A recent Book with the sub-title of ‘Revelations of the Mystics’ gives us the opportunity of resuming the theme we opened in the August issue, the nature and meaning of mysticism. The book itself is a delight for anyone interested in spiritual literature; it contains many treasures, some familiar and many rare. The title of the book, The Spear of Gold, is taken from the exalted experience of St Teresa when the angel pierced her heart with a flaming spear of Love. The whole anthology, for such it is, is divided and subdivided so that it may Sead from the first leap of desire in the natural heart of man to these high transports of love. But the editory sets aside the usual treament according to the three stages of spiritual progress. He believes this treatment leads too steeply to the heights; but the result of his anthology is that its order is difficult to follow, and is more usefully used simply as an occasional book.

One of the things we have learnt from the intense study of nature is that behind every desire of man and of all living things there is some justification and some fulfilment. That whatever men have persistently longed for and desired has some reality. Nature does nothing uselessly. God implants in human hearts no desire however fantastic that has not fulfilment. Dreams in one generation become commonplace realities in the next. Look back a thousand years and read the dreaming literature of that period and now we have got beyond the dreams and live in the reality. Man is never satisfied. As fast as one desire is satisfied new desires spring from our mind. Man has always desired to live; he naturally hates death. There is a sadness connected with the last time he does anything.

In a previous study concerning knowledge after death, we saw that men are the lowest of all intelligent beings, the infants of the spiritual universe. In this life knowledge has to be presented to us pictorially through the senses, for like children we need our crayons and our blocks.

We need them no less for expression. We not only look at pictures, but paint them. We respond to the music of life by striking its chords. No matter how profoundly spiritual the thought of the mystic, he must convey it, if at all, by lips and hands and images drawn from the material world about him.

This being so, how shall we view the life and speech of angels? We know them to be, not unions of spirit and matter, but purely spiritual beings. These intricate bodily organisms of ours are totally unnecessary to them, for angelic knowledge goes behind all colour sound and texture to the inner nature of created things. This kind of knowledge is at present a closed book to us, although a book that death must open.

Today, dearly beloved we are celebrating the feast of all the saints in one joyous solemnity. Those saints whose fellowship is the delight of heaven; whose protection is the joy of earth; whose triumphs are the Church's crown; whose confessing of the Faith glows brighter in esteem, the braver their torments made it. For the harder the fight the greater the warriors’ glory; and many and varied are the sufferings which furnish the triumph of martyrdom. As the severity of their tortures increases, so too does the reward. Our Mother, the Catholic Church, extending far and wide throughout the world, was clearly taught by Christ Jesus, her Head, to fear neither insults, nor tortures, nor even death itself. Strengthened ever more and more, not by resistance but by endurance, she was the inspiration of the triumphal glory of all those whom the penalty of imprisonment brought together in a glorious army, with one and the same ardent courage to fight the battle.

Purification continues to be an unpleasant part of life up to the very last breath, however advanced in holiness a man may be. The first stage in the way of perfection is called ‘purgative’ or purifying only because that ascetic activity is the predominant one at the beginning. A man has to struggle to abandon vice when he turns to God and sincerely tries to follow him. And so he purifies himself and opens his heart to the purifying action of God in the ways already suggested in previous articles. God himself also cultivates the soul as the farmer first cultivates the soil with plough and harrow. But at the point we have reached we come to the first outstanding transformation; the Christian soul is about to be converted once more and to enter upon a new form of life, fuller and more fruitful. He begins to enter another kind of asceticism, asceticism, a a dark night of the senses in which the spirit becomes far freer than before.

Sunday, the day of joy, commemorates the cause of our joy and looks forward to its consummation in eternity. There can be no Christian life without Sunday, no Sunday without the Mass. Here is the setting of the redemptive work of our Lord Jesus Christ, and its acceptance is the condition of any Christian recovery. Too often Sunday is confused with its secondary aspects: obligations, abstention from servile work, the merely natural rest in the cycle of time demanded by man's nature. But the first day of the week is the day of resurrection, far older as a feast than Easter. Its holiness enshrines the central mystery of Faith, and the Sabbath that marks the creative rest of God is transfigured now into the day of the new creation of grace.

[The original account of St Katherine of Alexandria kas disappeared under a mass of medieval additions. As B. James's version will serve to show, the additions are not only beautiful but have a theological importance and a historical value as documents illustrating the history of medieval spirituality. Those who are not concerned about historical values will find the legend worth reading for the doctrine it contains, and there is no reason to doubt the existence of the saint or the main outlines of her character.]

There was once a heathen king and queen who ruled well, although they worshipped idols. They had one daughter, Katherine, so beautiful that the people never ceased to wonder, and more clever than any child of her age. So learned and wise was she that her father set aside a tower in his palace where she might gather books around her and study as she liked. He sent for the seven wisest men in the land to teach her, but before long she was the teacher and they her pupils. When the princess was fourteen years old her father died, and left her to be queen of that land. Soon the Parliament of the country met, and as the young queen sat crowned, with her mother beside her, a lord rose up and kneeling at her feet said:

'Most high and mighty princess, I am commanded by the queen your mother, and by the lords and commons of this land, to beg your highness that some noble knight may be found to marry you; one who will rule and defend your kingdom as your father did until now'.