Produced by Al Haines.
CHURCH AND
NATION
THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES FOR 1914-15
DELIVERED AT THE GENERAL THEOLOGICAL
SEMINARY, NEW YORK
BY
WILLIAM TEMPLE
HON. CHAPLAIN TO H.M. THE KING
_Rector of St. James's, Piccadilly,
Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury
Formerly Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, and
Headmaster of Repton_
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1915
_COPYRIGHT_
TO
MY MOTHER
WHO FELL ASLEEP AS GOOD FRIDAY DAWNED
APRIL 2, 1915
*PREFACE*
When I received and accepted the invitation to deliver the Paddock
Lectures for the season 1914-1915, no one imagined that these years were
destined to have the historical significance which they must now possess
for all time. I was myself one of those who had allowed concern for
social reform, and internal problems generally, to occupy my mind almost
to the exclusion of foreign questions. I was prepared to stake a good
deal upon what seemed to me the improbability of any outbreak of
European war. For all who took this view the events of recent months
have involved perhaps a greater re-shaping of fundamental notions than
was required by people who had thought probable such a catastrophe as
that in which we are now involved. I found it impossible to concentrate
my mind upon any subject wholly unconnected with the war, while at the
same time it would have been in the last degree unsuitable that in my
lectures to American Theological Students I should deliver myself of
such views as I had formed concerning the rights and wrongs of the war
itself, or the questions at stake in it.
These lectures, therefore, represent an attempt to think out afresh the
underlying problems which for a Christian are fundamental in regard not
only to this war but to war in general--the place of Nationality in the
scheme of Divine Providence and the duty of the Church in regard to the
growth of nations.
But in a preface it may be permissible to say what would be
inappropriate in the Lectures themselves, and first I would take this
opportunity of reiterating certain convictions which have formed the
basis of a series of pamphlets issued under the auspices of a Committee
drawn from various Christian bodies and political parties, of which I
have had the honour to be Editor:
1. That Great Britain was in August morally bound to declare war and is
no less bound to carry the war to a decisive issue;
2. That the war is none the less an outcome and a revelation of the
un-Christian principles which have dominated the life of Western
Christendom and of which both the Church and the nations have need to
repent;
3. That followers of Christ, as members of the Church, are linked to one
another in a fellowship which transcends all divisions of nationality or
race;
4. That the Christian duties of love and forgiveness are as binding in
time of war as in time of peace;
5. That Christians are bound to recognise the insufficiency of mere
compulsion for overcoming evil, and to place supreme reliance upon
spiritual forces and in particular upon the power and method of the
Cross;
6. That only in proportion as Christian principles dictate the terms of
settlement will a real and lasting peace be secured;
7. That it is the duty of the Church to make an altogether new effort to
realise and apply to all the relations of life its own positive ideal of
brotherhood and fellowship;
8. That with God all things are possible.
These propositions were very carefully drafted by the Committee referred
to above and entirely represent my own beliefs; but there is something
more which I would add. The new Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and
Turkey is no accident; it is the combination of just those three Powers
which openly and avowedly believe in oppression--that is, in the
imposition by force of the standards accepted by one race upon people of
another race. All nations have at one time or another practised
oppression; certainly Great Britain is not free from the charge, and the
history of Russia has many dark pages in this respect. But we can all
claim that when we have been guilty of oppression it has been under the
influence of fear, whether of revolution, anarchism, or some other force
thought to be disruptive of the State. With our enemies this is not so.
We all know about Turkey; it is the essentially Mohammedan power, and
Mohammedanism is the religion of oppression; it believes in imposing its
faith by means of the sword. The Austrian Empire consists of three
divisions in each of which one race is imposing its manner of life upon
another. In Austria-proper the Germans oppress the Czechs; in Galicia
the Poles have, in some degree at least, oppressed the Ruthenes; in
Hungary the Magyars have systematically and avowedly oppressed the
Roumanians in the east, and the Croats in the south and west. Germany
has shown her political faith by her conduct in Alsace-Lorraine, and
still more in Poland. Nothing has yet appeared so illuminating with
regard to what is at stake in this war, as Prince Buelow's chapter on
Poland in his book, _Imperial Germany_; he describes what seems to us
the most grinding oppression with obvious self-contentment and without a
question of its righteousness; and there have been abundant signs that,
at least, many people in Germany are willing to impose German Kultur by
the sword as Mohammedans impose belief in their prophet.
