THE CHURCH AND THE KINGDOM Of GOD
+Order of the subject.+--From the consideration of the true
significance of such terms as Salvation, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell, we
now turn to one which might be thought to occupy a relatively inferior
position and to precede them in order of time. But if we have been
right in holding that such terms as we have already examined represent
states of the soul beginning here and now, we have considered them in
their rightful place, for now we have to see how these states of the
soul find expression in human institutions. In a word, I wish to
devote some space to the consideration of the great subjects of the
Church and the Kingdom of God in relation to one another. What is the
Church? Where did the idea spring from? What had Jesus to do with it
originally? What is the Kingdom of God, and how do the various
Christian societies which call themselves churches stand in regard to
it to-day? To answer any of these questions we must try to place
ourselves to some extent in the intellectual and moral atmosphere of
those amongst whom the ideas first arose. Let us take the Kingdom
first.
+Origin of the idea of the Kingdom of God.+--At the time when Jesus
came every person of Jewish nationality was looking for the
establishment of what had come to be called the Kingdom of God. For
many generations the Jews had been a subject race. There had been one
brief period of national splendour and prosperity, namely, the reigns
of David and Solomon. After generations were inclined to idealise
these two reigns, especially the former, and to look upon them as a
kind of golden age. David they looked upon as an ideal monarch; they
called him a "man after God's own heart," and the imagination of poet
and prophet loved to dwell upon his winsome personality. They thought
of him as in a special way the king chosen by God, and the Israel of
his time as a true kingdom of God, a kingdom of righteousness, peace,
and plenty under the favour of the Most High. The real Israel of
David's day was far different from this, but compared with the days
that followed it was indeed a time of unexampled greatness. A similar
tendency to idealise the past is observable in nearly every nation
which has entered upon a period of suffering or misfortune, as we can
see from the legends about King Olaf and Frederick Barbarossa. But
Israel always looked upon herself as in a special way a theocratic
kingdom, a chosen of God. At its best this idea was a fine one, one,
it led to the thought of a special spiritual vocation for the sake of
the other nations of the earth; at its worst it meant the assertion of
national privilege and contempt for everything which was not Jewish.
After the great captivity in Babylon the Jews were never without a
foreign master, and the northern kingdom of Israel disappeared from
history. But in quite a remarkable way Jewish poets and preachers
united to keep alive the popular belief that God would yet "restore the
kingdom to Israel." Hence there grew up a firmly held conviction that
God would sometime raise up a prince born of David's line who with
supernatural help, and with a strong hand, would drive out the invader
and establish a kingdom which should outshine even that of David
himself. This was the root idea of the kingdom of God, as we meet it
in the New Testament, and as it is described in some of the most
beautiful passages of the Old.
+The Messiah of Jewish expectation.+--As time went on this idea was
deepened and clarified and became more and more associated in popular
expectation with the advent of the Messianic deliverer whose work it
should be to inaugurate it. At the time when Jesus was born this
expectation had become very keen. Everyone was thinking of it, from
Pharisees and Scribes downward. At the moment the foreign master was
the Roman, whose rule, though milder than that of the Ptolemies, was
quite severe enough; the people were impoverished and unhappy. What
they were looking for was a Messiah, a transcendent but quite human
personality of royal descent, who should expel the Roman eagles and
inaugurate suddenly and completely an era of peace and prosperity the
like of which had never been known before, a true kingdom of God. One
extension of this idea was that Israel should replace the Roman empire
as the suzerain of all the other nations of the earth. "Arise, shine;
for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.
For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the
people: but the Lord shall rise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen
upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the
brightness of thy rising.... And the sons of strangers shall build up
thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee: for in my wrath I
smote thee, but in my favour have I had mercy on thee. Therefore thy
gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night;
that men may bring unto thee forces of the Gentiles, and that their
kings may be brought. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve
thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.... The
sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee; and
all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of
thy feet; and they shall call thee, The city of the Lord, The Zion of
the Holy One of Israel." This fine passage shows pretty clearly what
was the general idea as to the nature of the anticipated kingdom of
God. It meant that the Jewish Messiah was to take the place of Caesar
and reign with undisputed sway from his capital of Jerusalem.
