Victorianism. We had held that there was no greater satisfaction than
that of the craftsman in the work of his own hands. His was the real
_Imitatio Christi_ when he made something with his hands and saw that it
was good. Then we read _Andrea del Sarto_, despising
This low-pulsed craftsman’s hand of mine,
knowing that the artists who failed reached a heaven denied to him.
From Browning’s day on we have been moving away from Martha and coming
to Mary. The note-books of those young ones who loved thoughts began to
be filled with verses, sayings, apothegms of a new character, and many
of the elder ones to whom we read what we had found were blind and deaf
to the new ideas. I remember one old literary man and artist who used
always to say, “I take my stand with Jim”—meaning that he held with St.
James that faith without works is barren. He belonged to the old.
I admit we were not sober in our judgments. We went to see Ibsen and
Bernard Shaw, and it was easy to agree that Nora was right when she fled
from her home and her husband to save her soul, and we thought that the
immoral and unprincipled Dubedat was sooner to be saved than the
hard-working slum doctor. We saw in Solveig, who stayed in the
background and prayed, the true type of womanhood, and understood how
Peer Gynt through her could be saved. We read Nietzsche, that mad
Christian, a sort of Mary who hated her sister Martha, calling out in
anger that man had ceased to be man and had become merely _neighbour_.
We entered the domain of Russian literature, and read Dostoieffsky and
Chekhof and Gorky, and so fell under the spell of Eastern Christianity,
where we remain to-day.
The taste of England has been steadily changing this last ten years, and
the current becoming deeper and broader. Russia and the East have been
coming steadily nearer, and more and more of us have turned our backs on
work and service and that Divine materialism—the raising of the poor.
Not that we are on the way to becoming a philosophic and reflective or
ascetic nation, or even in the way of singing again “Doing is a deadly
thing”; but more and more of our nation is attempting to take to itself
and re-express the other aspect of Christianity—the way of Mary.
Even in the North of England, where the land is devoted to work and the
towns are little more than barracks of workmen, there is a noticeable
and, even from a capitalist’s point of view, an alarming change of
spirit. The “workers” are rebellious. It is not that they want more
money or lighter hours or better conditions. They simply don’t want to
work. The rising generation is disinclined to settle down, and the time
is coming when there will be difficulty in getting labouring hands, when
it will be difficult to buy them. The gloom of our industrialism is
destined to be broken.
As yet, however, those who represent us in politics, literature, and art
belong to the old. Mr. Lloyd George with his care for the poor is a
Martha. Mr. Bonar Law is a Martha also. H. G. Wells, with his World set
Free, and his rooms with rounded instead of squared corners to help the
women to sweep, is a Martha. Our poets are not Marys, and it is
necessary to go to Francis Thompson or Rossetti to find a mystic poet.
Our painters, Peter Graham, Farquharson, Leader, and others whose works
deck Academy walls, are occupied with the outward appearances of things
rather than the transcendental. And since Watts is dead we have not even
a mystical portrait painter, but all admire the gift to show in the face
money, importance, style, meat. Our people are worth painting, but there
is no one to paint them. We need an English Serof to show the true
kindred and spiritual relationship of faces.
On the stage we admire Russian opera and Russian ways. We show _The
Dynasts_ in the same way as it would have been shown in Moscow, or
nearly so. There first of all the new tendency is showing. Unfortunately
we have a long battle against American humour and vulgarity, American
materialism and the capital that would exploit our stage. Otherwise our
stage would change at a greater speed. Still the difference in the way
Shakespeare is produced in England is an index of the change. When we
produce _Hamlet_ as it is produced at the Theatre of Art, Moscow, we
shall have traversed the whole distance between the way of Martha and
the way of Mary as far as the stage is concerned.
XI
THE ECCLESIASTICAL CHURCH AND THE LIVING CHURCH
Strange that there should be a feud between the Church and the Theatre!
