of a religious newspaper, giving a similar experience, upon several ocasions in his life but with more circumstance of detail. Nevertheless, he regarded it as entirely a union with Christ, the Bridegroom of the Soul, and spoke of it reverently.
Madam de Guyon has left us memoirs of her rapturous union with the Divine Bridegroom of the Soul, and verses concerning His love and watchful tenderness which are rare specimens of pure and delicate sentiment. Yet, so little was Borderland wedlock understood by the learned of those days, that Bossuet made a coarse joke about her marriage with the Child Jesus; and another French bishop, says Arthur Little, wrote what might almost be called an episcopal lampoon. One couplet will be enough:
"Par l'epoux quelque foi une jeune mystique
Entend un autre epoux que celni du Cantique."
(A young woman who is mystical understands another spouse than that of Canticles). From which it would seem as though the Roman Catholic Church admitted that there might be objective realities in Borderland wedlock (so far at least, as appears on the surface) eschew objective phenomena on the Borderland and tries to keep her mystics entirely in the realm of subjectivity—a realm where illusions arise through the ease with which it is confounded with objective planes and where a well-trained mind is needed to distinguish between that which is suggested or thought hypnotically and that which actually occurs. And yet, it is for a Divine Bridegroom on the Borderland that the Church has long trained her nuns in the life of ascetics. For in various forms of austere self-denial, asceticism as well as total suppression of the sex-nature is an absolute preliminary, step to Borderland nuptials, though only for a time. The question arises however, who is this Divine Spouse of the purified and ascetic nun? Is it Christ? Or is it an angelic lover? The church says Christ when the union is uplifting and insists that the relation is entirely mystical and not at all objective. I think from the testimonies in which I have adduced from church writings an angelic bridegroom is not impossible. And it is quite con-
