Page:Essays and phantasies by James Thomson.djvu/220

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208

OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES

A servant with this clause
⁠Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,
⁠Makes that and the action fine.

But it is probable that we must go to the East for the purest fountain and the most copious river of the element which bathes the souls of this brotherhood. In Sir William Jones's Dissertation on the Mystical Poetry of the Persians and Hindus,^[1] he translates an ode by a sufi of Bokhara, who assumed the poetical name of Ismat, which is so transcendent an expression of the spirit of this fraternity, that I must cite it in its completeness.

"Yesterday, half-inebriated, I passed by the quarter

↑ Asiatic Researches, vol. iii. In the same dissertation, Sir William Jones gives examples of the occult meanings which many zealous admirers insist upon attributing to the most common words in these mystical poems. Thus wine means devotion; idolaters, infidels, and libertines are men of the purest religion; a tavern is a retired oratory; kisses and embraces are the raptures of piety, &c. &c. I do not doubt that orthodox Mussulmans are satisfied with such interpretations; nor would I argue that such interpretations are not in any sense right, for occult or spiritual meanings certainly abound in these poems. But had the poets meant the same kind of religion, devotion, &c., as the orthodox, they would have used the orthodox terms. No serious writer, and especially no poet, casts away venerable words rich in solemn and tender associations, until. he finds that they are altogether inadequate to convey his thought. Had the religion of Ismat been nothing more or higher than the best religion of those around him, would he have spoken with such contempt of the glass of piety, the square temple, the mosque, the cloak of a dervise? would he have celebrated with enthusiasm wine and paganism, the two things most abhorred by the devout among his people? The fact is, that mysticism, being intimate with the soul of the world in its own right, knows that it is beyond the law, proves its prerogative by dignifying the most despised objects (as a Sultan who makes a slave his Vizier), and cannot help now and then riotously shocking the formalists. For mysticism is the identity of the purest faith and the purest scepticism; the extremes not only meet, they intermingle and grow veritably one. There are in Christianity germs of this spirit which few Christians have ever dared to cultivate, and which few of those who have dared have been fit to cultivate: see the Epistle to the Romans, passim. The Anabaptists, Antinomians, &c. &c, made a miserable mess of it.

[1] Asiatic Researches, vol. iii. In the same dissertation, Sir William Jones gives examples of the occult meanings which many zealous admirers insist upon attributing to the most common words in these mystical poems. Thus wine means devotion; idolaters, infidels, and libertines are men of the purest religion; a tavern is a retired oratory; kisses and embraces are the raptures of piety, &c. &c. I do not doubt that orthodox Mussulmans are satisfied with such interpretations; nor would I argue that such interpretations are not in any sense right, for occult or spiritual meanings certainly abound in these poems. But had the poets meant the same kind of religion, devotion, &c., as the orthodox, they would have used the orthodox terms. No serious writer, and especially no poet, casts away venerable words rich in solemn and tender associations, until. he finds that they are altogether inadequate to convey his thought. Had the religion of Ismat been nothing more or higher than the best religion of those around him, would he have spoken with such contempt of the glass of piety, the square temple, the mosque, the cloak of a dervise? would he have celebrated with enthusiasm wine and paganism, the two things most abhorred by the devout among his people? The fact is, that mysticism, being intimate with the soul of the world in its own right, knows that it is beyond the law, proves its prerogative by dignifying the most despised objects (as a Sultan who makes a slave his Vizier), and cannot help now and then riotously shocking the formalists. For mysticism is the identity of the purest faith and the purest scepticism; the extremes not only meet, they intermingle and grow veritably one. There are in Christianity germs of this spirit which few Christians have ever dared to cultivate, and which few of those who have dared have been fit to cultivate: see the Epistle to the Romans, passim. The Anabaptists, Antinomians, &c. &c, made a miserable mess of it.

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