in the Gospels, and only in one epistle, that to the Hebrews, and there
its appearance is not unworthy of our notice. Christ is declared to be
a _hiereus_, or priest, _only after_ his removal from earth. It is
stated that it is an office which did not, which could not have
belonged to him while on earth--precisely the point we contend. But
how is it that in this epistle he comes to be designated as a priest at
all? It was probably due to the exigencies of controversy. The
epistle must be looked upon as a polemical pamphlet directed against
those Hebrews who refused to embrace the new reform and derided its
absence of priest, sacrifice and altar. Conscious that Jesus left no
priesthood behind him, that his teaching was anti-sacerdotal and
non-sacramental, there was nothing for the writer but to suggest that
the great prophet himself was the high priest, the _solitary member of
the caste_ in the new gospel, and that therewith men are to be
satisfied, because more than compensated thereby for the absence of the
altar and hierarchy of old. So we have here an unique instance of the
exception which proves the rule. Once and once only is the founder of
Christianity affirmed to be a priest, and then by an anonymous writer,
in a production which the whole Western Church for centuries refused to
acknowledge as inspired, and on examination it turns out that by the
very nature of the priesthood ascribed to him, such an institution is
no longer possible on earth; it is banished for ever into invisibility,
and can have no longer any representatives amongst men.
In like manner we find no instance of any attempt on the part of Jesus
to make his immediate followers priests. He called them "witnesses,"
bade them "preach" and "teach". If he told them to baptise, or to
break bread in memory of him, we shall soon see that, in the first
three centuries of Christian history, his words were emphatically not
taken to mean that no one but they, or such as they, could perform
these offices. That which men call "the apostolic succession," and to
which some of them apparently attach supreme importance, is nothing but
a chimera, positively unknown to Jesus or his apostles, and absolutely
unintelligible to the Christian Church for more than 200 years. The
most profound silence on the whole subject prevails during this period,
in vivid contrast with the language held on the subject by subsequent
writers. In the face of available, and even readily accessible
evidence, it is impossible to maintain that, before the age of Cyprian,
the Bishop of Carthage, who flourished about the middle of the third
century, there was any such distinction between clergy and laity as the
apostolic succession theory maintains to-day. The very names of the
clergy, such as deacon, presbyter, and bishop, are lay terms, borrowed
from civil not ecclesiastical life. A deacon is a domestic servant; a
presbyter, an elder; and a bishop an overseer or bailiff; and in
conformity with these names there was no office or function of the
Church so exclusively proper to the clergy as not to be capable of
performance also by the laity. And if this can be shown, what follows
but that the whole conception of "holy orders" is an absolute
innovation upon the original teaching of Jesus--a corruption fruitful
in disorders, or rather disasters, of the most deplorable character,
and at this very hour tending more than any other ascertainable cause
to divide man from man, and perpetuate the mischief of religious
dissension?
To begin with, then, preaching was indiscriminately permitted in the
apostolic times and subsequently. This may be gathered freely from the
Acts and Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter xiv.
Moreover, one of the most interesting monuments of the second century
is a homily delivered by a layman at Rome, a fragment of which had long
been known as the second epistle of Clement,[7] and the remainder of
which came to light in 1875 in two forms, a Greek MS. and a Syriac
translation. Moreover, the _Apostolical Constitutions_, which are
still later--going well into the second century--expressly contemplate
preaching by a layman. Dr. Hatch does not hesitate to say that the
earliest positive prohibitions of lay preaching were issued solely in
the interests of ecclesiastical order, not because there was any
inherent right in the priest to teach as opposed to the layman.
Next, in regard to baptism, there need be no hesitation in admitting
the capacity of the layman to baptise, because the Church of Rome
admits it to-day, nay, it admits that a Mohammedan, or even the heathen
Chinaman--if indeed he be such--could lawfully and validly perform that
function. This, I submit, is not to be construed as an act of
liberality on the Church's part. It is simply the result of the
impasse to which it would otherwise be brought by the grotesque
teaching that the Deity would condemn everlastingly the soul of an
unbaptised infant. This, according to Augustine, being the Christian
religion, naturally some loophole had to be fabricated, because priests
are not always at hand in moments of emergency, and consequently the
validity of lay baptism had necessarily to be recognised.
