waiting for
him beyond the gates of life and death? All these things are symbols,
because the emotions they arouse are veritably there, as indisputable a
phenomenon as any fact which science has analysed. The miserable mistake
that many intellectual people make is to disregard what they would call
vague emotions in the presence of scientific truth. Yet such emotions
have a far more intimate concern for us than the dim sociology of bees,
or the concentric forces of the stars. Our emotions are far more true
and vivid experiences for us than indisputable laws of nature which
never cut the line of our life at all. We may wish, perhaps, that the
laws of such emotions were analysed and systematised too, for it is a
very timid and faltering spirit that thinks that definiteness is the
same as profanation. We may depend upon it that the deeper we can probe
into such secrets, the richer will our conceptions of life and God
become.

The mistake that is so often made by religious organisations, which
depend so largely upon symbolism, is the terrible limiting of this
symbolism to traditional ceremonies and venerable ritual. It has been
said that religion is the only form of poetry accessible to the poor;
and it is true in the sense that anything which hallows and quickens the
most normal and simple experiences of lives divorced from intellectual
and artistic influences is a very real and true kind of symbolism. It
may be well to give people such symbolism as they can understand, and
the best symbols of all are those that deal with the commonest emotions.
But it is a lean wisdom that emphasises a limited range of emotions at
the expense of a larger range; and the spirit which limits the sacred
influences of religion to particular buildings and particular rites is
very far removed from the spirit of Him who said that neither at Gerizim
nor in Jerusalem was the Father to be worshipped, but in spirit and in
truth. At the same time the natural impatience of one who discerns a
symbolism all about him, in tree and flower, in sunshine and rain, and
who hates to see the range restricted, is a feeling that a wise and
tolerant man ought to resist. It is ill to break the pitcher because
the well is at hand! One does not make a narrow soul broader by breaking
down its boundaries, but by revealing the beauty of the further horizon.
Even the false feeling of compassion must be resisted. A child is more
encouraged by listening patiently to its tale