The Church and the Mountain

THERE is no doubt about it that mysticism is the only philosophy.

Of course all the others are true too, and there are probably none too many of them to preserve the balance of the many-sided world. If one commits himself wholly to a statement like that above, one finds himself confronted with the challenge: ‘So you believe that the business of life is to escape from the illusion of individuality and to merge your troublesome run-away soul as quickly as possible in the AllOne, the All-Nothing? ’ Rut why must philosophy bind itself into a logical system? Why is it not generously content to remain a tendency? A thing which devotes itself utterly to the needs of the human spirit, it ought to give plenty of scope even to moods and occasions; so that if I abandon my soul completely to-day — finding it uncommonly troublesome, perhaps — I should be perfectly free to reclaim it to-morrow and give it another trial.

I modify my initial statement. All the philosophies are good, but mysticism is the best of them.

Ah, that business of losing the soul — how sorry one is for those who have never known it! One can seldom predict the experience. It does not come very often at best, and has a royal way — which becomes it — of choosing its own occasions. Describe it? One cannot. It is as the lapse of the river into the sea, as the merging of spirits on lovers’ lips, as the breathless hush when wind folds into wind and the night broods close, as the withdrawal of the morning star into the dawn. Yet it is more than all these things; it is—very God of very God. When it is over, one stands transfixed, intensely serious, yet serenely light-hearted too; exhausted, yet wonderfully refreshed; purged, exalted; and quiet — that is the best gift of the experience, its gift of peace. A very profundity of repose holds the spirit that has submitted to a mystic embrace.

Explain it? How can one, if even description has to go halting by synonyms and comparisons? Perhaps the soul is an emanation from God and is gathered wholly back into Him when the rapture falls. Perhaps our boasted individuality is really as much of an illusion as the early, thorough-going mystics consistently maintained. Perhaps — but who knows, and what does it matter? The experience itself is the thing; and one who has known that, perceives that the function of understanding is not so essential to the life of the spirit as is sometimes supposed.

I have said that one can seldom predict a mystic experience. That is true; the high summons may come anywhere, at any time. But still there are certain places that are more liable than others to know divine visitations; and the wise mystic searches these out and zealously frequents them. Every one for himself in this matter. Although mysticism is anything but an individualistic faith, its manifestations are purely particular; and its children have to study their own peculiar environments to understand where, for them, Jacob’s ladder rests.

In my experience, there are two places —widely sundered and utterly diverse — which can above others be trusted to catch and detain the skirts of Divinity.

One is a mountain. It is not so very much of a mountain — not so very high, I mean, and, viewed with strictly impartial eyes (if any one in the world is so unlucky as to have optics like that), certainly no more beautiful than a hundred other hills. Its prosaic name is Green Peak. I like it immensely for that. It is so unassuming and genuine of it; so fine, too, and clever—masking High Heaven in the guise of the commonplace. As if a seraph should rest content to bear the name John Jones. It is just a hill like all other hills; — but, ah! it has ways with it.

Sometimes it wakes me in the early dawn. That is inconvenient, for I hate to get up. But I have to do it, thrusting my feet into my slippers, wrapping a long cloak about me, stealing down through the silent house, mysterious, shadowy, unreal, not my familiar home at all, but an enchanted dwelling. The pictures and tables make significant signs as I pass; I catch them from the tail of my eye. Slowly, softly, I open the door and step out into the glimmering dawn; the cool air breathes in my face, and the silence — ! Why is it that even the quietest house is full of obscure disturbance compared to the wide peace of the outdoors? I sit down on the doorstep, and look across the valley at Green Peak. It stands very dark and high, outlined against the faint glory which is just beginning to quicken in the sky behind it, with one great white star above its head and a white band of mist folded across its breast. Other mists out of the valley are creeping softly about its feet and climbing its dark sides. It is a shepherd

— no, a priest. But, after all, are they not the same thing? It is sublimely august and gentle, presiding over the dawn.

I gaze at it and I cannot breathe softly enough in my adoration. The meadows worship with me; they are mute, all gray and silver with dusk and the dew. The tall trees worship; no murmur runs through their hushed branches. The very grass prostrates itself still lower in its dear humility, and waits; we all wait — for what? There comes an instant, when, thought and sense suspended (or else exerted

— I really do not know which) to the uttermost, self-consciousness entirely eclipsed, the trees and the grass and the meadows and I are caught up together with the white mists to the dark breast of the mountain, and there are held close in an embrace which fuses our separate beings and makes us one even with the morning star. After this, I go soberly back to bed; and when the quarry whistle wakes me at seven o’clock in the usual manner, and I sit up and remember, I seem to have had an experience beyond the world, in the ideal realm which the objects of sense only symbolize.

