of Kings.”  The Pharisee becomes a selfish individualist just because he has forgotten this; the Essene, a selfish “mystic” for the same reason; Philo and the Jewish mystics of Alexandria lose in like manner all notion that Jehovah is the lawgiver, and ruler, and archetype of family and of national life.  Christianity retained the idea; it brought out the meaning of the old Jewish polity in its highest form; for that very reason it was able to bring out the meaning of the “mystic” idea in its highest form also, without injury to men’s work as members of families, as citizens, as practical men of the world; and so to conquer at last that Manichaean hatred of marriage and parentage, which from the first to the sixteenth century shed its Upas shade over the Church.

And here let us say boldly to Mr. Vaughan and to our readers:  As long as “the salvation of a man’s own soul” is set forth in all pulpits as the first and last end and aim of mortal existence; as long as Christianity is dwelt on merely as influencing individuals each apart—­as “brands plucked, one here and another there, from the general burning”—­so long will Mysticism, in its highest form be the refuge of the strongest spirits, and in its more base and diseased forms the refuge of the weak and sentimental spirits.  They will say, each in his own way:  “You confess that there can be a direct relation, communion, inspiration, from God to my soul, as I sit alone in my chamber.  You do not think that there is such between God and what you call the world; between Him and nations as wholes—­families, churches, schools of thought, as wholes; that He does not take a special interest, or exercise a special influence, over the ways and works of men—­over science, commerce, civilisation, colonisation, all which affects the earthly destinies of the race.  All these you call secular; to admit His influence over them for their own sake (though of course He overrules them for the sake of His elect) savours of Pantheism.  Is it so?  Then we will give up the world.  We will cling to the one fact which you confess to be certain about us—­that we can take refuge in God, each in the loneliness of his chamber, from all the vain turmoil of a race which is hastening heedless into endless misery.  You may call us Mystics, or what you will.  We will possess our souls in patience, and turn away our eyes from vanity.  We will commune with our own hearts in solitude, and be still.  We will not even mingle in your religious world, the world which you have invented for yourselves, after denying that God’s human world is sacred; for it seems to us as full of intrigue, ambition, party-spirit, falsehood, bitterness, and ignorance, as the political world, or the fashionable world, or the scientific world; and we will have none of it.  Leave us alone with God.”