om some later mystical systems. Fichte, for example, claims St. John
as a supporter of his system of subjective idealism (if that is a
correct description of it), and is driven to some curious bits of
exegesis in his attempt to justify this claim. And Reuss (to give one
example of his method) says that St. John cannot have used "the last
day" in the ordinary sense, "because mystical theology has nothing to
do with such a notion.[66]" He means, I suppose, that the mystic, who
likes to speak of heaven as a state, and of eternal life as a present
possession, has no business to talk about future judgment. I cannot
help thinking that this is a very grave mistake. There is no doubt
that those who believe space and time to be only forms of our thought,
must regard the traditional eschatology as symbolical. We are not
concerned to maintain that there will be, literally, a great assize,
holden at a date and place which could be announced if we knew it. If
that is all that Reuss means, perhaps he is right in saying that
"mystical theology has nothing to do with such a notion." But if he
means that such expressions as those referred to in St. John, about
eternal life as something here and now, imply that judgment is now,
_and therefore not in the future_, he is attributing to the
evangelist, and to the whole array of religious thinkers who have used
similar expressions, a view which is easy enough to understand, but
which is destitute of any value, for it entirely fails to satisfy the
religious consciousness. The feeling of the contrast between what
ought to be and what is, is one of the deepest springs of faith in the
unseen. It can only be ignored by shutting our eyes to half the facts
of life. It is easy to say with Browning, "God's in His heaven: all's
right with the world," or with Emerson, that justice is not deferred,
and that everyone gets exactly his deserts in this life; but it would
require a robust confidence or a hard heart to maintain these
propositions while standing among the rui