Religion is Life. Is our Life Religion? No man pretends it. No doubt there are good men in all Churches, and out of all Churches; there have been such in the hold of pirate-ships and robbers' dens. I know there are good men and pious women, and I would go leagues long to sit down at their blessed feet and kiss their garments' hem; but what are the mass of us? Disciples of Absolute Religion? Christians after the fashion of Jesus of Nazareth? No! only Christians in tongue. It is an imputed righteousness that we honour; not ours, but borrowed of Tradition; an “historical Christianity” that was, but is no more. A man is a Christian if he goes to meeting in a fashionable place; pays his pew-tax; bows to the parson; believes with his sect; is good as other people. That is our religion; what is lived, what is preached; “like people, like priest,” was never more true.
It is not that we need new forms and symbols, or even the rejection of the old. Baptism and the Supper are still beautiful and comforting to many a soul. A spiritual man can put spirit upon these. To many they are still powerful auxiliaries. They commune with God now and then—through bread and wine, as others hold converse with Him for ever, through the symbols of Nature, the winds that wake the “soft and soul-like sound” of the pine tree; through the earliest violets of spring and the last leaf of autumn; through calm and storm, and stars and blooming trees, and winter's snows and summer's sunshine. Α religious man never lacks symbols of its own, elements of communion with God. What we want is the Soul of Religion, Religion that thinks and works; its Sign will take care of itself.
With us Religion is a nun; she sits, of week days, behind her black veil, in the meeting-house; her hands on her knees; making her creed more unreadable; damning “infidels” and “carnal Reason;" she only comes out in the streets of a Sunday, when the shops are shut, and temptation out of sight, and the din of business is still as a baby's sleep. All the week nobody thinks of that joyless vestal. Meantime strong-handed Cupidity, with his legion of devils, goes up and down the earth, and presses Weakness, Ignorance, and Want, into his service; sends
