October 2026

 

‘There are three kinds of religion: the religion of the intellect, the religion of the imagination, and the religion of the heart’. I came across this quotation dating from the middle of the nineteenth century and hence from the early days of Anglo-Catholicism but which nevertheless has meaning for us today. I’m not quite sure how to disentangle the religion of the imagination from the religion of the heart, for both are rather nebulous and intensely individual inward responses to God. The accusation could be levelled that these concepts are more emotional than spiritual, but we have to recall that we are human beings trying to grasp the intangible, the infinite, and we can only feel such a relationship in the silence of our hearts. After all ‘God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them’.

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In former years much anger was expressed both verbally and in newspapers, tracts, and books bemoaning the ‘excesses’ of Anglo-Catholic worship, with its music, colour, ritual, beautiful churches, candles, and ‘bells and smells’. I would retaliate that these things are enacted to lead us into the ineffable mystery of God, in other words into the religion of the imagination and the heart – as indeed does the religion of the intellect.

The religion of the intellect, however, is not the sole province of clergy and theologians for it belongs to us all. ‘To engage the brain’ in matters of faith can only deepening our perception of matters which encounter as we worship in our imagination and in our hearts.

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It is impossible to contain the mystery of God in word or act: we can only enter what a mediaeval English writer described as ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ in the silence of the heart, in the stillness of the mind.

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Deacon Douglas Macmillan

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The Collect

 

O God,

forasmuch as without you we are not able to please you;
mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things

direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Amen