fire; though his deeper thought is that
the hopeless estrangement of the soul from God is the source of all
the torments of the lost.

Love, says Tauler, is the "beginning, middle, and end of virtue." Its
essence is complete self-surrender. We must lose ourselves in the love
of God as a drop of water is lost in the ocean.

It only remains to show how Tauler combats the fantastic errors into
which some of the German mystics had fallen in his day. The author of
the _German Theology_ is equally emphatic in his warnings against the
"false light"; and Ruysbroek's denunciation of the Brethren of the
Free Spirit has already been quoted. Tauler, in an interesting
sermon[277], describes the heady arrogance, disorderly conduct, and
futile idleness of these fanatics, and then gives the following
maxims, by which we may distinguish the false Mysticism from the true.
"Now let us know how we may escape these snares of the enemy. No one
can be free from the observance of the laws of God and the practice of
virtue. No one can unite himself to God in emptiness without true love
and desire for God. No one can be holy without becoming holy, without
good works. No one may leave off doing good works. No one may rest in
God without love for God. No one can be exalted to a stage which he
has not longed for or felt." Finally, he shows how the example of
Christ forbids all the errors which he is combating.

The _Imitation of Christ_ has been so often spoken of as the finest
flower of Christian Mysticism, that it is impossible to omit all
reference to it in these Lectures. And yet it is not, properly
speaking, a mystical treatise. It is the ripe fruit of mediaeval
Christianity as concentrated in the life of the cloister, the last and
best legacy, in this kind, of a system which was already decaying; but
we find in it hardly a trace of that independence which made Eckhart a
pioneer of modern philosophy, and the fourteenth century mystics
forerunners of the Reformation. Thomas a Kempis preaches a
Christianity of the _heart_; but he does not exhibit the
distinguishing characteristics of Mysticism. The title by which the
book is known is really the title of the first section only, and it
does not quite accurately describe the contents of the book.
Throughout the treatise we feel that we are reading a defence of the
recluse and his scheme of life. Self-denial, renunciation of the
world, prayer and meditation, utter humility and purity, are the roa