So much for the morning. Green Peak’s mid-day mood is for the most part a practical one. The sensible mountain understands that the work of the world must be done, and that its children must be left undistracted to do it. It stands out quite clearly therefore, with cloud-shadows racing over it, with breezes saluting it, with a blue sky irradiating it . There is as little of mystery about it as may be. Nevertheless, it torments me sometimes, will not entirely let me alone; and I often have to shut myself quite away from it if I expect to concentrate my mind on anything else. It has lurking suggestions of magic in its lines and its hollows at almost any hour of the day.

Then when evening comes — ! If I had to choose its superlative moment of revelation, I should hesitate between the dawn and a certain sunset that occurs two or three times in a season. The conditions for the latter are known to me now, and I can watch for it; though of course I am quite as likely to be disappointed as gratified in my expectation. For mere conditions do not secure revelation. As a matter of fact, the thing seems to mean most when it comes as a surprise, when I have quite forgotten about it, have failed to recognize the possibilities of the sky, and am merely roaming about the garden, thinking that here is a dull day over — better luck to-morrow. For, in accordance with one of the most beautiful laws of the world, it is always a dull day that works the spell. From morning to night a gray heaven of cloud, brooding above the tops of the mountains, not very low, but close, unrelenting. No wind, as a rule — a silent day, heavy and forlorn. Such a day is depressing; one aches with the burden of nameless troubles. Then, just when it seems to be over, when the sun has withdrawn his unseen presence behind the western hill and there is no longer any hope of a glimpse of his genial countenance, then the miracle happens. A touch, a warning — I know that the hills send forth a summons when they feel the glory coming, for I have often been called from the supper table, from the depths of the barn or the library, by a sudden, unreasoned necessity to go and look at Green Peak. And there — oh, wonderful! how shall one paint such a transfiguration? The clouds have parted somewhere in the north, below the line of the hills, and the light of the sunken sun streams back in a long, level finger or band across the breast and summit of the whole eastern range. The feet of these mountains stand plunged in shadow, — the gray night has met the gray day there, — but their crests soar into a sudden glory which dazzles and confounds the sight; one cannot believe it. Radiant, shining, glowing, intense, they lift up their heads, like flaming archangels, against the gray sky, and the King of Glory comes in.

There is simply no sort of comment to make on a sight like that.

Green Peak is very noble in storms. It wears the clouds grandly, and lets them wreathe and stream about it as they will, shutting it away altogether, or giving dark glimpses of its crest or slopes to watchful valley eyes. It is terribly austere thus at times; but that is all right — priests have to be austere now and then.

One evening I came home across the meadows, late, in the final hush of a storm that had spent itself at sunset time. It was quite late, there was very little light left, and what light there was seemed to be all embodied in a white mist which filled the whole valley. A veritable sea of mist; I swam in it, I could not see or breathe or feel anything else. There were no mountains, there was no sky, there was hardly a path under my feet. One’s very thoughts become muffled in a mist like that. I was plodding along blindly, stupidly, not enjoying myself very much (this kind of mystery is too oppressive), when a faint stir, the merest soft breathing of air, made me look up, and there above me loomed the crest of my mountain, gigantic. Only the crest; its sides were still lost in utter vagueness and nothingness. I forgot that it had any sides, and its crest astonished me as something unfamiliar, a new peak in Darien. Yet it was Green Peak, beyond any doubt. It leaned over me out of its fathomless realm of white cloud, and sternly admonished me — how it impended, how it imposed, how it grew! I stood perfectly still of course, and again the releasing touch came upon me, and in that white oblivion Green Peak and I were once more made one with each other and with the universe.

Green Peak’s twin sister in magic is not a mountain, or any shape of the open country. It is a church in a city, many miles away. A very beautiful church; yet here again, one has to know it to love it. It occupies a commanding position, in a triangle, at the junction of several streets. But it holds this position so modestly, with such an unassuming grace, that one does not realize what a power it wields until it is too late. Too late to escape, I mean of course, — if one happens to want to escape. For myself, I think that the rogue has bewitched me, the rascal has given me medicines to make me love it.