They were originally one and the same, and as it is the Church remains a
holy theatre where day after day is enacted the same holy mystery. In
passing: how much nearer the Theatre is brought to the Church by the
constant repetition of the great classical and mystical dramas such as
_Hamlet_. The reason for the religious distrust of the Theatre which
exists in all countries,—in England in the Free Churches; in Russia in
the Orthodox Church,—lies in the degradation of the Theatre, the making
it a show of wild beasts, a stage for indecent dances and comic songs,
an arena for combats of athletes. The common townspeople are not and
never can be the pupils of Hypatia. They will have their indecencies and
vulgarities, wild beasts, acrobats, invitation to sin. The showman has
usurped the place of the mystagogue, and money-making has replaced
religious service or service to art and culture as a motive of
theatrical production. The Theatre to-day, even if it aspire to be
serious, has unclean hands, and the Church not unfairly regards it as
part of the stock-in-trade of the evil one.
An interesting exemplification of the relation of Church and Stage is
furnished by Oscar Wilde’s _Salome_. To the Christian, to look at the
dance of Salome is to glance into the charnel-house where all is decay
and worms and death, and to see there the head of one of the saints with
celestial aureole. But the dramatist has turned the interest to the
dance itself and made you say that it is interesting: he has dwelt on
the jewels, the crimsons, the thick lips, the luscious movements. Every
effort is made to make you agree with Herod, and the best way to do that
is to suggest to your body and soul the same feelings towards the dancer
on the stage as Herod felt towards the daughter of his brother’s wife—so
that you would give her anything, even the pure body of the saint that
is in your keeping. He would give you a place with the worms and the
spirit of decay, and let you end as Herod ended, eaten by the worms at
the last. No aureole for you!
But the Church suggests the aureole for you, and if _Salome_ were
presented as a mystery-play the whole interest of the populace would be
directed towards the sainthood of John the Baptist. When Oscar Wilde’s
_Salome_ was produced at Petrograd, Russia made short work of it. On the
first night, at the first public performance, some one stood up in the
middle of a scene and shouted in a bass voice:
“_Spustee zanavess!_” “Lower the curtain!” and the curtain was lowered;
and _Salome_ has not been repeated there from that day to this.
Who it was said this is rather a mystery, but it was doubtless some one
who had the voice or the ear of Orthodoxy. Russia probably gained by
this prohibition. A pity, however, that many other plays quite as
injurious are allowed their way to the perversion of private morals and
the corruption of public taste. Indeed it would be a gain to Russia if
the Church would cease looking at the Stage from a merely ecclesiastical
point of view. The fault of the clergy is their pride in their own order
and their institutions. The clergy, ministers of the living Church of
Christ, should in nature be the humblest of people, so humble in fact,
so meek and unresentful, that it would be necessary occasionally to
protect them from the enmity of the secular world. As it is, in their
pomp, they are proud. They despise the Stage and often prohibit plays on
quite wrong grounds, incidentally depriving not only the theatre and the
public, but the Church also, of something helpful to the cause of
Eastern Christianity and of all real Russian values. The prohibition of
Andreef’s _Anathema_, performed at the Theatre of Art in Moscow, is an
example. Though this prohibition was at the instance of the Archbishop
of Moscow the play was in essential teaching profoundly helpful to
Eastern Christianity. It was written by a man who belonged to the
revolutionary movement, but it was only the more remarkable and the more
powerful thereby. It was in substance a refutation of Westernism and the
ideals after which secularist Russia was striving. A pious and
philanthropic Jew inheriting immense wealth, millions of American
dollars, resolved in his simplicity to save the world, feeding the
hungry, clothing the ragged, giving money to the needy, medical aid to
the suffering. The drama shows the futility of this dream, and at the
end the mob of enraged and suffering humanity stone the philanthropist
to death. Not by material but by spiritual things could their sufferings
be assuaged.
The archbishop who stopped it was probably never in a theatre in his
life, and no doubt condemned it on hearsay, and from a complete
misapprehension of the significance of the drama.
