Nearly four hundred wonderful years have passed since the issue was first drawn, since the first of these spiritual prophets uttered his modest challenge. There can be no question that the current of Christian thought has been strongly setting in the direction which these brave and sincere innovators took. I feel confident that many persons to-day will be interested in these lonely men and will follow with sympathy their valiant struggles to discover the road to a genuine spiritual religion, and their efforts to live by the eternal Word of God as it was freely revealed as the Day Star to their souls.
[4] 1 John iv. 13; John xiii. 34 and xvi. 13; 1 John iv. 4.
[5] They found their authority for this outer sheath of body in the text which says: "The Lord God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skins, and clothed them."--Gen. iii. 21.
[6] Many of these historical reappearances are considered in my _Studies in Mystical Religion_.
[7] Isaac Penington, "A True and Faithful Relation of my Spiritual Travails," _Works_ (edition of 1761), i. pp. xxxvii.-xxxviii.
[8] Isaac Penington's _Works_, i. pp. xxxvii.-xxxviii.
[9] The exact and sharply-defined "ladders" of mystic ascent which form a large part of the descriptive material in books on Mystical Religion are far from being universal ladders. Like creeds, or like religious institutions, they powerfully assist certain minds to find the way home, but they seem unreal and artificial to many other persons, and they must be considered only as symbolisms which speak to the condition of a limited number of spiritual pilgrims.
[11] _Theologia Germanica_, chaps. xxii. and xliii.
[13] _Meister Eckhart_, Pfeiffer, p. 320. 20.
[14] Tauler's Sermons. See especially Sermons IV. and XXIII. in Hutton's _Inner Way_.
[15] _The Divine Names_ of Dionysius the Areopagite, chap. i. sec. i.
[16] _Meister Eckhart_, Pfeiffer, p. 320. 25-30.
[17] Quoted in W. H. J. Gairdner's _The Reproach of Islam_, p. 151.
[19] Denck's _Was geredet sey, dass die Schrift_, B. 2. Pascal's saying is: "Comfort thyself; thou wouldst not be seeking Me hadst thou not already found Me."--Le Mystère de Jésus, sec. 2.
[19] _The Threefold Life of Man_, xiv. 72.
[20] Sterry's _Rise, Race, and Royalty of the Kingdom of God in the Soul of Man_, p. 24.