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 from the religious
society in which it is born. Only indeed by attachment, open or virtual,
through life or through literature, to some such group can the new soul
link itself with history, and so participate in the hoarded spiritual
values of humanity. Thus even a general survey of life inclines us at