reached an acute stage. The Catholic doctrine is and always has been
that there are two 'orders'--the natural and the supernatural--on the
same plane, and distinguishable from each other. The Catholic theologian
is prepared to define what occurrences in the lives of the Saints are
natural, and what supernatural. Miracles are of frequent occurrence, and
are established by ordinary evidence. Three miracles have to be placed
to the credit of each candidate for canonisation before he or she is
entitled to bear the title of saint, and the evidence for these miracles
is sifted by a commission. This theory has been practically abandoned in
the English Church. There are few among our ecclesiastics and
theologians who would spend five minutes in investigating any alleged
supernatural occurrence in our own time. It would be assumed that, if
true, it must be ascribed to some obscure natural cause. The result is
that the miracles in the Creeds, or in the New Testament, are isolated
as they have never been before. They seem to form an order by
themselves, a class of fact belonging neither to the world of phenomena
as we know it, nor to the world of spirit as we know it. From this
situation has arisen the tendency, increasingly prevalent both in the
Roman Church and in Protestant Germany, to distinguish 'truths of faith'
from 'truths of fact,' The former, it is said, have a representative,
symbolic character, and are only degraded by being placed in the same
category as physical phenomena. This contention is open to very serious
objections, but it at least indicates the actual state of the problem,
viz. that to most educated men the miraculous element in Christianity
seems to float between earth and heaven, no longer essentially connected
with either, while on the other hand the majority of religious people,
including a few men of high intelligence, find it difficult to realise
their faith without the help of the miraculous. Supernaturalism, which
from the scientific point of view is the most unsatisfactory of all
theories, traversing as it does the first article in the creed of
science--the uniformity of nature--gives, after all, a kind of crude
synthesis of the natural and the spiritual, by which it is possible to
live; it is, for many persons, an indispensable bridge between the world
of phenomena and the world of spirit. But when the heavy-handed
dogmatist requires a categorical assent to the literal truth of the
miraculous, in exactly the same sense in which physical facts are true,
a tension between faith and reason cannot be avoided. And it is in this
literal sense that Bishop Gore requires all his clergy to assent to the
miracles in the Creeds.
The fact is that the Catholic party in the Church are in a hopeless
_impasse_ with regard to dogma. They cannot take any step which would
divide them from 'the whole Church,' and the whole Church no longer
exists except as an ideal--it has long ago been shivered into fragments.
The Roman Church is in a much better position. The Pope may at any time
'interpret' tradition in such a manner as to change it completely--there
is no appeal from his authoritative pronouncements; but for the High
Anglican there is no living authority, only the dead hand, and a Council
which can never meet. It is much as if no important legislation could be
passed in this country without a joint session of our Parliament and the
American Congress. It is difficult to see any way of escape, except by
accepting the principle of development in a sense which would repudiate
the time-honoured 'appeal to antiquity.'
We have next to consider Bishop Gore as a Church Reformer. We have seen
that he desires an autonomous Church, which can legislate for itself.