I do not ‘belong’ to it in the least; it does not represent my native denomination. But I went in there one day in some stress of spirit, and all was over with me. I have forgotten nowwhat was the matter; I only know that I was tired and vexed, and that the church presented itself, and that I went in. I crossed the street with a dash in front of a trolley car; I mounted the steps with a little run; I opened the outer door with a brisk pull, entered the vestibule, paused, hesitated, looked up to see who had spoken to me, opened the inner door slowly, and went in and stood still.

There was nobody there. It was late afternoon, and parts of the church were already in soft shadow. On either side of the nave the columns soared into obscurity, and far down behind the screen the chancel lay dim with dusk. But the low’ sun had found a last way for itself through a corner of one of the windows and was stealing along the opposite wall, touching here a column and there an arch, resting upon the carved pulpit and bringing a saint or an angel into a sudden brief prominence. Just like the late sunlight on Green Peak. Precisely. The analogy struck me, and I sat down in one of the back rows of chairs with a sense of home-coming.

It was very still. The vastness of this interior removed it from the legitimate class of ‘indoors,’ and allowed it a range of silence which houses do not know. But it was articulate nevertheless, instinct with a thrilling communication which the spirit understood. Those who had built it had loved their work. That was apparent not only in the compelling impression of the whole, but. also in the fine perfection of the details, as the lingering sunlight pointed them out — in the grace of the carving, in the dignity of the statues. There was everywhere the touch of a thoughtful, discriminating devotion, working to produce one effect through a multitude of means. Love to love always. As those who had built had wrought with their hearts in their fingers, so those who inhabited were moved with tenderness and awe. I was sure of this as I sat there alone. I felt the presence of an adoring host of other worshipers in the empty chairs and in the shadowy, vacant aisles. Their unseen occupation was strangely moving to me.

It was all strange. It is hard to explain what the church did to me that afternoon to make me its slave. It appeared to do nothing at all. There was even a certain aloofness about it, as if it were wholly absorbed in a transcendent mood of contemplation. Yet there was an awareness too, an attention which took note of every sigh, every glance, every hesitating thought. A curious, contradictory mixture of response and ignoring, of utter remoteness and intimate presence. It let me completely alone; yet I had never been so enveloped, so permeated.

The spirit of places and buildings is one of the most mysterious forces we have to reckon with. How can it happen that an inanimate edifice, a mere construction of timber and stone, achieves a distinct personality, even a soul of its own? Matter in its crudest form is here, — undeniable, heavy, opaque, — yet it strikes out a result of pure spirit, intangible and thrilling.

There was no doubt about this church’s soul. Soul is an attribute that one knows when one sees it. A lofty soul, invested with grandeur (like Green Peak in that respect), but so gracious as to be almost humble in its response to the faintest tug of a human need. It listened through all its rapt spaces that day to the beating of one heart. A wise soul, moreover. The ages behind the prayers and the litanies which were said in the place every day lent it a weight of intelligence which was very comforting. One felt sure that it would understand every peculiar crisis. Yet not too tolerantly: there was a certain austerity underneath its beauty, an inflexible purpose which forbade many things. It was probably capable of coldness and severity. A serene soul —oh, profoundly untroubled! That was its most significant trait. For if all the sins and the sorrows of life had been poured out in it, if it knew the very worst of mankind, and could still maintain its high peace, then human affairs could not be in such a desperate strait after all. A scourged criminal might go out from that presence, bleeding, but with a shining face.

Do we often enough stop to think what a beautiful thing our religion is? We are so used to it; or, alas! so unfamiliar with it. For, of course, as mournful matter of fact, our present civilization reflects it hardly at all. But we profess it, and it stands patiently waiting for us to see our way clear to live up to it. Meantime, if we consider it fairly, we find it a most exquisite product, a work of the trinity of God and Man and Brother Time. There is probably no offense in saying that man has improved and developed it much. That is the way of things in the world. A divine seed, a human garden; a divine idea, a human poem or symphony. Humanity is not simple enough, is not consistent, is too diverse, to follow the Christ idea nakedly. It has other needs in its manifold nature: sensuous, passionate longings which crave for adornment and ceremony, pomp and symbolism; docile and timid necessities which must have the safeguard of law and order. It had to take the teachings of Jesus and fashion them into a system. The reed with its one high note of unworldliness has become the organ with many stops and many cadences. Nor has it lost the unworldliness thus. The theme remains the same through all developments.

