The Star in the West

THE NEW WINE 289 of invoking the Visible Image of the Invisible . Thus by a living chain religion lived-in the Mysteries of Eleusis .I Thus true religion consists in a spontaneous out burst of passionless illuminism , and not in the regular ranting of the boundless buncombe of a bawdy book . Better be a Shaker , or a camp -meeting homunculus , or a Chatauqua gurl, or a Keswick week lunatic , or an Evan Roberts revivalist , or even a common maniac , than a smug Evangelical banker's clerk , with a greasy wife , and three gifted children to be bank clerks after him ! That is , if religion is your aim : if you are spiritually minded . ? . Go out one night to a distant and lonely heath , if no moun tain summit is available : then at midnight repeat the Lord's Prayer , or any invocation with which you happen to be familiar , or one made up by yourself , or one consisting wholly of senseless and barbarous words . Repeat it solemnly and aloud , expectant of some great and mysterious result. I pledge myself , if you have a spark of religion in you , that is , if you are properly a human being, that you will (at the very least ) experience a deeper sense of spiritual com munion than you have ever obtained by a course of church going , The Irishman whose first question on landing at New York was “ Is there a Government in this country ? ” and on being told “ Yes,” instantly re plied : “ Then I'm agin it , ' must have travelled many a league along the road to adeptship , and if ten such men be found in any State at the same time , then a period of decadence may be said to have begun ; but it is not every day that ten righteous men can be found in Sodom ; for the inhabitants of that city of 1 Eleusis , vol. iii, p . 225 . 2 Ibid . 3 Ibid . vol . iii , p . 224 . 4 The Sword of Song , vol . ii, p . 206 . U