Alec de Candole

The Faith of a Subaltern

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THE FAITH OF A SUBALTERN : Essays on Religion and Life. By Alec de Candole, Lieutenant in the Wiltshire Regiment, killed in action September 1918.
Pp. xi, 92, with Portrait. Crown 8vo. Cambridge: -At the University Press. 1919. 2s. 6d. net.

THIS is a remarkable little book, and is of interest not only to theologians, but to students of history. It brings out clearly the points which have in the past divided the Church and its officers from a large proportion of the laity. And if the spirit which imbues these pages, and is the outcome of the war and all that it has meant, finds wide acceptance amongst leaders of thought, this book may mark a turning point in the history of the Church. It is of course only one of many works which denotes a revolt against the close clinging to tradition, and the magnifying of what seem to many the unimportant points in Christian teaching. But it is remarkable in its breadth of outlook and in the reverence with which it deals with points which have proved matter of controversy for two thousand years. Whether or not the future history of the Church will be affected seriously by the lessons of the last five years we cannot yet say; but few works have appeared which more clearly show the present tendencies and the possibilities of future development.

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THE FAITH OF A SUBALTERN
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THE FAITH OF A
SUBALTERN
ESSAYS ON RELIGION AND LIFE
BY
I ALEC DE CANDOLE
LIEUTENANT IN THE WILTSHIRE REGIMENT
KILLED IN ACTION, SEPTEMBER 1918
WITH A PREFACE BY
THE VERY REV. THE DEAN OF BRISTOL
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1919
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
THE writer of these Essays was born at Cheltenham
on January z6th, 1897. His first school-days
were spent at St Faith's, Cambridge, with Mr
R. S. Goodchild. In 1908 he went to St Andrew's,
Southborough (Rev. Reginald Bull). Two years
later he was elected to a Foundation scholarship
at Marlborough adding to it a Senior scholarship
in 1912. At his schools he showed great
promise and gained many prizes. In December,
1915, he was elected to an open Classical Exhibition
at Trinity College, Cambridge. In the
following April he left school for the Army and
after training at a Cadet School in Oxford he was
appointed to a Commission in the 4th Wilts.
Regiment and proceeded to France in April, 1917.
After short leave in the following September he
returned to France, and was wounded on October
z8th, coming back to England in November.
After some months on Salisbury Plain, where in
the early part of 1918 he wrote these Essays, he
was attached to the Machine Gun Corps and
went to Grantham in April. In July he left again
for France where he was killed on the night of
September 3rd, 1918.
H. L. C. DE C.
January , 1919
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PREFACE
As Alec de Candole's Headmaster and friend, I
have been given the privilege of writing a short
preface to this little volume of Theological
Essays. I strongly recommend to the attention of
clergy and laity alike this young officer's vigorous
profession of the faith that was in him. It is a
valuable contribution to religious thought.
The boy's personality was remarkable and could
not fail to impress itself on those with whom he
came in contact, whether they were young or old.
Of the depth in him there was no doubt from his
early boyhood: the breadth of his outlook on life
it was interesting to watch develop : to the height
of his spiritual nature his book of poems Avalon1
testifies, as well as this present volume, which he
left behind him at his early death in Flanders.
When in the Sixth Form at Marlborough he
was a good Classical scholar : but he was much
more. He was avid of ideas and loved to wrestle
with them and to argue over them. His mind was
remarkably keen to detect error, and stern in rejecting
it. Even more than most clever boys he
was a remorseless critic, but his criticisms were
This was printed privately, but is to be published in a
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viii PREFACE
governed by a strictly logical sense and fairness.
His one great object of attainment was truth, truth
at all costs. It is this craving for truth that is the
chief feature of the present work. The reader must
remember that it is the product of only twentyone
years of life, thought and experience. But yet
there is maturity in his grasp of problems and in
handling them, and evidence of a deeply religious
life. The author commands attention by his
obvious sincerity, as well as by his ability.
Like Charles Sorley, his rather older contemporary
at school, whom he greatly loved, and
whom he here quotes, he was a splendid rebel: a
rebel against the institutional, the conventional
and the traditionally accepted, when and where, if
tried by canons of truth and principle, he found
them wanting. Much that Alec de Candole here
writes will challenge criticism, especially in schools
of thought to which he was clearly and strongly
opposed. Personally I do not accept all that the
boy says, but after reading his Essays I feel that
he was one who had the power of envisaging truth,
and truth whole. There is fresh air, and sunshine
all through, and a degree of common-sense that
is stimulating and refreshing. He has conviction
and a trenchant power of expression. In dealing
with narrowness and exclusiveness he displays a
just ruthlessness, and in the face of much exPREFACE
ix
aggerated institutionalism declares boldly for
Christ's fundamental principles, setting Christianity
before Churchmanship. Boy though he is,
he expresses the views of a large number of thinking
Churchmen whose opinions and convictions,
I think and hope, will now gain fuller presentment
after the War.
This youth would surely, had he lived, have
matured into a great force. For he had the root
of the matter in him. His hope for the future was
ordination in the Church of England, to which he
was devotedly attached, in spite of his strong dislike
and vigorous criticism of certain phases and
tendencies in its modern development. "The
seed and full flower of all human goodness is the
life and death and love of Jesus." A finer dying
message no boy ever left behind him.
May this volume, with its strong and nobly
expressed faith, bring comfort to that new home
beneath the towers of Westminster, a home he
never knew but would have passionately loved !
ST J. B. WYNNE WILLSON
THE DEANERY,
BRISTOL,
November 1918
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CONTENTS
I. GOD . . . . . . PAGE I
H. JESUS OF NAZARETH . . • 7
II. THE CHURCH . . . . . 17
V. DOGMA, ORDER, AND CHRISTIAN
CHARITY . . . . . 25
V. INFALLIBILITY . . . . 32
TI. REASON AND FAITH . . . 40
[I. THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN
JESUS . . . . . - 47
[I. SIN, PENITENCE, AND ATONEMENT
. . . . 55
K. MORALITY, TRUTH, AND BEAUTY 64
K. IMMORTALITY . . . . 67
.I. CHRISTIANITY . . . . 74
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CHAPTER I
GOD
IF we examine the Apostles' Creed, which may
be called the authoritative statement of what
were in the early centuries of Christianity regarded
as its fundamentals, we shall notice that it
contains three great postulates, typified by the
Three Persons of the Trinity : "I believe in
GOD," "in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord,"
"in the Holy Catholic Church"---the Christian
sphere of the operation of the Spirit of GOD. In
other words : (1) GOD exists, (z) His supreme revelation
was in Jesus Christ, (3) He is still alive, and
working : par excellence, in the society which Jesus
founded—the Church, Holy because of her origin,
and Catholic because of her ideal inclusiveness.
With regard to the first of these postulates, it
may be said outright that the existence of GOD is
not a point which can be proved to the hilt by pure
reason. It is always possible, it seems to me, to
believe that the world was made by chance, and
acts by chance and more or less unfathomable
laws. This explains a great deal ; indeed, it could
theoretically explain anything: for where everything
happens by chance, anything at all may
happen. At the same time, there is much which it
does not explain satisfactorily. You may say that
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I
z GOD
the sun and the stars are glowing gases : that the
moon is a dead rock, shining by the sun's reflected
light: that the earth and the planets revolve round
the sun owing to attraction and a balance of centripetal
and centrifugal forces. You may trace back
the earth to a nebula and, if you like, that nebula
to a part of a larger nebula, now developed and
organised into the Solar System ; but you have not
discovered the origin of those gases, or the reason
for their movement, or of their heat and their
tendency to cool, contract, and harden. You may
talk of attraction and gravitation, of the origin of
life in a protoplasm. It may be you will yet learn
to produce life from lifelessness : but what is
attraction and why ? Above all, what is life ? What
is this great principle that differentiates a protoplasm
from a rock, and has developed eventually
a Plato, a Caesar, a Francis ? Fatalism must remain
agnostic on these points. Theism has an
answer, a personal Creator. Thus, at the lowest,
the existence of GOD-of a personal Supreme
Being—is a very sound and reasonable scientific
hypothesis. And when we consider man, we are
again brought up short in our Fatalism. Man is a
fact, and his emotions and aspirations,—yes, his
very superstitions,—are facts, whatever you think
of them; and you have got to deal with them. It is
no good talking about the "false fear of the gods,"
and saying that man's primitive belief in the supernatural
is the result of his observation of phenomena—
such as lightning and thunder—which he
GOD
could not explain, but which are now known to
have a "perfectly natural" explanation. It does
not seem quite convincing to assert that men invented
what they had no pattern or precedent for
believing in. And apart from this, it is not only
savages who have had a sincere and working belief
in what they could not see around them.
Almost all the greatest men of the world have
believed in some kind of GOD. Socrates and Plato
were not easily hoodwinked, nor men afraid of
" following whithersoever their reason might lead,"
yet they believed in a GOD as fervently as their
fellow-countrymen, and more ideally and more
rationally. Cromwell was a hard-headed and
eminently " practical " man; one of our greatest
generals and administrators; who started life
humbly, and lived to create the Ironsides, to
revolutionise cavalry warfare, to refuse a crown
but rule nevertheless as an autocrat, or perhaps
theocrat or conscious Vicegerent of GOD; to make
England's name respected and feared wherever a
hand was raised against the followers of the Reformers.
Yet, though his GOD was not quite ours,
we must recognise that few men have ever lived so
much " as ever in his great taskmaster's eye." His
sentries would notice him awake in his tent all
night, studying his Bible : then in the morning he
would lead his men to victory, a Psalm as a battlecry
on his lips. Belief in GOD is not the prerogative
only of feeble intellects.
There is much else of what we may call cir-
I-2
GOD
cumstantial evidence that points towards theism;
but there is only room for one more argument,—
which may be stated shortly thus : Man is not only
material, he has feelings and will. These nonmaterial
elements may even influence the physical
body as when a man blenches for fear, or his heart
beats wildly with excitement. Most important of
all is his character and personality—quite undeniably
an existent thing, which must be taken
account of. Now whence is this ? Can what is impersonal
produce what is personal ? " I worst e'en
the Giver in one gift," if I wake in the Universe
endowed with will and personality to find that
this Universe that has made me is impersonal and
unknowing. Thus it is no great assumption to say
that GOD exists, and if He exists, obviously our
first duty and our interest is to know what we can
of Him—what His character is, and what His laws
are. Then we shall know how we stand with the
Universe in which we have found ourselves; and
hence it is that man has for ever searched for GOD.
..This it is that links together as one
The sad continual companies of men; ...
...That souls weary and hearts afire
Have everywhere besought him, everywhere
Have found and found him not; and age to age,
Though all else pass and fail, delivereth
At least the great tradition of their God'.
If, then, theism is established against atheism,
what next? Polytheism as a recognised belief is
F. W. H. Myers, St John the Baptist (Poems. p. 61).
GOD
dead in Western Europe at least: if we are theists,
we are almost certainly monotheists. But there is
a curious form of theism which has revived a little
lately—the belief in a GOD Who is not omnipotent,
and hence not only uses, but actually must depend
on, human help. Monotheism includes dualism,
if one of the two powers is definitely the stronger;
but a dualism or any philosophy that leaves the
Supreme Power not yet omnipotent, is a strange
thing. If one GOD made the Universe, one GOD
must be omnipotent in it. Or else the world must
be a compromise between two or more powers
agreed that a Universe must be made, but differing
with regard to its nature ! 'Whatever more GOD
may be He must be at least the Sum of all human
activities, ideals, and aspirations. Thus, He is
supremely good. Do you demand that a man be
just, pure, consistent ? Then GOD must be the
same, only far more truly so. Is the perfect man
wise and strong and patient? So must He be to
whom man looks and tends. Do men seek truth?
Then GOD must be the truth—the final satisfaction
of the Intellect. Are there men who seek GOD
in beauty? Then GOD is there, and "thine eyes
shall see the King in His beauty." He is the
Righteous, the True, the Fair. Whatever is perfect
is in Him ; whatever seeks perfection, is from
Him; whatever climbs towards perfection, is
through Him. This must be so, if there is a GOD
at all. This, then, is the first great postulate of the
Apostles' Creed; that GOD is One, Perfect, Eternal
GOD
—the ALL. He is revealed in nature, in the faint
colours of dawn, the glory of noon, the myriad
hues of sunset, the terrible silence of the eternal
stars. He is in the freshness of spring and the
richness of autumn, in the trees and forests, rivers
and peaceful valleys, barren downs and rugged
mountains, in the stern cliffs and the tossing sea;
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man1.
He is revealed, too, in the beauty of art, in all
the pictures that were ever well painted, in all
great architecture and sculpture, in all music and
poetry that have in any degree attained power or
loveliness ; no one who has ever truly known any
art has not said in some sort, " GOD is here." Nor
is He less revealed in all the great men who have
trod this earth, in Moses and Isaiah, Plato and
Aurelius, Buddha and Confucius and Mohammed,
Pericles and Caesar,—yes, and Napoleon. This is
not poetic fancy; no theism can say less.
But the greatest revelation of GOD that has been
shown to us is not His power, or beauty, or truth,
or even His goodness; but His love. We know
Him now as Father, if we accept this revelation,
and this was given us by Jesus of Nazareth. This,
then, is our second great postulate—" I believe in
Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord." We must
next consider this revelation and the Person who
made it.
Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey.
CHAPTER II
JESUS OF NAZARETH
CHARLES LAMB is said once to have remarked:
" If Shakespeare came into the
room, we should all rise and offer him a
seat; but if Jesus Christ came in, we should kneel
down and try to touch the hem of His garment."
This truly illustrates the difference between the
feelings with which the majority of us regard Jesus
and those with which we regard even the greatest
of other men. Even so wonderful and mystical a
figure as St Francis of Assisi does not affect us in
quite the same way as does the figure of Jesus.
Yet it is worth while to examine this feeling and
to try and see how far it is genuine, and how far
merely the result of twenty centuries of the worship
of Jesus. For this is not irreverent, but rather
the truest reverence, to look back as closely as
possible on the real figure of the Founder of
Christianity. And one fundamental and obvious
fact often becomes clouded—that primarily, to
human knowledge, Jesus was not the Christ, but
the Nazarene—not a Divine revelation, but a man;
a man who lived in a certain country at a certain
period under certain rulers. During the reign of
Augustus, Emperor of Rome, Jesus was born in
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8 JESUS OF NAZARETH
Judaea, a country at that time1 ruled by Herod the
Great, a monarch who had obtained his kingdom
by acute diplomacy during the wars that followed
the assassination of Julius Caesar. Jesus lived for a
little over thirty years only, and was eventually put
to death by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate,
during the reign of Tiberius. He was thus living a
few years after the death of Horace and Maecenas,
and was more or less a contemporary of Sejanus.