If this is true, and if the analysis in my lectures of the Christian
function of the State and of the principles of the Kingdom of God is
sound, then it becomes clear that this war is being fought to determine
whether in the next period the Christian or the directly anti-Christian
method shall have an increase of influence. The three most democratic
of the great Western Powers--Great Britain, France, and Italy--in
conjunction with Russia, which is after all profoundly democratic in its
local life though imperially it is a military autocracy, are linked
together in a natural union on behalf of freedom as they understand it,
against an idea embodied and embattled which is in exact opposition to
all they live for. It was therefore no surprise to find that all the
citizens of the United States with whom I came in contact were quite
definitely upon the side of the Allies in sympathy. To advocate war in
the name of Christ is to adopt a position which looks self-contradictory
and which certainly involves immense responsibility, and yet if our
people can maintain the attitude of mind in which they entered on the
war and can secure at the end a settlement harmonious with that frame of
mind, I believe they will have served the Kingdom of God through
fighting, better than it was possible to do at this moment in human
history by any other means.
W.T.
Lecture II. in this series is almost identical with the pamphlet _Our
Need of a Catholic Church_--No. 19 of _Papers for War Time_. In
Lectures I. and III. I am under great obligation to Professor A. G.
Hogg, though my position is not at all identical with his.
*CONTENTS*
LECTURE I
THE KINGDOM OF FREEDOM
LECTURE II
CHURCH AND STATE
LECTURE III
JUSTICE AND LIBERTY IN THE STATE
LECTURE IV
HOLINESS AND CATHOLICITY IN THE CHURCH
LECTURE V
THE CITIZENSHIP OF HEAVEN
LECTURE VI
GOD IN HISTORY
APPENDIX I
ON THE APOCALYPTIC CONSCIOUSNESS
APPENDIX II
ON MORAL AND SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY
APPENDIX III
ON JUSTICE AND EDUCATION
APPENDIX IV
ON ORDERS AND CATHOLICITY
APPENDIX V
ON PROVIDENCE IN HISTORY
*CHURCH AND NATION*
*LECTURE I*
THE KINGDOM OF FREEDOM
"And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was
led by the Spirit in the wilderness during forty days, being tempted of
the Devil."--S. Luke iv. 1.
Our Lord, in accepting for Himself the title of the Messiah, or the
Christ, claimed that it was His function to inaugurate upon earth the
Kingdom of God. Whatever else might at that time be believed about the
Messiah, this at least was universally held, that the Messiah, when He
came, would inaugurate upon earth the Kingdom of God. That is the task
of the Lord's ministry; that is the task to which we, as His followers,
are pledged; and at this time when the civilisation, which for nearly
two thousand years has been under the Christian influence, has
culminated in as great a catastrophe as has ever beset any civilisation,
Christian or Pagan, it is well for us to go back and ask, What are the
fundamental principles of the Kingdom which Christ founded, what the
method by which He founded it, and what are the principles and methods
which He rejected?
There were various anticipations of the way in which the promised Christ
would do His work; but broadly speaking there were two main types of
expectation. There were those who supposed that the Messiah when He
came, would rule in the manner of an earthly ruler, establishing
righteousness by the ordinary methods of law and political authority,
and this expectation undoubtedly derived some colour from the way in
which Isaiah had envisaged the coming Christ:[#]
[#] Isaiah ix, 6, 7.
"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the
government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be
called Wonderful-Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace
there shall be no end _upon the throne of David_, and upon his
kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with judgment and
with righteousness from henceforth, even for ever."
It is a king ruling upon the throne of David that is suggested; and
while it is only the most foolish literalism which will say that the
Prophet himself was committed to such a view, it was natural enough for
those who read his writings to conceive of the Messiah as acting after
that fashion.
The people went into captivity; and when they returned, it was not to
any realised Kingdom of God upon earth, but rather to difficulties
greater than had ever confronted them before, until at last Antiochus
Epiphanes initiated the great persecution whose aim was to stamp out
altogether the worship of Jehovah, setting up as he did in the very
Temple Court at Jerusalem the altar of Zeus, on which swine were
sacrificed--"the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not."
Out of the fiery furnace of that persecution comes the glowing prophecy
of Daniel. What is the answer which he conceives God as giving to the
blasphemer Antiochus? It is nothing less than the divine judgment and
the mission of the divine Deliverer:[#]
[#] Daniel vii, 9, 10, 13, 14.
"I beheld till thrones were placed and one that was ancient of
days did sit: his raiment was white as snow, and the hair of his
head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, and the wheels
thereof burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from
before him; thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten
thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the judgment was
set, and the books were opened.... I saw in the night visions,
and, behold, there came with the clouds of heaven one like unto
a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they
brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion,
and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and
languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting
dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which
shall not be destroyed."
This conception of the Messiah, coming in the clouds of Heaven,
establishing the Kingdom of God by so manifest an exhibition of the
divine authority with which He is endowed, that all doubt and hesitation
are quite impossible, is that which took the greatest hold upon the
religious imagination of Israel, and particularly of that great body of
people, the heirs of the tradition of the Maccabees, inheritors of the
heroism which had stood out against the persecution, whom we know as the
sect of the Pharisees--men who lived in the strength of a fellowship
that had behind it the greatest religious tradition in all the world,
but who, because they trusted more to their tradition than to the God
who inspired it, were unable to recognise the still further call of God
when it came to them. The literature of the period between the Old and
the New Testament shows how wide and deep was the influence of Daniel's
vision upon their Messianic hopes.
