The Sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

Cynics might identify in these observations the philosophy of Christopher Hitchens, only in reverse. But that, of course, is what makes them cynics. For Scruton, the need "to refresh ourselves . . . to be purged of our transgressions, and to begin again with a clean slate" is at the very heart of consciousness itself and can be assuaged only in the religious reflux of penance. If that is true, then the fundamental question of religion becomes as much sociological as theological. Put another way, it is about how to incorporate the need for penance, and the pursuit of forgiveness, within the context of ordinary life. And if the solution to this question is indeed a church, that is, not just an article of faith but also a form of membership, then any viable and peaceful church must be at once a vehicle through which to inspire religious sentiment (to enable us to seek beyond ourselves) and an instrument for containing religious sentiment (to protect us from the temptation to discover the deity in ourselves).

Scruton believes that the Church of England performed this peculiar dual function particularly well for the English people over almost five centuries. In part, he argues this was precisely because it was Established, thereby subject to statutory provision and parliamentary oversight. In part too, it was the result of its grounding in the whole of national life-not just rural, agricultural and feudal, but also urban, industrial and class-conscious-and its consequent openness to the full range of vernacular expression, from neo-Gothic architecture to Hymns Ancient and Modern. Above all, it was owed to a historic literary achievement, contingently conceived and now foolishly imperilled, which consecrated the contents of ordinary life in a common language, at once worthy of God and yet accessible to every man. Hence the significance of the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer.

Some will find this account simply nostalgic. Others will deride its arguments as fogeyish. They should at least be encouraged to consider the possibility that they are mistaken. Even today-especially today-perceptive British Muslims lament the fate of England's Anglican establishment. At the same time, intelligent unbelievers perform passages from 17th-century scripture to packed audiences in the National Theatre.  Few who attend humanist funerals discover in the experience any improvement in the traditional burial service of the dead. There is, in other words, a real point behind such seemingly wistful reflections. Something actually is being lost, and in front of our very eyes. Is it too fanciful to identify that loss as the final eclipse of the most effective instrument this country ever invented to enable rich and poor, educated and uneducated, even devout and non-committed, to communicate their most serious concerns to one another? And is not the proper response to that kind of cultural collapse the sort of sustained sadness outlined in this elegiac essay?