ion to what
he sees. The necessary elements of religion could be written on a
post card; this book, small as it is, bulks large not by what it tells
positively but because it deals with misconceptions. We may (little
doubt have I that we do) need special propagandas and organisations to
discuss errors and keep back the jungle of false ideas, to maintain free
speech and restrain the enterprise of the persecutor, but we do not want
a church to keep our faith for us. We want our faith spread, but for
that there is no need for orthodoxies and controlling organisations of
statement. It is for each man to follow his own impulse, and to speak to
his like in his own fashion.

Whatever religious congregations men may form henceforth in the name
of the true God must be for their own sakes and not to take charge of
religion.

The history of Christianity, with its encrustation and suffocation
in dogmas and usages, its dire persecutions of the faithful by the
unfaithful, its desiccation and its unlovely decay, its invasion by
robes and rites and all the tricks and vices of the Pharisees whom
Christ detested and denounced, is full of warning against the dangers of
a church. Organisation is an excellent thing for the material needs
of men, for the draining of towns, the marshalling of traffic, the
collecting of eggs, and the carrying of letters, the distribution
of bread, the notification of measles, for hygiene and economics and
suchlike affairs. The better we organise such things, the freer and
better equipped we leave men's minds for nobler purposes, for those
adventures and experiments towards God's purpose which are the reality
of life. But all organisations must be watched, for whatever is
organised can be "captured" and misused. Repentance, moreover, is the
beginning and essential of the religious life, and organisations (acting
through their secretaries and officials) never repent. God deals
only with the individual for the individual's surrender. He takes no
cognisance of committees.

Those who are most alive to the realities of living religion are most
mistrustful of this congregating tendency. To gather together is to
purchase a benefit at the price of a greater loss, to strengthen one's
sense of brotherhood by excluding the majority of mankind. Before you
know where you are you will have exchanged the spirit of God for ESPRIT
DE CORPS. You will have reinvented the SYMBOL; you will have begun to
keep anniversaries and e