y add here, as the corollary of this
conclusion, first that the evoking and fostering of such ardour is in
itself a piece of social service of the highest value, and next that it
makes every individual socially responsible for the due sharing of even
the small measure of ardour, certitude or power he or she has received.
We are to be conductors of the Divine energy; not to insulate it. There
is of course nothing new in all this: but there is nothing new
fundamentally in the spiritual life, save in St. Augustine's sense of
the eternal youth and freshness of all beauty.[151] The only novelty
which we can safely introduce will be in the terms in which we describe
it; the perpetual new exhibition of it within the time-world, the fresh
and various applications which we can give to its abiding laws, in the
special circumstances and opportunities of our own day.

But the influence of the crowd-compeller, the leader, whether in the
crude form of the revivalist or in the more penetrating and enduring
form of the creative mystic or religious founder, the loyalty and
imitation of the disciple, the corporate and generalized enthusiasm of
the group can only be the first educative phase in any veritable
incarnation of Spirit upon earth. Each member of the herd is now
committed to the fullest personal living-out of the new life he has
received. Only in so far as the first stage of suggestion and imitation
is carried over to the next stage of personal actualization, can we say
that there is any real promotion of spiritual _life_: any hope that this
life will work a true renovation of the group into which it has been
inserted and achieve the social phase.

If, then, it does achieve the social phase what stages may we expect it
to pass through, and by what special characters will it be graced?

Let us look back for a moment at some of our conclusions about the
individual life. We said that this life, if fully lived, exhibited the
four characters of work and contemplation, self-discipline and service:
deepening and incarnating within its own various this-world experience
its other-world apprehensions of Eternity, of God. Its temper should
thus be both social and ascetic. It should be doubly based, on humility
and on given power. Now the social order--more exactly, the social
organism--in which Spirit is really to triumph, can only be built up of
individuals who do with a greater or less perfection and intensity
exhibit these characters,