A WAYFARER'S FAITH: ASPECTS OF THE COMMON BASIS OF RELIGIOUS LIFE By T. Edmund Harvey London: Wells Gardner, Barton and Co., Ltd. 3 & 4, Paternoster Buildings, B.C. and 44, Victoria Street, S.W. [1913] [Printed] Headley Brothers, Bishopsgate E.C.; and Ashford, Kent Some of these pages were originally prepared by the writer for the use of his fellow members in the Society of Friends. He is indebted to the courtesy of the Editor of /The Nation/ for permission to make use of two chapters which have appeared in its columns in a slightly different form. CONTENTS CHAPTER[...]PAGE I. THE COMMON BASIS OF RELIGIOUS LIFE I II. THE INNER LIFE OF THE CHURCH 2O III. THE PROPHET IN THE CHURCH 33 IV. SACRAMENTS OF LIFE 58 V. SOME OF NATURE'S SACRAMENTS 85 VI. INSTITUTIONS AND INSPIRATION 91 VII. PRIESTS AND PONTIFFS 97 VIII. THE ANSWER OF FAITH 116 IX. THE HOUSE OF PEACE 135 X. THE PATH TO UNITY 145 CHAPTER I. THE COMMON BASIS OF RELIGIOUS LIFE. THERE is a well known story of how a man of letters a century ago, when questioned as to his religious views, answered that all sensible men were of one religion, and to the further query as to what that religion might be, made the curt response: "Sir, sensible men never say." The story is characteristic of its age, and of the attitude towards religion of some of its ablest men. Many of the greatest thinkers, whatever the religious opinions of the circle in which they were educated may have been, held themselves aloof from controversy on questions of creed and church, looking upon such disputes with the kindly contempt of tolerant beings who themselves had reached a larger and freer atmosphere than that which surrounded those who struggled amid the dust of the plains beneath their feet. Something of this spirit, which is so clearly manifested in the world of politics and letters, can be seen too in many of the prominent religious organisations of the day. Men were weary of the hateful bitterness which had characterised the theological [p.2] controversies of the seventeenth century, and the wider outlook which came with the age of illumination showed itself even as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century, when in Germany Catholic and Protestant ecclesiastical authorities united in a common religious celebration at Fulda of the anniversary of the mission of Saint Boniface. But beneath the surface of this toleration, which seemed to be increasing between Catholic, Protestant and Jew, we may perhaps feel that the uniting influence lay not so much in a profound sense of the underlying verities common to all their various forms of faith as in a certain vagueness as to any form of dogmatic belief, a distrust of dogma in itself, if not an indifference to the things which that dogma attempted to represent. Men were willing to leave others free to have their own religious beliefs, and distrusted the enthusiasm of the fanatic, of the man who wished to convert others to view life as he