then, in spite of these adverse characters, to be looked on as
essential, inevitable, or merely desirable expressions of the spiritual
life in man; or can this spiritual life flourish in pure freedom?

This question, often put in the crucial form, "Did Jesus Christ intend
to form a Church?" is well worth asking. Indeed, it is of great pressing
importance to those who now have the spiritual reconstruction of society
at heart. It means, in practice: can men best be saved, regenerated, one
by one, by their direct responses to the action of the Spirit; or, is
the life of the Spirit best found and actualized through submission to
tradition and contacts with other men--that is, in a group or church?
And if in a group or church, what should the character of this society
be? But we shall make no real movement towards solving this problem,
unless we abandon both the standpoint of authority, and that of naïve
religious individualism; and consent to look at it as a part of the
general problem of human society, in the light of history, of
psychology, and of ethics.

I think we may say without exaggeration that the general modern
judgment--not, of course, the clerical or orthodox judgment--is adverse
to institutionalism; at least as it now exists. In spite of the enormous
improvement which would certainly be visible, were we to compare the
average ecclesiastical attitude and average Church service in this
country with those of a hundred years ago, the sense that religion
involves submission to the rules and discipline of a closed
society--that definite spiritual gains are attached to spiritual
incorporation--that church-going, formal and corporate worship, is a
normal and necessary part of the routine of a good life: all this has
certainly ceased to be general amongst us. If we include the whole
population, and not the pious fraction in our view, this is true both of