were acting to drive divided Christianity into consolidation, and the
starving churches of country villages were now beginning to combine.

No man might venture to predict the details of the future organization of
the united Church, although St. Paul himself had sketched it in broad
outline: every worker, lay and clerical, labouring according to his gift,
teachers, executives, ministers, visitors, missionaries, healers of sick
and despondent souls. But the supreme function of the Church was to
inspire--to inspire individuals to willing service for the cause, the
Cause of Democracy, the fellowship of mankind. If she failed to inspire,
the Church would wither and perish. And therefore she must revive again
the race of inspirers, prophets, modern Apostles to whom this gift was
given, going on their rounds, awaking cities and arousing whole
country-sides.

But whence--it might be demanded by the cynical were the prophets to
come? Prophets could not be produced by training and education; prophets
must be born. Reborn,--that was the word. Let the Church have faith.
Once her Cause were perceived, once her whole energy were directed
towards its fulfilment, the prophets would arise, out of the East and out
of the West, to stir mankind to higher effort, to denounce fearlessly the
shortcomings and evils of the age. They had not failed in past ages,
when the world had fallen into hopelessness, indifference, and darkness.
And they would not fail now.

Prophets were personalities, and Phillips Brooks himself a prophet--had
defined personality as a conscious relationship with God. "All truth,"
he had said, "comes to the world through personality." And down the ages
had come an Apostolic Succession of personalities. Paul, Augustine,
Francis, Dante, Luther, Milton,--yes, and Abraham Lincoln, and Phillips