in the teaching of Christ I feel the influence
of it in a way that I feel it nowhere else in the same degree. I feel that
Christ was closer to what I recognise as God; knew God better than anyone
that ever lived, and in a different kind of way--from inside, so to speak.
But it's a _life_ that I find in the Gospel, and not a _creed_:
and I believe that this is religion, to be somehow in touch with a higher
life and a higher sort of beauty.

"But I personally don't want this explained and defined and codified. That
seems to me only to hem it in and limit it. The moment I find it reduced to
dogma and rule, to definite channels of grace, to particular powers
entrusted to particular persons, then I begin to be stifled and, what is
worse, bored. I don't feel it to be a logical affair at all--I feel it to
be a living force, the qualities of which are virtue, beauty, peace,
enthusiasm, happiness; all the things which glow and sparkle in life, and
make me long to be different--to be stronger, wiser, more patient, more
interested, more serene. I want to share my secret with others, not to keep
it to myself. But when I argue with my friend, I don't feel it is my secret
but his, and that in his mind the force itself is missing, while a lot of
rules and logical propositions and arrangements have taken its place. It is
just as though I were in love with a girl, and were taken to task by
someone, and informed of a score of conventions which I must observe if I
wish to be considered really in love. I know what love means to me, and I
know, how I want to make love; and the same sort of thing is happening to
lovers all the world over, though they don't all make love in the same way.
You can't codify the rules of love!"

Presently he went on: "It seems to me like this--like seeing the reflection
of the moon. You may see it in the marble basin of a fountain, clear and
distinct. You may see it blurred into ripples on a wind-stirred sea. You
may see it moulded into liquid curves on a swift stream. The changing
shapes of it matter little--you are sure that it is the same thing which is
being reflected, however differently it appears. I believe that human
nature has a power of reflecting God, and the different denominations seem
to me to reflect Him in different ways, like the fountain and the stream
and the sea. But the same thing is there, though the forms seem to vary.
And therefore we must not quarrel with the different attempts to reflect