nsolation
which we feel not to be a mockery when we are in great trouble.

These charges, then, do not seem to form a grave indictment against
the type of Mysticism of which Wordsworth is the best representative.
But he _does_ fall short of the ideal held up by St. John for the
Christian mystic, in that his love and sympathy for inanimate Nature
were (at any rate in his poetry) deeper than for humanity. And if
there is any accusation which may justly be brought against the higher
order of mystics (as opposed to representatives of aberrant types), I
think it is this: that they have sought and found God in their own
souls and in Nature, but not so often in the souls of other men and
women: theirs has been a lonely religion. The grand old maxim, "Vides
fratrem, vides Dominum tuum," has been remembered by them only in acts
of charity. But in reality the love of human beings must be the
shortest road to the vision of God. Love, as St. John teaches us, is
the great hierophant of the Christian mysteries. It gives wings to
contemplation and lightens the darkness which hides the face of God.
When our emotions are deeply stirred, even Nature speaks to us with
voices unheard before; while the man who is without human affection is
either quite unmoved by her influences, or misreads all her lessons.

The spiritualising power of human love is the redeeming principle in
many sordid lives. Teutonic civilisation, which derives half of its
restless energy from ideals which are essentially anti-Christian, and
tastes which are radically barbarous, is prevented from sinking into
moral materialism by its high standard of domestic life. The sweet
influences of the home deprive even mammon-worship of half its
grossness and of some fraction of its evil. As a schoolmaster to bring
men and women to Christ, natural affection is without a rival. It is
in the truest sense a symbol of our union with Him from whom every
family in heaven and earth is named. It is needless to labour a thesis
on which nearly all are agreed; but it may be worth pointing out that,
though St. Paul felt the unique value of Christian marriage as a
symbol of the mystical union of Christ and the Church, this truth was
for the most part lost sight of by the mediaeval mystics, who as monks
and priests were, of course, cut off from domestic life. The romances
of true love which the Old Testament contains were treated as
prophecies wrapped up in riddling language, or as models for