Whitsuntide this year comes on the same day as St. Barnabas' Day
gives me a subject, the most solemn subject I have ever taken
at Marlborough--viz., the effect of the HOLY GHOST upon human
character. St. Barnabas was one of the most attractive characters in
the New Testament, an example of attractive goodness. He was such a
_gentleman_ in all he did, and therefore, if we could have produced
in us, by the HOLY GHOST, the wonderful character that the HOLY
GHOST produced in St. Barnabas, we might have that description used
of us; just think what it would be for men to say of us--"He was a
good man, full of the HOLY GHOST and of faith."
What, then, is the effect of the HOLY GHOST upon human character?
You might say, "But do we have the falling of the HOLY GHOST, too?"
Why did we have that hymn this morning, "Our blest Redeemer, ere
He breathed"? I was asked to choose the hymns, and I chose that
one because it so beautifully describes the indwelling of the HOLY
GHOST on your Confirmation day, and that is what makes the School
Confirmation the crowning event of the year. At Confirmation you
have the falling of the HOLY GHOST in exactly the same way as
happened in the early Church. Yesterday, for instance, I confirmed,
under the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, two hundred and thirty
people of all ages. "What is the effect of the HOLY GHOST upon human
character?" Some people imagine that what is called "doctrine" has
no practical value. But is this true?
(1) The first thing that the HOLY GHOST does is to _convict the
world of sin_. He shows people what they really are. You may have
heard of the National Mission of Repentance and Hope, and wondered
what it was. I will tell you. I have just come from a tour round
twenty-four dioceses in support of that Mission. I do not for one
moment understand by that Mission that we do not believe we are
fighting GOD's battles in the war. I believe that those three
hundred Old Marlburians who have fallen in the war have died as
martyrs. I believe the world is being redeemed by precious blood
again to-day, and that that precious blood is being mingled with
_the_ Precious Blood. I believe also that the freedom of the world
and the national honour are being saved to-day by the precious blood
of our sons and brothers. It is, therefore, not because we do not
believe we are doing the right thing in this war that we are engaged
in this Mission; it is because we believe we are called to save
the freedom of the world, and the national honour, and to see the
Nailed Hand prevailing over the Mailed Fist, that we have to repent.
Admiral Beatty said, in effect, that we should never win the war
until the nations came back to GOD, and it is Lord Roberts (peace to
his ashes, and glory to his memory!) who, just before he died, said
we had got the men, the ammunition, and the guns now; what we wanted
was the nation on its knees. And it is to bring the nation to its
knees, back to GOD, that is the great object of the National Mission
of Repentance and Hope. A messenger in connection with that Mission
will very likely be sent down to Marlborough.
Meanwhile let the HOLY GHOST do His work. He is _the_ great
Messenger, _the_ great Missioner. Ask the HOLY GHOST to show you
yourselves as you really are. It is the hardest thing in the
world to see this (easier for a boy than a grown-up man), but we
cannot get on in the spiritual life unless we are shown ourselves
as we are. If a light is shown into a darkened room, the dust is
discernible on the furniture, and stains are seen where it was
thought no stains were; and we cannot carry out the teaching of the
Gospel, and cast the beam out of our own eye, until we have seen it.
All progress really begins with humility.
We must therefore let the HOLY GHOST show us ourselves as we are.
"What does GOD think of me?" should be the first question we should
ask ourselves, and the HOLY GHOST will give us the answer. But that
is only the first thing the HOLY GHOST does. If He left us there,
contemplating our stains, our infirmities, and our sins, it would
not be much of a message of a Gospel of Hope.
(2) No, the next beautiful work of the HOLY GHOST is that He takes
CHRIST and shows Him to us. I paid a touching visit the other day
to an old clergyman who, some people would have said, was past his
work. He was ill and in lonely lodgings, and I went to see him. The
old clergyman gave me a great lesson. Instead of complaining, of
saying that he had been a failure, had been neglected and passed
over, he said: "I hope I shall live a few years longer, Bishop,
to preach the glorious Gospel." There he was, lonely, ill, passed
over by the world, yet feeling the great joy of simply preaching
the glorious Gospel. We are apt to get mechanical about our
religion. Even in the lovely service here at Marlborough, we are
sometimes--very often, perhaps--wandering in thought, and inclined
to become mechanical in our religion. The HOLY GHOST makes it
living. He takes of CHRIST, shows Him to us, and makes the whole
thing real. Therefore, our second prayer should be that the HOLY
GHOST will make religion a reality to us, make us understand the
glory of the Incarnation, that GOD actually came to earth in mortal
form, for our sakes.
