She thought that Christian
piety owes a large debt of gratitude to such writers as Thomas a Kempis,
Madame Guyon, Fenelon, Leighton, Tersteegen, and others like them in
earlier and later times, to whom "the secret of the Lord" seemed in a
peculiar manner to have been revealed, and who with seraphic zeal trod
as well as taught the paths of peace and holiness. While she was writing
the chapter on the Mystics, I showed her Coleridge's tribute to them
in his Biographia Literaria, which greatly pleased her. It is her own
experience that she puts into the mouth of Urbane, where he says, after
quoting Coleridge's tribute, "I have no recollection of ever reading
this passage till today, but had _toiled out_ its truth for myself, and
now set my hand and seal to it." [13] It is for her, too, as well as for
himself, that Urbane speaks, where, in answer to Hermes' question, "Who
are the Mystics?" he says:

They are the men and women known to every age of the Church, who usually
make their way through the world completely misunderstood by their
fellow-men. Their very virtues sometimes appear to be vices. They are
often the scorn and contempt of their time, and are even persecuted and
thrown into prison by those who think they thus do our Lord service. But
now and then one arises who sees, or thinks he sees, some clue to their
lives and their speech. Though not of them, he feels a mysterious
kinship to them that makes him shrink with pain when he hears them
spoken of unjustly. Now, I happen to be such a man. I have not built
up any pet theory that I want to sustain; I am not in any way bound to
fight for any school; but I should be most ungrateful to God and man if
I did not acknowledge that I owe much of the sum and substance of the
best part of my life to mystical writers--aye, and mystical thinkers,
whom I know in the flesh.... I use Christ as a magnet, and say to all
who cleave to Him--even when I can not perfectly agree with them on
every point of doctrine: You love Christ, therefore I love you.

Closely allied to her fondness for the Mystics was her delight in the
doctrine of the indwelling Christ. For more than thirty years it was a
favorite subject of our Sunday and week-day talk. The closing chapters
of the Gospel of John, the Epistle to the Ephesians, and other parts of
the New Testament, in which this most precious truth is enshrined, were
especially dear to her. So too, and for the same reason, was Lavater's
hymn beginni