m those cases of which the books are full,
where the director (but usually not the subject) remains in doubt
whether the experience may not have proceeded from the demon.

[282] Example: Mr. John Nelson writes of his imprisonment for
preaching Methodism: "My soul was as a watered garden, and I could
sing praises to God all day long; for he turned my captivity into joy,
and gave me to rest as well on the boards, as if I had been on a bed of
down. Now could I say, 'God's service is perfect freedom,' and I was
carried out much in prayer that my enemies might drink of the same
river of peace which my God gave so largely to me." Journal, London,
no date, p. 172.

The mystic is, in short, INVULNERABLE, and must be left, whether we
relish it or not, in undisturbed enjoyment of his creed. Faith, says
Tolstoy, is that by which men live. And faith-state and mystic state
are practically convertible terms.

2.

But I now proceed to add that mystics have no right to claim that we
ought to accept the deliverance of their peculiar experiences, if we
are ourselves outsiders and feel no private call thereto. The utmost
they can ever ask of us in this life is to admit that they establish a
presumption. They form a consensus and have an unequivocal outcome;
and it would be odd, mystics might say, if such a unanimous type of
experience should prove to be altogether wrong. At bottom, however,
this would only be an appeal to numbers, like the appeal of rationalism
the other way; and the appeal to numbers has no logical force. If we
acknowledge it, it is for "suggestive," not for logical reasons: we
follow the majority because to do so suits our life.

But even this presumption from the unanimity of mystics is far from
being strong. In characterizing mystic states an pantheistic,
optimistic, etc., I am afraid I over-simplified the truth. I did so
for expository reasons, and to keep the closer to the classic mystical
tradition. The classic religious mysticism, it now must be confessed,
is only a "privileged case."

It is an EXTRACT, kept true to type by the selection of the fittest
specimens and their preservation in "schools." It is carved out from a
much larger mass; and if we take the larger mass as seriously as
religious mysticism has historically taken itself, we find that the
supposed unanimity largely disappears. To begin with, even religious
mysticism itself, the kind that accumulates traditions and makes