shows plain signs of having been copied from the kingdoms that are of
this world--the strife among churches as to which shall be greatest
proves that--but the very form of its thought has become infected with
ideas from the same source. Even philosophers have a difficulty of
getting away from the notion that the universe is an immense political
state, which most assuredly it is not; while careless thinkers will
constantly refer to the laws of nature as though they were legal
enactments, to which they bear no resemblance. At no point has
Christianity become more deeply secularized. Instead of the Kingdom
which is _not_ of this world transfiguring the kingdoms that are,
lifting them up to its own level, where every term of law is translated
into a term of love, and the very notion of a Kingdom passes into that
of a Father's house of many mansions, the reverse process has taken
place. Love has forsaken its mission of converting law to its own
essence, and become a timid and apologetic fugitive, harried by the
police.
No wonder that men declare themselves perplexed by Christianity. No
wonder they find this mixture unacceptable. No wonder that official
Christianity, tied up as it is with a political system which manages
its own business none too well, is continually breaking down under the
assaults of a critical age, which has grown almost as tired of the one
thing as of the other.
I am far from saying that Christianity excludes the idea of God as the
moral Governor of the universe or forbids us so to think of him. But
it does not _begin_ with that idea, as we are apt to do. It allows us
to arrive at it, perhaps, at the end of a long pilgrimage in
experience; but if we never get there at all it makes no lamentation,
pulls no long face, and does not treat us as lost souls. It does not
say "Begin with the idea of a Cosmic Potentate and make everything else
fit in with that." It does not require us to dismiss from our minds as
blasphemous every thought of God which makes him other than the
omnipotent legislator of the universe. In the religion of Jesus I am
struck by the absence, by the total absence, of all these pompous
conceptions of the Divine Nature, which show such speaking signs of
having originated under lawyers' wigs.
The idea that I do find seems to have originated in a very intimate and
loving comradeship with man and with nature. Indeed, the religion of
Jesus is precisely this spirit of comradeship raised to its highest
power, the spirit which perceives itself to be "not alone," but
lovingly befriended and supported, extending its intuitions to the
heart of the world, to the core of reality, and finding there the
fellowship, the loyalty, the powerful response, the _love_, of which
the finest fellowships and loyalties of earth are the shadows and the
foretaste. In its essence the Gospel is a call to make the same
experiment, the experiment of comradeship, the experiment of
fellowship, the experiment of trusting the heart of things, throwing
self-care to the winds, in the sure and certain faith that you will not
be deserted, forsaken nor betrayed, and that your ultimate interests
are perfectly secure in the hands of the Great Companion. This
insight, this sure and firm apprehension of a spirit at hand, swiftly
responsive to any trust we have in its answering fidelity, coming our
way the moment we beckon it, motionless and irresponsive till we hoist
the flag of our faith and claim its fellowship, but then mighty to
save--this is the centre, the kernel, the growing point of the
Christian religion, which, when we have it all else is secure, and when
we have it not all else is precarious. God, said Jesus, is spirit: man
is spirit no less; and when the two meet in fellowship there is
religion.
I am approaching my conclusion and must gather up my threads.
All along my theme has been that we make a mistake when we look to
religion to relieve us of the perplexities and difficulties of life,
whether intellectual or moral. In a sense we should look for the
opposite. Religion will bring our perplexities to a focus; will
concentrate them on a point; will show us in one clear and burning
vision the depth of the mystery that confronts us in life. But in
raising our difficulties to that high level it will raise our nature to
a higher level still, by liberating faith, courage and love, qualities
that spring from a single root. In revealing the world as a world fit
for heroes to live in, that is, a difficult world, it will arouse also
the heroic spirit in ourselves, which is fit to live under those
conditions. It will give us a part to play in life which puts our
souls on their mettle at many points, but it will also give the
spiritual power which stands the strain and even rejoices in it. It
will show the Cross we have to bear; but it will also show the Christ
who bears it, and will awaken the Christ, as a victorious principle,
within us all. Pain and suffering it will not remove; but it will
quicken a divine substance within us, which is more than conqueror over
these things. And, lastly, when courage, faith and love have won the
victory at the supreme point of their trial, and so established
themselves as the ruling powers, it will turn these qualities back upon
life as a whole, will interpenetrate everything with their energy, and
transfigure everything with their radiance, and raise everything to
their level, and so fill the world with music and beauty and joy.
So, then, in expecting religion to reconcile the world with our notions
of a "good time"; to smooth and simplify our path; to accommodate
itself to what we, in our weaker moments, desire--in looking for this
we look for what is not forthcoming. Religion will meet us, not on the
level of our weakest moments, but on the level of our strongest. It
will give us power rather than satisfaction; courage to face danger
rather than safeguards against it; inspiration rather than explanation.
