CHAPTER I.

Secrecy; its Uses and Abuses.--Mystery; its Definition.--Mysticism, and
its Definition.

It is not true, as has been sometimes said, that wherever there is secrecy
there is error.

Secrecy, like most all else, hath its uses and abuses: its uses, as
developed in modesty and domestic virtue, in religious meditation,
self-examination, and prayer, and in prudence in the affairs of life: its
abuses, in prudery, asceticism, superstitious awe, undue veneration of
power, and when used as a cloud to conceal crime so hideous that nothing
but the truth of God, vindicated by human laws founded thereon, directed by
wisdom, can dispel it.

Virtue and modesty shrink from public gaze. Each looks alone to its innate
sense, the gift of God, and to the sole approval of the great "I AM."

The hidden sincere aspirations of the heart are known only to Him who
"breathed into man the {10} breath of life, and he became a living soul."
These are a secret between the created being and its Almighty Father. At
the lonely hour, when the burdened soul, knowing no earthly refuge from
overwhelming troubles, but a mightier Hand than that of man, seeks on
bended knee and with penitential tear, a blessing from on high, no word is
spoken, no sound uttered save the sob from a contrite heart. The aspiration
has gone forth inaudibly to Him who said to all mankind, then and for
future ages, "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will
give you rest."[1]

"Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,
Uttered or unexpressed,
The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast.
It is the burden of a sigh,
The falling of a tear,
The upward glancing of an eye
When none but God is near."[2]

What knoweth the outer world of this? Yet wrong can not exist in such
secret communion between a penitent heart and its Maker. Pure religious
meditation, leading us from earth to heaven, is only promoted by secret
study and reflection in solitude. Neither philosophy nor religion can be
cultivated in the midst of the vortices of commerce or other business
requiring constant intercourse with hundreds of {11} men during the day,
nor in the whirl of fashion in the evening.

Thus, then, do we trace one of the uses of secrecy. Both its use and its
abuse we shall hereinafter find exemplified in marked effects not only on
individual minds, but also on the masses of mankind in past history: its
use, in the development of tr