Chapter 3

With good cheer our Lord looked into His side and beheld with joy [_bodily vision_]: and with His sweet looking He led forth the understanding of His creature, by the same wound, into His side within [_her imagination is led by gesture from one thought to another_]. [9] And then He showed a fair and delectable place, and large enough for all mankind that should be saved, and rest in peace and love [_a conception of the understanding conveyed through the symbol of the open wound in the Heart_]. And therewith He brought to my mind His dear worthy Blood and the precious water which He let pour out for love [_a thought already contained in the mind, but brought to remembrance by Christ_]. And with His sweet rejoicing Pie showed His blessed Heart cloven in two [_bodily or imaginative vision_], and with His rejoicing He showed to my understanding, in part, the Blissful Godhead as far forth as He would at that time strengthen the poor soul for to understand [_an enlightening of the reason to the partial apprehension of a spiritual mystery_]. And with this our Good Lord said full blissfully: "Lo! how I love thee!" [_words formed in the imagination or for the outer hearing_], as if He had said: "My darling, behold, and see thy Lord," &c. [_her own paraphrase and interpretation of the said words_].

Rarely, however, are the different modes so entangled as here, and for the most part we have little difficulty in discerning the precise origin to which she wishes her utterances to be attributed--a fact that makes her book an unusually interesting study in the theory of inspiration.

Thus, in provisionally answering the problem proposed at the beginning of this article, as to how far Mother Juliana supplied from her own mind the canvas and the colours for this portrayal of Divine love, and as to how far therefore it may be regarded as a product of and a key to her inner self, we are inclined to say that, a comparison of her own style of thought and sentiment and expression as exhibited in her paraphrases and expositions of the things revealed to her, with the substance and setting of the said revelations, points to the conclusion that God spoke to her soul in its own language and habitual forms of thought; and that if the "content" of the revelation was partly new, yet it was harmonious with the previous "content" of her mind, being, as it were, a congruous development of the same--not violently thrust into the soul, but set down softly in the appointed place already hollowed for it and, so to say, clamouring for it as for its natural fulfilment. This, of course, is not a point for detailed and rigorous proof, but represents an impression that gathers strength the oftener we read and re-read Mother Juliana's "showings."

_Jan. Mar._ 1900.

Footnotes:

[Footnote 1: Prefatory Essay to Walter Hilton's _Scale of Perfection._]

[Footnote 2: The Protestant editor of the Leicester edition (of 1845), not understanding that an appreciation of difficulties, far from being incompatible with faith, is a condition of the higher and more intelligent faith, would fain credit Mother Juliana with a secret disaffection towards the Church's authority. How far he is justif may be gathered from such passages as these: "In this way was I taught by the grace of God that I should steadfastly hold me fast in the faith, as I had before understood." "It was not my meaning to take proof of anything that belongeth to our faith, for I believed truly that Hell and Purgatory is for the same end that Holy Church teacheth." "And I was strengthened and learned generally to keep me in the faith in every point ... that I might continue therein to my life's end." "God showed full great pleasaunce that He hath in all men and women, that mightily and wisely take the preaching and teaching of Holy Church; for it is His Holy Church; He is the ground; He is the substance; He is the teaching; He is the teacher," &c.]

[Footnote 3: _Ancren Riwle_.]

[Footnote 4: It is clear from many little touches and allusions that throughout the "showings" Mother Juliana considers herself to be gazing, not on a vision of Calvary, but on the illuminated crucifix hung before her by her attendants, in which crucifix these appearances of bleeding, suffering, movement, and speech take place. All else is shrouded in darkness. Yet she never loses the consciousness that she is in her bed and surrounded by others. Notice, for instance: "After this, I saw with bodily sight in the face _of the crucifix that hung before me_," &c. "The cross that stood before my face, methought it bled fast." "This [bleeding] was so plenteous, to my sight, that methought if it had been so in nature and substance" (i.e., in reality and not merely in appearance), "it should have made the bed all a-blood, and have passed over all about." "For this sight I laughed mightily, and made them to laugh that were about me." Evidently she is quite awake, is well conscious of her state and surroundings, and distinguishes appearance from reality, shadow from substance. There is no dream-like illusion in all this. Appearances presented to the outer senses are commonly spoken of as "hallucinations;" but it seems to me that this word were better reserved for those cases where appearance is mistaken for reality; and where consequently there is illusion and deception. Mother Juliana is aware that the crucifix is not really bleeding, as it seems to do, and she explicitly distinguishes such a vision from her later illusory dream-presentment of the Evil One. This dream while it lasted was, like all dreams, confounded with reality; whereas the other phenomena, even if made of "dream-stuff," were rated at their true value. Hence it seems to me that if such things have any outward independent reality, to see them is no more an hallucination than to see a rainbow. Even if they are projected from the beholder's brain, there is no hallucination if they are known for such; but only when they are confounded with reality, as it were, in a waking-dream. As we are here using the word, an experience is "real" which fits in with, and does not contradict the totality of our experiences; which does not falsify our calculation or betray our expectancy. If I look at a fly through a magnifying medium of whose presence I am unconscious, its size is apparent, or illusory, and not real; for being unaware of the unusual condition of my vision, I shall be thrown out in my calculations, and the harmony of my experiences will be upset by seeming contradictions. If, however, I am aware of the medium and its nature, then I am not deceived, and what I see is "reality," since it is as natural and real for the fly to look larger through the optician's lense, as to look smaller through the optic lense. I cannot call one aspect more "real" than the other, for both are equally right and true under the given conditions. For these reasons I should object to consider Mother Juliana's "bodily showings" as hallucinations, so far as the term seems to imply illusion.]

