"this northern island,
Sundered once from all the human race";
and when Christians first began to observe the Epiphany, or Theophany
(as the feast was indifferently called), our own forefathers were
among the heathen on whom the light of the Holy Manger was before
long to shine. It has shone on us now for a good many centuries;
England has ranked as one of the chiefest of Christian nations,
and has always professed, and often felt, a charitable concern
for the races which are still lying in darkness. Epiphany is very
specially the feast of a missionary Church, and the strongest appeal
which it could address to Heathendom would be to cry, "See what
Christianity has done for the world! Christendom possesses the
one religion. Come in and share its blessings."
There have been times and places at which that appeal could be
successfully made. Indeed, as Gibbon owned, it was one of the causes
to which the gradual triumph of Christianity was due. But for Europe
at the present moment to address that appeal to Africa or India
or China would be to invite a deadly repartee. In the long ages,
Heathendom might reply, which have elapsed since the world "rose
out of chaos," you have improved very little on the manners of
those primeval monsters which "tare each other in the slime." Two
thousand years of Christianity have not taught you to beat your
swords into plough-shares. You still make your sons to pass through
the fire to Moloch, and the most remarkable developments of physical
science are those which make possible the destruction of human life
on the largest scale. Certainly, in Zeppelins and submarines and
poisonous gas there is very little to remind the world of Epiphany
and what it stands for.
Thirty years ago the great Lord Shaftesbury wrote: "The present
is terrible, the future far more so; every day adds to the power
and facility of the means of destruction. Science is hard at work
(science, the great--nay, to some the only--God of these days)
to discover and concentrate the shortest and easiest methods to
annihilate the human race." We see the results of that work in
German methods of warfare.
Germany has for four centuries asserted for herself a conspicuous
place in European religion. She has been a bully there as in other
fields, and the lazy and the timid have submitted to her theological
pretensions. Now, by the mouth of her official pastors she has
renounced the religion of sacrifice for the lust of conquest, and
has substituted the creed of Odin for the faith of Christ. A country
which, in spite of learning and opportunity, has wilfully elapsed
from civilization into barbarism can scarcely evangelize Confucians
or Buddhists.
If we turn from the Protestant strongholds of the North to the
citadel of Authority at Rome, the signs of an Epiphany are equally
lacking. The Infallibility which did not save the largest section
of Christendom from such crimes as the Inquisition and the massacre
of St. Bartholomew has proved itself equally impotent in these
latter days. No one could have expected the Pope, who has spiritual
children in all lands, to take sides in an international dispute;
but one would have thought that a divinely-given infallibility
would have denounced, with the trumpet-tone of Sinai, the orgies
of sexual and sacrilegious crime which have devastated Belgium.
Is the outlook in allied Russia any more hopeful than in hostile
Germany and in neutral Rome? I must confess that I cannot answer.
We were always told that the force which welded together in one the
different races and tongues of the Russian Empire was a spiritual
force; that the Russian held his faith dearer than his life; and
that even his devotion to the Czar had its origin in religion.
At this moment of perplexity and peril, will the Holy Orthodox
Church manifest her power and instil into her children the primary
conceptions of Christian citizenship?
And if we look nearer home, we must acknowledge that the condition
of England has not always been such as to inspire Heathendom with a
lively desire to be like us. A century and a half ago Charles Wesley
complained that his fellow-citizens, who professed Christianity, "the
sinners unbaptized out-sin." And everyone who remembers the social
and moral state of England during the ten years immediately preceding
the present War will be inclined to think that the twentieth century
had not markedly improved on the eighteenth. Betting and gambling,
and the crimes to which they lead, had increased frightfully, and
were doing as much harm as drunkenness used to do. There was an
open and insolent disregard of religious observance, especially
with respect to the use of Sunday, the weekly Day of Rest being
perverted into a day of extra amusement and resulting labour. There
was a general relaxation of moral tone in those classes of society
which are supposed to set a good example. There was an ever-increasing
invasion of the laws which guard sexual morality, illustrated in
the agitation to make divorce even easier than it is now. Other
and darker touches might be added; but I have said enough to make
my meaning clear. Some say that the war is teaching us to repent of
and to forsake those national offences. If so, but not otherwise,
we can reasonably connect it with the lessons of Epiphany.