I do not suggest that these people, even the most extravagant of them, were not truly spiritual or truly mystical. The sort of criticism which divides mystics into two groups—the orthodox, who are inspired by God, and the heretical, who are inspired by Satan—of course belongs to the dark ages of theology. On the contrary, these rebel-mystics most often possessed—sometimes in a highly developed form—the sharp direct consciousness of the Divine Life which is the essential quality of the mystic. This was to them the central fact; by comparison with it they judged all other things. What they did _not_ possess was the balancing, equivalent consciousness of, and reverence for, corporate human life; that group-personality which is the church, and its value and authority. They lacked the sense that the whole organism, the whole herd, with all its imperfections, is yet interdependent, and has got to move together, urged from within by its more vivid spirits, not stung from without, as if by some enthusiastic spiritual mosquito. To a greater or lesser extent they failed in effect because they tried to be mystical in a non-human instead of a human way; were “other-worldly” in the bad sense of the word. They have not always remembered that Christ Himself, the supreme pattern of all mystics, lived a balanced life of clear personal vision, unmediated intercourse with God on the one hand, and gentle and patient submission to the corporate consciousness on the other hand. Though severely critical of the unrealities and hypocrisy of current institutionalism, he yet sought to form the group, the “little flock,” in which His ideas should be incorporated within, and not over against, the official Jewish Church; and thus gradually to leaven the whole.