DEAN INGE
_Some day, when I've quite made up my mind what to fight for, or whom to
fight, I shall do well enough, if I live, but I haven't made up my mind
what to fight for--whether, for instance, people ought to live in Swiss
cottages and sit on three-legged or one-legged stools; whether people
ought to dress well or ill; whether ladies ought to tie their hair in
beautiful knots; whether Commerce or Business of any kind be an
invention of the Devil or not; whether Art is a Crime or only an
Absurdity; whether Clergymen ought to be multiplied, or exterminated by
arsenic, like rat; whether in general we are getting on, and if so where
we are going to; whether it's worth while to ascertain any of these
things; whether one's tongue was ever made to talk with or only to taste
with._-JOHN RUSKIN.
When our day is done, and men look back to the, shadows we have left
behind us, and there is no longer any spell of personal magnetism to
delude right judgment, I think that the figure of Dean Inge may emerge
from the dim and too crowded tapestry of our period with something of
the force, richness, and abiding strength which gives Dr. Johnson his
great place among authentic Englishmen.
His true setting is the Deanery of St. Paul's, that frowning and
melancholy house in a backwater of London's jarring tide, where the
dust collects, and sunlight has a struggle to make two ends meet, and
cold penetrates like a dagger, and fog hangs like a pall, and the blight
of ages clings to stone and brick, to window and woodwork, with an
adhesive mournfulness which suggests the hatchment of Melpomene. Even
the hand of Grinling Gibbons at the porch does not prevent one from
recalling Crabbe's memorable lines:
Dark but not awful, dismal but yet mean,
With anxious bustle moves the cumbrous scene;
Presents no objects tender or profound,
But spreads its cold unmeaning gloom around.
Here in the midst of overshadowing warehouses--and until he came hither
at the age of fifty-one few people in London had ever heard his name, a
name which even now is more frequently pronounced as if it rhymed with
_cringe_, instead of with _sting_--here the Dean of St. Paul's, looking
at one moment like Don Quixote, at another like a figure from the pages
of Dostoevsky, and flitting almost noiselessly about rooms which would
surely have been filled for the mind of Dickens with ghosts of both
sexes and of every order and degree; here the great Dean faces the
problems of the universe, dwells much with his own soul, and fights the
Seven Devils of Foolishness in a style which the Church of England has
not known since the days of Swift.
In appearance he is very tall, rigid, long-necked, and extremely thin,
with fine dark hair and a lean grey clean-shaven face, the heavy-lidded
eyes of an almost Asian deadness, the upper lip projecting beyond the
lower, a drift of careless hair sticking boyishly forward from the
forehead, the nose thin, the mouth mobile but decisive, the whole set
and colour of the face stonelike and impassive.
In repose he looks as if he had set himself to stare the Sphinx out of
countenance and not yet had lost heart in the matter. When he smiles, it
is as if a mischievous boy looked out of an undertaker's window; but the
smile, so full of wit, mischief, and even gaiety, is gone in an instant,
quicker than I have ever seen a smile flash out of sight, and
immediately the fine scholarly face sinks back into somnolent austerity
which for all its aloofness and immemorial calm suggests, in some
fashion for which I cannot account, a frozen whimsicality.
Few public men, with perhaps the exception of Samuel Rogers, ever cared
so little about appearance. It is believed that the Dean would be
indistinguishable from a tramp but for the constant admonishment and
active benevolence of Mrs. Inge. As it is, he is something more than
shabby, and only escapes a disreputable appearance by the finest of
hairs, resembling, as I have suggested, one of those poor Russian
noblemen whom Dostoevsky loved to place in the dismal and sordid
atmosphere of a lodging-house, there to shine like golden planets by the
force of their ideas.
But when all this is said, and it is worth saying, I hope, if only to
make the reader feel that he is here making the acquaintance of an
ascetic of the intellect, a man who cares most deeply for accurate
thought, and is absorbed body, soul and spirit in the contemplation of
eternal values, still, for all the gloom of his surroundings and the
deadness of his appearance, it is profoundly untrue to think of the Dean
as a prophet of pessimism.