(3) Thirdly, the HOLY GHOST is the Comforter. He comforts us and
helps us to comfort other people. I remember, when I was at
Marlborough last year, that I had several boys in to see me, one of
them a little fellow who had lost his father in Gallipoli; and I
tried to comfort him. The HOLY GHOST is the only Comforter. When one
goes to a mother, as I have done, who has lost, perhaps, three sons
(and in this connection we at Marlborough shall always think of the
father and mother of those three splendid sons, the Woodroffes), one
is at a loss to say anything; one cannot comfort them oneself, but
has to depend upon the higher power; and my experience is that the
HOLY GHOST brings the Balm of Gilead, which no earthly agency can
produce, a heavenly balm of comfort for the mourners which enables
us to go out and comfort others. There is no comforter better than
the younger boy of a family, who, filled with the HOLY GHOST, goes
home in the holidays to comfort his father and mother in the loss of
an older son.
(4) But, of course, the old words "comfort" and "comforter," as
applied to the HOLY GHOST, meant far more than we call "comfort."
"Comfort" in the case of the HOLY GHOST, means far more than
sympathy; it means fortitude, courage, inspiration. The comfort of
the Comforter always strengthens; mere sympathy sometimes weakens.
We have got to bring home the bright view of death, to produce a
pride that "my boy, my brother, my husband, should have died." I
believe that we have not anything like a bright enough view of death.
It is the Comforter that can make us believe that. It is the
Comforter that can breathe fortitude into the splendid mothers and
wives of England, and to the lads in the trenches, up to their knees
in mud, facing danger every moment, that can bring fortitude to the
nation; and it is the task of the Church to breathe fortitude to the
nation to go on until the end.
(5) The HOLY GHOST has two more beautiful things to do for us, and
is always ready to do them. The first of these is to guide us. The
other day I heard the hurrying footsteps of a layman coming after
me in the street as I was walking to a meeting. The layman, who
told me that he was a churchwarden of one of the churches in the
Diocese of London, and had never spoken to his Bishop before, asked
for a message to give in an address. I gave him the same message I
had given to a young Bishop some months before[26]: "Take one day
at a time, and trust the HOLY SPIRIT to see you through." This is
a great truth, and one which I will pass on to you, as you leave
this place to take up your work in the larger world outside. I
remember having asked a rich clergyman, at the beginning of a Sunday
afternoon, whether he would go down and take a very poor parish in
the East of London, where there was no money and the credit of the
parish was very much shaken. He did not at first seem inclined to
go, and, thinking nothing more about it at the time, I went into St.
Paul's Cathedral, and preached upon the text, "Led by the SPIRIT of
GOD." In the evening I received a pencilled note from the clergyman,
stating that he had been in the Cathedral, that he was led by the
SPIRIT of GOD to go to the parish. He went, and splendid work he
did there. There is not one of you who need be left to your own
guidance; the SPIRIT of GOD will lead every one, and guide you all
your lives.
[26] Mentioned on p. 189.
(6) The sixth thing which the HOLY SPIRIT does for you is to pray
_in you_. It is not very easy to pray. I expect many of you get a
bit disheartened about your prayers; you kneel when "Preces" are
called in dormitory, and get up feeling cold and dead, and that it
is sometimes rather a matter of form. Prayer does not depend upon
feeling; we ought to pray in the belief that the HOLY GHOST will
pray in us, and in that way GOD calls to GOD, the deep calls to
the deep, and the smallest boy in the School is able to share the
supreme energy of GOD.
