igion must have an
institutional as well as a mystical element. Just as, if the feeling
of immediate communion with God has faded, we shall have a dead Church
worshipping "a dead Christ," as Fox the Quaker said of the Anglican
Church in his day; so, if the seer and prophet expel the priest, there
will be no discipline and no cohesion. Still, at the present time, the
greatest need seems to be that we should return to the fundamentals of
spiritual religion. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that both the
old seats of authority, the infallible Church and the infallible
book, are fiercely assailed, and that our faith needs reinforcements.
These can only come from the depths of the religious consciousness
itself; and if summoned from thence, they will not be found wanting.
The "impregnable rock" is neither an institution nor a book, but a
life or experience. Faith, which is an affirmation of the basal
personality, is its own evidence and justification. Under normal
conditions, it will always be strongest in the healthiest minds. There
is and can be no appeal from it. If, then, our hearts, duly prepared
for the reception of the Divine Guest, at length say to us, "This I
know, that whereas I was blind, now I see," we may, in St. John's
words, "have confidence towards God."

The objection may be raised--"But these beliefs change, and merely
reflect the degree of enlightenment or its opposite, which every man
has reached." The conscience of the savage tells him emphatically that
there are some things which he _must not do_; and blind obedience to
this "categorical imperative" has produced not only all the complex
absurdities of "taboo," but crimes like human sacrifice, and faith in
a great many things that are not. "Perhaps we are leaving behind the
theological stage, as we have already left behind those superstitions
of savagery." Now the study of primitive religions does seem to me to
prove the danger of resting religion and morality on unreasoning
obedience to a supposed revelation; but that is not my position. The
two forces which kill mischievous superstitions are the knowledge of
nature, and the moral sense; and we are quite ready to give both free
play, confident that both come from the living Word of God. The fact
that a revelation is progressive is no argument that it is not Divine:
it is, in fact, only when the free current of the religious life is
dammed up that it turns into a swamp, and poisons human society. Of