Apart from "The Cloud upon the Sanctuary," Eckartshausen is a name
only to the Christian Transcendentalists of England. He wrote much,
and at his period and in his place, he exercised some considerable
influence; but his other works are practically unknown among us,
while in Germany the majority at least seem forgotten, even among
the special class to which some of them might be assumed to appeal.
"The Cloud upon the Sanctuary" has, I believe, always remained in
the memory of a few, and is destined still to survive, for it
carries with it a message of very deep significance to all those
who look beneath the body of religious doctrine for the one
principle of life which energizes the whole organism. This
translation has offered it for the first time to English readers,
and it enters here upon the third phase of its existence. It
appeared originally in the pages of "The Unknown World," a magazine
devoted to the deeper understanding of philosophical and mystical
religion, and it was afterwards republished in volume form, of
which edition this is a new issue. It has attracted very
considerable attention and deserved it; it has even been translated
into French, under the auspices of the late Countess of Caithness,
for the pages of L’Aurore. These few words of bibliography are not
unnecessary because they establish the fact that there has been
some little sentiment of interest working within a restricted
circle, as one may hope, towards a more general diffusion and
knowledge of a document which is at once suggestive from the
literary standpoint and profoundly moving from other and higher
considerations.
It encourages me to think that many persons who know and appreciate
it now, or may come under its influence in the future, will learn
with pleasure the little that I can tell them of its author, the
Councillor Eckartshausen, and of certain other books not of his
writing, which, as I think, connect therewith, and the study of
which may help us to understand its message.
Perhaps the most interesting thing that I can say at the beginning
concerning Eckartshausen is that he connects with that group of
Theosophists of which Lavater was so important a figure, the Baron
Kirchberger an accomplished and interesting recorder, and Louis
Claude de Saint-Martin a correspondent in France and a certain
source of leading. In his letters to Saint-Martin, Kirchberger says
that Eckartshausen, with whom he was in frequent communication, was
a man of immense reading and wonderful fertility; he regarded him
in other respects as an extraordinary personage, "whatever way
providence may have led him." It would appear that at this period,
namely, in 1795, Eckartshausen was looking for and obtaining his
chief light from the mystical study of numbers, but was also, to
use the veiled and cautious language of the correspondence, in
enjoyment of more direct favours. Saint-Martin confesses on his own
part that he was more interested in Eckartshausen than he could
express. Kirchberger must have held him in even higher estimation,
and undertook a journey to the Swiss frontier actually for the
purpose of receiving from him the personal communication of the
Lost Word; but the illness of the proposed communicator frustrated
this project. The point is important because it establishes the
pretensions of Eckartshausen. As to the Councillor of Berne so to
us, he comes speaking with authority; and whatever may be our
opinion as to the kind of sacramentalism or economy which was
conveyed in a proposal to communicate the incommunicable name,
there are some of us who know, at least within certain limits, that
the little book which I am here introducing is not one of vain
pretension. Saint-Martin acknowledges that part of the numerical
system of Eckartshausen was in astonishing agreement with things
that he had learned long ago in his own school of initiation—that
of Martines de Pasqually. Altogether the French mystic had formed
the best opinion possible of his German brother, and his Swiss
correspondent further tells us that Eckartshausen, although a
courtier, walked in the narrow way of the inner life. In a letter
to Kirchberger dated March 19th, 1795, Eckartshausen bears witness
to his own personal experience and instructions received from
above, his consciousness of a higher presence, the answers which he
had received and the visions, with the steps by which he had
advanced even to the attainment of what he terms "the Law in its
fullness." I have thought it well to give these data derived from
private correspondence, the publication of which was never designed
or expected at the time, because they constitute a sketch of
Eckartshausen taken to some extent unawares, when there could be
the least reason to suppose that he was adopting an attitude. Let
us now compare the very strong claim which they incorporate with
that of "The Cloud upon the Sanctuary" itself, and the little
analysis which I shall give here will, I think, be otherwise
serviceable to readers as a summary of the chief purport of the
work. It is possible by seeking inwardly to approach the essential
wisdom, and this wisdom is Jesus Christ who is also the essence of
love within us. The truth of this statement can be experimentally
proved by any one, the condition of the experience being the
awakening within us of a spiritual faculty cognizing spiritual
objects as objectively and naturally as the outward senses perceive
natural phenomenon. This organ is the intuitive sense of the
transcendental world, and its awakening, which is the highest
object of religion, takes place in three stages: (a) morally, by
the way of inspiration; (b) intellectually, by the way of
illumination; (c) spiritually, by the way of revelation. The
awakening of this organ is the lifting of the cloud from the
sanctuary, enabling our hearts to become receptive of God, even in
this world. The knowledge of these mysteries has been always
preserved by an advanced school, illuminated inwardly by the
Saviour, and continued from the beginning of things to the present
time. This community is the Invisible Celestial Church, founded
immediately after the Fall, and receiving a first-hand revelation
for the raising of humanity. But the weakness of men as they
multiplied necessitated an external society, namely, the Outward
Church, which, in the course of time, became separated from the
Inner Church, also through human weakness. The external church was
originally consecrated in Abraham, but received its highest
perfection in the mystery of Jesus Christ. The Interior Church is
invisible and yet governs all; it is perpetuated in silence but in
real activity, "and united the science of the temple of the ancient
alliance with the spirit of the Saviour," or of the interior
alliance. This community of light is the reunion of all those
capable of receiving light, and is known as the Communion of
Saints. It possesses its school, its chair, its doctor, and a rule
for students, with forms and objects of study, and in short a
method by which they study, together with degrees for successive
development to higher altitudes. We must not, however, regard it as
a secret society, meeting at certain times, choosing its elders and
members, and united by special objects; for even the chief does not
invariably know all the members, and those who are ripe are joined
to the general members when they thought least likely, and at
a point of which they knew nothing. The society forms a theocratic
republic, which one day will be the Regent-Mother of the whole
world. Its members are exactly acquainted with the innermost of
religions and of the Holy Mysteries, but these treasures are
concealed in so simple a manner that they baffle unqualified
research.