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Such an interior attitude of mind towards religion as is implied, for instance, in Bishop Butler's Sermons on the Love of God, or the De Imitatione or Newman's Parochial Sermons seems to him, as far as we can judge, an unknown and unattempted experience. It is easy to deal with a question if you leave out half the factors of it, and those the most difficult and the most serious.
We have a manual for those who would follow this path, in the Bodhicaryâvatâra of Śântideva, which in its humility, sweetness and fervent piety has been rightly compared with the De Imitatione Christi. In many respects the virtues of the Bodhisattva are those of the Arhat.
For Divine charity overcometh all things and enlargeth all the powers of the soul." De Imitatione Christi, iii. 9. We conclude, then, that self can never measure the length and breadth of the Divine love, and run in the way of His commandment. We need God to make us understand God; we must be in union with Him in order to obey Him.
While rendering to it and the faith that produced it all honour, we must remember that it is typical of the Mahayana only in the sense that the De Imitatione Christi is typical of Roman Catholicism, for both faiths have other sides.
They had reached the garden-gate. Humility seemed to hesitate. "Yes; go," she said at length; and he ran, with the De Imitatione Christi under his arm. As he came within view of the church he saw a knot of men gathered about the door. They were pulling something out from the porch.
There were, indeed, mystics like the author of the immortal De Imitatione, in whom the special qualities of Christian doctrine seem to have grown pale in a brighter flood of devout aspiration towards the perfections of a single Being. But this was not the deism with which either Christianity on the one side, or atheism on the other, had ever had to deal in France.
That, I freely grant to M. Michelet, is inimitable; else, as regards substance, it strikes me that I could forge a better De Imitatione myself. But there is no knowing till one tries. Yet, after all, it is not certain whether the original was Latin. Excepting the Bible, but excepting that only in Protestant lands, no book known to man has had the same distinction.
"Everywhere have I sought peace and found it nowhere," says the blessed Thomas a Kempis, "save in a corner with a book." Whether that good monk wrote the "De Imitatione Christi" or not, one always likes him for his love of books. Perhaps he was the only book-hunter that ever wrought a miracle.
Now the wonderful book from which this example is taken is, next to the Bible and the Treatise of "De Imitatione Christi," the best-known religious work of Christendom. If Bunyan and his contemporary, Sydenham, had met in consultation over the case of Christian at the time when he was meditating self-murder, it is very possible that there might have been a difference of judgment.
The De Imitatione Christi slipped from Taffy's fingers and fell upon the chancel step. So his childhood ended. These things happened on a Friday. After breakfast next morning Taffy went to fetch his books. He did so out of habit and without thinking; but his father stopped him. "Put them away," he said. "Some day we'll go back to them, but not yet."
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