two types of teaching, and it is this: while we have got to incorporate
all, or at any rate, nearly all, that the more modern type of education
has given us, it has got to be used in such a way as to leave the great
marks of the traditional type predominant. Education, I hold, should
remain primarily corporate rather than individual, primarily spiritual
(that is, effective through influence, and through an appeal to sympathy
and imagination), rather than primarily intellectual (that is, effective
through an appeal to intelligence and memory), primarily concerned with
giving people the power to pronounce judgment on any facts with which
they may come in contact rather than supplying them simply with the
facts. It should be primarily co-operative and not primarily
competitive.
It is mainly the new democratic movements in education which have
emphasised this view. Indeed, the Workers' Educational Association has
understood more definitely than any other body I am aware of, that what
it finds of supreme value in the great centres of education is the
spirit of the place rather than the instruction; and those of us who
have received the best, or at all events have been in a position to
receive the best, that Oxford can give, and those who have had just a
taste of her treasures at the Summer School, will agree that Oxford does
more for us than any lectures do. But while we say that, we need also
to insist on a greater energy and efficiency, a greater and more living
contact with the world of to-day in some, at least, of the centres of
the old traditional type. Yet it is the traditional type that must
control, because the traditional type on the whole stands for spirit
against machinery. I have no doubt it is true that the old schools and
universities are amateurish in method; and I have no doubt that we ought
to organise ourselves more efficiently. There is a good deal of waste
that may be saved; but I shall regret the day when we become efficient
at the cost of our spirit.
I believe that in the University Tutorial Classes organised by the
Workers' Educational Association you will find upon the whole the
soundest educational principles which are at this moment operative
anywhere in England. The classes choose their own subjects, and, as a
general rule, they choose those subjects about which nobody knows the
truth. Those are always the best instruments of education; for if
anyone knows the truth, he has only to say what it is and his hearers
believe him. That may be instruction, but it is not education. Real
education is always best conducted as a joint search for truth; and in
these Tutorial Classes we have, not one teacher and thirty hearers, but
thirty-one fellow students, one of whom has commenced the study earlier
than the rest, and can therefore act as guide.
These are wide-reaching problems; and, indeed, there is no limit to the
range of the influence of education. It is the supreme regenerative
force. What is the chief obstacle of all who work for progress in any
department of life? Always the apathy of those whom we especially wish
to help. And why are they apathetic? Simply because they have had no
opportunity of finding out what is the life from which they are
excluded. But open by the merest chink the door of that treasure-house
wherein are contained the garnered stores of literature and science, of
history and art, and they will be foremost in demanding that they shall
no longer be excluded from the birthright of the sons of civilisation.
These are the good things of which no one is deprived because another
possesses them; they are the true social goods of which possession by
one redounds to the enrichment of all. It is the taste of them that can
most stimulate the zeal for progress; and as it supplies the motive
power, so it supplies also the directive wisdom. The perfecting and
expansion of our education is just what is most vital for social
progress to-day, and for the establishment of real justice in our social
life, for it alone can bring within the reach of all that knowledge
which is at once the source of power and the guarantee that the power
shall be beneficent.
*APPENDIX IV*
*ON ORDERS AND CATHOLICITY*
The position taken in the text of these lectures might be summarised as
follows: It is the living body which gives authority to its Orders; it
is not the possession of valid Orders which gives authority to the body.
In support of this view I have the kind permission of Dr. Headlam to
quote the following from his article--"Notes on Reunion: The Kikuyu
Conference," in the _Church Quarterly Review_ for January, 1914.
"On December 20th, 1912, the Bishop of Madras delivered an informal
speech to the members of the National Conference of Missionaries, at
Calcutta. This created in India and elsewhere a considerable amount of
sensation. As in that speech he referred to something which the present
writer had written and to an article in the _Church Quarterly Review_ by
Dr. Frere,[#] and as his speech has been very widely misunderstood, I
think I may be allowed to refer briefly to the points he raised. The
views which he propounded were those which I had put forward in the
'Prayer Book Dictionary,' and I should like to be allowed to quote them
again:
[#] "The Reorganisation of Worship," by W. H. Frere, D.D., Superior of
the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield (_Church Quarterly Review_,
October, 1912).
"If we combine the Patristic theory of Orders with the rule of
ordination, we shall be able to put the idea of Apostolic Succession
into its right place. It is really a deduction from the right theory of
Orders, and the mistake has been to make Orders depend upon Apostolic
Succession and transmission.
