ONE of the strangest and sometimes perhaps one of the saddest things
that the student of history comes to realize must surely be that law
which seems to doom every great ideal and every great movement to give
birth to organizations which, while created to promote it, end by
destroying it or diverting it to different channels. The cynics laugh at
the contrast between present-day Christianity, as manifested in the
dignity of the great historic churches and the rude simplicity of the
Galilean fishers; in a narrower field the most sympathetic of French
historians has traced for us the tragic way in which the great spiritual
forces that made the early Franciscan movement what it was, were
trammelled, if not extinguished, by the growth of the very society which
they had called into being.
The mystic laments the fall from the unrealized ideal; the statesman
makes rejoinder that the change is a needful one, and a necessary means
of progress. So across the centuries contend with one another the men of
method and of discipline [p.92] and the men of vision. Iscariot still
follows in the steps of Christ, bearing his money bags, planning his
arrangements of finance, ignoring his ideal.
Most of us must sympathize with Iscariot; we have so often been in his
place, sometimes in spite of ourselves, perhaps. Or if we cannot
sympathize with him, at least we must with Brother Elias, that born
master of organization, the practical man who saw the beauty of the
character of St. Francis, recognised the power of his attractive nature,
and wished to turn all to visible use, to build up around him a great
society which should be a guide to kings and prelates, a divine strong-
hold into which the beauty and the riches of the world should be
brought. Elias doubtless felt that St. Francis was too good for this
world; he himself dealt with men as men, understanding the worth of
compromise, seeing the strength of institutions. The Elias whom most of
us know well enough always tends to think of an ideal merely in its
relation to institutions actual or possible, while the Francis, for whom
we look too often in vain, thinks of the institution only as at best the
imperfect embodiment of, or the means to, the ideal, and more often as
the hindrance to be overcome on the way, "my brother the ass," who can
only be guided with difficulty.
It is very easy for us to recognise in a far off time the failure of
institutions to realize the ideal that inspired their origin, and we
readily admit, in the abstract, the need for the ideal to dominate
[p.93] the institution and the danger of the institution running away
with the ideal. It is harder to see in our own lives how far we are
allowing the machinery to take us from its object, how far that
machinery is out of date or out of gear, since we are in the thick of it
all, our ears dulled by the roar of the wheels. Assuming that we admit
that Iscariot has his right and helpful place, how are we to find it and
keep him there?
It may help us to understand the danger that follows upon organization,
if we make even a partial survey of a group of existing institutions and
try to trace the history of some one of them.
How great is the failure of our countless institutions intended to
promote social welfare, we to some extent realize as we take up such a
work as the "Annual Charities Register and Digest," of the Charity
Organization Society, and turn over those 700 pages describing the
various societies, with all their staffs and offices at work in the city
which is still the London that we know. Life appears almost to become at
times to some men one long committee, but, little, after all, seems
done. And this failure may be seen, to some extent at least, even in
recent movements which were originally a protest against the narrowness
and superficiality of earlier methods of dealing with the problems of
modern society. The first thought of the men who conceived the idea of
the university settlement was surely not to found a new institution, so
much as to bring life into touch [p.94] with life, to make centres in
which knowledge and experience might be collected, and from which men
and ideas might be put at the service of all who had most need of them.
Yet, in spite of themselves, they have almost become institutions;
indeed, some settlements have frankly made it their aim to be such, and
as one reads reports from across the water of all that our American
friends are doing, one must admit that they have been most successful in
achieving their object. If the settlement movement (as it is called) had
not begun as it did twenty odd years ago, perhaps these wonderful
centres of activity would not have come into being, or would have been
very different from what they are. Yet would the founders of the first
settlement have recognised as their spiritual descendants these men,
unselfish as they are, whose methods are so different? Did there ever
come before their vision the picture of a great building raised by some
millionaire, maintained by like gifts, manned by a staff of salaried
workers, and providing at the expense of far-seeing or enlightened
manufacturers, healthy amusement and duly certified religious teaching
and secular instruction to the workmen of these subscribers, as well as
dispensing, on behalf of Dives, basketfuls of crumbs, both of plain and
fancy bread, to Lazarus and his fellows at the door?
