to keep certain rules than to acquire and
maintain a certain mind and spirit and principle of action. In the
history of the Church St. Paul, we feel, would very often have been
saying, 'I am afraid of you: the rules are good in themselves, but
there are dangers attaching to all rules of which you seem to be quite
unconscious. There is a lower sort of religion of forms and
observances, and you may fall back into it as easily as the Galatians.'

But after all, rules for living religiously, private or ecclesiastical,
are, we all know, invaluable, and practically necessary. A man or a
church that should attempt to dispense with them would come to
disaster. It is very difficult to fathom the depth of the mischief
that has come {155} about in the corporate social life of the Church of
England, through the neglect of the surely moderate amount of
regulation which was provided for us by the Prayer Book in the way of
festival and fast days and of daily service. To keep a few simple,
intelligible, religious rules all together gives almost as much as a
common creed the feeling of social coherence. Even the extremest
Paulinist need have no fear so long as the ecclesiastical regulations
do not reach the point of becoming a burden--so long as no one could be
in danger of priding himself on 'acquiring merit' by their mere
observance; and so long also as the principle is kept clearly in view
that 'the rules were made for man and not man for the rules.' But I do
not think there can be any reasonable doubt that St. Paul would
repudiate the idea that any rules of worship and observance, other than
those which are necessarily involved in the administration of the
sacraments, can obtain by prescription a right to permanence. 'They
may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and
men's manners.' They were made for man; and the Church or the
churches--with due regard to mutual fellowship--can modify or abolish
them.

{156}

3. 'Overthrow not for meat's sake the work of God.' 'It is good not
to eat flesh nor to drink wine, nor to do anything whereby thy brother
stumbleth.' 'Wherefore, if meat maketh my brother to stumble, I will
eat no flesh for evermore, that I make not my brother to stumble[33].'
Here is the right principle of 'total abstinence' which does not deny
the legitimate use of what it yet permanently abandons for love's sake.
St. Paul would have Timothy use a little wine when it was for his
heal