When he speaks to one, in the rather muffled voice of a man troubled by
deafness, the impression he makes is by no means an impression of
melancholy or despair; on the contrary it is the impression of strength,
power, courage, and unassailable allegiance to truth. He is careless of
appearance because he has something far better worth the while of his
attention; he is aloof and remote, monosyllabic and sometimes even
inaccessible, because he lives almost entirely in the spiritual world,
seeking Truth with a steady perseverance of mind, Goodness with the full
energy of his heart, and Beauty with the deep mystical passion of his
soul.
Nothing in the man suggests the title of his most popular book
_Outspoken Essays_--a somewhat boastful phrase that would, I think, have
slightly distressed a critic like Ste.-Beuve--and nothing, except a
certain firm emphasis on the word _truth_, suggests in his conversation
the spirit that shows in the more controversial of his essays. On the
contrary, he is in manner, bearing, and spirit a true mystic, a man of
silence and meditation, gentle when he is not angered, modest when he is
not challenged by a fool, humble in his attitude to God if not to a
foolish world, and, albeit with the awkwardness inevitable in one who
lives so habitually with his own thoughts and his own silence, anxious
to be polite.
"I do not like being unpleasant," he said to me on one occasion, "but if
no one else will, and the time requires it--"
It is a habit with him to leave a sentence unfinished which is
sufficiently clear soon after the start.
In what way is he unpleasant? and what are those movements of the time
which call in his judgment for unpleasantness?
Of Bergson he said to me, "I hope he is still thinking," and when I
questioned him he replied that Bergson's teaching up to this moment
"suggests that anything may happen."
Here you may see one of the main movements of our day which call, in the
Dean's judgment for unpleasantness--the unpleasantness of telling people
not to make fools of themselves. Humanity must not go over in a body to
Mr. Micawber.
Anything may happen? No! We are not characters in a fairy tale, but men
of reason, inhabiting a world which reveals to us at every point of our
investigation one certain and unalterable fact--an unbroken uniformity
of natural law. We must not dream; we must act, and, before we act, we
must think. Human nature does not change very greatly. Bergson is apt to
encourage easy optimism, to leave the door open for credulity,
superstition, idle expectation; and he is disposed to set instinct above
reason, "a very dangerous doctrine, at any rate for _this_ generation."
What is wrong with this generation? It is a generation that refuses to
accept the rule and discipline of reason, which thinks it can reach
millennium by a short cut, or jump to the moon in an excess of emotional
fervour. It is a generation which becomes a crowd, and "individuals are
occasionally guided by reason, crowds never." It is a generation which
lives by catchwords, which plays tricks, which attempts to cut knots,
which counts heads.
What is wrong with this generation? Public opinion is "a vulgar,
impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for
anyone who is not content to be the average man." Democracy means "a
victory of sentiment over reason"; it is the triumph of the unfit, the
ascendancy of the second-rate, the conquest of quality by quantity, the
smothering of the hard and true under the feather-bed of the soft and
the false.
Some may prefer the softer type of character, and may hope that it
will make civilisation more humane and compassionate. . . .
Unfortunately, experience shows that none is so cruel as the
disillusioned sentimentalist. He thinks that he can break or ignore
nature's laws with impunity; and then, when he finds that nature
has no sentiment, he rages like a mad dog and combines with his
theoretical objection to capital punishment a lust to murder all
who disagree with him.
Beware of sentiment! Beware of it in politics, beware of it in religion.
See things as they are. Accept human nature for what it is. Consult
history. Judge by reason and experience. Act with courage.
As he faces politics, so he faces religion.
He desires to rescue Christianity from all the sentimental vulgarities
which have disfigured it in recent years--alike from the æsthetic
extravagances of the ritualist and the organising fussiness of the
evangelical; to rescue it from these obscuring unessentials, and to set
it clearly before the eyes of mankind in the pure region of thought--a
divine philosophy which teaches the only true science of life, a
discipline which fits the Soul for its journey, "by an inner ascent," to
the presence of God. Mysticism, he says, is the pursuit of ultimate,
objective truth, or it is nothing.
