Ignatius, for all his exaltation of the bishop's office, is full of humanity, feeling his own unworthiness and regarding himself as the servant of his church. As we hear him urging upon Polycarp to do his best to save all his flock, to put up with them all, even as Christ bears with [p.51] him, to love not just the good disciples but rather more especially the worse, and to conquer them by gentleness, to stand like a rock against false teaching, to care for the widows and not to overlook the slaves, we feel indeed how high the task of such a bishop was; and with both Ignatius and Polycarp, as with countless of their less illustrious fellows, it was a task crowned by martyrdom. But if history shows us how valuable was the work done under the system of the catholic hierarchy to preserve a living Christianity across the centuries, it also bears witness to the way in which in succeeding ages the prophetic spirit re-asserted itself. A long series of heresies from that of the Montanists in the second century to that of the Fraticelli in the fourteenth, or of the Lollards and Hussites in the fifteenth, up to the days of the Reformation and the Anabaptist prophets of Munster, give us evidence of the way in which that spirit meets the profound need of humanity and proves the outcome of deep stirring of soul. But inside the Church itself we shall find again that the spirit of prophecy cannot be banished, just because there always was true life there. Yet the prophetic gift does not go along the orthodox channels of the hierarchy, but is continually bursting out in new and unexpected quarters, so that often the authorities of the Church are in a strait whether they are dealing with a saint or a heretic. To those outside the Church, the canon sometimes seems strange enough which [p.52] rules into one class St. Theresa, into the other Madame Guyon, which, after burning Savonarola was almost on the point of canonising him, which deposed and exiled John of Parma, and then beatified him. The prophetic spirit surely often found its outlet in the early ages amongst the monks of the desert, witness for instance such a saint as Telemachus, who brought to an end the gladiatorial shows at Rome; and in later times first in the Benedictine and the subsequent monastic orders, and then, very notably, in the Franciscan brotherhood, it found freer outlets than the church of the day could provide, while the lives of countless saints bear witness to some touches at least of the spirit of the prophet re-asserting itself in spite of the trammels of the organization of the church. If the gift of prophecy were to be connected with a divinely ordered hierarchy we might naturally look for it most of all in the popes. Yet in so many centuries comparatively few popes have been canonised as saints, and few amongst these are conspicuous as showing forth this gift in the way in which we see it in such a simple woman as Catherine of Siena, or in plain men like Giles of Perugia.