Real mystics don’t hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you’ve seen it it’s still a mystery.

But the mystagogues hide a thing in darkness and secrecy, and when you find it, it’s a platitude.

G. K. Chesterton, ‘The Arrow of Heaven’

Let me first state my views on salient points, so as to declare my hand.

Religion in its traditional forms is a thing of the past - largely due to the development of science and to the discrediting by the sciences of religion’s archaic views of the world and of man. There are constant attempts to retain and revitalize parts or aspects of traditional religion in the new conditions. These are transformed ritual, transformed faith, and meaning, where meaning is meant to retain aspects of salvation. It turns out that these three aspects rather hang together, and that faith still seems to clash with science. It is my observation that these days see the growth of a new silent avant-garde of able and civic-minded religious scientists. They belong to various denominations and hold a new version of religious philosophy which follows Duhem, Buber, and Polanyi. It is compatible with science and revives ritual and faith in a desperate effort to find meaning. I oppose this avant-garde philosophy as one which makes its holders more living-dead than is bearable, as one which empties both science and religion of their significance. Fol­lowing Arthur Edward Waite, 1 find quest to be more significant in religion than faith, or ritual, or salvation. Like Russell in his less belli­cose and more pensive moods, I find quest to be the heart of research, and I find it full of religious overtones. The true religion, the quest, seems to be in science now as in Spinoza’s days.

I.