You see, therefore, that this doctrine or truth about the HOLY GHOST
is the most practical thing in the world. Resolve to-day that you
will really make your bodies temples of the HOLY GHOST. The boy
who is filled with the HOLY GHOST will be the merriest boy in the
School and the pluckiest at games; he will always be chivalrous and
unselfish, and there will be a something about him, besides, that
will really breathe the presence of the Heavenly Spirit, who dwells
in him. You must have a little more spiritual ambition, and all of
you make your prayer that you may be, like St. Barnabas, "good men,
full of the HOLY GHOST and of faith."
V
THE WAR AND RELIGION
THE WAR AND RELIGION
It was not until I had had a little correspondence with the
Secretaries that I decided upon the subject for my address as "The
War and Religion." I was very anxious not in the slightest degree
to violate any canon expressed or unexpressed with regard to the
subject of these addresses, and I think I can assure any in this
audience who may have their doubts upon this matter that they will
leave the hall without having their consciences offended in the
slightest degree, even if they may profoundly disagree with the
conclusions to which I may come. And I am encouraged in saying
this by a little incident which occurs every year. I am Visitor of
Queen's College in Harley Street, founded entirely by the influence
of Frederick Denison Maurice, and it is my pleasant duty to give
the girl members of it an annual address. My subject, at their
special request, is always Religion; and although quite a large
proportion are Jewish girls, I find that they look upon me in after
life as quite as much their friend as the others, and come to me in
their troubles, and they prefer that I shall speak to them out of
the deepest convictions of my heart, rather than offer them some
trite and colourless observations which mean nothing.
After all, there is great truth in the proverb that "the shoemaker
should stick to his last," and it cannot be entirely without
purpose that apparently about once in five years an ecclesiastic is
brought on to the scene here in his plain and sober raiment amid
the glittering galaxy of Generals and actors and scientists and
other distinguished men who in other years fill this distinguished
office. I have this summer had the high privilege of visiting
every battleship, battle cruiser, and most of the smaller ships
of the Grand Fleet of Great Britain, and the thousands of sailors
I addressed instantly caught the idea that of course I came to
represent "Religion." I told an East-End story which appealed at
once to the lower deck, so many of whom come from places like
Bethnal Green, Poplar, Stepney, and similar localities at Portsmouth
and Chatham. A rather shy East-End curate, on knocking at a door,
heard a voice from the wash-tub at the back ask in a shrill voice,
"Well, Sally, who is it?" and was rather depressed to hear Sally
shriek back, "Please, mother, _it's religion_." But, as I told
the sailors, my invariable advice to such a man is this, "Don't
be ashamed of representing religion; you were not dressed in a
pudding hat and a dog collar and a long black coat to talk about the
weather."
I make no apology then for plunging at once into the question
of "_The War and Religion_." It is very striking to notice the
different way in which the War has affected different minds with
regard to religion. While I have had some poor young widows throw
down their Bibles and (for a time) give up their prayers when their
husbands were killed, I have found others who in their sorrow have
found the comfort and force of religion for the first time; again,
on the battlefield, while some express themselves coarsened by the
"beastly work," as they express it, which they have to do, others
write, "Nothing does any good out here but prayer and trust in GOD;
we all feel it. War is a great _Purge_." Or again, "There are no
atheists out here; there are few of us who do not put up a prayer in
the trenches."
1. Let us look then first at the _case against religion_, and then
the special _case against the Christian religion_ as deduced in many
minds by the existence of the present War.
(1) I take Religion, as the word implies, to be a TIE _which binds
us to someone_, and I am further assuming that to have any religion
worth the name, that "Someone" must be good and just and Righteous.
Well, now, can we not easily see what a strong _prima facie_ case
could be made out against the existence of a really strong and good
and Righteous Supreme Being in the light of the appalling suffering
and the at present unpunished wickedness on a gigantic scale which
is being witnessed at the present time.
"Why did GOD ever allow the War? and if there is a GOD, why does
He not stop it?" is a question which is dinned into my ears from
morning to night by anxious mothers and even by men who have not had
time to think very deeply over the mystery of GOD's dealings with
mankind.
For nine years I used Sunday by Sunday to lecture and answer
questions in the great East London Victoria Park. I can imagine
the questions they are asking now. "Either He _cannot_ or He will
not"--this was always the favourite dilemma on which they sought
to impale me about the suffering in East London. "Either your GOD
_cannot_ stop it or He will not." "Either He is a tyrant who gloats
in it all or He is a weak ruler who has no control of His world."
