ABSTRACT
Baron Friedrich von Hugel is chiefly remembered today for the threefold distinction that he drew between the different elements of religion: the historical, the rational and the mystical. Of the three elements of religion, the historical, the rational and the mystical, it was to the third that von Hugel was most attracted, and he saw it as the most important of the three. The Baron was always aware of the need not to isolate the mystical element of religion, but always to combine it with the other two elements, the historical-institutional and the intellectual-rational. The mystical panentheist is acutely sensitive to the intrinsic lovableness of created things; he treats the entire cosmos as a sacrament of the divine presence. Von Hugel certainly upheld the generally accepted Christian view that Christ, the eternal Son of God, underwent genuine suffering during his earthly life; he suffered, that is to say, in his human but not in his divine nature.
