lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly."

The evidence of those who have been estranged from the Churches is
worth considering. We see that Mr. Gosse was driven from them in his
youth by their sectarian narrowness and unwillingness to face
intellectual inquiry; Mr. Shaw by the flippancy of the Irish Church,
its class prejudice, its false respectability; Mr. Lowes Dickinson,
among other reasons, because at a time when men are learning to adapt
the processes of Nature to their ends, when it becomes them to "dwell
less and less upon their weaknesses and more and more upon their
strength," the orthodox Christians assert that we are "miserable
sinners," that "there is no health in us," when they "ought to be too
busy demonstrating in fact the contrary." Members of the general
public in one way and another have become accustomed to regard
religion with an uneasy constraint; there are harmless things which
must not be said in the presence of a priest; there is a pastorality
about the minister which implies a flock and a coterie; and Englishmen
seldom mention the name of God without an appearance of apology or
secret shame. Religion has become largely a matter of cliques,
coteries, associations--of specialism in codes and casuistry.

I will not press the question whether the history of the Christian
Church has not been the history of the perversions of Christianity. A
distinguished Chinese author not long ago indicted the alleged
un-Christian methods of our missionaries in China; Dr. Halil Halid, a
Turk, has pointed out that it is in the Christian countries that the
Christian virtues of humility and disdain of wealth are least in
evidence. What concerns us now is the feeling in formally Christian
countries that in spite of Christianity the Christian Churches have
not taught that the Kingdom of Heaven is on earth; they have not
taught toleration and love; they have urged us to ignore the present
world in the interests of the next; and because their own followers
have refused to do anything of the kind they have isolated religion
from practical life. I agree that many Churches, seeking to adapt
themselves to modern needs, have organised social clubs, carried on
political crusades, and rendered useful service in "rescue work;" but
even so they have rather tended to distinguish between themselves in
their spiritual capacity and themselves in their secular capacity. The
majority of people do not seem to find in the religiou