s to escape from old forms and hampering associations to that
living and world-wide spiritual reality upon which the human mind almost
instinctively insists. . . .

It is the same God we all seek; he becomes more and more plainly the
same God.

So that all this religious stir, which seems so multifold and incidental
and disconnected and confused and entirely ineffective to-day, may
be and most probably will be, in quite a few years a great flood
of religious unanimity pouring over and changing all human affairs,
sweeping away the old priesthoods and tabernacles and symbols and
shrines, the last crumb of the Orphic victim and the last rag of the
Serapeum, and turning all men about into one direction, as the ships and
houseboats swing round together in some great river with the uprush of
the tide. . . .

3. CAN THERE BE A TRUE CHURCH?

Among those who are beginning to realise the differences and identities
of the revived religion that has returned to them, certain questions
of organisation and assembly are being discussed. Every new religious
development is haunted by the precedents of the religion it replaces,
and it was only to be expected that among those who have recovered their
faith there should be a search for apostles and disciples, an attempt to
determine sources and to form original congregations, especially among
people with European traditions.

These dispositions mark a relapse from understanding. They are
imitative. This time there has been no revelation here or there; there
is no claim to a revelation but simply that God has become visible. Men
have thought and sought until insensibly the fog of obsolete theology
has cleared away. There seems no need therefore for special teachers
or a special propaganda, or any ritual or observances that will seem
to insist upon differences. The Christian precedent of a church
is particularly misleading. The church with its sacraments and its
sacerdotalism is the disease of Christianity. Save for a few doubtful
interpolations there is no evidence that Christ tolerated either blood
sacrifices or the mysteries of priesthood. All these antique grossnesses
were superadded after his martyrdom. He preached not a cult but a
gospel; he sent out not medicine men but apostles.

No doubt all who believe owe an apostolic service to God. They become
naturally apostolic. As men perceive and realise God, each will be
disposed in his own fashion to call his neighbour's attent