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
attention 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 establish

sacramental ceremonies. The disposition to form cliques and exclude
and conspire against unlike people is all too strong in humanity, to

permit of its formalencouragement. Even such organisation as is
implied by a creed is to be avoided, for all living faith coagulates

as you phrase it. In this book I have not given so much as a
definite name to the faith of the true God. Organisation for

worship and collective exaltation also, it may be urged, is of
little manifest good. You cannot appointbeforehand a time and

place for God to irradiate your soul.
All these are very valid objections to the church-forming

disposition.
4. ORGANISATIONS UNDER GOD

Yet still this leaves many dissatisfied. They want to shout out
about God. They want to share this great thing with all mankind.

Why should they not shout and share?
Let them express all that they desire to express in their own

fashion by themselves or grouped with their friends as they will.
Let them shout chorally if they are so disposed. Let them work in a

gang if so they can work the better. But let them guard themselves
against the idea that they can have God particularly or exclusively

with them in any such undertaking. Or that so they can express God
rather than themselves.

That I think states the attitude of the modern spirit towards the
idea of a church. Mankind passes for ever out of the idolatry of

altars, away from the obscene rites of circumcision and symbolical
cannibalism, beyond the sway of the ceremonialpriest. But if the

modern spirit holds that religion cannot be organised or any
intermediary thrust between God and man, that does not preclude

infinite possibilities of organisation and collective action UNDER
God and within the compass of religion. There is no reason why

religious men should not band themselves the better to attain
specific ends. To borrow a term from British politics, there is no

objection to AD HOC organisations. The objection lies not against
subsidiary organisations for service but against organisations that

may claim to be comprehensive.
For example there is no reason why one should not--and in many cases

there are good reasons why one should--organise or join associations
for the criticism of religious ideas, an employment that may pass

very readily into propaganda.
Many people feel the need of prayer to resist the evil in themselves

and to keep them in mind of divineemotion. And many want not
merely prayer but formal prayer and the support of others, praying

in unison. The writer does not understand this desire or need for
collective prayer very well, but there are people who appear to do

so and there is no reason why they should not assemble for that
purpose. And there is no doubt that divinepoetry, divine maxims,

religious thought finely expressed, may be heard, rehearsed,
collected, published, and distributed by associations. The desire

for expression implies a sort of assembly, a hearer at least as well
as a speaker. And expression has many forms. People with a strong

artistic impulse will necessarily want to express themselves by art
when religion touches them, and many arts, architecture and the

drama for example, are collectiveundertakings. I do not see why
there should not be, under God, associations for building cathedrals

and suchlike great still places urgent with beauty, into which men
and women may go to rest from the clamour of the day's confusions; I

do not see why men should not make great shrines and pictures
expressing their sense of divine things, and why they should not

combine in such enterprises rather than work to fill heterogeneous
and chaotic art galleries. A wave of religious revival and

religious clarification, such as I foresee, will most certainly
bring with it a great revival of art, religious art, music, songs,

and writings of all sorts, drama, the making of shrines, praying
places, tempies and retreats, the creation of pictures and

sculptures. It is not necessary to have priestcraft and an
organised church for such ends. Such enrichments of feeling and

thought are part of the service of God.
And again, under God, there may be associations and fraternities for

research in pure science; associations for the teaching and
simplification of languages; associations for promoting and watching

education; associations for the discussion of political problems and
the determination of right policies. In all these ways men may