not be able to spend so long. There is no object in exhausting yourself.

You have been poring over the whole thing too much; instead of letting it happen, like a spell of bad weather.

I would rather you did some external good works, and thought less for the present about your soul. (I do not mean by this that I think grate-cleaning a proper substitute for church.) I wonder whether you have let your physical health run down and got nervous: because of course that accounts for a lot, and must not be confused with the other.

This sounds an odiously unsympathetic letter, and sort of easy and superior. But it is not meant to be really.

I know quite well what these states are like, and how dreary it is; and do not behave at all well under them. But I know too that surrender is the only way out of them. Humility and willing suffering have got to be learned if we want to be Christians, and some people learn them by boredom instead of by torture. But once you really surrender it is extraordinary how the nastiness goes and you perceive that it was “shade of His Hand outstretched caressingly.”

50 Campden Hill Square, W.

19 March, 1911.

To MRS. MMEYRICK HEATH.

It was kind of you to make time to write me so nice a letter out of the midst of all your work—work that seems to me so wonderful and alive, though I can well believe that it brings that hopeless, helpless feeling sometimes. Isn’t it strange how the people one really thought to do something with seem to dissolve on one’s hands —and one’s nearest approaches to success are those things one did almost inadvertently? I’ve noticed it over and over again and come to accept it as being mysteriously “part of one’s job.” Often enough, I suppose, you don’t see your best results at all: they are swamped temporarily and do not really appear till the stress of life begins to be felt? This must be hard: but when I remember the atmosphere of my schooldays (when we were confirmed, we were given a dear little book beginning, “My child, your life hitherto has been one continuous Sin, and you are now walking on the brink of Hell”) I feel deeply thankful that you exist. Your girls have none of the usual excuses for youthful agnosticism—though I agree that the average modern home atmosphere makes it frightfully difficult.

… Ruysbroeck is my own favourite of all the mystics—even beyond Rolle and Julian of Norwich. Traherne is no use to me somehow: too meditative and not sufficiently contemplative. I want someone with a higher temperature, at whose fires I may re-enkindle my chilliness.

Do you know Gertrude More? She is quite neglected now, but rather wonderful I think.

50 Campden Hill Square. W.

31 March, 1911.

To THE SAME.

… Please don’t ever talk or think of “sitting at my feet (!)”

or any nonsense like that. If you knew the real animal you would be provoked to either tears or laughter at the absurdity of the idea.

I’m an utter beast in my inside as a matter of fact—and this is not said for “humility” or something—but because it is unfortunately true, and I want you to understand it and not have illusions. Little things I write merely represent what I know I ought to be but am not. I am not “far on” but at the very bottom. So there!

It is very interesting what you said about the “anaesthetic revelation.” At one time of my life I used to have abrupt fainting fits, and in those I used to plunge into some wonderful peaceful, but quite “undifferentiated” plane of consciousness, in which everything was quite simple and comprehended. I always resented being restored to what is ordinarily called “consciousness”

intensely.

Now when I read Blood’s descriptions—especially that bit about “my grey gull lifts her wing against the nightfall” and also the opening section of Stewart’s “Myths of Plato,” I recognized at once that they had had exactly the same experience. Stewart’s “solemn sense of Timeless Being” is rather a good oblique description of it. I’ve never seen any chain of cause and effect as you say—but rather felt happily within a quiet peaceful Reality, like the “still desert” of the mystics—where there was no multiplicity and no need of explanations. Personally I doubt whether this is a very high way of apprehending reality, though no doubt it is a way. Last week a little girl of about 21, very clever and with some poetic imagination but not at all highly educated, was here: and becoming confidential, she told me that it made her restless and miserable to read Mysticism because I talked in it about “Reality,” and she knew that she had seen and known once what it was and forgotten it since.

That once, under an anaesthetic, she had been “shown” reality, and that she “came to” with a voice ringing in her ears, saying, “Don’t forget what you have seen—try to remember—we are afraid you will forget.” She did try, but it all slipped away from her except the voice and the knowledge that she had seen.

… It’s very kind of you to like The Path of the Eternal Wisdom.

It was really my own little attempts to “make something” of that particular devotion—which I used to find indigestible—and then a great friend suggested it might be worth while perhaps to print it.

April 12, 1911.

To M.R.

As far as I know—but I do not know much and apparently rather less every day!—what you now see about the Cross does seem to me right.

It is the active and heroic and glad taking on of the painful and arduous, for the sake of love, and because | it is the best on the whole of the poor little things we can offer.

And of course it does need “ascetic” training of some sort: and such training, if wisely chosen, is good, for all sorts of other and less exalted reasons. Soft comfiness is the soul’s worst enemy, and those who have let it become necessary to them will probably find heaven uncommonly like hell! The question is, how and where in a normal, active life, to fit in the said discipline and I agree with you, it is very difficult!

The one great rule must be, you must not do anything which lowers your all-round efficiency for life—if the absent hot-water bottle means always bad nights and slackness next day, it is not a good thing to choose. Ditto about food.

Personally—in case the idea is of use to you—I have taken to knocking off all aesthetic pleasure in Lent; all poetry, fiction, theatres, music. This I find, at any rate at first, a real deprivation, and absolutely harmless! Also, doing rather dreary social duties one is inclined to shirk and giving up attractive ones… . All this sounds very little and is, alas: but it makes a sort of beginning, and there are constant choices turning up in daily life, when one can try to choose the harder side pour le bon motif. We all want bracing, as you say, nowadays: and certainly the fact that the idea of going without some external comfort worries one is a danger signal that should not be neglected. Only, always keep your eye fixed on the object in view and never let yourself think the selfdenials you manage to perform important in themselves. The wildest austerities of the most ecstatic saints are hardly visible against “the glory that shall be revealed.”

Hotel de Lille et d’Albion, 223 Rue St. Honore, Paris.

Thursday evening [1911].

To HUBERT STUART MOORE.

