Now this was all very well for the Individualist Liberal of the Early Victorian period, but Individualist Liberalism was a mere destructive phase in the process of renewing the old Catholic order, a clearing up of the site.  We Socialists want a Church through which we can feel and think collectively, as much as we want a State that we can serve and be served by.  Whether as members or external critics we have to do our best to get rid of obsolete doctrinal and ceremonial barriers, so that the churches may merge again in a universal Church, and that Church comprehend again the whole growing and amplifying spiritual life of the race.

I do not know if I make my meaning perfectly clear here.  By conformity I do not mean silent conformity.  It is a man’s primary duty to convey his individual difference to the minds of his fellow men.  It is because I want that difference to tell to the utmost that I suggest he should not leave the assembly.  But in particular instances he may find it more striking and significant to stand out and speak as a man detached from the general persuasion, just as obstructed and embarrassed ministers of State can best serve their country at times by resigning office and appealing to the public judgment by this striking and significant act.

3.15.  A dilemma.

We are led by this discussion of secession straight between the horns of a moral dilemma.  We have come to two conclusions; to secede is a grave sin, but to lie is also a grave sin.

But often the practical alternative is between futile secession or implicit or actual falsehood.  It has been the instinct of the aggressive controversialist in all ages to seize upon collective organizations and fence them about with oaths and declarations of such a nature as to bar out anyone not of his own way of thinking.  In a democracy, for example, to take an extreme caricature of our case, a triumphant majority in power, before allowing anyone to vote, might impose an oath whereby the leader of the minority and all his aims were specifically renounced.  And if no country goes so far as that, nearly all countries and all churches make some such restrictions upon opinion.  The United States, that land of abandoned and receding freedoms, imposes upon everyone who crosses the Atlantic to its shores a childish ineffectual declaration against anarchy and polygamy.  None of these tests exclude the unhesitating liar, but they do bar out many proud and honest minded people.  They “fix” and kill things that should be living and fluid; they are offences against the mind of the race.  How is a man then to behave towards these test oaths and affirmations, towards repeating creeds, signing assent to articles of religion and the like?  Do not these unavoidable barriers to public service, or religious work, stand on a special footing?

Personally I think they do.