And when I see how little there is to impede
and bewilder us, I cannot but accept,--should it be for many
years,--the forlornness, the want of fit expression, the
darkness as to what is to be expressed, even that characterize
our time.
'But I do not, therefore, as some of our friends do, believe
that it will always be so, and that the church is tottering to
its grave, never to rise again. The church was the growth of
human nature, and it is so still. It is but one result of the
impulse which makes two friends clasp one another's hands,
look into one another's eyes at sight of beauty, or the
utterance of a feeling of piety. So soon as the Spirit has
mourned and sought, and waited long enough to open new depths,
and has found something to express, there will again be
a Cultus, a Church. The very people, who say that none is
needed, make one at once. They talk with, they write to one
another. They listen to music, they sustain themselves with
the poets; they like that one voice should tell the thoughts
of several minds, one gesture proclaim that the same life is
at the same moment in many breasts.
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