This is important as we are bound in the first place
to examine His life as we would the life of any other
historical character in whom we are interested.
It is necessary, then, to find out what first-hand
evidence we have, and how far it is reliable.
Four chief works have come down to us dealing
with the life of Jesus—what we call the Four
Gospels. The Fourth of these is later than the
rest; its date and authorship are very uncertain,
and its historicity more uncertain still. We are
left with the three " Synoptists." These three
writers are not altogether independent, but two
chief sources have been traced ; one lost, named
by scholars " Q," and the other probably our present
" Gospel according to St Mark." This was
almost certainly written by St Mark, the friend of
St Peter, the first leader of the Church after the
death of Jesus, either at St Peter's dictation, or
else from immediate recollection of his reminis-
1 Or shortly before; the exact date of the birth of Jesus
being uncertain.
JESUS OF NAZARETH
cences. Moreover, as St Mark is mentioned'. as
one of the earliest Christians, it is quite likely that
he himself had seen Jesus. His book is therefore
our best guide. The first thing to notice in it is
that Jesus is very human. He could be angry and
sorry 2, disappointed 3, affectionate4, tired5. But at
the same time He stands head and shoulders above
His surroundings. He feels Himself inspired by
GOD 6 to preach and teach. He was at first popular
7, or at any rate well-known and sought after.
But He came into conflict with the Pharisees, the
professed religionists of Judaea8, and at last, going
to Jerusalem, He was arrested at their instigation,
and the Roman governor, a weak man, was persuaded
by them to crucify Him. St Mark does not
spend much time on His teaching; he is more
interested in the actions of Jesus; but he indicates
the three main lines of His doctrine :
(1) That mutual love and forbearance are
necessary between man and man9;
(2) That religion is not formalism, or tradition,
or the heritage of one nation only10;
(3) That He was Himself "the Messiah,—the
Son of the Messed"' ": that is to say, the fulfilment
of all the aspirations of Judaism, the promised
Champion and Deliverer. This claim is very
Acts xii. 12, 25 et al. 2 Mark iii. 5.
3 Mark viii. 21, ix. 19. Mark x. 21.
5 Mark iv. 38. 6 Mark i. 15.
7 Mark i. 28, v. 24, xii. 37. 8 Mark vii. 1-23.
9 Mark x. 42,45, xi. 25,26. 10 Mark vii. 1-23, 24-30.
n Mark viii. 27-30, ix. 41, xiv. 61, 6z
licrosoft
io JESUS OF NAZARETH
important, for it is the final basis of the doctrine of
the Divinity of Jesus. At present it is enough to
say that even in St Mark's Gospel this claim is
definitely and unmistakeably made. Moreover, it
is plain, both from St Mark and from the other two
Synoptists, that the disciples did not understand
what this claim meant to Jesus. They thought He
meant that He was to free Israel and rule the
world 1 ; they were anticipating a kingdom on
earth, in which they themselves should be great 2.
This was not the ambition of Jesus as He showed
in His replies to their questionings and their
quarrels " who should be greatest." What the
claim actually did mean to Jesus we must try to
consider later.
With regard to certain other qualities, the
character of Jesus has in some ways been very
negligently treated. Certain marvellous and interesting
points have been too much overlooked.
" The meekness and gentleness of Christ" have
too often overshadowed, not so much His sternness
as His manliness :just as the " non-resistance"
teaching of St Matthew v. has often obscured the
combative qualities of Christianity, which are just
as fundamental and essential, though less original.
I would insist very specially on the courage of
Jesus, both physical and moral. Jesus, simply as a
man, is worthy of a man's admiration, worthy to
be taken as a man's hero. Not only do we get such
Daniel vii. 13, 14.
2 Mark x. 35-37; Luke ix. 46; Acts i. 6.
JESUS OF NAZARETH ii
stories as that of His behaviour to the crowd at
Nazareth when He "passing through the midst of
them went His way1 "—which is less likely to be
miraculous than to be simply an example of the
well-proved fact that a man who shows no fear of
a mob is usually safe from them: but this courage
comes out especially, as might be expected, in the
later events of His life. He certainly foresaw—not
necessarily by any supernormal prevision—that if
He went to Jerusalem He would be put to death.
Yet He "steadfastly set His facet" to go there.
And then came His arrest. He knew what would
happen, that if He once fell into the hands of His
enemies, they would, by fair means or by foul, get
Him condemned to death. Yet through the whole
scene He was absolutely calm. " Friend," He said
to Judas, "wherefore art thou come ?" He forbade
His followers to use violence; "the Scriptures
must be fulfilled." And so He gave Himself
up and His disciples fled 3. And then came the
trial. " Here stand I," cried Luther to his judges,
" GOD help me ; I can do no other." But Jesus
was even braver, for He was calmer, absolutely
confident of Himself, not denying His claims,
though the confession of them was the culminating
evidence against Him. To all the witnesses He
was silent, knowing that the evidence was false,
and procured against Him by His judges. The
sham could have but one issue, and He quietly
Luke iv. 30. 2 Luke ix. 51.
3 Matt. xxvi-47-56; Mark xiv. 43-52.
12 JESUS OF NAZARETH
awaited it, with the most agonizing of deaths in
front of Him. Even when He was actually on His
way to Calvary and so over-wrought by His sufferings
and His weariness that Simon had to be called
in to carry His Cross for Him, He turned to the
women who followed Him lamenting, to bid them
not weep for Him but for themselves, and for
their children1. On the Cross His first thought
was for His persecutors, and His second for His
fellow-sufferer 2.
His moral courage was no less remarkable. No
man ever had the courage of His convictions more
fully than Jesus. He found that His teaching was
putting Him in opposition to the established religious
authorities, yet He never wavered. If it is
too much to say that He deliberately sought conflict
with them, He at least never shrank from it.
He did what He thought right, and taught as He
believed, and if the Pharisees did not like it—well,
so much the worse for the Pharisees. Whether it
was a question of keeping the Sabbath, of ceremonial
washings, of divorce, or anything else, if
His idea of GOD opposed that of others, He met
them face to face, however powerful they were.
He was not afraid of Herod's threats; which indeed
He treated with contempt. His call was a
call to manhood; "Deny thyself," He said, "take
up thy cross ; put thy hand to the plough, and
never look back; do not be ashamed of Me, and so
1 Luke xxiii. 28. 3 Luke xxiii. 34-43.
JESUS OF NAZARETH 13
shalt thou be My disciple." No man can follow
without courage this pattern of all courage.
Another very striking characteristic of Jesus was
His absolute common sense. He could pierce in a
moment to the root of things, through all the
superficialities that satisfied the Pharisees and
blinded the people. What do ceremonial washings
matter compared with inward purity? "Ye fools,
did not He that made that which is without make
that which is within also ? The repentant publican
is better than the self-satisfied Pharisee2. Circumstances
must be taken into account in awarding
penalties 3. You cannot possibly maintain that
sin and suffering are equally awarded in this
world 4. It is important to note that Jesus recognised
this fact. He was no irresponsible optimist,
but He solved the problem—as it must be solved,
if at all—by reference to the supramundane. His
faith in GOD overcame in His mind all the difficulties
of the problems of evil.
And it was the same in less speculative matters.
He appreciated the cleverness of the unscrupulous
steward's methods5. He evaded the traps laid for
Him in the questions put to Him by His enemies 6
.
Their own consciences must be the judges of His
authority; they themselves acknowledged Caesar
by their use of his coinage; the spiritual is not
bound by the same ties as the material; the root of
Luke xi. 38, 4o. 2 Luke xviii. 14.
3 Luke xii. 47, 48. 4 Luke xiii.
Luke xvi. 1, 8. 6 Mark xi. 27, xii. 34.
14 JESUS OF NAZARETH
all the law is love. He took large views, and it is in
this matter especially that the so-called "man in
the street" is valuable in his ideas on religion. The
professional theologian or moralist is naturally
liable to get into the condition of not being able to
see the wood for the trees. The man who does not
concern himself with niceties has at least the advantage
of being able to see the big things.
Jesus, then, was a man—a great man, a teacher,
a mystic, a hero, perhaps one whom, if any, we
may call inspired and Divine—but primarily and
first of all, a historical human character. His place
in history can only be sketched. The early Christians
worshipped' Him—an important point, when
all allowances are made; but in time His Divinity
overshadowed His humanity, and men almost
seemed to forget He was a man even according to
their own Creed. Even the Reformation, though
it did something by minimising sacerdotalism in
the Reformed Churches, did not altogether mend
matters. At length, during the nineteenth century,
appeared a book which was described as "vomited
from the jaws of hell," a book called Ecce
Homo. This may perhaps be regarded at least
as a useful landmark. It appealed to Christians to
look at Jesus the man of Nazareth, the great Jew
of the reign of Tiberius. Since when perhaps they
have done so more widely and more intently. As
a mere matter of historical fact, Jesus was a human
being—a Jew—born nineteen hundred years ago.
Any Christianity that does not start from this hisJESUS
OF NAZARETH 15
torical fact, take full account of it, and base itself
ultimately on it, has its foundations laid on air, and
is, however good, however true even, a myth—
maybe "an ideal laid up in heaven," but an ideal
without its counterpart on earth. One result of the
prevalence of this false and unstable Christianity
has been that the word " faith " has utterly changed
its meaning. The earliest Christians meant by
"faith" a surrender of the whole being, a movement
of the whole personality, to Jesus—a love of
Him, sincere and unshakeable, and a firm determination
to follow His teaching, accepted by the
head as well as the heart, the reason as well as the
conscience. "Faith" has come to mean an unintelligent
swallowing down of disputed dogmas—often
even of untrue and disproved dogmas, and this is
nothing less than blasphemy, a sacrilege against
GOD'S gift of reason, often against the very essential
Christian virtues of love and broadmindedness.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused'.
This type of "faith" is what Jesus spent His
life fighting against. Ye make "the word of GOD
of none effect through your tradition 2." "Ye have
heard that it was said by them of old time.. . . But
I say unto you.. . .3"
Hamlet, IV. iv. 36. 2 Mark vii. 13.
3 Matt. v. 2/, 22, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 38, 39, 43, 44.
i6 JESUS OF NAZARETH
" Woe unto you,...hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of
mint and anise and cummin and have omitted the
weightier matters of the law1." This formalism is
one of the most unchristian vices in the whole
catalogue and has probably done more harm to
true Christianity than anything.
Jesus, when He died, left behind Him a band of
disciples, led by eleven Apostles whom He had
Himself selected. About seven weeks after the
death of Jesus, on the Feast of. Pentecost, they
suddenly came out before the immense cosmopolitan
crowd gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast,
"and the same day there were added unto them
about three thousand souls 2." This was the beginning
of the Church.
I Matt. xxiii. 23. 2 Acts a. 41.
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CHAPTER III
THE CHURCH
THE history of the Church is extraordinarily
interesting. The Christian Church has produced
Ignatius, St Francis of Assisi, Luther,
Ken, Wesley. It has produced also, or at least
allowed, the Borgias, the Inquisition, the Jesuits,
of whom even the worst had the official blessing of
the large and influential Roman branch of the
Church. The early Christians, naturally, banded
themselves together, they had ties binding them
to each other and to their Master which they felt
to be stronger than the ties of love and kindred,
and of life itself. This society, like all societies had
to be organised. The only practicable method of
government was that by which all religious bodies
were organised; by ministers, in some way specially
set apart to perform the functions of priests, to
have the spiritual care of their fellow-Christians,
and to officiate at their services ;—by lower orders,
to attend to matters of public and secular administration.
The organisation was monarchical, as was
all administration under the Roman Empire; and
every community had its own chief priest, called
the " Episcopus," that is, the Overseer—the
rea-sonBs ishop. At first the Christians, for various
, were unpopular, and on several occasions
DE C.
i8 THE CHURCH
they suffered official persecution. Then Constantine
by his famous Edict, proclaimed tolerance and
even pre-eminence, for Christianity. He enriched
the Church, and was himself baptised just before
his death.
Ah, Constantine, of how much ill was cause,
Not thy conversion, but those rich domains
That the first wealthy pope received of thee!
The Church waxed fat and prospered. That
was the period of the Fathers and the " Heresies."
The former were often great men, apologists,
theologians, systematisers of Christian dogma and
practice. But they lived in their own century, and
just as they considered their own time, its ideas
and its particular necessities, so must we do. In
this way they have been very badly treated by
some. Take, for example, the question of Fasting
before Communion. It was found that some socalled
" Christians " had so little sense of decency
as to come to the great Sacrament immediately
after an orgy of food and wine, gorged and sometimes
actually drunk. To prevent this scandal, and
meet this particular abuse a rule was made in
many of the local Churches that those who wished
to receive the Elements should be " impransi
that is to say, should not yet have dined. This
wise ordinance has by some people even in the
present day in the Church of England been frozen
into a regulation that no communicant may taste
Dante, Inf. XIX. 115, transl. by Milton.
THE CHURCH 19
any food or drink since the previous midnight, or
for six hours before he receives the Sacrament.
Not only does this lead to very serious practical
inconveniences (I once heard an Incumbent say
that if he cut off his evening Communion he would
excommunicate a large number of his parishioners
who could never come on Sunday mornings) but
the spirit that can lay down such a rule as a general
obligation is absolutely contrary to the spirit of
Christ and Christianity 1. (Mark vii. 18, Matt.
xxiii. 23, Rom. xiv. 3-13, where St Paul is dealing
with exactly parallel questions.)
There are two points that this formal type of
mind forgets. One is that the Church's work is
among men. Men are individuals : every individual
is different: GOD is infinite and all-inclusive:
every individual sees GOD as it were, from a
different angle, more or less : sees more or less of
Him, more or less truly. But it is impossible to
lay down hard and fast detailed rules for everybody,
since each man must draw near to GOD as
he best can. The Church must help him; but it
must recognise that no narrow path of dogma and
tradition can be trodden by all, be it never so
ancient and never so sainted, and that some even
1 I heard a story of a Chaplain to the Army in France,
who was asked by some men, the afternoon or evening
before a battle, to give them Communion, but refused on
the ground that they were not fasting; and this, when they
were going the next day into battle. One can only hope
that the story is false.