But there is one office which the Anglican, no less than the Roman
Church, would reserve to the priest, and that is the celebration of the
Eucharistic Supper.[8] It is abundantly clear to historians that the
root-source of the superstitious belief in orders is to be found in the
Eucharist and the theories which sprang up in the third century
concerning the elements. It cannot be doubted that previously to the
age of Cyprian, the communion was held to be what its name
designates--an holy assembly, a pledge of unity symbolised by the
common partaking of bread and wine after the example of Christ. Now,
it is clear from the Ignatian epistles, writings of the second century,
whoever may have been their author, that the Christians of those days
were accustomed to hold Eucharistic meetings other than those over
which a presbyter or elder presided. The practice is indeed reproved
by the writer, but in exceeding gentle tones. "Break one bread," says
the writer; "be careful to have only one Eucharist"; "let that be the
valid Eucharist which is celebrated by the bishop or by some one
commissioned by him".
It is surely positively inconceivable that Ignatius of Antioch, or
whoever the author of these letters is, can have held the sacramental
doctrine subsequently introduced and have used language of such mild
remonstrance to the Asiatic Christians he addresses. What would the
present occupant of the See of Antioch, of Lincoln, or of Rome say to a
number of Christians who assembled together to-day, took bread and
wine, and after repeating the Lord's prayer--for they did no more in
the early centuries--proceeded to partake of it? Their holy horror is
scarcely conceivable. And yet, these lay folk would be the true
Christians, not their sacerdotal denunciators. Let us repeat, there
was no office open to the priest which was not equally open to the
layman. Merely considerations of order and procedure restricted
ecclesiastical functions to a particular body or caste of men, and
consequently the theory of the essential distinction between priest and
layman is not a tenable one because it is none of Christ's making.[9]
It has been remarked that perverse conceptions of the Eucharist were
responsible for the equally corrupt teaching about orders. This is the
case. Previously to the third century, the Eucharist remained what it
had ever been, "the breaking of bread," the commemorative meal. Then
there came a change, and men began to read into it a sacrificial
meaning and to interpret it as a mystical repetition of the death of
Christ. From Cyprian this novel theology apparently passed to
Augustine and Ambrose in the fourth century, and thenceforth it became
dominant, though by no means universally so, until the eighth and ninth
centuries. The rise of Athanasianism in the fourth century, and the
abuse of the doctrine of incarnation by that bishop, reacted naturally
in the matter of the Eucharist. Christ, who was proclaimed to be the
solitary incarnation, the Deity hidden behind a veil of flesh,
naturally paved the way for the Eucharist as a sacrament wherein the
Deity is hid behind the veil of bread. The one incarnation is, as it
were, the complement of the other. Hence, a rigidly literal meaning
was given to Christ's utterances about eating his flesh and drinking
his blood, and Christians were taught to believe that by the
manducation of his bodily frame his holy spirit could be incorporated,
as though, for example, a man might hope to become a poet or a sculptor
by feeding upon the flesh or bones of a Shakespeare or a Michael
Angelo. Only mind can know and receive mind, and it is really
difficult to comprehend the grossness of soul which suggests to man the
idea that by feasting on the flesh and blood of his God he may hope to
become like a God.
It would be just as easy to show that in the matter of church
government and discipline everything was, in the early days, on a
thoroughly democratic, or representative basis. Power, as in the
England of to-day, is recognised to reside in the community, not
exclusively in the presbyters. St. Paul's first epistle to the
Corinthians recognises this in the matter of the removal of officers.