And these questions, which were difficult enough to answer then,
are intensified in their point to-day. It is difficult to select
out of the horrors which have passed before our eyes one worse than
another, but probably the most hellish thing done on earth in the
last five hundred years has been the attempted extermination of the
Armenian race; even as described in the restrained pages of Lord
Bryce, it has more tragedy than any battlefield, for there at least
men die in the heat of battle for what they think a great cause, but
here, in cold blood and with every circumstance of bestiality and
lust, women and children were slowly done to death. And yet _"GOD
does nothing_." This is the accusation. No thunderbolt comes from
Heaven; the brave Russians do something to avenge the hideous crime,
but GOD--where is GOD? He is like the ancient gods described by
Tennyson--
"On the hills, like gods together,
Careless of mankind,"
and all this cry from sinking ships and praying hands is to Him
"A tale of little meaning,
Though the words are strong."
(2) But if the case against religion at all is strong owing to the
War, still more is the War supposed to be fatal to the _Christian
Religion_. Here into the world it came two thousand years ago with
a great flourish of trumpets about "Peace on earth, good will to
men," and what is the result?
After two thousand years, the bloodiest war which has yet taken
place on earth; waste of treasure beyond counting every day, and
waste of something much more precious than material treasure, the
precious blood of the best manhood of the world. I have received
their broken bodies into my own arms in the front dressing stations;
I have consecrated the graveyards where their dear bodies lie. I
know that tens of thousands of those who would have been the fathers
of the future race of mankind are lying beneath these little crosses
in Flanders or Gallipoli, and that many a maiden will die childless
to-day, because those who would have been husbands in the fair days
of peace are buried now in a soldier's grave.
And all this--and here lies the bitterness of the
accusation--started by the great Christian nations of the world. The
Mohammedan Turk joins in as the war goes on, but then only under
the influence or domination of a Christian Power. "Could you ask,"
cries the triumphant opponent of the Christian religion, "for a
more complete proof of the breakdown of your Christianity than the
spectacle of Europe to-day?"
II. It is clear then that we who stand for religion, and especially
those of us who stand for the Christian religion, have got our work
cut out for us to-day to answer these accusations. I want the men
and women whose work lies largely in other spheres to enter into our
difficulties. We are asking people not only to pray, but to pray
more earnestly and with greater faith and hope; we are not sitting
down with Buddhist resignation under the inevitable. "If it rains,
it rains, and if it doesn't rain, it doesn't rain," was represented
to me as the philosophy of the Indian troops whom I had the honour
of entertaining for a week in my grounds at the Coronation of King
Edward VII. On the contrary, we are in the midst of a great National
Mission of Repentance and Hope; we have the fullest intention of
winning the nation to GOD; we are adopting as our text the saying of
that grand old man, Lord Roberts, "We have the guns now, and the men
and the ammunition; what we want now is _a nation on its knees_."
We have indeed our task cut out for us, and I hope that it may
at least be of some intellectual interest, if not some spiritual
profit, to the thinking men and women here to hear the arguments
upon which we rely.
(1) In the first place, _we definitely repudiate the picture of GOD
as the arbitrary ruler_ who can do exactly what He likes; at least
we repudiate this as the revealed picture of the way in which He has
willed to act in His relation to mankind.
Probably the passage in the Bible which has given the greatest
colour to this idea, and which certainly is largely responsible for
the distortion of Christianity which is associated with the name of
Calvin, is the picture of the Potter and the Clay. "Shall the thing
formed say to him that made it, why hast thou made me thus? Hath not
the Potter power over the clay, to make one vessel unto honour and
one into dishonour?" This is the passage from St. Paul's writings
which is most widely quoted in this connection. At the first blush
this seems to confirm our worst fears; but when we trace this
illustration of the Potter to the original passage in Jeremiah we
find an absolutely different picture; the potter is a patient,
resourceful person who, so far from having arbitrary powers over
the clay, is being defeated at every moment by the refractoriness
of the clay with which he has to deal. He attempts to make, let us
say, a porcelain vase, but the clay will not respond to his efforts;
there is a flaw in the material, or the clay is not of the kind to
make such a design possible; he starts again with his "Gospel of
the second best," and this time he succeeds in making a humbler but
useful bowl. Or again, in the course of his work, something goes
wrong, and "the vessel becomes marred in the hands of the potter";
but even now he is not defeated; he tries again--to use the words of
Jeremiah--"_he makes it again another vessel, as it seems good to
the potter to make it_." This is the real picture of the potter, and
it is a touching picture when you consider that it is meant for all
ages to describe the dealings of GOD with the human race, of which
we ourselves are members.