Digitized by Mic 2-2
20 THE CHURCH
of GOD'S truest followers may not be found visibly
within its bounds at all; since though the ideal
Church includes all such, the actual Church, being
composed of imperfect men under imperfect
rulers, is not and cannot be ideal. The Spirit of
God undoubtedly works and is working in the
visible Church, but imperfect man cannot become
officially perfect even so. The instruments of the
Spirit of God, being imperfect, cannot do perfect
work; just as no human artisan can do his best
work with broken or faulty tools.
This brings us to the second point that legalists
forget. They are very emphatic in stating that the
Holy Spirit is in the Church ; but they appear to
think that for all practical purposes He died
several centuries ago. When one of them is asked,
" What do you mean by the Catholic Church ? "
the answer is usually given in one form or another,
"Any organised Christian body that has Bishops !"
—the chief branches being the Roman, the Greek,
and the Anglican. But the Greek Church separated
from the Western Church in the eleventh
century; the Anglican and the Roman diverged
during the sixteenth. Hence the Church has said
nothing with an undivided voice at least since the
Reformation, and probably not since the separation
of the Eastern and the Western Churches.
Hence the Holy Spirit has shed no light on
modern problems for four or perhaps nine centuries,
and we poor Christians have to go on
pouring new wine into old bottles, believing that
THE CHURCH 21
these are the only bottles so to speak, authorised
and allowed by Divine Revelation. A strange view
surely !
We can now consider the " heresies." Naturally
the whole body of Christians did not agree on even
fairly fundamental points of Christian theology;
so Councils were held, and conclusions arrived at
concerning the true faith, and how far a man might
depart from certain beliefs and still remain in the
Church. But instead of being satisfied with defining
their own position, in time the " orthodox "
party began persecuting their opponents in the
name of Christ.
Face loved of little children long ago,
Head hated of the priests and rulers then,
If thou see this, or hear these hounds of thine
Run ravening as the Gadarean swine,
Say, was not this thy Passion to foreknow
In death's worst hour the works of Christian men ?1
The " Christian " Church has scarcely ever
since ceased wholly from persecution, never from
recrimination. For sixteen centuries the " followers
" of Him Who suffered persecution and murder
at the hands of the formalists has itself persecuted
and murdered those who could not subscribe to
their formulae. What wonder that men have
arraigned the Church before the throne of Christ,
or even mistakenly cursed Christ for the deeds
of those who took His name upon their lips and
Swinburne, Tristram of Lyonesse and other poems, p. 224.
22 THE CHURCH
dishonoured and denied and rejected Him in
their hearts and actions?
The Holy Spirit is alive, ever working, ever
energising, ever bringing forth from the treasury
of God "things new and old." In the twentieth
century He is with us as much as He was with the
Christians of the first century, and in the same
way. They applied the principles of Jesus Christ
to the problems of their day; in the words that the
author of the Fourth Gospel puts into the mouth
of Jesus Himself, the Spirit took of what was Jesus'
and showed it to His followers. And the same will
be the experience of the Church now, if she
will free herself from all bonds of tradition (which
is not the same thing as losing her respect for the
past, but is rather showing the truest respect for
it in following the spirit rather than the letter of
early Christian teaching and practice) and apply
the principles of Jesus Christ to problems of the
present day, on which the writings of the Apostles
and the Fathers can have no literal bearing or
authority because our particular problems had not
then arisen, or at any rate not in the particular
form that they hold to-day.
The Church must learn to "serve in newness of
spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter 1," to
"stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath
made us free, and be not entangled again with the
yoke of bondage 2."
There are two chief services of the Church,
Romans oii. 6. 2 Galatians v. r.
THE CHURCH 23
"ordained by Christ Himself'." The first is the
Sacrament of Baptism, with sprinkling of water,
or immersion, and a form of words. This is the
ceremony of admission, leading to many privileges
and responsibilities. The other is the Sacrament
of the Lord's Supper—which has probably
caused more, and more bitter, controversies than
any other subject in Christian history. But its
exact spiritual significance cannot be defined in
words, nor can a man be forced by rules to see or
feel more in it than he is able to apprehend. It is
primarily a commemoration of the death of Jesus
instituted by Him for that purpose just before His
arrest 2. It became immediately after the great
Pentecost the distinctive service of Christians. It
is a service of Christian love and fellowship, a
communion between the followers of Jesus Christ.
It is also a service of thanksgiving to GOD for the
life and death of Jesus, and of worship of GOD as
revealed by Jesus. It is thus a service of communion
with GOD. It has been found by many to
be also an actual "channel of grace " ; but this
depends on certain mystical and philosophic ideas,
and is moreover subjective. It cannot therefore
be laid down as a dogma; though such an exceedingly
widespread experience deserves the greatest
respect and reverence, and the fault should be
The question whether there are two Sacraments or
seven, seems to depend on the exact definition of the word
Sacrament, and therefore to be scarcely worth disputing.
2 Mark xiv. 23, 24. 7itized by Microsoft ,0
24 THE CHURCH
looked for rather in those who cannot, than in
those who can, accept and realise this. Nevertheless,
GOD speaks in many ways, and to many in
unwonted ways.
The Church, then, is the "blessed company of
all faithful people " : in other words, the body consisting
(ideally) of all who accept Jesus' revelation
of GOD, and try to follow the principles of His
teaching. It is essentially spiritual, not material.
Organisation is secondary, even doctrine is secondary,
to its spiritual purpose, its soul.
Univ Calif - Digitized by Microsoft Q3,'
CHAPTER IV
DOGMA, ORDER, AND CHRISTIAN
CHARITY
IF, then, this is so, what of Faith and Order—the
two chief components of the Church's life, if
we are to believe some ? But if the Church is
primarily spiritual, what are "Churchmen" to
think of those whose intellectual position and religious
organisation differs from theirs ?
The word dogma (Slogia, TO SeSoyA4vov, from
Soicio), means "that which has been decided" or
"seemed good"—the word used in the original.
(e.g. St Luke i. 3, Acts xv. 25, z8). From this
third passage we see that the leaders of the early
Church regarded their " dogmas, edicts or decisions"—
as directly influenced by the Holy Spirit.
" It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us,"
though, as we have seen, the Holy Ghost works
through imperfect human instruments, and the
correctness of what is decided must depend on the
efficiency of the instrument. The Spirit of GOD
is better revealed through a St Paul than through
a Tertullian, He can work better through a Luther
than through a Henry VIII. So much is obvious.
But it must never be forgotten that He works
through all who seek GOD, if haply they may feel
z6 DOGMA, ORDER, AND
after Him and find Him. All such have a revelation
of GOD given to them, more or less clear and
more or less true. The highest revelations are of
the greatest benefit to mankind; but no man can
sincerely believe that which is revealed to another,
except in so far as he can himself apprehend it.
A St Francis or a Luther may bring thousands
nearer to the truth, but it is not by external imposition,
but by influence upon their wills and
spiritual understanding.
"Dogmas," therefore, in the sense of ascertained
and embodied truths, are in themselves
merely formulae, which themselves require individual
apprehension. For example, take the
phrase in the Apostles' Creed, "I believe in...
the resurrection of the body." One man may
believe this literally: another may believe it, and
honestly say that he believes it, but in the sense of
mere continuance of personality beyond the grave :
a third may hold the same opinion, and yet deny
the phrase, thinking that it must be meant, if
such meant at all, more literally than that. Most of
quarrels are ultimately disputes, not about
ideas, but about words, the expression of ideas.
And even when the point at issue is something
more than this, when there is really a question between
two opinions, it seems difficult to understand
why such a difference should be regarded so
seriously, and why a " heretic " or " unorthodox "
person should be treated so severely. It is as hard
to accept a dogma as to do right—a point well
CHRISTIAN CHARITY 27
worked out in Ecce Homo'. Most men are
comparatively tolerant of errors in action, because
they have to act themselves and so know the difficulties
of right action. But a man who accepts
dogmas because he never thinks—who " believes "
(or says he believes) to save the trouble of thought
—is usually very hard on errors of " faith "—because
he does not know the difficulty of belief.
Yet take a thinker versed in abstractions, with
little practical experience; he will probably find
" Thou shalt love thine enemy, and thy neighbour
as thyself" a much less hard saying than "the
Word was made flesh "—the Absolute and Infinite
expressed in concrete human terms, the Eternal
Spirit confined in flesh, the A11 born of a woman !
Yet such amazing mysteries we are bidden accept,
and condemned if we fail to " believe " ; when we
can scarcely even comprehend what it is that we
are required to accept !
The notion therefore that one man, or one
formula, or one Creed, or one Church, can apprehend
the whole truth of GOD is palpably absurd.
GOD is infinite : mankind a finite collection of
finites. The utmost that any Church can claim is
that it contains all that it is possible for man to
know of GOD: and this is also obviously false unless
that Church actually (and not merely ideally)
contains every member of the human race. The
lowest savage even is different from all his fellow
men, with some capacity that no one else has,
1 Part 1, Chapter vu.
4icrosoft
28 DOGMA, ORDER, AND
some special vision of GOD to communicate to the
world. This is not fancy : it is pure reason : it is
the sternest and the most prosaic logic—unless we
are to grant the impossible idea that any two
men are, have' been, or ever will be, exact
spiritual replicas of each other.
Or it may be said that this or that Church contains
all the truth of GOD that it is right for man
to know. In that case, either we have the capacity
(the GOD-given capacity, since GOD made us) to
know more than GOD wills or intends us to know;
or else, all apprehension and reasoning outside
this Church is false, which would be a very rash
thing to assert. You cannot deny alleged truths in
a lump, without knowing and having examined all
that the lump contains: and moreover, even
opinions that are superficially incompatible, are
often (and perhaps alwaye, could we probe deep
enough to see it) really complementary.
GOD is too great to be comprised in any human
formula, creed or Church whatsoever : those who
look to find GOD'S whole truth in a formula, creed
or Church, are worshipping a petty Deity, contemptible
even to man.
Don't nail God down to rules, and think you know!
Or God, Who sorrows all a summer's day
Because a blade of grass has died, will come
And suck this world up in His lips, and lo!
Will spit it out a pebble, powdered grey,
Into the whirl of Infinity's nothingless foam'.
1 H. Rex Freston, Collected Poems, p. 112.
CHRISTIAN CHARITY 29
And the same principles must be applied to the
question of Order. The worship of Order is even
more absurd and unchristian than the worship of
Dogma. The narrow dogmatist has at any rate
this that can be said for him : that he does think
that his dogmas contain the truth about GOD, and
that those who do not hold his dogmas are in error
about the most important matters ; which is at
least the result of zeal for truth, though a narrow
or mistaken zeal. But the man who despises another
because their religious organisation is not
the same, holds a position too ridiculous to be
easily combated. His argument is : organisation is
necessary for any religious body: for fifteen hundred
years the Christian Churches were all episcopally
organised; this is obviously due to the
guidance of the Spirit of GOD. Episcopacy is,
therefore, GOD'S will. Any sect that rejects episcopacy
is no true part of the Church of Christ, and
must necessarily lack the special grace of ministry
in its officers, since this grace is only transmitted
by bishops, the only true successors of the
Apostles, to whom the grace was given from Jesus
Christ Himself. Moreover, the Holy Communion
may only be given to Christians who have been
confirmed : confirmation is the prerogative of
bishops : therefore no member of a non-episcopal
Church can receive truly the Sacrament of the
Body and Blood of Christ.
Now this argument first of all ties GOD down to
a formula, denying that the grace of ministry can
3o DOGMA, ORDER, AND
be given save through bishops. " Don't nail GOD
down to rules, and think you know !" Cannot
GOD give His grace as He wills, to whom He wills,
how He wills? Are the fountains of this grace
stopped, that we have to go back two thousand
years for it ? The GOD who sent His Spirit on the
first Christians on that great Pentecost, can He not
send down His Spirit now upon Non-conformist
Ministers ? The Jesus Who gave the first Sacrament
to His disciples, to whom His commission
even was not yet given, shall He refuse His presence
to His followers at the Sacrament because,
forsooth, no bishop has laid his hands upon them ?
But our worshipper of Order will reply: GOD
has tied Himself to these channels in His dealings
with us, and we must follow His will, and use
these channels and these only. I deny it. GOD
never yet tied Himself to any one channel in dealing
with the myriad-souled race of men. With all
their fifteen hundred years of tradition, these
channels are, at most, GOD'S normal methods : but
are we to deny GOD the right ever to depart from
His normal methods ? If we are to judge men, or
Churches, by their fruits, shall we prefer the
narrowness and heresy-hunting of our extreme
Episcopalians, to the purity of the Quakers, the
piety of the Wesleyans, and the freedom of the
Congregational bodies ? " Where two or three are
gathered together in My name, there am I in the
midst of them'," is the word of Jesus : gathered
'alif 1 matt. xviii. 2o.
CHRISTIAN CHARITY 31
that is, in the Spirit of Jesus, in humility and
fearlessness and sincerity and devotion and thankfulness
and desire and love : not in strict adherence
to human traditions ; not with exact enquiry,
"Have you been confirmed by a bishop ?
Do you believe this and that and the other thing ? "
It is this narrowness, this attitude of not being
able to see the wood for the trees, this twist of
soul that makes the secondary loom larger than
the primary, that seems to have been the one thing
capable of rousing Jesus to fury 1. He could be
exceedingly, terribly angry, enraged, furious ;
seldom has there been heard a more terrific and
comprehensive denunciation than that contained
in Matt. xxiii.: and it was directed all against this
very type of mind. For however important Faith
and Order may be, there is one thing greater still
—the vital and fundamental principle of Christianity—
charity, large mindedness, love. Are you
going to condemn your Non-conformist brother
—for whom Christ died—for not having bishops ?
Are you going to condemn your perplexed brother
—for whom Christ died—for not being able to
subscribe to your formulae? "Now abideth faith,
hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these
is love 2."
I Matt. xxiii. 16-26. 2 1 Cor. xiii. 13.
Univ Calif - Digitized by Microsoft 0
CHAPTER V
INFALLIBILITY
THE search for an infallible guide in matters
of religious truth is probably as old as religion
itself. To this extent it is good—that
it is the result of the realisation that on any subject
a man versed in that subject should be listened to
with attention and respect. But when this mere
platitude stiffens into an assertion that any man
whatever, however wise, is always and unquestionably
right on any subject, then we have the beginning
of the terrible impiety of intellectual slavery.
