MYSTICISM is precious, but beware lest in conversation, in writing, or in case you are a minister of the Word, in preaching, you abuse its tense cries of soul as vain talk.
Hollow sound is so deadly a menace to the depth and the seriousness of our inner life. Not to externalize yourself and not to become a “tinkling cymbal,” you should really never permit the cries of the soul of mysticism to flow from your pen or pass your lips, except as they have beforehand passed through your own soul, and in that passing through your soul, you have impressed the mark of your own soul upon them.
A preacher who has deeply felt the meaning of a single pious phrase, clearly thought it out, tenderly and in detail expresses it, enriches and refreshes you, while he who with a loud voice pours into your ears one pious utterance after another, like so many trumpet blasts, wearies you and deadens your religious receptivity.
This is especially true, when in larger or smaller groups we stand together at the entrance of the valley of the shadow of death, whether we do this to gaze after a loved departed one who disappeared therein, or to prepare one another for the hour, when our own way shall lead through the same.
Then our ordinary speech fails us, because for what is experienced in that somber valley, we have no proper words. So we use general phrases, in which the feelings aroused by the dying and mourning interpret themselves. And it is equally natural, that God’s dear children prefer to borrow these expressions from Holy Scripture.
Do not pass this over lightly. Not in high sounding phrases nor in fullness of detail, but in the word that has been deeply studied, is warmly felt, and has intimately been experienced does there throb at such a time real sympathy.
Where everything coöperates to strain our nerves, in the calm loosening of the ties that wind themselves around us, lies the inner strengthening of our soul.
SO wrote the man of Tarsus to the church at Philippi, that he had a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; because that was by far the best (Phil. 1, 23).
Does this selfsame deep expression apply to our own existence of soul? Would it therefore be honest and sincerely meant, if every one of us were to utter these lofty words as his own? And if God were to keep us to our word, and at that very moment were to strike us with deadly disease, would there not rather be terror in our soul, than thanks for hearing of prayer?
He who first wrung this word from his soul, was no ordinary believer, but a man extraordinarily endowed with grace. He enjoyed inspirations of the Holy Spirit as no one of us. Moreover, he was a oneling. He had neither wife nor children. And what speaks stronger still, he suffered under bitter persecution, and was a prisoner at Rome, menaced with sentence of death.
Add to this, that on the way to Damascus he himself had seen the Christ, that the soul-enchanting glory of that personal meeting had left behind in his soul a homesickness which nothing could pacify, and you readily understand, how such a man, who had nothing more to look forward to in this world and to whom the battle of life was a continual dying, without any exaggeration could testify, that he looked longingly forward to the end, and that endlessly to enjoy, what for one moment on the way to Damascus he had enjoyed, was for him so very far better.
But for this reason, that selfsame word in your lips can only be truth in those special moments, when in highly critical circumstances, with your whole soul you enter into it. And offhand to repeat it, while altogether other thoughts hold your attention, brings you no further, but puts you back, and accustoms you to hollow phrases, not experienced by yourself.
You then repeat after Paul, but do not speak for yourself, and what you say after the prisoner of Rome, is no truth in your own soul.
“TO be with Christ” has here with Paul mystical significance. He knew very well, that after death his spirit alone, separated from the body, would enter upon constant fellowship with Christ. So he adds to this, that he has a desire to be dissolved, i.e., to be loosed from his visible appearance.
When the apostle John writes: “We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is,” it does not refer to what takes place immediately after dying, but to what awaits God’s children after the resurrection.
Paul himself also testifies: “Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more after the flesh” (2 Cor. 5, 16). His strong expectation of being with Christ, did not direct itself therefore to bodily sight, but to fellowship of soul, not to a gazing upon His gloriousness, but to an enjoyment of spiritual outpourings.
Therefore he does not say: “to be with Jesus,” but “to be with Christ,” because between these two names there is always this distinguishing difference, that thinking of Jesus, in our representation we bring His human appearance before us, while speaking of Christ, we uncover the eye of the soul to the Central Figure of our spiritual good.