The epistles of Clement and Polycarp recognise the same thing. Bishops
are always elected by the people, and the net conclusion therefore is
that no such thing as a hierarchy of ordained deacons, priests and
bishops was known to Christ, to Paul, or the writers of the first two
and a half centuries. The teaching and belief of those days was
nonsacerdotal and non-sacramental, and nothing but a superstitious
accretion overlaying the original truth can account for the spectacle
which vast portions of the Christian world now present, as indeed do
vast portions of the Buddhist world. The fate reserved for both these
great prophets seems to be identical, the submergence of their pure and
elevated ethical teaching beneath an accumulated mass of traditionary
and ceremonial law; but here in the West, at all events, there appears
to be a well-grounded hope that it is not altogether impossible to get
back to Christ and his pure and wholesome teaching. Prophets have
arisen in this past century who have far more influence than many
priests, and there may be "some standing here" who will witness the
close of the reign of the priest and the restoration of the dominion of
the prophet.
The priests and scribes sat in the chair of Moses in the days of
Christ, and that chair is overturned. No one knows where to look for
it. Now we have another priest who sits in Peter's chair, a third who
holds Augustine's seat, and a fourth and a fifth who can trace back
their priestly ancestry in unbroken line to some era of superstition
and decay. The same thing goes on in India and Ceylon, and in Thibet
you have the Grand Lamas, to whom successively is united, by a sort of
hypostatic union, the holy Spirit himself. Always and everywhere the
shadow of the priest, the mystical, magical dispenser of the favours of
heaven! We look to the days when religion shall be purified of such
conceptions, when no one shall venture to stand between a man and his
conscience, or claim to possess powers unattainable by other men, or
pretend that the favour of heaven can be purchased by any other means
than those indicated by the prophet of old and no less by the
conscience of mankind--a life in accordance with righteousness, that
is, a life in conformity with the moral law and the example of that
supreme among the prophets of the race--Jesus who was called the Christ.
[1] _Christian Institutions_, p. 193.
[2] See _Times_, 5th February, 1898.
[3] Quoted in Spencer's _Ecclesiastical Institutions_.
[4] The appointment of Aaron by Moses, the leader of the Hebrew people,
is the exact counterpart of the institution of the Flamens by Numa.
[5] Martineau, _Studies of Christianity_, p. 38.
[6] And, therefore, we note the inconsistency of the sacramentarian
theory. It insists on moral goodness in the recipients and ministers
of sacraments. But if the rite works of itself, its mechanical
performance should be sufficient. But no; goodness is needed to secure
any benefit therefrom; and this, of course, is the explanation of the
alleged results of the sacraments. The moral goodness of the recipient
has already secured the blessing before any rite has been administered.
[7] So that what had been thought to be a papal letter turns out to be
a lay homily, showing that a layman could preach as well as a pope in
the second century of our era. This suggests the notorious fact that
unordained ministers are equally, if not more, successful in awakening
ethical and religious emotion than priests and bishops. Nay, women
like Catherine of Siena could hold Europe, its kings, and popes
spell-bound, when "mere men" were powerless. Has any one in this
generation read more powerful appeals to the religious sense than the
fragments of the sermons of Dinah Morris in _Adam Bede_, more thrilling
descriptions of an unavailing remorse than in the sermon on the text,
"Keep innocency, and take heed to the thing which is right, for this
shall bring a man peace at the last," which is preached by the agonised
minister in _The Silence of Dean Maitland_?
[8] The recent papal rescript on Anglican ordination makes it the test
of the comparative value of the rival "orders".
[9] Tertullian in the _De Corona_ distinctly declares that though "it
is only from the hands of our president we receive the Eucharist, if
there be an emergency, a layman may celebrate as well as a bishop". I
am indebted to the late Dr. Edwin Hatch for the historical evidence
above adduced as to the church practice prevalent in the earliest
centuries of Christianity. I would recommend interested readers to
consult his Bampton Lectures, delivered in 1882.
VIII.
PRAYER IN THE ETHICAL CHURCH.
