d by the Spirit of God on the spirit of man?
Mr. Vaughan assents, and says (we cannot see why) that there is no
mysticism in such a belief. Be that as it may, what that influence
is, and how exercised, is all through the de quo agitur of Mysticism.
Mr. Vaughan, however, seems here for awhile to be talking realism
through an admirable page, well worth perusal (pp. 264, 265). Yet
his grasp is not sure. We soon find him saying what More and Fox
would alike deny, that "The story of Christ's life and death is our
soul's food." No; Christ Himself is--would the Catholic Church and
the Mystic alike answer. And here again the whole matter in dispute
is (unconsciously to Mr. Vaughan) opened up in one word. And if this
sentence does not bear directly on that problem, on what does it
bear? It was therefore with extreme disappointment that on reading
this, and saying to ourselves: "Now we shall hear at last what Mr.
Vaughan himself thinks on the matter," we found that he literally
turned the subject off, as if not worth investigation, by making the
next speaker answer, apropos of nothing, that "the traditional
ascetism of the Friends is their fatal defect as a body."

Why, too, has Mr. Vaughan devoted a few lines only to the great
English Platonists, More, Norris, Smith of Jesus, Gale, and Cudworth?
He says, indeed, that they are scarcely Mystics, except in as far as
Platonism is always in a measure mystical. In our sense of the word
they were all of them Mystics, and of a very lofty type; but surely
Henry More is a Mystic in Mr. Vaughan's sense also. If the author of
"Conjectura Cabbalistica" be not a mystical writer (he himself uses
the term without shame), who is?

We hope to see much in this book condensed, much modified, much
worked out, instead of being left fragmentary and embryotic; but
whether our hope be fulfilled or not, a useful and honourable future
is before the man who could write such a book as this is, in spite of
all defects.

*****

Since the above was written, Mr. Vaughan's premature death has robbed
us of a man who might have done brave work, by lessening, through his
own learning, the intellectual gulf which now exists between English
Churchmen and Dissenters. Dis aliter visum. But Mr. Vaughan's death
does not, I think, render it necessary for me to alter any of the
opinions expressed here; and least of all that in the last sentence,
fulfilled now more perfectly than I could have foreseen.