Some men, it is said, are born slaves: they cannot
work save under the eye of a master, and a master
of some sort they will find for themselves. This is
certainly true intellectually: a very large number of
men lack either the energy, or the ability, or both,
to think for themselves. Hence they seek an infallible
Church, an infallible Book, or an infallible
authority of some kind, and therein they find
"peace "—the peace of the man who has refused
the fight.
Now this may perhaps be defensible for the
individual: but the point is always carried further,
and those who still maintain their intellectual
freedom, are denounced, are bidden surrender it,
and invited to enslave themselves in "peace," like
INFALLIBILITY 33
their fellows. This demand is both unreasonable
and impious. Unreasonable, because reason demands
its freedom: impious, because this reason
that demands freedom is from GOD. It is useless
to argue that reason may be used within the limits
allowed by dogma: for that argument, in plain
terms, runs thus: You may use your reason: if you
come to my conclusion, well and good : if you do
not, then you must deny the result of your reasoning.
If a definite conclusion must be arrived at,
you had better accept it straight away; to bolster
up by argument a foregone result is intellectual
and spiritual dishonesty. Moreover, as has already
been pointed out, you cannot comprise GOD in
a formula ; and in any case, a formula is only an
expression, needing further definition, and only
capable of unexpressed, but felt, definition in the
individual mind and soul.
The two chief sources to which Christians have
looked for infallible guidance are the Church and
the Bible. The theory of verbal inspiration is,
I hope and believe, dying. It is too obviously
absurd to last much longer in the light of examination.
The very arithmetical discrepancies of the
Bible give away the principle, and most striking
of all it does not seem to have been noticed by
those who hold this view that Jesus Himself laid
down the principle in the light of which Christians
should study the Old Testament. In the Sermon
on the Mount, He claims to have come to "fulfil
the law," and He proceeds to give several con-
DE C.
34 INFALLIBILITY
crete instances of this "fulfilment," with regard to
murder and hatred, adultery and lust, the questions
of divorce, swearing, revenge, and the treatment
of enemies 1. He announced the principle
of development, or progressive revelation. The
"righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees"
which He commanded His followers to exceed 2,
was just this formal legalist spirit that believes in
and holds to, one fixed moral or theological code,
a faith once for all delivered, and thenceforward
unchangeable. The Old Testament, Jesus said, is
imperfect; He came to fulfil it. And He did fulfil
it, to the extent that He laid down what is yet the
final word in human ethics and morality: "Thou
shalt love."
But human knowledge and human thought have
gone forward in the last nineteen hundred years ;
and just as Jesus never pretended to teach science,
so He never claimed to teach theology. His
mission was entirely practical, though His revelation
of GOD as a loving Father has revolutionised
theology. He never laid down a Creed. It is
worth while noting that Jesus never condemned
anyone for intellectual perplexity or even error.
The people whom He did condemn were the
earthly minded a, the censorious4, the hypocrites 5,
I Matt. v. 21-48.
3 Matt. V. 20.
3 Mark x. 23-25; Luke xii. 13-21.
4 Matt. v5ii .M 3a-tt5, ix. 10-13, xi. 16,19.
. vii. 21-23.
INFALLIBILITY 35
those who persisted in wilful blindness to good',
the formalists 2, the uncharitable or revengeful 3.
,On the other hand, the story told us by the
author of the Fourth Gospel (a mystic and not
apparently a man with a great deal of sympathy
for intellectual perplexity) regarding St Thomas'
doubt of Jesus' resurrection', is remarkably instructive.
The disciples were convinced that Jesus
had risen from the dead—a most amazing event;
we are apt to forget how amazing. But they were
persuaded that Jesus had appeared to them. (We
are now dealing with the story as told us; the
author had no doubt of the reality of the Resurrection,
therefore the story can be accepted as illustrating
the attitude of Jesus towards intellectual
perplexity, even by those who do not believe in the
Resurrection; and all the more so because of the
comparative narrowness of the narrator himself.)
Thomas, however, had not been with them, and
could not believe this astounding statement, and
like an honest man said so, reserving his judgment
for further evidence. Now our " orthodox" Christians
(who have always been hardly inclined even
towards St Thomas) would have persecuted him
—" you shall believe ! Your doubts are devil-born.
Put them away." Not so Jesus. "After eight days
1 Mark iii. 22-30.
2 Mark vii. 1-23, ii. 23, 28, iii. r, 5; Matt. xvi. 1, 4,
xxiii.; Luke xi. 37-52.
3 Matt. xxv. 41, 45; Luke ix. 52, 56,
4 John xxx. 24-29. lionized by Microsoft'@
3-2
36 INFALLIBILITY
again His disciples were within and Thomas with
them; then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and
stood in the midst. .. . Then saith He to Thomas,
Reach hither thy finger and behold My hands ; and
reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into My side;
and be not faithless but believing." This was the
very evidence that Thomas had demanded. Jesus
respected his doubts, sympathised with his perplexities,
and offered him the evidence he wanted.
The sentence that follows the confession of
-Thomas is not a condemnation of his doubts; it
is simply a blessing pronounced on those who have
'that spiritual insight. For there are human faculties
transcend reason; and blessed are they who
`have that spiritual insight which leads to that
Christian faith already defined as a movement of
the whole personality towards Jesus. But it was
not Jesus, but His self-styled " followers " who
have been the persecutors of intellectual error.
The belief in the infallibility of the Church is a
rather curious superstition, and exceedingly vague.
The man who tells us that the Bible is infallible is
at least definite: he puts a certain volume into our
hands ; Here is a volume, he can say, consisting of
sixty-six books, and divided into two Testaments.
It was written by such and such people about such
and such times : you can read it for yourself; this
is your guide. Follow it. But the infallible Church
is a Fata Morgana's palace; the more you try to
follow it, the more shadowy and unattainable it
grows. For what is this Church? asks the beINFALLIBILITY
37
wildered seeker after truth; and is told that it is
any organised Christian body that has bishops.
What, then, he asks, of others ? They are not
Christian bodies, is naturally the reply, though a
little hard if said, for example, of certain Nonconformists.
And how, in any given split of
opinion between episcopal bodies, may one decide
which is the Church and which the heretical
party? "The Church is the side which is right,"
was an answer I once actually received. This,
then, is the argument: "The Church is infallibly
right; for whichever side is right is the Church !"
Which leaves the poor bewildered seeker after
Truth much where he was.
Or, again, at least three large Christian bodies
are to-day comprised, according to this definition,
in the Catholic Church—the Roman, the Greek,
and the Anglican. Now granted that they will all
repeat certain formulae : "I believe in GOD ...in
Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord, Who was born
of the Virgin Mary...in the Resurrection of the
body..." and so on. But even if the further
official definition of these tenets were the same—
which I doubt—what of further and more detailed
doctrine :—of the Lord's Supper, of the grace of
Orders, of the position of Non-conformists, of
Papal predominance ? The Catholic Church, even
so narrowly defined as above, speaks with no certain
voice, and has, as I say, spoken with nothing
but confused voices since the Reformation, perhaps
since the separation of the Eastern and
38 INFALLIBILITY
Western Churches. And our seeker after truth has
no chance of finding out whether the Church is
really infallible—he cannot even find the Church !
The fact is, that these preachers of the infallibility
of the Church live, spiritually, before the eleventh
century: they have no grasp of more modern
questions, in so far as they do really hold to this
professed belief of theirs. And even the early
Fathers, and the Apostles themselves—great and
valuable as they were, and immense as is our debt
to them even now—were human, and men of
their age at that: so they cannot be expected to
give detailed answers to modern problems.
But Jesus Christ at least, we are told, is infallible.
He however, dealt with theological questions
not much, with theological details not at all :
with intellectual questions not at all'. He is, and
remains, the greatest religious teacher of the
world: but even He was a Jew of the first century
of our era, and held (for example, on eschatological
questions) the views of a Jew of the first
century of our era. Or you may say that He used
His contemporaries' language figuratively; which
leaves us where we were; for if we cannot take His
eschatological prophecies literally, where are we to
stop ?
Therefore we cannot accept even the detailed
prophecies of Jesus as infallible ; but His principles
stand firm; His great and fundamental principle
of love remains; His condemnation of world-
' See e.g. Luke xiii. 23, 24.
INFALLIBILITY 39
liness, unkindness, selfishness, hypocrisy, formalism—
this is unshaken. We are not here to obey
rules like children but to apply principles, to
struggle, to seek, to endure, like men. We are on
earth as an education—perhaps the beginning of
an eternal one—and we must fight against slavishness
in our education; we who are the free sons of
GOD.
I do not know if it seems brave
The youthful spirit to enslave,
And hedge about, lest it should grow.
I don't know if it's better so
In the long end. I only know
That when I have a son of mine,
He shan't be made to droop and pine,
Bound down and forced by rule and rod
To serve a God who is no God.
But I'll put custom on the shelf
And make him find his God himself...
A God—who will be all his own,
To whom he can address a prayer
And love him, for he is so fair,
And see with eyes that are not dim
And build a temple meet for him1.
1 C. H. Sorley, Marlborough and other poems, p, 10.
Univ Calif - Digitized by Microsoft /6)
CHAPTER VI
REASON AND FAITH
THERE is a curious idea that there is something
impious in the free use of reason in
religious matters. Reason, as all would
grant, I hope, is a gift of GOD; but it is, according
to some, only " meant " to be used in purely
earthly things—in politics, in adding up I. s. d.;
in organising charity bazaars. But when you reach
the highest things and the most important (and
incidentally the most difficult) you must shut
out reason and have "faith." In other words, you
may use your rudder in calm seas; but when you
enter a storm, you must dispense with it. But
religion, if it is to be anything at all, must be the
concern of the whole being—intellectual, moral,
aesthetic. GOD is the All : He is at least the sum of
all our aspirations. Do we desire Truth ? GOD is
the Truth, and Jesus is for Christians the supreme
Revealer of Truth. Do we desire Righteousness ?
GOD is the supreme Righteousness, and Jesus is
the Way. Do we desire Beauty? GOD is the All-
Lovely, and Jesus the Life. If a politician, or man
of business, or lawyer, or doctor, or soldier, is
useless without reason, much more a man whose
chief concern is GOD-as should be all men's.
GOD is the Truth ; and religion is maimed without
REASON AND FAITH
philosophy, just as it is maimed without love of
moral or aesthetic excellence. And philosophy,
like all other human activities, must have free
scope. If philosophy errs, it must be corrected;
not simply rejected, though rejection is the simpler
plan—till that which is rejected takes revenge.
Does religion despise Art? Then it produces men
who give Art the place of religion. Does it despise
Philosophy ? Then you get a Gibbon. Philosophy
and Art are activities of human nature; and human
nature cannot be thus summarily expelled—she
will come back, with vengeance at her heels.
A11 this does not deny that there are spheres
where reason is useless. You cannot by searching
find out the Almighty to perfection; mystical
knowledge transcends intellectual knowledge. But
reason must be combated with reason, not with
authority; for true reason recognises its own
limitations. Just as true Art realises that it has no
necessary place in the moral sphere, and true
morality that it has no authority in the realms of
beauty: so true reason knows that the infinite is
beyond it. But an unintelligent faith is worse than
useless—it is false. You may not understand, but
only be able to feel, your belief: but you must at
least understand what it is that you believe. Take
an example : " I believe that Jesus is the Son of
GOD." You may believe that, yet not be able to
reason out how He is the Son of GOD; but you
must have a definite feeling about the meaning of
the matter. You may mean one thing by it;
42 REASON AND FAITH
another may mean a different thing by the same
phrase. If some one bids you believe that Jesus
is the Son of GOD, you have a right to ask him
what he means by the phrase. You may say, " I
don't understand what you mean when you say
this." If he answers, "You cannot understand it,
it is a mystery : all you have to do, is to believe it,"
his words may be unimpeachable, but his meaning
is ridiculous. When I say that I believe the earth
is round, I may not be able to prove it: if a person
doubted it I might have to send him on elsewhere,
or I might—if I was very ignorant or obstinate—
refuse to believe it at all; but at least I do know
what a person means when he says that the earth
is round. He means that this mass of matter on
which we live is on the whole of a certain definite
shape, which we call round or spherical. Now we
have something to start from. But does " Jesus is
the Son of GOD" mean that He is the same as the
Eternal Ruler of all things, or like Him, or inspired
by Him, or merely divine in the sense in
which all men are divine—the Son of GOD in the
sense in which all men are sons of GOD ? Define
thus far, and we have something to start from. If
he says that Jesus is like GOD—the same as GOD,
but human as well, we still have a right to ask to
be given at least a general idea of what this means.
You cannot believe a thing unless you at least
understand the expression of your faith. Otherwise
your Creed becomes so much Chinese.
Or take another example. You may say that
REASON AND FAITH 43
"man is very far gone from original righteousness,
and is of his own nature inclined to evil...and
therefore in every person born into this world it
[that is, original sin] deserveth GOD'S wrath and
damnation 1." Now reason, and man's moral conscience
(which, when free and unvitiated is
usually the ally of reason) might pause over this
last sentence and ask: How can a baby at its birth
deserve GOD'S wrath and damnation ? The moral
conscience asserts that this is unjust: reason adds,
that if GOD be GOD, He is just, and even if human
nature is evil, the individual is not therefore
necessarily guilty—which may or may not be
sound. But it cannot be crushed by authority, or
waved aside with the remark that if so, you are in
disagreement with the Church of England. That
may be true, but is completely off the point, since
there is no law that states that the English bishops
and the clergy of 1562 were necessarily infallible.
You must meet reason with reason.
Or again, you may say that the Bible teaches the
doctrine of Eternal Punishment. I believe it is
possible to twist all the texts quoted in favour of
this doctrine so that they do not necessarily mean
that. If an objector were to take a larger view, and
say that if GOD is loving He will not do to anyone
a thing that no one would do to his worst enemy :
that if GOD is just, He will not avenge with infinite
penalties finite offences, or condemn to hopeless
torment a soul that never willed to be created :
Book of Common. Prayer, Article IX.
44 REASON AND FAITH
that if GOD is wise He will not inflict punishment
for sheer revenge—for endless punishment can
only be revengeful since it never can be remedial;
—if he says this, it is no good to quote texts at him
or passages from the Fathers, or decrees of the
Church. If you answer him at all, you must do so
by argument. You must meet reason with reason,
not with authority. Authority leads to ruin : for it
makes change and progress impossible. A thing
may once have been true for us, but our knowledge
of truth progresses. We have now seen further and
higher and purer truth: and that we must follow,
"forgetting those things which are behind, and
reaching forward to those things which are before."
