No one doubts to-day that one of the main approaches to the meaning of religion is through the nature of the soul of man. It would no doubt be a mistake to push the method of the inner way to the exclusion of all other methods of studying religion, but it is certain that nobody can tell us what religion is until he has sounded the deeps within man, and has dealt with the testimony of personal consciousness.
The mystics have in all ages and in all lands semper et ubique been intent on finding a direct way to God. They have been voices, often crying in the wilderness, announcing the nearness of God, and calling men from the folly of seeking Him where, from the nature of the case, he could not be found. Their message strikes a note which appeals profoundly to our generation, and for obvious reasons there has been a revival of interest in them. I hope these studies of mine will contribute to this interest, and will throw positive light on the problems of mystical religion.
I have had before me, in all my labour on this volume, the desire to make my work advance the plans of my beloved friend John Wilhelm Rowntree, who is now in the unseen realm. He had set before himself as part of a larger purpose the task of writing the history of Quakerism, treating it as an experiment in spiritual religion, and even before I knew of his plans, I had chosen as my special field a study of the mystics of ancient and modern times. We each felt that our work was toward the same end, and we spent many joyous hours telling each other of our literary dreams, always putting all our emphasis on the way in which these unborn books of ours were to minister to the larger spiritual life of our age. His books, alas, must remain unwritten! We who were his friends know, though the world never can, what power they would have revealed.
"The world which credits what is done
Is dark to all that might have been."
Some of us who loved him are resolved that his work, so far as possible, shall go on to completion, and I have made my volume function, in every way I could do so, toward the fulfilling of his interrupted plans. There is no sectarian cast or bias in it, but it does prepare the way for an intelligent comprehension of the appearance in the English commonwealth of a society of Christians who seriously undertook to live by the Light within, and whose story will be told in later volumes.
