cannot be a Christian unless he is a Churchman. To the mystic pure and
simple, such a statement seems monstrous. Did not even Augustine say, 'I
want to know God and my own soul; these two things, and no third
whatever'? What intermediary can there be, he will ask, between the soul
and God? What sacredness is there in an organisation? Is it not a matter
of common experience that the morality of an institution, a society, a
state, is inferior to that of the individuals who compose it? And is
organised Catholicism an exception to this rule? And yet we must admit
the glamour of the idea of a divine society. It arouses that _esprit de
corps_ which is the strongest appeal that can be made to some noble
minds. It calls for self-sacrifice and devoted labour in a cause which
is higher than private interest. It demands discipline and co-operation,
through which alone great things can be done on the field of history. It
holds out a prospect of really influencing the course of events. And if
there has been a historical Incarnation, it follows that God has
actually intervened on the stage of history, and that it is His will to
carry out some great and divine purpose in and by means of the course of
history. With this object, as the Catholic believes, He established an
institutional Church, pledged to the highest of all causes; and what
greater privilege can there be than to take part in this work, as a
soldier in the army of God in His long campaign against the spiritual
powers of evil? The Christian institutionalist is the servant of a grand
idea.
There are, however, a few questions which we are bound to ask him.
First, is his idea of the Church Christian? Did the Founder of
Christianity contemplate or even implicitly sanction the establishment
of a semi-political international society, such as the Catholic Church
has actually been? Orthodox Catholicism maintains that He did. Modernism
admits that He did not, but adds that if He had known that the Messianic
expectation was illusory, and that the existing world-order was to
continue for thousands of years, He would certainly have wished that a
Catholic Church should exist. And, argues the Modernist, if it is a good
thing that a Catholic Church should exist, it is useless to quarrel with
the conditions under which alone it can maintain its existence. The
philosophical historian must admit that all the changes which the
Catholic Church has undergone--its concessions to Pagan superstition,
its secular power, its ruthless extirpation of rebels against its
authority, its steadily growing centralisation and autocracy--were
forced upon it in the struggle for existence. Those who wish that Church
history had been different are wishing the impossible, or wishing that
the Church had perished. But this argument is not valid as a defence of
a divine institution. It is rather a merciless exposure of what happens,
and must happen, to a great idea when it is enslaved by an institution
of its own creation. The political organisation which has grown up round
the idea ends by strangling it, and continues to fight for its own
preservation by the methods which govern the policy of all other
political organisations--force, fraud, and accommodation. There is
nothing in the political history of Catholicism which suggests in the
slightest degree that the spirit of Christ has been the guiding
principle in its councils. Its methods have, on the contrary, been more
cruel, more fraudulent, more unscrupulous, than those of most secular
powers. If the Founder of Christianity had appeared again on earth
during the so-called ages of faith, it is hardly possible to doubt that
He would, have been burnt alive or crucified again. What the Latin
Church preserved was not the religion of Christ, which lived on by its
inherent indestructibility, but parts of the Aristotelian and Platonic
philosophies, distorted and petrified by scholasticism, a vast quantity
of purely Pagan superstitions, and the _arcana imperii_ of Roman
Cæsarism. The normal end of Scholasticism is a mummified philosophy of
authority, in which there are no problems to solve, but a great many
dead pundits to consult. The normal end of a policy which exploits the
superstitions of the peasant is a desperate warfare against education.
The normal end of Roman Imperialism is a sultanate like that of
Diocletian. It is difficult to find a proof of infallible and
supernatural wisdom in the evolution of which these are the last terms.
We read with the utmost sympathy and admiration Baron von Hügel's loyal
and reverent appeals to the authorities of his Church, that they may
draw out the strong and beneficent powers of institutionalism, and avoid
its insidious dangers. But it may be doubted whether such a policy is
possible. The future of Roman Catholicism is, I fear, with the
Ultramontanes. They, and not the Modernists, are in the line of
development which Catholicism as an institution has consistently
followed, and must continue to follow to the end. I can see no other
fate in store for the _soma_ of Catholicism; the germ-cells of true
Christianity live their own life within it, and are transmitted without
taint to those who are born of the Spirit.
