THE GROWTH OF SANDERSON SHOWN IN HIS SERMONS AND SCRIPTURE LESSONS
§ 1
Before I go on to a discussion of the latest, broadest, and most
interesting phase of Sanderson's mental life, I would like to give
my readers as vivid a picture as I can of his personality and his
methods of delivery. I have tried to convey an impression of his stout
and ruddy presence, his glancing spectacles, his short, compact but
allusive delivery, his general personal jolliness. I will give now a
sketch of one of his Scripture lessons made by two of the boys in the
school. Nothing I think could convey so well his rich discursiveness
nor the affectionate humour he inspired throughout the school. Here it
is.
'SCRIPTURE LESSON
'_Delivered by F. W. Sanderson on Sunday, 25th May 1919, and taken
down word for word by X and Y, and subsequently written up by
them._
'_Limitations of space and time have prevented them from including
all the lesson. Omissions have been indicated. They apologise for
the lapses of the speaker into inaudibility, which were not their
fault. They do not hold themselves in any way responsible for the
opinions expressed herein._
'ANALYSIS
'of the portions copied.
'Characteristic portions in the Gospel of St. Matthew.
'Obstinacy of the Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board.
'Character of the devil, according to some modern writers.
'First act of our Lord on beginning the Galilean Ministry.
'Empire Day.
'_Subject of the Scripture lesson:--St. Matthew, chaps. iv and v._
('The Temptations, the commencement of the Galilean Ministry, the
first portion of the Sermon on the Mount.')
'(The headmaster enters, worries his gown, sits down, adjusts his
waistcoat, and coughs once.)
'The--um--er--I am taking you through the Gospel of St. Matthew. I
think, as a matter of fact, we got to the end of the third chapter.
We won't spend much time over the fourth. The fourth, I think, is
the--er--er--Temptations, which I have already taken with you--a
rather--er--very interesting--ah--very interesting--er--survival.
That the Temptation Narrative should have survived shows that there
is probably something of value in it or I do not think it would
have survived. There are two incidents of very similar character
of--er--very--er--similar character and--ah--different to a certain
extent from everything else--er--ah-- There is a boy in that
corner not listening to me. Who is that boy in the corner there?
No, not you--two rows in front. I will come down to you later, my
boy. There are two incidents in the Gospel Narrative which are
similar in--er--character and which I have for the moment called
"Survivals"--very characteristic, namely, the somewhat surprising
narrative of the Temptation of our Lord, and the other the account of
the Transfiguration. These are different in form and character from
other narratives, just in the same way as the account of our Lord
sending messages to the Baptist differs from others. Er--yes--that
last one. I should put them together as coming from a similar source
(lapse into inaudibility--bow wow wow. Unique in characteristic--bow
wow wow--Somewhat subtle--bow wow). One remarks that the Temptations
are always looked at from the personal point of view, which I have
put down in my synopsis. Has anybody here got my synopsis? lend it to
me a moment. I don't think the personal significance of the Gospel
stories has importance nowadays. We needn't consider it. That's what
I think about things in general. Personal importance giving place to
universal needs. We are not so much concerned with whether boys do
_evil_ or not. Of course it annoys me if I find a boy doing evil.
Leading others astray. Shockingly annoying. Oughtn't to be. Like
continuous mathematics not enabling a boy to pass in arithmetic--bow
wow wow--screw loose. See what I mean, K----? Not referring to you, my
boy (laughter). Hunt me up something in Plato about all these things.
During the last generation--
'(Half a page omitted.)
'Just in the same way from another point of view shall we live for
own advancement, which we are continually tempted to do? It's awfully
annoying if you do certain things and people won't recognise them.
I was pretty heftily annoyed myself at a meeting of the Oxford and
Cambridge Board. Professor Barker--great man--I nearly always agree
with him. Professor Barker. They had made science compulsory for the
school certificate. Bow wow wow. I don't want boys turned aside from
their main purpose to have to get up scraps and snippets of science.
Literary pursuits and so on. I wouldn't have it at any price. Bow wow
wow. Modern languages are compulsory too. By looking at a boy's French
set I can tell whether he can pass or not. Bow wow. Professor Barker
proposed that science should be voluntary. I seconded him, but I said
that languages should be voluntary as well. He didn't see that at all.
Isn't it enough to make a man angry?
'(Half a dozen lines omitted from our note as incomprehensible.)
