The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-dayUnderhill, Evelyn
Religion
The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day
Underhill, Evelyn
Spiritual life
(3) It must not be so ring-fenced, so exclusive, so wholly conditioned
by the past, that the voice of the future, that is of the prophet giving
fresh expression to eternal truths, cannot clearly be heard in it; not
only from within its own borders but also from outside. But
(4) On the other hand, it must not be so contemptuous of the past and
its priceless symbols that it breaks with tradition, and so loses that
very element of stability which it is its special province to preserve.
I go on now to the second aspect of institutional religion: Cultus.
We at once make the transition from Church to Cultus, when we ask
ourselves: how does, how can, the Church as an organized and enduring
society do its special work of creating an atmosphere and imparting a
secret? How is the traditional deposit of spiritual experience handed
on, the individual drawn into the stream of spiritual history and held
there? Remember, the Church exists to foster and hand on, not merely the
moral life, the life of this-world perfection; but the spiritual life in
all its mystery and splendour--the life of more than this-world
perfection, the poetry of goodness, the life that aims at God. And this,
not only in elect souls, which might conceivably make and keep direct
contacts without her help, but in greater or less degree in the mass of
men, who _do_ need help. How is this done? The answer can only be, that
it is mostly done through symbolic acts, and by means of suggestion and
imitation.
All organized churches find themselves committed sooner or later to an
organized cultus. It may be rudimentary. It may reach a high pitch of
aesthetic and symbolic perfection. But even the successive rebels against
dead ceremony are found as a rule to invent some ceremony in their turn.
They learn by experience the truth that men most easily form religious
habits and tend, to have religious experiences when they are assembled
in groups, and caused to perform the same acts. This is so because as we
have already seen, the human psyche is plastic to the suggestions made
to it; and this suggestibility is greatly increased when it is living a
gregarious life as a member of a united congregation or flock, and is
engaged in performing corporate acts. The soldiers' drill is essential
to the solidarity of the army, and the religious service in some form
is--apart from all other considerations--essential to the solidarity of
the Church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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