But we should do an injustice to the subject if we failed to allow for
the fact that according to the prophetic ideal this kingdom was to be a
blessing to the world, and to abolish all violence and oppression; the
kingdom of God was to be a kingdom of universal peace and joy, a
kingdom of righteousness based on social justice. It was because of
this widespread expectation that the austere preacher, John the
Baptist, obtained his hearing in the wilderness of Judea. All John had
to preach about was the kingdom of God, which he declared to be near at
hand. He believed that he had been sent to herald the coming of the
Messiah, and from his words we can gather what people thought about the
Messiah: "Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his
floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the
chaff with unquenchable fire." According to the Baptist, the Messiah
would spare no kind of sham or hypocrisy; he would root out and utterly
destroy every kind of social evil, no matter what. John insisted that
it would be of no use for Jews to imagine that simply because they were
descendants of Abraham they would escape this general visitation; hence
his words to the Pharisees were particularly scathing: "O generation of
vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" It is
clear, therefore, that, in the opinion of the man who has now come to
be regarded as the forerunner of Jesus, the kingdom of God was to be an
earthly kingdom, was to come suddenly, and was to be inaugurated by a
sort of general judgment or clean sweep of all the elements that made
for oppression, cruelty, foul living, and pretentiousness of every
kind. It had not the remotest reference to a world to come or a Divine
Redeemer whose principal duty it should be to suffer and die in order
to secure a blessed immortality for those who believed in Him.
+Jesus' idea of the kingdom.+--How far Jesus shared these ideas at the
commencement of His own ministry it is impossible to say, but it seems
clear that He was attracted by the moral earnestness of John and wished
to associate Himself with those who were looking for a kingdom of God
which should mean the establishment and realisation of the moral ideal
in all human relations. But at the baptism a purpose long forming in
his mind appears to have taken definite shape. He felt Himself called
to preach the good news of a kingdom which could begin at once in the
heart of any man who was willing to become the instrument of divine
love and the expression of the ideal of human brotherhood. He went
into the wilderness to think this out and then came back to teach it.
I do not think He imagined that it could be realised quickly and
easily, but it seems fairly obvious that at first He expected that men
would be so glad to hear about it that they would hasten to avail
themselves of it. All through His ministry He spoke of little else,
and it was because of what He had to say about the nature of the
kingdom that His followers were attracted to Him. Hence, too, we have
the deathless teaching preserved for us in the synoptical gospels:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.... Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." The
meaning of Jesus is perfectly clear and perfectly simple. It is that
if a kingdom of universal brotherhood is ever to be realised on earth,
it can only come by the operation of universal good will. This has
been much too simple for most of the theologians, and so they have
endeavoured to twist and torture it out of all recognition. As time
went on, however, Jesus came to see that it would not be realised as
quickly as even He had thought. Men could not or would not understand;
they were looking for a kingdom which should mean plenty to eat and
drink, and universal dominion for the sons of Abraham. Even His most
immediate followers were unable to divest themselves of this notion,
and it is plain enough that they went on hoping even to the end that
Jesus would head a revolt and establish a kingdom in which they
themselves would hold positions of dignity and importance: "Grant that
we may sit, the one on thy right hand and the other on thy left in thy
kingdom." The striking rebuke which Jesus administered to these
pretensions, by setting a little child in the midst of the jealous men,
will never be forgotten while the world lasts. Jesus _did_ believe in
an earthly kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy, but it is evident
that He would have nothing to say to violence as a means of realising
it. He even believed that the kingdom had already come in the heart of
any man who was desirous of being at one with God and man and denied
himself in the effort to do it: "And when he was demanded of the
Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and
said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall
they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is
within you."