'Now I am inclined to think that Satan in this Gospel is not intended
to be the Satan of our minds--the prince of evil. He is intended to be
more like the Satan in the book of Job. He is the devil's advocate. He
argues for the other side. For the opposition. He is put up to create
opposition. This may in itself be a valuable thing. I don't know that
I need go further into it. I would just like to tell you this, boys.
Some modern writers, especially Bernard Shaw, have a very high esteem
for the devil. He[1] prefers hell to heaven. So he says. Of course
he hasn't been there, so he can't tell. So he is voted a dangerous
personage because, dear souls, they don't know what he means. What
_he_ means is that heaven as it has been run down to and God as He
has been run down to--everything placid and simple and inactive and
non-creative and sleepy. People don't worship God. They worship (burble
burble). They don't disturb their minds and think about things. That's
what he means. Yes. Man and Superman. Activity of intellect. That's
more or less what he has in mind. He prefers people doing something
outrageously wrong than doing nothing at all. I don't know if it's
true; it's all expressed in Greek thought.
'(Four pages omitted on running with the tide, Lloyd George, the
importance of French in examinations, and the correct way of getting a
true national spirit.)
'Well, our Lord now proceeded to found His Galilean Ministry. And what
was the first thing He did, L----? It's quite obvious. What did He
do? Obvious. Were you thinking of what I said just now? No, sir. My
stream of words goes over you, not through you. Obvious. Now what was
the first thing He did? What is obviously the first thing He did? Why,
it's painfully obvious, even to L----. What was it? What? Where are we,
L----? L---- has lost the place. Which paragraph do I mean, L----? Read
the paragraph I mean. No. I have finished that. Next one. Obvious. What
is it about? Yes, what is it about? What is it about? Two or four? Yes,
four! Now what is obvious? Obvious! Now you've just got it, and you're
ten minutes behind. Of course. The first obvious thing He had to do
was to get a band of faithful disciples. Very first thing He did. What
did He call them to be? To be what? Fishers of Men. Obvious.
'(Five pages omitted on Empire Day, Medical Study, and Cancer.)
'Now the--er--the Sermon on the Mount. You have heard this ever
since you were on your mother's knee. At least I hope so. Beyond the
historical times of your memory. For you, the Sermon on the Mount is as
old as the ages. And yet I dare trespass on the Sermon on the Mount.
"I've heard of it before," you say. "I'm tired of it. Do something
fresh." Boys, you must go and read old things and breathe into them
the new Spirit of Life. Now what is that chapter in Ezekiel, boys? Do
you know the number of the page, and the paragraph, and the chapter?
No. What am I talking about? Why, the valley of dry bones. Never heard
of it! No. Is it in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or where, or Habakkuk? Is it in
Ezekiel 1? No. 36? No. 37? Yes. Dry Bones. Bones. Yes. That's what. I
am going to take you to a valley of dry bones. Dry Bones. Bones. It is
your business to go into the dry bones of the past and cover them with
flesh, and breathe into them the new Spirit. I often read the Sermon on
the Mount. It never bores me. I have more excuse to be bored than you.
I learned it, gracious goodness, how long ago! Beyond Historic times. I
loved it as a boy. Dry Bones.
'(Three pages on the Sermon on the Mount.)
'Now yesterday was Empire Day. Why did you want me to put the flag
up? Rule Britannia! Britannia rules the waves! Is not that it? (Yes,
sir.) Dear boys! I wouldn't throw cold water on it for worlds. Well,
you had your flag. It didn't fly. There was no wind behind it. There
was no devil to blow it. Dear boys, you wanted that flag for a reason
I think a shade wrong. It wouldn't be within the--what's the word I
want?--suited for our modern gauges. The new world won't come until we
give up the idea of Conquest and Extension of Empire--no new kingdom
until its members are imbued with the principles that competition is
wrong, that conquest is wrong, that co-operativeness is right, and
sacrifice a law of nature. Now, how do the seven Beatitudes read with
_Rule Britannia_? Now you say you believe in your Bibles. You say you
are Christians. Pious Christians. You would be most annoyed if I called
you heathens. Well, if so, you believe that these are right:--
'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Rule Britannia!
'Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Rule
Britannia!
'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Rule Britannia!
'Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they
shall be filled. Britannia rules the waves!
'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Rule Britannia!
'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see all that is worth
seeing and living for. Wave your flag! Rule Britannia!
'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Rule Britannia!
'Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness sake.
Rule Britannia! It is incongruous....
'Dear souls! My dear souls! I wouldn't lead you astray for anything.