A most mysterious thing happened here. A Dr. Colquhoun, of New Zealand, staying in this hotel, sent in his card to me, with my name written on it, saying he would like to see me! I looked out for him but we didn’t meet and this morning he left for me a friendly letter, saying he was so sorry not to have caught me, but was leaving to-day, gives me his London address and says he hopes we shall soon meet on my return to England and I haven’t the least idea who he is!! The Horticultural plants sound quite a decent lot on the whole: I asked for the Prims and Campanulas I knew, and think you were quite right to pot ‘em up, the weather being so uncertain. It’s really quite cool here out of the sun today. It’s rather nice that Methuen thinks it worth while to print a 2nd ed. of Mysticism, isn’t it? I’ve written begging him to wait till I get home and send my corrections. Did you read the letter from Edmund you sent on to me? Very amusing! To-night a review by in The Record has come—most generous in its language, “great book,” “classic work,” etc.: but with a beautiful characteristic little dab at my mystical saints whose “transcendental eroticism” he finds “nauseating.” There’s also a long and splendid review signed “C. E. Lawrence” from the Daily Graphic—so I’m purring!

Edmund Gardner.

50 Campden Hill Square, W.8

14 May, 1911.

To MRS. MEYRICK HEATH.

… I wonder whether you and I ought to talk about religion, any more than you and your Roman friends. It will be horrid if we can’t because I know we are at one about the inside, though clearly about the outside we differ a good deal. Anyhow I am not going to argue—that is so dreadful, and spoils everything. But the honestest way is to be a bit autobiographical and explain, and then you can choose if you care to go on with me—so if the rest of this letter becomes a series of egoistical confidences you must forgive it.

You see, I wasn’t brought up to religion really—except just in the formal way of course. So when the “youthful crash” arrived it caught me fair and square, and for 8 or 9 years I really believed myself to be an atheist. Philosophy brought me round to an intelligent and irresponsible sort of theism which I enjoyed thoroughly but which did not last long.

Gradually the net closed in on me and I was driven nearer and nearer to Christianity—half of me wishing it were true and half resisting violently all the time. In those days I used to frequent both English and Roman churches and wish I knew what their secret was. Finally I went to stay for a few days at a Convent of Perpetual Adoration. The day after I came away, a good deal shaken but unconvinced, I was “converted”

quite suddenly once and for all by an overpowering vision which had really no specific Christian elements, but yet convinced me that the Catholic Religion was true. It was so tightly bound up with (Roman) Catholicism, that I had no doubt, and have had none since (this happened between 4 and 5 years ago only), that that Church was my ultimate home. So strong is this conviction that to have any personal dealings with Anglicanism seems for me a kind of treachery. Unfortunately I allowed myself to be persuaded to wait a year before being received; and meanwhile the Modernist storm broke, with the result that now, being myself “Modernist” on many points, I can’t get in without suppressions and evasions to which I can’t quite bring myself. But I can’t accept Anglicanism instead: it seems an integrally different thing. So here I am, going to Mass and so on of course, but entirely deprived of sacraments.

I no more like the tone and temper of contemporary Romanism than you do: it is really horrible; but with all her muddles, she has kept her mysteries intact. There I can touch—see—feel Reality: and—speaking for myself only—nowhere else. Alas, you won’t approve of all this, and I don’teither—it is all wrong, but at present I don’t know what else to do. The narrow exclusiveness of Rome is dreadful—I could never believe it, for I feel in sympathy with every Christian of every sort—except when they start hating one another. But to join any other communion is simply an impossible thought.

50 Campden Hill Square, W.

15 May, 1911.

To THE SAME.

… Oh, that dreadful limiting of salvation! How can anyone who does it dare to take Our Lord’s name on their lips again. As if His presence had not been with thousands who knew not who it was they entertained. You are right—we are all too narrow for God—and yet, to steer a clean course between bigotry and indifferentism is none too easy sometimes—for me, anyhow. But I cling to St. Paul—and seem to find his inmost teaching over and over again in all one’s experience, and in everyone who cares for Christ—Catholic or Protestant or whatsoever he may be. Is it not amazing when one can stand back from one’s life and look back down it—or still more, peep into others’ lives—and see the action of the Spirit of God: so gentle, ceaseless, inexorable, pressing you bit by bit whether you like it or not towards your home? I feel this more and more as the dominating thing—it seems so odd that everyone does not feel and notice it happening, don’t you think?

July 25, 1911.

To M.R.

I am sending you Les Graces d’Oraison [Auguste Poulain] to read because I think its description of states of prayer and recollection and its general advice is so sane and practical—and in it if anywhere, you will be able to locate yourself. Of course I mean by this in the earlier chapters. When he gets on to visions and such like, he gets rather absurd!! …

As to making an act of recollection, I can only tell you what I do myself. I think I generally (1) make a definite act of the will to attend to it, (2) some short verbal prayer holding on tight to each word, (3) go on direct from that, or sometimes without finishing it to a sort of staring at God. Of course very often it does not come off at all; and when it does (3) may vary from a mere deliberate act of meditation to real passivity which is entirely outside our own control and should never be deliberately struggled for. If I were you, I should try to do this for 10 or 15 minutes every morning at first, not for longer whilst it is an effort. What is really best for you I believe when you are like this, is just to say, you will put aside that (or any other given point of time) for attending exclusively to God—and then spend it as seems natural when it comes, not in striving for states that do not come of themselves, but just being content to give yourself up to Him and “be as you are.”

You will see that Poulain regards such fluctuations and loss of perception as you have had as absolutely normal and indeed to be expected.

If you want a more formal, but very simple and sensible account of how to meditate, there is an extraordinarily good one in No. 26 of Mowbray’s Manuals for the Million (id. I think), A Plain Guide to Meditation, by Rev. G. Longridge.

