live by. Here we can see both the character
of God and the measure of His expectation for us. But we must not stop
with the Christ after the flesh, the Christ without. He first becomes
our life and salvation when He is born within us and is revealed in our
hearts, and has become the Life of our lives. We must eat His body,
drink His blood until our nature is one with His nature and our spirit
one in will and purpose with His spirit.[17]

Franck belongs in many respects among the mystics, but with peculiar
variations of his own from the prevailing historical type of mysticism.
He is without question saturated with the spirit of the great mystics; he
approves their inner way to God and he has learned from them to view this
world of time and space as shadow and not as reality. No mystic,
further, could say harsher things than he does of "Reason."[18] Human
reason--or more properly "reasoning"--has for him, as for them, a very
limited area for its demesne. It is a good guide in the realm of earthly
affairs. It can deal wisely with matters that affect our bodily comfort
and our social welfare, but it is "barren" in the sphere of eternal
issues. It has no eye for realities beyond the world of three
dimensions. It goes blind as soon as it tries to speculate about God.
He looks for no final results in spiritual matters from intellectual
dialectics, whether they be of the old scholastic type, or of the new
type of speculations, formulations and subtleties of the Protestant
theologians.

Franck always comes back to _experience_ as his basis of religion, as his
way to truth and to divine things. "Many," he says, "know and teach only
what they have picked up and gathered in, without having experienced it
{56} in the deeps of themselves."[19] "He who wishes to know what is in
the Temple must not stand outside, merely hearing people read and talk
about God. _That_ is all a dead thing. He must go inside and have the
experience for himself ("selbst erfahren"). Then first everything
springs into life."[20] But "experience" with him does not mean
enthusiastic visions and raptures. He puts as little value on ecstasies
and emotional vapourings as he does on dialectic. Ecstasies lead men as
often on false trails as on right tracks. They supply no criterion of
certitude; they furnish no concrete ideas or ideals to live by; but still
further, they do not bring all the deep-lying powers of the soul into
play as any true sou