The dead hand, which weighs so lightly upon him when it forbids any
attempt to revise the formularies of the faith, seems to him intolerably
heavy when it obliges the Church to conform to 'the laws, canons, and
rubrics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which it cannot
alter or add to.'[43] The only remedy, he thinks, is a really
representative assembly, of bishops, presbyters, and laymen. In the
early Church, as he points out, the laity were always recognised as
constituent members of the government of the Church. In a democratic
age, the laity as a body should exercise the powers which in the Middle
Ages were delegated to, or usurped by, 'emperors, kings, chiefs and
lords.' The parish ought to have the real control of the Church
buildings, except the chancel; the Church servants ought to be appointed
and removed by the parish meeting. It would be a step forward if these
parish councils could be organised under diocesan regulation, and
invested with the control of the parish finances, except the vicar's
stipend; the right to object to the appointment of an unfit pastor; and
some power of determining the ceremonial at the Church services. The
diocesan synod should become a reality; there should also be provincial
synods, which could become national by fusion. But in the last resort
the declaration of the mind of the Church on matters of doctrine and
morals ought to belong to the bishops.[44]
But who are the laity? 'By a layman,' he says, 'I mean one who fulfils
the duties of Church membership--one who is baptised into the Church,
who has been confirmed if he has reached years of discretion, and who is
a communicant.' A roll of Church members, he suggests, should be kept in
each parish, on which should be entered the name of each confirmed
person, male or female. The names of those who had passed (say) two
years without communicating should be struck off the roll. Further,
names should be removable for any scandalous offences.[45]
It is easy to see that the 'communicant franchise' would work entirely
in favour of that party in the Church which attaches the greatest
importance to that Sacrament. It would exclude a large number of
Protestant laymen who subscribe to Church funds, and who on any other
franchise would have a share in its government. But we need not suspect
Dr. Gore of any _arrière pensée_ of this kind. His ideal of parochial
life is one which must appeal to all who wish well to the Church. We
will quote a few characteristic sentences:
'Are we to set to work to revive St. Paul's ideal of the
life of a Church? If so, what we need is not more
Christians, but better Christians. We want to make the moral
meaning of Church membership understood and its conditions
appreciated. We want to make men understand that it costs
something to be a Christian; that to be a Christian, that
is, a Churchman, is to be an intelligent participator in a
corporate life consecrated to God, and to concern oneself,
therefore, as a matter of course, in all that touches the
corporate life, its external as well as its spiritual
conditions.... We Christians are fellow-citizens together in
the commonwealth that is consecrated to God, a commonwealth
of mortal men with bodies as well as souls.'[46]
With regard to ritual, he will not allow that the disputes are
unimportant. The vital question of self-government is at stake. From
this point of view, a 'mere ceremony' may mean a great deal. St. Paul,
who said 'Circumcision is nothing,' also said, 'If ye be circumcised
Christ shall profit you nothing,'[47] This is quite consistent with his
hearty disapproval of the introduction of purely Roman ceremonial.
Does this ideal of a free Church in a free State involve
disestablishment? Not necessarily, Dr. Gore thinks. Why should not legal
authority be entrusted to diocesan courts, with a right of appeal to a
court of bishops, abolishing the jurisdiction of the Judicial Committee
in spiritual cases? It is the paralysis of spiritual authority, in his
opinion, which pushes into prominence all extravagances, and conceals
the vast amount of agreement which exists in essentials. 'We are weary
of debating societies; we want the healthy discipline of co-operative
government.'[48] The policy of this self-governing Church is to be
'Liberal-Catholic,' a type which 'responds to the moral needs of our
great race.'
Such is the scheme of Church reform towards which the Bishop is working;
and he has told us, in the sentence last quoted, what kind of Church he
looks forward to see. But what kind of Church would it actually be, if
his designs were carried out? It would not be a national Church; for
his belief that Catholicism 'responds to the moral needs of our race' is
contradicted by the whole history of modern England. The laity of
England may not be quite 'as Protestant as ever they were, though we
often hear that they are so; but they show no disposition to become
Catholics. Catholicism as we know it is Latin Christianity, and even in
the Latin countries it is now a hothouse plant, dependent on a special
education in Catholic schools and seminaries, with an _index librorum
prohibitorum_. Such a system is impossible in England. Seminaries for
the early training of future clergymen may indeed be established; but
beds of exotics cannot be raised by keeping the gardeners in greenhouses
while the young plants are in the open air. The 'Liberal Catholic'
Church, accordingly, would shed, by degrees, the very large number of
Churchmen who still call themselves Protestant. Nor would the adjective
'Liberal' secure the adhesion of the 'intellectuals.' Bishop Gore's
Liberalism would exclude most of them as effectually as the most rigid
Conservatism. It would also be a disestablished and disendowed Church;
for surely it is building castles in the air to think of episcopal
courts recognised by law. The prospect of disestablishment does not
alarm the Bishop. Some of his utterances suggest that he would almost
welcome it. Indeed, disestablishment is viewed with complacency by an
increasing number of High Church clergy. They feel that they can never
carry out their plans for de-Protestantising the Church while the Crown
has the appointment of the bishops. For even if, as has lately been the
case, their party gets more than its due share of preferment, there will
always, under the existing system, be a sufficient number of Liberal and
Evangelical bishops on the bench to make a consistent policy of
Catholicising impossible. And the Catholic party are so admirably
organised that they are confident in their power to carry their schemes
under any form of self-government, even though the mass of the laity are
untouched by their views. Moreover, the town clergy, among whom are to
be found advocates of disestablishment, find in many places that the
parochial idea has completely broken down. The unit is the congregation,
no longer the parish, and the clergy are supported by pew-rents and
voluntary offerings, not by endowments. In such parishes,
disestablishment might, they think, give them greater liberty, and would
make little difference to them in other ways. But in the country
districts the case is very different. Thirty years after
disestablishment, the quiet country rectory, nestling in its bower of
trees and shrubs, with all that it has meant for centuries in English
rural life, would in most villages be a thing of the past.
