The relations in life which are precious
to such youth, the intimate, the mystical and subtle ones, get small
recognition or expression. A hundred agencies outside the church are
stimulating in the best boys and girls of the present generation fine
sensibilities, critical standards, the higher hungers. Our services,
chiefly instructive and didactic, informal and easy in character,
irritate them and make them feel like truculent or uncomfortable
misfits.
A third reason for the lack of corporate or public offices of devotion
in our services lies in the intellectual character of the Protestant
centuries. We have seen how they have been centuries of individualism.
Character has been conceived of as largely a personal affair expressed
in personal relationships. The believer was like Christian in Bunyan's
_Pilgrim's Progress_. He started for the Heavenly Country because
he was determined to save his own soul. When he realized that he was
living in the City of Destruction it did not occur to him that, as
a good man, he must identify his fate with it. On the contrary, he
deserted wife and children with all possible expedition and got him
out and went along through the Slough of Despond, up to the narrow
gate, to start on the way of life. It was a chief glory of mediaeval
society that it was based upon corporate relationships. Its cathedrals
were possible because they were the common house of God for every
element of the community.
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