The Church of the future in England, and probably in Russia, will have
to come into alliance with what may be called the right side of the
theatre. For occasionally in the theatre people worship as much as
others do in the Church. Many young people whose families have lapsed
from the Church find their religious life functionised in the book, the
drama, the opera, the symphony. They are not _communicants_ in the
literal sense, they are outside the church walls and the shut church
doors, but they are inside the living Church. They have a common word
with people inside church walls. Their chorus of praise swells from the
other side of the walls, and in some countries the secular chorus of
praise to God has considerably more volume than the official
ecclesiastical chorus. Somehow in church one rather resents the choir,
especially in the _Te Deum_, when they are singing it to some
“God-forsaken” curious tune that a pedant musician has chosen. It is
good when the whole church can lift one great voice. And outside the
church the greater congregation rather resents the church-goers. They
would sing _Te Deum_ also.
The relation of Church and Stage exhibits the confusion of religious
values at present existing. The same confusion exists with regard to the
Church and Literature—many of the great classics of Russian literature,
like Gogol’s _Dead Souls_, the monks would regard it a sin to read. The
ecclesiastical Church takes no useful stand with regard to what is
helpful, what harmful, in past and present literature; it is left for
the living Church to find out for itself and do what it can without
organisation. Even in the domain of Holy Writ there is a confusion of
what the living Church believes, and what mere ecclesiasticism lays
down. At least one fundamental idea in Christianity has been overlaid,
and, as it were, frustrated by the Church itself—the idea of the Holy
Ghost. The Holy Ghost has been conventionalised and made terrible. It
has become the most inscrutable and awe-inspiring aspect of the Trinity,
whereas it should be the most familiar and consoling, Christ saying
good-bye to his disciples in that last long sweet talk where He calls
them friends, tells them that after He is gone away from them there will
come a new consolation, the vision of Truth.
“I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter that he
may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth whom the world
cannot receive, ... the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost, whom the
Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring
all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. Peace I
leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give
I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid....
If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If
ye were of the world the world would love his own: but because ye are
not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the
world hateth you.... When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto
you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the
Father, He shall testify of me: And ye also shall bear witness, because
ye have been with me from the beginning.”
And in the cross-examination before Pilate, Jesus said, “My kingdom is
not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my
servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews.... To this
end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should
bear witness unto the truth.”
Therein lies the true idea of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit—it is the
vision of Heavenly Truth that gives the lie to worldly values, worldly
truth. By virtue of this Holy Spirit the blind see, though they have no
eyes, the deaf hear, the dumb speak, the dead live, mortality itself is
disproved. The mysteries of the Pentecostal mitres, of the gift of
tongues, and the conventionalised notion of what is called the “sin
against the Holy Ghost,” have stood in the way of the simple and
beautiful conception of the comforting vision of Truth. The Church, with
its keys of heaven and hell, and its arrogation of the power of anathema
and excommunication, has preferred to lay its emphasis on those texts
which may seem to imply the dreadfulness of offence against a certain
more inscrutable aspect of the Trinity. There is nothing in the Gospels
but love of man, forgiveness of man, and nothing is more pitiful than
the man who, having a glimpse of the Truth, yet denies it or wilfully
confuses it with magic or unclean power.
But the _Filioque_ clause of the Creed is alone sufficient to exemplify
the confusion of ecclesiasticism and the living Church. There are many
who think that the two Churches of England and Russia are kept apart by
this clause alone. England holds that the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit,
proceeds from the Father and from the Son, Russia that it proceeds from
the Father alone. Russia’s basis is St. John, XV. 26, “... the Spirit of
truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me.” “What
does it matter how it is put?” cries the living Church. But
ecclesiastical pedantry is strongly entrenched, and whenever the
question of the intercommunion of the two Churches is mentioned there
arises that fatal phrase—“_Filioque_—and from the Son.”
