which it could not gain in any other way. News of God can only enter the temporal order through some human consciousness. Is it unreasonable that for so great an office certain individuals should be set apart—within the community, not over against it—and should live in a special way? As a matter of fact, the church has gained a thousandfold by her acquiescence in the special vocation of the mystics; for the treasures they won were never kept for themselves, but always showered upon her. True, she has not hesitated to scrutinize and control them; sometimes her attitude has seemed to the enthusiasts for liberty to be deliberately obscurantist and tyrannical. Yet, even here—and although in many cases there has clearly been ignorance, injustice, and persecution—the mystic gains more than he loses by submission to the collective judgment. Even in their harshest form, discipline and tradition are still priceless for him. First, they school him in the virtue of humility, the very foundation of the Christian character; which is seldom possessed by the spiritual genius who always leads and never submits, and whose triumphant formula, “God and myself!” too often ends by becoming “Myself and God!” “O caritate, vita, ch’ ogn’ altro amor è morto; non vai rompendo legge; nante, l’observe tutto.” said Jacopone da Todi; that natural rebel who deliberately submitted himself to an uncongenial religious authority, and there found perfect freedom. Next, the solid sense of the community, the mere fact that it always lags behind the more vivid spirits, that the forward-moving shepherd who sees new pastures has got to take account of the slowest sheep—all this is a valuable safeguard against the notorious extravagances of a mysticism unfettered by authority. It is significant that the greatest mystics in all communions have ever raised up their voices most earnestly against spiritual license; have been most eager to submit their soaring intuitions to the witness of their Scriptures or the corporate feeling of their church. They realize the fact that they owe to this church the huge debt which every individual owes to the tradition of his art or of his trade. The church represents a complete spiritual civilization, a conserver of values; were it not for her, every new spiritual genius who arose would have to begin at the beginning, at the Stone Age of the soul. Instead of that, he finds himself placed within a social order enriched by all the contributions of his great predecessors. The bridges are built; the roads are made and named; his own experiences and discoveries are made more valid, less terrifying, more comprehensible to him, because others have been this way before. Compare the clarity, the sure-footedness as one may say, of Ruysbroeck, of St. Catherine of Siena, of St. Teresa, with the entanglements, the sense of wandering in beautiful but trackless places,