Whatever satisfaction it brings will come through the power; whatever
safeguards, through the courage; whatever explanation, through the
inspiration. It will not teach us to see no evil in the world; but
immensely increase our resources for dealing with evil when seen. A
power in the world which is for ever on the side of those who are brave
enough to trust it, causing all things to work together for their
ultimate good, and making them conquerors, and more than conquerors,
over whatever confronts them, whether in life or in death,--this, and
nothing less than this, is what we have to expect and to ask for. Our
mistake has been not that we have asked for too much, but that we have
asked for too little.
A true religion will be optimistic. It will end in a radiant and
joyous vision of the meaning of life. But it will not begin with that,
will not give us that for nothing. The radiant and joyous vision will
not come to us through listening to arguments, through proving that
there is more happiness than misery in the world, through shutting our
eyes to the dark side of things and looking only at the bright, through
crying "Peace, peace" when there is no peace, nor by any of the cheap
and shallow devices on which mere verbal optimism is made to rest. We
must win our optimism at the sword's point. We must pay the price. We
must go through "the Dark Valley" and not listen to the man who thinks
he knows of a way round. At certain stages of the journey we shall see
the whole creation, as St Paul did, groaning and travailing together in
pain until now; and only at the last stage, when loyalty has stood the
test, shall we see this world of suffering and death delivered, by
redeeming love, into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
Such a religion as I have been trying to describe will be found in
Christianity--yes, and in other religions also. Far be it from me to
set up an exclusive claim for Christianity at this point. Anyone who
does that goes a long way towards forfeiting his title to be called a
Christian. Let each of us look for truth where it is most accessible
and where it speaks the language he best understands. For most of us
here Christianity has this advantage. It gives the sharpest point to
the challenge of life as we know life.
Christianity is the simplest and most difficult religion in the world,
best adapted therefore for strong races, endowed with deep but silent
affections, and with the plain-dealing mind whose conversation is "Yea,
yea and nay, nay." But here let me utter a word of warning.
There is an outcry in these days for a Christianity shorn of its
complications, and reduced to its simplest and most intelligible form.
It is a thing greatly to be desired. I have been pleading for it in
what has gone before. But let nobody suppose that, when Christianity
has been reduced to its simplest and most intelligible form, it will be
found an easy religion to put into practice. It will be found
immensely more difficult than before. Only there will be this further
difference. Whereas the old difficulties, those that came from
presenting Christianity in complicated forms, merely irritated and
confused us and caused us to waste ourselves upon irrelevance, the new
ones, the difficulties of simple Christianity, meet us on a far higher
level, introduce us to essentials, and give us a battle to fight that
is really worth fighting. That is an enormous difference, but not in
the direction of making simple Christianity easier than the other kind.
It has been said that Christianity reduced to its simplest and most
intelligible form needs only two words to express it--"Follow me." It
has been said, also, that if all Christian men for the next twenty
years would give up the attempt to _explain_ Christ and devote their
attention to _following_ him, at the end of that time they would know
more about the person of Christ than they had ever known before, and
they would have put Christianity in a posture to conquer the world. I
accept all that. But before we claim that our problem is solved, let
us think for a moment what "following Christ" really means, and to what
it commits us, when we make it the keyword of simple Christianity.
Whoever sets out to follow Christ will have to follow him a long way
and to follow him into some dark places. The path we have to follow is
a narrow one. It runs all the time on the edge of a precipitous
mystery, sometimes taking you up to the sunlit heights and the Mount of
Transfiguration, and sometimes taking you down into the fires of
suffering and into the shadows of death. Following Christ means that
when you find these dizzy things before you, these dark things in your
path, you go through them and not round them. Have you a good head?
Have you a stout heart? Are you loyal to the leader in front? Easy
enough while the road runs by the shining shores of the Lake of
Galilee, but not so easy when it turns into the Garden of Gethsemane
and becomes the Via Dolorosa.
There are those who think they have followed Christ when they have
obeyed the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, loved their neighbour
as themselves and done unto others as they would that others should do
to them. To follow as far as that is to go a long way, much longer
indeed than most of us can claim to have gone. But to stop _there_ is
to stop in the middle, to miss the end of the journey, to come short of
the point of arrival, where the key lies to the meaning and value of
all that has gone before. We are too apt to rest in the thought that
to follow Christ is merely to follow a teacher or a reformer, so that
enough has been done when we have repeated his doctrine of Fatherhood
and brotherhood, voted for his precepts, and practised as much of them
as we can, or perhaps only as much as we find convenient. Let there be
no mistake as to the inadequacy of all that, whether presented in a
simple form or any other. To follow Christ is to follow a victor in
life's battle, a conqueror over suffering and death, through the
completeness of his loyalty to the Great Companion. Hence the power
which makes his teaching live; hence the driving force which makes his
Gospel effective for the regeneration of society.