We must further ask the institutionalist what are his grounds for
identifying the Church of God with the particular institution to which
he belongs. On the institutionalist hypothesis, it might have been
expected either that there would have been no divisions in Christendom,
or that all seceding bodies would have shown such manifest inferiority
in wisdom, morality, and sanctity, that the exclusive claims of the
Great Church would have been ratified at the bar of history. This is, in
fact, the claim which Roman Catholics make. But it can only be upheld by
writing history in the spirit of an advocate, or by giving a preference,
not in accordance with modern ethical views, to certain types of
character which are produced by the monastic life of the Catholic
'religious,' It is increasingly difficult to find, in the lives of those
who belong to any one denomination, proofs of marked superiority over
other Christians. Of course, we know little of the real character of our
neighbours as they appear in the eyes of God; but in considering a
theory which lays so much stress on history as Catholic institutionalism
does, we are bound to make use of such evidence as we have. And the
evidence does not support the theory that we cannot be Christians unless
we are Catholics. Nor does it even countenance the view that we cannot
be Christians unless we are enthusiastic members of _some_ religious
corporation. Professor Royce seems to have been carried away by the idea
which prompted him to write his book; but a little thought about the
characters of his acquaintances might have given him pause.
The mechanical theory of devolution which assumes so much importance in
some fashionable Anglican teaching about the Church need not detain us
long. The logical choice must ultimately be between the great
international Catholic Church and what Auguste Sabatier called the
religion of the Spirit. The religion of all Protestants, when it is not
secularised, as it too often is, belongs to this latter type, even when
they lay most stress on the idea of brotherhood and corporate action.
For with them institutions are never much more than associations for
mutual help and edification. The Protestant always hopes to be saved
_qua_ Christian, not _qua_ Churchman.
A third question which must be asked is whether institutionalism in
practice makes for unity among Christians, or for division. Too often
the chief visible sign of the 'corporate idea' of which so much is said,
is the rigidity of the spikes which it erects round its own particular
fold. The obstacles to acts of reunion (which in no way carry with them
the necessity of formal amalgamation) are raised almost exclusively by
stiff institutionalists. The much-discussed Kikuyu case has brought this
home to everybody. But for these uncompromising Churchmen, Christians of
all denominations would be glad enough to meet together at the Lord's
table on special occasions like the service which gave rise to this
controversy. Anglicans are well aware that the differences of opinion
within their body are far greater than those which separate some of them
from Protestant Nonconformity, and others of them from Home. Allegiance
to this or that denomination is generally an accident of early
surroundings. To make these external classifications into barriers which
cannot be crossed is either an absurdity or a confession that a Church
is a political aggregate. A Roman Monsignor explained, _à propos_ of the
Kikuyu service, that no Roman Catholic could ever communicate in a
Protestant church, because in so doing he would be guilty of an act of
apostasy, and would be no longer a Roman Catholic. The attitude is
consistent with the Roman claim to universal jurisdiction; for any other
body it would be absurd. The stiff institutionalist is debarred by his
theory from fraternising with many who should be his friends, while he
is bound to others with whom he has no sympathy. His theory is once more
found to conflict with the facts.
Lastly, we must ask whether institutionalism is really a spiritual and
moral force. Of the advantages of _esprit de corps_ I have spoken
already. No one can doubt that unity is strength, or that Catholicism
has an immense advantage over its rivals in the efficiency of its
organisation. But is not this advantage dearly purchased? Party loyalty
is notoriously unscrupulous. The idealised institution becomes itself
the object of worship, and it is entirely forgotten that a Christian
Church ought to have no 'interests' except the highest welfare of
humanity. The substitution of military for civil ethics has worked
disastrously on the conduct of Churchmen. Theoretically it is admitted
by Roman casuists that an immoral order ought not to be obeyed; but it
is not for a layman to pronounce immoral any order received from a
priest; if the order is really immoral, 'obedience' exonerates him who
executes it; in all other cases disobedience is a deadly sin. The result
of this submission of private judgment is that the voice of conscience
is often stifled, and unscrupulous policies are carried through by
Churchmen, which secular public opinion would have condemned decisively
and rejected. The persecution of Dreyfus is a recent and strong
instance. If all France had been Catholic, the victim of this shocking
injustice would certainly have died in prison. It is extremely doubtful
whether the presence of a highly organised Church is conducive to moral
and social reform in a country. The temptation to play a political game
seems to be always too strong. In Ireland the priesthood has probably
helped to maintain a comparatively high standard of sexual morality, but
it cannot be said that the Irish Catholic population is in other
respects a model of civilisation and good citizenship. In education
especially the influence of ecclesiasticism has been almost uniformly
pernicious, so that it seems impossible for any country where the
children are left under priestly influence to rise above a certain
rather low level of civilisation. The strongest claim of
institutionalism to our respect is probably the beneficial restraint
which it exercises upon many persons who need moral and intellectual
guidance. It is the fashion to disparage the scholastic theology, and it
has certainly suffered by being congealed, like everything else that
Rome touches, into a hard system; but it is immeasurably superior to the
theosophies and fancy religions which run riot in the superficially
cultivated classes of Protestant countries. The undisciplined mystic, in
his reliance on the inner light, may fall into various kinds of
_Schwärmerei_ and superstition. In some cases he may even lose his
sanity for want of a wise restraining influence. It is not an accident
that America, where institutionalism is weakest, is the happy
hunting-ground of religious quacks and cranks. Individualists are too
prone to undervalue the steadying influence of ancient and consecrated
tradition, which is kept up mainly by ecclesiastical institutions. These
probably prevent many rash experiments from being tried, especially in
the field of morals. Even writers like Dr. Frazer insist on the immense
services which consecrated tradition still renders to humanity. These
claims may be admitted; but they come very far short of the
glorification of institutionalism which we found in the authors quoted a
few pages back.
