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p. xxxi
THE TEMPTATION OF EVIL
From Cædmon.
INTRODUCTION
THE mystic tradition in Christian Times is preserved, apart from all questions and traces
of Instituted Mysteries, in the literature of Christian Mystical Theology; it is a large and
exceedingly scattered literature; some of its most important texts are available in no
modern language; they stand very seriously in need of codification, and--if I may be so
frank--even of re-expression. But if, for other reasons, they are in their entirety a study
which must be left to the expert, there is no person now living in Europe who has not
close at his hands the specific, simple, isolated texts--much too numerous to name--which
are sufficient to give some general idea of the scope and aims of the tradition. If I were
asked to define the literature shortly and comprehensively as a whole, I should call it the
texts of the way, the truth and the life in respect of the mystic term. It is not only full but
exhaustive as to the way--which is that of the inward world, recollection, meditation,
contemplation, the renunciation of all that is lower in the quest of all that is higher--but
perhaps the most catholic word of all would be centralisation. It is very full also on the
fundamental truth, out of which it arises, that a way does exist and that the way is open.
The truth is formulated in all simplicity by the Epistle to the Hebrews--that God is and
that He recompenses those who seek Him out. I have cited this testimony on several
occasions in the same connection, and I do so here and now without a word of apology
and with no sense of repetition, since it can never be a matter of redundancy to remember
after what manner the Divine ways are justified to humanity, when humanity is seeking
the Divine. The literature,
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