Sheldon Cheney (1886–1980)

When I am asked to recommend books from my own personal library, this is often the first one I mention. Written by an art critic (not the Cheney family now in the news!), published at the end of his career, in 1945, it must have been a labor of love. It provides a clear and engrossing account of the lives, visions, and influence of mystics from Lao Tsu and Buddha to Jacob Boehme and William Blake--and what a powerful account of each one.

I have been a reader of Blake and Blake criticism for almost fifty years, and I have not read a clearer, nor certainly a more concise, essay on Blake as a Christian visionary. Most modern critics emphasize the "visionary," but not the "Christian." By the way, Blake also would have preferred the term "visionary" to "mystic" and otherwise would have used much less conventional religious terminology, but Cheney recaptures the Anabaptist, Moravian, and early Methodist background of Blake's own family.

Cheney's ecumenicism, however, is one of the striking features of this book, focusing also on Pythagoras and Plato, Plotinus, St. Bernard, St. Francis of Asissi, Meister Eckhardt, and Brother Laurence. (I wish it gave more attention to "women who walked with God," for after all this was written in the 1940s; he mentions a few prominently but devotes no single chapter to a woman mystic.) I happened on this book quite by accident at a used book store, though I understand that it is still in print. I was attracted simply by the essay on Blake, but it gave me so much more that I read it through twice almost immediately. I kept wishing this book had been brought to my attention as a young reader, but maybe I became more ready for its wisdom as a "senior citizen."… (more)