The institutionalist, however, may reply that he by no means admits the
validity of Sabatier's antithesis between religions of authority and the
religion of the Spirit. His own religion, he believes, is quite as
spiritual as that of the Protestant individualist. He may quote the fine
saying of a medieval mystic that he who can see the inward in the
outward is more spiritual than he who can only see the inward in the
inward. We may, indeed, be thankful that we have not to choose between
two mutually exclusive types of religion. The Quaker, whom we may take
as the type of anti-institutional mysticism, has a brotherhood to which
he is proud to belong, and for which he feels loyalty and affection. And
Catholicism has been rich in contemplative saints who have lived in the
light of the Divine presence. The question raised in this essay is
rather of the relative importance of these two elements in the religious
life, than of choosing one and rejecting the other. I will conclude by
saying that our preference of one of these types to the other will be
largely determined by our attitude towards history. I am glad to see
that Professor Bosanquet, in his fine Gifford Lectures, has the courage
to expose the limitations of the 'historical method,' now so popular. He
protests against Professor Ward's dictum that 'the actual is wholly
historical,' as a view little better than naïve realism. History, he
says, is a hybrid form of experience, incapable of any considerable
degree of being or trueness. It is a fragmentary diorama of finite
life-processes seen from the outside, and very imperfectly known. It
consists largely of assigning parts in some great world-experience to
particular actors--a highly speculative enterprise. To set these
contingent and dubious constructions above the operations of pure
thought and pure insight is indeed a return to the philosophy of the man
in the street. 'Social morality, art, philosophy, and religion take us
far beyond the spatio-temporal externality of history; these are
concrete and necessary living worlds, and in them the finite mind begins
to experience something of what individuality must ultimately mean.' Our
inquiry has thus led us to the threshold of one of the fundamental
problems of philosophy--the value and reality of time. For the
institutionalist, happenings in time have a meaning and importance far
greater than the mystic is willing to allow to them. Like most other
great philosophical problems, this question is largely one of
temperament. Christianity has found room for both types. I believe,
however, that the aberrations or exaggerations of institutionalism have
been, and are, more dangerous, and further removed from the spirit of
Christianity than those of mysticism, and that we must look to the
latter type, rather than to the former, to give life to the next
religious revival.
FOOTNOTES:
[90] Moore, _Science and the Faith_, Introduction.
[91] Troeltsch, _Die Bedeutung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu
für den Glauben,_ pp. 25 _sq_.
[92] Royce, _The Problem of Christianity_, vol. i. 39.
THE INDICTMENT AGAINST CHRISTIANITY
(1917)
No thinking man can deny that this war has grievously stained the
reputation of Europe. Even if the verdict of history confirms the
opinion that the conspiracy which threw the torch into the
powder-magazine was laid by a few persons in one or two countries, and
that the unparalleled outrages which have accompanied the conflict were
ordered by a small coterie of brutal officers, we cannot forget that
these crimes have been committed by the responsible representatives of a
civilised European power, and that the nation which they represent has
shown no qualms of conscience. That such a calamity, the permanent
results of which include a holocaust of European wealth and credit,
accumulated during a century of unprecedented industry and ingenuity,
the loss of innumerable lives, and the destruction of all the old and
honourable conventions which have hitherto regulated the intercourse of
civilised nations with each other, in war as well as in peace, should
have been possible, is justly felt to be a reproach to the whole
continent, and especially to the nations which have taken the lead in
its civilisation and culture. The ancient races of Asia, which have
never admitted the moral superiority of the West, are keenly interested
spectators of our suicidal frenzy. A Japanese is reported to have said,
'We have only to wait a little longer, till Europe has completed her
_hara kiri_.' This is, indeed, what any intelligent observer must think
about the present struggle. Just as the feudal barons of England
destroyed each other and brought the feudal system to an end in the
Wars of the Roses, so the great industrial nations are rending to pieces
the whole fabric of modern industrialism, which can never be
reconstructed. Mr. Norman Angell was perfectly right in his argument
that a European war would be ruinous to both sides. The material objects
at stake, such as the control of the Turkish Empire and the African
continent, are not worth more than an insignificant fraction of the
war-bill. We are witnessing the suicide of a social order, and our
descendants will marvel at our madness, as we marvel at the senseless
wars of the past.
