When such creative personalities appear and such groups are founded by
them, the phenomena of the spiritual life reappear in their full vigour,
and are disseminated. A new vitality, a fresh power of endurance, is
seen in all who are drawn within the group and share its mind. This is
what St. Paul seems to have meant, when he reminded his converts that
they had the mind of Christ. The primitive friars, living under the
influence of Francis, did practice the perfect poverty which is also
perfect joy. The assured calm and willing sufferings of the early
Christians were reproduced in the early Quakers, secure in their
possession of the inner light. We know very well the essential
characters of this fresh mentality; the power, the enthusiasm, the
radiant joy, the indifference to pain and hardship it confers. But we
can no more produce it from these raw materials than the chemist's
crucible can produce life. The whole experience of St. Francis is
implied in the Beatitudes. The secret of Elizabeth Fry is the secret of
St. John. The doctrine of General Booth is fully stated by St. Paul. But
it was not by referring inquirers to the pages of the New Testament that
the first brought men fettered by things to experience the freedom of
poverty; the second faced and tamed three hundred Newgate criminals, who
seemed at her first visit "like wild beasts"; or the third created
armies of the redeemed from the dregs of the London Slums. They did
these things by direct personal contagion; and they will be done among
us again when the triumphant power of Eternal Spirit is again exhibited,
not in ideas but in human character.

I think, then, that history justifies us in regarding the full living of
the spiritual life as implying at least these three characters. First,
single-mindedness: to mean only God. Second, the full integration of the
contemplative and active sides of existence, lifted up, harmonized, and