I can't explain it ... this national spirit of yours. Beneath it all
there is a spirit of great righteousness. I wouldn't tamper with it for
thousands of pounds. But you must just see the other side....
'(Starts on the Salt of the Earth, but is interrupted by time. Sets a
heavy prep., and goes.)'
§ 2
Now that was the key in which Sanderson dealt with his boys and in
which he gave his message to the world. And that is also the key in
which they dealt with him. I want to clear out of the reader's mind any
idea that this great teacher of men was a solemn and superior person,
clear, exact, and exalted, and that his boys had any vague sentimental
worship for him. They laughed at him, loved him, understood him,
assimilated his ideas, and worked with him. He was much more like a
sweating, panting, burly leader pushing a way for himself and others
through a thorny thicket. And when I sat in his study and read over the
notes of his sermons and scripture lessons I got the same impression of
a sturdy fighter thrusting through a tangle.
Altogether there were several hundred of these sermon-memoranda. He
would take a quire of manuscript paper and write down his notes, not
headings merely but sentences, writing very fast, missing out halves
of words, leaving phrases incomplete. The result would be a little
book with perhaps a title and a date scribbled on the back page. The
dozen specimen sermons in the official Life were mostly taken from
these rough drafts. There was also a quantity of printed sermons dating
from his earliest days at Oundle. So that it was possible to trace his
development from the days when every heretical utterance was jealously
noted, to the days of complete freedom of thought and expression.
He came into the interlaced briars and brakes of modern religious
thought, a trained theological student, but already a very broad
one, far from the trite materialistic superstitions of the narrowly
orthodox. 'Of what is termed "definite religious teaching" his boys
received little,' says one of his clerical assistants. 'The Head fought
shy of anything which he felt might cramp a boy's tendency to think for
himself and develop his own views.'
This is far from the old days of salvation by belief.
He took Christ as the central figure in his teaching. In his early
days he had prepared a parallel arrangement of the gospels, and this
developed into his _Synopsis of the Life of Christ_. He seems to have
clung stoutly to the authenticity of the recorded sayings of Christ,
but he held himself free to doubt whether we have as yet 'got to the
bottom of many sayings of the Master.' And, says the same witness,
at once rather vaguely and rather illuminatingly: 'He brushed aside
impatiently doubts as to the feasibility of this miracle or that. To
any who seemed to be worrying about the actual turning of water into
wine at Cana he would urge that they were missing the whole point;
cold, lifeless water was turned into warm, life-giving wine--and this
was the work of the Master and His new teaching. Could they doubt
that? He seemed to feel acutely that the passing of the centuries is
liable to bring a distortion as well as an enrichment of the Christian
revelation, and for that reason he was always trying to meditate
himself, and to get others to meditate, on the true characteristics of
the Master in the earliest portraits of Him handed down to us in the
Gospels.'
[Illustration: The head among the parents]
Like all religious teachers he emphasised some aspects of the
general doctrine in preference to others, but his accent was never
on the sacramental or ceremonial side. The root ideas of orthodox
Christianity, the ideas of sin and an atonement, never very prominent
in his teaching, faded more and more from his discourses as the years
went on. He never seems to have had much sense of sin, and he laid an
increasing stress on action, on courage and experiment. One saying
he repeated endlessly, 'Give, and it shall be given unto you; good
measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall men give
into your bosom.' Still more frequently he quoted, 'I came that ye
might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly.' In his
later days that had become a new motto for Oundle School; it ousted
'God grant Grace' from the boys' thoughts in much the same way that
Faraday for all spiritual purposes ousted St. Anthony as the patron
saint of the school. And in the later sermons one would find side by
side with Gospel sayings, exhortations from quite another quarter.
The boys were told to 'live dangerously.' The Christ of later Oundle
became indeed a very Nietzschean Christ.
§ 3
Orthodox Christianity is built upon the doctrine of the Fall of Man
and the damnation of mankind, but I could find only the rarest and
remotest allusions to this ground beneath the Christian corner-stone of
salvation in the bale of sermons I examined. There is no evidence that
Sanderson ever denied the fallen state of man, but he never alluded
to it, and the general effect of his teaching went far beyond a mere
avoidance. As his teaching developed, another word, a word infrequent
in the gospels, became dominant, the word 'creative.' For any mention
of 'salvation' you will find twenty repetitions of 'creative.' So far
as I can gather he took the word from a hitherto unrecognised Christian
father, St. Bertrand Russell. And I should submit the following passage
from a sermon on The Garden of Life, to any competent theological body
with very grave doubts whether they would accept it as consistent with
the teaching of any recognised Christian Church.
