stile to the unity of the spirit. But, in many cases, it is the
narrowness of our nature, the chaos of our unspiritual passions, the
barren formalism of our conventions that they assail. And such
assaults turn our eyes upward to the unity of {286} the spirit from
whence alone consolation and escape may come. Indirectly, therefore,
such souls are often the misunderstood prophets of new ways of
salvation for men. When they are loyal, when their very hardness is
due to their resolute truthfulness, they are often amongst the most
effective friends of a deeper religious life.

A notable criterion whereby, quite apart from mere conventions, you
may try the spirits that pretend or appear to be religious, and may
discern the members of the invisible church from those who are not
members, is the criterion of the prophet Amos: "Woe unto them that are
at ease in Zion." This, as I said earlier, is one of the favourite
tests applied by moralists for distinguishing those who serve from
those who merely enjoy. That it is also a religious test, and _why_ it
is a religious test, our acquaintance with the spirit of loyalty has
shown us. Religion, when triumphant, includes, indeed, the experience
of inward peace; but the peace which is not won through strenuous
loyal service is deceitful and corrupting. It is the conquest over and
through tribulation which saves. Whoever conceives religion merely as
a comfortable release from sorrows, as an agreeable banishment of
cares, as a simple escape from pain, knows not what evil is, or what
our human nature is, or what our need of salvation means, or what the
will of the master of life demands. Therefore, a visible church that
appears simply in the form of a cure for worry, or a {287} preventive
of trouble, seems to me to be lacking in a full sense of what loyalty
is. Worry is indeed, in itself, not a religious exercise. But it is
often an effective preliminary, and is sometimes, according to the
vicissitudes of natural temper, a relatively harmless accompaniment,
to a deeply religious life. Certainly the mere absence of worry, the
mere attainment of a sensuous tranquillity, is no criterion of
membership in the invisible church. Better a cynic or a rebel against
conventional religious forms, or a pessimist, or a worrying soul, if
only such a being is strenuously loyal according to his lights, than
one to whom religion means simply a tranquil adoration without
loyalty. But, of course, many of the t