For these reasons, the Bishop's policy of reconstructing the Church of
England as a self-governing body, professing definitely Catholic
principles and enjoining Catholic practices, seems to us an impossible
one. The chief gainer by it would be the Church of Rome, which would
gather in the most consistent and energetic of the Anglo-Catholics, who
would be dissatisfied at the contrast between the pretensions of their
own Church and its isolated position. The non-episcopal bodies would
also gain numerous recruits from among the ruins of the Evangelical and
Liberal parties in the Church.
But, it may be said, this dismal forecast may be falsified if the
Anglican Church can win the masses. The English populace are at present
neither Protestant nor Catholic; they are, if we count heads, mainly
heathen. May not the working man, who has no leaning to dissent, unless
it be the 'corybantic Christianity' of the Salvation Army, be brought
into the Church?
Bishop Gore has always shown an earnest sympathy with the aspirations of
the working class to improve their material condition. He is also
profoundly impressed by the apparent discrepancy between the teachings
of Christ about wealth and the principles which His professed disciples
wholly follow and in part avow. These anxious questionings form the
subject of a fine sermon which he preached at the Church Congress of
1906, on the text about the camel and the needle's eye. Jesus Christ
chose to be born of poor and humble parents, in a land remote from the
centre of political or intellectual influence, and in the circle of
labouring men. He chose to belong to the class of the respectable
artisan, and most of the twelve Apostles came from the same social
level. In His teaching He plainly associated blessedness with the lot of
poverty, and extreme danger with the lot of wealth. All through the New
Testament the assumption is that God is on the side of the poor against
the rich. As Jowett once said, there is more in the New Testament
against being rich, and in favour of being poor, than we like to
recognise. And is not this the cause of our failure to win the masses?
Is it not because we are the Church of capital rather than of labour?
The Church ought to be a community in which religion works upward from
below. The Church of England expresses that point of view which is
precisely not that which Christ chose for His Church. The incomes of the
bishops range them with the wealthier classes; the clergy associate with
the gentry and not with the artisans. We must acknowledge with deep
penitence that we are on wrong lines. For himself, the Bishop admits
that he has 'a permanently troubled conscience' in the matter. Then,
with that admirable courage and practicality which is the secret of much
of his influence, he proceeds to indicate four 'lines of hopeful
recovery.' First, the Church must get rid of the administration of poor
relief. Where the charity of the Church is understood to mean the
patronage of the rich, it can do nothing without disaster. All will be
in vain till it has ceased to be a plausible taunt that a man or woman
goes to church for what can be got. Secondly, we must give the artisans
their true place in Church management, and must consult their tastes in
all non-essentials. Thirdly, the clergy should 'concentrate themselves
upon bringing out the social meaning of the sacraments,' and giving
voice to the spirit of Christian brotherhood. Lastly, we ought to free
the clerical profession entirely from any association of class.
The Bishop is not a Collectivist, but he has great sympathy with some of
the aims of Socialism. In a 'Pan-Anglican Paper' just issued, he
discusses the attitude of the Church towards Socialism. Christianity, he
says, must remain independent of State-Socialism, as of other
organisations of society. Socialism would make a far deeper demand on
character than most of its adherents realise. 'An experiment in
State-Socialism, based on the average level of human character as it
exists at present, would be doomed to disastrous failure.' (Bishop
Creighton said the same thing more epigrammatically. 'Socialism will
only be possible when we are all perfect, and then it will not be
needed.') But what we have is no Socialistic State, but a great body of
aspiration, based on a great demand for justice in human life. The
indictment of our present social organisation is indeed overwhelming,
and with this indictment Christianity ought to have the profoundest
sympathy, for it is substantially the indictment of the Old Testament
prophets. The prophets were on the side of the poor; and so was our
Lord. Where is the prophetic spirit in the Church to-day? We need 'a
tremendous act of penitence.' Our charities have been mere
ambulance-work; but 'the Christian Church was not created to be an
ambulance-corps.' We have followed the old school of political economy
instead of the prophets and Christ. Broadly, we may contrast two ideals
of society: individualism, which means in the long run the right of the
strong; and socialism, which means that the society is supreme over the
individual. 'On the whole, Christianity is with Socialism.'
