It is modified, in the second place, by the nucleus of genuine mystical endowment, which has persisted through the centuries at the heart of the Quaker church, both handed down in the direct line and coming in from without; the remnant whose influence has so often made this little church the sorting-house, so to say, amongst the sects for mystically minded persons. And during the last ten years--the years which have seen such a striking revival of the interest in mysticism, have felt a clearing and a growth of the recognition of the importance to the race as a whole of mystical genius, have produced a mass of seriously undertaken studies of this phenomenon from every point of approach--the Quaker church has continued increasingly to fulfil this function. Not only from the sects, but from the older establishments, and from the ranks of religiously unclassified "philosophy" and "culture," there is a steady migration towards the Quaker fold. The vitality of this modern Quaker group is expressing itself at the present time in a twofold activity over and above the home and foreign missionary work we have already noted. This activity is visible throughout the society, both in England and in America. There is, on the one hand, an effort emanating from the more intellectual section of the group, to express Quakerism in terms of modern thought, to reach, as far as may be, with the help of modern psychology, a philosophical "description" of the doctrine of the "inner light"--a description which is thought to be much more possible to-day than it was at the time of George Fox. This effort, which includes the rewriting in detail and from original documents of the history of the Society of Friends, is embodied in the work of a little group of Quaker writers, prominent amongst whom are the late John Wilhelm Rowntree, the late Miss Caroline E. Stephen, Dr. Rufus M. Jones, Mr. William C. Braithwaite, Mr. Edward Grubb, and Miss Joan M. Fry. Mr. Edward Grubb,[27] perhaps one of the most illuminating of the Quaker writers upon the doctrine of the Inner Light, realizes with perfect clearness that the dogma of the Infallible Spirit presents at least as many difficulties as that of an infallible Church or Bible; that in the case of either of these infallibilities the question immediately arises as to "_who_" is the infallible interpreter? Fox, he points out, trusted urgency and unaccountability by mere thought processes for the sign of the higher source. He adds to this that "the spirit in one man must be tested by the spirit in many men. The individual must read his inward state in the light of the social spiritual group," ... and thus reaches a sort of spiritual democracy. On the whole, however, his appeal is to idealism as the supplanter of materialism; he claims thought as the _prius_ of knowledge, and identifies consciousness with thought. He leaves us with the "notional" God of transcendental idealism, who is just as far off as the