WE must beware, of the mysticism which renounces all claims to doctrinal precision and refrain from abandoning ourselves to the impulses of feeling and imagination as if we should endeavor to sink into the abyss of that love which died on the cross, or think to find the true principle of redemption in the repetition in ourselves of the sacrifice once made by Christ, in the literal crucifying of our own flesh.
The Word sets before us a personal Redeemer, and an accomplished redemption, but mysticism is the poison and death of all true Christian life and scriptural godliness; and, moreover, it is mischievously heterodox. The aim and aspiration of one of the most prominent of their leaders, we are told, was " to float in divinity, as the eagle in the air," and their teaching all tends to the erroneous doctrine of union with God.
And yet their system is a human imitation of what the Spirit teaches of him who abides in love, dwelling in God, and God in him, of an assembly being in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us not be scared from enjoying the legitimate teaching of the Spirit from a fear of being counted mystics. Union with Christ and fellowship with the Father and the Son must ever appear mere mysticism to the carnal professor.
But, while mysticism, ignores as it does a personal Savior and an accomplished redemption, as well as new creation in Christ and the scriptural testimony to the person and work of the Holy Ghost, we are to hold fast as our very life " the things of the Spirit," and all we have in Christ and in the Spirit as God's word reveals them, and faith receives them, and not allow ourselves to be scared from enjoying the highest reaches of a spiritual experience of the knowledge of Christ by the dread of mysticism.
“The things that are freely given to us of God," by the Spirit, are such as these: " In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. If any one love me he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come and make our abode with him. That they all may be one as thou, Father, art in me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us. God is love, and he that abides in love abides in God, and God in him. What, know ye not that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost which ye have of God? The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given to us." Such are the things the world calls mystical and transcendental. (1 Cor. 2:14,1514But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. (1 Corinthians 2:14‑15).) God grant that we may all know more of them!
In Him I find mine exultation,
My fairest visions of delight;
I feed mine eyes, mine expectation,
On Him alone, my Rest, my Light!
Each heart will seek and love its own:
My Object Christ, and Christ alone!
His riches are too vast to measure;
His countenance is as the sun;
Apart from Him there's naught of treasure;
He is the Changeless Living One.
Each heart will seek and love its own:
My goal is Christ, and Christ alone!