+Early Christian idea of the kingdom.+--An important fact, which I do
not think is generally recognised, is that the first Christians thought
almost precisely what the Jews did about the kingdom of God. Most
people are accustomed to think of Christianity as having been from the
first a religion which had principally to do with getting men ready for
the next world. We can hardly think about it apart from ecclesiastical
buildings, choirs, baptisms, confirmations, prayers for the sick and
dying, and so on. So much have we been accustomed to think of it in
this way that the average man reads his New Testament with these
assumptions in the background of his mind. But this is certainly not
New Testament Christianity. The apostles and their followers believed
like the Jews in the sudden establishment of an ideal commonwealth upon
earth. This was how they understood the Lord's prayer, "Thy kingdom
come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." They did not even
wish to separate from Judaism, and it is clear from Paul's letters that
there was at one time a great danger that the new faith might become a
mere Jewish sect. The Christians differed from the Jews, not in their
ideal concerning the kingdom, but in their greater moral intensity and
enthusiasm, as well as in their profound conviction that the Lord Jesus
was God's chosen instrument for realising this kingdom, and that He
would presently return to earth and do it. Any unbiassed reader of the
New Testament can see for himself that the primitive Christians lived
in hourly expectation that this was what would happen. Of course they
also believed in their Master's continual spiritual presence with them,
but the dominant thought in their minds was that of a dramatic second
coming and the inauguration of a reign of righteousness and universal
peace, the making of a beautiful world, something like the Utopia of
Mr. H. G. Wells. Nor was this altogether a delusion. If it had been,
Christianity would soon have died. But, on the contrary, it lived and
grew because of the great truth behind this belief, namely, that the
Spirit of Christ working in the hearts of men is gradually producing
this ideal kingdom in our midst. If, with this view of the character
of early Christianity in our minds, we go afresh to the gospels or to
the letters of Paul, we shall find it abundantly confirmed. There is
no getting away from it. All the earnestness and enthusiasm of these
first Christians were centred upon the belief in the near advent of a
divine kingdom upon earth with Jesus as its head. This belief even
affected the practice of these early Christians in regard to the
disposal of their property. To understand this, let us put ourselves
in their place and ask what we should do if we were possessed by the
conviction that the whole existing social order might come to an end
to-morrow morning or next week, and that after that no child of God
would ever want for anything. I think we should be sure to feel that
the holding of personal property would not matter much. If, in
addition to this, our hearts were filled with a divine enthusiasm, an
overmastering love for Jesus and for all our brethren, we should not
want to keep anything back that could serve to make anyone happier for
the short time that intervened before the glorious coming of the Lord.
This was just how the primitive Christians felt. They had no organised
economic system; no one was compelled to give anything, but under the
pressure of the new spirit they willingly gave everything. What did it
matter? they thought; they were only like pilgrims within sight of
home, or watchers waiting for the morning.
+Origin of the idea of the church.+--Where, then, did the idea of the
church come from? It is as plain as anything can be that the primary
interest of early Christianity was the kingdom of God. It took the
conception over from Judaism with a deeper moral content derived from
the preaching and the life of Jesus. Its first adherents did not even
know that they had a new religion; they only thought they had found the
true Messiah, although the Jewish nation as a whole had rejected Him.
What they wanted above everything was to see the kingdom come upon
earth, and we now know that they were mistaken in imagining that it
would be established speedily and suddenly by the visible second coming
of Jesus on the clouds of heaven. But seeing that they were thinking
of it in this way, how did the church arise and why?
It is doubtful if Jesus ever used the word "church," for the two verses
in Matthew in which He is credited with it are probably of late date
and point to a time when the ecclesiastical organisation was fairly
well established. Still the word itself has an interest and a history
of its own apart from its Christian use. The _ecclesia_, as most of my
readers may be aware, was the assembly of the citizens of any Greek
city-state. It was the custom for the whole body of the members of a
Greek self-governing community to be called together from time to time
for the transaction of public business. This assembly was the final
authority in matters affecting the communal welfare, and even after the
various Greek states became absorbed in the Roman empire this custom
was allowed to continue. It was the policy of the Romans to permit a
large measure of self-government to their subjects of any alien race,
and therefore the _ecclesia_ of any particular city-state continued to
be summoned as usual to decide upon matters of local importance. There
is a reference to this in the nineteenth chapter of the Acts, where we
read that the preaching of Christianity in Ephesus caused a riot which
the town clerk--a thoroughly typical town clerk!--succeeded in allaying
by reminding the demonstrators that if they had any real cause for
complaint, the matter ought to come before the regular _ecclesia_.