You see, then, what is involved. Unless we can follow him through the
point where his victory was won, all the rest will not amount to very
much. We must follow him to the _end_ if we are to be his disciples.
It is said of his first followers that when they came to this last lap
of the journey, when the road before them took that critical turn which
led through the Garden of Gethsemane, and became a Via Dolorosa, they
all forsook him and fled. Do not some of our modernized versions of
Christianity show a similar weakness, a similar reluctance to grasp the
nettle, a similar tendency to stop short in their following of Christ
precisely at the critical point? They forsake him and flee--flee for
their lives!--This it is that makes simple Christianity so difficult;
so difficult but so splendid, so infinitely worth achievement.
There was a phase in the ministry of Jesus, a comparatively untroubled
one, when he went about among men in a temper of radiant optimism,
declaring his confidence in the Divine Companion, a confidence so
complete that all anxiety for the morrow was banished and the soul
freed for a life of the utmost generosity and beneficence. "Be ye
therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." Nothing
too bad to be incurable; nothing too good to be hoped for; nothing too
high to be attempted; nothing so precious that we cannot afford to give
it away. Yes, even that! For there is that within the hero which is
so rich that he can afford to give his very life away, and be none the
poorer, but the richer; a strange discovery, made by many a brave lad
during the recent war, as he prepared himself to "go over the top," and
thought of his mother or of his beloved.
Then came another phase, such as we too must meet sooner or later, when
his mission had to be fulfilled not by saying these things, not by
saying anything, but by doing and bearing up to the limit of courage
and endurance. The silence of Jesus in the presence of Pilate is the
silence of one for whom the day of speech is over and the day of battle
begun, the ultimatum delivered, and the trumpet sounding the attack.
Where are his followers now? They have all run away, as verbal
Christianity always runs away when it comes to the critical point.
Fugitives from the crisis, every man of them! And what of that radiant
optimism that broke out by the shores of the Galilean Lake? Well, it
came near to breaking-point, as near as it could without actually
giving way. But it held! It carried him through! The infinite
Friendliness did not forsake him in his extremity, as his followers had
done. At one point he thought it had forsaken him, but it had not.
For its nature is to be as true to the loyal soul as any loyal soul can
be to it; waiting to attest its presence wherever the courage exists to
make the experiment of trusting it. All prayers to it sum themselves
up into one, which when it comes from the heart makes other prayers
almost unnecessary--"Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit." _In
tuas manus, Domine, meam animam commisi_.
So far, then, as I am able to understand these high matters, there is
no such thing for any of us as getting rid of religious perplexity.
But there is such a thing as exchanging the perplexities which depress
and weaken our nature for those which exalt and strengthen it. This
world is ill adapted to the fearful and the unbelieving; but most
exquisitely adapted to the loyal, the loving and the brave. To
poltroonery of one kind or another the Spirit makes no concessions; it
wears the face of a hard master to all pusillanimous demands. To its
own children it is not only gracious but faithful. It gives them
commissions bearing the sign manual of God; shares their perplexities;
goes with them into their battles; stands by them in their time of
need; interprets their bright hours to a tenfold brightness; and
changes the mystery of their pain from an unfathomable darkness to an
unfathomable light.
Behind the battle of the Creeds lies the battle of life--a much more
serious affair. Wherever the seriousness of the greater battle is
deeply felt the acrimony of the lesser is mitigated. The two battles
are not unconnected, but let us take them in their right order.
Churches and sects which begin by fighting for their creeds are apt to
end by fighting for their own importance--which is contrary to the
spirit of the Christian religion and to the express command of Christ.
Are there not some among us who think that the way to establish their
own creed is to destroy the creeds of their neighbours? But is that
so? Does the flourishing of my form of Christianity depend on the
languishing of yours? I say it does not! The more your form prospers
the better for mine. Christianity is big enough to find room for both
of us. The more devout you are in holding and practising what you
believe the more you help me in being faithful to what I profess.
There is only one way in which the truth or falsity of any creed can be
demonstrated--that is, by trying whether we can live up to it and
observing what happens. What is needed, therefore, first of all, is
not that we should destroy our neighbour's creed, but that we should
help him to live up to it by living up to our own. I know of no other
way in which the union of Christendom can be brought about.
[1] For doubts on this point see the last chapter of _Our Social
Heritage_, by Professor Graham Wallas.
[2] I refer to the fact that for the last twenty years I have been
Editor of the _Hibbert Journal_.
THE END
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