Christianity demands the closest attention of the mind. It cannot be
seen at a glance, understood in a moment, adopted by a gesture. It is a
deep and profound philosophy of life. It proposes a transvaluation of
values. It insists that the spiritual life is the only true life. It
sets the invisible above the visible, and the eternal above the
temporal. It tears up by the roots the lust of accumulation. It brings
man face to face with a choice that is his destiny. He must think, he
must decide. He cannot serve both God and Mammon. Either his life must
be given for the imperishable values of spiritual existence or for the
meats that perish and the flesh that will see corruption. Let a man
choose. Christianity contradicts all his natural ideas; but let him
think, let him listen to the voice of God, and let him decide as a
rational being. Let him not presume to set up his trivial notions, or to
think that he can silence Truth by bawling falsehood at the top of his
voice. Let him be humble. Let him listen to the teacher. Let him give
all his attention to this great matter, for it concerns his soul.
Here again is the aristocratic principle. The average man, until he has
disciplined his reason to understand this great matter, must hold his
peace; certainly he must not presume to lay down the law.
When we exclaim against this doctrine, and speak with enthusiasm of the
virtues of the poor, Dr. Inge asks us to examine those virtues and to
judge of their worth. Among the poor, he quotes, "generosity ranks far
before justice, sympathy before truth, love before chastity, a pliant
and obliging disposition before a rigidly honest one. In brief, the less
admixture of intellect required for the practice of any virtue, the
higher it stands in popular estimation."
But we are to love God with all our _mind_, as well as with all our
heart.
Does he, then, shut out the humble and the poor from the Kingdom of God?
Not for a moment. "Ultimately, we are what we love and care for, and no
limit has been set to what we may become without ceasing to be
ourselves." The door of love stands open, and through that doorway the
poor and the ignorant may pass to find the satisfaction of the saint.
But they must be careful to love the right things--to love truth,
goodness, and beauty. They must not be encouraged to sentimentalise;
they must be bidden to decide. The poor can be debauched as easily as
the rich. Many are called, but few chosen.
His main protest is against _the rule_ of the ignorant, the democratic
principle applied to the _amor intellectualis Dei_. Rich and poor,
learned and ignorant, all must accept, with humility, the teaching of
the Master. Plotinus, he points out, was the schoolmaster who brought
Augustine to Christ. The greatest of us has to learn. He who would teach
should be a learner all his life.
In everything he says and writes I find this desire to exalt Truth above
the fervours of emotionalism and the dangerous drill of the formalist.
Always he is calling upon men to drop their prejudices and catchwords,
to forsake their conceits and sentiments, to face Truth with a quiet
pulse and eyes clear of all passion. Christianity is a tremendous thing;
let no man, believer or unbeliever, attempt to make light of it.
It is not compassion for the intellectual difficulties of the average
man which has made Dr. Inge a conservative modernist, if so I may call
him. Sentiment of no kind whatever has entered into the matter. He is a
conservative modernist because his reason has convinced him of the truth
of reasonable modernism, because he has "that intellectual honesty which
dreads what Plato calls 'the lie in the soul' even more than the lie on
the lips." He is a modernist because he is an intellectual ascetic.
When we compare his position with that of Dr. Gore we see at once the
width of the gulf which separates the traditionalist from the
philosopher. To Dr. Gore the creeds and the miracles are essential to
Christianity. No Virgin Birth, no Sermon on the Mount! No Resurrection
of the Body, no Parable of the Prodigal Son! No Descent into Hell, no
revelation that the Kingdom of Heaven is within! Need we wonder that Dr.
Gore cries out despairingly for more discipline? He summons reason, it
is true, but to defend and explain creeds without which there is no
Christianity.
To Dr. Inge, on the other hand, it is what Christ said that matters,
what He taught that demands our obedience, what He revealed that
commands our love. Christianity for him is not a series of extraordinary
acts, but a voice from heaven. It is not the Christ of tradition before
whom he bows his knee, but the Christ of history, the Christ of faith,
the Christ of experience--the living and therefore the evolving Christ.
