new was thus evoked from, and added to, humanity.  No one can read with attention the Gospel and the story of the primitive Church, without being struck by the consciousness of renovation, of enhancement, experienced by all who received the Christian secret in its charismatic stage.  This new factor is sometimes called re-birth, sometimes grace, sometimes the power of the Spirit, sometimes being “in Christ.”  We misread history if we regard it either as a mere gust of emotional fervour, or a theological idea, or discount the “miracles of healing” and other proofs of enhanced power by which it was expressed.  Everything goes to prove that the “more abundant life” offered by the Johannine Christ to His followers, was literally experienced by them; and was the source of their joy, their enthusiasm, their mutual love and power of endurance.

On lower levels, and through the inspiration of lesser teachers, history shows us the phenomena of primitive Christianity repeated again and again; both within and without the Christian circle of ideas.  Every religion looks for, and most have possessed, some revealer of the Spirit; some Prophet, Buddha, Mahdi, or Messiah.  In all, the characteristic demonstrations of the human power of transcendence—­a supernatural life which can be lived by us—­have begun in one person, who has become a creative centre mediating new life to his fellow-men:  as were Buddha and Mohammed for the faiths which they founded.  Such lives as those of St. Paul, St. Benedict, St. Francis, Fox, Wesley, Booth are outstanding examples of the operation of this law.  The parable of the leaven is in fact an exact description of the way in which the spiritual consciousness—­the supernatural urge—­is observed to spread in human society.  It is characteristic of the regenerate type, that he should as it were overflow his own boundaries and energize other souls:  for the gift of a real and harmonized life pours out inevitably from those who possess it to other men.  We notice that the great mystics recognize again and again such a fertilizing and creative power, as a mark of the soul’s full vitality.  It is not the personal rapture of the spiritual marriage, but rather the “divine fecundity” of one who is a parent of spiritual children; which seems to them the goal of human transcendence, and evidence of a life truly lived on eternal levels, in real union with God.  “In the fourth and last degree of love the soul brings forth its children,” says Richard of St. Victor.[53] “The last perfection to supervene upon a thing,” says Aquinas, “is its becoming the cause of other things."[54] In a word, it is creative.  And the spiritual life as we see it in history is thus creative; the cause of other things.