This 'Pan-Anglican Paper' is a fair representation of the views which
are spreading rapidly among the High Church clergy. The party is in fact
making a determined effort to enlist the sympathies of the working man
with the Church, by offering him in return its sympathy and countenance
in his struggle against capitalism. This is a phase of the movement
which it is very difficult to judge fairly. Dr. Gore's sermon was
calculated to give any Christian who heard it, whether Conservative or
Liberal, 'a troubled conscience;' and his practical suggestions are as
convincing as any suggestions that are not platitudes are likely to be.
But in weaker hands this sympathy with the cause of Labour is in great
danger of becoming one of the most insidious temptations that can attack
a religious body. The Church of England has been freely accused of too
great complaisance to the powers that be, when those powers were
oligarchic. Some of the clergy are now trying to repeat, rather than
redress, this error, by an obsequious attitude to King Working-man. But
the Church ought to be equally proof against the _vultus instantis
tyranni_ and the _civium ardor prava iubentium_. The position of a
Church which should sell itself to the Labour party would be truly
ignominious. It would be used so long as the politicians of the party
needed moral support and eloquent advocacy, and spurned as soon as its
services were no longer necessary. The taunt of Helen to Aphrodite in
the third book of the 'Iliad' sounds very apposite when we read the
speeches of some clerical 'Christian Socialists,' who find it more
exciting to organise processions of the unemployed than to attend to
their professional duties.
hêso par' ahython hiohysa, thehôn d' haphoeike kelehythoy,
mêd' heti sohisi phodessin hypostrhepseiast 'Holympon,
hall' ahiehi perhi kehinon hohizye kahi he phylasse,
ehist ho khe s' hê halochon poihêsetai, hê ho ge dohylên.[49]
It is as a slave, not as an honoured help-mate, that the Social
Democrats would treat any Christian body that helped them to overthrow
our present civilisation. And rightly; for Christ's only injunction in
the sphere of economics was, 'Take heed and beware of all covetousness,'
He refused pointedly to have anything to do with disputes about the
distribution of property; and in the parable of the Prodigal Son the
demand, 'Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me,' is the
prelude to a journey in that 'far country' which is forgetfulness of God
(_terra longinqua est oblivio Dei_). Christ unquestionably meant His
followers to think but little of the accessories of life. He believed
that if men could be induced to adopt the true standard of values,
economic relations would adjust themselves. He promised His disciples
that they should not want the necessaries of subsistence, and for the
rest, He held that the freedom from anxiety, covetousness, and envy,
which He enjoined as a duty, would also make their life happy. This is
a very different spirit from that which makes Socialism a force in
politics.
Bishop Gore, we may be sure, will not willingly allow the High Church
party to be entangled in corrupt alliances. When he handles what may be
called applied Christianity, he does so in a manner which makes us
rejoice at the popularity of his books. The little commentaries on the
Sermon on the Mount, and on the Epistles to the Romans and Ephesians,
are admirable. They are simple, practical, and profound. We subjoin a
short analysis of the notes on the first part of the Sermon on the
Mount, as an illustration of the teaching which runs all through the
three commentaries.
