IT is difficult for us, and some may even feel that it is impossible, to
make an impartial survey of an institution of which we ourselves form a
part; on the other hand, it is equally difficult, unless one can realize
something of its life from the inside, to appreciate the real nature of
that life. And thus it must ever be peculiarly hard for us to understand
the true relationship of the Christian churches to the world in which
they work and to the ideal which guides them. And yet as we seek to see
the difficulties others feel, and to enter into sympathy alike with the
critic without and the workers within, we may come near at least to
understanding some portion of the truth. It may remain true that "all we
have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool," but as we
endeavour to clear our minds and hearts of prejudice and to use others'
eyes as well as our own, the pool grows clearer and the reflection
becomes less broken, and more nearly an image of the reality it represents.
To see the failure of the Church does not mean that we ignore its
victories: but if we are to carry [p.21] those victories further, it
must be by noting our shortcomings, and all that we have not achieved.
Looking out upon the life of men to-day, we cannot forget how, bad as it
is, society has been again and again in large measure redeemed and kept
alive through lives that have been the light and strength of the Church
as well as of the world, but this need not prevent us from seeing how
far the Church as a whole has failed to act in the same way.
Organised Christianity to-day in England, as represented in the
churches, is very largely a middle class institution. Not only the very
rich, but the great mass of the poorer workers, stand aloof from it. It
has not given its strength to prophesy against the evils that attack our
social life; and to remedy above all that utter separation of the lives
of rich and poor, employer and employed, which is the terrible
characteristic of twentieth-century urban civilisation.
There is much religious "activity," of a limited kind, using old and
recognised channels of expression, and an earnestness in defence of
particular religious views or in attacking particular errors of doctrine
or forms of worship. But if we can for a moment forget our own
individual standpoint and endeavour to look from the point of view of an
outsider upon such religious enthusiasm as shows itself upon different
sides in , let us say the present education controversy. we shall surely
feel that if this represents the life of the churches, they [p.22] are
far indeed removed from the spirit of their Founder.
"I love to see these Christians fight," was the remark of one able
critic as he left a room where a public body had been engaged in
discussing some phase of the "religious difficulty" in education. It is
true that such a charge is no new one; as far back as the middle of the
second century the philosopher Celsus brought a like one against the
Christians of his day. [1] But since those early days too,
there has been continual protest within the Church against this very
spirit, and it has been in that series of protests that some, perhaps,
may trace the true apostolic succession of teachers and guides. Age
after age these leaders have found new help and inspiration as they
turned toward the source from which the strength of the Church first
sprang, and it is noteworthy that now, as often in the past many of the
men who are estranged from the Church have nothing but respect — nay,
often reverence — in their thought of Christ and of these followers of
His. They would have very different thoughts of Christianity if all who
profess and call themselves Christians had realised that ideal of the
meaning of the name by which they are [p.23 ] called which William Penn
once expressed in the words, "To be like Christ, then is to be a Christian."
If only we had all more clearly before us that vision, we could not but
be filled not merely with burning shame at our own failure, but with
longing to be more helpful to our fellows, and to draw nearer to them,
as we would grow nearer to our spirit. And this desire within us will
surely be strengthened as we turn towards that wonderful reflection of
His teaching gathered together for us in the closing chapters of the
Gospel of John. In that unique picture of the mind and heart of the
Master there are traits over which we some- times pause and wonder;
sayings which, when we can free our eyes from the scales with which
custom has covered them, seem to shine with a light brighter than we can
bear. And in that chapter, in which we listen as silent witnesses to the
great charter of futurity, the prayer of the Founder for His Church that
is to be, there are words which are so full of lofty purpose that we
hesitate to apply them to our lives; unconsciously, perhaps, we have
been wont to read them over and treat them as metaphor, meant to inspire
but not to be realized; and gradually we have lost hold of their true
significance, the inner life of thought beyond them. How truly can we
say that we have realized, as individuals or as a Church, this picture
which that prayer gives us of the Master's aim and desire for us? [p.24]
"And I am no more in the world, and these are in the world, and I come
to Thee. Holy Father, keep them in Thy name which Thou hast given me,
/that they may be one, even as we are/. . . . Neither for these only do
I pray, but for them also that believe on Me through their word; /that
they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee,/
that they also may be one in us: /that the/ /world may believe that Thou
didst send Me/."
So lofty is the thought that one may wonder whether, if these words had
not come down to us as they have done, and some later Christian mystic
had dared to utter this as his ideal, he would not have been treated as
a madman or a heretic. It is hard to think of what it means: a unity of
Christians one with another, even as there is unity between the Divine
Father and the unique Son.
In the bygone days of scholastic theology men might have gone on to
unfold the meaning of this by showing how unity of substance did not
remove the difference of person; But these thoughts do not live for us
to-day as for our forefathers. We must seek to find the meaning of
Christ's union with the Father, not by the road of medieval metaphysics,
but by some method which may appeal to our moral consciousness.
