The survey of such a great collection cannot but be stimulating to every thoughtful student. Some of its visitors may see in the hideous idols of the South Seas and in the pictures of the medicine man at work at his craft only a further incentive to aid the spreading of their own faith, which they feel more strongly than ever to be immeasurably [p.99] raised above the rites and thoughts of the savage. Others may look with sad eyes at the long series of pictures that is spread out before them, for they see everywhere only the same superstition, the primitive fears of unknown forces, developing with the growth of civilization into religions which expand with man's own needs and conceptions, intermingling with his hopes and aspirations and refined by his thought into the creeds and theologies of the higher faiths. Through all they trace the same instincts, and feel that the savage kneeling before a blood-smeared stone explains to them the Nicene Creed, that the hierarchy of the Church has its origin in the spirit-doctors and fetish-men of a simpler age.
Yet to some at least there may come far other thoughts than these, as they ponder over what they have seen. Everywhere they behold men stretching out their hands towards something above them, beyond them, struggling with fears, oppressed by dim consciousness of wrong, hoping for some way of peace. The priest himself is a witness to this innate need of the soul, since his very presence speaks of man's dependence on the higher than himself, while it also shows men's interdependence upon each other. For the priest's position is impossible, unless he is in some way regarded as a means of communication between man and God, and a centre of fellowship among men. With this thought in his heart a man may look back, not without hope, upon the melancholy pageant of [p.100] the centuries, and watch the strange part that the priest has ever played in it. The modern sceptic joining in the sad cry of the old Roman poet — "So many are the ills that superstition has had power to urge men to" — has had, after all, like the rest of us, but an imperfect vision of the confused drama of history. He sees priesthood as a selfish influence playing upon human ignorance and baseness; he does not perceive the wider priesthood at work of which this is only a perversion, nor realize that priesthood and prayer underlie all that is highest and best in human life. For priesthood is the highest expression of man's social nature, by which he enters into communion with his fellows and with God. It is only because we narrow the use of the name of priest that we do not honour it aright, for in its essence priesthood is not a profession, but a high duty to which all are called.