I am afraid all this is not much use! You see I think it is very likely that the point for you now is not to be going on to the next thing, but to accept loyally the place where you are now and stick to it, putting up with the dimness and aridity and holding on to the knowledge of what you have had in the past.

Yacht Nepenthe, Poole, Dorset.

Feast of the Assumption, 1911.

To MRS. MEYRICK HEATH.

… No, I hadn’t spotted the fact that you are a craftswoman—and you, apparently, had not spotted that I am one too! In the days when I was still too timid and reverential to dare handle the English language I used to be an almost professional bookbinder and even once had a pupil who used to put me into agonies of impatience by her finicky amateurish ways! I can do weaving and have a lace-maker’s cushion on board here: and my husband does really nice jewellery and enamels on the rare occasions when he has any daylight time. So you see I can sympathize with that side of you all right though I don’t actually do those things now so much as I used.

Gardening takes up most of my play hours in London, and I do a little Health Society and Poor Law visiting, and seem to go out to tea a terrible lot and have lunch with my mother every day. So existence is fairly full—even though it be of nothing in particular!

I’m so glad your long fast was a success! When I heard how clear-headed and undistracted it made you I felt quite inclined to try one myself, feeling just the opposite at present! Only not having any surplus tissue to feed on I didn’t quite know what would happen… .

You and I have rather got that Seeker to ourselves, haven’t we? I thought your article splendid and only hope it will go to the hearts and brains of all its readers. What a good thing it has got in ahead of –‘s contribution on the subject! I think you make religion very “amiable”—but I suppose the Cross is for the mature, not for babes.

My Ruysbroeck is as flat as a pancake and almost an insult to that transcendent genius. But it was written “to order” when I was at my dullest and dreariest. The second instalment is even worse!

Newbiggin Hall, Westmorland.

16 Sept., 1911.

To J. A. HERBERT.

Thank you so very much for your letter and for the gift of the Book, which I am much looking forward to seeing when I get home. I am delighted to hear that G.F. thinks so well of it and only hope that is the beginning of a long series of just appreciations.

I did read R.H.B.‘s book, with pain and disgust. I wondered what you were thinking of it; it seems to me the most dangerous attack on Catholicism which has appeared for some time. Its mixture of childishness, intolerance and unspirituality is heartrending and one cannot help having a feeling that its author knew that it would give pleasure in certain high places, and efface the “disagreeable impression” made by the Lord of the World.

The Dawn Of All

As for me, I intend to try and be definite and outspoken, so far as the indefinable can be defined! but whether the result will be acceptable to you is another and very different question.

I forget whether I told you that I have become the friend (or rather, disciple and adorer) of Von Hugel. He is the most wonderful personality I have ever known—so saintly, so truthful, sane and tolerant. I feel very safe and happy sitting in his shadow, and he has been most awfully kind to me.

50 Campden Hill Square, W.

30 September, 1911.

To THE SAME.

We got home late last night, and I got Illuminated MSS. and am very delighted with it so far as a brief turn over entitles me to express an opinion. Thank you so very much for it. You ought to be very pleased with the production of such a fine and authoritative piece of work—and the illustrations are splendid: a marvellous improvement on the proofs! I doubt whether I shall be able to come to the show on the 7th. I am going to Bristol on Tuesday for a few days and may not be back.

I have got the Rev. Dr. Harford’s Lady Julian, amongst other things, for “special review.” It is a most interesting text, but I consider his idea of editing truly beastly. “Reaction and Nightmare” is hardly a felicitous title for her chapter about the vision of the fiend, to my thinking! Nor is “littleness of the Kosmos” a likely phrase on the lips of a 14th century mystic. He seems rather a queer creature. The day after I had been asked to review the book, I had a letter from him saying he heard I was going to do it, and enclosing typewritten notes of points to which he wished me to draw attention, and things he had left out and would like said! They went back by return of post and I have heard no more!

All good wishes for luck with the reviewers of Illuminated MSS. Only a few of course will be worth bothering about.

50 Campden Hill Square, W.

16 November, 1911.

To MRS. MEYRICK HEATH.

I wonder what you’ll think of The Everlasting Mercy. I have never read Farrar (wondeful wide acquaintance with Protestant literature you seem to have!) but cannot imagine they had anything in common.

I think the last twelve pages the most wonderfully exact and yet highly poetic description of that sort of vision that has ever been written. Every time I read it, it makes me live the “first fine careless rapture” over again.

I’ve had such a perfectly charming letter from the Abbot of Downside, whom I have never seen, but who is reading Mysticism and wrote to say how absolutely he agrees with it. Wasn’t it sweet of him, and such a surprise. It came yesterday and made me feel so warm and comfy and readier to tolerate the ever-growing crowd of bores who have had visions and want to tell me what they are like!

I don’t believe it matters a bit feeling as you do just now about prayer—I mean of course I know it is beastly—but it’s not your fault and all that really matters is holding on with one’s will. I’m sure hard difficult prayer is more worth giving than the easy nice sort—though it is one of the hardest things in the world, when one has been grinding out spiritual sawdust, to feel this really is so.

Anyhow there can’t be any merit in being sugar-fed!!

Feb. 6, 1912.

To M.R.

No, I am not going to scold a bit: and if you read any of “these here ensuing” in that sense, you will be twisting my meaning and attributing too much importance to the harshness of an unchastened style.

I do not think you are doing nearly as badly as you fancy: you have made great progress these last few years and there are bound to be flat times when nothing very spicy happens and you appear to yourself to be stuck or even to be going back, because you have leisure to observe the great difference which always exists and always must exist between your actions and your ideals and dreams.

It is dreadfully difficult to estimate progress when there has been no opportunity for showing positive acts or any outstanding highly coloured fault to be eradicated: but there are more ways than one of growing, and you must not assume you have not developed merely because you do not observe your frocks getting too short!

