can be spread.  Some real discipline and humbling submission to rule.  Some traditional and theological standard.  Some missionary effort and enthusiasm.  For these four things we must find place in any incorporation of the spiritual life which is to have its full effect upon the souls of men.  And as a matter of fact, the periodical revolts against churches and ecclesiasticism, are never against societies in which all these characteristics are still alive; but against those which retain and exaggerate formal tradition and authority, whilst they have lost zest and identity of aim.

A real Church has therefore something to give to, and something to demand from each of its members, and there is a genuine loss for man in being unchurched.  Because it endures through a perpetual process of discarding and renewal, those members will share the richness and experience of a spiritual life far exceeding their own time-span; a truth which is enshrined in the beautiful conception of the Communion of Saints.  They enter a group consciousness which reinforces their own in the extent to which they surrender to it; which surrounds them with favourable suggestions and gives the precision of habit to their instinct for Eternity.  The special atmosphere, the hoarded beauty, the evocative yet often archaic symbolism, of a Gothic Cathedral, with its constant reminiscences of past civilizations and old levels of culture, its broken fragments and abandoned altars, its conservation of eternal truths—­the intimate union in it of the sublime and homely, the successive and abiding aspects of reality—­make it the most fitting of all images of the Church, regarded as the spiritual institution of humanity.  And the perhaps undue conservatism commonly associated with Cathedral circles represents too the chief reproach which can be brought against churches—­their tendency to preserve stability at the expense of novelty, to crystallize, to cling to habits and customs which no longer serve a useful end.  In this a church is like a home; where old bits of furniture have a way of hanging on, and old habits, sometimes absurd, endure.  Yet both the home and the church can give something which is nowhere else obtainable by us, and represent values which it is perilous to ignore.  When once the historical character of reality is fully grasped by us, we see that some such organization through which achieved values are conserved and carried forward, useful habits are learned and practised, the direct intuitions of genius, the prophet’s revelation of reality are interpreted and handed on, is essential to the spiritual continuity of the race; and that definite churchmanship of some sort, or its equivalent, must be a factor in the spiritual reconstruction of society.  As, other things being equal, a baby benefits enormously by being born within the social framework rather than in the illusory freedom of “pure” nature; so the growth of the soul is, or should be, helped and not hindered by the nurture it receives