That is why I assert so confidently
that there is a real deep religious movement afoot in the world. But
not one of those conversations could have gone on, it would have ceased
instantly, if anyone bearing the uniform and brand of any organised
religious body, any clergyman, priest, mollah, of suchlike advocate of
the ten thousand patented religions in the world, had come in. He would
have brought in his sectarian spites, his propaganda of church-going,
his persecution of the heretic and the illegitimate, his ecclesiastical
politics, his taboos, and his doctrinal touchiness.... That is why,
though I perceive there is a great wave of religious revival in the
world to-day, I doubt whether it bodes well for the professional
religions....
The other day I was talking to an eminent Anglican among various other
people and someone with an eye to him propounded this remarkable view.
"There are four stages between belief and utter unbelief. There are
those who believe in God, those who doubt like Huxley the Agnostic,
those who deny him like the Atheists but who do at least keep his place
vacant, and lastly those who have set up a Church in his place. That is
the last outrage of unbelief."
IV. THE RIDDLE OF THE BRITISH
All the French people I met in France seemed to be thinking and talking
about the English.
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