spirit is, fundamentally, a life-giver; and all corporate achievement of
the life of the spirit flows from some great apostle or initiator, is
the fruit of discipleship. Such corporate achievement is a form of group
consciousness, brought into being through the power and attraction of a
fully harmonized life, infecting others with its own sharp sense of
Divine reality. Poets and artists thus infect in a measure all those
who yield to their influence. The active mystic, who is the poet of
Eternal Life, does it in a supreme degree. Such a relation of master and
disciples is conspicuous in every true spiritual revival; and is the
link between the personal and corporate aspects of regeneration. We see
it in the little flock that followed Christ, the Little Poor Men who
followed Francis, the Friends of Fox, the army of General Booth. Not
Christianity alone, but Hindu and Moslem history testify to this
necessity. The Hindu who is drawn to the spiritual life must find a
_guru_ who can not only teach its laws but also give its atmosphere; and
must accept his discipline in a spirit of obedience. The S[=u]fi
neophyte is directed to place himself in the hands of his _sheikh_ "as a
corpse in the hands of the washer"; and all the great saints of Islam
have been the inspiring centres of more or less organized groups.

History teaches us, in fact, that God most often educates men through
men. We most easily recognize Spirit when it is perceived transfiguring
human character, and most easily achieve it by means of sympathetic
contagion. Though the new light may flash, as it seems, directly into
the soul of the specially gifted or the inspired, this spontaneous
outbreaking of novelty is comparatively rare; and even here, careful
analysis will generally reveal the extent in which environment,
tradition, teaching literary or oral, have prepared the way for it.
There is no aptitude so great that it can afford to dispense with human
experience and education. Even the noblest of the sons and daughters of