[Footnote 5: For those therefore who make an act of faith in the absolute universality and supremacy of the laws of physics and chemistry, and find in them the last reason of all things, these phenomena are interesting only as studies in the mechanics of illusion.]

[Footnote 6: It was largely by this method, supplemented no doubt by that of reasoned discussion, that St. Ignatius guided himself in determining points connected with the constitution of his Order, according to the journal he has left us of his "experiences," which is simply a record of "consolations" and "desolations."]

[Footnote 7: i.e., A kinæsthetic idea, as it is called, an idea of something to be done in the given conditions.]

[Footnote 8: P. 272 in Richardson's Edit., from which I usually quote as being the readiest available.]

[Footnote 9: On another occasion, by looking down to the right of His Cross, He brought to her mind, "where our Lady stood in the time of His Passion and said: 'Wilt Thou see her?'" leading her by gesture from the seen to the not seen.]

XIV.

POET AND MYSTIC.

A biographer who has any other end in view, however secondary and incidental, than faithfully to reproduce in the mind of his readers his own apprehension of the personality of his subject, will be so far biassed in his task of selection; and, without any conscious deviation from truth, will give that undue prominence to certain features and aspects which in extreme cases may result in caricature. A Catholic biographer of Coventry Patmore would have been tempted to gratify the wish of a recent critic of Mr. Champneys' very efficient work, [1] and to devote ten times as much space as has been given to the account of his conversion, and a good deal, no doubt, to the discussion and correction of his eccentric views in certain ecclesiastical matters; thus giving us the history of an illustrious convert, and not that of a poet and seer whose conversion, however intimately connected with his poetical and intellectual life, was but an incident thereof. On the other hand, one less intelligently sympathetic with the more spiritual side of Catholicism than Mr. Champneys, would have lacked the principal key to the interpretation of Patmore's highest aims and ideals, towards which the whole growth and movement of his mind was ever tending, and by which its successive stages of evolution are to be explained. Again, with all possible respect for the feelings of the living, the biographer has wisely suppressed nothing needed to bring out truthfully the ruggednesses and irregularities that characterize the strong and somewhat one-sided development of genius as contrasted with the regular features and insipid perfectness of things wrought on a small scale. If idealizing means the filing-away of jagged edges--and surely it does not--Mr. Champneys has left us to do our own idealizing. The faults that marred Purcell's _Life of Manning_ are here avoided, and yet truth is no whit the sufferer in consequence.

In speaking of Patmore as a thinker and a poet, we do not mean to dissociate these two functions in his case, but only to classify him (according to his own category) with those "masculine" poets whose power lies in a beautiful utterance of the truth, rather than in a truthful utterance of the beautiful.

We propose, however, to occupy ourselves with the matter rather than the mode of Patmore's utterance; with that truth which he conceived himself to have apprehended in a newer and clearer light than others before him; and this, because he does not stand alone, but is the representative and exponent of a certain school of ascetic thought whose tendency is diametrically contrary to that pseudo-mysticism which we have dealt with elsewhere, and have ascribed to a confusion of neo-platonic and Christian principles. This counter-tendency misses the Catholic mean in other respects and owes its faultiness, as we shall see, to some very analogous fallacies. If in our chapter on "The True and the False Mysticism," it was needful to show that the principles of Christian monasticism and contemplative life, far from in any way necessarily retarding, rather favour and demand the highest natural development of heart and mind; it is no less needful to assign to this thought its true limits, and to show that the noblest expansion of our natural faculties does not conflict with or exclude the principles of monasticism. I think it is R.H. Hutton who remarks that it is not "easy to give us a firm grasp of any great class of truths without loosening our grasp on some other class of truths perhaps nobler and more vital;" and undoubtedly Patmore and his school in emphasizing the fallacies of neo-platonic asceticism are in danger of precipitating us into fallacies every whit as uncatholic. It is therefore as professedly formulating the principles of a certain school that we are interested in the doctrine of which Patmore constitutes himself the apostle.