Now about self-examination. These general vague examinations are very apt to be deceptive and featureless particularly with a life and character of your type. Drop that now, and take up the “particular examination.” Pick out a fault or lack which you recognize in yourself, and which comes out, however subtly, in your daily life. Whatever you find yourself most “up against”

—pride, lack of loving response (to life in general, as well as to God in particular), slackness, depression—whatever it is. Watch that, and that only. Try if you have time in the middle of the day to glance back over the morning and see if you have fallen into it.

Pull yourself together and make an act of contrition as regards that. At night, count up how many times you have committed it. Write down the number: and look a little into the circumstances of each.

You will not find this tends at all to self-glorification, at first at any rate. But it is solid work in character-building and very bracing, definite and wholesome.

If you find in your prayers that you really tend to dreaminess and talking to yourself, it will be better to use more vocal prayers until you get back more of your power. When one is really tired, it seems the only thing possible to do: and remember, it is the direction of your will that counts, not the amount that you have strength to accomplish. Prayer, when one is going through a blank time like this, is really exhausting work and you must be as reasonable in your use of it as in any other form of work. Try to make acts of faith and trust and to cultivate the power of resting in God, even in the darkness. Remember, grace is pouring in on you all the time and it is not conditioned by the fact that your eyes are shut.

About churchgoing I am quite of your opinion. I should never dream myself of going to a cheerful hearty Evensong, and shouting hymns by way of expressing my devotion! I do not feel that it is anyone’s duty to do so unless that sort of thing is a natural act of worship to them. No doubt it is excellent for M–, but a quiet hour of meditation and reading at home is probably far better for you. I do think it is right and necessary to attend a Celebration every Sunday but anything beyond that seems to me a matter of individual piety which one is at liberty to settle for oneself. As to Festivals—other things being equal, I do think it desirable to observe them in some way; and unless one does observe them, they will never come to mean anything to one—just as it is impossible to understand intercession unless one practises it, and they all do or can mean something—have a definite place in the interior drama of faith.

Now as to your last theological difficulty. This is really simply a “bogey” and need not cause you any distress. Everyone tends to worship God more under one aspect than another. The Trinity is far too great to be apprehended “evenly all round” by any one consciousness. Tyrrell said that everyone was either a God-lover or a Christ-lover: and no one was both, at any rate in an equal degree.

Why was God revealed in Christ, except that such a revelation was an absolute necessity for the majority of human souls?

All the saints have taught that it is far better and safer to approach the contemplation of God through the Humanity of Christ than in any other way. So I would not worry about this at all. At the same time, it is rather a strong measure to give up the Lord’s Prayer—the one thing which sums up the attitude of the human Christ Whom you are to try to imitate. If you say it in union with His Spirit it will become real to you sooner or later. But so long as you go on trusting and doing what you ought without getting anything for it, you need not have any fear that you are on the wrong track; or that your inward life is not secure. I am certain, myself, that it is secure; and that you will discover it for yourself—probably in some wholly unexpected way.

50 Campden Hill Square, W.

February, 1912.

To MRS. MEYRICK HEATH.

… I suppose you have received –-‘s. What do you think of that?

What with Adam and Eve, and that wild notion of his about the visible order being the inversion of the invisible (the impudence of making St. Paul responsible for it!) I felt as if I had got a nightmare of a distressing kind—the sort of thing that makes Richard mew suddenly in his sleep.

I’m immersed in my book which is very difficult but enthralling, and involves consulting what seems to be an absolutely endless number of authorities. I write all morning and read in the evening; at least as long as I can but I generally collapse with dimness of mind about nine o’clock! I wish Miss R. would teach me to cure that. Her second class was much better than her first and I felt rather contrite at having run her down to you. She is all right when she sticks to physiology, and simple psychological facts—often quite illuminating. But when she approaches metaphysics or theology the thin ice begins! It is all very well, but this teaching does leave out something which seems to me an essential of Christianity as I understand it. It aims at making a healthy all-round efficient even-tempered creature, a perfect machine for doing God’s Will: but not a “God-intoxicated spirit,” a lover of the Eternal Beauty. Miss R. said on Wednesday, a propos of the stigmata of the saints, that modern Christians would never think of meditating on the sufferings or crucifixion of Christ but would give all their attention to making the world the sort of place where “such an episode” would be impossible. Rather a tepid, remote impersonal kind of religion, don’t you think? And wholly wanting in the great qualities of wildness and romance.

Haarlem.

Eve of Dominica in Albis [Low Sunday], 1912.

To THE SAME.

… We had a truly divine week at Storrington; walked ten miles each day, mostly on the tops of the downs, and soaked our minds in all the trees and flowers and growing things. There was a monastery church for me, with four doddery old monks and one brisk one with a superb voice. He took the whole Good Friday and Holy Saturday services as solos and no one else seemed capable of so much as making the responses! On Good Friday he sang the Reproaches, choir parts and all, and the Crux Fidelis, and then carried the Blessed Sacrament to the altar of Repose singing the Vexilla. Regis all by himself. It sounds weird, but really it was most impressive—much more so than the attempt at fluffy anthems on Easter Day. But as on many previous Easters, I found nature a great deal more spiritually suggestive than ecclesiasticism! Everything seems then to surge in on you with new life, doesn’t it? It is too much to be pinned down at the moment into any rites and symbols however august, isn’t it?

It’s only after the glory and the madness have worn off a bit that one can bear them.

We saw Father Tyrrell’s grave. He is buried there in the corner of the Anglican churchyard with the chalice that was taken away from him engraved on his tomb.

I am over here now for a fortnight or three weeks—rather waste of time, for Storrington did me such a lot of good I could quite well have started work again at once, and wanted to. However, I’d promised to escort mother on her holiday so it had to be done! It is all very bright, clean, crisp, sunny and neat here, and the fields of flowers look like a kindergarten exercise in “flat tinting.” At the corners of them are rubbish heaps of masses and masses of cut flowers, all lovely mixed fading tints, and more melancholy than a thousand cemeteries. There must be a streak of real beastliness in the Dutch—they use the cut flowers for manure. Nature in her harshest and most dreadful mood has never equalled that, has she? It has quite put me off the bulb gardens and I take refuge with the glorious Franz Hals pictures—a whole room just bursting with vitality and getting realer and realer the longer one sits with them. They offer all sorts of interesting problems to be meditated on, those pictures: as for instance, why should a view of humanity so obviously superficial be at the same time so deeply alive? And, why should this end by impressing one as more mysterious than the avowedly mysterious pictures of Rembrandt? Kindly tell me.