It is true, that St. Paul later on cherished the quiet expectation of living to see the day of Jesus’ return, and of entering, without dying, through wondrous change, into glory; but here he does not speak of this.
When he wrote, that “to be with Christ is by far the best,” he thought of dissolution and of dying, so as separated soul spiritually to approach to the full fellowship of his Savior.
DOES this spiritual fellowship await us only after death?
Surely not.
Jesus Himself said: “I and the Father will come and make our abode with you” (St. John 14, 23), and in Revelation 3, 20 we have the promise that to the redeemed soul, seeking Him, Jesus comes already here on earth, to sup with him.
Thus what takes place with respect to this before dying, and after dying is not essentially different. With His “grace, majesty and Spirit” Christ is omnipresent, and thus also in this life near unto us.
But yet there is considerable difference in degree of fellowship.
Even the “most saintly” of God’s children, as our Catechism puts it, enjoy such rich fellowship with Christ only by moments. And then comes the stormy life again with its diversion, and its superficiality, and its externality, and its distraction, in which the soul wanders about at miles’ distance from Christ.
And this ceases after death. Then the world has no more hold on us. Life to us has gone into death. And what here was enjoyed fully and deeply only at a single time, is then enjoyed uninterruptedly and forever.
And what is more, while here the “body of sin” in the present and by remembrance of the past, ever yet runs up a wall of separation between us and Christ, that wall of separation then falls away, and thereby the fellowship with Christ becomes far more intimate than it could ever be on earth.
To be without sin, and without remembrance of former sins, will be so Divinely rich to the redeemed soul.
WHERE the almighty Father of spirits, after death, will gather together His redeemed elect we do not know, and we can form no representation of it. We do not know one another otherwise than in the body, and thus bound to an observable spot. But spirits are free. They who die in Christ shall be as the angels in heaven, and with them our whole calculation according to measurable distances falls away. To spiritual sight distance can make no difference.
But the separated soul remains therewith not only in the enjoyment of her spiritual senses, but only then with the eye of the soul shall see aright, and with the ear of the soul shall hear most acutely. Her sphere of life shall enchantingly be extended. In that sphere of her higher life Christ shall be the spiritual Center, and all God’s angelic host, with the host of His redeemed and blessed, the scintillating fullness of that life.
To what development, and richer perfection, in such a sphere of life, the redeemed soul shall prove susceptible, is the secret of heaven. But it is certain, that God the Lord shall only then reveal what hidden germs of spiritual power and spiritual riches He had stored in the heart of His human child. Flowers shall then unfold, the beauty of which we have never surmised, precious stones shall sparkle, whose brilliance would here have blinded us.
And all this shall be enjoyed as direct, ever continuous outbeaming of Christ in the focus of the soul, and a love, as here the soul could not have borne, shall set the heart aglow for that Christ.
AND do you ask reverently, where then God is, and whether the tenderest worship of our soul already here, and especially on the other side of the grave must not go out to the Eternal Being, as the Psalmist sang (17, 15): “I shall delight myself with Thy Likeness when I awake,” observe then once more, that St. Paul speaks of being with Christ, and not of being with Jesus.
This escaped the attention of many, and so they came to a Jesus-veneration, which in fact led away from the Eternal Being, and especially women were misled thereby.
But when you hold fast to that “to be with Christ,” is not that to possess your God in Christ Himself? Is not He Himself God to be praised above all, forever? And when the redeemed soul seeks the Eternal Being, not in the Hiddenness of His Being, but in His Revelation, can she then find God, that Eternal Being, otherwise and more richly revealed than in the Son of His love? Has not he, who has Christ, the Father in Him, and is it not in that same Christ that all approach of God the Holy Ghost comes to us?
Outside of Christ it is all darkness and hiddenness, but in Christ, if we may so express ourselves, the crystalline window is opened, through which the liberated soul gazes into the depth of the Divine Being.
Philip could still say: “Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us,” and he had to be answered: “He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father” (John 14, 8).
But the redeemed soul asks so no longer. She is with Christ and in and through Christ sees her God.
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