FATHER TYRRELL ON MYSTICISM.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2659, 15 November 1909, Page 3

FATHER TYRRELL ON MYSTICISM.

A POSTHUMOUS PAPER

A pathetic interest attaches to a paper in a recent “Quarterly Review” on the mystical element in religion, since it was written by Father Tyrrell, who has passed to “where beyond these voices there is peace.” It is a closely-packed article, containing the writer’s ripest thoughts oh philosophy and religion, which it is very difficult to summarise. Ho begins with the- round assertion that what distinguishes religion from ethics is “the belief in another world, and the endeavor to hold intercourse with it.” The Three Factors of Religion. — After pointing out the errors of pseudo mysticism and ecccsiasticism he says:—“For, as the whole of life, so religion, its principal factor, is a harmony or dependent organism; and its three factors —the historic or institutional, the mystical, and the rational —- correspond roughly to three stages oi religious development, successive yet superposed, in the race and in the individual. First, as children or barbarians, we are formalists and traditionalists ; later comes personal experience; firstly, reflection on experience and tradition and their rational combination and justification. Yet each of these " elements of religion has, even in its most normal state, something antipathetic to the other two, and, if given its way, tends to rid itself of them and grow to something monstrous and deformed. Hence the call for a unifying effort to keep each and all in their proper places.” He says that religion is institutional just because it is social, and the legitimate end of institutionalism is the formation of a living, independent personality in which the common type is transfigured through and through by the character of a unique individuality. —As Sex to Species, so Religion to God. — History has its rights, the reason has its rights, but a certain primacy must he conceded to the mystical over the oilier two. Nevertheless, the mystic needs the cheek of the institutional and rational element. But- mysticism does not necessarily mean the disparagement of the body or of common life or of science. Of Quietism lie says that the Quietism condemned by the Roman Church was the analysis, not the thing, and the Quietists, besides the errors of analysis, had provoked the hostility of the theologians, “who will more readily forgive any slight error than a slight upon their class.“ On the doctrine of absolutely selfish love Father Tyrrell says beautifully: “Man’s higher life F the life of the Whole that lives in him, as truly as his sexual life is the life of the species that lives in him.” “To he moral” an act “must proceed from our sense of identity and .solidarity with the AVhole, whose interests are our own deepest interests — i.e., from the pure love of God.” —Mere Morality Sometimes Worse Th a n Vice. — Touching on the relation of mysticism to morality, Father Tyrell gives a short shrift to Kantian moralis.ni—an impoverishment of religion further developed by A. Ritsehl and AY. Hermann. “The banality of Kant-inspired Protestautism” is responsible for sundry bizarre reactions in favor of Ritualism, pseudo-mysticism, and other medieval fashions. Far from being identical, lie says, the ends of religion and morality are but imperfectly harmonised. A strenuous moral life tends to become little better than a sanctified and systematic worldliness:—“lf the tone of life is to be deep and rich, and not harsh and metallic, it needs a strong infusion of mysticism, an abiding consciousness, or at least subconsciousness, of the transcendent and infinite, of the darkness that walls round our tiny sphere of light. It needs that humility begotten of a felt finitude, evanescence, and dependence which we find in Socrates, in the Greek tragedians, in Dante, in Shakespeare, and without which man becomes evermore pert and provincial with every step of his progress. TJntempered by swell humility, morality easily becomes Pharisaical, and more perilous to character (as Christ perceived) than vice itself.” —The Idea of God and AA’hat it Covers.— Father Tyrrell glances round the whole realm of theology, beginning with the idea of God. Ho says:—“We have at least abandoned the idea of ‘proving’ tlm existence of God. If He is what religion says, the sovereign necessity of our spiritual nature, we must hold Him by something stronger than a string of syllogisms. He must be given to us -as the light is to our eyes or air to our lungs. If He is not to be found in us as the necessary presupposition of our thought and action, we can safely-, dispense Avith Him. What we'have now to do is to slioav men that they affirm God. in every breath, to teach them the. mystic- habit- of attention to the 0011-" stunt .that underlies the- variable elements of their consciousness.” He will allow philosophy to hold together as imperfectly complementing one another—deism, theism, pantheism, panentheism, polytheism, immanence, transcendence, identity, duality. Each stands' for some aspect of an incceSsiblc truth that determines our feeling and practical attitude towards the divine, and contributes to the fulness and richness of our spiritual life. —The Christian Faith: What is it?— Father Tyrrell describes the Christian religion as one “that has grown out of Avbat AA r as originally a Jewish revival, and has incorported Avhat is best (and a good deal that is only second best) in the religious tradition of the whole Avorkl—a religion avliosc thought is occupied with the four invariable problems. God. man, the world’s redemption —a religion tiiat in institutional, mystical. and rational, as tense as it is multiple, optimistic, yet pessimistic, transcendent yet immanent, of this wbrlcl yet of the ether world, a dualism *vct a unification, Avhose ethic is at once human and religious; and yet a religion that began'' in .a violent, one-sided veaction against the interests that may be trusted to look after themselves.” —Only the Church tho Complete Believer. — The present crisis of Christianity is due +0 the intensification of the conflict between the three factors. And the writer says truly:—“On no ono soul can the burden of all these difficult syntheses be laid —of rational, mystical, and institutional: of immanence and transcendence' of ethical ends and religious ends. It is only in the bosom of generations that the process is effected . ’ ’