greatness least of all.  It is usually startlingly modern, even eccentric at the time at which it appears.  We are accustomed to think of “The Imitation of Christ” as the classic expression of mediaeval spirituality.  But when Thomas a Kempis wrote his book, it was the manifesto of that which was called the Modern Devotion; and represented a new attempt to live the life of the Spirit, in opposition to surrounding apathy.

When we re-enter the past, what we find, there is the persistent conflict between this novelty and this apathy; that is to say between man’s instinct for transcendence, in which we discern the pressure of the Spirit and the earnest of his future, and his tendency to lag behind towards animal levels, in which we see the influence of his racial past.  So far as the individual is concerned, all that religion means by grace is resumed under the first head, much that it means by sin under the second head.  And the most striking—­though not the only—­examples of the forward reach of life towards freedom (that is, of conquering grace) are those persons whom we call men and women of the Spirit.  In them it is incarnate, and through them, as it were, it spreads and gives the race a lift:  for their transfiguration is never for themselves alone, they impart it to all who follow them.  But the downward falling movement ever dogs the emerging life of spirit; and tends to drag back to the average level the group these have vivified, when their influence is withdrawn.  Hence the history of the Spirit—­and, incidentally, the history of all churches—­exhibits to us a series of strong movements towards completed life, inspired by vigorous and transcendent personalities; thwarted by the common indolence and tendency to mechanization, but perpetually renewed.  We have no reason to suppose that this history is a closed book, or that the spiritual life struggling to emerge among ourselves will follow other laws.

We desire then, if we can, to discover what it was that these transcendent personalities possessed.  We may think, from the point at which we now stand, that they had some things which were false, or, at least, were misinterpreted by them.  We cannot without insincerity make their view of the universe our own.  But, plainly, they also possessed truths and values which most of us have not:  they obtained from their religion, whether we allow that it had as creed an absolute or a symbolic value, a power of living, a courage and clear vision, which we do not as a rule obtain.  When we study the character and works of these men and women, observing their nobility, their sweetness, their power of endurance, their outflowing love, we must, unless we be utterly insensitive, perceive ourselves to be confronted by a quality of being which we do not possess.  And when we are so fortunate as to meet one of them in the flesh, though his conduct is commonly more normal than our own, we know then with Plotinus that the soul has another life.  Yet many of us