I think we can say that the Church or institution gives to its loyal members:—­

  (1) Group-consciousness.

  (2) Religious union, not only with its contemporaries
      but with the race, that is with
      history.  This we may regard as an extension
      into the past—­and so an enrichment—­of
      that group-consciousness.

  (3) Discipline; and with discipline a sort of
      spiritual grit, which carries our fluctuating
      souls past and over the inevitably recurring
      periods of slackness, and corrects subjectivism.

  (4) It gives Culture, handing on the discoveries
      of the saints.

In so far as the free-lance gets any of these four things, he gets them ultimately, though indirectly, from some institutional source.

On the other hand the institution, since it represents the element of stability in life, does not give, and must not be expected to give, direct spiritual experience; or any onward push towards novelty, freshness of discovery and interpretation in the spiritual sphere.  Its dangers and limitations will abide in a certain dislike of such freshness of discovery; the tendency to exalt the corporate and stable and discount the mobile and individual.  Its natural instinct will be for exclusivism, the club-idea, conservatism and cosiness; it will, if left to itself, revel in the middle-aged atmosphere and exhibit the middle-aged point of view.

We can now consider these points in greater detail:  and first that of the religious group-consciousness which a church should give its members.  This is of a special kind.  It is axiomatic that group-organization of some sort is a necessity of human life.  History showed us the tendency of all spiritual movements to embody themselves, if not in churches at least in some group-form; the paradox of each successive revolt from a narrow or decadent institutionalism forming a group in its turn, or perishing when its first fervour died.  But this social impulse, these spontaneous group-formations of master and disciples, valuable though they may be, do not fully exhibit all that is meant or done by a church.  True, the Church is or should be at each moment of its career such a living spiritual society or household of faith.  It is, essentially, a community of persons, who have or should have a common sentiment—­belief in, and reverence for, their God—­and a common defined aim, the furtherance of the spiritual life under the special religious sanctions which they accept.  But every sect, every religious order or guild, every class-meeting, might claim this much; yet none of these can claim to be a church.