We are one with the earth—let us remember that. And even those catastrophes of earth for which we seem to have no responsibility, storm and flood and earthquake, are not cut off from a relation with ourselves that may some day be more clear. We are but beginners in the task of entering upon our heritage of earth. And when we try to look deep into the mystery of matter and spirit what we see makes us think that they are not unlike the red and violet ends of a spectrum, which between them passes from colour to colour, but which, when our analytical stretching out is over, returns to the multiplicity in unity of white light. The Christian, by his sacramentalism and his emphasis on incarnation, confesses their kinship, as does the artist when out of three sounds he frames 'not a fourth sound, but a star,' and out of mud or marble, a vision.
We cannot penetrate this mystery; but when we recognize the solidarity of man with man, we may try to remember that it must reach beyond man, not only above him but below.
When the Christian sends us to the tower of Siloam he does us good service. If all Christians had learnt their lesson from that instead of from an older tradition and many superstitions, there would have been no need to send us. We should have known long ago what it tells of the judgements of God and the heavy responsibilities of men. And if the objection is made that the immediate application of the words of the prophet was far narrower than this to which we have carried it, our answer is that the mark of prophetic teaching is its inexhaustible richness of meaning and its proof that wisdom, of its essence, applies to life in every aspect and mode that life may display.
Notre liberté, dans les mouvements mêmes par où elle s'affirme, crée les habitudes naissantes qui l'étoufferont si elle ne se renouvelle par un effort constant. _Bergson._
It is quite true that to be popular a religion must be corrupt. The fact is noted both by its critics and enemies and by its friends and devotees. They express their minds in different terms but they agree. There is, however, a difference running through their agreement, at least in many cases. The critics who are also enemies regard the corruption not strictly as corruption but as the clearer manifestation of the true character religion has from the beginning. The religious man means precisely what he says when he calls it corrupt. There is a reality, true, beautiful, good, which men in the multitude do not find attractive, but which may be adapted, one way or another, overlaid, delicately or barbarously perverted, to suit them.