These are some of the reasons why the doctrine of Atonement seems to be closely bound up with the mystical vision of life, and hard to understand—whether we mean by it a spiritual principle or a historic event—without that mystical vision. We have Christianity saying to us, on the one hand, that the utmost ideal of humanity, the ideal of perfect self-donation to the purposes of Spirit, perfect self-surrender to the interests of the All, was completely and transcendently achieved in Jesus. In Him man leapt to the heights; and this unique attainment counts for the whole race. But, on the other hand, it says that all who can are called to go as far as they are able on the same road; to “fill up the measure of the sufferings,” to “grow to the full stature,” to “press on to the high calling” of the human soul. Through these more vital personalities—the mystics, the twice-born, the saints—the radiance of the spiritual streams out on the race; God speaks to man through man. Such personalities act as receivers and transmitters; they really and practically distribute the flashes of the Uncreated Light. Their activities are vicarious; they do atone for the disabilities of other men. Therefore the social value of the mystics, their place in the organism, is intimately connected with the atoning idea. Were it not for the principle which the doctrine of Atonement expresses, the mystics would be spiritual individualists, whose life and experience would be meaningless except for themselves. And were it not for the continuance of the mystical life, the perpetual renewal of the mystical self-donation in love, its known value for the race, then the historic Atonement of Jesus would be an isolated act, unrelated to the great processes of the Spiritual World, of which it should form the crown. THE MYSTIC AS CREATIVE ARTIST Hostile criticism of the mystics almost invariably includes the charge that their great experiences are in the nature of merely personal satisfactions. It is said that they stand apart from the ruck of humanity, claiming a special knowledge of the supersensual, a special privilege of communion with it; yet do not pass on to others, in any real and genuine sense, the illumination, the intuition of Reality, which they declare that they have received. St. Bernard’s favourite mistranslation from Isaiah, “My secret to myself,” has again and again been used against them with damaging effect; linked sometimes with the notorious phrase in which Plotinus defined the soul’s fruition of Eternity as “a flight of the alone to the Alone.”