Lights are constantly breaking in upon me [he writes] and convincing me more and more that the singular luck has fallen to me of having to write, for the first time that any one even attempted to do so with any fulness, on simply the greatest and most exquisite subject that ever poet touched since the beginning of the world.

The more I consider the subject of the marriage of the Blessed Virgin, the more clearly I see that it is the _one_ absolutely lovely and perfect subject for poetry. Perfect humanity, verging upon, but never entering the breathless region of the Divinity, is the real subject of _all_ true love-poetry; but in all love-poetry hitherto, an "ideal" and not a reality has been the subject, more or less.

Taking the "Angel of the House" as representing the earlier, and the "Odes" the later stage of the development which this theme received under his hands, it seems as though he passes from the idealization and apotheosis of married love to the conception of it as being in its highest form, not merely the richest symbol, but even the most efficacious sacrament of the mystical union between God and the soul. He is well aware--though not fully at first--that these conceptions were familiar to St. Bernard and many a Catholic mystic; it was for the poetic apprehension and expression of them that he claimed originality; or, at least, for their unification and systematic development. "That his apprehensions were based generally--almost exclusively, on the fundamental idea of nuptial love must," as Mr. Champneys says, "be admitted." This was the governing category of his mind; the mould into which all dualities naturally fell; it was to his philosophy what love and hate, light and dark, form and matter, motion and atoms, have been to others.

It was, at all events, the predominance of this conception which bound together his whole life's work, rendering coherent and individualizing all which he thought, wrote, or uttered, and those who study Patmore without this key are little likely to understand him.

And it is the persistent and not always sufficiently restrained use of this category that made much of his writing just a trifle shocking to sensitive minds.

These latter will have "closed his works far too promptly to discover that far from gainsaying the Catholic instinct which prefers virginity to marriage" (not a strictly accurate statement) he makes virginity a condition of the idealized marriage-relation, and finds its realization in her who was at once matron and virgin. Following the fragmentary hints to be found here and there in patristic and mystical theology, he assumes that virgin-spousals and virgin-birth were to have been the law in that Paradise from which man lapsed back into natural conditions through sin; that in the case of the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph the paradisaic law was but resumed in this respect. Accordingly, he writes of Adam and Eve in "The Contract,"

Thus the first Eve With much enamoured Adam did enact Their mutual free contract Of virgin spousals, blissful beyond flight Of modern thought, with great intention staunch, Though unobliged until that binding pact.

To their infidelity to this contract he ascribes the subsequent degradation of human love through sensuality; and all the sin and selfishness thence deriving to our fallen race:

Whom nothing succour can Until a heaven-caress'd and happier Eve Be joined with some glad Saint In like espousals, blessed upon Earth, And she her fruit forth bring;

No numb chill-hearted shaken-witted thing, 'Plaining his little span. But of proud virgin joy the appropriate birth, The Son of God and Man.

The rationalistic objection to this suppression of what seems to be of the essence or integrity of matrimony is obvious enough, and yet finds many a retort even in the realm of nature, where the passage to a higher grade of life so often means the stultifying of functions proper to the lower. As to the pre-eminence of that state in which the spiritual excellencies of marriage and virginity are combined, Catholic teaching is quite clear and decided; in this, as in other points, Patmore's untaught intuitions, and instincts--his _mens naturaliter catholica_--had led him, whither the esoteric teaching of the Church had led only the more appreciatively sympathetic of her disciples, from time to time, as it were, up into that mountain of which St. Ambrose says: "See, how He goes up with the Apostles and comes down to the crowds. For how could the crowds see Christ save in a lowly spot? They do not follow Him to the heights, nor rise to sublimities"--a notion altogether congenial to Patmore's aristocratic bias in religion as in everything else. Undoubtedly it was this mystical aspect of Catholic doctrine that appealed to his whole personality, offering as it did an authoritative approval, and suggesting an infinite realization, of those dreams that were so sacred to him. As far as the logic of the affections goes, it was for the sake of this that he held to all the rest; for indeed the deeper Catholic truths are so internetted that he who seizes one, drags all the rest along with it under pain of self-contradiction.

