in the civilization of Europe, carrying forward not only religion, but education, pure scholarship, art, and industrial reform.  The object of St. Bernard’s reform was the restoration of the life of prayer.  His monks, going out into the waste places with no provision but their own faith, hope and charity, revived agriculture, established industry, literally compelled the wilderness to flower for God.  The Brothers of the Common Life joined together, in order that, living simply and by their own industry, they might observe a rule of constant prayer:  and they became in consequence a powerful educational influence.  The object of Wesley and his first companions was by declaration the saving of their own souls and the living only to the glory of God; but they were impelled at once by this to practical deeds of mercy, and ultimately became the regenerators of religion in the English-speaking world.

It is well to emphasize this truth, for it conveys a lesson which we can learn from history at the present time with much profit to ourselves.  It means that reconstruction of character and reorientation of attention must precede reconstruction of society; that the Sufi is right when he declares that the whole secret lies in looking in one direction and living in one way.  Again and again it has been proved, that those who aim at God do better work than those who start with the declared intention of benefiting their fellow-men.  We must be good before we can do good; be real before we can accomplish real things.  No generalized benevolence, no social Christianity, however beautiful and devoted, can take the place of this centring of the spirit on eternal values; this humble, deliberate recourse to Reality.  To suppose that it can do so, is to fly in the face of history and mistake effect for cause.

This brings us to the Second Character:  the rich completeness of the spiritual life, the way in which it fuses and transfigures the complementary human tendencies to contemplation and action, the non-successive and successive aspects of reality.  “The love of God,” said Ruysbroeck, “is an indrawing and outpouring tide";[51] and history endorses this.  In its greatest representatives, the rhythm of adoration and work is seen in an accentuated form.  These people seldom or never answer to the popular idea of idle contemplatives.  They do not withdraw from the stream of natural life and effort, but plunge into it more deeply, seek its heart.  They have powers of expression and creation, and use them to the full.  St. Paul, St. Benedict, St. Bernard, St. Francis, St. Teresa, St. Ignatius organizing families which shall incarnate the gift of new life; Fox, Wesley and Booth striving to save other men; Mary Slessor driven by vocation from the Dundee mill to the African swamps—­these are characteristic of them.  We perceive that they are not specialists, as more earthly types of efficiency are apt to be.  Theirs are rich natures, their touch on existence has