free flow
of spiritual life."

This passage, to those who feel that there has been no age since the
Birth of Christ when the great principles of religious life have been
wholly lost, and who remember that Richard Rolle lived in the age of
Dante, may seem overstated. But it shews sufficiently at least, and for
that reason is quoted here, what a great Englishman he was, and what a
debt his unaware countrymen owe him; a debt which they could pay in the
way most grateful to him, by listening to his words.

It may be remarked, by the way, that Rolle is not inclined to substitute
individualism for the authority of the Church; a change which has been
brought against some mystics. There is immense emphasis laid, all
through his writings, on the importance of conduct. The penetrating
analysis, in ch. vi, of _The Form of Perfect Living_, of the possible
sins humanity can commit on its journey through the wilderness of this
world, hardly leaves a corner of the heart unlighted; lets not one
possible shift, twist or excuse of the human conscience go free. But it
all has the Church as its immediate background; the Mystical _Body_, not
the individual soul in isolation, is everywhere taken for granted. Man
lives not to himself nor dies to himself, even though he be Richard
Rolle the hermit, or Margaret Kirkby the recluse, that is the plain
teaching of these plain-speaking pages. And all through them too is a
tough common sense, and an unusually alert power of observation; and
there is perhaps an element of that business capacity, which some of the
Saints and Mystics have shewn, in his inclusion among "sins of deed" of
"beginning a thing that is above our might"; for in that there is not
only pride, but a kind of stupid incapacity surely.

It is quite possible that Rolle's tendency to repetition may tire any
one who reads him "straight on," as the phrase is. But it is doubtful
whether that be the best means of approach. If he be read in bits, he
will prove far more effective: and his ability to hit the right nail on
the head, and to hit it wonderfully hard, may occasionally bring his
words home to our immediate circumstances with an appositeness that may
be more than a coincidence.

In the past, the learned and ignorant alike have been guilty of the
operation which may be described as cutting man up into parts: _i.e._,
they have been inclined to treat him now as if he were all intellect,
then as if he were all feeling; while to the