s; but I feel that we have here a work of art, of divine art; and
art is one of God's ways of reaching the human heart. We are proud that we
have not discarded it from our church buildings, from our altars, from the
music of our choirs. Let us treat tenderly our great book of Common
Prayer, like that other great masterpiece of divine literary art, the King
James version of the Bible. There are plenty of better translations; there
is not one that has the same magic of words to fire the imagination and
melt the heart.

These are all trite things to say to churchmen: I have tried, on occasion,
to say them to non-churchmen, but they do not seem to respond. There are
those who rejoice in their break with historic continuity, who look upon a
written form of service with horror. It is well, as I have said, for us to
realize that our friends hold these opinions. One can not strengthen his
muscles in a tug of war unless some one is pulling the other way. The
savor of religion, like that of life itself, is in its contrasts. I thank
God that we have them even within our own Communion. We are high-church
and low-church and broad-church. We burn incense and we wear Geneva gowns.
This diversity is not to be condemned. What is to be deprecated is the
feeling among some of us that the diversity should give place to
uniformity--to uniformity of their own kind, of course. To me, this would
be a calamity. Let us continue to make room in our church for
individuality. God never intended men to be pressed down in one mold of
sameness. In the last analysis, each of us has his own religious beliefs.
The doctrines of our church, or of any church are but a composite portrait
of these beliefs. But when one takes such a portrait throughout all lands
and in all time, and the features keep true, one can not help regarding
them as the divine lineaments.

This is how I would have you regard the beliefs of our church, as you have
studied them throughout this course--as our particular composite
photograph of the face of God, as He has impressed it on the hearts and
minds of each one of us. I commend this view to those who have no
reverence for beliefs, particularly when they are formulated as creeds.
These persons mean that they have no regard for group beliefs but only for
those of the individual. Each has his own beliefs, and he must have
confidence in them, for they are the grounds on which he acts, if he is a
normal man. Even the faith of an Agnosti