ich relate to the
corporate aspect of the spiritual life, and its expression in religious
institutions; that is to say, in churches and cults. We have looked upon
it as a personal growth and response; a personal reception of, and
self-orientation to, Reality. But we cannot get away from the fact that
this regenerate life does most frequently appear in history associated
with, or creating for itself, a special kind of institution. Although it
is impossible to look upon it as the appearance of a favourable
variation within the species, it is also just as possible to look upon
it as the formation of a new herd or tribe. Where the variation appears,
and in its sense of newness, youth and vigour breaks away from the
institution within which it has arisen, it generally becomes the nucleus
about which a new group is formed. So that individualism and
gregariousness are both represented in the full life of the Spirit; and
however personal its achievement may seem to us, it has also a
definitely corporate and institutional aspect.

I now propose to take up this side of the subject, and try to suggest
one or two lines of thought which may help us to discover the meaning
and worth of such societies and institutions. For after all, some
explanation is needed of these often strange symbolic systems, and often
rigid mechanizations, imposed on the free responses to Eternal Reality
which we found to constitute the essence of religious experience. Any
one who has known even such direct communion with the Spirit as is
possible to normal human nature must, if he thinks out the implications
of his own experience, feel it to be inconsistent that this most
universal of all acts should be associated by men with the most
exclusive of all types of institution. It is only because we are so
accustomed to this--taking churches for granted, even when we reject
them--that we do not see how odd they really are: how curious it is that
men do not set up exclusive and mutually hostile clubs full of rules and
regulations to enjoy the light of the sun in particular times and
fashions, but do persistently set up such exclusives clubs full of rules
and regulations, so to enjoy the free Spirit of God.

When we look into history we see the life of the Spirit, even from its
crudest beginnings, closely associated with two movements. First with
the tendency to organize it in communities or churches, living under
special sanctions and rules. Next, with the tenden