Let me take one salient instance.  Could there, to any impartial observer, be anything in the world more incredible than that the Pope, surrounded by ritual and pomp, and hierarchies, and policies, should be held to be the representative on earth of the peasant-teacher of Galilee?  And yet the melancholy process of development is plain enough.  As the world became Christianized, it could not be expected to give up its social order, its ambitions, its love of power and influence.  Christianity uncurbed is an inconvenient, a dangerous, a subversive force; it must be tamed and muzzled; it must be robed and crowned; it must be given a high and honoured place among institutions.  And so it has fallen a victim to bribery and intrigue and worldly power.

I do not for a moment say that it does not even thus inspire thousands of hearts to simple, loving, and heroic conduct.  The secret is far too vital to lose its power.  It is a vast force in the world, and indeed survives its capture in virtue of its truth and beauty.  But instead of being the most free, the most independent, the most individualistic force in the world, it has become the most authoritarian, the most traditional, the most rigid of systems.  As in the tale of Gulliver, it is a giant indeed, and can yet perform gigantic services; but it is bound and fettered by a puny race.

Further, there are some who would divide religion sharply into two aspects, the objective and the subjective.  Those who emphasize the objective aspect, would maintain that the theory that underlies all religion is the idea of sacrifice.  This view is held strongly by Roman Catholics and by a large section of Anglicans as well.  They would hold that the duty of the priest is the offering of this sacrifice, and that the essential truth of the Christian revelation was the sacrifice of God Himself upon God’s own altar.  This sacrifice, this atonement, they would say, can be and must be made, over and over, upon the altar of God.  They would hold that this offering had its objective value, even though it were offered without the mental concurrence of those for whom it was offered.  They would urge that the primal necessity for the faithful is that by an act of the will,—­not necessarily an emotional act, but an act of pure and definite volition,—­they should associate themselves with the true and perfect sacrifice; that souls that do this sincerely are caught up, so to speak, into the heavenly chariot of God, and move upward thus; while the merely subjective and emotional religion is, to continue the metaphor, as if a man should gird up his loins to run in company with the heavenly impulse.  They would say that the objective act of worship may have a subjective emotional effect, but that it has a true value quite independent of any subjective effect.  They would say that the idea of sacrifice is a primal instinct of human nature, implanted in hearts by God Himself, and borne witness to by the whole history of man.