Page:What We Want.djvu/11

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PREFACE
vii

movements of thought and action towards a higher human ideal which are the authentic effects of the operation of the Divine Spirit. They would remind them that authority exists to constitute a brotherhood of all men of goodwill, and not merely to procure formal order or enforce unquestioning submission in an exclusive society.

It is with this conception of authority that they approach the present head of their Church in order to justify their action and their methods. If they are attempting to apply a new and unfamiliar mode of apologetic, it is not in any light or frivolous spirit of innovation, but for high and serious reasons. It is, on the one hand, because the new learning has provided them with an instrument for more vividly presenting the traditional faith, and they dare not refuse