This is, after all, an instance of a world-wide process. We are face to
face once again with the fact that men are constantly attempting to do
their [p.95] duty by deputy; to subscribe to what they see to be a good
work rather than to set about to do it themselves, to give of their
money rather than of their lives. It is the danger that has beset the
church from almost the earliest days, that the men who should be
inspiring and setting others to work have too often simply done their
work for them, or tried to do it. Doubtless the old robber baron
returning from some murderous fray felt his heart uplifted as, rounding
a comer of the road on the way to his castle on the hill, he came in
sight, in the valley below, of the monastery he had founded, and thought
of the holy lives of the monks, and of their prayers put up daily for
him, who had such need of them. Doubtless, too, the good monks' hearts
warmed towards the old freebooter who yet had so much good in him as to
be their founder and protector. But it was small consolation to the men
he robbed and put to death to know that some part at least of their
possessions would go to Holy Church and to make possible the cloistered
self-denial of these men of God. The baron's keep has vanished, and the
abbey is in ruins, but is there not evidence that the same process is
going on to-day? It is not always pleasant to think of the ultimate
source of some of the contributions which are to be found in the
subscription lists of churches and charities. The man who realizes this
may well hesitate to appeal to the wealthy for money to aid his plans,
for he sees the effect of such methods in making [p.96] religious and
social agencies distrusted by many among the very classes which they aim
at helping. He will rather honour the spirit in which such a social
worker as Jane Addams of Chicago refuses to receive gifts of "tainted
gold," as she feels the conscience money of some unscrupulous men of
business to be. Yet here again he may be in danger of deceiving himself.
He needs, it is true, to beware of accepting, still more of asking for,
gifts which would merely be given to promote the vanity or to further
the selfish interests of the giver, but can a man so easily wash his
hands of the stain of the mammon of unrighteousness? Does he not rather
need to recognise that, indirectly at least, the fruits of injustice
enter into all the money that comes to him, since selfishness plays the
part it does in our social life, and since our lives are so bound up
with each other that no man can set himself apart from his fellows? Only
let him see that the gifts he asks for will quicken in the givers the
sense of social responsibility and increase the desire to do and to give
more themselves.
The payment of subscriptions, if this principle be disregarded, becomes
a soul-destroying process, alike to him that gives and him that takes.
The pious Henry III. turned once at bay, after listening to the pleading
of Friar William of Abingdon, one of the most eloquent of the early
Dominican preachers, and cried to him, "Brother William, there was a
time when thou couldst speak of spiritual things; now all thou canst say
is, [p.97] ' Give, give, give ! ' One may compare the disgust with which
a modern public schoolboy often turns from the familiar appeal of the
clergy- man who year by year comes to the school to preach on behalf of
the school mission, and to carry back with him the usual collection, but
nothing better. For the only thing worth giving or asking is life; and
such a missioner too often fails to ask for it. Here surely we may find
a hint of the explanation of all successful social work, which is the
passing on of life from life, the result of the contact of personality
with personality. In so far as organization promotes this and makes it
possible does it stand justified, and only by this test.
One does not wish to undervalue the associations, the reflexes of life,
which institutions so often pass on, or the wealth of a great past which
they keep in store for us. But death is perhaps as needful and as
inevitable for the body corporate as for the individual; for both it is
often true that whom the gods love die young. It is surely better to
spend and be spent in a short life rich in ideas, than to carry on a
long existence by the aid of a comfortable endowment, which may prevent
men from realizing how far out of touch they are with the actual needs
of those about them. It is not known whether any council of bishops has
decided if there be humour in Heaven, but one is inclined to think that
the solemn way in which men shake their heads and lament the impending
decease of an outworn institution must sometimes be greeted elsewhere by
a peal of celestial laughter.