“Does not one of your Thirty-nine Articles lay down that the Holy Ghost
proceeds from the Father _and from the Son_? And is not assent to the
Thirty-nine Articles obligatory upon your clergy? Why, then....” To
which one can only answer in one’s heart:
Thirty-nine Articles,
Ye precious little particles,
And did God really make the world by you?
The same confusion exists with regard to the Church and Life. That which
the living Church of Christ possesses is a spiritual communion, not a
set of dogmas or a set of points of ecclesiastical law. If a man is
really touched to go to church, if he has the impulse from the heart, it
is not in order that he may hear dogma. He goes to blend his voice and
his thoughts with the voice and the thoughts of humanity in hymn and
prayer. But to-day many misconceptions arise. Carlyle could not go to
church because the sermon bored him. Many stay away from churches
because they can’t stand so-and-so’s sermon. As if the sermon were part
of the service! In old days the sermons were often delivered outside the
churches after the service was done. The priest came through the
worshippers, went out into the church square, and rising to a platform
or “outside pulpit” harangued the everyday crowd. The function of the
Church service is not to be a frame to a sermon, even a clever or
profound or inspiring sermon. Its function is praise.
A Jew writing for an important Russian newspaper about the state of the
Church of England remarks that “dogmas make many leave the Church, and
those who stay remain to preach ethics,” and he goes on to praise ethics
as the function of the Church, leaving out of account, and evidently
having no notion of, the Church as a temple of religion, a place of
communion and aspiration. Surely the preaching ethics is a work begun by
parents and confirmed by the schoolmaster. Christ did not die on the
cross or forgive the thief who recognised Him in order to preach “Thou
shalt not steal!” Yet such a confusion of ideas remains in the mind even
of the cultured.
Still, the whole world and the universe is an orchestra praising God,
and, remembering that, it is impossible to say there is real confusion
or final confusion. It is as impossible to classify and show series of
like things, for the imagination tells you that every instrument in the
orchestra is diverse. Hence I am open to misconception when I write of
confusion or when I classify, as for instance when I talk of Marthas and
Marys. There is confusion and there is order. Nothing is fixed, all is
in motion, the kaleidoscope is ever moving. So it would be wrong to say
that all who were in the way of Martha were in towns working for the
poor, or that all in the way of Mary were away in the desert saving
their souls at the feet of the Master, or that the priests in their
orders and vestments with their processions and grandeur were all in the
way of Martha, or that the hermits of the desert did not upon occasion
come like Paphnutius to Alexandria to save Thaïs, the dancing-girl. The
sisters love one another; and though it is not written in the Gospels,
there were certainly occasions when Mary might have been seen cumbered
about with many things whilst Martha sat with her Lord.
XII
WITNESS UNTO THE TRUTH
The purely Eastern aspect of the Church is the way of Mary, the
spiritual, meditative, introspective, mystical way, and this is ever the
strength of the whole Church. It is even the strength of the Protestant
churches, though there the spiritual life is more private. In Orthodoxy
the voice speaks from the desert right into the ears of the everyday
mundane crowd. The people are enjoined against sloth in the name of the
fathers of the desert. They sing their hymns in praise of those who have
overcome. They are encompassed round about with “the crowd of
witnesses,” the ikon faces and frescoed saints of the church walls, the
thousands of those who have died in the Lord looking on whilst we run
with patience the race that is set before us.
Our work is in the world, our passion is for the realisation of good
worldly hopes. We pray for the King, the Emperor; we own a true
allegiance to a God-guided Cæsar, and are ready to render to such a
Cæsar the things that are his. We pray for the administrative bodies and
for Parliament, may they go forward to the raising of the poor, the
healing of the sick, the raising to a life of knowledge those who are
dead in ignorance. We pray for our fellow-man and for ourselves. We band
ourselves in a Christian order, and confirm in ourselves the resolve to
fight against sin, ugliness, unhappiness. We promise to give time, to
give money, to work for the Cause. This is all in the way of Martha. But
these thoughts and prayers are made in a temple where the light is the
light of candles placed before shrines of the Unseen. A vision
accompanies the Christian man. Though his passion is towards the things
of this world he is encompassed and enveloped by the atmosphere of
another world. The remembrance remains his that Cæsar is not God, nor
Cæsar’s officers the angels of God, nor this world the real world, that
the poor we have always with us, that our true citizenship is of another
realm.
