sks: "What next?" the answer simply
is--Begin. Begin with ourselves; and if possible, do not begin in
solitude. "The basal principles of all collective life," says McDougall,
"are sympathetic contagion, mass suggestion, imitation":[153] and again
and again the history of spiritual experience illustrates this law, that
its propagation is most often by way of discipleship and the corporate
life, not by the intensive culture of purely solitary effort. It is for
those who believe in the spiritual life to take full advantage now of
this social suggestibility of man; though without any detraction from
the prime importance of the personal spiritual life. Therefore, join up
with somebody, find fellowship; whether it be in a church or society, or
among a few like-minded friends. Draw together for mutual support, and
face those imperatives of prayer and work which we have seen to be the
condition of the fullest living-out of our existence. Fix and keep a
reasonably balanced daily rule. Accept leadership where you find
it--give it, if you feel the impulse and the strength. Do not wait for
some grand opportunity, and whilst you are waiting stiffen in the wrong
shape. The great opportunity may not be for us, but for the generation
whose path we now prepare: and we do our best towards such preparation,
if we begin in a small and humble way the incorporation of our hopes and
desires as for instance Wesley and the Oxford Methodists did. They
sought merely to put their own deeply felt ideas into action quite
simply and without fuss; and we know how far the resulting impulse
spread. The Bab movement in the East, the Salvation Army at home, show
us this principle still operative; what a "little flock" dominated by a
suitable herd-leader and swayed by love and adoration can do--and these,
like Christianity itself, began as small and inconspicuous groups. It
may be that our hope for the future depends on the formation of such
groups--hives of the Spirit--in which the worker of every grade, the
thinker, the artist, might each have their place: obtaining from
incorporation the herd-advantages of mutual protection and unity of aim,
and forming nuclei to which others could adhere.

Such a small group--and I am now thinking of something quite practical,
say to begin with a study-circle, or a company of like-minded friends
with a definite rule of life--may not seem to the outward eye very
impressive. Regarded as a unit, it will even tend to be inf