The most important consequence of the new faith that religion is rooted
and grounded not in doctrine but in morality, is the belief that the
religious instinct grows with the growth and advancement of the moral
sense. The old conception that everything religious was revealed once
for all 1900 years ago, that it is impious to add to, or modify, the
heavenly communication then made, we find ourselves obliged to
repudiate in terms. And, hence, we have no creed or articles. We
never know when, owing to advancing knowledge, we may be compelled to
discard them. The desperate straits to which the Churches and their
professional apologists are reduced in their endeavours to reconcile
antiquarian statements in Scriptures and theologies with the
authenticated facts of mental and physical science, are not such as to
encourage us to attempt a definition of the Indefinable, or the
comprehension of the Infinite within the exiguous limits of human
thought and speech. We are too young by some centuries to so much as
think about the formulation of a doctrinal code.
The moral sense, it is abundantly obvious, is growing from day to day.
The community herein is the counterpart of the individual. And hence,
the moral and religious observances of to-day may become obsolete
to-morrow. "The altar-cloths of one generation become the door-mats of
the next." Hence, I am full of confidence that though everything may
be against us now, one thing is on our side--that is, the future. We
saw an illustration of this truth in the history of the relations
between the priest and the prophet; we shall witness a further instance
of its workings in the history of prayer.
What is the attitude of a human and ethical religion towards that
characteristic manifestation of piety which we call prayer? Doubtless
its views will be found to diverge notably from those which were
prevalent in other days when scientific knowledge was imperfect, and
conceptions of man and the Infinite even more inadequate than they
admittedly are at present. The origin of prayer is, like the origin of
all things terrestrial, extremely humble. When primitive man found
himself face to face with the more terrible of the natural
phenomena--terrors and portents which he was wholly unable to
explain--his only resource was to ascribe their appearance to the
agency of beings like himself, though, of course, immeasurably more
powerful. These phenomena being often attended by the destruction of
the results of laborious industry, and even of human life itself, it
became a matter of urgency to devise means whereby the anger of the
preternatural powers might be appeased, and a cessation of the
successive scourges effected. It was then that man began to offer up
entreaty, supplication, petition and prayer to the dread divinities in
whose power it was to behave so malevolently towards man and his
possessions.
That this account of the matter is not fanciful, the reports of
travellers and missionaries in savage lands make certain; and as the
inhabitants thereof now are, we certainly once were in our ancestors
who dwelt in these northern islands, in the days after the cessation of
the glacial periods. There is not one shred of scientific evidence
available which would help us to the comforting belief that, however it
may be with the Matabele or the Tonga Islanders, the ancestors of
Christian England were anything different. That, then, which is called
the instinct or habit of prayer, had its origin in the ignorance and
superstition of an age which knew nothing of the inviolable reign of
law throughout the infinities of the Divine creation, in an age whose
religious conceptions were as gross as their scientific ideas were
absurd.
Now, the unscientific and unphilosophical taint, which marked the
earliest heavenward cries of terrified man, has clung to the petitions
which he offers up at this hour for material favours and blessings. At
the close of a prolonged drought, the Archbishops of Canterbury and
York compose a prayer for rain, and as a drought cannot last for ever,
rain does eventually come, and the same dignitaries then order a prayer
to be offered up in thanksgiving. But does any one really suppose that
the natural order of the phenomena has been altered at the request of
the clergy by an Almighty mind? It were preposterous, grotesque and
irreverent, in the highest degree to think so. And the proof that it
is preposterous is seen in the fact that prayers are no longer offered
up for the advent or cessation of the effects of phenomena whose causes
have been scientifically determined. Thus, in mediaeval days, man
placed bells high in the steeples of his churches to deafen the demons
who caused the storms of thunder and lightning which destroyed his
property. At this day one may read the inscriptions on the bells which
testify to the belief of the time. But as soon as the lightning rod
was discovered by Franklin, and its absolute ability to conduct the
electric current to the soil, bells were no longer requisitioned as
antidotes to storms, and prayers and litanies ceased to be sung to
petition the Divine clemency against the effects of the weather. In
the same way an outbreak of cholera or diphtheria once sent people in
their thousands to the churches and chapels; now it sends them to the
drains, and while prayers proved but a poor prophylactic against
epidemics, the most pious credulity now places unbounded faith in a
sanitary system approved by a first-class surveyor. Can there be any
possible doubt that, when the laws of meteorology are as well known as
those which govern the tides or the thunderbolts, the archbishops will
cease to order any more prayers for the purpose of controlling the
elements?