And for him, as for the great majority of searching men, the more the
mists of pious _aberglaube_ lift, the more real, the more fair, and the
more divine becomes the Face of that living Christ, the more close the
sense of His companionship.
A friend of mine once asked him, "Are you a Christian or a
Neoplatonist?" He smiled. "It would be difficult to say," he replied.
He was thinking, I am sure, of Troeltsch's significant prophecy, and
warning, that _the Future of Christian philosophy depends on the renewal
of its alliance with Neoplatonism_.
Let no man suppose that the intellectual virtues are outside the range
of religion. "Candour, moral courage, intellectual honesty, scrupulous
accuracy, chivalrous fairness, endless docility to facts, disinterested
collaboration, unconquerable hopefulness and perseverance, manly
renunciation of popularity and easy honours, love of bracing labour and
strengthening solitude; these, and many other cognate qualities," says
Baron von Hügel, "bear upon them the impress of God and His Christ."
What Dr. Inge, who quotes these words, says of Plotinus declares his own
character. He speaks of "the intense honesty of the man, _who never
shirks a difficulty or writes an insincere word_."
But though he is associated in the popular mind chiefly with modernism,
Dr. Inge is not by any means only a controversial theologian. Above and
beyond everything else, he is a mystic. You may find indications of this
truth even in a book like _Outspoken Essays_, but they are more numerous
in his two little volumes, _The Church and the Age_ and _Speculum
Animæ_, and of course more numerous still in his great work on
Plotinus[5]. He is far more a mystic than a modernist. Indeed I regard
him as the Erasmus of modernism, one so sure of truth that he would
trust time to work for his ideas, would avoid fighting altogether, but
certainly all fighting that is in the least degree premature. The two
thousand years of Christianity, he says somewhere, are no long period
when we remind ourselves that God spent millions of years in moulding a
bit of old red sandstone.
[Footnote 5: "I have often thought that the unquestionable inferiority
of German literature about Platonism points to an inherent defect in the
German mind."--_The Philosophy of Plotinus_, p. 13]
Meanwhile we have our cocksure little guides, some of whom say to
us, "That is primitive, therefore it is good," and others, "This is
up-to-date, therefore it is better." Not very wise persons any of
them, I fear.
And again, writing of Catholic Modernism in France:
We have given our reasons for rejecting the Modernist attempt at
reconstruction. In the first place, we do not feel that we are
required by sane criticism to surrender nearly all that M. Loisy
has surrendered. We believe that the Kingdom of God which Christ
preached was something much more than a platonic dream. We believe
that He did speak as never man spake, so that those who heard Him
were convinced that He was more than man. We believe, in short,
that the object of our worship was a historical figure.
I will give a few extracts from _Speculum Animæ_, a most valuable and
most beautiful little book, which show the true bent of his mind:
On all questions _about_ religion there is the most distressing
divergency. But the saints do not contradict each other.
Prayer . . . is "the elevation of the mind and heart to God." It is in
prayer, using the word in this extended sense, that we come into
immediate contact with the things that cannot be shaken.
Are we to set against such plain testimony the pessimistic agnosticism
of a voluptuary like Omar Khayyám?
_There was the Door to which I found no Key_. . . .
May it not be that the door has no key because it has no lock?
The suggestion that in prayer we only hear the echo of our own voices is
ridiculous to anyone who has prayed.
The life of Christ was throughout a life of prayer. Not only did He love
to spend many hours in lonely communing with His Father, on the
mountain-tops, which He was perhaps the first to love, and to choose for
this purpose, but His whole life was spent in habitual realisation of
God's presence.
Religion is caught rather than taught; it is the religious teacher, not
the religious lesson, that helps the pupil to believe.
What we love, that we see; and what we see, that we are.
We need above all things to simplify our religion and our inner life
generally.
We want to separate the essential from the nonessential, to concentrate
our faith upon the pure God-consciousness, the eternal world which to
Christ was so much nearer and more real than the world of external
objects.
