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People generally—unconsciously often—have a sense of goodness, or righteousness, as something which is higher than themselves. They are in a way dissatisfied with their own selfishness, and also with a state of society founded on selfishness. There is a widely spread expectation of a better time which will be swayed by dominant goodness. The people have thus, in some degree, the second constituent of religion, in that they have the thought that the High and Mighty which inhabits Eternity is good.

3. When, however, we come to the third constituent, we have at once to admit that the non-church-going population has no means of realizing the Most High in a form which sustains and inspires its action. It has no close or personal touch or communion with this goodness; no form which, like a picture or like a common meal, by its associations of memory or hope rouses its feelings; nothing which, holding the thought, stirs the emotions and works the thought into daily life. The forms of religion, the Churches, the doctrines, the ritual, the sacraments, which meant so much to their fathers and to some of their neighbours, mean nothing to them. They have lost touch with the forms of religious thought as they have not lost touch with the forms of political thought.