ertain institutions have a monopoly
of Divine truth and grace, and are therefore in a position to dictate
to their fellow-men how they are to bear themselves if they wish to
be "saved," what they are to believe, what they are to do. From this
the transition has been easy to the further idea that salvation is
to be achieved by blind and mechanical obedience,--by renouncing
the right to follow one's own higher nature, to obey one's own
conscience, to use one's own reason, to map out one's own life. In
order to induce men to yield the obedience which is required of them,
their lower instincts have had to be appealed to (for the higher,
ruined by the Fall, have presumably ceased to operate),--their desire
for pleasure by the promise of Heaven, their fear of pain by the
threat of Hell. And in order that their lives may be kept under
close supervision and their merits accurately appraised, an
ever-increasing stress has had to be laid on what is outward,
visible, and measurable in human life, as distinguished from what
is inward and occult,--on correctness in the details of prescribed
conduct, or again in the details of formulated belief. As the idea of
salvation through mechanical obedience develops into a systematised
scheme of life, the higher and more spiritual faculties of Man's
nature become gradually atrophied by disuse. In other words, the
channel of soul growth--the only channel that leads to spiritual
health, and therefore to "salvation"--becomes gradually obstructed,
with the result that the vital energies of the soul tend either to
dissipate themselves and run to waste, or to make new channels for
themselves,--channels of degenerative tendency, the end of which is
spiritual death.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] By "self-satisfaction" I mean satisfaction with the
existing system _as a system_. That strenuous efforts are being made
to improve the system, within its own limits, I can well believe. But
the system itself, with the defects and limitations which are of its
essence, seems to be regarded as adequate, and even as final, by
nearly all who work under it.

[2] 1862 to 1895 A.D.

[3] The _Jewish People in the time of Jesus Christ_, by Dr.
Emil Schuerer.

[4] In its extreme form legalism tends to bring about that
ruin of human nature which it starts by postulating; for, by
forbidding Man's higher faculties to energise, it necessarily arrests
their development, and so makes it possible for the lower faculties
to draw