Of course, the question entirely hinges upon what GOD meant mankind
to be. We used to discuss this question in East London Sunday after
Sunday--"Did He mean mankind to be like clocks, bound to go right,
like puppets who would dance to the strings which He pulled; or did
He mean them to be what we call human fallible men, who might go
right or wrong, but who in any case had the freewill to do either?"
And it is a striking testimony to the common sense of a great
working-class audience that, while they started with a predilection
in favour of being made to go right, after an afternoon's discussion
they invariably came to the conclusion that with all its risks it
was better to be men and women; that forced goodness was no goodness
at all, and that if GOD did wish to have as His companions in
eternity companions worth having, He could have done nothing less
than endow them with freewill.
Now, if this is so, it is obvious that the metaphor of the Potter
and the Clay has a great bearing on the question of "_The War and
Religion_."
Let us assume, as we are bound to do, that the first design of the
Great Potter was a porcelain vase of universal Peace. He made men
_of one blood_ in every nation of the earth; he loves to make men
"of one mind in a house." Work and trial were to be part of man's
lot, but not War. The idea that War is in itself a glorious thing
may be the doctrine of Treitschke or Bernhardi, but cannot, I
believe, be found in the Bible.
This, then, is His first design, but the clay will not take this
design. There is a stubborn element in human nature determined upon
War; there is a "throw back" to Paganism with which the Potter has
to reckon. It is not His fault. To coerce, to crush Freewill is to
crush His own Image in mankind, to make any kind of freely chosen
goodness impossible. He must give up for the time, with what regret
we can never know, His first design. He may see of the travail of
His soul _one day_ and be satisfied, but, for the present, He must
bring in the "Gospel of the second best." He will bring good out of
this evil; He will produce a bowl of unselfish service. The devil
makes the War, but GOD will turn the devil's own weapons against
himself, for He will produce a spectacle of unselfish service such
as the world has never seen before.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we are looking at to-day,
what we are seeing portrayed daily before our eyes. We have never
seen such a sight in our time before. With an unselfish devotion
which has been the admiration of the world, the young men have flung
themselves into the battle. To take our own nation alone, to imagine
that five million men would have freely offered themselves for
service would have been thought incredible in the year in which Sir
Ian Hamilton delivered the interesting address to you, which I have
read, on "National Service." Nor is it only the young men; there is
not an idle young woman in London to-day, and I do not suppose there
is in Birmingham; and as for the children, a little boy of nine
shall speak for them. Asked whether he minded his beautiful home
being turned into a soldiers' hospital, he replied, "I _love_ having
the soldiers here, Bishop." _We can't go back to our old life after
the War._
Even, therefore, without going further, as we are bound to do
presently with the special teaching of the Christian religion, this
conception of the Potter and the Clay relieves our minds of its
worst fears. God _does_ care for His human children; this slaughter
of one man by another is not according to His first or even His
ultimate design. He does not stop the mischief any more than He will
pick off with His Hand obstacles placed to-night in the path of the
Scotch express. He will not stop the wreck of it by main force, but
meanwhile He is not inactive. The moulding Hand is hard at work;
monuments of fortitude in matrons and wives, glorious specimens
of unrivalled courage in their sons and husbands, issue from the
workshop every day, and, to use the words of the Psalmist, "The
fierceness of man turns to GOD's praise."
III. But now we have a more formidable task, and that is to meet
the charge that the very existence, and especially the virulence of
the War, constitutes a _breakdown of historic Christianity_. I have
already admitted the force of the _prima facie_ case which can be
made out to sustain this argument, but a singular circumstance may
well make us pause before we follow this specious, but, as I hope to
show, shallow argument.