Hotel-Restaurant Bellevue, Dordrecht.

22 April, 1912.

To HUBERT STUART MOORE.

Here we are, safely arrived at Dordrecht so I will begin your letter to-night: which is really extremely nice of me, as I haven’t heard a thing from you—no letter here! I suppose the garden on Saturday made you miss the post?

We were dreadfully sorry to leave Volendam—it was such a friendly seductive little place and wonderful bright air too. We came away by “house-boat,” a small boat with an open cabin in the middle, and a sail and push-pole, to Edam, where we got the light railway to Amsterdam. The ancient bargee who managed the house-boat had to get on the roof at one point and manoeuvre the pole, so—really almost unconsciously—I took the helm—we were heading straight into the bank—and cleared the main sheet which was jammed in the block.

Tremendous sensation on the part of Dutch passenger and bargee, who was understood to say I was “een trouer schipper”!

I have bought one of the Volendam fur hats, and also a nice boy’s sleeved waistcoat: it fits rather well and will be a most nice little garment on the boat, I think. One of the girls at the inn took us shopping this morning, to the real general shop where the people buy their clothes, not the tourist place; and amongst other things we happened on two good old silver buckles, of which I secured one.

High Mass yesterday was really distracting—e whole population in church, 2,000 or more, and only about six not in costume. Men and women sit separately, so where I was it was a forest of entrancing caps! I was rather amused because at breakfast at the hotel a very Protestant English couple assured me that if I went to the church I should have to stand the whole time as no stranger ever got a seat.

A friend of theirs the previous Sunday had “offered any money” for one and simply been turned away. I thought this odd, but went off prepared for the worst. Went into church in the usual way, and the old man who took Holy Water next after me at once seized my arm in a fatherly way, said “Heer ist een platz” and led me to an excellent seat! They are a very religious, serious sort of people, and I dare say do discourage visitors who come to the church merely to see the show—don’t blame them! A thing happened there which I had never hoped to see in real life: during the sermon the beadle walked down the aisles stirring up the children who were going to sleep with his staff and again at the Consecration, giving all those a whack who didn’t kneel down!

In the evening one of the innkeeper’s daughters, in a delightful ingenuous broken English, discoursed to us, more frankly than I think she knew, of the manners and customs of Volendam, and of various local scandals. The other English, I think, were much shocked. Personally I nearly died of suppressed laughter, especially when one matron said, a propos of the cupboard-beds where all the family sleep together: “But of course the boys and girls do not sleep in the same bed?” and our informant replied, “Oh yees, zey do: till zee boys begin to go after zee girls, zen they must go and sleep in the boats. But zee Volendam boys very slow. Sometimes 16, 17 before zey begin to think of zee girls!”

We are much pleased with our quarters here, which have reconciled us a little to leaving Volendam. The hotel is just at the point where the three big rivers meet, and we have rooms with balconies where we can sit and watch the shipping, which just streams past all the time. Every pattern of barge and school you can imagine. In the twilight they looked most lovely. What is funny is that they carry no side lights here, only a masthead one even for sailing vessels. We hope to go all the way to Middelburg by water on Wednesday—seven hours of it.

50 Campden Hill Square, W.

12 May, 1912.

To MRS. MEYRICK HEATH.

… We’ve been back ten days and now in another ten I’ve got to go away for Whitsuntide. This is really a terrible time of year! No settling in for really connected work—st sudden vivid scraps.

I am so glad you had a good time in Rome. Isn’t the Pope (Pius X) impressive? I never saw the last one—t the simplicity and radiant devoutness of this simply left me grovelling. However unsuitable he may be politically and intellectually, I am convinced that inside he is a great Christian and would be an ideal Pope if a Pope’s job were purely spiritual (as it ought to be).

I can’t remember where I wrote to you from last, but I fancy it was Amsterdam. We went to Volendam after that, which I loved, though in parts it was smelly. But the marvellous costumes—the dear creatures with mediaeval faces, in huge baggy trousers laced up with green, and rose-coloured waistcoats and fur hats, were entrancing. We were there for Sunday, and High Mass was a terrible struggle between the delights of the inward and the outward eye. Then we went to Dort and Middelburg, then Brussels (I’d never seen the pictures there—and some of them are really rather good, aren’t they?) and then three wild days of shopping in Paris! It was its very sweetest and greenest and blossomyest, but there were no nice little old books on the bookstalls, which was a great blow….

(At this point an interval has occurred during which the thunderstorm being over, we have descended into the garden and caught 300 slugs. How I love the mixture of the beautiful and the squalid in gardening. It makes it so lifelike.)

Did I tell you about a thing called the Religious Thought Society which has been started lately? It is supposed to be going to get hold of the modern mind and deepen its spiritual life. I don’t know whether it will: it has considerably diminished its chances by co-opting me on to its Committee, where I feel very uncomfortable amidst earnest and orthodox females. There’s one nice open-airy man though with the proper Christian twinkle in his eye. The Dean of St. Paul’s [Dr. Inge] is the head of it, which is at any rate a guarantee that it will not vapour off in the direction of sentimentalism. We are going to have two conferences on the Doctrine of the Trinity in June and July, the various groups of members who study together reading and discussing around that subject at their own weekly meetings, and in the autumn we shall begin, I hope, a course taking in the different aspects of the spiritual life.

50 Campden Hill Square, W.

15 May, 1912.

To THE SAME.

