Amongst the sources of insight which bring us into definite and
practical relations with that spiritual world whose nature has now
been again defined, one of the most effective is the life and the word
of other men who are minded to be loyal to genuine causes, and who are
already, through the service of their common causes, brought together
in some form of spiritual brotherhood. The real unity of the life of
such fellow-servants of the Spirit is itself an instance of a
superhuman conscious reality; and its members are devoted to bringing
themselves into harmony with the purposes of the universe. Any {273}
brotherhood of men who thus loyally live in the Spirit is, from my
point of view, a brotherhood essentially religious in its nature,
precisely in proportion as it is practically moved by an effort to
serve--not merely the special cause to which its members, because of
their training and their traditions, happen to be devoted, but also
the common cause of all the loyal. Such a brotherhood, so far as it is
indeed human, and, therefore narrow, may not very expressly define
what this common cause of all the loyal is, for its members may not be
thoughtfully reflective people. But if, while rejoicing in their own
perfectly real fraternal unity, they are also practically guided by
the love of furthering brotherhood amongst men in general; if they
respect the loyalty of other men so far as they understand that
loyalty; if they seek, not to sow discord amongst the brethren of our
communities, but to be a city set on a hill, that not only cannot be
hid, but is also a model for other cities--a centre for the spreading
of the spirit of loyalty--then the members of such an essentially
fruitful brotherhood are actually loyal to the cause of causes. They
are a source of insight to all who know of their life, and who rightly
appreciate its meaning. And of such is the kingdom of loyalty. And the
communities which such men form and serve are essentially religious
communities. Each one is an example of the unity of the Spirit. Each
one stands for a reality that belongs to the superhuman world.
{274}
Since the variety of social forms which appear under human conditions
is an unpredictably vast variety, and since the motives which guide
men are endlessly complex, different communities of loyal people may
possess such a religious character and value in the most various
degrees. For it results from the narrowness of the human form of
consciousness that men, at any one moment, know not the whole of what
they mean. No sharp line can be drawn sundering the brotherhoods and
partnerships, and other social organisations which men devise, into
those which for the men concerned are consciously religious, and those
which, by virtue of their absence of interest in the larger and deeper
loyalties are secular. The test whereby such a distinction should be
made is in principle a definite test. But to apply the test to every
possible case requires a searching of human hearts and a just estimate
of deeds and motives whereto, in our ignorance, we are very generally
inadequate.
A business firm would seem to be, in general, no model of a religious
organisation. Yet it justly demands loyalty from its members and its
servants. If it lives and acts merely for gain, it is secular indeed.
But if its business is socially beneficent, if its cause is
honourable, if its dealings are honest, if its treatment of its allies
and rivals is such as makes for the confidence, the cordiality, and
the stability of the whole commercial life of its community and (when
its influence extends so far) of the world, if {275} public spirit and
true patriotism inspire its doings, if it is always ready on occasion
to sacrifice gain for honour's sake--then there is no reason why it
may not become and be a genuinely and fervently religious brotherhood.
Certainly a family can become a religious organisation; and some of
the most ancient traditions of mankind have demanded that it should be
one. There is also, and justly, a religion of patriotism, which
regards the country as a divine institution. Such a religion serves
the unity of the spirit in a perfectly genuine way. Some of the most
momentous religious movements in the world's history have grown out of
such an idealised patriotism. Christianity, in transferring local
names from Judea to a heavenly world, has borne witness to the
sacredness that patriotism, upon its higher levels, acquires.
In brief, the question whether a given human brotherhood is a
religious institution or not is a question for that brotherhood to
decide for itself, subject only to the truth about its real motives.
Has its cause the characters that mark a fitting cause of loyalty?
Does it so serve its cause as thereby to further the expression of the
divine unity of the spirit in the form of devoted human lives, not
only within its own brotherhood, but as widely as its influence
extends? Then it is an essentially religious organisation. Nor does
the extent of its worldly influence enable you to decide how far it
meets these requirements. Nor yet does the {276} number of persons in
its membership form any essential criterion. Wherever two or three are
gathered together, and are living as they can in the Spirit that the
divine will (which wills the loyal union of all mankind) requires of
them--there, indeed, the work of the Spirit is done; and the
organisation in question is a religious brotherhood. It needs no human
sanction to make it such. Though it dwell on a desert island, and
though all its members soon die and are forgotten of men, its loyal
deeds are irrevocable facts of the eternal world; and the universal
life knows that here at least the divine will is expressed in human
acts.
But so far as such communities both exist and are distinctly
recognisable as religious in their life and intent, they form a source
of religious insight to all who come under their influence. Such a
source acts as a means whereby any or all of our previous sources may
be opened to us, may become effective, may bear fruit. _Hence, in this
new source, we find the crowning source of religious insight._
This last statement is one which is accepted by many who would
nevertheless limit its application to certain religious communities,
and to those only; or who, in some cases, would limit its application
to some one religious community. There are, for instance, many who
say, for various special reasons, that the crowning source of
religious insight is the visible church. By this term those who use it
in any of its traditional senses, mean one religious {277} institution
only, or at most only a certain group of religious organisations. The
visible church is a religious organisation, or group of such
organisations, which is characterised by certain traditions, by a
certain real or supposed history, by a more or less well-defined
creed, and by further assertions concerning the divine revelation to
which it owes its origin and authority. With the doctrinal questions
involved in the understanding of this definition, these lectures, as
you now well know, have no direct concern. It is enough for our
present purpose to say that the visible church thus defined is indeed,
and explicitly, and in our present sense, a religious organisation. In
all those historical forms which here concern us, the visible church
has undertaken to show men the way to salvation. It has carried out
its task by uniting its members in a spiritual brotherhood. It has in
ideal extended its interest to all mankind. It has aimed at universal
brotherhood. It has defined and called out loyalty. It has conceived
this loyalty as a service of God and as a loyalty to the cause of all
mankind. Its traditions, the lives of its servants, its services, its
teachings, have been and are an inexhaustible source of religious
insight to the vast multitudes whom it has influenced and, in its
various forms and embodiments, still influences. Not unnaturally,
therefore, those who accept its own doctrines regarding its origin and
history view such a visible church not only as by far the most
important source of religious {278} insight, but also as a source
occupying an entirely unique position.
The deliberate limitations of the undertaking of these lectures forbid
me, as I have just reminded you, to consider in any detail this
supposed uniqueness of the position which so many of you will assign
to some form of the historical Christian church. After what I have
said as to the nature and the variety of the forms which the spiritual
life has taken, and still takes, amongst men, you will nevertheless
not be surprised if, without attempting to judge the correctness of
the traditions of the visible church, I forthwith point out that, to
the higher religious life of mankind the life of the visible church
stands related as part to whole; and that very vast ranges of the
higher religious life of mankind have grown and flourished outside of
the influence of Christianity. And when the religious life of mankind
is viewed in its historical connections, truth requires us to insist
that Christianity itself has been dependent for its insight and its
power upon many different sources, some of which assumed human form
not only long before Christianity came into being, but in nations and
in civilisations which were not dependent for their own spiritual
wealth upon the Jewish religious traditions that Christianity itself
undertook to transform and to assimilate. Christianity is, in its
origins, not only Jewish but Hellenic, both as to its doctrines and as
to its type of spirituality. It is a synthesis of religious motives
{279} which had their sources widely spread throughout the
pre-Christian world of Hellenism. Its own insight is partly due to the
non-Christian world.
As a fact, then, the unity of the Spirit, the religious life which has
been and is embodied in the form of human fraternities, is the
peculiar possession of no one time, or nation, and belongs to no
unique and visible church. Yet such an unity is a source of religious
insight. We have a right to use it wherever we find it and however it
becomes accessible to us. As a fact, we all use such insight without
following any one principle as to the selection of the historical
sources. Socrates and Plato and Sophocles are religious teachers from
whom we have all directly or indirectly learned, whether we know it or
not. Our own Germanic ancestors, and the traditions of the Roman
Empire, have influenced our type of loyalty and have taught us
spiritual truth that we should not otherwise know.
Moreover, that which I have called the cause of all the loyal, the
real unity of the whole spiritual world, is not merely a moral ideal.
It is a religious reality. Its servants and ministers are present
wherever religious brotherhood finds sincere and hearty manifestation.
In the sight of a perfectly real but superhuman knowledge of the real
purposes and effective deeds of mankind, _all the loyal, whether they
individually know the fact or not, are, and in all times have been,
one genuine and religious brotherhood._ Human narrowness and the {280}
vicissitudes of the world of time have hidden, and still hide, the
knowledge of this community of the loyal from human eyes. But
indirectly it comes to light whenever the loyalty of one visible
spiritual community comes, through any sort of tradition, or custom,
or song or story, or wise word or noble deed, to awaken new
manifestations of the loyal life in faithful souls anywhere amongst
men.
_I call the community of all who have sought for salvation through
loyalty the Invisible Church._ What makes it invisible to us is our
ignorance of the facts of human history and, still more, our
narrowness in our appreciation of spiritual truth. And I merely report
the genuine facts, human and superhuman, when I say that _whatever any
form of the visible church has done or will do for the religious life
of mankind, the crowning source of religious insight is, for us all,
the actual loyalty, service, devotion, suffering, accomplishment,
traditions, example, teaching, and triumphs of the invisible church of
all the faithful._ And by the invisible church I mean the brotherhood
consisting of all who, in any clime or land, live in the Spirit.
Our terms have now been, so far as my time permits, sharply defined. I
am here not appealing to vague sentiments about human brotherhood, or
to merely moral ideals about what we merely hope that man may yet come
to be. And I am not for a moment committing myself to any mere worship
of humanity, so long as one conceives humanity as the mere collection
of those who are subject to the {281} natural laws that govern our
present physical and mental existence. Humanity, viewed as a mere
product of nature, is narrow-minded and degraded enough. Its life is
full of uncomprehended evils and of mutual misunderstandings. It is
not a fitting object of any religious reverence. But it needs
salvation. It has been finding salvation through loyalty. And the true
cause, the genuine community, the real spiritual brotherhood of the
loyal is a superhuman and not merely a human reality. It expresses
itself in the lives of the loyal. In so far as these expressions
directly or indirectly inspire our own genuine loyalty, they give us
insight. Of such insight, whatever you may learn from communion with
any form of the visible church, is an instance--a special embodiment.
The invisible church, then, is no merely human and secular
institution. It is a real and superhuman organisation. It includes and
transcends every form of the visible church. It is the actual subject
to which belong all the spiritual gifts which we can hope to enjoy. If
your spiritual eyes were open, no diversity of human tongues, no
strangeness of rites or of customs or of other forms of service, no
accidental quaintnesses of tradition or of symbols or of creeds, would
hide from your vision its perfections. It believes everywhere in the
unity of the Spirit, and aims to save men through winning them over to
the conscious service of its own unity. And it grants you the free
grace of whatever religious insight you can acquire from outside
yourself. {282} If you are truly religious, you live in it and for it.
You conceive its life in your own way and, no doubt, under the
limitations of your own time and creed. But you cannot flee from its
presence. And your salvation lies in its reality, in your service, and
in your communion with its endlessly varied company of those who
suffer and who in the might of the spirit overcome.
Let me tell you something of this life of the invisible church.