gion too divine to be fettered by any man-made
formulas, too nobly human to be readily acceptable to men in whom the
ape and tiger are still alive, but which finds a congenial home in the
purified spirit which is the 'throne of the Godhead.' Such is the type
of faith which is astir among us. It makes no imposing show in Church
conferences; it does not fill our churches and chapels; it has no
organisation, no propaganda; it is for the most part passively loyal,
without much enthusiasm, to the institutions among which it finds
itself. But in reality it has overleapt all barriers; it knows its true
spiritual kin; and amid the strifes and perplexities of a sad and
troublous time it can always recover its hope and confidence by
ascending in heart and mind to the heaven which is closer to it than
breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

But on the other side we see a tendency, even more manifest if we look
for external signs, to emphasise the institutional side of religion,
that which prompts men and women to combine in sacred societies, to
cherish enthusiastic loyalties for the Church of their early education
or of their later choice, to find their chief satisfaction in acts of
corporate worship, and to subordinate their individual tastes and
beliefs to the common tradition and discipline of a historical body. It
is now about eighty years since this tendency began to manifest itself
as a new phenomenon in the Anglican Church. Since then, it has spread to
other organisations. It has prompted a new degree of denominational
loyalty in several Protestant bodies on the Continent, in America, and
in our own country; and it has arrested the decline of the Roman
Catholic Church in countries where the outlook seemed least hopeful from
the ecclesiastical point of view. Such a movement, so widespread and so
powerful in its results, is clearly a thing to be reckoned with by all
who desire to estimate rightly the signs of the times. It is a current
running in the opposite direction to the mystical tendency, which
regards unity as a spiritual, not a political ideal. Fortunately, the
theory of institutionalism has lately been defended and expounded by
several able writers belonging to different denominations; so that we
may hope, by comparing their utterances, to understand the attractions
of the theory and its meaning for those who so highly value it.

Aubrey Moore, writing in 1889, connected the Catholic revival with the
abandonment