most of us, "I believe one Catholick and Apostolick Church." It is a
crowning mercy that we do say it; that we do bear witness so outright to
the state of sin in which we dwell; the clause does keep the mind of
Christ and our own duty before us, of establishing as the first, perhaps
the only hope of this sin-stained, war-stained earth, the brotherhood of
believers which shall be one.
Then came the war, and in many ways the war, which has in every
direction cleared vision, and both deepened and simplified thought, has
brought home to every Christian both the disaster of disunion, and the
imperative need of attempting unity.
You will expect me to give some account of the reaction of the chaplains
and the Church in France to this conviction. Perhaps I should make clear
my own position. Folk probably term me an "advanced High Churchman." I
should call myself "a Catholic"--an English Catholic, if you like--, at
any rate, one who cannot fairly be accused of ignorance of the details
and depths of our divisions; nor of underestimating their real
importance.
The priests who went out as Chaplains to the Forces had an experience
somewhat similar to that of colonial or missionary priests--they
exercised their ministry under totally new conditions, and in a new
atmosphere. So did the Roman Catholics, Nonconformists, and
Presbyterians, but of course I do not speak for them in what follows.
But all the Church of England padres--high, low, broad--tell exactly the
same tale of their experience; between them there has been no division;
they have worked together in perfect harmony and keenness, largely
appropriating each other's methods. In a word, they have discovered how
false and artificial is the partisan atmosphere of home religion; and
when they return, will find it hard to tolerate any continuance of it.
The Church of England is as a matter of fact divided roughly into three
sections, by no means corresponding to the "high, low, and broad," of
the church journals. Most Church of England men scarcely know what these
terms mean. No, it consists of a devoted inmost section, regular
churchgoers and communicants--and you will pardon me for thinking them
the best instructed, the freest, and the sturdiest Christians in the
world. They are of course in a minority, but they are actually numerous
enough to occupy the time and care of our whole ministry, which is far
below reasonable strength. Then comes a large fringe, who come to Church
occasionally, or even regularly, in the evening; who make little or no
use of the Sacraments, or of the more intimate devotions and
instructions provided: they are well disposed; but are not consciously
prepared to make _sacrifices_ for their faith; and indeed are somewhat
ignorant of its contents and demands. Then thirdly, there is a yet
vaster multitude, baptised, married, and buried, perhaps by the Church,
and therefore counting themselves Church of England, but who come but
rarely within the orbit of Church life and teaching; and who, not to
mince words, are semi-pagan. Only _semi_-pagan because the ethics,
morals and traditions of England are Christian; and these people,
knowing little of Jesus Christ, and understanding less, and not
consciously moved by Him, yet not infrequently rise to heights of love
and sacrifice which would adorn the life of a saint.
The mass of our parishioners in France, then, was not made up of the
inner circle--we were lucky if we found three or four in a unit--but of
the ill-instructed fringe, and the totally ignorant multitudes. The
horror and boredom of war, the personal insecurity, the difficulty of
understanding the ways of God, made all friendly to the parson with whom
hitherto they had never come into contact; and caused large numbers to
think things out, and to hunger for an understanding of God. Religion
became a common topic of discussion. The padres found themselves in a
larger world, where old labels and divisions simply had no meaning; and
where the first necessity and work was to preach Christ and teach the
meaning of the Faith. They felt also, very quickly, that this interest
in ultimate things did not mean that men became friendly to organised
religion in any form. On the contrary, their hostility and distrust
toward all religious bodies were marked. The chaplains had that common
and dreadful experience of foreign missionaries, of feeling themselves
alone, closed round by thick dark walls of unsympathy and worse. They
longed for the help and support of any genuine friend of Christ,
whatever body he belonged to. I was called upon to preach the National
Mission in a peculiarly hostile and irresponsive camp of motor lorry
drivers, who much resented the use of "their" Y.M.C.A. hut for such
religious purposes. A Wesleyan minister had charge of it, and got far
more of their blunt language than I the visitor did; but he worked
undismayed and unreservedly for all he was worth, for the National
Mission and for me. The alliance was natural, real, inevitable. He and
I, and some five or six men of that camp, were clearly on one side, and
the rest of it on the other, of an exceeding broad gulf. With this as a
daily experience, a man's values changed rapidly; and it became quite
obvious that, even to begin to fight the battle of Christianity in the
modern world, Christians must be united.
This assurance was reinforced by the quite extraordinary scandal that
the mere fact of religious disunion caused both to officers and men. It
was the big, obvious "damper" on the very threshold of
Christianity--"see how these Christians hate one another." Officers
would throw the taunt up again and again in the Mess, and the men lying
down to talk themselves to sleep in their comfortless barns would begin
to talk about religion with at heart a wistful longing to understand it
and know its help and power. At once, someone would bring up the picture
of squabbling denominations, and the wistfulness and hope would be slain
by scorn. Next day and every day, the glaring scandal would be laid
before the chaplain; who had little enough to answer. Of course, it is
quite false to suppose that the existence and continuance of division
are due to the clergy. Our English schisms have been caused at least as
much by over-eager laymen as by over-eager clergy; and I think if it
were left to the clergy alone the process of reuniting would be very
rapid. In our Division, for instance, the three Nonconformist Chaplains
to the Forces and I used to talk over the whole question; one was an
orthodox Wesleyan, another a Primitive, and the other a United
Methodist; and they did not hesitate to say that Methodist reunion had
taken place more than ten years ago if it had been left to the ministers
alone. But the average Englishman naturally blames the official
representatives of religion, their ministries, for the obvious and open
disgrace of division in the religion of love; he is ignorant of the
excuses that history, and the real importance of the matters in dispute,
afford; he only sees the evil fact; and it is quite enough by itself to
excuse his closer association with so harsh a contradiction of the first
principle of Christ and Christianity.
Then again in France, one came up violently against the sheer nuisance
and waste of division. Imagine upon a Friday every C.O. and adjutant
(and adjutants are always over-worked) of every unit approached by three
Chaplains--Church of England, Roman Catholic, and Nonconformist; and
requested to make different arrangements at different times for
different fractions of his command to attend divine service on the
Sunday. This in the midst of modern war, where organisation for war
purposes is complex and laborious enough. The mere typing and
circulating of these arrangements at Brigade and Divisional H.Q. mean in
sum total a vast expenditure of paper and labour. The chaplains, who, I
hope, are at least gentlemen, feel considerable shame at being the
guiltless authors of these confusions. And the effect is so deplorable.
Just when the nation is one, just when each military unit seeks to
promote, for mere military efficiency, the _esprit de corps_ of its
oneness, the religion of the one Christ enters as a thing which almost
flaunts fissure. Or again, think of the mere waste of pastoral
efficiency involved in this fact. Each infantry brigade consists roughly
of four battalions, and three or four somewhat smaller units (R.A.M.C,
M.G.C., etc.). For these there are four chaplains, normally two Church
of England (who have 80 per cent. of the men under their care), one
Roman Catholic and one Presbyterian or Nonconformist. The two latter
have to do the best they can each to get round all these scattered units
to provide for small handfuls of men in each. Each of the Church of
England chaplains has to arrange for a whole half brigade. How much more
efficiently and thoroughly, with how much less needless labour, had the
work been done, if an one Church could have set one chaplain to live
each with one battalion, and be responsible as well for one smaller
unit. That had made it easy for a chaplain to know his flock intimately;
now it is next to impossible.
But above and beyond these misfortunes, which after all are details,
must be ranked the big thoughts and truths which have swum into the
sight and experience of everybody. The first is this. Granted that the
Church like the world was surprised by the sudden outbreak of war, and
therefore could not stop it; yet that she should have no voice at all
even to denounce the unrighteousness and barbarities into which the
world plunges deeper every day does strike men as wrong. The Church
cannot speak because she is not one; even suppose all England be
actually one national Church, if it is only national, it will go the way
of the nation, and certainly cannot speak to other nations. For the
Church ever to acquire a world-voice in the cause of love and right
means that reunion and our desires for it must not stop short at home
reunion. Here the witness of Roman Catholicism to the necessity of
international Christianity is vital to the ideal of a reunited
Christendom. Men, far removed from his obedience, did look wistfully to
the Pope, conceding that he alone could speak such a word to the world
in the name of Christ; wide and deep has been the disappointment that it
was not spoken. Here again it is not the Pope, nor Roman Catholicism,
that is to blame, but the whole divided state of Christendom which
paralyses the action of each communion, even the strongest and most
widespread.
I will mention only one other of these big truths--there are many of
them--that have come home to every man; where again Christian division
is the first and fatal obstacle in the way. This time it affects all the
looking forward to the end of the war, and the new world of peace. It is
unthinkable but that the new world must be one of brotherhood, not of
enmity; of love, not of hatred. Otherwise every drop of blood that has
been shed, every tear that has fallen, every death that has been died,
will be so much utter waste. That is the one most intolerably dark
thought in the days of darkness. There is a new policy open to the world
which it has never yet tried, to work toward _the Dominance of Love_.
Every conceivable form of selfishness has in turn dominated the affairs
of nations and men; never yet has love been seriously tried. But there
will be no chance of International Friendship, Brotherhood, Love, if the
Church, the fellowship of Christians, who are after all set in the world
by their own confession, to live by love, to be the exemplars and hot
centre of love, cannot conspicuously shew forth love. How can the
nations be friends before Christians be brothers? We have only to act
according to our creed; and our creed does not only believe in
brotherhood, but in the continual help of God Himself in our efforts to
realise it. The influence upon the world even of a persevering _attempt_
to achieve a united Christendom would surely be decisive. Therefore the
reunion of Christendom becomes now the imperious vocation of every
Christian, the one preventive of our agony and loss going to waste, the
one hope of a loveless world, the clear next objective of the Church of
the living God.
Before returning to the idea of the Dominance of Love, and a
consideration of first steps towards it, let us go back to France, and
watch the relations of the various communions there one to another after
four years of war.
It is new and rather hard to describe. The first few months, when the
Chaplains to the Forces of the various denominations arrived with their
inherited home suspicions one of another, presented many difficulties
that might have increased ill-feeling. An army regulation which allows
the Church of England chaplain only to minister to Church of England
men, and the Roman Catholic to Roman Catholic men, etc., reduced the
chances of such conflict; and at the same time, the vastness and
urgency of the work the chaplains had to do swallowed up all other
thoughts. As a writer in _The Church in the Furnace_ said, "We have
heard with mingled irritation and amusement that good folk at home have
been exercised because an undue proportion of men of this party or that
have been sent out; the question out here is not 'To what party does he
belong?' but 'Is he capable by character and life of influencing men for
good, and winning them for God and His Church?'" Again, the extremely
free use of the Prayer Book and of any and every sort of devotion, at
any and every hour of day and night, has broken up all prejudiced
rigidity of use. Methods that did not help were dropped; methods that
helped men were welcome, from whatever source they came.
So arose a great harmony, a harmony of energy and experiment; and
although in religious matters the Roman Catholics retained their
aloofness, the drawing together of other denominations, as represented
by their clergy, has been constant and perfectly natural and
unsuspicious. United services have not been common; each denomination
has confined itself loyally to its own men; what the statements in the
Lower House of Convocation meant to the effect that the amount of
intercommunion going on at the Front would shock members of that house,
no chaplain has any idea. But the new, fresh, and delightful thing is,
the absolute lack of feeling between, say, the Catholic Anglican and the
Congregationalist. There are numerous occasions on which they must or
can work together; on which they must or can do jobs for one another;
and it has been decisively proved that the existing demarcation and
rivalry in England is a false and needless thing; and that working
together can be a real, unselfconscious and wholly profitable matter.
Our English airs are poisoned by past history and old social cleavage:
in France, the past is forgotten, and social barriers do not exist. It
is a matter of atmosphere, and there it is clear and bracing. Nobody
sacrifices conviction or principle, but they love one another.
I do not say there may not be individual misunderstandings and frictions
now and then, but they are miraculously few. The normal temper is shewn
by the numerous meetings for conference and devotion by the various
chaplains. These are more easy to effect at the bases than in the line;
but they take place everywhere. Typical is the conduct of a small base
on the sea, where the eight chaplains or so meet regularly for devotion,
and each is entrusted with a section of the proceedings each time. For
instance, the American Episcopalian takes the Thanksgiving, the
Presbyterian the Confession, the Wesleyan the Intercession, each of the
others has found from the same chapter of, say, St Mark's Gospel, some
"seed-thought" upon which he is allowed to dilate for four minutes.
There is no constraint or self-consciousness in this gathering. Each is
perfectly happy, and so is the whole.
It is not surprising that out of such an atmosphere and among such
practices a powerful passion for unity has arisen, based on something
far stronger than sentiment, and having in it some of the fire of
revelation. It has not been sought; it has come; it has grown: nobody
expected it. It came, naturally and delightfully. The fifth year of war
will assuredly see some definite policy or action towards greater unity
proceeding from France. The quiet, unhasty, resolved manner in which
the Chaplains to the Forces in France are moving is in striking contrast
to the hasty proposals and hasty actions threatening on the less
prepared soil at home. Indeed in this last sentence I have touched upon
the two actual terrors which the Church in France feels. FIRST, that
hasty and purely _sectional_ action on unimaginative and traditional
lines by the home-clergy will give the old party-feeling a new bitter
lease of life, and by ruining unnecessarily the unity of the Church of
England will destroy the hopes that are so fair of yet wider reunion.
And SECOND, that the local outlook of the lay-folk--in our villages
especially perhaps--and local lines of cleavage, not having been
subjected to the experience and discipline of France, will have the
opposite effect, prevent things moving as fast as they ought, and throw
away the fairest chance of buying up opportunity that ever was given to
the Church of Christ. To these opposite dangers, I shall recur.
The Dominance of Love in the world! Let us see and absorb that big
vision first, and its pathetic urgency: its summons to each body of
Christians, and to every individual member of Christ. Acknowledge its
NECESSITY for the world, and therefore its _immediate_ necessity for the
Church of the God of Love.
