THE BIBLE
The Bible is the "sacred Book" of Christianity, as the Koran is the
sacred Book of Mohammedanism; with this difference, however, that
Christianity, as the religion of the Spirit, can never be, like
Mohammedanism, a "religion of the Book," any more than it can be, like
ancient Judaism, a religion of the Law. The Biblical writings include
two main collections of books, known as the Old Testament and the New
Testament respectively, of which the latter alone is distinctively
Christian. Intermediate between the two "Testaments" in point of date
are the writings known as the "Apocrypha," which though inferior, for
the most part, in spiritual value to the fully canonical books, and
frequently omitted from printed editions of the Bible, are regarded by
the Church as canonical in a secondary sense.
The various books of the Bible originally became canonical, that is,
were included in the "canon" or collection of sacred writings, on the
ground that they were read aloud or recited in the course of Divine
worship. The Old Testament canon comprises the books customarily read
aloud in the Jewish synagogue, together with certain other writings
associated with them. The books of the New Testament are a similar
collection of early Christian writings which were read side by side
with the Old Testament in Christian worship. The selection of these
particular writings for the purpose was determined in part by the
Church's recognition of their spiritual value and in part by the
regard which was paid by the Christian community to the religious
authority of those by whom they were believed to have been written.
Speaking generally, we may say that the Old Testament is the religious
literature of Judaism. It is the literary deposit of the spiritual
life of a nation, the written record and monument of a progressive
process of religious development. It begins at the level of folklore
and primitive tribal cults, such as are portrayed or reflected, for
example, in parts of the Pentateuch and in the Books of Judges and
Samuel. It culminates, in the utterances of the greatest of the
prophets and in many of the Psalms, at the highest levels of religious
attainment which are discoverable anywhere in history prior to the
coming of our Lord.
The Old Testament will always have a value for Christianity: in part
because many of the religious lessons which it conveys can never be
superseded even by Christianity itself: in part because the study of
it provides the general knowledge of Judaism, and of Jewish
institutions and modes of thought, which is necessary for the proper
understanding of the religious background of the Gospels, and of much
else in the New Testament as well: in part also because the two
revelations--the Jewish and the Christian--hang together, interlocking
with one another as anticipation and fulfilment, in a manner which is
singularly impressive.
The various books of the Old Testament, nevertheless, require to be
read by Christians with discrimination, and with a clear realization
of their Jewish character. There is much in the Old Testament as it
stands which is liable to mislead the simple and cause needless
difficulty. There are, moreover, numerous passages, and not a few
entire books, which except in the light of historical criticism and
scholarly guidance are not really intelligible. But the study of the
Old Testament as reinterpreted in our own generation by research and
scholarship is a fascinating subject. It requires little in the way of
technical equipment, and there is no reason in the world why it should
be monopolized by specialists. To have even the most general
acquaintance with the methods and results of critical study brings
with it a great transformation of outlook. The Old Testament writers
come to life again wonderfully when they are set in their proper
historical context, and the result is a clear gain in spiritual
values. The best general introduction to the whole subject is Dr. W.
B. Selbie's book, _The Nature and Message of the Bible_ (Student
Christian Movement, 3s. 6d.). Canon Nairne's volume, _The Faith of
the Old Testament_ (Layman's Library, Longmans, 2s. 6d.) is an
illuminating survey designed specially to bring out the religious
value of the Old Testament, [Footnote: Those who may desire a more
detailed and comprehensive treatment of the literary problems of the
Old Testament should consult G. B. Gray, _A Critical Introduction to
the Literature of the Old Testament_ (Duckworth, 2s. 6d.).] and for
commentaries upon individual books _The Century Bible_ (T. C. and
E. C. Jack, 3s. each volume) is to be recommended.
The books of the New Testament are the classical literature of
Christianity in a much fuller and more obvious sense. Here, again,
there is much that apart from the use of a good commentary will be
found hardly intelligible: but the greater part of the New Testament,
and especially the Gospels, can be read with profit by the ordinary
man apart from any extraneous aids. It is well to remember that S.
Paul's Epistles were written at an earlier date than any of the
Gospels, and that they represent the occasional correspondence of a
hard-worked missionary. Of the Gospels the first three have much in
common, and the Gospels of S. Matthew and S. Luke are based partly
upon that of S. Mark. S. Mark is said to have been the companion of S.
Peter, and is probably the author of the Gospel which bears his name.
It may be taken to represent his reminiscences of S. Peter's
preaching. The Gospel now known as that according to S. Matthew
appears to be the work of a compiler who fitted into the framework of
S. Mark's story a considerable amount of additional matter, drawn
chiefly from a collection of "sayings of Jesus" which an early
Christian writer declares to have been made by S. Matthew in Aramaic.
S. Matthew's name, it is thought, was subsequently attached to the
resulting document, since it contained a large preponderance of
material derived from his book on our Lord's sayings. The name of the
actual compiler of the first Gospel has not survived.
S. Luke's Gospel is a compilation made upon somewhat similar lines,
and is based, in large measure, upon the same two sources: but the
author's researches extended also more widely, and his Gospel contains
a large proportion of matter peculiar to itself, which critics
commonly regard as being of high historical value. The author of the
book was a Greek doctor who attended upon S. Paul, accompanying the
latter in his travels, and writing the Acts of the Apostles as a
second volume in continuation of his Gospel. The Acts is partly based
upon a kind of diary which S. Luke kept of his experiences as S.
Paul's companion and physician.
It is probable that both the first and the third of our four Gospels
were in existence shortly before, or at the latest very shortly after,
the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 A.D. The
second Gospel, since they both drew upon it, must be even earlier.
The Gospel according to S. John is of a somewhat later date, and bears
a different character. It is reflective and meditative, and is
penetrated throughout by a mystical symbolism. In many ways it
suggests rather a spiritual interpretation of the significance of
Jesus than a literal portrait of Him. Again, it is the product of a
Greek rather than of a Jewish atmosphere, though its narrative
presents so many touches of extraordinary vividness, and the author
shows so exact a knowledge of Jewish institutions and conditions of
life in Palestine, that it is difficult not to think that the book
must have been written by a Jew who knew Judaism before its downfall.
It is supposed that the writing dates from the closing years of the
first century, and tradition declares that the author was S. John in
old age at Ephesus. This statement is, however, in dispute, and the
authorship of the Gospel is uncertain. In point of fact, it does not
matter who the writer was. There is no one of the interpreters of
Jesus who had drunk more deeply of His Spirit than had he: nor is
there any of the books of the New Testament which brings Jesus closer
to us than the Gospel according to S. John, or speaks home with
greater power to the heart and affections of the simplest Christian.
PART II
THE PRACTICE OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
CHAPTER I
THE CHRISTIAN AIM
Christianity in practice means the dedication of life to the unselfish
service of GOD and man, in the light of the ideals of Jesus Christ,
and in the power of an inward spiritual life which is hid with Christ
in GOD. The Christian, renouncing such merely worldly ideals as self-
advancement, personal or family ambition, the accumulation of money,
or the enjoyment, for their own sake, of the things which money can
buy, is called to seek first and in all things GOD'S Kingdom and His
righteousness, in the assurance that whatever may be really necessary
for the advancement of this aim will in due course be added unto him.