Christ meant us to be happy, happier than any other people.
It is because he is so profoundly convinced of the mystical truth of
Christianity, because he has so honestly tried and so richly
experienced that truth as a philosophy of life, it is because of this,
and not out of a lack of sympathy with the sad and sorrowful, that he
opposes himself to the obscurantism of the Anglo-Catholic and the
emotional economics of the political reformer.
"The Christian cure," he says, "is the only real cure." The socialist is
talking in terms of the old currency, the currency of the world's
quantitative standards; but Christ introduced a new currency, which
demonetises the old. Spiritual goods are unlimited in amount; they are
increased by being shared; and we rob nobody by taking them. He believes
with Creighton that "Socialism will only be possible when we are all
perfect, and then it will not be needed."
In the meantime, "Christianity increases the wealth of the world by
creating new values." Only in the currency of Christ can true socialism
hope to pay its way.
We miss the heart and centre of his teaching if we forget for a moment
that it is his conviction of the sufficiency of Christ's revelation
which makes him so deadly a critic both of the ritualist and the
socialist--two terms which on the former side at least tend to become
synonymous. He would have no distraction from the mystery of Christ, no
compromise of any kind in the world's loyalty to its one Physician.
Simplify your dogmas; simplify your theologies. Christ is your one
essential.
I have spoken to him about psychical research and the modern interest in
spiritualism. "I don't think much of _that!_" he replied. Then, in a
lower key, "It was not through animism and necromancy that the Jews came
to believe in immortality." How did they reach that belief? "By thinking
things out, and asking the question, Shall not the Judge of all the
earth do right?"
The answer is characteristic. Dr. Inge has thought things out;
everything in his faith has been thought out; and the basis of all his
thinking is acceptance of absolute values--absolute truth, absolute
goodness, absolute beauty. No breath from the class-rooms agitated by
Einstein can shake his faith in these absolutes. His Spirit of the
Universe is absolute truth, absolute goodness, absolute beauty. He is a
Neoplatonist, but something more. He ascends into communion with this
Universal Spirit whispering the Name of Christ, and by the power of
Christ in his soul addresses the Absolute as Abba, Father.
No man is freer from bigotry or intolerance, though not many can hate
falsity and lies more earnestly. The Church of England, he tells me,
should be a national church, a church expressing the highest reach of
English temperament, with room for all shades of thought. He quotes
Dollinger, "No church is so national, so deeply rooted in popular
affection, so bound up with the institutions and manners of the country,
or so powerful in its influences on national character." But this was
written in 1872. Dr. Inge says now, "The English Church represents, on
the religious side, the convictions, tastes, and prejudices of the
English gentleman, that truly national ideal of character. . . . A love of
order, seemliness, and good taste has led the Anglican Church along a
middle path between what a seventeenth century divine called 'the
meretricious gaudiness of the Church of Rome and the squalid slutterny
of fanatic conventicles.'"
Uniformity, he tells me, is not to be desired. One of our greatest
mistakes was letting the Wesleyan Methodists go; they should have been
accommodated within the fold. Another fatal mistake was made by the
Lambeth Conference, in its insistence on re-ordination. Imagine the
Church of England, with two Scotch Archbishops at its head, thinking
that the Presbyterians would consent to so humiliating a condition! An
interchange of pulpits is desirable; it might increase our intelligence,
or at least it should widen our sympathy. He holds a high opinion of the
Quakers. "Practical mystics: perhaps they are the best Christians, I
mean the best of them."
Modernism, he defines, at its simplest, as personal experience, in
contradistinction from authority. The modernist is one whose knowledge
of Christ is so personal and direct that it does not depend on miracle
or any accident of His earthly life. Rome, he thinks, is a falling
power, but she may get back some of her strength in any great industrial
calamity--a revolution, for example. Someone once asked him which he
would choose, a Black tyranny, or a Red? He replied "On the whole, I
think a Black." The friend corrected him. "You are wrong. Men would soon
emerge from the ruins of a Red tyranny, but Rome never lets go her power
till it is torn from her."
