rtainty of many of the
recorded details, is to adopt a simple compromise; to claim their part
in the inheritance of Christ, and the symbols of His mysteries, but not
to feel themselves bound by any ecclesiastical tradition. No one can
forbid, by peevish regulations, direct access to the spirit of Christ
and to the love of God. Christ's teaching was a purely individualistic
teaching, based upon conduct and emotion, and half the difficulties of
the position lie in His sanction and guidance having been claimed for
what is only a human attempt to organise a society with a due deference
for the secular spirit, its aims and ambitions. The sincere Christian
should, I believe, gratefully receive the simple and sweet symbols of
unity and forgiveness; but he should make his own a far higher and
wider range of symbols, the symbols of natural beauty and art and
literature--all the passionate dreams of peace and emotion that have
thrilled the yearning hearts of men. Wherever those emotions have led
men along selfish, cruel, sensual paths, they must be distrusted, just
as we must distrust the religious emotions which have sanctioned such
divergences from the spirit of Christ. We must believe that the essence
of religion is to make us alive to the love of God, in whatever writing
of light and air, of form and fragrance it is revealed; and we must
further believe that religion is meant to guide and quicken the tender,
compassionate, brotherly emotions, by which we lean to each other in
this world where so much is dark. But to denounce the narrower forms
of religion, or to abstain from them, is utterly alien to the spirit
of Christ. He obeyed and reverenced the law, though He knew that the
expanding spirit of His own teaching would break it in pieces. Of
course, since liberty is the spirit of the Gospel, a liberty conditioned
by the sense of equality, there may be occasions when a man is bound to
resist what appears to him to be a moral or an intellectual tyranny. But
short of that, the only thing of which one must beware is a conscious
insincerity; and the limits of that a man must determine for himself.
There are occasions when consideration for the feelings of others seems
to conflict with one's own sense of sincerity; but I think that one
is seldom wrong in preferring consideration for others to the personal
indulgence of one's own apparent sincerity.

Peace and gentleness always prevail in the end over vehemence and
violence, and a