“The kingdom of heaven is within you.” Personal religion is a real and a living thing only in proportion as it springs from this deep inward root. The root itself is common to all true believers. The consciousness of its “inwardness” is that which distinguishes the mystic. How it should be that to some minds the words “inward and outward” express the most vivid and continuous fact of consciousness, while to others they appear to have no meaning at all; how it comes that some are born mystics, while to others the report of the mystic concerning the inner life is a thing impossible to be believed and hardly to be understood;—these are psychological problems I cannot attempt to unravel. If, however, a certain correspondence between the inward and the outward do really exist (and this, I suppose, will hardly be denied, whatever may be the most philosophically accurate way of expressing it), the faculty of discerning it must needs be a gift. I believe, indeed, that the power in this direction which distinguishes such mystics as, _e.g._, Thomas à Kempis, Jacob Boehme, Tauler, Fénélon, Madame Guyon, George Fox, William Law, St. Theresa, Molinos, and others, is essentially the same gift which in a different form, or in combination with a different temperament and gifts of another order, makes poets. It is the gift of seeing truth at first-hand, the faculty of receiving a direct revelation. To have it is to be assured that it is the common inheritance, the “light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” Preachers like those I have just mentioned always appeal to it with confidence as to a witness to be found in every heart. And surely experience confirms this conviction of theirs. It is in degree only that their gift is exceptional. They may have the sight of the eagle, but they see by the same light as the bat. Now, the obvious tendency of a vivid first-hand perception of truth, or light, is to render the possessor of it so far independent of external teachers. And we all know that in point of fact such _illuminati_ always have shown a disposition to go their own way, and to disregard, if not to denounce, traditional teaching, which has brought them into frequent collisions with ecclesiastical and other authorities. Those of the Church of Rome have, with their wonted sagacity, as much as possible sought to turn this strange power to account, while providing safety-valves for the unmanageable residue.