"The authority to consecrate and ordain, or to perform all spiritual
offices, resides in and comes from the Church to which God gives His
Holy Spirit. From the beginning this work of the Church has been
exercised by those who have received a commission for it, and the rule
of the Church has been that that commission should always be given by
those who have received authority from others with a similar commission.
The historical fact, therefore, of Apostolic Succession has resulted
from the rule of the Church being always regularly carried out. If this
be correct, the following further deductions may be made:
"1. The idea of 'transmission' is an additional and late conception
which, instead of expressing the idea of Succession, has, by its
exaggeration of it led to a rigid and mechanical theory of the Ministry.
"2. As the grace of Orders depends upon the authority of the Church and
not upon mechanical transmission, all objections from supposed
irregularities of ordination are beside the point, and the opinions of
churchmen and others who have maintained that in certain circumstances a
presbyter may ordain are explained. Ordination depends upon the
authority of the Church, and not the Church upon ordination.
"3. The idea of Succession, which results from the Church's rule of
ordination, is an historical fact, and not a doctrine. It represents an
external connection with the first beginnings of Christianity of
infinite value for the Church; and nothing should be done to break such
a connection, as it acts like a link for binding together the Churches
as parts of a living whole.
"4. One part of the work of Christian reunion should be to restore and
secure the links of Succession throughout the whole Christian world; but
no rigidity or mechanical theory of Orders need compel us to deny divine
grace to those separated from us.[#]
[#] _The Prayer Book Dictionary_ (Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, Ltd.,
1912), p. 42.
"The particular point that I wish to emphasise is that there are two
things to be separated--the one the rule of the Church, the other the
theory of that rule. I do not believe that it would be possible on any
Catholic principle to depart from the rule of the Church with regard to
Orders; I should go further and say that I believe that no real reunion
would ultimately be possible except on the basis of that rule. At the
present time, however, continuous emphasis is laid on the theory of
Orders, and that theory is often put as an extreme form of a mechanical
conception of the Apostolic Succession. Now it is quite true that from
the beginning Bishops have been looked upon as 'the successors' of the
Apostles, but I can find no authoritative interpretation of that phrase
other than that they perform at the present day those functions of the
Apostles which were not miraculous or extraordinary.[#] Neither the
formularies of the Church of England nor, so far as I am aware, those of
any other Church, lay down any theory of ministry, and to impose,
therefore, any such theory on the Church is to depart from Catholic
tradition.
[#] See, for example, Van Espen, i. 16, 1. Council of Trent, Sessio
xxiii., Cap. iv.
"An incidental result of this is that our attitude towards Sacraments of
Nonconformist bodies will not partake of that rigid character which is
so characteristic of some in the present day. We are glad to see that
Dr. Sanday takes exception to these. 'It seems to me to be a very
delicate matter, and, indeed, scarcely admissible for one Christian body
to take upon itself to pronounce upon the validity or otherwise of the
ministrations of another. I think that at least the question ought not
to be put in that bald and sweeping form.' It is interesting to note
that Dr. Pusey would have been equally averse to such language. He of
course accepts the doctrine of Apostolic Succession in very definite
form, but he writes as follows:
"'But while maintaining that they only are commissioned to administer
the Sacraments who have received that commission from those appointed in
succession to bestow it, we have never denied that God may make His own
sacraments efficacious even when irregularly administered; we should
trust it might be so.'
"It would be of great advantage if we were to speak of non-episcopal
orders and sacraments as 'irregular,' which we know they are, not as
'invalid,' about which we know nothing."
With these words of Dr. Headlam I am in profound agreement. But there
is another quite different matter to which I would allude. If the Church
is indeed to be the vehicle of the power of Christ in its plenitude, it
must be Catholic not only in principle and right, but in actual fact.
Deeper than all divisions of "Catholic" and "Protestant" is the division
of the great human family--European, Indian, Chinese, and so forth.
These great civilisations must each bring its own gift, consecrated by
the Spirit of Christ, to the life of the whole Body before that Body
reveals the measure of the fulness of the stature of Christ. A merely
European Church cannot be fully Catholic, nor can it ever do, even for
Europe, what the Catholic Church is called by God to do for the nations
which become its provinces.