His contempt for the idea of reunion with Rome in her present condition
is unmeasured. "The notion almost reminds us of the cruel jest of
Mezentius, who bound the living bodies of his enemies to corpses." It is
the contempt both of a great scholar and a great Englishman for
ignorance and a somewhat ludicrous pretension. "The _caput orbis_ has
become provincial, and her authority is spurned even within her own
borders." England could not kneel at this Italian footstool without
ceasing to be England[6].
[Footnote 6: "There are, after all, few emotions of which one has less
reason to be ashamed than the little lump in the throat which the
Englishman feels when he first catches sight of the white cliffs of
Dover."--_Outspoken essays_, p. 58.]
"A profound reconstruction is demanded," he says, "and for those who
have eyes to see has been already for some time in progress. The new
type of Christianity will be more Christian than the old, because it
will be more moral. A number of unworthy beliefs about God are being
tacitly dropped, and they are so treated because they are unworthy of
Him."
He sees the future of Christianity as a deep moral and spiritual power
in the hearts and minds of men who have at length learned the value of
the new currency, and have exchanged profession for experience.
But this Erasmus, far more learned than the other, and with a courage
which far exceeds the other's, and with an impatience of nature, an
irritability of mind, which the other seldom knew, is nevertheless
patient of change. He does not lead as decisively as he might. He does
not strike as often as he should at the head of error. Perhaps he is
still thinking. Perhaps he has not yet made up his mind whether "Art is
a Crime or only an Absurdity," whether Clergymen ought to be multiplied
or exterminated, whether in general we are getting on, and if so where
we are going to.
I feel myself that his mind is made up, though he is still thinking and
still seeking; and I attribute his indecision as a leader, his want of
weight in the affairs of mankind, to one fatal deficiency in his
mysticism. It is, I presume to suggest, a mysticism which is separated
by no gulf from egoism--egoism of the highest order and the most
spiritual character, but still egoism. In his quest of God he is not
conscious of others. He thinks of mankind with interest, not with
affection. Humanity is a spectacle, not a brotherhood.
When one speaks to him of the confusion and anarchy in the religious
world, and suggests how hard it is for the average man to know which way
he should follow, he replies: "Yes, I'm afraid it's a bad time for the
ordinary man." But then he has laid it down, "There is not the
slightest probability that the largest crowd will ever be gathered in
front of the narrow gate." Still one could wish that he felt in his
heart something of the compassion of his Master for those who have taken
the road of destruction.
He attaches great importance to preaching. He does not at all agree with
the sneer at "preaching-shops." That is a convenient sneer for the
younger generation of ritualists who have nothing to say and who perform
ceremonies they don't understand; not much meaning _there_ for the
modern man. No; preaching is a most important office, although no other
form of professional work is done anything like so badly. But a preacher
who has something to say will always attract intelligent people.
One does not discuss with him the kind of preaching necessary to convert
unintelligent people. That would be to take this great philosopher out
of his depth.
As for the Oxford Movement, he regards it as a changeling. His
grandfather, an archdeacon, was a Tractarian, a friend of Pusey, a
scholar acquainted with all the doctors; but he was not a ritualist; he
did not even adopt the eastward position. The modern ritualist is hardly
to be considered the lineal descendant of these great scholars.
"Romanticism, which dotes on ruins, shrinks from real restoration . . . a
Latin Church in England which disowns the Pope is an absurdity."
No, the future belongs to clear thinking and rigorous honesty of the
intellect.
Dr. Inge began life as the fag of Bishop Ryle at Eton--the one now
occupying the Deanery of St. Paul's; the other the Deanery of
Westminster, both scholars and the friendship still remaining. He was a
shy and timorous boy. No one anticipated the amazingly brilliant career
which followed at Cambridge, and even then few suspected him of original
genius until he became Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in 1907. His
attempts to be a schoolmaster were unsuccessful. He was not good at
maintaining discipline, and deafness somewhat intensified a nervous
irritability which at times puts an enormous strain on his patience. Nor
did he make any notable impression as Vicar of All Saints', Ennismore
Gardens, a parochial experience which lasted two years. Slowly he made
his way as author and lecturer, and it was not until he came to St.