And reason is one of our GOD-given faculties, to
be used with all our other faculties, in the apprehending
of GOD. For we cannot, without great
loss, ignore or despise any of our faculties by refusing
to use them in our religion. And this is true
in any sphere whatever.
There are some who are inclined to despise
reason, and some who are inclined to despise
emotion and mysticism. But just as reason must
be respected, so must these. Man is not wholly
material. A man most certainly feels emotions—
emotions which may even affect his body: and it
is just as absurd to attempt to ignore these as it is
to attempt to ignore reason. In fact, the motive
power of man lies in his non-material being, his
emotions, his personality, his will. It is his will
that forces a man to do what is unpleasant because
REASON AND FAITH 45
it is right; it is his personality that is the source of
his influence on others. It was the stern will of
Hannibal that shook Rome, it was the unbending
will of Garibaldi that saved Italy; it was the untiring
will of 'Wilberforce and his colleagues that
abolished slavery in the British Empire. It was
the personality of Caesar that led his legions to
victory; it was the personality of Napoleon that so
bound his soldiers to him that they conquered half
Europe. Even reason cannot control the will, until
the will itself decides to be governed by reason;
and even then it may at any time revolt.
And the value, too, of emotion and mysticism is
very great. They are undoubtedly faculties of
human nature—though, like reason and all other
faculties, far more highly developed in some than
in others—and have done far too much to be
despised without stupidity, or ignored without
great loss. The study of hypnotism has added
much to our knowledge of what is called our
psychical power; a man's will can be temporarily
put under complete subjection to the will of another;
then the subject is absolutely under the
control of the hypnotiser, body and mind. The
subject will do whatever he is told; even blisters,
of greater or less severity, may be produced on his
body, at the suggestion of the hypnotiser. The
will of man is the strongest power on earth. It can
conquer all things, and endure all things. We cannot,
then, afford to ignore our non-material and
emotional powers. A certain amount of self46
REASON AND FAITH
hypnotism there undoubtedly is and has been;
but to explain all mysticism by this is not an
explanation adequate to the facts.
Now there are two great points in Christianity
on which mysticism has especially seized—the
Divinity of Jesus and the Holy Communion.
Many have spoken from personal experience of
the former; of the help and presence of Jesus
which they have themselves actually felt. They
have told us of their own experience of the power
of prayer.
Now at these problems reason confessedly fails :
the intellectual difficulties of prayer, no less than
of accepting the Divinity of Jesus, are enormous
and almost overwhelming. But to reject for this
cause the vast mass of mystical evidence on these
problems is blasphemy to mankind; for you shut
the door on certain human faculties, thereby excluding
the light that comes through them. This
evidence cannot be ignored without disaster, any
more than can the evidence of reason. And it is
the same with the Holy Communion; many have
found in it their closest approach to GOD through
Jesus and though, as we have seen, this does not
justify dogmatism, it does demand most careful
and sincere consideration. GOD is the Truth and
must be sought by reason: but He is also a Spirit,
and must be sought by the spirit of man. It takes
at least the whole man to contemplate the All.
Ilniv Calif - Digitized by Microsoft 051
CHAPTER VII
THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT
IN JESUS
APOINT that sticks in the throat of a good
many people to-day is the alleged miraculous
element in the life of Jesus : His
miracles of healing, power over nature, and raising
the dead; the doctrine of His Virgin Birth; and
the story of His resurrection. This last is the most
important, and throws light perhaps on the others.
It is a most astonishing story, a priori extremely
improbable, and therefore requiring the strongest
evidence in its favour if it is to be accepted. But,
I think it has this. No one ever claimed to have
actually seen the event; the only people said to be
present were the Roman guard, and they were
asleep. But the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.
Consider at the Passover, when Jesus
was arrested, His followers were a weak and
timorous band, "they all forsook Him and fled1."
Their leader plucked up courage to go as far as the
palace of the high priest beneath the court of
Justice; but when he was suspected of dealings
with Jesus, he three times flatly and vehemently
denied any such thing2. At most one other, the
chosen and closest friend of Jesus, and some
1 Mark xiv. 5o. 2 Mark xiv. 66-72.
'yitized
48 THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT
women, were by His Cross, or standing afar off
After the death of Jesus they met, if at all,
secretly 2. This was at the time of the Passover.
Seven weeks later came the feast of Pentecost, and
again Jerusalem was crowded with Jews and proselytes
from all parts of the Mediterranean world.
Before them rose up these same once timid
followers of Jesus, led by the Peter who had three
times denied Him, and this Peter preached to
them that Jesus whom they had seen crucified at
the Passover had been raised from the dead3.
Three thousand joined Peter 4 and the Christian
Church began. They were persecuted by the
religious authorities 5 who were however unable
to shut their mouths. Some left Jerusalem for
Samaria, Antioch, and other places : and eventually,
largely through the efforts of St Paul (who
had at first been one of the most eager persecutors
of the Christians), the story spread to Europe and
in time reached Rome.
Now we have this extraordinary phenomenon;
for at least twelve hundred years Christianity was
one of the most potent factors in European politics.
This Christianity began from -Judaea, from a few
uninfluential people, who by force of sheer energy
John xix. 25, 26; Mark xv. 40. 44•
2 John xx. Ig. 3 Acts ii. 22-24, 32, 33.
4 Acts v. 41.
5 Acts iv. 1-22, V. 17,18,26-42, vi. 9-15, vii. 54, viii. 4,
ix. x, 2 and xii. 1-4, where Herod acted at the instigation of
the religious authorities--" because he saw it pleased the
Jews."
IN JESUS 49
and courage and sincerity, spread their belief
throughout the known world. These same people,
seven weeks before their campaign began, had
been timid, uncertain, and powerless. This extraordinary
and enormously influential change must
be accounted for somehow. They themselves
accounted for it by saying that their crucified
Master had risen from the dead, that they had
seen Him alive, and that He had spoken to them,
commissioned them and sent them His Spirit to
teach and guide and encourage and strengthen
them. Now it is perfectly obvious that they themselves
sincerely believed this—so sincerely that
they not only died for it and suffered torture
for it but spent their lives in working for it, amid
opposition and difficulties and hardships.
Could it have been a collective hallucination ?
Apart from the extreme difficulty of believing
in a collective—as distinct from an individual
—hallucination strong enough to make every
person affected by it, live and suffer and die
for it, not only together but very often alone :
besides this, it must be considered that the disciples
were very obviously not expecting anything
of the kind. True, Jesus had prophesied it 1;
but on the first occasion Peter had tried to turn
Him from going to His death—ignoring apparently
the prophecy of the resurrection—while on
the second they frankly did not understand Him2.
So that when Jesus died, they thought that all was
Mark viii. 31, ix. 31, x. 34. 2 Mark viii. 32, ix. 32.
DCE .
50 THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT
over. The women, immediately after the sabbath
brought spices for His embalming. We are even
told in the Fourth Gospel that Peter and six other
disciples were going back to their old trade of
fishing'. But suddenly this all changed. They
were convinced that they had seen Jesus alive and
that He had spoken to them and that not once but
several times ; that finally they had seen Him
ascend from the earth and "a cloud received Him
out of their sight." Whereupon angels had prophesied
to them of His return 2
. Well, you cannot
explain twelve hundred years of history on the
hypothesis of an extremely improbable collective
hallucination 3. Whatever the .fact may mean,
whether the first Christians interpreted it aright
or not, the fact itself seems undeniable.
Yet perhaps they were not far wrong when they
took the Resurrection as the great proof of the
Divinity of Jesus. It certainly seems to set Him
apart from other men. We must remember that we
are dealing with facts, though with astonishing
and unusual ones. And the extraordinarily strong
evidence in favour of the Resurrection sheds some
light upon the other miraculous events that are
alleged to have been connected with Jesus. He is
recorded to have healed sick persons, to have performed
such natural wonders as walking on the
sea and feeding five thousand people with a few
John xxi. 3. 2 Acts i.
3 Cf. the Rev. W. Temple in The Faith and Modern
Thought, Lecture III (Macmillan & Co.).
IN JESUS 51
loaves and fishes, and even to have raised the dead.
Now again, it is primarily a question of evidence.
The evidence it must be confessed is good. The
Gospel of St Mark (which is, as we have seen, the
oldest of the four and probably the one most
directly derived from eye-witnesses) is exceptionally
full of records of miracles. The last six
chapters are taken up with the last week of the life
of Jesus. In the first ten are recorded seventeen
distinct miracles 1 besides four 2 occasions on which
a number were healed of their diseases at one
time. Twelve of these are miracles of healing; and
among the diseases healed are "possession by a
devil "—i.e. some form of raving madness—and
the mysterious disease of leprosy, then considered
quite incurable, and still, I believe, without any
absolute and certain cure. This class of miracles
can of course be explained as " Psychiatry "—but
no one has yet fully explained " Psychiatry." Still,
Jesus is not the only man who has had a mysterious
power of healing. The miracles of nature are more
difficult. Four are recorded by St Mark—the
calming of a storm 3, walking on the sea 4, and the
feeding of the five thousand and of the four
thousand 5.
1 Mark i. 23-26, 3o-31, 40-42, ii. 3-12, iii. 1-5, iv. 37-39,
v. 2-15, 25-29, 38-42, vi. 35-44, vii. 26-30, 32-35,
viii. 1-9, 22-25, ix. 17-27, X. 46-52.
2 Mark i. 32-34, iii. 10, 11, vi. 5, 56.
3 Mark iv. 37-39.
4 Mark vi. 48-51.
5 Mark vi. viii. by Microsoft 0 4-2
52 THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT
Most difficult of all are the miracles of raising
the dead. Three are recorded—of Jairus' daughter',
of the widow's son at Nain 2, and of Lazarus 3.
The three accounts .of the first of these may all
well be taken from one source. The second is told
simply, almost incidentally, by St Luke alone.
The third only occurs in the Fourth Gospel but is
told strikingly and circumstantially. Perhaps it is
simpler to accept than to reject them, strange as
they are. All these miracles can be explained
away 4 by coincidence and such things ; but these
explanations never seem to me to be quite satisfactory.
It seems almost easier to believe in the
occurrence of these unexplained phenomena in the
life of one who is already so strikingly distinguished
from His fellow-men, and of whom the Resurrection
is recorded, than it is to believe in so strange
a series of coincidences. Besides, when each individual
miracle is explained away, the total impression
made by Jesus, of which these stories
are at least the expression, is not, even so, explained.
But in any case the miracles are unimportant.
Even according to their actual historians
they were so regarded by Jesus who tried to hush
them up whenever possible' and He always re-
1 Matt. ix. 23-26; Mark v. 38-42; Luke viii. 49-56.
2 Luke vii. 11-15.
3 John xi. I-44•
• See App. to The Lord of all Good Life by Donald Hankey
(Longmans & Co.).
5
Mark i. 44, iii. r2, v. 43, vii. 33,36, viii. 26 but v. 19 is
IN JESUS 53
fused any demand for a "sign1." To say therefore
that Christianity stands or falls with the miracles
of Jesus is stupidity carried almost to the point of
dishonesty.
It is the same with the Virgin Birth. Belief in
this doctrine depends very much on one's own
definition of the Divinity of Jesus. Perhaps if is
not more difficult to believe than the Resurrection
—for which as we have seen the evidence is overwhelming;
but the evidence for this is not much
—a passage in St Matthew's Gospel 2, another in
St Luke's 3 but it is not mentioned in St Mark, the
Fourth Gospel or the Epistles.
Again, this is not of the essence of Christianity.
A man may be the supreme revelation of GOD
without being born of a virgin. The uniqueness
of Jesus lies, not in such earthly details as these
but in His character, His teaching, His life and
His death. You may treat them as being on a par
with the legends of the saints, you may accept
them but try to explain them " naturally," or you
an exception, since Gadara was outside the ordinary scope
of His journeys as were also Tyre and Sidon (Mark vii. 24).
All the other miracles when Jesus did not command secrecy
were either done privately in the presence of His disciples
only, or else so publicly that secrecy was impossible. I am
only speaking now of those recorded by Mark.
1 Matt. xvi. 1-4.
2 Matt. i. 18-25. This passage, moreover, occurs in a
section which also contains such stories as the Star,
Herod's anxiety about the new king, the visit of the Magi,
the flight into Egypt.
3 Luke i. 34, 35. Digitized by Microsoft C ,
54 MIRACULOUS ELEMENT IN JESUS
may say that if Jesus rose from the dead it is a
light matter to believe that He also healed lepers,
calmed storms, raised the dead, or was born of a
virgin. But it is not worth quarrelling about: the
destructive critic may be right or wrong, but he
has taken nothing from true Christianity by rejecting
them. Jesus is no more to be considered
the supreme revelation of GOD on account of His
miracles than Socrates is to be regarded as a
supreme philosopher because of the manner of his
death.
Univ Caiif - Digitized by Microsoft
CHAPTER VIII
SIN, PENITENCE, AND ATONEMENT
E have left undone those things which
we ought to have done and we have
done those things which we ought not
to have done."
Perhaps that is a good general definition of sin,
—that is, of Moral Evil. Sin is evil as it affects our
actions: Ugliness, evil as it affects our perceptions
: Error, evil as it affects our intellects : and
Pain, evil as it affects our bodies. But the English
character has in this matter been most unfortunately
and deeply tinged by Puritanism, chiefly I
suppose, because we are a " practical !" race,—
given to doing things, and idolising great doers;
rather than aesthetic (or apt to perceive, and to
idolise great perceivers), or intellectual (or especially
able to think and understand, and likely to
idolise great thinkers and understanders). The
"ordinary" Englishman is pretty sure, in his
rough " practical " way, of the boundary between
right and wrong: he cares little for the boundary
between true and false: while the boundary between
beautiful and ugly he is apt to treat with
supreme contempt. He will talk of "a mere
aesthete," or "a mere intellectual," but not of "a
mere good and honest man" ! This is really an
•7 ed
56 SIN, PENITENCE,
utterly false point of view. Evil is evil, and good is
good, in any sphere ; and who shall say that the
sphere of earthly acts is more important than the
sphere of intellectual understanding, or of artistic
appreciation ?
I have called pain physical evil: all parallels are
likely to be more or less weak : but it may be useful
to try to draw a parallel between pain and sin—
between bodily evil and moral evil. The parallel
might be extended to cover other forms of
spiritual evil, such as error and ugliness : but
these for the moment are not our concern.
