The mystical way has largely been lost as an option within the mainstream life of the Church. We have turned the focus of our attention away from the immense reality of God. We have settled, perhaps, for something rather more comfortable. In this ground-breaking and passionate book, Melvyn Matthews argues that believers today desperately need to retrieve a spiritual life of great depth in order to remain faithful in a world that contains much moral and social disintegration. Mysticism, often wrongly regarded as a private and personal experience limited to the few, is a way of returning to the 'starlit darkness' in which we can really see and which removes us from the delusory qualities of contemporary existence. Moreover a retrieval of the twin strands of the mystical way - the negative, emphasising the total unknowability of God, and the affirmative, the impossible wonder of God and his transcendent beauty - will deepen the integrity and the credibility of the evangelistic work of the Church. Many, in talking about the faith, emphasise the light and truth brought by Christ. The secular world, however, is still fascinated by a spirituality of mystery. 'Both Alike to Thee' affirms God, not just as an object of belief, but as the source of all being. It gives us a vision of the Church as the place where we can step out into his 'deep and dazzling darkness' with love and confidence.
