ct in us, unless it penetrates below the conscious surface into the
deeps of the instinctive mind, and moulds this in accordance with the
regnant idea. If we are to receive the gifts of the cultus, we on our
part must bring to it at the very least what we bring to all great works
of art that speak to us: that is to say, attention, surrender,
sympathetic emotion. Otherwise, like all other works of art, it will
remain external to us. Much of the perfectly sincere denunciation and
dislike of religious ceremony which now finds frequent utterance comes
from those who have failed thus to do their share. They are like the
hasty critics who dismiss some great work of art because it is not
representative, or historically accurate; and so entirely miss the
aesthetic values which it was created to impart.

Consider a picture of the Madonna. Minds at different levels may find in
this pure representation, Bible history, theology, aesthetic
satisfaction, spiritual truth. The peasant may see in it the portrait of
the Mother of God, the critic a phase in artistic evolution; whilst the
mystic may pass through it to new contacts with the Spirit of life. We
shall receive according to the measure of what we bring. Now consider
the parallel case of some great dramatic liturgy, rich with the meanings
which history has poured into it. Take, as an example which every one
can examine for themselves, the Roman Mass. Different levels of mind
will find here magic, theology, deep mystery, the commemoration under
archaic symbols of an event. But above and beyond all these, they can
find the solemn incorporated emotion, of the Christian Church, and a
liturgic recapitulation of the movement of the human soul towards
fullness of life: through confession and reconciliation to adoration and
intercession--that is, to charity--and thence to direct communion with
and feeding on the Divine World.

To the mind which refuses to yield to it, to move with its movement, but
remains in critical isolation, the Mass like all other ceremonies will
seem external, dead, unreal; lacking in religious content. But if we do
give ourselves completely and unselfconsciously to the movement of such
a ceremony, at the end of it we may not have learnt anything, but we
have lived something. And when we remember that no experience of our
devotional life is lost, surely we may regard it as worth while to
submit ourselves to an experience by which, if only for a few minutes,
we are