harmony with the real significance of the Person and message of Jesus
Christ. Those who had come to him questioning, he declared, were a
thousand times right in refusing to accept the interpretations of other
men, the consensus of opinion of more ignorant ages, expressed in an
ancient science and an archaic philosophy.

And what should be said of the vast and ever increasing numbers of those
not connected with the Church, who had left it or were leaving it? and of
the less fortunate to whose bodily wants they had been ministering in the
parish house, for whom it had no spiritual message, and who never entered
its doors? The necessity of religion, of getting in touch with, of
dependence on the Spirit of the Universe was inherent in man, and yet
there were thousands--nay, millions in the nation to-day in whose hearts
was an intense and unsatisfied yearning, who perceived no meaning in
life, no Cause for which to work, who did not know what Christianity was,
who had never known what it was, who wist not where to turn to find out.
Education had brought many of them to discern, in the Church's teachings,
an anachronistic medley of myths and legends, of theories of schoolmen
and theologians, of surviving pagan superstitions which could not be
translated into life. They saw, in Christianity, only the adulterations
of the centuries. If any one needed a proof of the yearning people felt,
let him go to the bookshops, or read in the publishers' lists to-day the
announcements of books on religion. There was no supply where there was
no demand.

Truth might no longer be identified with Tradition, and the day was past
when councils and synods might determine it for all mankind. The era of
forced acceptance of philosophical doctrines and dogmas was past, and
that of freedom, of spiritual rebirth, of vicarious suffering, of willing
sacrifice and service for a Cause was upon them. That cause was