I thought of these things during the first part of my twilight sojourn in the silent church. But by and by I stopped thinking. The reluctant sunlight withdrew, the shadows deepened and settled, even the silence grew more profound.

I sank on my knees. I waited. My soul lay, an offering, on the white altar, hidden in the dusk. When it was accepted, my life escaped, and I was folded into the church as completely as one of its shadows.

This was already an experience beyond the scope of Green Peak. It had no more divinity in it perhaps (Green Peak is divine enough); but it had humanity, and Green Peak is rather ‘careless of mankind.’ Having humanity, it had all the rich complexity of emotion which pertains to the intricate working of human affairs; and it moved me, if more disturbingly, yet more profoundly, than the lonely hill. I went out into the evening city, hushed and exalted; nor did I hear the church say behind me as I closed the door, ‘Yet show I unto you a more excellent way.’

The next morning the enamored sunlight and I returned in good time; and there was the humanity too, hurrying to embody the spirit which it had left to fill the church so potently in its absence. Humanity? I should say so! It came flocking along the many streets which converged so significantly at this point, trooped in through the doors, paused, subsided, and took its way soberly up the aisles. It was a humanity versed in genuflexion beyond a Puritan understanding; but what did that matter? The church reassured me, or rather compelled me, with its imperious gentleness; and I reëntered my nook and knelt down with my kind. I supposed that they were still my kind in spite of their superior proficiency in gesture.

Verily, they were, and I was theirs, and we were all one another’s. We could not very well help it in the tide of that mighty service which rolled through the aisles presently, sweeping us all together in one burst of praise and prayer. Marvelous service! It w’as as the voice of the church itself, waking at last from its contemplation and turning to tell us what it had learned. There was the ring of eternity in it. But there was also the pulse of time and the human accent which marked it the voice of the people as well as of the church. There could hardly have been a heart there that did not find its special need expressed in some prayer first or last; and that is saying a good deal, for an assembly of several hundred modern hearts presents — or conceals — a lavish variety of complex necessities. Yet there was no effect of separation, of passing from point to point in the prayers. They all took their flight from a common ground to a common heaven. Such a service is perhaps the best example there is in the world of the place of the many in the one, of the life of the one as made up of the many, and yet as greater than the sum of them. What is it, by the way, that makes everything that is worth while greater than the sum of all its parts?

The church’s morning mood was triumphant. The stained-glass windows glowed in the sun, the arches rose clear of mystery, and even the altar offered its white beauty generously to the reverent gaze of the throng. The organ pealed and the choir exulted; silence was put to flight. The place was no less compelling thus than it had been the evening before. Rather, I found it more compelling, for there was now so much more of me to be compelled: there was the woman across the aisle, the little boy in the next row but one, the young girl in front, of him. It is curious how the spirit runs out and identifies itself with certain people in a congregation or audience, claiming them in their unconsciousness, sharing with them a secret congratulation which they never suspect. The experience is a happy one. But it is nothing compared to what happened to that whole churchful of people when, at the most solemn point in the service, they all knelt together and suddenly — not a barrier of any kind remained, not a sundering distinction in the whole throng; but each life flowed into the other, and all flowed into the One Life and were spread and hushed in an ineffable peace.

This was the ‘ better way,’ this was the crest of mystic experience. For it is more to have been several hundred people than to have been a mountain or even a morning star.

What does it all mean anyway — this spell of the church and the mountain? Nothing new, surely. The spirit world has for ages been knocking at our doors, commanding, appealing, pleading, now and then thrusting its glories upon us in a desperate sally which ought to make an end of resistance. What is the matter, then? Are we perverse, that we so fleetingly and so seldom embrace the morning star? Do we not even yet understand the meaning of life that we so rarely love one another? Or are we really helpless, bound in chains which we cannot break, unable to live the life of the spirit save in little snatches?

The snatches are something at any rate; in fact they are everything. They indicate native talent, and ultimate achievement. That which we have known we can know again, and again, and again; and perhaps by and by permanently. Meantime, the church and the mountain stand fast and hold the keys for us. We can hardly revere them too much, wait upon them too patiently, expect too much of them. They are highly significant.

Every man his own mountain and church. But when he has found them, let him cling to them.