In saying all this I do not seek to discredit religious ceremony; either of the naive or of the sophisticated type.  On the contrary, I think that in effecting this change in our mental tone and colour, in prompting this emergence of a mood which, in the mass of men, is commonly suppressed, these ceremonies do their true work.  They should stimulate and give social expression to that mood of adoration which is the very heart of religion; helping those who cannot be devotional alone to participate in the common devotional feeling.  If, then, we desire to receive the gifts which corporate worship can most certainly make to us, we ought to yield ourselves without resistance or criticism to its influence; as we yield ourselves to the influence of a great work of art.  That influence is able to tune us up, at least to a fleeting awareness of spiritual reality; and each such emergence of transcendental feeling is to the good.  It is true that the objects which immediately evoke this feeling will only be symbolic; but after all, our very best conceptions of God are bound to be that.  We do not, or should not, demand scientific truth of them.  Their business is rather to give us poetry, a concrete artistic intuition of reality, and to place us in the mood of poetry.  The great thing is, that by these corporate liturgic practices and surrenders, we can prevent that terrible freezing up of the deep wells of our being which so easily comes to those who must lead an exacting material or intellectual life.  We keep ourselves supple; the spiritual faculties are within reach, and susceptible to education.

Organized ceremonial religion insists upon it, that at least for a certain time each day or week we shall attend to the things of the Spirit.  It offers us its suggestions, and shuts off as well as it can conflicting suggestions:  though, human as we are, the mere appearance of our neighbours is often enough to bring these in.  Nothing is more certain than this:  first that we shall never know the spiritual world unless we give ourselves the chance of attending to it, clear a space for it in our busy lives; and next, that it will not produce its real effect in us, unless it penetrates below the conscious surface into the deeps of the instinctive mind, and moulds this in accordance with the regnant idea.  If we are to receive the gifts of the cultus, we on our part must bring to it at the very least what we bring to all great works of art that speak to us:  that is to say, attention, surrender, sympathetic emotion.  Otherwise, like all other works of art, it will remain external to us.  Much of the perfectly sincere denunciation and dislike of religious ceremony which now finds frequent utterance comes from those who have failed thus to do their share.  They are like the hasty critics who dismiss some great work of art because it is not representative, or historically accurate; and so entirely miss the aesthetic values which it was created to impart.