The Sermon on the Mount is not the whole of Christianity. It
is the climax of law, of the letter that killeth. The Divine
requirement is pressed home with unequalled force upon the
conscience; yet not in the form of mere laws of conduct, but
as a type of character. It is promulgated not by an
inaccessible God, but by the Divine Love manifested in
manhood. The hard demand of the letter is closely connected
with the promise of the Spirit. We are told that many of the
precepts in the sermon were anticipated by Pagan and Jewish
writers. But this we might have expected, since all men are
rational and moral through fellowship with the Word, who is
also the Reason of God. Christ is the light which in
conscience and reason lightens every man throughout the
history of the race. But the Sermon is comprehensive where
other summaries are fragmentary, it is pure where they are
mixed. It is teaching for grown men, who require principles,
not rules. And it is authoritative, reinforced by the
mysterious Person of the speaker. The Beatitudes are a
description of character. Christ requires us, not to do such
and such things, but to be such and such people. ... True
blessedness consists in membership of the kingdom of heaven,
which is a life of perfect relationship with man and nature
based on perfect fellowship with God.... The Beatitudes
describe the Christian character in detail; in particular,
they describe it as contrasted with the character of the
world, which, in the religious sense, may be defined as
human society as it organises itself apart from God. The
first Beatitude enjoins detachment, such as His who emptied
Himself, as having nothing and yet possessing all things. We
are all to be detached; there are some whom our Lord
counsels to be literally poor. 'Blessed are they that
mourn' means that we are not to screen ourselves from the
common lot of pain. We must distinguish 'godly sorrow' from
the peevish discontent and slothfulness which St. Paul calls
the sorrow of the world, and which in medieval casuistry is
named acedia. 'Blessed are the meek' means that we are not
to assert ourselves unless it is our duty to do so. The true
Christian is a man who in his private capacity cannot be
provoked. On a general view of life, though not always in
particular cases, we must allow that we are not treated
worse than we deserve. The fourth Beatitude tells us that if
we want righteousness seriously, we can have it. The fifth
proclaims the reward of mercy, that is, compassion in
action. Pity which does nothing is only hypocrisy or
emotional self-indulgence. On the whole, we can determine
men's attitude to us by our attitude to them; the merciful
do obtain mercy. 'Purity of heart' means singleness of
purpose; but in the narrower sense of purity it is worth
while to say that those who profess to find it 'impossible'
to lead a pure life might overcome their fault if they would
try to be Christlike altogether, instead of struggling with
that one fault separately. 'Sincerum est nisi vas,
quodcunque infundis acescit.' On the seventh--there are many
kinds of false peace, which Christ came to break up; but
fierce, relentless competition is an offence in a Christian
nation. The last shows what our reward is likely to be in
this world, if we follow these counsels. Where the
Christ-character is not welcomed, it is hated.
From the later sections a few characteristic comments may be given in an
abridged form.
We are apt to have rather free and easy notions of the
Divine fatherhood. To call God our Father, we must ourselves
be sons; and it is only those who are led by the Spirit of
God who are the sons of God.... Ask for great things, and
small things will be given to you. This is exactly the
spirit of the Lord's Prayer.... Act for God. Direct your
thoughts and intentions Godward, and your intelligence and
affections will gradually follow along the line of your
action.... You must put God first, or nowhere.... It is a
perilous error to say that we have only to follow our
conscience; we have to enlighten our conscience and keep it
enlightened.... There is no greater plague of our generation
than the nervous anxiety which characterises all its
efforts. We ought to be reasonably careful, and then go
boldly forward in the peace of God.... Our Lord did not
mean to make of His disciples a new kind of Pharisee.
....'Judge not,' means, Do not be critical. The condemnation
of one who is always finding fault carries no moral weight.
It is those who have the lowest and vaguest standards of
what is right who are often the most critical in judgment of
other people.... We ought so to limit our desires that what
we want for ourselves we can reasonably expect also for
others.... A man who wants to do his duty must always be
prepared to stand alone.... Christianity is not so much a
statement of the true end or ideal of human life, as a great
spiritual instrument for realising the end.
These extracts will be sufficient to show what are the characteristics
of these little commentaries. They exhibit extreme honesty of purpose,
fearless acceptance of Christ's teaching honestly interpreted, scorn of
unreality and empty words, and a determination never to allow preaching
to be divorced from practice. No more stimulating Christian teaching has
been given in our generation.
The valuable treatise on the Holy Communion, called 'The Body of
Christ,' is too theological for detailed discussion in these pages. The
points in which the Roman Church has perverted and degraded the really
Catholic sacramental doctrine are forcibly exposed, and the true nature
of the sacrament is unfolded in a masterly and beautiful manner.