What I would have those do who can profess themselves sincerely convinced Christians, in spite of the uncertainty of many of the recorded details, is to adopt a simple compromise; to claim their part in the inheritance of Christ, and the symbols of His mysteries, but not to feel themselves bound by any ecclesiastical tradition.  No one can forbid, by peevish regulations, direct access to the spirit of Christ and to the love of God.  Christ’s teaching was a purely individualistic teaching, based upon conduct and emotion, and half the difficulties of the position lie in His sanction and guidance having been claimed for what is only a human attempt to organise a society with a due deference for the secular spirit, its aims and ambitions.  The sincere Christian should, I believe, gratefully receive the simple and sweet symbols of unity and forgiveness; but he should make his own a far higher and wider range of symbols, the symbols of natural beauty and art and literature—­all the passionate dreams of peace and emotion that have thrilled the yearning hearts of men.  Wherever those emotions have led men along selfish, cruel, sensual paths, they must be distrusted, just as we must distrust the religious emotions which have sanctioned such divergences from the spirit of Christ.  We must believe that the essence of religion is to make us alive to the love of God, in whatever writing of light and air, of form and fragrance it is revealed; and we must further believe that religion is meant to guide and quicken the tender, compassionate, brotherly emotions, by which we lean to each other in this world where so much is dark.  But to denounce the narrower forms of religion, or to abstain from them, is utterly alien to the spirit of Christ.  He obeyed and reverenced the law, though He knew that the expanding spirit of His own teaching would break it in pieces.  Of course, since liberty is the spirit of the Gospel, a liberty conditioned by the sense of equality, there may be occasions when a man is bound to resist what appears to him to be a moral or an intellectual tyranny.  But short of that, the only thing of which one must beware is a conscious insincerity; and the limits of that a man must determine for himself.  There are occasions when consideration for the feelings of others seems to conflict with one’s own sense of sincerity; but I think that one is seldom wrong in preferring consideration for others to the personal indulgence of one’s own apparent sincerity.

Peace and gentleness always prevail in the end over vehemence and violence, and a peaceful revolution brings about happier results for a country, as we have good reason to know, than a revolution of force.  Even now the narrower religious systems prevail more in virtue of the gentleness and goodwill and persuasion of their ministers than through the spiritual terrors that they wield—­the thunders are divorced from the lightning.

Thus may the victories of faith be won, not by noise and strife, but by the silent motion of a resistless tide.  Even now it creeps softly over the sand and brims the stagnant pools with the freshening and invigorating brine.