*APPENDIX V*
*ON PROVIDENCE IN HISTORY*
The most outstanding facts in the history known to us, which plainly
reveal the providential guidance of its course, are the careers of
Alexander the Great and Napoleon. There had developed in Greece the
whole spirit of civilisation in reference to the small problems of the
city-state; the whole principle of civilisation which had been thus
worked out was now established; Greek civilisation was so perfectly
developed that it had even a perfect theory of itself in Plato and
Aristotle. Just at this moment there appears upon the scene the
absolutely amazing figure--Alexander of Macedon, himself the pupil of
the man in whom the Greek spirit reached its final formulation. He
carries that spirit in his astounding triumphs through Asia Minor and
Syria to the Western Provinces of India. As a military achievement the
mere leading of his troops to the banks of the Indus is one of the
supreme wonders of the world. No doubt he was conscious of a mission to
spread the gifts which Greece held in trust for humanity; but also no
doubt he was very much concerned with the political fabric which his
conquests set up. The moment his work is finished, he himself dies.
Politically his Empire was not established and it immediately fell to
pieces. Spiritually it remained. It supplied the inspiration of
Chandra gupta, and the career of Asoka is unintelligible apart from
Alexander. The arrival of the Greeks in India is, I am assured, the
beginning of all that we now understand by Indian art. Far more
important to the history of the world was the bringing of Greek culture
into Palestine; this culture in itself was no doubt decadent, and the
Chasidim and Pharisees were right enough to resist it: yet the leaven of
this humanising influence is an essential part of the preparation for
the Incarnation in the soil of Judaism. It is to be noticed that
Galilee was a region particularly affected by the Greek influence and
the settlement of Decapolis was still mainly Greek in the Gospel period.
Asoka and St. Paul are not at all the kind of successors that Alexander
would have anticipated or desired, but his conscious desires were
utilised by Providence to serve an end of which he never dreamed. His
early death before his Empire could be consolidated in a political sense
is as markedly providential as his emergence at the precise moment of
history when he appears upon the scene.
The case is similar with Napoleon. Alexander at his death was 32 years
old. Napoleon was 52. He also appears at a critical moment, is active
precisely as long as he can serve what we now see to have been the cause
of progress, and is then removed. The great feature of the period is
the growth of the sentiment of nationality. This is the sense of
membership in a people united by common characteristics and a common
purpose; it is therefore always democratic in spirit though it need not
at all necessarily be democratic in machinery. The old European
constitutions, which had been valuable enough in their time, were
becoming a barrier to its further development; the flood of progress
burst the dam in France, and soon after there appears the supreme
genius, not himself a Frenchman, who was to carry the spirit of which
France had just become consciously possessed through the entire length
and breadth of Europe. Napoleon, like Alexander, was conscious of his
mission; he thought of himself as being the organ of the Revolution; he
is reported to have said that moral principles did not apply to him;
they applied only to persons, and he was a force. But there can be no
doubt that he was as much concerned with establishing a vast French
Empire as he was with merely carrying the principles of the French
Revolution into the other nations. He is allowed success so long as the
work of destruction is still needed; his activities first as general and
then as ruler began the unification alike of Italy and Germany; but as
soon as the spiritual work which he was to do is fully accomplished, the
political construction, which was as a great scaffolding surrounding it,
falls to pieces, and he is driven into exile to end his days in solitude
and impotence. Perhaps some day people will look back upon the horror
that now lies upon the world and not only believe that God was active in
it, but see the blessings which He was conferring by its means.
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* * * * * * * *
_*By the Rev. WILLIAM TEMPLE.*_
THE FAITH AND MODERN THOUGHT. SIX LECTURES. With an Introduction by
Professor Michael Sadler.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD. A COURSE OF FOUR LECTURES.
THE NATURE OF PERSONALITY. A COURSE OF LECTURES.
STUDIES IN THE SPIRIT AND TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY. BEING UNIVERSITY AND
SCHOOL SERMONS.
REPTON SCHOOL SERMONS. STUDIES IN THE RELIGION OF THE INCARNATION.
FOUNDATIONS. A STATEMENT OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF IN TERMS OF MODERN THOUGHT.
By Seven Oxford Men: B. H. STREETER, R. BROOK, W. H. MOBERLY, R. G.
PARSONS, A. E. J. RAWLINSON, N. S. TALBOT, W. TEMPLE.
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