At His baptism, the Lord is called to begin His Messianic work; the
voice which He heard from Heaven spoke words which were by all
interpreters of the time believed to refer to the Messiah:--"Thou art my
beloved son; in thee I am well pleased." The Messiah will be endowed
with Divine authority and power. How shall He use it? And immediately
the Lord goes into the wilderness to face the temptations that arose
from precisely the conviction that His Messianic work is even now to
begin.
The temptation has two sides to it--an inward and an outward. As
regards Himself, what does the temptation mean? Let us remind ourselves
that there was apparently no one with Him in this crisis; the story, as
we have it, must come from Himself. It is His own account (of course in
parable form, like so much else in His teaching) of the struggle of
those early days. What is meant by the parable concerning the turning
of stones into bread? Surely for Himself it is the temptation to use
the power, with which us the Christ of Cod He is endowed, for the
satisfaction of His own needs, and that in such a way as will do no kind
of harm to anybody else. No one will be the worse for his satisfying
His hunger in that way. It is a self-concern from which nobody can
suffer; it is perfectly innocent and perfectly rational. But no! It is
not for any selfish purpose, however harmless, that the power of God is
given; selfishness in its most innocent form is set aside.
How shall He set about His work? Shall He fulfil that expectation which
Isaiah's vision had fostered? He looks out on the kingdoms of the earth
and the glory of them, and He knows that they can be His, if He will
fall down and worship the Prince of the power of this world. Shall He
use worldly methods to convert the world to God? No; worldliness in its
most attractive form is set aside.
Or shall He fulfil the expectation encouraged by the vision of the Son
of Man in Daniel, appearing with the clouds of Heaven, descending upon
Jerusalem up-borne by angels, giving that sign from Heaven which the
Pharisees, who particularly adopted this view of the Messiah, were
afterwards going to demand so frequently? From His answer we know that
this is a temptation not only to give them a sign, but to secure it for
Himself, for the answer is "Thou shalt not tempt,"--that is, Thou shalt
not put to the proof--"the Lord thy God." The promise of God is to be
trusted, not tested. The test comes as we obey the command and in that
sense every act of faith is an experiment, but there must be no test
cases to see whether God fulfils His promise. Infidelity in its most
insidious form is set aside.
But there is an outward aspect also to the temptations. Shall He use
His power to satisfy the bodily needs of men? Shall He exert a power
parallel with that of political rulers, which will coerce their conduct
without first winning their free allegiance? Shall He give such proof
of divine authority that any doubt, intellectual or otherwise, becomes
impossible? No; not any of these. And as He leaves the temptation
vanquished, what He has set aside is precisely every method of
controlling men's action without winning their hearts and wills. He has
rejected coercion; He has decided to appeal to Freedom.
What is left? At first, only the commission to proclaim the Kingdom;
and He comes proclaiming it. All through the early part of the ministry
He moves from place to place preaching or proclaiming the Kingdom of
God. He does not at present announce that He is King of that Kingdom; it
is the Kingdom itself on which all attention is concentrated. He has
indeed the power to do works of mercy, and when with that power He
stands in the face of human need, He must for very love exert the power
and satisfy the need; so people come crowding around Him, attracted by
His wonder-working. But that is not what He desires. The disciples are
excited about it; but He has gone out a long while before dawn, and is
alone in prayer; and when St. Peter finds Him, and says "All men are
seeking Thee," He does not say, "Then let us go to them," but, on the
contrary, "Let us go into the villages that I may preach--that I may
make my proclamation--there also."[#] As the deadness, the
indifference, and hostility of the people gradually shows itself to be
invincible, He gathers about Him those whose hearts have been touched,
and from among them chooses twelve, "that they may be with Him."[#]
They are to live in His company, catching His Spirit, learning to
understand Him. With them He goes on two long journeys--north-west to
Tyre and Sidon, and then north-east, to Caesarea Philippi; through all
those journeys they are alone with their Master, moving through country
outside the boundaries of the Jewish religion, and therefore free from
controversy.
[#] S. Mark i, 35-38.
[#] S. MArk iii, 14.
At Caesarea Philippi He feels that the time is ripe, and asks them, "Who
do men say that I am?" They mention the various conjectures ... Elijah;
John the Baptist; one of the Prophets. "Who say ye that I am?" And St.
Peter with a leap of inspired insight answers: "Thou art the
Messiah."[#]
[#] S. Mark viii, 27-30.
