ers in their purity
were families, inheriting and reproducing the salient qualities of their
patriarch; who gave, as a father to his children, life stamped with his
own characteristics.

Yet sooner or later after the withdrawal of its founder, the group
appears to lose its spontaneous and enthusiastic character. Zest fails.
Unless a fresh leader be forthcoming, it inevitably settles down again
towards the general level of the herd. Thence it can only be roused by
means of "reforms" or "revivals," the arrival of new, vigorous leaders,
and the formation of new enthusiastic groups: for the bulk of men as we
know them cannot or will not make the costing effort needed for a
first-hand participation in eternal life. They want a "crowd-compeller"
to lift them above themselves. Thus the history of Christianity is the
history of successive spiritual group-formations, and their struggle to
survive; from the time when Jesus of Nazareth formed His little flock
with the avowed aim of "bringing in the Kingdom of God"--transmuting the
mentality of the race, and so giving it more abundant life.

Christians appeal to the continued teaching and compelling power of
their Master, the influence and infection of His spirit and atmosphere,
as the greatest of the regenerative forces still at work within life:
and this is undoubtedly true of those devout spirits able to maintain
contact with the eternal world in prayer. The great speech of Serenus de
Cressy in "John Inglesant" described once for all the highest type of
Christian spirituality.[55] But in practice this link and this influence
are too subtle for the mass of men. They must constantly be
re-experienced by ardent and consecrated souls; and by them be mediated
to fresh groups, formed within or without the institutional frame. Thus
in the thirteenth century St. Francis, and in the fourteenth the Friends
of God, created a true spiritual society within the Church, by restoring
in themselves and their followers the lost consistency between Christian
idea and Christian life. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
Fox and Wesley possessed by the same essential vision, broke away from
the institution which was no longer supple enough to meet their needs,
and formed their fresh groups outside the old herd.

When such creative personalities appear and such groups are founded by
them, the phenomena of the spiritual life reappear in their full vigour,
and are disseminated. A new vitality