'God had created man, and had moulded and fashioned him, and had
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a
living soul, possessed of the divine and eternal indestructible
spirit, the God-like spirit which would fill him with the glorious and
life-giving spirit of unrest, of unsatisfied longings and desire, of
the instinctive natural urge to have more of life. A mighty power, a
dynamic creative force, a daemonic increasing urge--against which the
forces of hell, of destructiveness, of caprice, of lawlessness, of
the jungle, cannot prevail. Under this power man and the races of man
progress: but without this mental fight, this constant struggle, no
life can come. I dwelt on this fact last time I spoke to you, having
in mind the mental or intellectual aspect of it, especially for those
of you who are working for some searching examinations: for without
a persistent, painful, and often enough disappointing effort the
understanding of things will not come to you, or to any of us.
'Be true to yourselves, suffer no artifice, or artificial
understanding, to throw dust in your eyes. Do not struggle for
a static victory. Be true to yourselves. Do not struggle for
your own recognition, as it were, or for the mere appearance of
knowledge--rather struggle to enter into the kingdom, the kingdom of
service.
'And where can you find the inspiration and urge of life? The source
is wonderfully drawn out for us in the illuminating and suggestive
commentary on Genesis you have the advantage to study. A great human
book is Canon Driver's _Commentary_, digging out for us the deep truths
of life embedded in the ancient myths of Genesis. A study in the use of
words; of what we can learn from words; a new form of text-book. Such a
text-book as we should have for the new era. This picture of the coming
and making of man tells us a story of the widest applicability. It is
found in all the works of God; it is found in all our surroundings; it
is found in all our work and toil; it is found most fully and actively
in all our daily working life. God, we are told, made a garden for
man, and there He placed him and gave him charge of it; and there the
Lord God came and walked with man, and communed with man, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life. And there He gave him his chief
aim of life, his one purpose. And the Lord God took man, and put him
in the Garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it. And then with the
memory and order of that garden in his mind He permitted him to receive
knowledge, and then sent him out into the great wilderness to find his
garden there.'
And here is another passage from a sermon entitled 'Creative.'
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth
was waste and void. The world was in chaos, darkness, and gloom. But
it was not to be left in this state. All this condition of anarchy,
this waste and void, was the material out of which a new world was to
be created. Confused and impossible though everything appeared, yet
there was something present that made steadfastly and incessantly for
order. So we believe it is now, in the present state of things. All
the conflicts and strifes of to-day are the breaking up of the fallow
ground. They are the effort to create life. They are the messengers of
the coming of the Son of Man. In storm and tempest cometh the Son of
Man. Over all this lawless, shapeless, impossible material of chaos
there brooded, we are told, the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God was
brooding over the waters like a bird over its nest, and in due time,
in the order of creation, a new life was to take shape, and a new world
was to rise up. In stately, ordered, majestic manner with all the
certainty and irresistible power of gravitation, step by step, stage by
stage, out of the welter of anarchy, a life--a new life--was to come
into the world. A new life came.
And at each stage we hear the words of the Lord God, "Let there be,"
and "there was." And then: "God saw that it was good." There was
evening, and there was morning--darkness changed into light--and the
day's work was done. And God saw that it was good.
So, too, it is and will be in the history of the human race. The
uplifting of mankind, the coming of fuller life to nations, to man, to
classes and sections of men, has come in epochs of change. Such stages
in history are like the stages in the life history of a plant. There
seem to be resting phases, epochs of apparent quiescence, the cessation
of struggle.
The fact is that some new freedom, some new principle of life, some
desire to grow, has for a long time been taking root in the minds and
souls of men. The urge to become more creative--to gain more of life
and give more of life--becomes at last intense. And there is an immense
desire to satisfy the great urge of nature. The old order passes. The
gathered forces seek release. The pangs of birth are upon us.'
The further one goes with Sanderson, the stronger is one's sense of new
wine fermenting in the old bottle of orthodox Christian formulæ. In one
of the late sermons he deliberately sets aside the Epistles of the New
Testament as of less account than the gospels. He was still diverging
when he died. In the last year or so of his life a new word crept into
his talk and played an increasingly important part in it. That word
was 'syncretism.' He spoke of it more and more plainly as an evil
thing. And I cannot but believe, knowing his sources of knowledge and
the angle at which he approached history, that he must have been aware
that doctrinal Christianity--as detached from the personal teaching
of Jesus--is, with its Mithraic blood sacrifice and Sabbath keeping,
its Alexandrine trinity, its Egyptian priests, shaven and celibate,
its Stella Maris and infant Horus, the completest example of a
syncretic religion in the world. My impression is that if he had lived
another two years he would have shed his last vestiges of theological
paraphernalia and gone straight back to the teaching of the Nazarene,
openly and plainly. And that would have created a very embarrassing
situation for the members of the Grocers' Company, in the school at
Oundle.