No papers so far about the Religious Thought Society as everyone seems anxious not to make it formal but just a community of people caring about the things, and leaving different | groups complete liberty to form and act as they think best. At bottom I feel much as you do about it, and for some months flatly refused to go on the Committee as I regarded it as a mere excuse for Religious Talk.

However, I do see that whilst Theosophists, Higher Thoughtists and every other kind of heretic are having organized campaigns and “group meetings” and the rest and getting hold of those who think themselves intelligent by the score, it is idle for Christians to sit tight and talk about the merits of “wholesome Church discipline,” etc. We must meet them on their own ground and show what the treasures of Christian philosophy are. Not one in a thousand, believers or unbelievers, knows anything about them. I look on it as a sort of educative and missionary work really worth doing if it can be done in the right sort of way.

Yacht Nepenthe, Walton-on-the-Naze.

29 May, 1912.

To THE SAME.

… No, I’m not going to retort with remarks about lights under bushels to your observations on the Religious Thought thing. On the contrary, the people who wave their lights under your nose on the smallest provocation generally fry me brown with disgust. All the same, I think this policy of modest reticence can be carried too far! Really much of what our people want to do—so far as I can make out—is just the sort of thing you do for your girls now, because millions have grown up without having it done to them; and their need cannot be met by ecclesiastical ceremonies which they don’t know how to use. To my mind, if only a few of these are put on the road to first-hand experience, the Society will have been a success. Of course, a lot of purposeless talk will go on and a lot of rope be given to the pious gabblers, but that’s unavoidable. It is not so much a case of speculating, as of expounding what we have got. Nine-tenths of modern Christians are blissfully ignorant of their own theology, and intelligent young sceptics hardly ever know the outlines of the religion they are too clever to believe. If we educate intellects, surely we must take account of them in religion as in everything else? If we don’t, I think we run a frightful risk.

Better get them for God than leave them for the devil, even though it is the heart He chiefly wants. It’s odd I should be arguing like this because really the whole of my instincts are on the other side!

I feel the ideal thing—and for me, the only possible way—is to get people individually bit by bit, one by one, when a “door is opened”

to one. The idea of talking generally about anything that really matters, makes one squirm. Still, a thing like this, purposely left very vague and unfettered by rules, may attract “seekers” who may thus get into touch with those who can help them. There’s a lot of religious loneliness about, I think; and the mere fact of a corporate spirit amongst those interested ought—if we back each other up and pray for each other—to be good, oughtn’t it?

What a screed! and there are lots of nice plover in the salt marsh all round us talking much better sense. We might be at the end of the world here, it’s so desolate—a narrow creek running up into the marsh—not a house or a tree in sight; and a queer orange moon in the sky. It’s like a bit out of “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came” and pleases me immensely.

50 Campden Hill Square, W.

Monday in Easter Week, 1913.

To MISS NANCY PAUL.

… Thank you so very very much for your beautiful and generous letter. How could you think such kindness an “impertinence”? It soothed and delighted me beyond measure: for so far the outstanding results of The Mystic Way have been a rather harrowing letter from Arthur Machen, making it obvious that he no longer considers me a Christian; some objectionable flattery from unbelievers, and the amazing deduction of The Times reviewer, that I have proved that mystics value the sacraments highly, as an elaborate sham. Between them I’ve been feeling rather dismal and outcast: and even began to fear I had achieved the impossible and shocked Scotty herself (a triumph in its way, I admit!), and your lovely letter has had a most restorative effect. You have read into the book just what I tried so hard to put there but which will only be found by those who already possess a clearer vision than I have at my disposal. Yes, “reverent insulation” is no good, is it? In its way, as destructive of love as the worst excesses of “rationalism”. But I am gradually finding out that most devout persons are Docetists without knowing it, and that nothing short of complete unreality will satisfy them. It is queer, isn’t it? Logically their Scriptures ought to begin, “In the beginning the devil created… .”

Mrs. Ernest Dowson (William Scott Palmer).

Thanking you again many times for your letter—d I haven’t told you a bit properly what it has meant to me.

50 Campden Hill Square, W.

Low Sunday (March 30), 1913.

To J. A. HERBERT.

No, of course, I am not “vexed”; though I admit that your letter is very painful reading. I had not expected you to misinterpret my attitude and intentions quite so completely, or so promptly take it for granted that I meant the worst. Far from going further on the path of destruction, the last thing I wish is to destroy the one thing which gives life meaning and beauty to me: but what seems to you, to my great grief, to be blasphemy, seems to me to make the things I love best more real and more sacred.

As to the critical side of the book, I simply took the least common measure of what seems to me to be practically established beyond reasonable doubt, and did not, in most particulars, even go so far as Baron von Hugel thought I should have done. (You are of course quite right about Mark as the source for Matthew and Luke, and I should have made that more clear.) I think that theologians will have to accept these positions sooner or later (an enormous number of course have already done so) and that a Christianity which cannot survive that process is in a parlous case.

The Mystic Way.

As to the Magnificat, apart from the difficulty of supposing that Our Lady remembered exactly, and repeated to others, a long and yet absolutely spontaneous rhapsody of this kind, it surely tallies with all that we know about antique writers of history, that they felt quite at liberty to write speeches for the persons whom they described? The case here is clearly quite different from that of Our Lord Himself whose words were evidently felt from the first to be of supreme importance, and were moreover heard and treasured by a group of disciples. I don’t one bit wish to jar on any one. At the same time a recognition of the plain fact that the Magnificat is simply a wonderfully beautiful linked series of O.T. texts does seem to reduce the importance of the question as to whether or no this form of words, rather than the pure and intense emotion which they represent, goes back to Our Lady herself.

