Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III MYSTICISM "We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep."—Shakespeare. In taking up Mysticism as the first form of religious expression to be discussed, I do so for two reasons. In the first place, it is an experience common to all people; and in the second place, it leads naturally to a number of religious phenomena which are usually connected with it, while not an integral or necessary part of it. While it is true that mysticism, especially in its extreme forms, is a matter of temperament and unattainable by some people, yet we find in it the kernel of all religions, and of Christianity not less than of others. It is found among all races, and all religions must look to it in seeking for origins, and for the method and cause of revival after religious declension. In times when a barren orthodoxy has usurped the place of a vital faith, mystics have arisen to show by practical means that religion is something more than a dry dogma, which furnishes an exercise for the understanding. It is a protest of the individual, living, inner experience against the formal systems of men long since dead and buried. Religion—real religion—always contains a unique factor for every individual, and nothing short of mystical experiences of the more pronounced type will satisfy some people. Every one is justified in having his own religiousneeds satisfactorily met, for "it is only in the reality of the living experience of the Individual Self that the Universal and Absolute becomes known and believed in or dimly apprehended as felt." 1 The religious strivings which we may not be able to share with others are strictly our own, and these are the experiences which make religion. We may say that religion stands or falls with the perso...