r. They have the sacredness of ideas which
people lived by, and for which they were prepared to die. But many of them
are scientific in form only, and the substance has gone out of them. We
know more in one sense about life and God than we did, but we also know
less, because we realise there is so much more to know. But now we want, I
believe, two or three great ideas which everyone can understand--like
Fatherhood and Brotherhood, like peace and orderliness and beauty. I think
that a church service means all these things, or ought to. What people need
is simplicity and beauty of life--joy and hope and kindness. Anything which
helps these things on is fine; anything which bewilders and puzzles and
gives a sense of dreariness is simply injurious. I want to be told to be
quiet, to try again, not to be disheartened by failures, not to be angry
with other people, to give up things, rather than to get them with a sauce
of envy and spite--the feeling of a happy and affectionate family, in fact.
The sort of thing I don't want is the Athanasian Creed. I can't regard it
simply as a picturesque monument of ancient and ferocious piety. It seems
to me an overhanging cloud of menace and mystification! It doesn't hurt the
unintelligent Christian, of course--he simply doesn't understand it; but to
the moderately intelligent it is like a dog barking furiously which may
possibly get loose; a little more intelligence, and it is all right. You
know the dog is safely tied up! Again, I don't mind the cursing psalms,
because they give the parson the power of saying: 'We say this to remind
ourselves that it was what people used to feel, and which Christ came to
change.' I don't mind anything that is human--what I can't tolerate is
anything inhuman or unintelligible. No one can misunderstand the
Beatitudes; very few people can follow the arguments of St. Paul! You don't
want only elaborate reasons for clever people, you want still more
beautiful motives for simple people. It isn't perfect, our service, I
admit, but it does me good."

"Tell me," I said--"to go back for a moment--something more about
meditating--I like that!"

"Well," said Father Payne, "it's like anchoring to a thought. Thought is a
fidgety thing, restless, perverse. It anchors itself very easily on to a
grievance, or an unpleasant incident, or a squabble. Don't you know the
misery of being jerked back, time after time, by an unpleasant thought? I
think one ought to practise the