The Lord recognises that this is the revelation of God to faith:
"Blessed art thou, Simon, Son of Jonah; flesh and blood hath not
revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven."[#]
Immediately that He has been thus spontaneously recognised, He begins to
say what He had never said before: "The Son of Man must suffer." The
Son of Man is the title of the Messiah in glory, as He was conceived in
Daniel's vision and the Apocalyptic writings which drew their
inspiration from it. "The Son of Man must suffer;" that is the great
Messianic act; that is the way in which the Kingdom of God shall be
founded. But it was not what St. Peter meant. "Peter took Him, and
began to rebuke Him ... Be it far from Thee, Lord; this shall not be
unto Thee." And our Lord recognises the voice of the tempter in the
wilderness, who bade Him take thought for self.... "Get thee behind me,
_Satan_, for thou thinkest not God's thoughts, but men's thoughts."[#]
[#] S. Matthew xvi, 17.
[#] S. Matthew xvi, 22, 23.
Just as, when once He was spontaneously recognised, He began to set
forth the new conception of the Messiahship, "The Son of Man must
suffer;" so too He immediately starts on that last journey to Jerusalem
which culminates with the Cross. Arrived at Jerusalem, He arranges the
triumphal entry. He carefully fulfils Zechariah's prophecy--thus
claiming the Messiahship, and challenging the religious rulers. But the
prophecy which He thus selects for deliberate fulfilment is one which
represents the Messiah as a civil, not a military authority (for this is
the meaning of the ass as distinguished from the horse), and as one who
shall speak Peace to the nations.[#] It is the conception of the
Messiah which in all the Old Testament has least suggestion of coercion
and is therefore the nearest to His own.
[#] Zechariah ix, 9, 10.
But the primary purpose of the triumphal entry is no doubt to make His
claim and issue His challenge. On the journey and after the entry
itself He declares with increasing emphasis that the Kingdom of God is
at hand; those who stood there should see it come with power; and as He
stands before Caiaphas, He answers the question "Art Thou the Christ?
with the words, I am, and from this time[#] there shall be the Son of
Man seated on the right hand of power." Daniel's prophecy is here and
now fulfilled. In the moment that love completes its sacrifice in
death, the glory of God is fully made known and the power of His Kingdom
is come; this is the Lord's own Apocalypse.[#]
[#] Different words in St. Matthew and St. Luke, but agreeing in sense,
which sense the authorised version spoils.
[#] See Appendix I.: _The Apocalyptic Consciousness_.
So He had spoken on that last journey. "Ye know that they which are
accounted to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great
ones exercise authority over them. But it is not so among you; but
whosoever would become great among you shall be your minister, and
whosoever shall be first among you shall be servant of all, for verily
the Son of Man came"--(again the title of the Messiah in Glory)--"not to
be ministered unto, but to minister; and to give His life a ransom for
many."[#]
[#] S. Mark x, 42-45.
So, too, St. John records His saying that in precisely this way he would
win His royalty--"I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men
unto me."[#] The Cross was foreseen by the Lord to be what, as we look
back, we know that it has been--the throne of His glory and His power;
and the capacity to realise it as such is for St. Paul the touchstone of
character, the test of election--"We preach a Messiah on a Cross--to
Jews a scandal and to Gentiles an absurdity, but to the very people who
are called, whether Jews or Greeks, a Messiah who is God's power and
God's wisdom."[#]
[#] S. John xii, 32.
[#] 1 Cor. i, 23, 24.
Here then is the mode of God's power, and we know that it can be no
other; for if God is truly King, He must be King of our hearts and
wills, and not only of our conduct. There is only one way to win men's
hearts and wills, that is by showing love; and there is only one way to
show love, and that is by sacrifice, by doing or suffering what, apart
from our love, we should not choose to do or suffer. Sacrifice is the
Divine activity; Calvary is the mode of the Divine omnipotence. It is
the actual Divine method and the ideal human method.
As we come to consider how far it has become also the actual human
method, we are confronted at the outset by the sheer impossibility of
our applying this method, just because we have not in ourselves the
necessary love.
Our perfection, we are told, is to consist in just that quality which
shows the Father's perfection, namely, that He is kind to the unthankful
and evil, and makes His sun to rise on the evil and good and sends His
rain on the just and on the unjust; and we are to be perfect in the way
that He is perfect.[#]
[#] S. Matthew v, 43-48.
But until we reach that perfection we cannot imitate His action; for a
man's act is not what He intends; nor is it the mere motion of his body;
but it is the whole train of circumstances that he initiates. Christ in
His perfect purity may stand before the woman taken in her sin and say,
"Neither do I condemn thee," because there is no possibility that she
will interpret His mercy as condonation of the sin; but if we said it,
people would so interpret it, and usually quite rightly so.
Our problem then is so to guide our conduct that we come as near as we
are capable of coming to the divine ideal that is set forth in Christ,
and that we come perpetually closer and closer to it.