The work of Martha fails, fails again; the poor multiply, sickness
becomes a plague and scourge from God, the ignorant increase, peace
becomes war, the progressive work of centuries topples down like Babel,
kings or emperors become killed, allegiances of millions are changed,
famous Christian workers and organisers who have given their whole life
to the Cause go out to death with grey hairs, all their life-work made
as nought before their eyes. The passionate soldier-saint goes out in
failure. The lukewarm mediocre man and the cheerful happy-go-lucky
mortals, the ordinary folk, the witty ones, the dull ones, the run of
mankind as we call them, also go out, looking at the failure of ideas to
which they have vaguely or earnestly given assent. But Christianity does
not fail. Thousands of years hence this young religion of Christianity
will be more triumphant, splendid, vital, than it is to-day. And this by
virtue of the mystical and transcendental aspect of the word.
The service of the Church is more than a consecration of duty. It is a
bearing witness to the Truth, a watching till He come, an expectancy, a
getting into position for a great procession, a carrying of banners and
emblems, a joining in a universal hymn sung not only by ourselves but by
all the dead. The light of the Church is the light of transfiguration,
not the light of common day, it is the light of the halo round the
saint’s head.
You enter a church, such a temple, for instance, as the Cathedral of the
Assumption in Moscow. At a step you are in the precincts of a different
world. You have overstepped a frontier line, and the language has
changed, just as when in Europe you cross a boundary and the language
changes, say from German to Russian. The people are looking a different
way, not Westward as to the Emperor but Eastward as to God. You are in a
new kingdom; but as your thoughts go back to the street you left you
realise that the kingdom is not from thence.
The faces in the ikons are not the faces of men. The figures are twisted
and strange. One asks: “Why did not the Byzantine painters paint the
truth? There never were men looking as these men. Why these
copper-coloured and flame-coloured faces? Why the unearthly expression
in eyebrows and eyes? Men never looked like that.” The answer is: the
early Christian painters did not wish to paint earthly truth. Their
object was to indicate the unearthly nature of man, his citizenship of
another world. They wrote into the features of every saint, “Be of good
cheer, I have overcome the world.” This was one of the earliest
traditions in the Christian Church, and has been handed down from
generation to generation in the books of _ikonopis_ or ikon-painting.
There is a way to paint a Christian saint, and that way has to be
followed in the Eastern churches. He must be represented as a witness
unto the Truth, a face that at least at last owns no allegiance to the
monarch in the West, but only to the God in the East, the face of an
archangel or of one who sings continuously, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God
Almighty, which was and is and is to come.” One may belong to a mighty
empire, but the citizenship of those within the Church is of a mightier
and grander and vaster empire. The thrill of the new national hymn is
the greater, the characteristic uniforms and robes have the more
reverence in their associations.
The vestments of the priests astonish one. They are gorgeous past
belief. Whence comes that gold brocade? It was cut in another world. At
least, that is its intention, that is what it would signify. Who are
they in white robes? Why do the priests at the altar walk so stately?
What is that new _tempo_ to which they have learned to move and to swing
the censer?
And the voice of the clergy, that unearthly bass, that profound groaning
and seeking of notes that man does not utter, that voice as of Jesus
commanding the soul of the dead Lazarus to return to the awful and
dreadful corpse? The service in the Slavonic tongue, not in the everyday
tongue....
All these things bear witness unto the Truth and are the emblems of our
allegiance to the kingdom of Christ, marks of our other citizenship, the
visible emblems and symbols of our hope, our love and passion. Hence it
is possible to sing with angels and archangels. Failure in the work of
Martha loses significance as failure. Failure is even good, it is one
more sign, an involuntary ritual, telling of our truer destiny.