Whoever the author may be, he has produced the most popular religious work in Christendom. In England alone the Pilgrim’s Progress surpasses it, but even here the Imitatio stands second. For though the book in certain parts speaks for itself as being the work of a monk, it also speaks, not here and there, but throughout, the passionate eagerness of a soul to know God. The monkish habit is but the accident, the heart which beats beneath is impatient of everything external, in its aspirations to acquaint itself with God and be at peace. Exemplary ecclesiastic as no doubt the writer was, he ignores all outward ceremonies, save frequent Communions, in following the longings and feelings of his heart. He works out his own salvation with fear and trembling, knowing his own frailty, his own worthlessness, and need of divine grace. His confession is made to his own soul, and he asks for no earthly mediator to unite him to his Lord. As his name indicates that he was of the same race as Luther, so does his book anticipate the dawnings of the great Reformer’s theology. His soul lives in a solitude, sometimes fearing, but oftener hoping, beneath the eye of God. “He feels he was not made to die,” because he has found God to be the source and the end of his being. Thought, feeling, will, affection—all move round Him.
Milman stands, as far as I know, alone in the unfavourable judgment which he has formed upon this book. After describing it as the last effort of Latin Christianity, he pronounces it to be absolutely selfish in its aim. “Its sole, single, exclusive object, is the purification, the elevation of the individual soul, of the man absolutely isolated from his kind, of the man dwelling alone in the solitude, in the hermitage of his own thoughts; with no fears or hopes, no sympathies of our common nature; he has absolutely withdrawn and secluded himself not only from the cares, the