The Lord in His temptation rejected all use of force and substituted for
it the appeal of love expressed in sacrifice, so far as the actual and
positive building of His Kingdom is concerned. For us there must always
be some use of the lower method, because we are incapable of applying
the highest. If any man, when he is confronted with evil which he can
prevent by the exercise of force, refrains from doing it, we must
immediately put to him the question, "But did you so suffer under that
act of evil that there is any hope of your suffering proving to be the
redemption of the evil-doer? If so, well and good; but, if not, then
you are idle and cowardly, not Christian." No one who is not a
Christian in spirit can perform the Christian act; and the Sermon on the
Mount is not a code of rules to be mechanically followed; it is the
description of the life which any man will spontaneously lead when once
the Spirit of Christ has taken complete possession of his heart.
And yet there is a perfectly legitimate use of force also, and a use
which our Lord Himself makes of it. We may use force in various
circumstances in spite of the fact that for the positive work of the
building His Kingdom the Lord rejected it. It is legitimate, in the
first place, when it is applied to immature characters--characters which
are, as all our characters are in early childhood, a chaos of impulses
and instincts, as yet unregulated by any governing principle. Here it
may be necessary simply to restrain the activity of one set of impulses
without converting the heart or will of the person to whom that
restraint is applied, merely in order to give the other side of nature
its chance of development. So in education it is legitimate to employ
force in this restraining way for the sake of the development which is
made possible thereby in the other parts of nature.
But our Lord's example also shows us that the use of force is
permissible in dealing with those who are so case-hardened that the
appeal of love can never reach them until their present state of mind is
broken up. It is sometimes said that the Lord never made use of physical
force; but whether or not that is true[#]--the question is unimportant,
because for all moral purposes there is no difference whatever between
physical and non-physical force. The appeal to force always means the
appeal to pain or inconvenience, for these are the only things that
force can inflict upon one. Physical force may break a man's bones; but
one may enforce a certain kind of conduct by the threat, for example, of
social ostracism, which might break his heart; and there is no
difference whatever between the two, except that the second is a more
refined form of cruelty. Now in our Lord's denunciation of the
Pharisees, in those words which are thrown, burning and smashing, into
the self-complacent contentment of those upholders of tradition, there
is every moral quality of force and violence. Their aim is to batter
down a state of mind, the state of mind which cannot receive the appeal
of love, as it shows when it stands beneath the very Cross and only
jeers. But this use of force is only negative and preparatory; it is
the effort of love to make ready for the rebuilding which only love's
own method can really accomplish. Only with characters quite immature
and liable to develop in many different directions, can force be used,
except in this wholly preparatory way; and even there its work is
preparatory, for at that stage everything that is done is still
preparatory.
[#] _e.g._, whether or not He employed the scourge of small cords to
drive men from the Temple Courts as He certainly did the animals; the
Greek words suggest that He did not.
It is sometimes said that society rests upon force. Of course it does
not, and it could not, because force is a dead thing which can only
operate as human wills direct it; and, however much force there may be
in the maintenance of society, that force itself must be controlled by
the consent of human wills. It is true, however, that society, as we
know it, rests simultaneously upon two contradictory principles, upon
the principle of antagonism and the principle of fellowship. So far as
it is represented by the police force, it rests upon antagonism. Men
are selfish; in their selfishness they are brought into conflict with
one another. In order that anyone may be able to enjoy, however
selfishly, any property or comfort in life, it is necessary to restrain
to some degree the selfishness of all the rest; and to secure that
restraint placed upon others, a man submits to a similar restraint upon
himself. And so we arrive at that contract of which Plato speaks: "the
contract neither to commit nor to suffer injury."[#] But, at the same
time, as Plato immediately afterwards points out, society would arise
quite equally if men were wholly altruistic, because men's natures are
different, and they need one another for support, for protection, and
for the very instinct of fellowship.[#] Now those principles are both
present in all actual societies; and progress has consisted of the
steady development of the principle of co-operation and fellowship, at
the expense of the principle of competition and antagonism.
[#] [Greek: mete adikein mete adikisthai.] _Republic_ ii. 359*a*.
[#] The whole Ideal State. _Republic_ ii, 369*b* to vii end.
That has been what we have meant in the last resort by political
progress; but the conclusion inevitably follows that society makes
progress precisely in that degree in which it realises more and more a
relationship of love between its various members, and becomes the
Kingdom which Christ came on earth to found. Thus, at the very outset of
our enquiry we find that the principles of secular progress and of the
Divine revelation in Christ are identical.
I shall venture in a subsequent lecture to trace out the way in which,
as I think, further progress in accordance with this principle will lead
us.
But let me close this lecture by recalling our thoughts to that ideal
method for men, which is the actual method of God, setting this in the
words of a fable which I take from the masterpiece of the most Russian
of the Russian novelists--Dostoievsky--merely throwing it into my own
language.
In the days of the Inquisition, this fable runs, our Lord returned to
earth, and visited a city where it was at work. As He moved about, men
forgot their cares and sorrows. He healed the sick folk as of old, and
meeting with a funeral procession where a mother was mourning the loss
of her only son, He stopped the procession, and restored the dead boy to
life.
