Let them expel
you, struggling valiantly and resolved to return so soon as they release
you, to hammer at the door. But withdrawing--sulking--going off in a
serene huff to live by yourself spiritually and materially in your own
way--that is voluntary damnation, the denial of the Brotherhood of Man.
Be a rebel or a revolutionary to your heart's content, but a mere
seceder never.
For otherwise it is manifest that we shall have to pay for each step of
moral and intellectual progress with a fresh start, with a conflict
between the new organization and the old from which it sprang, a
perpetually-recurring parricide. There will be a series of religious
institutions in developing order, each containing the remnant too dull
or too hypocritical to secede at the time of stress that began the new
body. Something of the sort has indeed happened to both the Catholic and
the English Protestant churches. We have the intellectual and moral
guidance of the people falling more and more into the hands of an
informal Church of morally impassioned leaders, writers, speakers, and
the like, while the beautiful cathedrals in which their predecessors
sheltered fall more and more into the hands of an uninspiring,
retrogressive but conforming clergy.
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