A WAYFARER'S FAITH: ASPECTS OF THE COMMON BASIS OF RELIGIOUSLIFE
By
T. Edmund Harvey
London: Wells Gardner, Barton and Co., Ltd.
3 & 4, Paternoster Buildings, B.C. and 44, Victoria Street, S.W.
[1913]
[Printed] Headley Brothers, Bishopsgate E.C.; and Ashford, Kent
![[Cover image]](https://oldbook.b-cdn.net/kitaplar/7/pg64544-h/images/cover.jpg)
Some of these pages were originally prepared by the writer for theuse of his fellow members in the Society of Friends. He is indebted tothe courtesy of the Editor of The Nation for permission tomake use of two chapters which have appeared in its columns in aslightly different form.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER[...]PAGE
I. THE COMMON BASIS OF RELIGIOUSLIFE I
II. THE INNER LIFE OF THE CHURCH2O
III. THE PROPHET IN THE CHURCH 33
V. SOME OF NATURE'S SACRAMENTS85
VI. INSTITUTIONS AND INSPIRATION91
CHAPTER I. THE COMMON BASIS OFRELIGIOUS LIFE.
THERE is a well known story of how a man of letters a century ago,when questioned as to his religious views, answered that all sensiblemen were of one religion, and to the further query as to what thatreligion might be, made the curt response: "Sir, sensible men neversay." The story is characteristic of its age, and of the attitudetowards religion of some of its ablest men. Many of the greatestthinkers, whatever the religious opinions of the circle in which theywere educated may have been, held themselves aloof from controversy onquestions of creed and church, looking upon such disputes with thekindly contempt of tolerant beings who themselves had reached a largerand freer atmosphere than that which surrounded those who struggledamid the dust of the plains beneath their feet. Something of thisspirit, which is so clearly manifested in the world of politics andletters, can be seen too in many of the prominent religiousorganisations of the day. Men were weary of the hateful bitternesswhich had characterised the theological [p.2] controversies of theseventeenth century, and the wider outlook which came with the age ofillumination showed itself even as late as the beginning of thenineteenth century, when in Germany Catholic and Protestantecclesiastical authorities united in a common religious celebration atFulda of the anniversary of the mission of Saint Boniface. But beneaththe surface of this toleration, which seemed to be increasing betweenCatholic, Protestant and Jew, we may perhaps feel that the unitinginfluence lay not so much in a profound sense of the underlyingverities common to all their various forms of faith as in a certainvagueness as to any form of dogmatic belief, a distrust of dogma initself, if not an indifference to the things which that dogmaattempted to represent. Men were willing to leave others free to havetheir own religious beliefs, and distrusted the enthusiasm of thefanatic, of the man who wished to convert others to view life as hehimself did. The profession of a recognition