We may not, of course, apply the term "imitative" in too absolute a sense. All have the light. We are all mystics. We all live our lives on our various levels, at first hand. But a full recognition of this fact need not blind us to the further fact that, while those who have mystical genius need no chart upon their journey, most of us need a plain way traced out for us through the desert. Most of us follow the gleam of doctrine thrown out by first-hand experience, and cling to that as our guide. But if the Quaker message failed as theology, and the later generations swung back to the simpler doctrine of Protestantism and re-enthroned an infallible Scripture, something, nevertheless, had been done. Within the precincts of Quakerism certain paths backwards were, so to say, permanently blocked. A fresh type of conduct was assured. The world, the environment in which the new lives of the group were to arise, had been changed for ever. The working out of the logical insecurity of the Quaker position is interestingly shown in the person of George Keith, intellectually the richest of the early Quakers, a man whose writings have been acknowledged by his fellows, and would still stand if he had not left the group, as amongst the best expositions of the Quaker attitude. He was a Scotch Presbyterian, and seems to have joined the Quakers while still a student at Aberdeen University. For nearly thirty years he was under the spell of the Quaker reading of life, and lived during this time well in the forefront of public discussion and persecution. We find him writing books and pamphlets in and out of prison, full of the ardour and the joy of his discovery that there are to-day immediate revelations, speaking with delight of the meaning and use of silence, defending his new faith before Presbyterian divines and University students, declaring that he found Friends "wiser than all the teachers I ever formerly had been under."