This properly constituted _ecclesia_ to which the level-headed town
clerk referred was the general assembly of the citizens for the
transaction of public business.
It was quite natural that the primitive Christians should have come to
adopt this word, and to an extent this very idea, as a convenient
description of the new Christian community. After the departure of
their Master the Christians held together, and wherever their
missionaries went, new communities sprang up, animated by a spirit of
loyalty to Jesus and a desire to realise His ideal for mankind. It was
quite natural, too, that the apostles should recognise all these
communities as being in reality one community for fellowship of faith
and love; it was the _ecclesia_, or assembly, or society of Jesus, the
beginning of the church of Christ, as it soon came to be called. There
was no elaborate organisation; nothing could have been simpler. Every
Christian seems to have thought that as it would not be long before the
Master came again, the wise and right thing to do was for His followers
to hold together and witness Him to the world, until that great event
took place.
+Church only exists for the sake of the kingdom.+--But how far did
Jesus foresee and intend this? It is difficult to say, but his choice
of twelve apostles whom He carefully trained to continue His work is
evidence that He contemplated the formation of some kind of society to
give effect to His teaching. The number twelve points to the
probability that He thought of this society as a kind of new Israel, a
spiritual Israel, which should do for the world what the older Israel
had failed to do, that is, bring about the kingdom of God. I have
already pointed out that in my judgment Jesus did not believe, as His
contemporaries did, that that kingdom could be established suddenly
from without, but held that it could only be achieved by spiritual
forces working from within. His _ecclesia_ has lived and grown. It
has survived for nineteen centuries, and is likely to survive for many
centuries more. It has played a leading part in the making of modern
civilisation. But it is no longer a unity, and many different theories
exist as to its meaning and worth.
_The sacerdotal theory._--Broadly speaking, however, there are two
outstanding views as to the scope and function of the _ecclesia_, or
church of Jesus. One is the sacerdotal, and the other is what, for
want of a better name, I may term the evangelical. In outline the
former is as follows: before Jesus finally withdrew His bodily presence
from His disciples He formally constituted a religious society to
represent Him on earth. This society was to be the ark of salvation,
the "sphere of covenanted grace." Its principal work was to call men
out of a lost and ruined world and secure for them a blessed
immortality; those who were members of this church, and only they, were
certain of heaven. Membership therein was clearly defined; the gateway
was baptism. Those who were baptized in a proper way, even though they
were unconscious infants, were members of the church of Christ and all
others were outside. Within this sacred society souls were to be
trained in rightness of living, and, to an extent, made fit for heaven.
The Holy Spirit abiding in this society would sanctify the individual
members and guide them into all the truth. It is even held that Jesus
definitely appointed the way in which this church was to be governed.
Its affairs were to be managed by a threefold order,--bishops, priests,
and deacons. But here a division has taken place amongst the
sacerdotalists themselves owing to the necessity of finding some final
authority, some living voice, within this visible society to which
appeal in the last resort could be made. Romanists have found this in
the bishop of Rome whom they regard as the episcopal successor of the
apostle Peter. Devout Anglicans take their stand upon the faith as
defined by the first four general Councils, while in administrative
matters they regard the bishop as independent. The Greek church also
insists upon its autonomy.
This sacerdotal view has exercised enormous influence in Christian
history, and I have sufficient of the historic imagination to be able
to say that at certain times it has undoubtedly worked on the whole for
good. But did Jesus really found a church of this kind? I am quite
sure He never thought of such a thing, and historical criticism of
Christian origins does not leave the sacerdotalist much to stand on.