There has, it is plain, been something fundamentally wrong with European
civilisation, and the disease appears to be a moral one. With this
conviction it is natural that men should turn upon the official
custodians of religion and morality, and ask them whether they have been
unfaithful to their trust, or whether it is not rather proved that the
faith which they profess is itself bankrupt and incapable of exerting
any salutary influence upon human character and action. Christianity
stands arraigned at the bar of public opinion. But it is not without
significance that the indictment should now be urged with a vehemence
which we do not find in the records of former convulsions. It was not
generally felt to be a scandal to Christianity that England was at war
for 69 years out of the 120 which preceded the battle of Waterloo.
Either our generation expected more from Christianity, or it was far
more shocked by the sudden outbreak of this fierce war than our
ancestors were by the almost chronic condition of desultory campaigning
to which they were accustomed. The latter is probably the true reason.
The belief in progress, which at the beginning of the industrial
revolution was an article of faith, had become a tacitly accepted
presupposition of all serious thought; and even those who were dubious
about the moral improvement of mankind in other directions, seldom
denied that we were more humane and peaceable than our forefathers. The
disillusion has struck our self-complacency in its most vital spot.
Nothing in our own experience had prepared us for the hideous savagery
and vandalism of German warfare, the first accounts of which we
received with blank amazement and incredulity. Then, when disbelief was
no longer possible, there awoke within us a sense of fear for our homes
and women and children--feeling to which modern civilised man had long
been a stranger. We had not supposed that the non-combatant population
of any European country would ever again be exposed to the horrors of
savage warfare. This, much more than the war itself, has made thousands
feel that the house of civilisation is built upon the sand, and that
Christianity has failed to subdue the most barbarous instincts of human
nature. Christians cannot regret that the flagrant contradiction between
the principles of their creed and the scenes that have been enacted
during the last three years is fully recognised. But the often repeated
statement that 'Christianity has failed' needs more examination than it
usually receives from those who utter it.
History acquaints us with two kinds of religion, which, though they are
not entirely separate from each other, differ very widely in their
effects upon conduct and morality. The _religio_ which Lucretius hated,
and from which he strangely hoped that the atomistic materialism of
Epicurus had finally delivered mankind, has its roots in the sombre and
confused superstitions of the savage. Fear, as Statius and Petronius
tell us, created the gods of this religion. These deities are mysterious
and capricious powers, who exact vengeance for the transgression of
arbitrary laws which they have not revealed, and who must be propitiated
by public sacrifice, lest some collective punishment fall on the tribe,
blighting its crops and smiting its herds with murrain, or giving it
over into the hand of its enemies. This religion makes very little
attempt to correct the current standard of values. Its rewards are
wealth and prosperity; its punishments are calamity in this world and
perhaps torture in the next. It is not, however, incapable of
moralisation. The wrath of heaven may visit not the innocent violation
of some _tabu_, but cruelty and injustice. In the historical books of
the Old Testament, though Uzzah is stricken dead for touching the ark,
and the subjects of King David afflicted with pestilence because their
ruler took a census of his people, Jehovah is above all things a
righteous God, who punishes bloodshed, adultery, and social oppression.
So in Greece the Furies pursue the homicide and the perjurer, till the
name of his family is clean put out. Herodotus tells us how the family
of Glaucus was extinguished because he consulted the oracle of Delphi
about an act of embezzlement which he was meditating.
International law was protected by the same fear of divine vengeance.
The murder of heralds must by all means be expiated. When the Romans
repudiate their 'scrap of paper' with the Samnites, they deliver up to
the enemy the officers who signed it, though (with characteristic
'slimness') not the army which the mountaineers had captured and
liberated under the agreement. To destroy the temples in an enemy's
country was an act of wanton impiety; Herodotus cannot understand the
religious intolerance which led the Persians to burn the shrines of
Greek gods. Thus religion had a restraining influence in war throughout
antiquity, and in the Middle Ages. The Pope, who was believed to hold
the keys of future bliss and torment, was frequently, though by no means
always, obeyed by the turbulent feudal lords, and often enforced the
sanctity of a contract by the threat or the imposition of
excommunication and interdict. In order to make these penalties more
terrible, the torments of those who died under the displeasure of the
Church were painted in the most vivid colours. But in the official and
popular Christian eschatology, as in the terrestrial theodicy of the Old
Testament, there is little or no moral idealism. The joys or pains of
the future life are made to depend, in part at least, on the observance
or violation of the moral law, but they are themselves of a kind which
the natural man would desire or dread. They are an enhanced, because a
deferred, retribution of the same kind which in more primitive religions
promises earthly prosperity to the righteous, and earthly calamities to
the wicked. Values, positive and negative, are taken nearly as they
stand in the estimation of the average man.