Is it not a fact that Christ is most truly revealed to us as in unity
with the Father in his identification of himself with suffering and
degraded humanity, as most truly Divine when he eats with publicans and
sinners, pours out his strength [p.25] for the sick and suffering, and
his life for those who have rejected him and at best have misunderstood him?
The Church, then, is most likely to attain to that inward unity for
which her Founder prayed by following the guidance of his life. She will
be most like him in laying upon herself and claiming as her own the
sufferings and evils that befall or should befall, men in the world
without; least like him and least likely to attain this Divine unity
when she claims rights and privileges for herself, when she insists on
her superiority, when she turns from her the publican and sinner, or
leaves them to meet the punishment which is their due.
The union of Christians with each other is to be witness to the world of
the Divine mission of Jesus. Men are to believe on him because they see
how his life and spirit hold together communities with differing
organisations and men of widely varying personality. The union is not to
destroy personality or variety of character, but to underlie all
difference. It is no external machinery to unite us in a single visible
organisation by which individuality would be stamped out or fettered in
growth. There is little trace of any such machinery in the earliest
history of the Church, and the ages and places where it has been most
perfect have not been those which we think of as nearest in spirit to
Christ, nor those men most like Him whose lives have been spent merely
in the development of such organisation. [p.26 ]
Perhaps the only one of the first group of disciples who possessed
powers of organisation was Judas Iscariot; and some critics may say that
he at least has had an apostolic succession of followers throughout the
history of the Church. One remembers the terrible saying of Renan [2]
<#_edn2>: L'histoire de l'Eglise sera le plus souvent désormais
l'histoire des trahisons que subira l'idée de Jesus; and though no
churches have been dedicated to SS. Ananias and Sapphira, they have
become in practice the patrons of too many Christian lives. But if we
cannot wish for an external unity such as that for which many good men
plead, we have, nevertheless, constantly to strive after a deeper union
of spirit in the service of our fellows, in the search after truth, in
love to our Lord.
First let us take our need of sincerity. Perhaps nothing so holds many
men of to-day from Christ as the sense of the insincerity of those who
call themselves Christians. Our worship, our hymns and prayers, are full
of unreality; we persuade ourselves, perhaps, that we still believe in
dogmas which have ceased to have any influence upon our lives. We shut
our eyes to new truths because we are really afraid to be free, and what
was the chalice of a new truth to our fathers becomes a poison-cup to us
and our children. If the Church is to regain and to retain the respect
of honest thinkers we must welcome fair-minded inquiry wherever it be
directed, and not fear to open our eyes to the sun. [p.27]
And it is not only intellectual sincerity in accepting new truths that
is needed; if the old truths are to be made real to our day, we must be
prepared to translate them into language which people can understand. It
is worse than useless often to attempt to hand them on in the garments
of old words by which they were clothed in former days, for as truth is
a living thing, and words fade and lose their meaning, the form in which
it is rightly expressed must change from age to age. It is not enough,
then, to repeat some passage of Scripture, some familiar verse of
religious poetry, or some words of a man of God of former days, to bring
help to men to-day, even though the words are full of meaning to us
because we have entered into the inward experience which they represent.
Some have heard the words so often that they are now almost meaningless;
others cannot be touched by a mode of thought which was the outcome of
another time. They need the truths that lie behind the old words and the
outworn methods of thinking, but they must be re-expressed if they are
to reach them.
The eternal realities of which the New Testament writers had hold, which
filled their souls and made them struggle with words and metaphors to
express some glimpse of what they felt, could never be completely
represented by any language. Yet we have taken the words of the
Scripture and treated them as though they were so many phials of truth
in solution. The exquisite flowers of love and [p.28] faith have been
crushed and bruised in the mortar of the theologians to produce the
infallible dogmas of our orthodoxy. But the inward life does not live
upon the abstractions of the theologian any more than our outward life
upon the compressed drugs of the chemist, however perfect the process of
their making may have been. Cannot we, then, honestly confess that our
dogmas are but imperfect human attempts to fathom the deep things of
God, symbols that stand for something which transcends them as much as
the mother's face surpasses the poor drawing which her child may make of
it? Such a drawing can only be understood by the eyes of love, and we
need the same spirit to make our dogmas full of meaning.
It is not only in intellectual matters that the Church has been
insincere. Many who are no thinkers feel that she has not honestly
attempted to carry out her own teachings. "Blessed are the gentle,"
"Blessed are the poor in spirit," are explained in many a commentary,
but illustrated by too few lives. Yet the only adequate commentary on
the beatitudes is the life of a real follower of Christ.
