"The invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly
seen, being understood through the things that are made, even His ever-
lasting power and Divinity." -- ROM. i. 20.

IN my last Lecture I showed how the later Mysticism
emancipated itself from the mischievous doctrine that
the spiritual eye can only see when the eye of sense is
closed. After the Reformation period the mystic tries
to look with both eyes; his aim is to see God in all
things, as well as all things in God. He returns with
better resources to the task of the primitive religions,
and tries to find spiritual law in the natural world. It
is true that a strange crop of superstitions, the seeds
of which had been sown long before, sprang up to
mock his hopes. In necromancy, astrology, alchemy,
palmistry, table-turning, and other delusions, we have
what some count the essence, and others the reproach,
of Mysticism. But these are, strictly speaking, scien-
tific and not religious errors. From the standpoint of
religion and philosophy, the important change is that, in
the belief of these later mystics, the natural and the
spiritual are, somehow or other, to be reconciled; the
external world is no longer regarded as a place of exile
from God, or as a delusive appearance; it is the living

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