That was in the Cathedral Square, and at that moment there came out from
the Cathedral doors the Grand Inquisitor, an old man over ninety years
of age, clad now, not in the Cardinal's robe in which only the day
before he had condemned a score of heretics to the stake, but in a
simple cassock, with only two guards in attendance. Seeing what was
done he turned to the guards and said, "Arrest Him." They moved forward
to obey; and he sent the Prisoner to a cell in the dungeon.
That night the Grand Inquisitor visited his Prisoner, and to all that he
said the Prisoner made no reply. "I know why Thou art come," said the
Inquisitor; "Thou art come to spoil our work, to repeat Thy great
mistake in the wilderness, and to give men again Thy fatal gift of
freedom. What did the great wise spirit offer Thee there? Just the
three things by which men may be controlled--bread and authority and
mystery. He bade Thee take bread as the instrument of Thy work; men
will follow one who gives them bread. But Thou wouldest not; men were
to follow Thee out of love and devotion or not at all. We have had to
correct Thy work, or there would be few to follow Thee. He bade Thee
assume authority; men will obey one who gives commands, and punishes the
disobedient. But Thou wouldest not; men were to obey out of love and
devotion or not at all. We have had to correct Thy work, or there would
be few to obey Thee. He bade Thee show some marvel that men might be
persuaded and believe. But Thou wouldest not; men were to believe from
perception of Thy grace and truth or not at all. We have had to correct
Thy work and hedge Thee about with mystery, or there would be few to
believe. And which of us has served mankind the better? Thy appeal was
to the few strong souls. We have cared for the weak. Many who would be
disorderly and miserable have been made orderly and happy. And now Thou
art come to spoil our work and repeat Thy great mistake in the
wilderness by giving to men again Thy fatal gift of freedom, through
trust in the power of love. But it shall not be; for to-morrow I shall
burn Thee."
The Grand Inquisitor ceased; and still the Prisoner made no reply; but
He rose from where He sat, and crossed the cell, and kissed the old man
on his bloodless lips. Then the Inquisitor too, rose, and opened the
door; "Go," he said. The Prisoner passed out into the night and was not
seen again.
And the old man? That kiss burns in his heart. But he has not altered
his opinion or his practice.
*LECTURE II*
*CHURCH AND STATE*
"He put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head
over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fulness of him
that, all in all, is being fulfilled."--Ephesians i, 22, 23.
If one of the great saints of the early Church had been told that in the
year 1915 the world would still be waiting for the final consummation,
and had tried to conceive the life of men and nations as it would be
after that long period of Christian influence, what would his conception
have been? Surely he would have expected that all nations would be
linked together in the Holy Communion, the Fellowship of Saints. Roman,
Spaniard, African, Syrian, those strange Germans, and the barbarous
Britons who lived in the remotest corner of the earth, might have
maintained their own varieties of culture, but each would find his joy
and pride in offering his contribution to the life of the whole family
of nations. Rooted in knowledge of the love of God, their life would
grow luxuriantly and bear fruit in love of one another and service of
the common cause. Inspiring each and knitting all together, the Holy
Catholic Church, fulfilling itself in service of the world, would gather
up all this exuberance of life and love into itself, and present it to
the God and Father of mankind in unceasing adoration.
But the world in 1915 is not in the least like that. The old man of our
selfish nature, selfish himself and therefore supposing that others must
be selfish too, so that he relies upon the methods of cajolery and
coercion, has indeed received the kiss of Christ; and while that kiss
burns in his heart, so that sometimes he is roused to an aspiration
after an order of things altogether different, his opinions and his
conduct remain fundamentally unchanged. And the contrast between what
is and what might have been is due in part, at least, to the failure of
the Church to be true to its own commission. It is also because of this
that no practical man dreams of turning to the Church to find the way
out from the intolerable situation into which the nations have drifted.
An eminent politician is reported to have defined the Church on a recent
occasion in the following terms: "The Church is, I suppose, a voluntary
organisation for the maintenance of public worship in the interest of
those who desire to join in it." And it is to be feared that many
people regard it in some such way as that. But of course the Church is
nothing of the kind; the Church is the Body of Christ.
It is not a "voluntary organisation" any more than my body is a
voluntary organisation either of limbs or of cells. No one could
"voluntarily" join the Church, if by that were meant that the act
originated in his own will. "No man can say Jesus is Lord, but in the
Holy Spirit."[#] A man cannot make himself a Christian. The Apostles
were made Christian by Christ Himself--"Ye did not choose Me, but I
chose you"[#]; others were made Christian by the Apostles, or (as they
always said) by Christ working in and through them; and so successive
generations have been made Christian by the Spirit of Christ operative
in the fellowship of His disciples--that is to say, in the Church. This
is the aspect of truth expressed and preserved in the practice of infant
baptism. We are Christians, if at all, not through any act initiated by
our own will, but through our being received into the Christian
fellowship and subjected to its influence. Just as we are born members
of our family, so by our reception into the fellowship of the disciples
we are "made members of Christ." In the one case as in the other, we
may repudiate our membership or we may disgrace it; we can never abolish
it. Let me hasten in parenthesis to add, that this is only one aspect
of the truth, and the protest of those who object to infant baptism will
be a valuable force in the Church, until we are finally secure against
the temptation to regard a sacrament as a piece of magic. For of course
it is true that, while no man can make himself a Christian by his own
will, no man can be made a Christian against or without his will. It is
precisely his will that the Spirit must lay hold of and convert, and the
will can refuse conversion.
