the very form in which it can most
easily sink in. This lays a considerable responsibility on those who
choose psalms and hymns for congregational singing; for these can as
easily be the instruments of fanatical melancholy and devitalizing, as
of charitable life-giving and constructive ideas.

In saying all this I do not seek to discredit religious ceremony; either
of the naive or of the sophisticated type. On the contrary, I think that
in effecting this change in our mental tone and colour, in prompting
this emergence of a mood which, in the mass of men, is commonly
suppressed, these ceremonies do their true work. They should stimulate
and give social expression to that mood of adoration which is the very
heart of religion; helping those who cannot be devotional alone to
participate in the common devotional feeling. If, then, we desire to
receive the gifts which corporate worship can most certainly make to us,
we ought to yield ourselves without resistance or criticism to its
influence; as we yield ourselves to the influence of a great work of
art. That influence is able to tune us up, at least to a fleeting
awareness of spiritual reality; and each such emergence of
transcendental feeling is to the good. It is true that the objects which
immediately evoke this feeling will only be symbolic; but after all, our
very best conceptions of God are bound to be that. We do not, or should
not, demand scientific truth of them. Their business is rather to give
us poetry, a concrete artistic intuition of reality, and to place us in
the mood of poetry. The great thing is, that by these corporate liturgic
practices and surrenders, we can prevent that terrible freezing up of
the deep wells of our being which so easily comes to those who must lead
an exacting material or intellectual life. We keep ourselves supple; the
spiritual faculties are within reach, and susceptible to education.

Organized ceremonial religion insists upon it, that at least for a
certain time each day or week we shall attend to the things of the
Spirit. It offers us its suggestions, and shuts off as well as it can
conflicting suggestions: though, human as we are, the mere appearance of
our neighbours is often enough to bring these in. Nothing is more
certain than this: first that we shall never know the spiritual world
unless we give ourselves the chance of attending to it, clear a space
for it in our busy lives; and next, that it will not produce its real
effe