Jesus appointed neither bishop nor priest, and never ordained that any
merely mechanical ceremony should be the means of admission to the
Christian society or be necessary to the eternal welfare of anyone. In
the early church the bishop or elder was the president of the little
Christian society meeting in any particular locality. Primitive
Christian organisation was anything but rigid and formal, and was as
far as possible from the sacerdotal model. I do not say that the
sacerdotal mode of organisation which gradually grew up was wholly
mischievous, nor do I say that the primitive Christian organisation
would be the best under all circumstances. All I maintain is that in
founding His new society Jesus did not ordain any particular form of
organisation.
+The evangelical theory.+--The other view of the meaning of the word
"church" to which I have already referred, is that it is the totality
of the followers of Jesus. Under this view organisation is a secondary
matter. There are many reasons why Christian societies should organise
themselves differently from one another. Temperament plays a great
part in the matter. But theories of church government have ceased to
be the burning questions that they once were. Most sensible men are
now satisfied that forms of government matter much less than the kind
of life which flourishes in the society itself.
+What the church exists for to-day.+--But what does the church exist
for, using the word in its primitive sense? What ought it to exist for
to-day? What is the justification for all the vast number of Christian
organisations which exist throughout the world? This is a subject upon
which a clear note needs to be sounded, for a great deal of mental
confusion exists in regard to it. Two inconsistent views of the work
of the church, as well as of the constitution of the church, have come
down the ages together and exist side by side in the world to-day. The
first is that the chief business of the church is to snatch men as
brands from the burning and get them ready for a future heaven. The
Fall theory has had much to do with this. The assumption behind it is,
as we have seen, that the world is a City of Destruction, as Bunyan
calls it. It is a ruined world, a world which has somehow baffled and
disappointed God, a failure of a world which, when the cup of its
iniquity is full, will be utterly destroyed as a general judgment.
When that dreadful day comes it will be bad for all those who are
outside the fellowship of Christ, for, like those who have died without
availing themselves of the means of salvation, they will be relegated
to everlasting torment in the world unseen. This view of the fate of
the world as being at enmity with God, and of the duty of the church to
persuade as many as possible to believe something or other in order to
secure salvation in a future and better world, has been held by
sacerdotalists and non-sacerdotalists, Catholics and Protestants alike.
It is still implied in most of our preaching and in the hymns we sing.
I admit that there is a certain truth in it, the truth that man is
constituted for immortality and ought not to live as if this world were
all that mattered. But on the whole, it has been thoroughly
mischievous, and there is nothing which is acting as a greater
hindrance to the spirituality and usefulness of the churches to-day.
It is based on an entirely false idea as to the relation of God and the
world.
+To save the world.+--But alongside of this view a far higher and
nobler one has been present to the minds of Christians in every
century, namely, that the work of the church is to save the world and
to believe that it is worth the saving. If what I have already said be
true, this is the idea which was in the mind of Jesus when He founded
His _ecclesia_. To Him the purpose of the _ecclesia_ was to help to
realise the kingdom of God by preaching and living the fellowship of
love. Ever since His day those who have been nearest to Him in spirit
have been going forth into the dark places of the earth trying to win
men to the realisation of the great ideal of a universal fellowship of
love based on a common relationship to the God and Father of us all.
This is what Augustine aimed at in his City of God. It was what
Ambrose had in mind when he excommunicated the emperor Theodosius for
having ordered a cruel massacre of some of his rebellious subjects. It
was the ideal of the mighty Hildebrand, grim and arrogant though he
was, when he compelled princes to bow their haughty necks and do
justice to the weak. It was what Bernard of Clairvaux meant to declare
when he defied the cruel and sensual king of France to approach the
altar of Christ. Savonarola realised it for a brief moment in
Florence, Calvin in Geneva, the Covenanters in Scotland, the Puritans
in England, the Pilgrim Fathers in America. They all failed because
the world can never be saved by the imposition of ideal institutions
from without and by force; it can only be by the spirit of Christ
working from within. But to some extent they all succeeded, too, for
the world is a better place to live in because of the gradual and
cumulative redemptive effort of the Christian _ecclesia_, the Church of
Jesus. On the other side of the ledger we have to set many things that
ecclesiasticism has done,--cruel persecutions, infamous tortures,
burnings and massacres, devastating wars, and fierce religious hatreds.