[#] 1 Cor. xii, 3
[#] S. John xv, 16.
The Church, then, is not a "voluntary organisation," but the creation of
God in Christ. In fact it is the one immediate result of our Lord's
earthly ministry. When His physical presence was withdrawn, there
remained in the world, as fruit of His sojourn here, no volume of
writings, no elaborated organisation with codified aims and methods, but
a group of people who were united to one another because His Spirit
lived and worked in each. And the great marvel lay in this: whereas all
men realise that fellowship is better than rivalry, and yet fail to pass
from one to the other because they are radically selfish both
individually and corporately, in Christ men found themselves to be a
real community in spite of their as yet unpurged selfishness. By the
invasion of the Divine Life in Christ, the ideal itself, the life of
fellowship, is given, and is made into the means of destroying just
those qualities which had hitherto prevented its own realisation. The
ecclesiastical organisations of to-day are not fellowships of this sort,
but if the members of the Church lose their hold on this central
principle of fellowship, as they have largely done, we are thrown back
upon the futile effort to build up fellowship on the foundation of
unredeemed selfishness.
As it is not true to say that the Church is a "voluntary" organisation,
so also it is not true to say that it exists "for the maintenance of
public worship," at least in the sense that most Englishmen would give
to the words. Certainly the Church, consisting of men and women whom
God of His sheer goodness has delivered from the power of darkness and
translated into the kingdom of His dear Son, will find its first duty,
as also its first impulse, in an abandonment of adoration. But if the
God who is worshipped is not only some Jewish Jehovah or Mohammedan
Allah, but the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, this love and
adoration of God will immediately express itself in the love and service
of men, and especially in the passionate desire to share with others the
supreme treasure of the knowledge of God. The Church, like its Master,
will be chiefly concerned to seek and to save that which is lost,
calling men everywhere to repent because the Kingdom of God is at hand.
Worship is indeed the very breath of its life, but service of the world
is the business of its life. It is the Body of Christ, that is to say,
the instrument of His will, and His will is to save the world.
The spiritual life of men is not limited to this planet, and the
fulfilment of the Church's task can never be here alone. The Church
must call men from temporal to eternal hopes. But in this way it will do
more than is possible in any other way to purify the temporal life
itself. For most temporal goods are such that the more one person has
the less there is for others, so that absorption in them leads
inevitably to strife and war. But the eternal goods--love, joy, peace,
loyalty, beauty, knowledge--are such that the fuller fruition of them by
one leads of itself to fuller fruition by others also, and absorption in
them leads without fail to brotherhood and fellowship.
It is not of worship, the breath of the church's life, but of service,
the business of its life, that I wish to speak. But this can only be
misleading if the other has not first been given prominence. The Church
serves because it first worships. Only because it has in itself a
foretaste of eternal life, the realised Kingdom of God, can it prepare
the way of the Lord, so that His Kingdom may come on earth as it is in
heaven.
One question which demands attention concerns the nature of the Church
which is to perform this function. Is it enough that there should be
vast numbers of Christian individuals gathering together in whatever way
is proved by experience to be the most effective for edification,
pursuing their profession as Christians, and so gradually leavening
life? Or is there need for a quite definite society, with a coherent
constitution and a known basis of membership? The former has much to
recommend it; it avoids the deadening influence of a rigid machinery; it
ensures freedom of spiritual and intellectual development; it may seem
to correspond with that loosely constituted group of disciples, which
was, as we have seen, the actual fruit of the earthly ministry of
Christ. Yet it is condemned by all analogies, and is inadequate to the
essential nature of religion.
All relevant analogy suggests that a spirit must take definite and
concrete form before it can be effective in the world, even as God
Himself must become incarnate in order to establish His Kingdom upon
earth. No doubt the form has often fettered the spirit and sometimes
even perverted it; the history of the Franciscan movement is an instance
of this; but the influence of St. Francis would never have done for
Europe what it actually accomplished if the Order had not been founded.
