1. “The Pre-eminence of the Spiritual Experience.
2. “The Spiritual Experience may be realized independently of any special occasion, rite, or mediating person, except our Lord.
3. “Membership of the Church of Christ is of such a character that any outward recognition fails adequately to determine it.”
If the complete Christian message is to be given, if the Christian Church is to enter fully into an understanding of the mind of the Master, this aspect of truth needs to be emphasized, not only by words but by lives, and not only by the lives of individuals but by that added emphasis which comes through the existence of a corporate Body, whose very existence depends upon the validity of this tremendous fact. Our position as a Society does depend upon this truth, and out of it grow many other of our special contributions, if not all. We are set in the world of to-day to testify to a truth the enunciation of which has never been more urgently or more widely needed. The whole Church of Christ should be sounding forth this message. _She needs, therefore, a body of persons who stand for the principle that God deals directly with every soul of man, ever challenging the spirit of man to rest in nothing short of direct personal intercourse with God._
No one can be blind to the way in which every detail of our life is being modified by the many new inventions which accelerate the rate of living. We crowd into a single day more than our forefathers could put into a week. The express train, the telegraph and the telephone, the typewriter, the multiplied devices for saving time—all these things are speeding up life to the point at which the time for meditation and quiet is crowded out. This is surely a great and growing danger of which none of us is wholly unconscious.
I have been surprised to find in how many different circles there is at the present time a feeling of dissatisfaction with the forms of worship which have for long been regarded as sufficiently satisfactory. I know a number of cases where, in high church circles, prominent people are feeling after something more akin to a Quaker Meeting than anything else. I am also intimately associated with some of the most living movements in my own country, in which meetings have been held on the same lines. This does not mean that great value does not still attach to regular arranged services. No doubt the vast majority of those who attend the services of the Anglican Church are still finding out that their spiritual needs are met thereby; but, there are others, and some of them are choice spirits, who feel the need of more liberty and who crave for more stillness in their worship. They are coming to recognize the great danger of the regular pre-arranged service such as is usual in most other denominations. They fear, perhaps, the invasion of the sanctuary by the spirit of rush and hurry.