Pain is the sign that there is something wrong in
the body. It may be active disease, or merely a
weakness : yet to this extent it is useful and
healthy, that it does give warning when something
is wrong. It is the protest of a normally healthy
organism against ill-health. Besides, without pain
there could be no growth—just as no intellect can
grow and be enriched without occasional error, and
art can never progress without some unsuccessful
experiments. But the healthy body tries to rid
itself of the cause of its pain, and return to health.
Now apply this to sin. Sin' is the sign that something
is wrong in the soul, or the will—it may be
a latent viciousness, or merely weakness; yet it is
better that this hidden fault should come to light
than remain to fester.
By sin, I mean the outward word or thought as distinguished
from the inward moral wrong or weakness which
it denotes.
AND ATONEMENT 57
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen1.
If the fault is in the will, it becomes no worse by
an open act. And the true man is striving after
goodness ; therefore what we call the conscience
gives a sense of sin, and all that is good in the man
rises against the sin and endeavours to cure the
fault of will. Moreover, sinlessness is not a
practical ideal in this life. This does not mean
that sin does not matter, any more than error and
ugliness do not matter because they are sometimes
inevitable; but our treatment of sin is apt to be
somewhat curious. If a man is in intellectual
error, if he makes an unsuccessful experiment in
art, and then sees his mistake, he doesn't sit down
and cry over spilt milk; what he does, if he is a
man, is to learn from his mistake and set out on a
new path. He recognises where he has failed or
gone wrong and goes ahead along what now seems
the right way. But when a man sins, he is expected
to spend a long time in penitence morbidly
confessing his many sins and abasing and humbling
himself, till only too often he comes to regard
himself as a creature in whom is no good; his hope
is withered, and at best he begins to aim at sinlessness
rather than active goodness, at merely avoiding
what is wrong, rather than doing what is right.
This negative goodness is a most insidious and
poisonous ideal.
'nil/ Calif - Hamlet,III. iv. 148: ,licrosoft qi)
58 SIN, PENITENCE,
I dreamed I sat by heaven's gate,
• And watched the good men go
All comfortless in robes of white,
That had no stain to show.
For, fearing greatly, they on earth
Scarce dared to draw a breath
—Their single talent still unused—
And now their life was death.
Then I descended to the depth,
And watched the sinners go,
With faces shining like the day,
And scarlet robes aglow.
And there among them as of old
Walked One, Whom I knew well,
Who opened wide His arms to me:
I found my Christ in help.
Evil, as we have seen, is both negative—weakness
or slackness ; and positive—a definite vitiation
of will. But good is positive. For my own part,
give me a sturdy sinner rather than a good man
whose only goodness is avoiding sin, who lacks
the courage even to be bad, much more to be
really good. These are the nonentities whom
Dante saw, rejected by heaven and scorned by
hell, outcasts even from the pit. Do you think
that GOD is to be appeased by whining ? " Wherefore
criest thou unto Me ? . . . Go forward !"
"Don't sit down and cry over spilt milk; recognise
your fault; learn from it; strive against it and do
better. Set out on a new path; go ahead; do right.
H. Rex Freston, Collected Poems,
AND ATONEMENT 59
GOD wants servants not slaves." The victorious
soldier is not he who avoids defeat by never entering
the battle at all. There is more hope for a
determined sinner than for a weakling pietist.
Sin hinders the soul's perfection, whether negatively
or positively: it is an enemy to be fought
with, not avoided. Loathing of past sin is the first
part of true penitence and an essential part, in so
far as it enables you to avoid sin in future. But if a
runner falls he does not sit and cry," How stupid,"
" How unworthy of me to fall," he gets up and goes
on again. The best and truest penitence is to fix
your eyes again on the ideal which you had forsaken
or denied. Up, and on again I Hope is an
essential part of true penitence.
To come to matters more definitely theological.
Has the death of Jesus any connection with our
sins or help for sinners ; and if so, how ? The old
idea, of course, ran something as follows : God is
bound to punish sin. Man sinned : God was
therefore bound to punish him, as a sort of debt
to the devil, or to His own " justice." So a remedy
was found: God became man in Jesus. Jesus did
not sin: but He paid the penalty of sin; thus man
became free, whoever claimed the wiping-out of
sin's debt in Jesus' Blood.
When before the Judge we tremble,
Conscious of His broken laws,
May the Blood of His atonement
Cry aloud, and plead our cause;
(Hymn 102, A. & M.).
6o SIN, PENITENCE,
Or again:
O sinner, mark, and ponder well
Sin's awful condemnation;
Think what a sacrifice it cost
To purchase thy salvation;
Had Jesus never bled and died,
Then what could thee and all betide
But uttermost damnation?
(Hymn 104, A. & M.).
This theory is logical and businesslike. But
there are two things ascribed in it to GOD which
seem rather undignified—the discrepancy between
His love and His "justice," and the keeping of
moral account-books. It has already been hinted
that punishment must be remedial, not revengeful.
Eternal punishment is not only a confession
of failure on the part of GOD—even the extinction
of a soul would be that—but it would be
a
useless and childish piece of revenge as well.
Moreover, it could not be even just, for justice,
as Plato pointed out', can never make a man
worse.
Again, morality cannot be run on a system of
debit and credit. Nor can vicarious righteousness
be counted righteousness at all—a righteousness,
so to speak, merely laid on top of a man's imperfections.
Righteousness is a quality of the soul.
How, then, does the death of Jesus affect man's
soul? That it does so is evident; sinners have at
all times found comfort and hope in the Cross;
1 Republic, Book 1. 335 n, E.
AND ATONEMENT
this cannot be all false superstition, though probably
these penitents themselves could not always,
nor perhaps even often have explained exactly
how the comfort and hope came to them from the
Cross of Jesus—they may only have known that
so it was. But take hold of the root principle of
Christianity: apply the fundamental principle of
Jesus' teaching to Jesus' own life and death. He
revealed God as love in His own death, which He
suffered for the sake of men because He persisted
in His teaching and His opposition to the formalism
and hypocrisy that destroyed love. By His
death He symbolised and revealed the love of
GOD. In Jesus—as in the less conspicuous examples
of all others who have shown that love
than which no man can have greater, in laying
down their lives for their fellow men—in these,
men have seen the love of GOD, the supreme ideal,
in whose light their sins are most loathsome, in
whose beams are hope and strength for the renewed
fight, the onward journey.
Those who have felt and realised the love of
God revealed in the Cross of Jesus no longer obey
the law as a moral code of commands and penalties;
they simply cannot offend against such love.
... God's dear Son came down to earth and died
In bloodshed and the darkness of clouds that groaned
aghast
With pierced hands and a great wound in His side.
It is not in my heart to hate the pleasant sins I
leave.
'f Digitized by Microsoft CD
6z SIN, PENITENCE,
Earth's passion flames within me fierce and strong.
But this is like a shadow ever rising up to thieve
Sin's pleasures and the lure of every pattern lust can
weave
And charm of all things that can do him wrong1.
In Jesus we see GOD'S love and the beauty of
sacrifice. We know GOD better now.
Oh that the heavens were rent and one came down
Who saw men's hurt with kindlier eyes than mine,
Fiercelier than I resented every wrong,
Sweated more painful drops than these that flow
In nightly passion for my people's sin 2,—
and that is what we now have. Our new knowledge
of the love of GOD is a far nobler, as well as
a far stronger incentive to hate the evil and follow
the good than the fear of eternal torment, against
which all that loves freedom revolts in scathing
passion, in hatred and scorn and defiance.
Were it not thus, o King of my salvation,
Many would curse to thee and I for one,
Fling thee thy bliss and snatch at thy damnation,
Scorn and abhor the shining of the sun,...
Is there not wrong too bitter for atoning?
What are these desperate and hideous years ?
Hast Thou not heard Thy whole creation groaning,
Sighs of the bondsmen, and a woman's tears3 ?
F. W. Harvey, Gloucestershire Friends: Poems from a
German Prison Camp, p. 70.
2 F. W. H. Myers, St John the Baptist (Poems, p. 64).
3 F. W. H. Myers, Saint Paul. rosoft (E0
AND ATONEMENT 63
Or again :
What! out of senseless Nothing to provoke
A conscious Something to resent the yoke
Of unpermitted Pleasure under pain
Of Everlasting Penalties, it broke!
What! from his helpless Creature be repaid
Pure dGrooslsd- aflolar yw'dh-Saut eh e lent us
for a Debt he never did contract,
And cannot answer—Oh the sorry trade!
Nay, but, for terror of his wrathful Face
I swear I will not call Injustice Grace'.
But the antidote to sin is the Love of GOD.
1 FitzGerald, Omar Khayyam, 2nd ed. st. lxxxiv. to
lxxxvi.
Univ Calif - Digitized by Microsoft
CHAPTER IX
MORALITY, TRUTH, AND BEAUTY
THE spiritual activities of mankind may be
roughly classified as moral, intellectual and
aesthetic. The aim of the first is morality
or righteousness; its evil is sin ; its physical manifestation
is in thoughts and acts. The aim of the
second is truth or knowledge; its evil is error; its
physical manifestation is in opinions and words.
The aim of the third is beauty; its evil is ugliness;
its physical manifestation is in art. The perfect
man, then, appreciates alike righteousness, truth
and beauty. All these paths lead to the same end.
The whole perfection of mankind depends on the
perfection of each part. Therefore, though total
perfection is the ultimate and ideal result of all,
each must be an end in itself, and a law to itself.
Nov among the English race, the chief difficulty
in keeping morality, truth and beauty distinct, is
our inherited Puritanical idea of the overwhelming
importance of morality. The result is, that seekers
after truth and beauty are liable to be interfered
with by hide-bound moralists, who do not realise
that perfect truth and perfect beauty are bound in
the end to be found on the side of morality. Perfection
is comprehensive, not exclusive, and principles
that seem superficially incompatible are
MORALITY, TRUTH, AND BEAUTY 65
often, if not always, found to be really complementary.
Take the case of Psychical Research. A certain
number of men undertook this study in a purely
scientific spirit : abuses crept in, charlatans appeared,
moral degradation resulted in weak or
insincere persons. In comes our "moralist."
"Away with it," he cries, too blind or too impatient
to distinguish between science and charlatanry,
sincerity and hypocrisy, enquiry after
truth and greed of money or notoriety. So able
and sincere scientists are sometimes pilloried as
charlatans; or even as practisers of the black art;
their opponents cry out in the name of a spurious
morality, or a still more spurious religion, babbling
confusedly about "wizards that peep and that
mutter." Of whom enough.
Worse and more common is the harm done in
the name of morality to art. Now there is no harm
for example, in painting a picture with a moral
purpose ; but do not call that art. Art seeks
beauty, and beauty alone. In so far as it succeeds
in this it is good ; in so far as it fails in this, it is
bad. Morality has no place, as such, in art, which
is strictly non-moral, just as truth is non-moral.
Much in art that seems immoral is not immoral—
to the pure all things are pure : if a so-called work
of art is really immoral, it is not appealing to the
sense of beauty, but to something else—sensuousness,
lust or what not.
Righteousness is concerned with earthly acts,
DE C.
66 MORALITY, TRUTH, AND BEAUTY
and the motives that prompt them. In these is a
vision of GOD the All-Righteous. But no less, .to
many indeed far more inspiring, is the vision of
GOD the TRUTH, revealed in contemplation of
truth, of the revelations of truth in the great
thinkers and scientists of the world, who have
been thus the prophets of GoD—in Plato and
Aurelius, Galileo and Newton, James Watt and
Frederick Myers. Nor less exalting is the vision
of GOD the All-Beautiful, revealed in nature and
art, in dawn and sunset, hill and valley, river and
ocean; in all music and poetry, painting and
sculpture and architecture. What soul that is not,
so far as this, dead, can contemplate without a
beating exaltation the supreme works of great
artists ? GOD is revealed in the work of the builders
of Wells, the saints of Angelico, the odes of Keats,
the figures of Pheidias. And then we imagine GOD
as merely the stern Judge, or worse, as the balancer
of moral account books, or the capricious but unfortunately
omnipotent Despot !
This tyranny of a narrow and unsympathetic'
morality has sometimes caused a reaction even in
England, and men have arisen to decry morality
in the interests especially of art. This is of course
unsound, and schools of art founded on it are
doomed. But it is a significant symptom. Yet
were morality discredited, it would be as bad as if
art or science was discredited; all man's activities
are necessary to his perfection; and all are included
and summed up in the grand root princip e of
Christianity, which is love; and GOD is Love.
CHAPTER X
IMMORTALITY
One dieth in his full strength, being wholly at ease
and quiet....
And another dieth in the bitterness of his soul, and
never eateth with pleasure.
They shall lie down alike in the dust, and the worms
shall cover them. (Job xxi. 23, 25, 26.)
THE question of life after death is one of
the most important questions regarding the
conduct of our life on earth. If there is no
future life, then let us eat and drink, for tomorrow
we die.
Drink ! for you know not whence you came, nor why :
Drink ! for you know not why you go, nor where1.
This, though hopeless, is logical. The pleasures
of earth may be low, transitory, unsatisfying, but
they are pleasant, and all you have. Enjoy them
while you can, and live for the moment. When
tired of life, rid yourself of it speedily and painlessly
and all is over. But somehow this does not
satisfy the soul of man. Man has always had a
hankering after continued life, when the instinct
has been healthy. Nirvana is only the ideal of a
weary and decadent race. Moreover, our very
FitzGerald, Omar Khayyam, 2nd ed. At. lxxx.
5-2
68 IMMORTALITY
ideals of virtue are only valid in the light of immortality.
Is a man good who refrains from
wronging his neighbours ? But if this life is all, a
man who can steal his neighbours' goods without
being caught is the happier, and the happiest is he
who can do whatever he desires, and yet keep the
esteem and praise, and obtain the honours and
rewards of his fellow-men. In other words, the
happiest man is the successful criminal 1! The
remark that wrongdoing hurts the soul is meaningless,
for man has no soul. To say that a
criminal is punished by his own conscience merely
strengthens the case: for the possession of a conscience
argues a certain amount of good in a man ;
therefore, the worse a man is, the less conscience
he will have to trouble him, and the happier he
will be. "Ask him, if this life is all, who wins the
game ? " You may say that a man should serve
virtue for no reward : but virtue itself is now only
a social agreement—nothing more. As, therefore,
we have throughout granted the existence of
ideals, and have seen reason to believe in the
existence of a supreme and supremely good GOD
(who yet certainly does not enforce goodness in
this life), we cannot but grant that life is continued
beyond bodily death. Modern science is
beginning to tell us the same thing.