He is not to expect to find the practice of his religion to be, in a
worldly sense, profitable; and the practice of his religion is to
cover the whole of life. The desperate attempt to combine the service
of GOD with that of Mammon is therefore to be abandoned. If riches
increase, he is not to set his heart upon them. If poverty be his lot,
he is to embrace poverty as a bride. The aim and object of his life is
not to be to get his own will done, but to discover what for him is
the will of GOD, and to do it. He is to be the slave of GOD in Christ,
a living instrument in the hands of Another, called to co-operate in a
purpose not his own, though a purpose which he is to embrace, and to
_make_ his own, in a spirit of loyal sonship.
This means, among other things, that life is to be interpreted in
terms of vocation. It means that for every man there is a "calling," a
particular line of life which GOD intends him to follow, a specific
piece of service to GOD and to his neighbour which he is called upon
to render. The motto of a Christian's life is to be the motto of his
Master--"My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to
accomplish His work." Gifts and capacities, aptitudes for any special
work, are therefore "talents," to be used in accordance with the will
and purpose of the Giver. Opportunities and endowments, whatsoever
they may be, are opportunities and endowments for service.
It does not necessarily follow from this that a realization of the
truth of Christianity, and an awakening to the claims of religion,
will lead to any outward change or radical alteration in the general
conception of a man's life-work. It may or it may not do so. There are
indubitably cases in which a man is called upon to abandon his
previous career--to forsake prospects, however promising, or to
renounce wealth and possessions, however entangling--in order to
become (for example) a minister of the Church or a missionary of the
Gospel, or to enter a religious order. Our Lord's command to the rich
young ruler, that he should give up all that he had, in order to
follow Christ along the paths of homelessness and poverty, is a call
which sounds still with a literal force in the ears of a certain
number of His disciples. The inner spirit, moreover, of detachment
from the world and from the things of the world, the readiness to
abandon wealth and worldly position if need so require, and the
refusal to be ensnared by them, are in any case demanded of all. The
vocation, however, of the majority of men is already determined by
their circumstances, or by their training and general aptitudes. It is
only the few, comparatively speaking, who are called to become monks
or missionaries, or priests devoid of "prospects." The majority will
best serve GOD and their neighbour by "carrying on" in their existing
occupations: and in most cases they are incidentally called also,
sooner or later, to matrimony.
But GOD calls no man to idleness. It is the duty of every Christian,
rich as well as poor, unless he be incapacitated by bodily sickness or
infirmity, to be engaged in some work of general service to the
community: and a man who proposes seriously to practise the Christian
religion needs to ask himself, with regard to the work or occupation
in which he is engaged, or by which he earns his bread, whether he can
say truly that he believes it to be the work which his Father has
given him to do: whether it can be interpreted, not simply as a means
of livelihood, but as a service rendered in Christ's name to society
at large. If it cannot so be interpreted, then plainly it is no work
which a Christian should be doing. There are ways of making a living
which, are definitely unchristian. The work of a shoe-black or of a
tradesman or of an actor may be as true a piece of Christian service
as that of a doctor or a bishop. The work of a burglar or of a
bookmaker could not be so regarded.
Christianity--it cannot be too strongly insisted--means the
Christianization of life as a whole. It is in the daily round and the
common task that Christ is most chiefly to be served. "Whatsoever ye
do in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving
thanks to GOD and the Father by Him." Religion is a wider thing than
piety, and it is a false pietism which would regard it as consisting
mainly of pious practices. The cultivation of the inner spiritual life
by means of the practices of Christian devotion is indeed essential in
its place and its degree. The life of the spirit languishes if it is
not fed. But except these things issue in the practical service of
Christ in daily life they are worse than futile. They degenerate
either into formalism and hypocrisy, or into spiritual self-
indulgence. "Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit."
"By their fruits ye shall know them." And the "fruits" of Christian
living are to be discovered, not in the hours spent in devotion, but
in the manifestation amid the activities of the market-place of that
temper of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, and that
spirit of unselfish service, which should be their normal product.
What is needed is a wider conception of Churchmanship and a truer
doctrine of vocation. All honest work in which a Christian can
lawfully engage should be regarded as an expression of his
Churchmanship--as truly work done for the Church of GOD in obedience
to a vocation from on high as is the work of a priest or a teacher of
religion. It is at least partly because the majority of laymen do not
so interpret their work in life that in so many cases they are
discovered to be in effect living for the sake of their leisure and
regarding their daily work as uninteresting drudgery, with the result
that life as a whole comes to be for them dreary and profitless and
stale. A Christian man's life-work ought not to have the character of
drudgery, but of sheer delight in GOD'S service.
But is such an ideal really practicable? It is literally practicable
to a greater extent than most men think. It ought to be practicable
universally. At the same time there is no disguising the fact that
large numbers of men to-day find themselves in circumstances to which
such a doctrine cannot without palpable unreality be applied. The
structure of existing society under modern industrial conditions
forces multitudes, by an evil economic pressure, into mechanical,
uncongenial, and soul-destroying occupations: and the conditions of
some men's labour in the world as it is are such that it would be
sheer blasphemy to regard them as a product of the will of GOD. The
problem of the Christianization of the social order is one of the
greatest of the tasks confronting the Christian Church. Its solution
has hardly yet begun to be attempted. In the meantime the mass of
Christian people, in virtue of their acquiescence, are accomplices in
the denial to the disinherited classes of the conditions and
opportunities which make life worth living for themselves. So long as
it continues to be possible for a man who genuinely desires to learn
and labour truly to get his own living to starve in the midst of
plenty: so long as multitudes are constrained to work under conditions
which rob their labour of all interest, of all idealism, and of all
hope: so long as sweating, and destitution, and such conditions of
life as obtain in the more densely crowded areas of our great towns
continue to exist: so long will it be the duty of every Christian to
be a social reformer, and to have a conscience permanently troubled
with regard to wealth and social advantage. [Footnote: Mr. George
Lansbury's _Your Part in Poverty_ (George Alien and Unwin, Ltd., Is.)
is a book worth reading in this particular connexion.]
Meanwhile the Christian ideal of life stands. It is the ideal of
consecration to service. It means discipleship in Christ's school of
unselfishness, both individual and corporate: for there is a
selfishness of the family, of the class, or of the nation, which bears
as bitter fruit in the world as does the selfishness of the
individual. Christianity, in a word, means the carrying out into daily
practice of the ideal of the _Imitatio Christi_, the imitation of
Jesus Christ, in the spirit if not in the letter. It means that as He
was, so are we to be in the world. It means that all things,
whatsoever we do, are to be done in His Spirit and to His glory: that
our every thought is to be led captive under the obedience of Christ.
It means that we are to love GOD because GOD first loved us, and to
love men because they are our brothers in the family of GOD: because
love is of GOD, and every one that loveth is born of GOD and knoweth
GOD. It means that we are to consecrate all comradeship and loyalty
and friendship, all sorrow and all joy, by looking upon them as
friendship and loyalty and comradeship in Christ, as sorrow and joy in
Him. It means that we are to live glad, strong, free, clean lives as
sons of GOD in our Father's House.
It means also struggle and hardship. It means truceless war against
the spirit of selfishness, against everything that tends to drag us
down, against the law of sin in our own members. It means a truceless
war against low ideals and tolerated evils in the world about us. It
means soldiership in the eternal crusade of Christ against whatsoever
things are false and dishonest and unjust and foul and ugly and of
evil report.
It is an ideal which, considered in isolation from the Christian
Gospel of redemption and the power of the Holy Spirit, could only
terrify and daunt a man who had a spark of honesty in his composition:
and for this reason the mass of men refuses to take it seriously. It
is an ideal which, in the case of all who do take it seriously,
convinces them of sin.
