"...there is a right feeling, right experience and right enjoyment just as much as right action."

Can we reasonably assume that God is interested only in our actions? Is he indifferent to the matter of right feelings, right experiences and right enjoyments? And is this a conclusion justifiably drawn from a reading the Psalms?

I think it is not.

Most of our contemporaries believe that whatever limitations are imposed on us by a decadent ambient culture will somehow be adequate to the task of right living. Most assume that reform can be measured in millimeters when in fact it will be measured in metric tons, by which I mean to say that we are not only wrong in thinking that our change can be incremental, we have not yet grasped the proper unit of measure.

I thought about this again yesterday as our choir led us in a rather silly contemplation of the Promised Land. If the realities of the Christian life cannot be conceived in a culture of misguided activities and misapprehended artifacts, there will be no way to correct the sensibilities of all those kids who heard our choir sing. We will not fix in a classroom what we broke in our public worship.

If Scruton is correct in seeing culture as a way of conveying right feelings, and if Eliot is properly concerned that the loss of faith is preceded by a distortion of sensibility, then these are issues of ultimate significance.

Sentimental forms are not adequate to express a very, very unsentimental faith.