To believe this in
our day may require courage, even a certain childish simplicity; but
were not courage and a certain childish simplicity always requisite
for Christian faith? It never was a religion for the rationalist and
the worldling; it was based on alienation from the world, from the
intellectual world no less than from the economic and political. It
flourished in the Oriental imagination that is able to treat all
existence with disdain and to hold it superbly at arm's length, and at
the same time is subject to visions and false memories, is swayed by
the eloquence of private passion, and raises confidently to heaven the
cry of the poor, the bereaved, and the distressed. Its daily bread,
from the beginning, was hope for a miraculous change of scene, for
prison-walls falling to the ground about it, for a heart inwardly
comforted, and a shower of good things from the sky.
It is clear that a supernaturalistic faith of this sort, which might
wholly inspire some revolutionary sect, can never wholly inspire human
society. Whenever a nation is converted to Christianity, its
Christianity, in practice, must be largely converted into paganism.
The true Christian is in all countries a pilgrim and a stranger; not
his kinsmen, but whoever does the will of his Father who is in heaven
is his brother and sister and mother and his real compatriot.
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