1924 In Europe

We began the day with a visit to the York minster and ended it with a dinner at the Rountree cocoa works. Some of the men thought there was more spirituality in the discussion of the ethical problems of modern industry in which we engaged at Rountree’s than in the communion service we heard so atrociously read in the minster. Of course the dinner discussion was richer in ethical content, but there are nevertheless religious values in the cathedral which one cannot find in a discussion of ethical problems however vital.

Religion is a reaction to life’s mysteries and a reverence before the infinitudes of the universe. Without ethical experience the infinite is never defined in ethical terms, but the soul which is reverent and morally vital at the same time learns how to apprehend the infinite in terms of holiness and worships a God who transcends both our knowledge and our conscience. The cathedral with its dim religious light, its vaulted ceiling, its altar screen, and its hushed whispers is symbolic of the element of mystery in religion.

Without an adequate sermon no clue is given to the moral purpose at the heart of the mystery, and reverence remains without ethical content. But a religion which never goes beyond a sense of awe is no less {“more” in 1929 reprint} complete (though perhaps less serviceable) than one which has reduced life’s ultimate and ineffable truth to a pat little formula which a proud little man expounds before a comfortable and complacent congregation. I am sorry that there is no more ethically vital preaching in the cathedral, though that wretched communion service this morning, which could help no one if he did not believe in magic, is hardly typical of everything which happens in a cathedral. But I am equally sorry that the sense of awe and reverence has departed from so many of our churches.

The very appearance of many of our churches betrays the loss of one necessary element in religion. Everything suggests the secular rather than the religious, from the red hat of the rather too sensuously pretty soprano soloist and the frock coat of the rather too self-conscious parson to the comfortable pew cushions and the splendiferous pew holders. The morning sun shines brightly into the “auditorium” and the sun of worldly wisdom illumines the discourse of the preacher.

Of course I know that the devotional attitude frequently destroys clear thinking, and we need clear thinking for ethical living in a complex civilization. But it ought not be impossible to preserve the poetic with the scientific attitude, the mystical with the analytical, to have both worship and instruction. I think that is what Heywood Broun was driving at some time ago when he expressed a preference for an “Episcopal church with an heretical sermon.” Unfortunately the heretical, i.e., the morally vital and contemporaneous religious instruction, does not seem to flourish in the liturgical church.

But there are men here in England who preach prophetic sermons in cathedrals. There might be more. In America they are certainly not numerous. But that is no reason why we should dismiss religious awe and reverence as morally dangerous. After all, the prophetic preaching which we hear in our “church auditoriums” is not so vigorous as to give us any certainty that a secularized church is superior in its moral potency.