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Nor on the other hand did his music breathe the pessimism and naturalism that came with the last rebound of Romantic reaction. Rather was his vein one of high spiritual absorption not so much in recoil, as merely apart from the world in a kind of pious seclusion. Perhaps his main point of view was the church-organ. He seems a religious prophet in a non-religious age.
A sudden discharge of feeling in a special direction leading to a changed attitude, more or less permanent towards life, may be seen in connection with the non-religious life, although it fails to receive the attention bestowed on changes that are connected with religion.
Even where sound religion without superstition and without pseudophilosophy stands behind the therapeutic work, the community will not give up the question whether the church does not necessarily neglect by it the interests which are superior. The community becomes more and more strongly aware that too many factors of our modern society urge the church to undertake non-religious work.
Much of the vagueness and sentimentalism of present preaching, its uncritical impressionism, is due to the influence of the non-religious or, at least, the insufficiently religious character of the ruling ideas and motives outside the church which are impinging upon it, and upon the rest of the thinking of the moment.
So in the Catholic Church there are proletarian rebellions; there is many a priest who does not carry out the political orders of his superiors, but goes to the polls and votes for his class instead of for his pope. In Ireland, as I write, the young priests are defying their bishops and joining the Sinn Fein, a non-religious movement for an Irish Republic.
All their work has been for altars or church walls or large public places. We have seen nothing for a domestic wall but little mannered Longhis, without any imagination, or topographical Canalettos and Guardis. And then we turn a corner and are confronted by this! not only a beautiful picture and a non-religious picture but a picture painted to hang on a wall.
Could she honestly tell that it might not lead to a judgment that should call her to account for her non-religious influence over her scholars? Marion was growing heavy-hearted; she wanted at least to do no harm in the world if she could do no good.
Moral ties were as loose as they could reasonably be; and the attitude of the Church towards the sexual relation had forced both the religious and the non-religious mind into wholly unhealthy channels. This last aspect of the subject has been little dealt with, but it is unquestionably a very real one. A German writer says:
Many psychologies of religion define this contemplation as aesthetic, and make worship a higher form of delight. This appears to me a quite typical non-religious interpretation of a religious experience. There are four words which need explaining when we talk of worship. They are: wonder, admiration, awe, reverence.
A one-sided training, even when its one-sidedness takes the form of specialising in theology, is a non-religious, and may well become an irreligious training, for it does not lead to, and may well lead away from, knowledge of God. And if we have never before realised how great are the opportunities and responsibilities of the teacher, we must surely do so now.
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