Paul's that the world realised the greatness of his mind and the
richness of his genius.
As a correction to the popular delusion concerning his temperament and
outlook, although, I must confess, there is something about him
suggestive of a London Particular, I will quote in conclusion a few of
the many witty epigrams which are scattered throughout his pages,
showing that he has a sense of humour which is not always discernible in
those who would laugh him away as an unprofitable depressionist.
The clerical profession was a necessity when most people could
neither read nor write.
Seminaries for the early training of future clergymen may indeed be
established; but beds of exotics cannot be raised by keeping the
gardeners in greenhouses while the young plants are in the open
air.
It is becoming impossible for those who mix at all with their
fellow-men to believe that the grace of God is distributed
denominationally.
Like other idealisms, patriotism varies from a noble devotion to a
moral lunacy.
Our clergy are positively tumbling over each other in their
eagerness to be appointed court-chaplain to King Demos.
A generation which travels sixty miles an hour must be five times
as civilised as one which only travels twelve.
It is not certain that there has been much change in our
intellectual and moral adornments since pithecanthropus dropped the
first half of his name.
I cannot help hoping that the human race, having taken in
succession every path except the right one, may pay more attention
to the narrow way that leadeth unto life.
It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favour of
vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.
After the second century, the apologists for the priesthood are in
smooth waters.
Not everyone can warm both hands before the fire of life without
scorching himself in the process.
It is quite as easy to hypnotise oneself into imbecility by
repeating in solemn tones, "Progress, Democracy, Corporate Unity,"
as by the blessed word Mesopotamia, or, like the Indians, by
repeating the mystic word "Om" five hundred times in succession.
I have lived long enough to hear the _Zeitgeist_ invoked to bless
very different theories.
. . . as if it were a kind of impiety not to float with the stream, a
feat which any dead dog can accomplish. . . .
An appendix is as superfluous at the end of the human cæcum as at
the end of a volume of light literature.
The "traditions of the first six centuries" are the traditions of
the rattle and the feeding bottle.
In speaking to me last year of the crowded waiting-lists of the Public
Schools, he said: "It is no longer enough to put down the name of one's
son on the day he is born, one must write well ahead of that: 'I am
expecting to have a son next year, or the year after, and shall be
obliged if--' The congestion is very great, in spite of the increasing
fees and the supertax."
Much of his journalism, by the way, has the education of his children
for its excuse and its consecration--children to whom the Dean of St.
Paul's reveals in their nursery a side of his character wholly and
beautifully different from the popular legend.
There is no greater mind in the Church of England, no greater mind, I
am disposed to think, in the English nation. His intellect has the range
of an Acton, his forthrightness is the match of Dr. Johnson's, and his
wit, less biting though little less courageous than Voltaire's, has the
illuminating quality, if not the divine playfulness, of the wit of
Socrates.
But he lacks that profound sympathy with the human race which gives to
moral decisiveness the creative energy of the great fighter. A lesser
man than Erasmus left a greater mark on the sixteenth century.
The righteous saying of Bacon obstinately presents itself to our mind
and seems to tarry for an explanation: "The nobler a soul is, the more
objects of compassion it hath."
FATHER KNOX
KNOX, REV. RONALD ARBUTHNOTT; b. 17th Feb., 2888; 4th s. of the Rt.
Rev. E.A. Knox, Bishop of Manchester. Ethuc.: Eton (1st
Scholarship); Balliol College, Oxford (1st Scholarship). Hertford
Scholarship, 1907; Second in Honour Moderations, 1908; Ireland and
Craven Scholarship, 1908; 1st in Litt. Hum., 1910; Fellow and
Lecturer at Trinity College, Oxford, 1910; Chaplain, 1912;
Resigned, 1917; received into the Church of Rome, September, 1917.
[Illustration: FATHER KNOX]