No one knew better than Patmore the infinite insufficiency of the highest created symbols to equal the eternal realities which it is their whole purpose to set forth; he fully realized that as the lowliest beginnings of created love seem to mock, rather than to foreshadow, the higher forms of which they are but the failure and botched essay, so the very highest conceivable, taken as more than a metaphor, were an irreverent parody of the Divine love for the human soul. It is not the _same_ relationship on an indefinitely extended scale, but only a somewhat _similar_ relationship, the limits of whose similarity are hidden in mystery. But when a man is so thoroughly in love with his metaphor as Patmore was, he is tempted at times to press it in every detail, and to forget that it is "but one acre in the infinite field of spiritual suggestion;" that, less full and perfect metaphors of the same reality, may supply some of its defects and correct some of its redundancies. We should do unwisely to think of the Kingdom of Heaven only as a kingdom, and not also as a marriage-feast, a net, a treasure, a mustard-seed, a field, and so forth, since each figure supplies some element lost in the others, and all together are nearer to the truth than any one: and so, although the married love of Mary and Joseph is one of the fullest revealed images of God's relation to the soul, we should narrow the range of our spiritual vision, were we to neglect those supplementary glimpses at the mystery afforded by other figures and shadowings.

And this leads us to the consideration of a difficulty connected with another point of Patmore's doctrine of divine love. He held that the idealized marriage relationship was not merely the symbol, but the most effectual sacrament and instrument of that love; "yet the world," he complains, "goes on talking, writing, and preaching as if there were some essential contrariety between the two," the disproof of which "was the inspiring idea at the heart of my long poem (the 'Angel')." Now, although in asserting that the most absorbing and exclusive form of human affection is not only compatible with, but even instrumental to the highest kind of sanctity and divine love, Patmore claimed to be at one, at least in principle, with some of the deeper utterances of the Saints and Fathers of the Christian Church; it cannot be denied that the assertion is _prima facie_ opposed to the common tradition of Catholic asceticism; and to the apparent _raison d'être_ of every sort of monastic institution.

It must be confessed that, in regard to the reconciliation of the claims of intense human affection with those of intense sanctity, there have been among all religious teachers two distinct conceptions struggling for birth, often in one and the same mind, either of which taken as adequate must exclude the other. It would not be hard to quote the utterances of saints and ascetics for either view; or to convict individual authorities of seeming self-contradiction in the matter. The reason of this is apparently that neither view is or can be adequate; that one is weak where the other is strong; that they are both imperfect analogies of a relationship that is unique and _sui generis_--the relationship between God and the soul. Hence neither hits the centre of truth, but glances aside, one at the right hand, the other at the left. Briefly, it is a question of the precise sense in which God is "a jealous God" and demands to be loved alone. The first and easier mode of conception is that which is implied in the commoner language of saints and ascetics--language perhaps consciously symbolic and defective in its first usage, but which has been inevitably literalised and hardened when taken upon the lips of the multitude. God is necessarily spoken of and imagined in terms of the creature, and when the analogical character of such expression slips from consciousness, as it does almost instantly, He is spoken of, and therefore thought of, as the First of Creatures competing with the rest for the love of man's heart. He is placed alongside of them in our imagination, not behind them or in them. Hence comes the inference that whatever love they win from us in their own right, by reason of their inherent goodness, is taken from Him. Even though He be loved better than all of them put together, yet He is not loved perfectly till He be loved alone. Their function is to raise and disappoint our desire time after time, till we be starved back to Him as to the sole-satisfying--everything else having proved _vanitas vanitatum_. Then indeed we go back to them, not for their own sakes, but for His; not attracted by our love of them, but impelled by our love of Him.

This mode of imagining the truth, so as to explain the divine jealousy implied in the precept of loving God exclusively and supremely, is, for all its patent limitations, the most generally serviceable. Treated as a strict equation of thought to fact, and pushed accordingly to its utmost logical consequences, it becomes a source of danger; but in fact it is not and will not be so treated by the majority of good Christians who serve God faithfully but without enthusiasm; whose devotion is mainly rational and but slightly affective; who do not conceive themselves called to the way of the saints, or to offer God that all-absorbing affection which would necessitate the weakening or severing of natural ties. In the event, however, of such a call to perfect love, the logical and practical outcome of this mode of imagining the relation of God to creatures is a steady subtraction of the natural love bestowed upon friends and relations, that the energy thus economized may be transferred to God. This concentration may indeed be justified on other and independent grounds; but the implied supposition that, the highest sanctity is incompatible with any pure and well-ordered natural affection, however intense, is certainly ill-sounding, and hardly reconcilable with the divinest examples and precepts.

The limitations of this simpler and more practical mode of imagining the matter are to some extent supplemented by that other mode for which Patmore found so much authority in St. Bernard, St. Francis, St. Teresa, and many another, and which he perhaps too readily regarded as exhaustively satisfactory.