time: the refreshing river 



of England at their coronations. Religion, like Folk Art, is the spiritual 

 protest of the oppressed creature, and organised religion is an opiate 

 in so far as it canalises and confines this protest purely to the spiritual 

 realm, turning it thus into an escape from the real. 



Thus religion begins with fear; is stabilised by priests as an instru- 

 ment of subjection; is transformed by prophets into ever higher 

 forms of the sense of the holy, and ends in the idea of love as holy. 

 By removing earthly oppression, the necessity for spiritual compensa- 

 tions is also largely removed, and in this way when perfect love casts 

 out fear, religion (in one sense) goes with it. In another sense it remains 

 as the symbolism of comradeship. Hence the paradox of communism — 

 the only persons in the world to-day who take the Gospels seriously 

 are just those who declare themselves the enemies of all religion. 

 This fact, I cannot help feeling, might be more congenial to the 

 central figure of the Gospels than most christians would imagine. 

 For when that which is perfect is come (the Kingdom of God), that 

 which is imperfect (organised religion) shall be done away. Or, as 

 John Lewis has put it,^ Religion must die to be born again as the 

 holy spirit of a righteous social order. 



The Parallel of Folk Art, 



Further mention of folk art at this point is no digression. As the 

 semi-inarticulate manifestation of the consciousness of an oppressed 

 class, it demands comparison with religion. And here also the sacra- 

 mental principle is evident; the actors in the mummers' play are 

 saying far more than they mean, the sword-dancers and the wren- 

 hunters are symbolic to the core. Nor is this remote from Haldane, 

 writing in his study his last contribution, for no one knew better the 

 coalfields than he, and no one could have watched the rapper sword- 

 dancers of Northumberland and Durham with greater sympathy. But 

 the truth has never yet been told about folk-verse, folk-music, folk- 

 dance. The folk-songs of England are the songs of the peasantry 

 (labourers, cowmen, woodmen, shepherds, etc.), the seamen (in the 

 form of chantys), and other types such as the town artisan and trades- 

 man, the peddlar, and the rank-and-file of the army. And two features 

 of working-class life especially have stamped their character upon the 

 folk-songs, first the lack of education of the people, and second the 

 hardness of their life and the lack of security in their occupations. The 

 second is the more important. In the haunting minor tunes, the 



■"• In Christianity and the Social Revolution (London, 1935). 



128 



