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They need a church and religious teachers and members that have a sense of mission, a reason and purpose for living that is related to all the exciting meanings of human life, instead of being concerned with such irrelevancies as churchism, parochialism, institutionalism, and other modern idols.
Gilman, and partly to the conservatism of its vestry, the institutionalism of St. John's was by no means up to date. No settlement house, with day nurseries, was maintained in the slums. The parish house, built in the, early nineties, had its gymnasium hall and class and reading rooms, but was not what in these rapidly moving times would be called modern.
One begins to think that he is likely to disappoint many of those who once regarded him as the future statesman of a Christianity somewhat less embarrassed by institutionalism. It is probable, one fears, that he may conclude at Lambeth a career in theology comparable with that of Mr. Winston Churchill in politics.
With all of this, it is strange to find a man of so much learning who had so little sympathy with the comparative study of religions, who was such a dogmatist on behalf of his own inadequate notion of revelation, the logical effect of whose teaching concerning the Church would be the revival of an institutionalism and externalism such as Protestantism has hardly known.
He is also alive to the dangers connected with that kind of asceticism which is based on theories of the impurity of the body the typical Oriental form of world-renunciation. But he does not appear to have foreseen the unethical and polytheistic developments of sacramental institutionalism. In this particular his Judaising opponents had a little more justification than he is willing to allow them.
It is difficult to find a proof of infallible and supernatural wisdom in the evolution of which these are the last terms. We read with the utmost sympathy and admiration Baron von Hügel's loyal and reverent appeals to the authorities of his Church, that they may draw out the strong and beneficent powers of institutionalism, and avoid its insidious dangers.
We do not wish to be extreme, but it is hard to see how, in our day, for example, any who fail to put human rights in the first place can really master the scriptural revelation. We have spoken of the Master's rebukes of any form of institutionalism which stands in the way of human rights.
And it must not be afraid to impart that knowledge in modern terms which all can understand. All this it can and will do if its members sufficiently desire it: which means, if those who care intensely for the life of the Spirit accept their corporate responsibilities. In the last resort, criticism of the Church, of Christian institutionalism, is really criticism of ourselves.
Lastly, we must ask whether institutionalism is really a spiritual and moral force. Of the advantages of esprit de corps I have spoken already. No one can doubt that unity is strength, or that Catholicism has an immense advantage over its rivals in the efficiency of its organisation. But is not this advantage dearly purchased? Party loyalty is notoriously unscrupulous.
Yet the present generation of women has gone through the same preliminary education in schools with its brothers; and many women in high schools and colleges have made a more extended study of political institutionalism.
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