It seems to me clear that the chief office of the church is liturgical
rather than homiletical. Or, if that is too technical a statement,
it may be said that the church exists to set forth and foster the
religious life and that, because of the nature of that life, it finds
its chief opportunity for so doing in the imaginative rather than the
rationalizing or practical areas of human expression. Even as Michael
Angelo, at the risk of his life, purloined dead bodies that he
might dissect them and learn anatomy, so all disciples of the art of
religion need the discipline of intellectual analysis and of knowledge
of the facts of the religious experience if they are to be leaders in
faith. There is a toughness of fiber needed in religious people that
can only come through such mental discipline. But anatomists are not
sculptors. Michael Angelo was the genius, the creative artist, not
because he understood anatomy, but chiefly because of those as yet
indefinable and secret processes of feeling and intuition in man,
which made him feel rather than understand the pity and the terror,
the majesty and the pathos of the human spirit and reveal them in
significant and expressive line. Knowledge supported rather than
rivaled insight. In the same way, both saint and sinner need religious
instruction. Nevertheless they are what they are because they are
first perceptive rather than reasoning beings.
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