The fact is that many Christians think that by bowing down in worship
before Christ they are His followers, forgetting His own test for such:
"Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?" We
write of Him, it may be, as Our Lord with capital letters, when He is
not our lord at all, nor the master and controller of our lives. [p.29]
There is a great deal of false reverence about this lip-worship of
phrase and form that actually keeps us from getting as near as we might
to the true spirit of followers of Christ.
If we are lovers and followers of the truth as Jesus bids us be, we must
recognise our kinship and comradeship with all others who sincerely seek
the truth, even though they may attack us and fail for the moment to see
all the light which may shine in our eyes so clearly: in the mere search
after truth their souls are turned towards the light and unconsciously
fed and aided by the Source of all truth! Nor must we think of them our
blind brothers merely, for they may be fighting a far greater army of
foes than we, placed as out-posts of the hosts of God, surrounded by the
enemy and overborne themselves for a while, that afterwards the
victorious ranks of their comrades may press on over their bodies to
conquests of which we have not even dreamed.
And how far have we failed in unity with our Master and each other
through our not having learnt His lesson of the way of service, of our
true relationship to our fellows?
Yet here and there across the pages of history shines the light of a
good life pointing us the true way, and how by losing ourselves we find
ourselves.
The bearing of the Cross which Jesus enjoined upon His followers is far
other than that asceticism which monk and nun and Puritan have wasted
many a precious life to attain. We have not to give [p.30] up the
pleasant thing because it is pleasant, or because it gives only a
mundane and transitory joy. Joy is good, and not to be avoided, but
welcomed. We have to give up the pleasant thing ourselves, others may
take it in our stead; or give up a large measure of it that they may
share it with us. We do not lose the joy, or pretend that it is unreal
and transitory as the monk may. It is very real, and we feel it in a
sense we could not do before, because our fellows share it or have it in
place of us, and our life is their life. Gladness which they feel we
must feel too.
This is the difference between the monk of the desert and Francis of
Assisi, the apostle of the joy of Christ . The monk battles with himself
to maintain his vow of poverty; he is constantly giving up in not
possessing things for himself, or in renouncing pleasures which attract
him. St. Francis in possessing nothing has all things, for all are God's
and his fellows', and he is theirs. The wide world is his cloister, and
everything which he can do to gladden his brother gives joy to himself.
True Christianity like his is full of an infectious sense of the joy of
life. Whenever such men go there comes to others some touch of their
spirit, as crumbs drop from a full table.
This faith that joy in itself is good does not mean that there may not
be needful for us all some form of true asceticism, training in
withholding from things good in themselves and from pleasures we desire,
quite apart from the surrendering [p.31] of them to others. But needful
as this is, it is good only as training for an end beyond itself, and
not for the mere sake of abstinence. We refrain that we may be masters
of our wills, that we may keep control of habit, that our bodies may be
the instrument of our spirits; such fasting as this only fits us more
fully for the joy of service.
Deeper even than the sacrament of joy is that of sorrow, and we may
learn something of it from John Woolman, the Quaker apostle of Christ's
sufferings. Where men suffered he suffered too in spirit with them. When
he came on his last journey to England he could not travel in the
comfortable cabin because of the needless toil of the workmen that had
gone to adorn it, but must share with the poor sailors the foul air and
discomfort of the steerage. And when on the stormy passage across the
Atlantic he lay there sick and in pain, his heart went up in
thankfulness that he was permitted to share the experience which so many
of his fellow-men had to go through, and be united thus to suffering
humanity. "I was now desirous," he tells us, "to embrace every
opportunity of being inwardly acquainted with the hardships and
difficulties of my fellow-creatures, and to labour in His love for the
spreading of pure righteousness on the earth." Then we shall remember,
too, that beautiful passage near the close of his journal, where he
recalls the vision that came to him in time of sickness of that mass of
dull, gloomy colour, made up of [p.32] human beings in as great misery
as they could be and live, and how he was told that he was mixed with
them and henceforth might not consider himself a separate being. The
angel's song, "John Woolman is dead," sounded to him more pure and
lovely than any he had ever heard before, for in truth his old will was
dead, and in him the spirit of Christ was alive.
Is it not here that the Church will find the way to reconcile the world
of toilers and sufferers estranged from her to-day? — in that unity
between her members which goes deeper even than membership, in a love to
Christ which shows itself, as He calls for it, towards all who have need
of Him, which identifies the Christian with his brothers, the doers and
bearers of wrong?
As we look out upon a Christendom divided by sects and creeds into a
score of different bodies, we may be saddened by the lament which many a
devout lip has uttered over the schisms which rend the mystic robe of
the Master. But it was only His outer garments which the soldiers rent
asunder: the seamless robe is unsevered still. External separation does
not touch the spirit of love and true communion which beneath countless
outer differences unites together the lives of all who follow Him in
deed and in truth. And as we each draw nearer to Him, and His life flows
into our lives, we must draw nearer to each other and to all our fellow-men.