Page:Religion of a Sceptic (IA religionofscepti00powy).djvu/54

to be at the same time sympathetic and unruffled.

'There may or may not be gods," the first mind would say. "How strange, how beautiful, that such hallowed ecstasies should appear at all in this chance-driven world!"

"This popular worship of the gods," the second mind would say, "is doubtless an ignorant and superstitious expression of that Divine Order and Divine Wisdom that 'sweetly and strongly' regulate the universe."

The great festivals of the church are, as we have Tainted before, vast grey milestones, set up upon the king's high-road along which all men have to travel.

One can pass them by without so much as turning one's head; and for each person they have different associations; but the mere sight of them there, as we move forward, is something that gathers our days into a fulfilled pattern, something that enables us to see the track we have made, up hill, down dale, "by pavéd fountain and by rushy brook," as if from the vantage-ground of a mountain-ridge.

And it is the same with the contemplation of such historic dogmas as that of the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection. To attempt to modernize these dogmas is to sacrifice all the sweet, rich, dim encrustation of racial memories with which, one by one, they are inscribed.