One of the clearest illustrations of the principle is before our eyes in
our experience to-day. When the spirit of national patriotism makes its
appeal, no one has to make any effort to understand its claim; our
nation is a definite and concrete society in which we easily realise our
membership to the full. We know that there is no escaping from it, and
that, when it appeals for our service or our lives, we must either
respond or refuse. But the Christian Church, as we know it, is
powerless to bring home its appeal in the same way. Largely because of
its divisions and endless controversy about the points, secondary though
important, which separate the various sections, it has become curiously
impotent in the face of any great occasion such as the present, and
curiously unsuccessful in persuading either its own members or the world
outside of the nature of its mission. We are not conscious, for
example, that we are permanently either responding to, or else refusing,
the appeal to "preach the Gospel to every creature." That appeal does
not hit us personally as does the appeal, "every fit man wanted." Our
membership in the Church does not in fact make us feel a personal
obligation to assist the cause of the Church. We are content to "belong
to it" without admitting that it has any power to dispose of its
"belongings"; we think that we "support" it by "going to church" and
contributing to "church expenses." But we feel no link with our
fellow-Christians in Germany at all comparable to that which binds us to
an agnostic but patriotic Englishman, or at all capable of bridging
spontaneously the gulf fixed by national antagonism. By a deliberate
effort we can realise that we and they are equally precious in the sight
of God, and that they are our fellow-members in Christ. But there is no
realised bond of corporate unity that binds us to each other, and we
rely upon the very feeble resources of our personal good-will and
personal faith for any sense of unity with them that we may attain. The
Church is less powerful than the nation as an influence in our lives,
partly at least because it is in fact less actual. The Church
universal, whether as an organisation or as spirit of life, is an ideal,
not a reality.
Such an argument, however, simply invites refutation. It is pointed out
that when the whole of one section of Christendom was organised as a
single religious community under the Pope, men did, as a mere matter of
historical fact, fight and hate even more bitterly than now. A common
membership in one Catholic Church did not prevent Edward III. and Henry
V. from making war upon their neighbours across the English Channel.
And at this moment Roman Catholic Frenchmen appear to be fighting
against Roman Catholic Bavarians with no more signs of fellowship
between the opponents than appear in other parts of the field of war. So
far as the Church is organised as a unity, this does not, in fact,
create unity of spirit in its members sufficient to mitigate national
antagonisms.
And this, it will be urged, is only to be expected. "The wind bloweth
where it listeth," and machinery cannot control the spirit. It is only
a personal faith in Christ that will lift men above natural divisions so
that they spontaneously recognise as brothers those who have similar
faith. To build up again a great ecclesiastical organisation which
shall include all Europe, or even all the world, will not of itself
create friendship between the members who compose it if otherwise they
are antagonistic. Individual conversion, not ecclesiastical
statesmanship, is the one thing needful; nothing can take its place.
No; of course nothing can take its place. And of course an
all-comprehensive lukewarm Church will share the fate of its smaller
counterpart at Laodicea. When it is said that the Universal Church is
not a reality, it is not only the absence of a world-wide organisation
that is deplored; still worse is the total absence of any typical manner
of life by which members of the Church may be known from others. Men
die for Great Britain, not because Britain is a united kingdom, but
because there is a definite British character which is ours and which we
love. But there is no specifically Christian type of character actually
distinguishing members of the Church from others which may make men
ready to die for Christendom. Christians differ from others, as Spinoza
bitterly remarked, not in faith or charity or any of the fruits of the
Spirit, but only in opinion. Assuredly individual conversion is the
primary requisite.
But half our troubles come from these absurd dilemmas. Do you believe
in faith or in organisation? Well; do I believe in my eyes or my ears?
Why not in both? Of course organisation cannot take the place of faith;
of course faith without order is better than order without faith. But
why cannot we have in the Church what we have got in the nation faith
operative through order as loyalty is operative through the State and in
service to it?
The earlier objection, however, is equally serious. Catholicism has
failed in the past and is failing now. One main ground of its failure
is to be found, I believe, in its inadequate recognition of nationality,
which has avenged itself by almost ousting Catholicism, and with it
Christianity itself, where national interests are concerned.[#]
[#] I am speaking throughout of the Western Church: the Eastern Church
has perhaps been, if anything, too national.
This failure to give adequate recognition to nationality arises from too
exclusive emphasis on the principle which is, quite rightly, the root
idea of Catholicism--the idea of transcendence. Here in the last resort
is the fundamental distinction between naturalism and religion;
naturalism may take a form which stimulates the religious emotions and
supports a high ethical ideal; but it confines itself to the limits of
secular experience. For naturalism the history of man and of the
universe is the starting-point and the goal; this as fact is the datum,
this as understood is the solution. The Will of God, on this view, is to
be discovered from the empirical course and tendency of history. But
religion begins with God; it breaks in upon what we ordinarily call
"experience" from outside; in its monotheistic form it regards the world
as created by God for His own pleasure, and lasting only during that
pleasure; in its pantheistic form it regards the world as a phase or a
moment of His Being which is by no means limited to that phase or
moment. Its philosophy does not elaborately conceive what God must be
like in order to be the solution of our perplexities, but, starting with
the assurance of His Being and Nature, shows how this is in fact the
answer to all our needs.