Then, there is another aspect of petitionary prayer which demands a
passing notice. It actually represents the Supreme Being as an
individual who will interfere with what are manifestly natural laws to
suit the convenience or even the whim of the votary; and worse than
that, that the course of events will be so ordered as to meet the
requirements of the individual supplicant, to the exclusion of the
needs, the convenience or circumstances, of numberless other human
beings who may be seriously incommoded, possibly even wronged, if the
first votary's supplications are granted. It is of little avail to
have recourse to the mechanical theory that infinite power is capable
of so adjusting matters as to satisfy everybody. These are words and
phrases more sonorous than satisfactory. When, for instance, war
breaks out between two Christian powers, the Almighty is at once
petitioned to crown both combatants with victory, and that done,
victory is always assumed by the conqueror to mean that the Divine
blessing has been with him to the exclusion of his adversary. But the
remarkable fact to the impartial observer uniformly is, that victory
always rests with those who have made the best preparations, conducted
the campaign in the most skilful manner, and fought with the greatest
determination, or as Napoleon curtly put it, that as far as he could
see, Providence was always on the side of the strongest battalions.
I recently heard read a lady's letter in which she poured forth her
most fervent gratitude to heaven because her husband had been elected
to a certain influential position over the heads of seventy
competitors. Unless sixty-nine other equally desirable posts were
magically created by Divine power, it seems difficult to understand, on
the supposition that the election was the arbitrary act of God, how the
claims of all were satisfied in this individual instance. The truth is
that the prayer of petition ought instantly to cease as infantine,
irrational, and irreverent. The serious man cannot bring himself to
offer up vocal prayers for temporary or spiritual benefits, which are
manifestly attainable by the capacity of man's natural powers, or which
cannot be heard without a selfish indifference to the equal rights and
claims of others. And, therefore, no petitionary prayers find a place
in the service of the ethical Church. The God whom we recognise is the
"Mind who meditates in beauty and speaks only in law"; the "beneficent
Unity," the "beautiful Necessity"; the law which is not intelligent,
but Intelligence. It were as impious to pray for an infraction of the
natural laws of Divine ordaining as it were foolish to wish that the
law of gravitation were suspended to gratify a passing need or whim.
In the Talmud there is a prophetic intimation of the religion which
asks no favours, but prays by living the moral life. It foretells the
day when prayer shall cease in the Jewish Church, and thanksgiving only
be henceforth heard. This exactly expresses what we feel should be the
attitude of the reverent man in the silence of the Great Presence--his
life an attestation of his recognition of what he owes to the Being
whose nature he shares.
But, it will doubtless be urged, prayers are answered even when offered
for purely temporary blessings, or at any rate, numberless men and
women contend that they have been so answered in their own experience.
Members of the more emotional forms of Nonconformity are especially
emphatic in their testimony to the efficacy of prayer, though I doubt
not that their more educated ministers would hesitate to commit
themselves to the belief in its more extreme forms. Mr. Armstrong
certainly disavows it for the Unitarian body, a Church always to be
held in reverence as having done more to rationalise religion in this
country and America than any other agency we could indicate. But what
are we to say to such testimonies? This, that the prayers have been
answered by the supplicants themselves, when even, indeed, we have not
to deal with a matter of mere coincidence. But, I would expressly
guard against the inference being drawn, that I question the Divine
Personality. I lay down no dogmatic statements as to the efficacy of
vocal prayers. What I do say is, that all I know of God as revealed in
nature and law forbids me to entertain the notion that the order he has
seen fit to establish is to be capriciously altered at the request of
any of his creatures. It is not irreverence, but a sense of reverence
which prohibits me from believing that the Being whose presence and
power are revealed in the least as in the greatest of the phenomena of
nature, is open to arbitrarily interfere with the established course of
things because an individual or a score of individuals wish it.