This, of course, the Christian church has said far more beautifully and exactly in her doctrine of the Communion of Saints; and that doctrine, rightly understood, is indeed the key to the connection between the great mystics and the corporate life within which they arise. Were the activities of these more vital spirits wholly hidden from us, wholly silent and supersensual—as they are not—it would be a grossly materialistic and violently un-Christian judgment which concluded from this that their lives were useless save to themselves. How can a life which aims at God be useless, if we believe that achievement of Him is the final destiny and only satisfaction of every soul? It would be an implicit denial of the efficacy of prayer, of the “prevailing merits” of sanctity, its value to the society which produces it—the power of a great and loving spirit to help, infect and reinforce more languid souls—did we agree that the life of the most strictly enclosed contemplative was wasted. Christians, who believe that the world was redeemed from within the narrow limits of Palestine, should not thus confuse space with power, or character with the manner of its self-expression. Without the ardent prayers of the mystics, the vivid spiritual life they lead, what would the sum of human spirituality be? How can we tell what we owe to the power which they liberate, the currents which they set up, the contacts which they make? The land they see, and of which they report to us, is the land towards which humanity is going. They are like the look-out men upon the cross-trees, assuring us from time to time that we are still upon our course. Tear asunder their peculiar power and office from the office of the whole, and you will have on one side a society deprived of the guides which God has raised up for it; on the other, an organ deprived of its real perfection and beauty, because severed from the organism which it was intended to serve. MYSTICISM AND THE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT