It may be doubted if this line of reasoning regarding the official and
his oath can be extended to excuse the priest or pledged minister of
religion who finds that faith in the true God has ousted his formal
beliefs.
This has been a frequent and subtle moral problem in the intellectual
life of the last hundred years. It has been increasingly difficult for
any class of reading, talking, and discussing people such as are the
bulk of the priesthoods of the Christian churches to escape hearing and
reading the accumulated criticism of the Trinitarian theology and of the
popularly accepted story of man’s fall and salvation. Some have no doubt
defeated this universal and insidious critical attack entirely, and
honestly established themselves in a right-down acceptance of the
articles and disciplines to which they have subscribed and of the
creeds they profess and repeat. Some have recanted and abandoned their
positions in the priesthood. But a great number have neither resisted
the bacillus of criticism nor left the churches to which they are
attached. They have adopted compromises, they have qualified their
creeds with modifying footnotes of essential repudiation; they
have decided that plain statements are metaphors and have undercut,
transposed, and inverted the most vital points of the vulgarly accepted
beliefs. One may find within the Anglican communion, Arians, Unitarians,
Atheists, disbelievers in immortality, attenuators of miracles; there
is scarcely a doubt or a cavil that has not found a lodgment within the
ample charity of the English Establishment. I have been interested to
hear one distinguished Canon deplore that “they” did not identify the
Logos with the third instead of the second Person of the Trinity, and
another distinguished Catholic apologist declare his indifference to
the “historical Jesus.” Within most of the Christian communions one may
believe anything or nothing, provided only that one does not call too
public an attention to one’s eccentricity. The late Rev. Charles Voysey,
for example, preached plainly in his church at Healaugh against the
divinity of Christ, unhindered. It was only when he published his
sermons under the provocative title of “The Sling and the Stone,” and
caused an outcry beyond the limits of his congregation, that he was
indicted and deprived.
Now the reasons why these men do not leave the ministry or priesthood in
which they find themselves are often very plausible. It is probable that
in very few cases is the retention of stipend or incumbency a conscious
dishonesty. At the worst it is mitigated by thought for wife or child.
It has only been during very exceptional phases of religious development
and controversy that beliefs have been really sharp. A creed, like a
coin, it may be argued, loses little in practical value because it is
worn, or bears the image of a vanished king. The religious life is a
reality that has clothed itself in many garments, and the concern of
the priest or minister is with the religious life and not with the poor
symbols that may indeed pretend to express, but do as a matter of fact
no more than indicate, its direction. It is quite possible to maintain
that the church and not the creed is the real and valuable instrument of
religion, that the religious life is sustained not by its propositions
but by its routines. Anyone who seeks the intimate discussion of
spiritual things with professional divines, will find this is the
substance of the case for the ecclesiastical sceptic. His church, he
will admit, mumbles its statement of truth, but where else is truth?
What better formulae are to be found for ineffable things? And
meanwhile--he does good.
That may be a valid defence before a man finds God. But we who profess
the worship and fellowship of the living God deny that religion is a
matter of ineffable things. The way of God is plain and simple and easy
to understand.
Therewith the whole position of the conforming sceptic is changed. If
a professional religious has any justification at all for his
professionalism it is surely that he proclaims the nearness and
greatness of God. And these creeds and articles and orthodoxies are not
proclamations but curtains, they are a darkening and confusion of what
should be crystal clear. What compensatory good can a priest pretend
to do when his primary business is the truth and his method a lie? The
oaths and incidental conformities of men who wish to serve God in the
state are on a different footing altogether from the falsehood and
mischief of one who knows the true God and yet recites to a trustful
congregation, foists upon a trustful congregation, a misleading and
ill-phrased Levantine creed.
Such is the line of thought which will impose the renunciation of his
temporalities and a complete cessation of services upon every ordained
priest and minister as his first act of faith. Once that he has truly
realised God, it becomes impossible for him ever to repeat his creed
again. His course seems plain and clear. It becomes him to stand up
before the flock he has led in error, and to proclaim the being and
nature of the one true God. He must be explicit to the utmost of his
powers. Then he may await his expulsion. It may be doubted whether it is
sufficient for him to go away silently, making false excuses or none at
all for his retreat. He has to atone for the implicit acquiescences of
his conforming years.