But these things have never belonged to Jesus; they are the very
negation of His spirit. The true church of Christ in any and every age
consists of those and those only who are trying like their Master to
make the world better and gladder and worthier of God. The word
"church" has become so hateful to many because of the admixture of
other ideals with this that I sometimes wish something could be done
either to get rid of it or to change it for another which shall fully
and clearly express what Jesus really came to do. I maintain that the
church has nothing whatever to do with preparing men for a world to
come; the best way to prepare a man for the world beyond is to get him
to live well and truly in this one. The church exists to make the
world a kingdom of God, and to fill it with His love. No greater
mistake could be made than to estimate the church of Jesus by
ecclesiastical squabbles and divisions, or even by Psalm-singing and
go-to-meeting talk. Look for the spirit of Jesus at work, and you have
found the church too.
+Modern industrialism and the church.+--Judged by this standard where
are the churches to-day? We have seen that the only gospel which Jesus
had to preach was the gospel of the kingdom of God; everything He ever
said can be included under that head. His Church, or Christian
society, or whatever else we like to call it, has no meaning unless it
exists for the realisation of the kingdom of God. We cannot state this
too strongly. The whole of the other-worldism of the churches, the
elaborate paraphernalia of doctrine and observance, is utterly useless
and worse than useless unless it ministers to this end. Unless it can
be shown that I am wrong in this supposition--and I think that will be
pretty hard to do--a fairly good case could be made out for burning
down most of the theological colleges in the land and sending the
bright young fellows in them to do some serious work for the common
good. For it must be confessed, as I said at the beginning, that the
churches are to a large extent a failure. We cannot but recognise, for
one thing, that our modern civilisation, with all its boasted advance
on the past, is still un-Christian. It puts a premium upon
selfishness. Modern industrialism is cruel and unjust and directly
incites men to self-seeking. The weak and unfortunate have to go to
the wall; little mercy is shown to the man who is not strong enough to
fight his way and keep his footing in the struggle for existence. We
are all the time making war upon one another,--man against man,
business against business, class against class, nation against nation.
We talk of our freedom, but no man is really free, and the great
majority of us are slaves to some corporation, or capitalist, or
condition of things, which renders the greater part of life a
continuous anxiety lest health or means should fail and we should prove
unequal to the demands made upon us. If a man goes under, his
acquaintances will pity him for five minutes and then forget all about
him. There is no help for it; they cannot do anything else, they have
their own living to get. They are like soldiers in the heat of battle;
they must not pause to mourn over a fallen comrade or they may soon be
stretched beside him. I do not mean, of course, to make the foolish
statement that present-day industrialism is unrestrainedly
individualistic: thank God it is not that. But the principle of
competition still exercises a sway so potent as to stamp modern social
organisation as un-Christian. We may just as well recognise that fact
and state it plainly. The glaringly unequal ownership of material
wealth is anti-social; it is good neither for the rich man nor for the
poor, for it is to the interest of every man that the body politic
should be healthy and happy. That so large a number of our total
population should have to exist upon the very margin of subsistence is
a moral wrong. We have no business to have any slums, or sweating
dens, or able-bodied unemployed, or paupers. Poverty, dulness of
brain, and coarseness of habit are often found in close association.
Some amount of material endowment is required even for the development
of the intelligence and the training of the moral faculties. Wealth
possesses no value in itself; it only possesses value as a means to
more abundant life. If there is one thing upon which Christianity
insists more than another, it is the duty of caring for the weak and
sinful, but at present this duty is only recognised to a very limited
extent.
+Christianity and Collectivism.+--In what I am now saying I am well
aware that I have come to a phase of my subject which thousands of my
countrymen are stating so clearly and forcibly as to compel attention;
but what I want to show is that the present unideal condition of the
civilised world is an indictment of the churches and their conventional
doctrines. We seem to have forgotten our origin. I have long felt, as
I suppose every Christian minister must feel, the antagonism between
the Christian standard of conduct and that required in ordinary
business life. There is no blinking the fact that the standard of
Christ and the standard of the commercial world are not the same. Our
work is to make them the same, and to that end we must destroy the
social system which makes selfishness the rule and compels a man to act
upon his lower motives, and we must put a better in its place. We must
establish a social order wherein a man can be free to be his best, and
to give his best to the community without crushing or destroying anyone
else. In a word we want Collectivism in the place of competition; we
want the kingdom of God. Charity is no remedy for our social ills and
their moral outcome; the only remedy is a new social organisation on a
Christian basis. I do not believe that any form of Collectivism, as a
mere system superposed from without, can ever really make the world
happy; it must be the expression of the spirit of brotherhood working
from within. Neither do I feel much faith in any sudden and
cataclysmic reformation of society. The history of Christendom proves
that no institution can be much in advance of human nature and survive.
Covenanters and Puritans found that out when they tried to make men
godly by Act of Parliament; Savonarola found it out when the wild
passions of the Florentines, restrained for a brief hour, broke their
chains and destroyed him; the Christians of New Testament times found
it out when their beautiful experiment of social brotherhood came to an
end in the horror and darkness of the break-up of Jewish national life.
But at least we can recognise the presence of the guiding Spirit of God
in all our social concerns and work along with it for the realisation
of the ideal of universal brotherhood. We can show men what Jesus
really came to do, and, as His servants, we can help Him to do it. We
can definitely recognise that the movement toward social regeneration
is really and truly a spiritual movement, and that it must never be
captured by materialism. I deplore the fact that, for the moment, the
main current of the great Labour movement which, perhaps more than any
other, represents the social application of the Christian ideal, should
appear to be out of touch with organised religion. This cannot
continue, for I observe that the men who lead it are men of moral
passion, and often men of simple religious faith. It could hardly be
otherwise. It seems to me in the nature of things impossible to
sustain a belief in the moral ideal without some kind of belief in God,
and assuredly God is with these men in the work they are doing and have
yet to do. In fact, the Labour Party is itself a Church, in the sense
in which that word was originally used, for it represents the
getting-together of those who want to bring about the kingdom of God.
+The New Theology and Collectivism.+--The New Theology, as I understand
it, is the theology of this movement, whether the movement knows it or
not, for it is essentially the gospel of the kingdom of God. No lesser
theology can consistently claim to be this; systems of belief which are
weighted by dogmatic considerations have not and cannot have the same
power of appeal. This higher, wider truth, which sweeps away the
mischievous accretions which have made religion distasteful to the
masses, is religious articulation of the movement toward an ideal
social order. This fact ought to be realised and brought home to the
consciousness of the earnest men who are labouring to redeem England
and the world from the power of all that tortures and degrades humanity
and stifles or destroys its best life.
This, then, is the mission of the New Theology. It is to brighten and
keep burning the flame of the spiritual ideal in the midst of the
mighty social movement which is now in progress. It is ours to see God
in it and help mankind to see Him too. It is ours to show what the
gospel really is and has been from the first. We shall not suffer the
world any longer to believe that Christianity and dogma mean the same
thing. Our business is to show that the religion of Jesus is primarily
a gospel for this life and only secondarily for the life to come. We
have to demonstrate that material things have spiritual meanings, and
that wealth has value only as it ministers to soul power. We have to
make clear to the world that the reason why we want to lift any man up
and give him a chance of a better and happier life here is because he
has an immortal destiny and must make a beginning somewhere if he is to
reach the stature of the perfect man at last. We believe that faith is
the one indispensable qualification for this work, as for any work that
is worth the doing, or ever has been worth the doing, in the history of
mankind. It is the victory that overcometh the world.