§ 4
And what creed was taking the place of the old theological tangle?
What interpretation was Sanderson putting upon this ever-new teaching
of Christ in the world, that he was stripping so steadily out of its
irrelevant casings of dogma and superstition? I cannot do better in
answer to that than quote from one of his latest sermons, a sermon
delivered on the reassembly of the school at the opening of a new
school year.
'The fundamental instinct of life is to create, to make, to discover,
to grow, to progress. Every one in some form or other has experience
of this joy of creating; the joy of seeing the growth, the building,
the change, the coming. The instinct of those in authority has
recognised--without perhaps knowing it--the love to create, when they
devised punishment--the treadmill, prisons, routine, all thwarting that
free creative impulse to the point of torture. Or on a minor scale
the trivial school stupidities and idlenesses of 'lines'; detentions
without labour or sacrifice or both; or even the cheap and easy
physical punishment. Such punishment, if not all inflicted punishment,
springs out of the distinctive protective aim of slavery. Creative life
comes slowly.
Life, this beautiful, creative life, comes slowly through the ages,
but it comes. Slowly mankind is emerging out of slavery into the
beautiful freedom of creative life. Slowly mankind is realising the
natural desire, the instinctive natural urge, the essential need for
life--of each individual to be free. Free--_i.e._ free to strive, to
endeavour, to reach onwards, to create, to make, to beget. The economic
freedom of the individual has been slowly escaping throughout history.
It burst into a new vigorous life through the hammering blows of the
French Revolution. During the last century or more this principle of
freedom has been changing our political relationships and values. This
economic escape may be said to have reacted on science, and the modern
developments of evolution have benefited by the spreading change in the
temper of mind, and by the influx of workers and creative thinkers from
the enslaved order.
And this raises a large question which I have in mind this morning.
Every one can see to-day the immensity of the problems before the
world. It does not need much reflection, or foresight, or knowledge, to
see that the organisation of the intercourse of races is hurrying on to
becoming a dangerous problem. As has been said, and as any one I think
with powers of sight can see, it is in a large sense a race between
education and catastrophe. And the question we in schools have to ask
is, Can we in schools be outside all this? Can we confine our work,
our play, our necessary work, our necessary play, to the recognised,
traditional work or play of schools? We here think not. We believe
that schools should move on towards becoming always a microcosm of the
new world. A microcosm, and experiment, of the standards of value, of
the commandments, the statutes and judgments, of the organisation, of
the visions and aims of a coming world. We must not get into our heads
that these are theoretical things, it may be pure idealistic sort of
things, or, it may be new and dangerous things. They are none of these
things--they can be expressed in very everyday, homely, matter-of-fact
things and in the doing of our ordinary work. Of course they do mean
thought, a tendency to believe, a faith in boys--and they do mean
labour, and sacrifice--as they are called or thought of at first--until
both pass on into the beautiful life.
Such aims and urges become terrific powers for prolonging the life of
man; and as the stream of life goes on it becomes more and more like
a vast river moving slowly forward with great power, receiving more
and more of tributaries, slowly, strongly, surely flowing on "unto
the estuary that enlarges, and spreads itself grandly as it pours its
waters into the great ocean of sea."
But the beginnings are here: and here boys must find themselves in the
great stream of true life. They must find themselves in the land of the
great vision, of faith, of service. No beating or marking of time here.
No easy static state. No satisfaction with conventional static comfort.
Here they will join in this great world-life. They came from their
homes to join the great world-life here. Even these tiny boys here will
feel that something is before them that matters, something of true life
and true intent. They will get the germs of life from some of those
things we are perpetually trying to do, and never succeeding in doing.
They will catch the contagion of effort. For learning is not our object
here, but doing. They may learn things in a deadly static way, they may
learn much in a static way and gain nothing of life. Not here, I hope.
No, the germs of life come from the spirit; from the incessant travail
of the soul; from high intent; they come from the burning desire to
know of the things that are coming into the world....'
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Mr. Shaw.