(1) It must give a social life that shall develop group consciousness in respect of our eternal interests and responsibilities:  using for this real discipline, and the influences of liturgy and creed.

(2) Yet it must not so standardize and socialize this life as to leave no room for personal freedom in the realm of Spirit:  for those “experiences of men in their solitude” which form the very heart of religion.

(3) It must not be so ring-fenced, so exclusive, so wholly conditioned by the past, that the voice of the future, that is of the prophet giving fresh expression to eternal truths, cannot clearly be heard in it; not only from within its own borders but also from outside.  But

(4) On the other hand, it must not be so contemptuous of the past and its priceless symbols that it breaks with tradition, and so loses that very element of stability which it is its special province to preserve.

I go on now to the second aspect of institutional religion:  Cultus.

We at once make the transition from Church to Cultus, when we ask ourselves:  how does, how can, the Church as an organized and enduring society do its special work of creating an atmosphere and imparting a secret?  How is the traditional deposit of spiritual experience handed on, the individual drawn into the stream of spiritual history and held there?  Remember, the Church exists to foster and hand on, not merely the moral life, the life of this-world perfection; but the spiritual life in all its mystery and splendour—­the life of more than this-world perfection, the poetry of goodness, the life that aims at God.  And this, not only in elect souls, which might conceivably make and keep direct contacts without her help, but in greater or less degree in the mass of men, who do need help.  How is this done?  The answer can only be, that it is mostly done through symbolic acts, and by means of suggestion and imitation.

All organized churches find themselves committed sooner or later to an organized cultus.  It may be rudimentary.  It may reach a high pitch of aesthetic and symbolic perfection.  But even the successive rebels against dead ceremony are found as a rule to invent some ceremony in their turn.  They learn by experience the truth that men most easily form religious habits and tend, to have religious experiences when they are assembled in groups, and caused to perform the same acts.  This is so because as we have already seen, the human psyche is plastic to the suggestions made to it; and this suggestibility is greatly increased when it is living a gregarious life as a member of a united congregation or flock, and is engaged in performing corporate acts.  The soldiers’ drill is essential to the solidarity of the army, and the religious service in some form is—­apart from all other considerations—­essential to the solidarity of the Church.