That the Church being organised and being human will suffer from defects inherent to all organisation and to all humanity is equally certain. There will be bad administrators, wicked men in holy charges, abuse of powers. But that is no answer to the claim of the Church. For consider--what is the alternative? Supposing there be upon earth a definite body of some kind--corporation, society, officer, what you will: a definable existent _Thing_ whereto men may turn for ultimate and certain pronouncements upon the chief matters of their concern (that is, the nature of man and his destiny). If that Thing, whatever form it were to be given, were _not_ organised, then must affirmation clash with affirmation and whatever were common to all would divide into a mere vague mood. Now such a mood does not fulfill the requirements of the _Thing_ in question. You may indeed say (the vast majority of English-speaking people are saying it to-day) that true religion is of this vague kind; an instinctive aspiration to unity with the Divine Will; most would even put it lower still and say “to unity with nature or the universe.” They therefore feel that all attempts to systematise this aspiration, to regulate the enthusiasm, to define particular dates and cases, to set up the machinery of a society with laws, officials and decision, is a warping of the only true living and direct religious impulse: and certainly if that original and vague religious impulse in man be the only true religion and if its value be in proportion to its vagueness, then organisation is a warping and a lessening of it. But remember that in making this statement you are denying at the outset the possibility of an authority and therefore contradicting the very affirmation you make of some certain common truth in religion. For any authority beyond mere individual emotion (which changes in each individual and varies indefinitely among many individuals) must have a power of definition, must act with a function, and therefore must be organised in some degree. The choice is unavoidable between organisation in that which can speak with authority and the rejection of all claim to authority--which is the rejection of all common or general certitude on matters not immediately and universally apparent. In plain words, either you must admit organisation in your religion or say that no religion is true.