often an artistic quality, St. Paul in his correspondence could break into poetry, as the only way of telling the truth.  St. Jerome lived to the full the lives of scholar and of ascetic.  St. Francis, in his perpetual missionary activities, still found time for his music songs; St. Hildegarde and St. Catherine of Siena had their strong political interests; Jacopone da Todi combined the careers of contemplative politician and poet.  So too in practical matters.  St. Catherine of Genoa was one of the first hospital administrators, St. Vincent de Paul a genius in the sphere of organized charity, Elizabeth Fry in that of prison reform.  Brother Laurence assures us that he did his cooking the better for doing it in the Presence of God.  Jacob Boehme was a hard-working cobbler, and afterwards as a writer showed amazing powers of composition.  The perpetual journeyings and activities of Wesley reproduced in smaller compass the career of St. Paul:  he was also an exact scholar and a practical educationist.  Mary Slessor showed the quality of a ruler as well as that of a winner of souls.  In the intellectual region, Richard of St. Victor was supreme in contemplation, and also a psychologist far in advance of his time.  We are apt to forget the mystical side of Aquinas; who was poet and contemplative as well as scholastic philosopher.

And the third feature we notice about these men and women is, that this new power by which they lived was, as Ruysbroeck calls it, “a spreading light."[52] It poured out of them, invading and illuminating other men:  so that, through them, whole groups or societies were re-born, if only for a time, on to fresh levels of reality, goodness and power.  Their own intense personal experience was valid not only for themselves.  They belonged to that class of natural, leaders who are capable,—­of infecting the herd with their own ideals; leading it to new feeding grounds, improving the common level It is indeed the main social function of the man or woman of the Spirit to be such a crowd-compeller In the highest sense; and, as the artist reveals new beauty to his fellow-men, to stimulate in their neighbours the latent human capacity for God.  In every great surge forward to new life, we can trace back the radiance to such a single point of light; the transfiguration of an individual soul.  Thus Christ’s communion with His Father was the life-centre, the point of contact with Eternity, whence radiated the joy and power of the primitive Christian flock:  the classic example of a corporate spiritual life.  When the young man with great possessions asked Jesus, “What shall I do to be saved?” Jesus replied in effect, “Put aside all lesser interests, strip off unrealities, and come, give yourself the chance of catching the Infection of holiness from Me.”  Whatever be our view of Christian dogma, whatever meaning we attach to the words “redemption” and “atonement,” we shall hardly deny that in the life and character of the historic Christ something