The true light is love of God, the false light is love of the world.  But we must pass through darkness to go from one to the other.  “The darker the night is, the nearer is the true day.”  This is the “darkness” and “nothing” spoken of by the mystics, “a rich nothing,” when the soul is “at rest as to thoughts of any earthly thing, but very busy about thinking of God.”  “But the night passeth away; the day dawneth.”  “Flashes of light shine through the chinks of the walls of Jerusalem; but thou art not there yet.”  “But now beware of the midday fiend, that feigneth light as if it came from Jerusalem.  This light appears between two black rainy clouds, whereof the upper one is presumption and self-exaltation, and the lower a disdaining of one’s neighbour.  This is not the light of the true sun.”  This darkness, through which we must pass, is simply the death of self-will and all carnal affections; it is that dying to the world which is the only gate of life.

The way in which Hilton conceives the “truly mystical darkness” of Dionysius is very interesting.  As a psychical experience, it has its place in the history of the inner life.  The soul does enter into darkness, and the darkness is not fully dispelled in this world; “thou art not there yet,” as he says.  But the psychical experience is in Hilton entirely dissociated from the metaphysical idea of absorption into the Infinite.  The chains of Asiatic nihilism are now at last shaken off, easily and, it would seem, unconsciously.  The “darkness” is felt to be only the herald of a brighter dawn:  “the darker the night, the nearer is the true day.”  It is, I think, gratifying to observe how our countryman strikes off the fetters of the time-honoured Dionysian tradition, the paralysing creed which blurs all distinctions, and the “negative road” which leads to darkness and not light; and how in consequence his Mysticism is sounder and saner than even that of Eckhart or Tauler.  Before leaving Hilton, it may be worth while to quote two or three isolated maxims of his, as examples of his wise and pure doctrine.

“There are two ways of knowing God—­one chiefly by the imagination, the other by the understanding.  The understanding is the mistress, and the imagination is the maid.”

“What is heaven to a reasonable soul?  Nought else but Jesus God.”

“Ask of God nothing but this gift of love, which is the Holy Ghost.  For there is no gift of God that is both the giver and the gift, but this gift of love.”

My other example of English Mysticism in the Middle Ages is Julian or Juliana of Norwich,[281] to whom were granted a series of “revelations” in the year 1373, she being then about thirty years old.  She describes with evident truthfulness the manner in which the visions came to her.  She ardently desired to have a “bodily sight” of her Lord upon the Cross, “like other that were Christ’s lovers”; and she prayed that she might have “a grievous sickness almost