s an earlier stage on the road of humanity. If Christianity
were--as we are occasionally assured--the religion of Jesus, then the
great mystics cannot be called Christians. And yet St. Augustine's: "We
are not Christians, but Christs," was fulfilled in them.

The profoundest depth of European religion, of which Eckhart was the
exponent, and which found artistic expression in Gothic art, was not
sounded by music until very much later. Bach, more emphatically in the
High Mass and the Magnificat, but also in his purely instrumental music,
brought the universal feeling of mysticism to absolute artistic
perfection. The deep religious sentiment which pervades the High Mass is
so far above all cults, that it has no real connection with any
historical faith--it is pure consciousness of the divine.

The peculiar state of the soul, called mysticism, could never become
popular, or exert any very great influence. A few men, such as Tauler,
Suso, Merswin, and the unknown author of the _Theologica Germanica_
handed on--not by any means always unadulterated--the doctrine they had
received from Eckhart--which at all times appealed to a few
thinkers--but the real influence on the world and on history was
reserved for the reformers. The reformer, in his inmost nature, is
related to the people; his soul is agitated by formulas and ceremonies,
to which the mystic is indifferent; they are to him obstacles to his
faith and he strains every nerve to destroy them. He has every
appearance of the truly free spirit, but he is secretly dependent on
that against which he is fighting. He suffers under its inefficiency;
his deed is the final reaction against his environment; salvation seems
to him to lie in the improvement of existing conditions, and not until
he has succeeded in accomplishing his purpose can he hope for religious
peace. The mystic is possible in all states of civilisation. He is not
dependent on external circumstances; his whole consciousness is filled
with one problem only, before which everything else pales: the
relationship of the soul to God. But the reformer is possible only under
certain circumstances. He, too, starts from an inner religious
consciousness, but his problem is soon solved, and he devotes all his
energy to the world. The mystic is not even aware of the difference
between his own conception of God and traditional religion; he is under
the impression that he is still an orthodox believer, long after he has
broken