But "with what body do they come ? " Or have
they any body at all ? Can we in any sense say we
believe in the Resurrection of the Body?
1 Cf. Plato, Republic, Book 11. 359 B-362 c.
IMMORTALITY 69
Now obviously this cannot be taken literally.
Our present earthly material body lies down in
the dust, and the worms cover it: or it is burnt:
or it is maimed and scarred. A man is blown to
pieces by a shell: will his body, scattered in
fragments, become manure for the fruits of the
ground ?
When the earth breaks into blossom
Richer from the dust of man1,
—shall this rise again ?
Yes! tho' the darts exasperate and bloody
Fell on the fair side of Sebastian faint,
Think ye the round wounds and the gashes ruddy
Scar in God's house the beauty of the saint? 2
Literal interpretation, then, being impossible,
the thin end of the wedge is in. Speculation is
more free. Perhaps the soul will form itself a body
adapted to its new surroundings, whatever they
may be—a body, perhaps, like that which St Paul
describes', related to our earthly body in the same
sort of way as a flower or tree is related to its seed.
Or perhaps the soul will need no body—that is no
material expression. But this at least it must
mean, and this at least we must grant: that the
personality of a man continues after his death,
that he takes his character with him—for his
character is his soul. And as earthly life is social,
• Outward Bound, by an officer who has since fallen in
Gallipoli (The Times, 27 Aug. 1915).
2 F. W. H. Myers, Final Perseverance (Poems, p. 71).
' I Cor. xv. 35-44.
IMMORTALITY
so must be our next life, and friends shall recognise
each other somehow.
Human imagination has always played round
the details of our next life. This is very natural,
but no detailed description can be entirely satisfactory.
But one point has brought forth some
very queer theories: the tormenting question, What
of those who die "in sin "—to use a theological
term ? This cuts two ways: a man usually regards
his enemies as sinful, but he cannot always be
quite satisfied about the "fitness to die "—to use
another horrible phrase—even of those whom he
loves. But the first usually predominates. The
great influence on European thought in this matter
has been the dreams of the post-exilic Jewish
Apocalyptic writers ; who, belonging to an oppressed
and proud and passionate nation, imagined
and prophesied terrible things in store for their
powerful and victorious enemies. Accordingly,
eternal punishment became early, and for a long
time remained, a prominent tenet of the Church.
The objections to this have already been briefly
noted : it is inconsistent with even man's love,
justice, or common sense : much more with GOD'S.
A compromise has been suggested—the theory of
Annihilation, or Conditional Immortality—that if
a soul persists in evil, it eventually rots out of
existence. This theory is open to some of the same
objections. GOD first creates a soul and then destroys
it. The net result for the soul is this : it
awakes to a universe thus governed ; it sets itself
IMMORTALITY 71
against, or finds itself incompatible with, this
universe. Eventually after much trouble, it returns
to the non-existence which it had better
never have left, after having first won a partial
victory over a universe which produced, but could
neither absorb nor coerce it. Thus the soul has
suffered much to no purpose, and GOD has in this
one instance at least failed. The total result is
utter evil.
We seem then to be driven back on Universalism—
the theory that at last every single soul must
become perfect, or, since perfection is necessarily
an infinite process, set itself towards perfection,
and cease from its opposition or indifference to
good. Up jumps our moralist: " What reason,"
he demands, " is there any more for men to be
good, if all are at last to become perfect and
to be saved ? If you are sure of your final safety,
eat and drink and satisfy your lust. You are
undermining the very basis of morality with
your sentimental notions." True : I was once
told of a girl who after hearing Universalism
preached, came to her mother and said that
she felt that the prop of her morality had been
taken away, and she should fall. And she did
fall. But her morality was only propped on fear—
fear of punishment : her soul was weak and low :
she would probably have fallen in any case sooner
or later; and even if not, such morality as hers is
more contemptible than the violence of a courageous
sinner. But there must be eternal hope; GOD
IMMORTALITY
cannot love her less than her mother did ; and
" GOD has plenty of time to do things between now
and the other side of eternity."
But to our moralist's other objection we may
reply that the good and the bad soul cannot be in
the same position. Evil hurts the soul; perfection
is of the soul. Every evil admitted into a soul removes
it further from perfection and makes its
future struggle harder, and its gaze on perfection
dimmer. Yet that light can never quite fade. But
a soul rotted by immorality, indifference to truth,
contempt of beauty, or any other evil, is worse
equipped, and finds its goal dimmer and its
struggle harder than a soul strengthened by the
contemplation and pursuit of what is good in act,
true in thought, and beautiful in art. You may
call this remedial punishment if you like—struggle
will make a weak soul stronger—but punishment
for sheer revenge is useless and childish, whether
in man or GOD and unthinkable in perfect Goodness.
There is, then, further progress in the life after
death; and progress means struggle, and perhaps
pain. Perhaps this progress will be endless, since
the goal is infinite; but the idea that all eternity
depends on this little space of earthly life is too
disproportionate to be believed, and too terrible
to be borne. The next life must be a continuation
of this, another stage of the same journey, another
phase of the same battle, not the journey's end, or
the battle's completion.
IMMORTALITY 73
O nights how desolate, O days how few,
O death in life, if life be this, be this!
O weighed alone as one shall win or miss
The faint eternity which shines there thro'!
Lo all that age is as a speck of sand
Lost on the long beach when the tides are free,
And no man metes it in his hollow hand
Nor cares to ponder it, how small it be;
At ebb it lies forgotten on the land
And at full tide forgotten in the seal.
And in eternal progress is eternal hope; yes, in
regress still is hope. While there is life there is
hope ; but a " dead soul "—a soul imprisoned and
fixed for ever in its evil—there is no hope there;
yet neither is there any justice or love or wisdom
there. Therefore it cannot be the act of GOD.
I could not worship a GOD whom I believe capable
of so monstrously evil a thing. All we who have
come from GOD shall return to GOD: for if GOD
be GOD, Whose power is equal to His Will, no
evil will, human or demoniac, shall in the end
withstand Him, "that GOD may be all in all."
1 F. W. H. Myers, Fragments of prose and poetry, 1904,
p. 172.
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CHAPTER XI
CHRISTIANITY
IT may seem that by this time we have worn
Christianity rather thin. If it is not necessary
to define very strictly the Divinity of Jesus : if
the Church is so largely a human institution, its
doctrines not infallible, its organisation not determined
: if Universalism has excluded from our
belief the Last Judgment as an historical event:
if the forgiveness of sins is merely perpetual inspiration
to do better in the future : what then is
left of Christianity as it has been understood in
the past? Is it not true that we have merely tried
to evolve a theistic and idealistic philosophy and
called it Christianity ? I say, most emphatically
unhidNden, o : we have left the core of Christianity
its central light unveiled—the principles
of Jesus' teaching, His Person, His life, His death.
Jesus was the centre of the Apostles' teaching as
He has been of all true Christian teaching ever
since. The first Christian sermon began with the
name of " Jesus of Nazareth 1," and it is with Him
that all right Christianity begins. And thus we are
still Christians : yes, and more Christian than those
who quarrel about "Faith and Order"—that is
Univ Calif - D.. Acts ii. 22
.
. 1/ Microsoft cFP
CHRISTIANITY 75
about dogma and organisation. For we try to go
back through these to Jesus.
Christianity is an ideal; but in this point it
surpasses all other idealistic philosophies and
religions—that it is an ideal expressed and summarised
in a Person. It is quite literally the
religion of the " Word made Flesh "—the Eternal
and Absolute expressed as far as may be in human
terms. And this Word is Love. In this immense
mystic word is inherent the whole good. " Every
one that loveth is born of GOD and knoweth GOD.
He that loveth not, knoweth not GOD1." And one
of the most characteristic acts and expressions of
love is self-sacrifice. And here lies the unfathomable
significance of the Cross.
Not in soft speech is told the earthly story,
Love of all Loves! that showed thee for an hour:
Shame was thy kingdom, and reproach thy glory,
Death thy eternity, the Cross thy power2.
This disposes of the objection that the doctrine of
love is a weak and sentimental thing, out of touch
with the stern and hard facts of life.
God's love's...
...caress IS chastisement.
What answered through the olive-trees
GOD, when the Son in anguish lay,
Praying, " 0 take this cup away!"
Did He then take it? Nay, child, nay:
He made Him drink it to the lees3.
1
a Ibsen's Brand, transl. C. H. Herford, p. 86.
76 CHRISTIANITY
This willing abandonment of self is the highest
and noblest and truest love.
" Greater love hath no man than this, that a man
lay down his life for his friends," said Jesus; and
at another time, "No man taketh it from me, but
I lay it down of myselfl."
It is not martyrdom to toss
In anguish on the deadly cross:
But to have WILL'D to perish so,
To WILL it through each bodily throe,
To will it with still-tortured mind,
This, only this, redeems mankind2.
In this great principle of love, in one manifestation
or another, in the form of sacrifice, harmony,
or whatever it may be, is the key and solution of
everything. But again, objections may be raised:
for example, Are we to love evil ? Evil in the
abstract is of course hateful and to be hated ; as
by Dante,
Who loved well because he hated,
Hated wickedness that hinders loving3.
But Dante, in his great poem, could not separate
evil from the workers of evil; his hell for evil had
to be filled with evil-doers, human types of sin.
John xv. 13 and x. 18. These are quoted from the
Fourth Gospel. But at the least they are a very ancient
commentary of Jesus, by one who had studied His Person
and work very deeply, whether the Apostle himself or a
disciple of his.
2 Itrabnsl. Cs. BHe. Herrnforda,' ps. 9n2 . d,
3 R. Browning, Men and Women. One Word more, vol. v.
P. 315.
CHRISTIANITY 77
But it is a platitude that Christianity hates the sin
but loves the sinner. There is a good example of
this in the story (whether authentic or not) of
Jesus' treatment of the woman taken in adultery.
Even if the actual incident is fabulous, the moral
importance of the story is not impaired. The
Pharisees discovered, at the Feast of Tabernacles,
a woman in the very act of adultery. They seized
her, and dragged her into the Temple to Jesus,
through the middle of the crowd, not by reason of
moral disapprobation of the deed—they would not
consult Jesus about that—but "that they might
have to accuse Him." Now Jesus did not condone
the sin ; He said she had sinned, but His sentence
was not " I condemn thee," nor even, " Go and
weep and do penance," it was, " I do not condemn
thee ; go, and sin no more." At the same time He
rebuked the Pharisees for their eagerness to
" down " the woman—a type of eagerness not remarkably
absent in some who profess and call
themselves Christians.
What about our charities for the "deserving
poor" ? I wonder what Mary Magdalene would
have got out of them. Look within; consider your
own faults, and you will be less ready to condemn
your neighbour. " He that is without sin among
you, let him first cast a stone at her." Jesus always
proclaimed that His mission was primarily to
sinners. " Go ye," He said to the moralists, "and
learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and
not sacrifice ; for I am not come to call the right78
CHRISTIANITY
eous, but sinners to repentance." Yet no one can
ever say that Jesus took sin lightly. He loathed
sin. Though His scale of moral values was utterly
different from that of the Pharisees, He was always
fighting sin, both in others and in His own temptations.
So He laid down the principle that the
sinner must be distinguished from the sin, and
He put it in practice Himself. This practice has
been misunderstood by those who have failed to
grasp the principle. Still confusing the sinner and
the sin, they have read such stories as that of Jesus'
treatment of the wicked woman in the Pharisees'
house', and have almost seemed to draw the conclusion
that He in some way condoned the sin.
As a matter of fact He was absolutely silent about
the woman's wrong-doings. The secret of the
essential distinction lies again in the fundamental
principle of love. As in the case of the woman
taken in adultery, He concentrated His attention,
not on the case, but on the person. This story in
St Luke vii. is one of the most beautiful and
touching stories in the world ; it is so absolutely
human. Jesus and the woman were two human
beings, met face to face; she loved Jesus, and He
loved her. This Pharisee was not human, and he
was therefore rebuked and silenced. " Her sins,
which are many, are forgiven ; for she loved much.
. .. And He said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven. "
And so with Zacchaeus 2 !He repented of h is
sins : he offered restitution : for he loved Jesus.
Luke vii. 36-50 gitized 2
Luke xix.
CHRISTIANITY 79
The Puritans muttered, " He is gone to be the
guest of a sinner !" We can imagine them holding
up their hands in pious horror. But Jesus preferred
a loving and repentant sinner to a loveless
"righteous man that needs no repentance." This
is strongly brought out in the parable of the
Prodigal Son 1. This young man spends his fortune
in riotous and probably immoral living and is
reduced to beggary. He goes home in penitence,
and his father gives him a royal welcome. His
elder brother hears of it, and refuses to come in.
"This fellow—he has devoured your living with
harlots ! I never disobeyed you "—yes ; but that
is not the point. Lovelessness is worse than all
other sins2. By his behaviour now this elder
brother showed that he lacked love, and all this
obedience went for nothing in comparison with
the penitent love of his sinful brother. The principle
is this: Love the sinner, and your loathing of
his sin will not cause you to feel contempt or lack
of sympathy for him. There is nothing, I think,
in the New Testament afterwards like this unique
tenderness of Jesus—yet a tenderness not incompatible
with hatred of sin 3. Jesus is the bitter
enemy of all sin ; but He is also the enemy of any
self-righteous Pharisaism. He was very fond of
associating with people who were not "respect-
1 Luke xv. 11-32.
2 Matt. xxi. 31.
3 A11 this is personal, and bears only indirectly on the
theory of punishment, which is largely a social question.
8o CHRISTIANITY
able." It was the respectable folk who aroused, by
their self-satisfaction and lovelessness, His contempt
and anger. Christianity hates sin but loves
the sinner.
Yes, spurned and fool and sinner stray
Along the highway and the way...
This journey soon will make them clean:
Their faith is greater than their sin'.
Or there is the old objection, If GOD is love,
why is there so much evil in the world? There is
a story of a preacher who took for the text of his
first sermon, " GOD is love." As he gave it out,
all the untold evil of the world seemed to flash
across his mind, and he silently registered a vow
that he would never preach again till he had seen
how this could be reconciled with GOD'S love.
And the story goes that he never did preach again.
Yet it is a shallow view that GOD cannot be loving
while evil is so rife, or that love cannot be the root
principle of so unkind a universe In reply to this
view it may be asked, How is it that, when the
world contains so much evil, men have ever come
to regard GOD as loving? It is not merely the
sentimentality of unsound idealists; the view has
been held by men of practical and personal experience
of the world's evil, men too of sound,
hard, worldly wisdom, who have met evil of all
kinds, and still continue to call GOD Love.