And next, before considering practical steps, let us recall certain
postulates and axioms, which in any attempt to realise so magnificent a
vision must always be borne in mind, lest, in our human frailty and
selfwill, we head straight for new misunderstandings and disasters[14].
1. The importance of unity is so great, and division has been found so
calamitous, and the words of Christ are so definite on the subject, that
I think all would admit now that _Division is only to be prolonged for
causes that are backed by divine command_. The larger Christian bodies
are separated by convictions of great importance; but a severe and
honest self-examination will probably lessen the number of differences
which can justify the responsibility of so disastrous a thing as
separation, and then we can set afoot conferences to deal with what
remain. Human temperament, upbringing, tradition, human haste and pride
have much to do with the birth, stabilising and continuance of division.
A rare self-abnegation in our ecclesiastical history was the partial
suicide of the Non-juring schism, and it has never been repeated; there
were many great saints among the Nonjurors. If they could not take the
oath of allegiance to William III, and therefore could not remain in the
Church of England, the best of them recognised that their individual
difficulty would not excuse them if they perpetuated themselves as a
Church. In any junction of existing divisions, differing customs and
methods of worship and organisation can be and should be safeguarded.
That would only make the more for the health of the one Body. But,
division itself is only to be prolonged for causes that are, or seem to
be by conscience, backed by divine command, and the first step in all
work for reunion will be the isolating of these causes from lesser
things, and their careful and prayerful reconsideration.
A grand example of such process, of course, has been the Conference of
the leaders of our English denominations, at the inspiration of the
American Committee of Faith and Order, which during 1917 faced the
question of Episcopacy. The findings of its "second interim report" are
nothing less than a landmark in Church History. You remember that
roughly it was this: that any corporate reunion can only come in the
acceptance of the historical Episcopate; but that the conception and use
of Episcopacy in the Church has been a limited one: there are many ways
of regarding and using bishops besides the monarchical or "prelatical"
way exemplified by the Church of England. This is a first proof that
when truths, keenly felt and seemingly rival, are discussed in
Conference spirit, the angularities that offend disappear; and wider,
bigger truth comes into the possession of all. It will be so more and
more. By faith we can already see that the labour of understanding unto
reunion is bound to be an immense _creative_ period in the Church of
God.
2. Our second axiom sounds discouraging. Just this--that unity is,
humanly speaking, impossible. Reunion means great changes of heart in
great communions of men, and we all know how hard it is to effect change
of heart even in the individual. We must not think that no price will
have to be paid for so good a result, both by whole communions, and by
the members composing them; and that the whole force of inherited
prejudice, past history, and present wilfulness, ignorance, and sincere
conviction will not arise in opposition. The difficulty even of
approaching Rome illustrates vividly our task. The Unity of Christendom
is a meaningless expression without that vast international Church,
without her rich stores of devotion and experience, without her
unbending witness to the first things of faith, worship and
self-sacrifice. Here the "impossibility" is open and honest, but I do
not know that the difficulties will be greater than those, less obvious
as yet, between other denominations. Yet with God all things are
possible. This is only the MIRACLE which He has set the faith of modern
Christians to perform.
3. Thirdly then, our rule must be, to hasten slowly. We are not dealing
with matters susceptible of mere arrangement, but with _convictions_,
which have deep roots in history, and cling passionately round the
individual. Convictions can only be modified or changed gradually, by
love and deeper spiritual learning. Bully or outrage a conviction, and
you double its strength. That is why argument seldom does aught but
harm. Argument is an attack upon another man's convictions, or
semi-convictions, and inevitably fails to do anything but stiffen them.
Inevitably therefore will hasty action by individuals or sections, for
instance in the Church of England, for which other sections are not
ready, throw these into suspicion and opposition. I speak of my own
Communion and say deliberately, that if at the moment, either an
individual, or a section--any section--of it goes galloping off, be its
zeal and hope never so pure and splendid, on private roads, the whole
desire for unity, and therefore the cause of unity, will be gravely
damaged.
For the whole Church of England--I think that can be truly said--has now
an unutterable desire for the joy of Unity; it is, further, convinced
that action must be taken; but it is by no means convinced that certain
actions--to take a concrete example, free interchange of pulpits with
Nonconformists--are as yet either helpful or right. If one part adopt
such a policy, hostilely and sectionally, it will simply throw others
into convinced opposition and retard the whole desire for decades.
Questions of deepest implication cannot be settled in haste. Before
approaching at all, we must find the right methods of approach. Quite
rightly, the American "World Conference for the consideration of
questions touching Faith and Order," paid, from the start, the utmost,
an uniquely scientific, attention to right method; their patience has
been lightning-swift in result. It did not even go so far as to say, "We
will confer, that is the right method"; it said, "We will learn how to
confer." It was a new and by no means easy exercise, but it has been
learned, and the English Conference mentioned above, "the landmark,"
arose by its inspiration and worked by its methods.