It would be safer and more
indisputable to say that nothing compared with religion
but politics, and nothing compared with politics but
religion. In offering this proposition also we must think
of our dimensions. There is a religious fervour in Oxford,
in Mecca, in Benares, and the sign for these ideas is
the same; we have to apply ourselves to the interpretation.
In Elgin religious fervour was not beautiful, or dramatic,
or self-immolating; it was reasonable. You were perhaps
your own first creditor; after that your debt was to your
Maker. You discharged this obligation in a spirit of
sturdy equity: if the children didn't go to Sunday school
you knew the reason why. The habit of church attendance
was not only a basis of respectability, but practically
the only one: a person who was "never known to put his
head inside a church door" could not be more severely
reprobated, by Mrs Murchison at all events. It was the
normal thing, the thing which formed the backbone of
life, sustaining to the serious, impressive to the light,
indispensable to the rest, and the thing that was more
than any of these, which you can only know when you stand
in the churches among the congregations. Within its
prescribed limitations it was for many the intellectual
exercise, for more the emotional lift, and for all the
unfailing distraction of the week.
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