Moreover, such a view is very largely unfair to
C. H. Sorley, Marlborough and other poems (3rd edn),
p. 107.
CHRISTIANITY 8i
GOD. Take this present War. It has come as a
grand text to those who want to disprove GOD's
benevolence or His existence. "Look at this,"
they say, "the barbarities, the horrors, the pain
and the waste and death, the slaughter of innocents,
the torture of those who did no harm, the
death of so many who might have done much for
the world. Consider these facts, and say, if you
dare, that GOD, if He exists at all, is love !" But
was it GOD after all, that caused this War ? Or was
it man ? Can you put down to GOD the national
jealousies and rivalries and suspicions and greedinesses
that were the seed that has burst into this
poisonous and flaming flower of death ? You serve
evil, you love yourself, you strive against your
neighbour, and when you find that you have
brought disaster on yourself, you blame GOD for
it ! You ask for trouble, and when you get it you
cry out on GOD. Of course, certain people will
point out with righteous indignation, that we are
not responsible for this War, our hands are clean,
we were a peaceful people, meekly inheriting the
earth, till that monster of Satan, Germany,
brutally and inexcusably attacked us. Well ; if
that is your view, be it so. Say the evil is all of
German make. It is still evil. The problem has
changed, and become, "Why if GOD is loving and
just does He allow the innocent to suffer for the
sins of the guilty ? " For such is most undoubtedly
the case on the earth. We are compelled to fall
back on our principle of love. The whole human
DE C. 6
8z CHRISTIANITY
race—including the Germans—are one, and one
member must suffer with and for another. It is
inevitable. " What ? " you say, " are we to love the
Germans ? " We must at any rate recognise that
the Germans are men, as we are men. Men at the
Front, who tend German wounded, and feed
starving German prisoners, know this ; the excess
of hatred seems to be a luxury chiefly enjoyed at
home. This recognition of kinship, however, does
not preclude killing the enemy, if, as now, it is
necessary. The view that it does, assumes that
death is necessarily an evil and killing necessarily
wrong. It may be impossible—as it is now—to
stamp out the evil without killing the evil-doer;
yes, and without killing those, too, whom we believe
to be doing the work of evil, but who think
themselves to be doing good, and who are as
innocent of actually causing the War as we are.
Killing may be a necessity, though an unfortunate
one—the lesser of two evils. This argument, I
know, will not appeal to "plain minds" incapable
of separating in their thought even things absolutely
distinct. But there it is.
The ultimate problem is really this : Why does
GOD allow evil at all, if He really is loving? It is
these objectors who take a sentimental view of love
rather than we. Their idea of love is the foolish
love of a mother who spoils her child. A wiser and
nobler and stronger love is that which desires the
loved ones' highest good; and if this cannot be
obtained without pain—well then, pain be it
CHRISTIANITY 83
"His caress is chastisement." But it may still be
wondered why we are not allowed an Adam-and-
Eve existence in a calm, untroubled and sinless
garden, a land of unvexed peace and unmingled
pleasure,
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns,
And bowery hollows crown'd with summer seal.
But this is most ignoble wonder. Which is better,
the innocence of a child, or the goodness of a good
man? The one is merely good because he cannot
be anything else, the other is good, because he
loves good, and his goodness is stronger through
the falls he has tried with evil. GOD'S plan
Was to create man and then leave him,
Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him,
But able to glorify Him too,
As a mere machine could never do...
Made perfect as a thing of course2.
Without the possibility of evil there could be no
good; without freewill there could be no virtue.
Man's highest good could not possibly be attained
without the strengthening and purifying power of
contest; he could not even know what good was
had he not seen and known evil. Therefore the
love of GOD which desires our highest good, has
decreed that we shall know good and evil and
1 Tennyson, Morte d'Arthur.
2 Browning, Christmas Eve and Easter Day.
84 CHRISTIANITY
shall have the choice between them, which shall
be ours.
This may be thought inconsistent with the
notion that in the long run every one shall become
perfect. No; for now we are dealing with eternity.
If the love of GOD has decreed that man's good
shall be made good in battle, it has also decreed
that none shall be finally lost in that battle; yet
those who are weak or cowardly or treacherous
cannot but pay the penalty. It rests with the
man's own soul what he shall suffer before he
conquers. We cannot conceive to what extremities
the love of GOD may have to go before a man will
see that good is his good and so take sides against
evil.
Love, then, is the key of the universe, its heart,
its foundation-stone. Love is the source and the
end of morality, the supreme truth, and the ideal
beauty. In morality, for example, there seems
superficially to be two opposing principles—law
and liberty. The latter is usually regarded as the
negation of morality, a revolt against the moral
law of "Thou shalt not" or "Thou shalt." The
law says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," or
positively, "Thou shalt keep thy body in temperance."
The law-abider refrains from adultery and
keeps his body in temperance: the libertine commits
it, and yields to his body. That is the usual
contrast. But what really is liberty? Take an
extreme definition: it is doing what one likes. Now
suppose a man likes temperance and hates adultery
CHRISTIANITY 85
—does he not then keep the law in doing what he
likes ? This law is not then irksome to such a man.
In other words, law and liberty are united in one in
Love. And even the law itself is thus strengthened,
for the man who loves the law keeps its spirit as
well as its letter. Love is the highest law, and the
truest liberty. Morality is not a matter of good or
bad acts, but of good or bad motives. The difference
between a righteous man and an unrighteous
is not in their open acts, but in their wills. A man
who does wrong believing it to be right is more
righteous than a man who does right for a selfish
or otherwise low motive. Take the example of a
rich man who founds a hospital or an almshouse.
All applaud him; but does he do it out of pity and
love for the sick and poor, or does he do it to win
the praise of men, and perhaps their honours—
for laudatory notices in the papers, and perhaps a
knighthood ? It is on this question that the merit
of the deed depends. He has obeyed the letter of
the law that a man must help his fellow-men, and
especially those who are "worse off" than himself;
but if his motive is low he may or he may not
get his earthly reward—he is certainly no real
gainer. He is none the better for his act, even
though the poor may be happier for it and bless
him for it. Love is the moral law; and if his will
loves good he is righteous; but though he bestows
all his goods to feed the poor and have not love, it
profiteth him nothing. Though he speak with the
tongues of men and of angels, though he under-
6-3
86 CHRISTIANITY
stand all things hidden, and have all knowledge
and all faith, though he yield up even his body to
be burnt, and have not love, he is nothing.
Righteous acts done without love are nothing. A
cup of cold water given in the name of love is all
—it has struck the root of the matter, the very
core and centre of all morality.
Nor is love less essential and central in the
intellectual sphere. What is Truth ? Ask the
scientist what is the supreme and guiding principle
of the sphere of his study; it is order, he will
say. And what is order in human terms, but love ?
What ordered state was ever securely based on
anything but love? "Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne,
and myself," said Napoleon, " founded
Empires on force and they are gone; Jesus Christ
alone founded His on love, and to-day millions
would die for Him." A perfectly ordered state,
if such ever existed, would be a state where (as
Plato says) every one does his own work—the
work he is suited for; the most richly endowed
would do the highest and hardest work, the less
richly endowed would do inferior work; but all
the jealousies, all undue ambitions, would be prevented
by the love of each man for the state and
for his fellow-citizens. Love is thus the source of
order and humility.
Or ask the Philosopher. We have heard what
Plato says; let us next hear Aurelius. "We are
made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like
eye-lids, like rows of the upper and lower teeth.
CHRISTIANITY 87
To act against one another then is contrary to
nature 1." " The good for the reasonable animal is
society 2." "Reverence the gods and help men3."
" Love mankind 4
." " Men exist for the sake of one
another 6."
Order is in the stars above; order is virtue in the
sight of the reason that seeks truth ; order is the
virtue of mankind as a social being; and order
means love. The inferior must be inferior; but
where love rules, order is firm; for selfishness is
quelled. Harmony and due subordination, sacrifice
and love, are supreme Truth.
And this love must be applied to matters of
dogma and religious organisation; unity of spirit
may and must be present, even though uniformity
of organisation is impossible. But when a bishop
of the Church of Christ is found rejecting fellow-
Christians from the great Christian Sacrament of
the Lord's Supper because the organisation of
their body is not the same as his, or excommunicating
a fellow bishop for favouring a man darkly
suspected of " heresy "—that is, of freely exercising
his individual reason on matters of theology
—or when another bishop is found loudly protesting
against a fellow priest's appointment to the
Episcopate on similar grounds—then the enemies
of the Lord blaspheme, and what are we Christians
to say ? At the time of the Kikuyu contro-
Meditations,II. I. 2 Ibid. v. 16.
Ibid. vi. 3o. 2 Ibid. vu. 31.
Ibid. VIII 59;gitized by
88 CHRISTIANITY
versy, when " fellow-Christians " were bitterly
abusing each other over the Sacrament of love, a
cartoon appeared—I forget where—entitled " Saving
the Heathen," and showing an African savage
grinning while he watched one Christian " bishop "
hitting another over the head—in the name of
Christ,
Whose sad face on the Cross sees only this
After the passion of a thousand years1.
This sort of thing is a disgrace to Christianity;
"for in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth
any thing nor uncircumcision ; but faith which
worketh by love 2
." Love is the highest truth—
love and sacrifice and harmony.
Or what of the aesthetic faculty, the desire and
search for beauty? Love is the supremely beautiful
thing. That sublimest example of love, the
death of Jesus, has been one of the greatest inspirations
of art, from the calm grandeur of the
crowned Christ of Byzantine art, and the ,serene
splendour of Fra Angelico in San Marco at
Florence, to the passionate loneliness of Guido
Reni's interpretation in San Lorenzo at Rome.
The spell of beauty is very near akin to love—is
indeed love. It is love that is awakened by the
sight of rolling hills and rich valleys, of the quiet
stars, of some grand cathedral, or some superb
picture, by some perfect ode or some sublime
1 R. Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi, vol. v. p. 239.
2 Gal. v. 6. ""1qC
CHRISTIANITY 89
sonata. Oscar Wilde was moved by the supreme
aesthetic beauty of the life of Jesus. The incidents
of Jesus' life and death have been the subject of a
thousand magnificent achievements in all branches
of art. Love is again the supreme beauty and inspiration
of beauty.
Religion is the quintessence of human activities.
Nothing that is truly human is alien to it. A11
human enjoyment, all right laughter, is of the
nature of religion. There seems to be a popular
notion that religion is something very serious,
something arcane, hidden and shielded from
healthy human life. It is not. He who prays
attends to religion; he who engages in honest
trade attends to religion; so does he who studies
science or practises art; so does he who laughs.
A hearty laugh sounds the praise of GOD. Religion
was not only the source of the Greek tragic
and comic drama: it was the source of our English
dance and drama. The "Mystery Plays" were
religious dramas, representing scenes from the life
of Jesus or the saints; they were also comic—often
coarse according to our modern ideas. Religion is
a happy thing. It is again the Puritans who must
bear most of the blame for our forgetting this.
They had, unfortunately, no sense of humour.
GOD, I believe, has. Consequently, the Puritans
maimed and devitalised religion to a large extent.
If we would bring to bear on ecclesiastical and
theological matters the same free common sense,
the same healthy sense of humour, that we use in
go CHRISTIANITY
other concerns, there would be less bitterness, less
schism, less narrowness, less stupidity in our religion.
Two men are both seeking GOD, striving
after perfection ; yet they stand and revile and spit
at each other, because they differ, not about GOD,
but about Bishops; not about ideals, but about
phrases ; and so they "hiss and hate." And the
blind fight the blind. Common sense would kick
these quibbles out of doors. Humour would blow
them away in a storm of laughter. We want more
of this free and healthy humour in these matters.
At present we acknowledge Zeus and Apollo and
Prometheus and Athena—power and light and
sacrifice and wisdom—in the Godhead ; but we
have forgotten Pan and Dionysus—the spirit of
bursting nature and of jolly enjoyment.
All things properly human are religious. Everything
good is religious, everything that is not evil.
And the criterion of good and evil is to be found
in Jesus' principle of love. Everything which does
not offend against love is good. But in this world
evil is strong; and we have no reason to believe
that immediately after death things will be much
easier. Progress must be by struggle and pain.
The Christian call is not a sentimental lullaby of
ease ; it is a call to strength and manhood, a
summons to do and suffer, to strive and endure,
...eternally to no—
Our joy, our task, our recompense;
Up unexplored mountains move,
Track tireless through great wastes afar,
CHRISTIANITY
Nor slumber in the arms of love,
Nor tremble on the brink of war;
Make Beauty and make Rest give place,
Mock Prudence loud—and she is gone,
Smite Satisfaction on the face
And tread the ghost of Ease upon'.
Christianity is a great and eternal adventure.
Jesus' call was not a call to cowards ! " Whosoever
will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take
up his cross, and follow Me." "He that loveth
father or mother more than Me is not worthy of
Me....And he that taketh not his cross , and followeth
after Me, is not worthy of Me. He that findeth his
life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for My
sake shall find it 2."
What better wouldst thou have when all is done?
If any now were bidden rise and come
To either, could he pause to choose between
The rose-warm kisses of a waiting bride
In a shut silken chamber, and the thrill
Of the bared limbs bound fast for martyrdom?3
Love must be prepared to meet the hate of evil,
yes, even of the men whom it loves, and be able to
love them while it fights to the death against the
evil that is in them. Love cannot conquer without
strength, without endurance. But a man who was
perfectly loving would be perfectly good; he would
also be perfectly free, for he would never desire to
C. H. Sorley, Marlborough and other poems (3rd edn),
P. 71.
2 Mark viii. 34; Matt. x. 37-39.
8 Mrs Hamilton King, The Disciples.ilicrosoft
92 CHRISTIANITY
do or think what was evil. He would also have
attained supreme Truth and Beauty and the very
perfection of humanity. That is our standard,
which must be applied to every department of
life; and this is the root Christian principle and
its supreme ideal, .expressed to us in the Word
made flesh, the perfectly loving life of Jesus of
Nazareth. His teaching laid down the great
central principle: His life expressed it in action:
and all is summed up in the terrible and wonderful
and supreme symbol of His Cross. The seed and
full flower of all human goodness is the life and
death and love of Jesus.
Finished January 20th, 1918.
Revised ,July, 1918.
CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY J. B. PEACE, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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