Nevertheless to lower the ideal, to abate one jot of its severity, to
compromise, on the score of human weakness, though it were but in a
single particular, the flawless perfection of its standard, were to
prove false to all that is highest within us, and traitor to the cause
of Christ.
"Never, O Christ--so stay me from relenting--Shall there be truce
betwixt my flesh and soul."
CHAPTER II
THE WAY OF THE WORLD
The three traditional enemies of the Christian life are symbolized
under the headings of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, and the
classification has a certain convenience. The "World" stands in this
connexion for human society in so far as it is organized apart from
Christ. It is obvious that "the way of the world," as represented by
the general outlook of conventional society, is in many respects in
manifest conflict with the principles of the Gospel. The existing
social order is the product of a compromise between inherited
influences and standards which are in a certain sense broadly
Christian, and the natural man's instinctive selfishness in matters
both individual and social. The conflict against the spirit of
worldliness which should be one of the marks of a genuine Christian
life is beset by peculiar difficulties, precisely because in a society
which is in some respects partially Christian the issues are confused.
Public opinion indubitably tolerates many things which should not be
tolerated, and condones others which should not be condoned. But
public opinion approves much that is good, and does lip-service to a
variety of Christian ideals, even while reserving the reality of its
devotion for the worship of success and material comfort.
Perhaps it may be said that the most fundamental characteristic of
essentially "worldly" opinion is absence of idealism. Worldliness is
the principle of contentment with things as they are. Against
worldliness, so defined, the Christian is committed to a conflict all
along the line, since even in those regions of life and conduct in
which the standards recognized by the world are right and good so far
as they go, "the good is the enemy of the best." To rest content at
any point with what has already been attained is fatal to all
spiritual advance. It is, in effect, the death of the soul.
Mr. William Temple has remarked that in the conflict of Christians
against the Devil and the Flesh the public opinion of the Church, as
visibly organized, is on their side, but that in their conflict with
the World it is decidedly against them. That is an over-statement, but
it conveys a truth. Undoubtedly the Church has made compromises with
the World, a fact which arises partly as the result of the inclusion
within her fold of a large proportion of merely nominal members whose
Christianity is no more than an inherited or conventional tradition. A
further point of importance is this. Two thousand years is not a long
period in relation to the scale of the world's history as a whole, and
Christianity is still a comparatively young religion. The problem of
worldliness is mainly a problem of the relation of the Church to the
social order; and there are reasons why it was natural that the
working out of the Christian ideal of conduct should first have been
developed in relation to the affairs of private and domestic life.
Christians in the early days were a "little flock," surrounded by a
society whose standards and conventions and beliefs were frankly pagan
and hostile. So long as these conditions obtained the issues were
plain: the contrast in ideals between Church and World stood out sharp
and clear. The world, it was held, was ready to perish, and destined
at no distant date to do so. "The whole world," writes S. John, "lieth
in wickedness." The Church stood apart as the spiritual brotherhood of
GOD'S elect who were called to assist at the obsequies of a world
which was in process of passing away. "The world passeth away, and the
lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of GOD abideth for ever."
The words contain an eternal truth: but in their literal sense they
expressed a mistaken judgment. The world--that is, secular society--
did not pass away. It is with us still. For a period of some three
hundred years it persecuted the Church. At the end of that period it
accepted baptism, but not its implications. The Church has been
engaged ever since in the task of attempting to Christianize the
heathen within her own borders.
The Church was outwardly secularized: and the minority who could not
tolerate the secularization of her ideals took refuge in the hermit's
cell or in the cloister. In these retreats was developed the practice
of Christianity as an art or science of individual sanctity, but at
the cost of a certain aloofness from the rough and tumble of workaday
life. The Christianity of the Middle Ages was fertilized from the
cloister, with the result that the spiritual ideals even of those
Christians who remained "in the world" tended to be coloured by the
monastic tradition. The Christian man of the world who took seriously
the practice of his religion aimed at reproducing at second hand the
Christianity of the monk. The salvation of the individual soul tended
to be regarded as the supreme end of Christian endeavour, rather than
the service of the brethren.
The Reformation, when it came, did nothing to diminish this
individualism of the religious outlook, but rather accentuated it. The
whole emphasis of Protestantism was thrown upon the life of the
individual soul in relation to GOD, to the comparative neglect of the
importance of the conception of membership in the Church. To the
ordinary worldling the advent of Protestantism meant simply that he
need no longer trouble to go to Mass or to Confession. The Protestant
who took his religion seriously became a Puritan, a type resembling
the monk of Catholicism in his attempted isolation from the world, yet
lacking the peculiar otherworldly mysticism of the monkish character
at its best, and having a peculiar knack of making religion appear
repellent to the ordinary man.
The emergence of the ideal of a genuinely social Christianity, aiming
not at escape from the world by way of flight, but at the deliberate
conquest of the world for Christ by the resolute application of
Christian standards to the ordinary life of men in society, is of
comparatively recent date. It began in this country with the writings
of Kingsley and Maurice, and various living teachers both in England
and in America have carried on their work. It is one of the
misfortunes of Germany that she has had no corresponding movement. As
a consequence we are confronted at the present time with the spectacle
of various leaders of religious thought in Germany, too honest not to
perceive the glaring contrasts between the way of the world and the
precepts of the Gospel, deliberately maintaining the position that
Christianity is solely adapted to be a religion of private life, and
that Christian standards and ideals have no application as between
class and class, or as between nation and nation. To adopt such an
attitude is to abandon all hope of the redemption of society. It is to
condemn the world in perpetuity to a fate of which the present war is
the appropriate symbol.
The war is, in effect, a kind of sacrament of the power of Antichrist.
It is the outward and visible sign of the inward character and essence
of a civilisation founded upon principles which are the opposite of
those of the Gospel. Neither men nor nations, in the world as we have
known it, have been wont to love their neighbours as themselves. The
way of the world is, and has been, the way of selfishness.
This is not any the less true because the world's selfishness has been
to a considerable extent unconscious, and has arisen rather from
absence of thought than from deliberate badness of heart. The world
does not always realize how cruel are its ways towards the weak and
the socially unfortunate, or towards those who, for whatever reason,
transgress its code. For the world _has_ a code of its own, both in
manners and in morals, though the basis of its code is convention, and
its standard respectability rather than virtue. The world is very apt
to show itself implacable towards those whom it regards as being
beyond its pale, and to exhibit, in effect, the spirit and temper
which, when manifested in the religious sphere, we know and loathe as
Pharisaism. Pharisaism, like worldliness, has penetrated to an
alarming extent into the Church of England.
Parallel and proportionate to the world's selfishness is its cynicism.
This also is largely unconscious. Lacking any true insight into
spiritual realities, the world lacks vision and lacks hope. It
presumes always that "the thing which has been, it is that which shall
be." It beholds the evil that is done under the sun, and pronounces it
inevitable. It fails to understand that to pronounce any evil
inevitable is to be guilty of blasphemy against the GOD of heaven.
Against the spirit of the worldly world, its selfishness and cynicism,
its conventional judgments and shallowness of mind, the Christian is
called deliberately to make war. The Church exists to be to the world
and its ways a permanent challenge: to be the champion in all
circumstances and times of righteousness and truth; to insist upon
bringing to bear on human life in all its relationships, both
corporate and individual, the spirit of brotherhood, which is the
Spirit of Christ. It was a true instinct which led S. Ignatius Loyola
to pray on behalf of the Order which he founded that it might be hated
by the world. "Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.... If
ye were of the world, the world would love his own." If the world does
not hate the Church it is not because the world has become Christian,
but because worldliness has taken possession of the Church. The world
to-day regards the Church as not worth hating, as a negligible
quantity. When the Church is once more ready to be crucified, then the
opposition of the world will be revived, and the Church will suffer
martyrdom afresh.
CHAPTER III
THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH
Sins of the flesh include all forms of slackness and bodily self-
indulgence. A Christian is called to assert the supremacy of the
spirit over the flesh by controlling his bodily impulses and
disciplining his desires. There is, therefore, a true Christian
asceticism. But asceticism, in so far as it is genuinely Christian, is
never an end in itself. It is a discipline which promotes efficiency.
It is to be compared to an athlete's training, not to the self-
mutilation of a fakir. There is in Christianity no doctrine of the
unlawfulness of bodily pleasures in themselves. "The Son of Man came
eating and drinking." For Christianity every creature of GOD in itself
is good, and a man's bodily impulses are God-given endowments of his
nature. What is essential is that their exercise should be controlled
and subordinated to the higher purposes of the spirit, that they
should be directed to their proper ends, and that they should not be
allowed to get out of hand. Christians are not meant to be Puritans,
but they are meant to be pure. The battle against fleshliness in all
its forms is a battle which has to be fought and won in every
Christian's life.
Apart from the question of certain unmentionable forms of perverted
sexual vice, the sinfulness of what are commonly classified as "sins
of the flesh" consists in wrongful indulgence or lack of self-control
in respect of that which in itself is legitimate and good. The
Christian ideal is not abstinence, but temperance. A Christian will be
temperate, for example, in sleep, food, alcohol, and tobacco.
Intemperance means slavery to a habit, the loss of spiritual self-
mastery, whereby the whole character is enervated, and efficiency,
both physical and moral, is impaired. "All things are lawful," as S.
Paul says, but a Christian is not to allow himself to be brought
"under the _power_ of any." He is meant to live hard and to live
clean.
The practice of fasting, that is, of deliberate temporary self-
discipline in these matters, even below the standard of what would
normally be a reasonable indulgence, is a valuable means of asserting
and retaining the self-mastery which is essential to Christian
freedom. But fasting should not be allowed to become a mechanical
observance, or erected into an unduly rigid law. The fish-dinner upon
Fridays and other fast-days of the Church is, as a modern dignitary
has remarked, innocuous; and it has the value which belongs to
conformity to a rule or recommendation of the Christian brotherhood;
but whether or not it is observed in practice, it is hardly adequate
by itself to the purposes of Christian self-discipline.
It appears to be a fairly widespread delusion in some sections of
society that a Christian must necessarily be a teetotaller. The ideal
Christian policy, here as elsewhere, if we may judge from the example
of our Lord, would seem to be that of a temperate use of the gifts of
GOD. It is unfortunate that in this country most of the societies
which exist for the purpose of promoting temperance have virtually
committed themselves to the confusion of temperance with total
abstinence, and their fanaticism is, in the judgment of many persons,
a hindrance to genuine reform. But it cannot reasonably be denied that
drunkenness, and the still wider prevalence of an excessive drinking
which falls short of actual drunkenness, is a frightful evil in the
national life; and what is commonly known as the "Liquor Interest"
plays a sinister part as an organized obstructive force standing in
the way of needed reforms. The number of public-houses and drinking-
bars in English towns and villages is monstrously out of proportion to
any reasonable needs of the population: and it must be more than
ordinarily difficult for brewers and publicans, under existing
conditions, to resist the temptation to exploit for the sake of gain
the weaknesses of others. A Christian need not be a teetotaller in
order to have this problem upon his conscience, and to be ready to
support, by his vote and influence, some considered and constructive
policy of reform. A man who by experience finds that alcohol is to him
personally a temptation will be wise if he becomes a teetotaller. "If
thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut it off." In certain social
environments it may also be wise for a man to become a total
abstainer, not in his own interests, but for the sake of others with
whom he is brought into immediate contact. There can be no question
but that drunkenness, which is a vice both degrading and repulsive in
itself, is in many strata of English social life still far too lightly
regarded.
It is, moreover, worth remarking that even a degree of indulgence in
alcohol which would commonly be regarded as falling well within the
limit of temperance is regarded by some authorities as having the
effect--which actual drunkenness certainly has--of stimulating
sexuality: and when all is said, probably the most insistent of
fleshly temptations, at least in the earlier years of manhood, are
those which are connected with the life of sex. Many make shipwreck
upon these rocks through lack of knowledge or want of thought; but
neither thought nor knowledge will avail to safeguard a man's purity
apart from sound moral principle: nor are even moral principles
effectual in the hour of strong temptation apart from the grace of
GOD.
Christianity teaches that to every man there is entrusted, in virtue
of his manhood, the seed of life as a divine treasure. It is meant not
to be turned into a means of self-indulgence, or suffered to run riot
in a blaze of passion, but to be restrained and safeguarded in purity
against the day--if the day arrives--upon which a man is called to use
it for the purpose for which it was given him, namely, that of
bringing new lives into the world through union with a woman in pure
marriage.
Most men are sorely tempted to lack of self-control, and to the misuse
of their sexual endowment in a variety of ways: and the maintenance of
chastity--never an easy ideal--is made doubly difficult by the fact
that in the existing social system marriage, except among the poorer
classes, is commonly deferred until an age much later than that at
which a man becomes physically mature, and also by the widespread
prevalence, in masculine society, of a corrupt public opinion which
regards sexual indulgence as morally tolerable, or even as essential
to physical health. This latter doctrine, even were it as true as it
is in fact false, would not in any case justify a man in taking
advantage of a woman's ruin: but experience shows that there is no
form of sin or indulgence which so effectually degrades a man's moral
outlook, blunts his finer perceptions, and destroys the instinct of
chivalry within him, as does the sin of fornication. The majority of
those who practise promiscuous sexual intercourse are found to greet
with frank and obviously genuine incredulity the assertion that there
exists a not inconsiderable proportion of men whose lives are clean;
while at the other end of the scale men of pure lives and clean ideals
often find it difficult to believe that more than a small minority of
peculiarly degraded individuals are clients of the women of the
streets.
The publication of the Report of the Royal Commission on Venereal
Diseases, taken in conjunction with what is known or suspected with
regard to the state of morals in the Army, has had the effect of
drawing public attention to certain aspects of these problems. The
Victorian convention of prudery has to a great extent been discarded.
The subject is freely discussed, and it is generally acknowledged that
something must be done. There is danger, however, lest public opinion,
rightly concerned to promote measures for the eradication of disease,
should ignore the essentially moral aspect of the matter. A Christian
man is here concerned, not simply with the personal struggle against
the temptations of sex in his own life, but with a further conflict on
behalf of Christian ideals against the public opinion of the world.
For if ecclesiastical opinion in the past has been both prudish and
Pharisaic, the public opinion of the world is frankly cynical. Roughly
speaking, the world expects the majority of women to be pure,
acquiesces in the prostitution of the remainder, and treats masculine
immorality as a venial offence. Numbers of would-be reformers--of the
male sex--are not ashamed to advocate, in private if not in public,
the establishment of licensed brothels on the continental model. It
ought not to be necessary to say that no Christian man can possibly
tolerate a proposal to give deliberate public sanction to the
prostitution of a certain proportion of the nation's womanhood to the
lusts of men, or acquiesce in the complacent sex-selfishness which is
concerned only for the physical health of sinners of the male sex.
The point of view of the Christian Church is determined by that of our
Lord, who on the one hand numbered a reclaimed prostitute among His
intimate friends, and on the other taught that whoso looketh on a
woman to lust after her hath committed adultery already in his heart.
The Church, therefore, differs from the world, first in holding that
what is wrong for women is equally wrong for men, that there is one
and the same standard in these matters for both sexes, namely,
absolute sexual purity; and secondly, in extending equally to the
fallen of both sexes the promise of Divine forgiveness upon identical
terms, namely, genuine repentance, unreserved confession, desire and
purpose of amendment, and faith in GOD. The world, which condones the
iniquity of the man who falls, is apt to be uncommonly hard upon the
fallen woman, forgetting that she also is a sister for whom Christ
died, and that the woman who to-day plays the part of a temptress of
men was originally, in the majority of cases, more sinned against than
sinning. Very few of those who ply the trade of shame will be found to
have adopted such a mode of life, in the first instance, of their own
unfettered choice. We are members one of another, and society as a
whole, which both creates the demand and provides the supply, must
share the guilt of their downfall.
This book is written primarily for men: and there are therefore other
aspects of the life of sex upon which it is necessary to touch, though
they are difficult matters to handle. It is well known that large
numbers of men in boyhood, either through untutored ignorance of the
physiology of their own bodies, or as a result of the corrupt example
and teaching of others, become addicted to habits of solitary vice, in
which the seed of life within them is deliberately excited, stirred up
and wasted, to the sapping of their physical well-being and the
defilement of their minds. Habits of self-abuse, when once they are
established, are apt to be extremely difficult to break. The minds of
their victims are liable to be morbidly obsessed by the physical facts
of sex, and their thoughts continually directed into turbid channels.
But it is possible by the grace of GOD to conquer, though there may be
relapses before the final victory is won. It is important neither on
the one hand to belittle the gravity of the evil, nor on the other to
grow hopeless and despondent, but to have faith in GOD. It is also a
counsel of common sense to distract the mind, so far as possible, in
other directions, and to avoid deliberately whatever is likely to
prove an occasion or stimulus to this particular form of sin. The
battle of purity can only be successfully fought in the region of
outward act if the victory is at the same time won in the region of
thought and desire. Books and pictures, or trains of thought and
imagination, which are either unclean in themselves, or are discovered
by experience to be sexually exciting to particular individuals, ought
obviously to be avoided by those concerned, and the mind directed
towards the contemplation of whatsoever things are true and honest and
just and pure and lovely and of good report. In the hour of strong
temptation it is often best, instead of trying to meet the assault
directly, to change the immediate environment, or in some other way to
concentrate the mind: for example, to sit down and read a clean novel
until the stress of the obsession is past. Physical cleanliness,
plenty of healthy exercise in the open air (it is unfortunate that the
circumstances of many men's lives do not give adequate opportunity for
this), temperance in food, and especially--in the light of what has
been said above--temperance in drink, are all incidentally of value as
aids to the maintenance of purity. So also is the avoidance of the
habit of lying in bed in a semi-somnolent condition after true sleep
has finally departed. A Christian's body is meant to be a temple of
the Holy Ghost, and no other spirit, whether of impurity or of sloth,
should be allowed to have domination over him.
Other sins there are which should not be so much as named among
Christian men-those, namely, in which men with men work that which is
unseemly, and burn with lust one towards another. It is necessary to
refer to these, because their prevalence is said to be increasing. A
considerable proportion of men are temperamentally liable to be
sexually attracted by members of their own sex; and passionate
friendships, in which there is an element which is in the last
analysis sexual, are not uncommon both between boys and youths at the
age of early manhood, and between men of mature age and adolescents.
The true character of these relationships is not always in their
initial stages obvious, even to those concerned. As a guiding
principle it may be laid down that a friendship between members of the
same sex begins to enter upon dangerous ground whenever an element of
jealousy betrays itself, when there is a desire habitually to
monopolize the other's company to the exclusion of third persons, or
when the life and interests of the one appear to be disproportionately
wrapped up in the concerns and doings of the other. Friendships of
this character are always selfish and may all too easily become
impure. It is the business of a Christian man to be on his guard and
to love his male friends not as a woman is loved and not in a spirit
of selfish monopoly, but with the pure and clean and essentially
unselfish affection of Christian manhood.
A word may be said, lastly, with regard to prurient and polluted talk
and unclean stories. Against these a Christian man will do well firmly
and resolutely to set his face. Such things defile the mind. They are
injurious both to him that hears and to him that speaks, in that they
tend to engender a mental atmosphere in which the suggestions of
actual vice are likely to meet with an enfeebled power of resistance.
Of course it is possible to be too tragical on the subject of
"language," and to exaggerate the harm done by "smoking-room" stories.
But whatever is definitely unclean is definitely evil, and should be
both avoided and discouraged. To assume, however, a pious demeanour
and to appear to be shocked is a fatal method of protest. Christians
have no business to be shocked, nor are they meant to be prigs. There
are other forms of social pressure which are more effective. It is,
moreover, sometimes possible to combine moral reprobation with a sense
of humour.
CHAPTER IV
THE WORKS OF THE DEVIL
The devil is from one point of view a figure of Jewish and Christian
mythology. The Jews, like other early peoples, believed in the
existence of evil spirits or demons, to whose malignant agency they
ascribed various diseases, both functional and organic, and in
particular those unhappy cases of obsession, fixed idea, and multiple
personality, which we should now class under the general head of
insanity, and treat in asylums for the mentally deranged. The New
Testament writings are full of this point of view, which is of course
largely foreign to our minds to-day. The ordinary Englishman is not a
great believer in devils or spirits of evil: though he does in some
instances believe in ghosts, and is inclined to the practice of what
in former ages was called necromancy--the attempt to establish an
illicit connexion with the spirits of the departed--under the modern
name of psychical research. There are, no doubt, some forms of
psychical research which are genuinely scientific and legitimate. It
is probable enough that there exists a considerable area of what may
be called borderland phenomena to which scientific methods of inquiry
may be found applicable, and which it is theoretically the business of
science to investigate. But it is a region in which the way lies
readily open to all kinds of superstition and self-deceit. The pursuit
of truth for its own sake is essentially a religious thing: but the
motives of many amateur dabblers in psychical research are far from
being truly religious or spiritual. Much popular spiritualism, whether
it assumes the form of table-turnings, of spirit-rappings, or of
mediumistic seances, is thoroughly morbid and undesirable, and the
Christian Church has rightly discouraged it.
It is not, however, necessary to believe literally in the devil, or in
devils--concerning whose existence many persons will prefer to remain
agnostic--in order to find in the figure of the devil, as he appears
in Biblical and other literature, a convenient personification of
certain forms of evil. There is an atmosphere of evil about us, a
Kingdom of Evil, over against the Kingdom of Good: and there are
suggestions and impulses of evil which from time to time arise in our
minds, which--whatever may be the literal truth about them--not
infrequently present the appearance of having been prompted by some
mysterious external Tempter. Certainly deeds have been done in the
present war which can only be described as devilish. The war has
revealed on a large scale and in unmistakable terms the evil of which
the heart of man is capable, and how thin in many cases is the veneer
which separates the outwardly civilized European from the primitive
savage. "For this purpose was the Son of GOD manifested, that He might
destroy the works of the devil." And by the works of the devil we may
understand especially cruelty, malice, envy, hatred and all
uncharitableness, the spirit of selfishness which wars against love,
and the spirit of pride which ignores GOD. We see these things
exhibited upon the large scale in the conspicuous criminals among
mankind, whom we are sometimes tempted to regard as devils incarnate.
We need to be on our guard against the beginnings of them, and indeed
in many cases their actual presence in an undetected but fairly
developed form, in ourselves.
Christian men are to be kindly affectioned one towards another in
brotherly love: in honour preferring one another--which is easier to
say than to do. They are to refrain from rendering evil for evil, and
to learn under provocation to be self-controlled. They are to be in
charity with all men, and so far as it lies within their own power
(for it takes two to make peace, as it takes two to make a quarrel)
they are to live peaceably with all men. Wrath and clamour, lying and
evil-speaking, back-biting and slandering, are all of the devil,
devilish. Contrary to the works of the devil, which may be summed up
under the three headings of lying, hatred, and pride, are the
Christian ideals of truthfulness, love, and humility, with regard to
each of which a few words may usefully be said.
(i) The devil is described in the New Testament as "a liar and the
father thereof." A Christian is to be true and just in all his
dealings, abhorring crookedness: for the essence of lying is not
inexactitude in speech, but deceitfulness of intention. Christian
veracity means honesty, straightforwardness, and sincerity in deed as
well as in word. A writer of fiction is not a liar: to improve in the
telling an anecdote or a story is not necessarily to deceive others in
any culpable sense; and moralists have from time to time discussed the
question whether there may not be circumstances in which to tell a
verbal lie is even a moral duty--_e.g._ in order to prevent a murderer
or a madman from discovering the whereabouts of his intended victim.
But casuistical problems of this kind do not very frequently arise,
and in all ordinary circumstances strict literal veracity is the right
course to pursue. [Footnote: Of course such social conventions as "Not
at home," "No trouble at all," or "Glad to see you," "No, you are not
interrupting me," etc., are hardly to be classed as "lies," since they
do not as a rule seriously mislead others, but are merely an
expression of the will to be civil.]
Christian truthfulness, however, is in any case a much wider thing
than merely verbal truth-telling: it implies inward spiritual reality,
a genuine desire to see things as they are, a thirst of the soul for
truth, and a hatred of shams. The worst form of lying is that in which
a man is not merely a deceiver of others but is self-deceived, and
suffers from "the lie in the soul." The religion of Christ is always
remorselessly opposed to every form or kind of humbug or of sham.
Jesus Christ is the supreme spiritual realist of history. In His view
the "publican" or acknowledged sinner is preferable to the Pharisee or
hypocrite for the precise reason that the former is a more genuine
kind of person than the latter. And to tell the truth in this deeper
sense, that is, genuinely to face realities and to refuse to be put
off with shams, to see through the plausibilities and to detect the
hollowness of moral and social pretences and conventionalities, to
have, in short, the spiritual and moral instinct for reality, is a
much harder thing than to be verbally veracious. The true veracity can
come only from Him who is the Truth: it is a gift of the Spirit, and
proceeds from GOD who knows the counsels of men's hearts, and discerns
the motives and imaginations of their minds.
It follows that just as every lie is of the devil, so all truth, of
whatever kind, is of GOD. The Lord is a God of Knowledge, and every
form of intellectual timidity and obscurantism is contrary to
godliness. There can never be any opposition between scientific and
religious truth, since both equally proceed from GOD. The Christian
Church is ideally a society of free-thinkers, that is, of men who
freely think, and the genuine Christian tradition has always been to
promote learning and freedom of inquiry. It is worth remembering that
the oldest and most justly venerable of the Universities of Europe are
without exception in their origin ecclesiastical foundations. If the
love of truth and the spirit of freedom which inspired their inception
has at particular epochs in their history been temporarily obscured,
if there is much in the ecclesiasticism both of the past and of the
present which is reactionary in tendency and spirit, at least there
have never been lacking protesting voices, and the authentic spirit of
the Gospel tells always upon the other side. "Ye shall know the
truth," says a New Testament writer, "and the truth shall make you
free." [Footnote: The manifestations of the persecuting spirit and
temper are not confined to the sphere of religion; the intolerance of
the platform or of the press can be as bigoted as that of the pulpit:
and secular governments also can persecute--not only in France or in
Prussia. That it is part of the mission of Christianity to cast out
the evil spirit of persecution, to destroy intolerance as it has
destroyed slavery, is none the less true, in spite of the fact that
both slavery and persecution have in the past found Christian
defenders.]
(ii) In the second place, hatred is of the devil, and love is of
Christ: the Christian is to love even his enemies. In a time of war,
that is to say, whenever actual enemies exist, the natural man
discovers in such an ideal only an immoral sentimentalism, and the
doctrinaire pacificist occasionally uses language which gives colour
to the charge. But Christianity has nothing in common with
sentimentalism, and Christian is no merely sentimental affection which
ignores the reality of evil or explains away the wrongfulness of
wrong. In order to love his enemies it is not necessary for a
Christian to pretend that they are not really hostile, to make excuses
for things that are inexcusable, or to be blind to the moral issues
which may be at stake. It has rightly been pointed out that "Love your
enemies" means "Want them to be your friends: want them to alter, so
that friendship between you and them may become possible." More
generally what is meant is that the Christian man is by the grace of
GOD, to conquer the instinct of hatred and the spirit of revenge
within his own heart, to be willing to serve others (his enemies
included) at cost to himself in accordance with the will of GOD, to
desire on behalf of all men (his enemies included) the realization of
their true good. For wrongdoers chastisement may be the truest
kindness. To allow a man, or a nation, to pursue an evil purpose
unchecked would be no real act of love even towards the nation or the
individual concerned. To offer opposition, if necessary by force, may
in certain circumstances be a plain duty. That which we are to love,
in those whose immediate aspect and character is both unlovely and
unlovable, is not what they are, but what they are capable of
becoming. We are to love that element in them which is capable of
redemption, the true spiritual image of GOD in man, which can never be
totally effaced. We are to remember that for them also the Son of GOD
was crucified, that we also have need of forgiveness, and that "GOD
commendeth His own love towards us, in that, while we were yet
sinners, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."
(iii) The third great manifestation of the spirit and temper which is
of the devil, devilish, is pride, which by Christian writers upon
these subjects is commonly regarded as the deadliest of the so-called
"deadly sins," on the ground that it logically involves the assertion
of a false claim to be independent of GOD, and is therefore fatal in
principle to the religious life. Pagan systems of morality distinguish
between false pride, the foolish conceit of the man who claims for
himself virtues and capacities which he does not in fact possess, and
proper pride, the entirely just appreciation by a man of his own
merits and accomplishments at neither more nor less than their true
value. The Christian ideal of humility is apt from this point of view
to appear either slavish or insincere. The issue between Christian and
pagan morals here depends upon the truth or falsehood of the Christian
doctrine of GOD and of His relation to man. Once let a man take
seriously the avowal that "It is He that hath made us, and not we
ourselves," once let him grant the position that his life belongs to
GOD and not to himself, and concur in the judgment of spiritual
experience that whatever is good in him is the result not of his own
efforts in independence of his Maker, but of the Divine Spirit
operative within him, and it becomes obvious that "boasting"--as S.
Paul expresses it--"is excluded."
At the same time Christian humility is not self-depreciation. It has
nothing in common either with the spirit of Uriah Heep, or with the
false diffidence which refuses on the ground of personal insufficiency
a task or vocation to which a man is genuinely called. These are both
equally forms of self-consciousness. Humility is forgetfulness of
self. The true pattern and exemplar of humility is the Christ, who
claimed for Himself the greatest role in the whole history of the
world, simply on the ground that it was the work which His Father had
given Him to do. "I seek not Mine own glory: there is One that seeketh
and judgeth." The secret of humility is devotion to the will of GOD.
CHAPTER V
THE KINGDOM OF GOD
Christianity in the last three chapters has been considered on its
negative side as involving a conflict against temptation. But the
Christian ideal is positive rather than negative. We have only to
think for a moment of the character and life of Christ in order to
realize how ludicrously impoverished a conception of the Gospel
righteousness is that which regards it as exhausted by the meticulous
avoidance of sin. "Christian purity," it has been said, "is not a
snowy abstinence but a white-hot passion of life towards GOD." The
same might be said of other Christian virtues. Positively regarded,
the Christian ideal of life means sonship towards GOD and citizenship
in His Kingdom.
The precise signification of the phrase, "Kingdom of GOD," or "Kingdom
of Heaven," in the language of the New Testament has been the theme of
controversy and discussion among scholars. It is impossible to enter
here into the technicalities of the dispute. Broadly speaking, it may
be laid down without much fear of contradiction that the Kingdom of
GOD means the effectual realization, in every department of human life
and upon a universal scale, of the sovereignty of GOD as Christ
reveals Him. It is the vision of the goal of human history. It is
meant to be a leading motive and inspiration of Christian life.
"I will not cease from mental strife,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land."
It is quite true that, according to the thought of the New Testament
writers, the mystic Jerusalem is not a city built by mortal men upon
this earth, but something which is wholly the gift of GOD, a city not
made with hands, descending from GOD out of heaven. The Kingdom of GOD
in its fulness is no product of human striving. It is the achievement
of a Divine purpose, the manifestation in the end of the days of the
completed mystery of the Divine Will.
Nevertheless it is the mission of the Church to prepare the way of the
Kingdom, and it is for Christian men to live as sons of the Divine
Kingdom even now, that is, as men in whose hearts and lives GOD and
none other is enthroned as King and Lord. This means that everything
that is good in human life is to be redeemed by being offered to GOD,
and that everything that is vile and evil is to be eliminated and cast
out. "The Son of Man shall send forth His messengers, and they shall
gather out of His Kingdom all things that offend." "There shall in no
wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh
abomination, or maketh a lie." "The Kingdom of GOD is righteousness
and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost."
The ideal of the Christian life, therefore, is something infinitely
richer and more positive than the merely negative morality of the Ten
Commandments. It is the ideal of the Divine Kingdom. It is a positive
devotion to the will of GOD. It means co-operation with the Divine
will and purpose, a will and a purpose which, by the patient operation
of the Divine Spirit, is in the course of world-history slowly but
surely being worked out, amid all the immediate chaos and welter of
events, to its goal in the revelation of the Jerusalem which is from
above. That is why the Christian is bidden to pray continually, "Thy
Kingdom come, Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven."
If a man does not want the Divine Kingdom, or does not believe in it,
he ought not to pray for it. If he does want it and pray for it, he
ought also to work for it. And though no man may fully understand it,
yet if a man is to pray for it and work for it at all, he needs to
have at least some partial understanding of what it means. It is worth
while, therefore, instead of dismissing the idea as a vague dream or
an empty phrase, to try and fill it with some measure of positive
meaning for us men here and now. What is the will of GOD for humanity?
And what is meant by preparing the way of the Lord? Some things at
least we may say are certainly included in the will of GOD, and some
things are as certainly excluded.
"It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of
these little ones should perish." A Christian Church which took
seriously its vocation to go before the Lord and to prepare His ways
would be effectively and vigorously concerned with problems so prosaic
as the rate of infantile mortality and the allied questions of housing
and sanitation, with the insistence that the conditions of life among
the poorer classes of the community shall be such as make decent
living possible, and with the provision of a minimum of leisure and of
genuine opportunities of liberal education for all who have the will
and the capacity to profit by them. The combined ignorance and apathy
of the people of England with regard to questions of education, which
has made possible the shelving of Mr. Fisher's Education Bill in
deference to the opposition of vested interests, is little to the
credit of the Christian Church in these islands, and grievously
disappointing to those who had hoped at last for a real instalment of
constructive reform. [Footnote: It is now stated that the Bill is to
be reintroduced and passed, with certain modifications. It is to be
hoped that the modifications will not be such as to destroy its
effectiveness as an instrument of real reform. It remains true that
the Bill was imperilled by the apathy and ignorance of the rank and
file of Churchmen and Christians generally, though it is fair to say
that the Bishops demonstrated unanimously in its favour.]
A system of education, moreover, which was truly Christian, would
provide not merely for the training of mind and body, and for
instruction--on the basis of some inter-denominational modus vivendi
yet to be achieved--in morality and religion. It would secure equally
for the children of all classes opportunities for the training of the
aesthetic faculties, for the cultivation of art and imagination, for
the filling of life with colour and variety and movement. The
intolerable ugliness of the domestic architecture of our cities and
towns is a totally unnecessary offence to GOD and man; and the
drabness and monotony of the life of huge masses of the population,
who find in the rival attractions of the gin-palace and the cinema the
only means of distraction at present open to them--this also is
something which cannot possibly be regarded as being in accordance
with the will of GOD. The redemption of society from all that at
present makes human life sordid or hideous is a real part of what the
ideal of the Kingdom means. It is a part of the task laid upon the
Christian Church in preparing the way of the Lord and making straight
His paths.
Included also in the will of GOD for humanity is the evangelization of
the world, the perfecting of the Church, the bringing of all nations
and races into a spiritual unity in Christ Jesus. Christianity claims
by its very nature to be the absolute religion: the climax and
fulfilment of the whole process of man's religious quest: the
synthetic and unifying truth, in which whatever is true and positive
and permanently valuable in the religious systems of the non-Christian
world is gathered up and made complete. Of Christ it has been written
that "How many soever be the promises of GOD, in Him is the yea." In
Christ is the fulfilment of the unconscious prophecies of the
religions of the heathen world, nor is there any true solution of the
problems of comparative religion except this. The Christian Church is
in principle and of necessity missionary, and apart from the
vitalizing breath of the missionary spirit the life of the Church
languishes and dies.
But the true spirit and method of Christian missions is not a narrow
proselytism. There are indeed things in many of the lower religions of
the world which are dark and evil. There are regions of the earth
which are full of base and cruel and degrading superstitions, immoral
rites and practices against which the Church of Christ can only set
its face, and with which it can make no terms. These are works of the
devil which the Son of GOD was manifested to destroy. But there is
much in the higher religious thought of paganism which Christ comes
not to destroy but to fulfil, and Christianity can fulfil and
interpret to the higher religions of paganism just that which is
truest and most positive in their own spiritual message. Conversely,
it is probable that there are in Christianity itself elements which
will only be fully interpreted and understood when the spiritual
genius of nations at present pagan has made its proper contribution to
Christian thought. For our own sake as well as for theirs it is
important that the nations should be evangelized and brought to a
knowledge of the truth. When we say the Lord's Prayer we are praying,
among other things, for the success of Christian Missions.