Of course I would not suggest that incidents given by one source only are necessarily “non-historical.” It is not this, but their “literary” character and incompatibility with Matthew, which causes suspicion to fall on the Nativity episodes in Luke. As to your last suggestion that I make it appear that Our Lord was inferior to “the really tip-top” mystics I do feel it rather difficult to write coolly. I say over and over again that He represents the classic and perfect achievement of all that the greatest saints have aimed at but never wholly reached—that throughout His whole Ministry, He exhibited, as none other did, the characters of the Unitive Way in their highest perfection, that, in Him, for once life achieved freedom and touched the Divine. Does not this involve the Incarnation? And could I make my disclaimer of the idea that I “rank Him below His followers” much more plain?

I never dreamed for an instant that anyone could bring such a charge as that or I most certainly would have “disclaimed” in the most violent terms known to me. At the same time the postresurrection life surely was (or rather is, for we cannot, can we, regard it as other than directly continuous with His presence in the Blessed Sacrament?) of a more “exalted” nature than the “earthly” life and so does represent the achievement of new levels by one who is human as well as divine.

I should like to ask you just two questions on the whole subject (you need not answer them).

(1) Does it strike you as more consonant with the dignity and glory of God that His supreme revelation should run counter to the normal processes of the life He creates and upholds, instead of emerging through that life?

(2) Does not the Incarnation involve complete humanity? And can we sever complete humanity from the laws and limitations (mental as well as bodily) which go with our psycho-physical framework? Do you think the Incarnation could achieve its purpose for man if it had as its instrument a special nervous system, a special brain, and was exempt from the working of the laws of growth, etc.? It seems to me that all conceptions of Our Lord’s person as something ready-made, must eventually land us in Docetism—d personally I find my own heresy, horrible though it be, better to live with than that.

[April, 1913.]

To THE SAME.

I was just going to answer your previous letter when its appendix came. The funny thing is, that in the said appendix, your attitude to miracle is exactly the same as my own: which makes the reason why I shock you so, more of a mystery (to me) than ever. Moreover, to revert to the letter itself, my question did not mean “Can you swallow the Virgin Birth?” because as far as the possibility is concerned (though I think, for technical reasons I won’t bore you with, that the evidence is weak and full of special difficulties) I have no difficulty in swallowing it myself. In the M.W. [Mystic Way) I left it absolutely alone; and nothing said there is affected by it. All the same, were it disproved tomorrow, I should not have to follow your suggestion and fall back on good manners as a reason for kneeling at “incarnatus est.” My question had to do with the whole general question of revelation: not with possible modifications of the “material” under pressure of the “spiritual” but with the “growth theory” as against the “conjuring-trick theory.” Personally, if I didn’t think the whole of life was the work of the Holy Spirit, I should give everything up. It is the centre of my creed: so vivid that the things which seem to us disgusting, cruel, unjust—and I don’t deny them—can do nothing against it.

50 Campden Hill Square, W.

[? 1913.]

To THE SAME.

I am a wretch not to have answered your kind letter before. I would love to see the Sherborne Missal and if it is possible for me to get to the B.M. before leaving home I will let you know but my life is highly complicated at present by my beloved Indian Prophet, who is convalescing from an operation and likes me to go to him every afternoon if possible, to work out some translations of old Indian mystical lyrics. It is fascinating work and a real joy and education to be with him—but it does not leave much spare time when my other various jobs are done. I had a long talk with the Baron [

von Hugel] before he left for Italy—much about your letter, which had disturbed him considerably—and a firm but gentle lecture on my own Quakerish leanings! His main point seems to be that such interior religion is all very well for our exalted moments, but will fail us in the ordinary dull jog-trot of daily life, and is therefore not a “whole religion” for men who are not “pure spirit”; “a steady-going parish priest like a dear nice eiderdown”!) he thinks a better standby for daily life than any prophet. Hard and dreary doctrine, to my mind, but I am not prepared to say it is wrong.

One Hundred Poems of Kabir, translated by Rabindranath Tagore, assisted by Evelyn Underhill, 1914. Published by the India Society.

50 Campden Hill Square, W.

12 October, 1913.

To MRS. MEYRICK HEATH.

We got back a week ago quite dismal at having to leave Italy, and are slowly getting used to the frowsiness of our glorious country.

We had a really glorious time. The best holiday I’ve had for years.

Very little bad weather, and the last 10 days in particular quite ideal—hot sun and bright crisp air. I think September a far nicer time for Tuscany than the spring: so few tourists, plenty of room everywhere—and then the vineyards such a sight. We went to one vintage and cut grapes madly to cast them into great baskets, feeling highly Bacchanalian, for the best part of a hot afternoon!

We had a beautiful week at and about Vallombrosa. I love those great forests full of little shrines to mark the adventures of St.

Giovanni Gualberto; the penitential baths he took, and the encounters he was always having with the devil. We had one wonderful day in the Casentino. I was determined to get to Camaldoli because there are still Hermits there, so we drove there: right over the Consuma Pass, and by Poppi and lots of other Dante places. The whole day was rather like being inside the Divina Commedia, and the whole landscape absolutely mediaeval. The hermits are at the top of a hill above Camaldoli—seven of them, and so charming. They would not let me into their enclosure (and Hubert flatly refused to go alone!) but one came out and talked and showed me St. Romuald’s cell, which is exactly the pattern they have still, though our hermit assured us that his was much more comfortable! I think it is an ideal life. You keep the canonical hours, do a good deal of gardening, and may talk to each other every other day. Six feet of snow all the winter, which some of course might think a disadvantage, but they don’t seem to mind it a bit. We drove back by moonlight—so wonderful. It was full moon, and the eve of the Feast of the Stigmata and we drove in full sight of La Verna. I felt as if the original night must have been like that. There were sheets of lightning too playing round the tops of the mountains. Do you remember how the peasants reported that on the night of the miracle they saw a mystical fire lighting up the summit of the Mount? If it was such a night as we saw, their statement was absolutely correct.

50 Campden Hill Square, W.

Sunday [1913].

To THE SAME.

