became increasingly important to him towards the end of his life.
And it is the most releasing idea in the system.
Only in the most general terms can I trace the other origins of
these present views. I do not think modern religion owes much to
what is called Deism or Theism. The rather abstract and futile
Deism of the eighteenth century, of “votre Etre supreme” who bored
the friends of Robespierre, was a sterile thing, it has little
relation to these modern developments, it conceived of God as an
infinite Being of no particular character whereas God is a finite
being of a very especial character. On the other hand men and women
who have set themselves, with unavoidable theological
preconceptions, it is true, to speculate upon the actual teachings
and quality of Christ, have produced interpretations that have
interwoven insensibly with thoughts more apparently new. There is a
curious modernity about very many of Christ’s recorded sayings.
Revived religion has also, no doubt, been the receiver of many
religious bankruptcies, of Positivism for example, which failed
through its bleak abstraction and an unspiritual texture. Religion,
thus restated, must, I think, presently incorporate great sections
of thought that are still attached to formal Christianity. The time
is at hand when many of the organised Christian churches will be
forced to define their positions, either in terms that will identify
them with this renascence, or that will lead to the release of their
more liberal adherents. Its probable obligations to Eastern thought
are less readily estimated by a European writer.
Modern religion has no revelation and no founder; it is the
privilege and possession of no coterie of disciples or exponents; it
is appearing simultaneously round and about the world exactly as a
crystallising substance appears here and there in a super-saturated
solution. It is a process of truth, guided by the divinity in men.
It needs no other guidance, and no protection. It needs nothing but
freedom, free speech, and honest statement. Out of the most mixed
and impure solutions a growing crystal is infallibly able to select
its substance. The diamond arises bright, definite, and pure out of
a dark matrix of structureless confusion.
This metaphor of crystallisation is perhaps the best symbol of the
advent and growth of the new understanding. It has no church, no
authorities, no teachers, no orthodoxy. It does not even thrust and
struggle among the other things; simply it grows clear. There will
be no putting an end to it. It arrives inevitably, and it will
continue to separate itself out from confusing ideas. It becomes,
as it were the Koh-i-noor; it is a Mountain of Light, growing and
increasing. It is an all-pervading lucidity, a brightness and
clearness. It has no head to smite, no body you can destroy; it
overleaps all barriers; it breaks out in despite of every enclosure.
It will compel all things to orient themselves to it.
It comes as the dawn comes, through whatever clouds and mists may be
here or whatever smoke and curtains may be there. It comes as the
day comes to the ships that put to sea.
It is the Kingdom of God at hand.