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But it is not every one to whom it would be natural to describe this experience in language so mystical as this, nor would the mystic’s experience be likely to stop short at anything so simple and elementary as the process just described. And here we are confronted with the real “peculiarity” of Quakerism—its relation to mysticism. There is no doubt that George Fox himself and the other fathers of the Society were of a strongly mystical turn of mind, though not in the sense in which the word is often used by the worshippers of “common sense,” as a mild term of reproach, to convey a general vague dreaminess. Nothing, certainly, could be less applicable to the early Friends than any such reproach as this. They were fiery, dogmatic, pugnacious, and intensely practical and sober-minded. But they were assuredly mystics in what I take to be the more accurate sense of that word—people, that is, with a vivid consciousness of the inwardness of the light of truth.

Mysticism in this sense is a well-known phenomenon, of which a multitude of examples may be found in all religions. It is, indeed, rather a personal peculiarity than a form of belief; and therefore, although from time to time associations (our own, for one) have been based upon what are called mystical tenets, there can scarcely be anything like a real school of mysticism—at any rate, in Europe. Mysticism, as we know it, is essentially individual. It refuses to be formulated or summed up. In one sense it is common to all religious persuasions; in another, it equally eludes them all. We can easily understand what constitutes a mystic, but the peculiarity itself is incommunicable. Their belief is an open secret. They themselves have ever desired to communicate it, though continually feeling the impossibility of doing so by words alone. It is the secret of light—an inward light clothing itself in life, and living to bring all things to the light.