I like Mr. Gamble. He is not up to date of course, but his ideas are nice. The other book I haven’t tackled yet, but I fancy it is rather too high and dry for me! It seems to me that in theology one makes a series of forced choices between history and poetry. Both are necessary if one is to get an adequate symbol of truth, but it’s imperative to take them separately. But the professional theologian often falsifies history without attaining poetry and that’s an unforgivable sin against the light!

I liked the Miracle as a pageant very much indeed: it had to my mind nothing at all to do with religion, and I agree with Miss W. in very much resenting the use of the Ave Maria. We narrowly escaped something much worse—the producers originally meant an imitation of the Blessed Sacrament to be carried in the procession, but were dissuaded at the last moment by Father Thurston whom they had consulted about the accuracy of various details! I thought the Madonna and the Spielmann both magnificent pieces of acting. We saw the English Spielmann, not the celebrated Viennese, who has broken down under the strain of having to walk 6 miles at each performance!

50 Campden Hill Square, W.

Sunday [? 1913].

To THE SAME.

… I’ve been that driven this week! Mother’s Sale of Work, Monday to Wednesday—Bergson’s lectures, for which I have been simply living, then a sudden demand for an article on him—ordered Thursday and printed Saturday!—en a note from Methuen asking me to revise Mysticism for its 3rd edition, which is wanted immediately!

So no time for reading, or for preparing to write anything that matters! …

I don’t feel in the mood for theology and am not going to argue with you about Sacraments. I’m still drunk with Bergson, who sharpened one’s mind and swept one off one’s feet both at once. Those lectures have been a real, great experience: direct contact with the personality of a profound intuitive thinker of the first rank!

London isn’t quite so silly as it seems. It provided him with a big, wildly enthusiastic audience which followed him with a deep attention that one could almost feel. After the first lecture when he was shy, he got on very friendly terms with us, and thanked us at the end for our sympathy, in a sweet little English speech.

It was rather strange, and gave me quite a shock last night, when he gave us his final conclusions on the nature of spirit (conclusions which sounded like a metaphysical version of the Communion of Saints), to find that they were exactly the same as my mystic declares that she saw—her intellectual vision, and insists upon in the teeth of all arguments, as absolutely true! I’ve not see her again but we correspond. She is a most strange person, frightfully telepathic and over-sensitive. Two days after I’d seen her she wrote to me, and said, “I have lost my awful feeling of spiritual suffering, for the first time for months, and I know it is because you are praying for me.” It was true that I had been, almost continuously—but I had never said or suggested that I intended to do it.

Nov. 9, 1917.

To M.R.

It was very nice to hear of you again: though I am grieved that writing is still such a painful matter for you.

I could not help being a little bit amused at your description of yourself as becoming “worldly.” Somehow it seems a very unlikely thing to happen to you and it certainly has not happened yet: for your old scale of values is, by your own showing, still intact although like the majority of the human race, you are not perhaps living up to your own ideals.

What has happened to you is happening in a greater or less degree to everyone. The present abnormal conditions are as bad for the spiritual life as for every other kind of life. We are all finding it frightfully difficult and most of us are failing badly. The material world and its interests, uproars and perplexities are so insistent that detachment is almost impossible. Some are utterly overwhelmed: others, as you say of yourself, take refuge in interest in little things. Transcendence of the here and now demands at present a strength of will and a power of withdrawal which very few possess. I am certainly not going to scold you because you cannot manage it—only the saints on one hand, and the spiritual egoists on the other, can.

All the same of course it is essential to hold on as well as you can and make a resolute and regular act of willed attention to God at the times set apart for prayer—only do not fuss at the poor and unappetizing results. The will is what matters—so long as you have that, you are safe—and anything achieved now, when you are tossed back to this state, is worth far more than the enjoyable prayers you could not help.

I know well the condition in which spiritual things seem secondary and unreal—it is not pleasant—but you cannot force yourself into the mood in which they will seem real again—it will come back in its own time. Meanwhile your duty is to act on your inner knowledge and conviction and put all questions of feeling on one side. I do not mind your reluctance of “unwilling pertinacity” as long as you are pertinacious. You are like a person who gets into a fog in the mountains and can only see a few bits of moss in the immediate neighbourhood. The thing is to trust your compass, plod quietly on and avoid getting fussed. You will find it is all right in the long run.

50 Campden Hill Square, W.

7 January, 1919.

To HORACE HUTCHINSON.

Thank you so much for your very kind letter and the gift( of your beautiful little book. I had already seen it, and was very nearly speaking to you about it when we met—only, as you say, the occasion did not seem quite to arise, and I hate talking about these things in a “general way.” I am delighted to hear it is| going into a second edition. I have already given it to people] whom I thought it would benefit.

Although I can’t, of course, say I agree with you on every point-although the mystical experience is one, it is doubtful whether any two people feel absolutely the same about it—I think your statement is admirably clear and lucid. Without unduly stressing the Christian view, you have put the subject in a light which ought to prevent your readers from making any of the cruder mistakes, or rambling off into theosophy and such-like follies. Of course I thoroughly agree with you that| Christianity was from the first essentially a mystical religion; to me, the doctrine of the New Testament is only intelligible from that standpoint.

The only thing I do a little regret is the fact that in one or two cases you have put forward guides who seem to me rather doubtful —e.g. Molinos, as to whose aberrations I agree with Baron von Hugel—and (especially) Mrs. L.—a lady whose spiritual practices were doubtless better than her declarations on the subject. I can’t help thinking it bad to encourage people to induce a quasi-contemplative state by means of mental associations—boundless oceans, sky, light, etc. This is a psychic trick, not the real thing. I think it is better, really, to teach at once the hard and wholesome doctrine that the attitude of adoration and humility is what matters and that spiritual realization is secondary to this, and can only be prepared for, not obtained, by our deliberate conscious efforts. But very likely you don’t agree about this. I don’t apologize for writing frankly because I am sure you would prefer it, and we both care about the subject too much for anything but candour to be possible.

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