sacramentalism was to its initiates a channel of grace. For all these
are children of tradition, occupy a given place in the stream of
history; and commonly they are better, not worse, for accepting this
fact with all that it involves. And on the other hand, as we shall see
when we come to discuss the laws of suggestion and the function of
belief, the weight of tradition presses the loyal and humble soul which
accepts it, to such an interpretation of its own spiritual intuitions as
its Church, its creed, its environment give to it. Thus St. Catherine of
Genoa, St. Teresa, even Ruysbroeck, are able to describe their intuitive
communion with God in strictly Catholic terms; and by so doing renew,
enrich and explicate the content of those terms for those who follow
them. Those who could not harmonize their own vision of reality with the
current formulæ--Fox, Wesley or Blake, driven into opposition by the
sterility of the contemporary Church--were forced to find elsewhere some
tradition through which to maintain contact with the past. Fox found it
in the Bible; Wesley in patristic Christianity. Even Blake's prophetic
system, when closely examined, is found to have many historic and
Christian connections. And all these regarded themselves far less as
bringers-in of novelty, than as restorers of lost truth. So we must be
prepared to discriminate the element of novelty from the element of
stability; the reality of the intuition, the curve of growth, the moral
situation, from the traditional and often symbolic language in which it
is given to us. The comparative method helps us towards this; and is
thus not, as some would pretend, the servant of scepticism, but rightly
used the revealer of the Spirit of Life in its variety of gifts. In this
connection we might remember that time--like space--is only of secondary
importance to us. Compared with the eons of preparation, the millions of
years of our animal and sub-human existence, the life of the Spirit as
it appears in human history might well be regarded as simultaneous
rather than successive. We may borrow the imagery of Donne's great