Page:What We Want.djvu/10

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vi
PREFACE

was never so necessary in the interests of real religious influence and growth as at the present day; that even under all the aberrations of her momentary policy she has cherished it as the pearl of great price. And their sole desire is to remind her of the conditions under which alone she can continue to uphold that witness among Western peoples.

They are not rebels against authority. They would but remind authority of its nature, its origin, its purpose. They would remind those who are for the moment the guardians of authority in their Church that it consists, not in the imposition of arbitrary fiats, but in the recovery and crystallization of the faith which is vaguely diffused throughout and revealed in the common life. They would remind them that authority proceeds from the Holy Spirit—i.e., from all those