w life; Fox, Wesley and Booth striving to save
other men; Mary Slessor driven by vocation from the Dundee mill to the
African swamps--these are characteristic of them. We perceive that they
are not specialists, as more earthly types of efficiency are apt to be.
Theirs are rich natures, their touch on existence has often an artistic
quality, St. Paul in his correspondence could break into poetry, as the
only way of telling the truth. St. Jerome lived to the full the lives of
scholar and of ascetic. St. Francis, in his perpetual missionary
activities, still found time for his music songs; St. Hildegarde and St.
Catherine of Siena had their strong political interests; Jacopone da
Todi combined the careers of contemplative politician and poet. So too
in practical matters. St. Catherine of Genoa was one of the first
hospital administrators, St. Vincent de Paul a genius in the sphere of
organized charity, Elizabeth Fry in that of prison reform. Brother
Laurence assures us that he did his cooking the better for doing it in
the Presence of God. Jacob Boehme was a hard-working cobbler, and
afterwards as a writer showed amazing powers of composition. The
perpetual journeyings and activities of Wesley reproduced in smaller
compass the career of St. Paul: he was also an exact scholar and a
practical educationist. Mary Slessor showed the quality of a ruler as
well as that of a winner of souls. In the intellectual region, Richard
of St. Victor was supreme in contemplation, and also a psychologist far
in advance of his time. We are apt to forget the mystical side of
Aquinas; who was poet and contemplative as well as scholastic
philosopher.

And the third feature we notice about these men and women is, that this
new power by which they lived was, as Ruysbroeck calls it, "a spreading
light."[52] It poured out of them, invading and illuminating other men:
so that, through them, whole groups or societies were re-born, if only
for a time, on to fresh levels of reality, goodness and power. Their own
intense personal experience was valid not only for themselves. They
belonged to that class of natural, leaders who are capable,--of
infecting the herd with their own ideals; leading it to new feeding
grounds, improving the common level It is indeed the main social
function of the man or woman of the Spirit to be such a crowd-compeller
In the highest sense; and, as the artist reveals new beauty to his
fellow-men, to stimulate in their neighbours