And if Christianity contains within itself the true solution of the
problem of comparative religion, it contains also, in germ and
potentiality, the solution of the problems of race and caste, and of
the international problem also. Not until men have learnt the secret
of brotherhood in Christ will the white and the coloured races treat
one another as brothers. Not until the nations, as nations, are
genuinely Christian and have learnt, in their dealings one with
another, to manifest the spirit of unselfishness and love, will the
day be in sight when they shall beat their swords into ploughshares
and be content to learn war no more. This too, if the Gospel means
anything at all, is part of the will of GOD for the human race. It is
part of what is involved in the prayer, "Thy will be done in earth, as
it is in heaven." It is an integral and vitally important element in
the Christian hope of the Kingdom.
The redemption of society, the evangelization of the world, the
bringing together into the corporate wholeness of a world-wide
Catholic Church of the fragmentary Christianity of the existing
multitude of sects, the elimination of war from the earth, and the
breaking down, as the result of a conscious realization of human unity
in Christ, of the dividing barriers of colour and race and caste-all
these are essential elements in the Christian vision. The man of the
world may, and probably will, pronounce each and all of them to be
chimerical, the baseless fabric of a dream. He will find no thoughtful
man who is genuinely Christian to agree with him.
For these things are, quite certainly, part of the will of GOD for
humanity. They are involved of necessity in any effectual realization
in human life of the sovereignty of the Father who is revealed in
Christ. And because GOD is GOD, the goal, for the Christian man, is
within the horizon-"The Kingdom of heaven is at hand." In any case, be
the goal near or be it far off, it is as a citizen of that Kingdom,
and of none other, that the Christian man will set himself to live. He
will enthrone GOD in his own heart as King and Lord, and will hold
fast the heavenly vision which it has been given to him to see.
"As we look out into the future," says a modern writer,[Footnote: The
Rev. W. Temple, in an address delivered at Liverpool on "Problems of
Society" in 1912, and published by the Student Christian Movement in
_Christ and, Human Need._] "we seem to see a great army drawn from
every nation under heaven, from every social class, from every section
of Christ's Church, pledged to one thing and to one thing only-the
establishment of Christ's Kingdom upon earth by His method of
sacrifice and the application of His principle of brotherhood to every
phase of human life. And as they labour there takes shape a world much
like our own, and yet how different! Still individuals and
communities, but the individual always serving the community and the
community protecting the individual: still city and country life, with
all their manifold pursuits, but no leading into captivity and no
complaining in our streets: still Eastern and Western, but no grasping
worldliness in the West, no deadening pessimism in the East: still
richer and poorer, but no thoughtless luxury, no grinding destitution:
still sorrow, but no bitterness: still failure, but no oppression:
still priest and people, yet both alike unitedly presenting before the
Eternal Father the one unceasing sacrifice for human life in body
broken and blood shed: still Church and World, yet both together
celebrating unintermittently the one Divine Service, which is the
service of mankind. And in that climax of a vision, which, if we are
faithful, shall be prophecy, what is it that has happened?
"'The kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of our GOD and of
His Christ.'"
CHAPTER VI
CHRISTIANITY AND COMMERCE
This chapter ought properly to be written by a layman who is also a
Christian man of business. It is inserted here mainly to challenge
inquiry and to provoke thought. The writer has no first-hand
acquaintance either with business life or with business methods. He
desires simply to chronicle an impression that the level of morality
in the business world has been declining in recent years, and that the
more thoughtful and candid of Christian laymen in business are
beginning to be deeply disquieted. It is not uncommon to be confronted
by the statement that it is impossible in modern business life to
regulate conduct by Christian standards. The impression exists that if
large numbers of business men abstain from the outward observances of
religion, it is in many cases because they are conscious of a lack of
correspondence between Sunday professions and weekday practice, and
have no desire to add hypocrisy to existing burdens upon conscience.
The clergy are by the circumstances of their calling sheltered from
the particular difficulties and temptations which beset laymen in the
business world. Their exhortations are apt to sound in the ears of
laymen abstract and remote from life.
If the situation has been diagnosed correctly the matter is serious.
What is suggested is not that men to-day are deliberately more
unprincipled than were their fathers, but that modern conditions have
made the way of righteousness more difficult. Things have been speeded
up. The competitive struggle has been intensified. Men are beset, it
has been said, by a "moral powerlessness." They are "as good as they
dare be." Absorbed in money-making, and pressed hard by unscrupulous
rivals, they cannot afford to scrutinize too narrowly the social
consequences of what they do, or the strict morality of the methods
which they employ. Honesty, as experience demonstrates, is by no means
always the best policy from a worldly point of view. "The children of
this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light."
This being so, it is to be feared that men are apt to prefer the
wisdom of the serpent to the harmlessness of the dove.
Moreover the man of business in the majority of cases does not stand
alone. He is a breadwinner on behalf of others. Very commonly he
regards it as a point of honour to refrain from disclosing to those at
home his business perplexities and trials. It is assumed that they
would not be understood, or that in any case it is unfair to burden
wife and children with financial troubles. In the result it sometimes
happens that a man's foes are found to be they of his own household,
and that for the sake of wife and child he stoops to procedures which
his own conscience condemns, and which those for whose sake he embarks
upon them would be the first to disapprove. A wife, it may be
suggested, ought to share the knowledge of her husband's difficulties,
and to be willing, if need so require, to suffer loss and diminution
of income as the price of her husband's honour. A wife takes her
husband in matrimony "for poorer" as well as "for richer," for
sickness and poverty as well as for health and wealth. It is a tragedy
that in modern marriages too often only the more pleasurable
alternative is seriously meant.
Enough has been said to make it evident that in the world of modern
business there is a battle to be fought on behalf of Christ. Precisely
for the reason that the vocation of a Christian in this sphere is in
some ways the most difficult it is also the most necessary. There is a
call for courage and consecration, for hard thinking and readiness for
sacrifice, and from the nature of the case it must be mainly a
laymen's battle. There may have to be financial martyrdoms for the
sake of Christ before the victory is won. But the prize and the goal
is worth striving for, for it is nothing less than the redemption of a
large element in human life from the tyranny of selfishness and greed.
[Footnote: It may, of course, be argued that so long as the
competitive system prevails in the business world, a Christian man in
business must compete, just as in the existing state; though in an
ideally Christian world competition would be replaced by co-operative
and war would be unknown. This is perfectively true. But it should be
possible, nevertheless, to hold fast the Christian ideal as a
regulative principle even under present conditions. Only in proportion
as this is done is the redemption of business life a possibility.]
In principle the issues are clear enough. The interchange of
commodities is a service rendered to the community. It ought to be so
regarded, and the service rendered, rather than the gain secured,
should be its inspiration and motive. The service of man is a form of
the service of GOD, and the operations of financiers and business men
ought to be capable of interpretation as forms of social service. It
is only as this spirit is infused into the lives and practice of men
in business that the world of business can be saved from degenerating
into a soulless mechanism, dominated by the idea of purely selfish
profit, or a tissue of dishonest speculation and sordid gambling. The
business man, like any other servant of the community, is entitled to
a living wage. He is not entitled either by chicanery and trickery, or
by taking advantage of the needs of others and his own control of
markets, to become a "profiteer." Profiteering in time of war is
condemned by the common conscience. It is equally to be condemned in
time of peace. The Christian man in business will stand for integrity
and just dealing, for human sympathy and the spirit of service, for
the renunciation of profits which are unreasonable and unfair. His
function is not to exploit the community in his own personal or
sectional interests, but to be a servant of the Christian
commonwealth. Some procedures and some methods of making money the
Christian man will feel himself debarred from employing. For the rest
what is needed is mainly a change of heart, a shifting of emphasis, a
modification of the inward spirit and motive of business life.
CHAPTER VII
CHRISTIANITY AND INDUSTRY