MONK'S ORCHARD,
UPTON,
Oct. 12, 1904.
DEAR HERBERT,--I have nothing but local gossip to tell you. We have
been having a series of Committee meetings lately about our Chapel
services; I am a member of the Committee, and as so often happens when
one is brought into close contact with one's colleagues upon a definite
question, I find myself lost in bewilderment at the views which are
held and advanced by sensible and virtuous men. I don't say that I am
necessarily right, and that those who disagree with me are wrong; I
daresay that some of my fellow-members think me a tiresome and
wrong-headed man. But in one point I believe I am right; in things of
this kind, the only policy seems to me to try to arrive at some broad
principle, to know what you are driving at; and then, having arrived at
it, to try and work it out in detail. Now two or three of my friends
seem to me to begin at the wrong end; to have got firmly into their
heads certain details, and to fight with all their power to get these
details accepted, without attempting to try and develop a principle at
all. For instance, Roberts, one of the members of the Committee, is
only anxious for what he calls the maintenance of liturgical tradition;
he says that there is a science of liturgy, and that it is of the
utmost importance to keep in touch with it. The sort of detail that he
presses is that at certain seasons the same hymn ought to be sung on
Sunday morning and every morning throughout the week, because of the
mediaeval system of octaves. He calls this knocking the same nail on
the head, and, as is common enough, he is led to confuse a metaphor
with an argument. Again, he is very anxious to have the Litany twice a
week, that the boys may be trained, as he calls it, in the habit of
continuous prayerful attention. Another member, Randall, is very
anxious that the services should be what he calls instructive; that
courses, for instance, of sermons should be preached on certain books
of the Old Testament, on the Pauline Epistles, and so forth. He is also
very much set on having dogmatic and doctrinal sermons, because dogma
and doctrine are the bone and sinew of religion. Another man, old
Pigott, says that the whole theory of worship is praise, and he is very
anxious to avoid all subjective and individual religion.
I find myself in hopeless disagreement with these three worthy men; my
own theory of school services is, to put it shortly, that they should
FEED THE SOUL, and draw it gently to the mysteries of Love and Faith.
The whole point is, I believe, to rouse and sustain a pure and generous
emotion. Most boys have in various degrees a religious sense. That is
to say, that they have moments when they are conscious of the
Fatherhood of God, of redemption from sin, of the indwelling of a Holy
Spirit. They have moments when they see all that they might be and are
not--moments when they would rather be pure than impure, unselfish
rather than self-absorbed, kind rather than unkind, brave rather than
cowardly; moments when they perceive, however dimly, that happiness
lies in activity and kindliness, and when they would give much never to
have stained their conscience with evil. It seems to me that school
services ought to aim at developing these faint and faltering dreams,
at increasing the sense of the beauty and peace of holiness, at giving
them some strong and joyful thought that will send them back to the
world of life resolved to try again, to be better and worthier.
I am afraid that I do not value the science of liturgical tradition
very much. The essence of all science is that it should be progressive;
our problems and needs are not the same as mediaeval problems and
needs. The whole conception of God and man has broadened and deepened.
Science has taught us that nature is a part of the mind of God, not
something to be merely contended against; again, it has taught us that
man has probably not fallen from grace into corruption, but is slowly
struggling upwards out of darkness into light. Again, we no longer
think that everything was created for the use and enjoyment of man; we
know now of huge tracts of the earth where for thousands of years a
vast pageant of life has been displaying itself without any reference
to humanity at all. Then, too, as a great scientist has lately pointed
out, the dark and haunting sense of sin, that drove devotees to the
desert and to lives of the grimmest asceticism, has given place to a
nobler conception of civic virtue, has turned men's hearts rather to
amendment than to repentance; well, that, in the face of all this, we
should be limited to the precise kind of devotions that approved
themselves to mediaeval minds seems to me to be a purely retrograde
position.
Then as to arranging services in order to cultivate the power of
continuous prayer among boys, I think it a thoroughly unpractical
theory. In the first place, for one boy so trained you blunt the
religious susceptibilities of ninety-nine others. Boys are quick,
lively, and bird-like creatures, intolerant above all things of tedium
and strain; and I believe that in order to cultivate the religious
sense in them, the first duty of all is to make religion attractive,
and resolutely to put aside all that tends to make it a weariness.
As to doctrinal and dogmatic instruction, I cannot feel that, at a
school, the chapel is the place for that; the boys here get a good deal
of religious instruction, and Sunday is already too full, if anything,
of it. I believe that the chapel is the place to make them, if
possible, love their faith and find it beautiful; and if you can secure
that, the dogma will look after itself. The point is, for instance,
that a boy should be aware of his redemption, not that he should know
the metaphysical method in which it was effected. There is very little
dogmatic instruction in the Gospels, and what there is seems to have
been delivered to the few and not to the many, to the shepherds rather
than to the flocks; it is vital religion and not technical that the
chapel should be concerned with.
As to the theory of praise, I cannot help feeling that the old idea
that God demanded, so to speak, a certain amount of public recognition
of His goodness and greatness is a purely savage and uncivilised form
of fetish-worship; it is the same sort of religion that would attach
material prosperity to religious observation; and belongs to a time
when men believed that, in return for a certain number of sacrifices,
rain and sun were sent to the crops of godly persons, with a nicer
regard to their development than was applied in the case of the
ungodly. The thought of the Father of men feeling a certain
satisfaction in their assembling together to roar out in concert
somewhat extravagantly phrased ascriptions of honour and majesty seems
to me purely childish.
My own belief is that services should in the first place be as short as
possible; that there should be variety and interest, plenty of movement
and plenty of singing, and that every service should be employed to
meet and satisfy the restless minds and bodies of children. But though
all should be simple, it should not, I think, be of a plain and obvious
type entirely. There are many delicate mysteries, of hope and faith, of
affliction and regret, of suffering and sorrow, of which many boys are
dimly conscious. There are many subtle and seemly qualities which lie a
little apart from the track of manly, full-fed, game-playing boyhood;
and such emotions should be cultivated and given voice in our services.
To arrange the whole of our religion for brisk, straightforward boys,
whose temptations are of an obvious type and who have never known
sickness or sorrow is, I believe, a radical mistake. There is a good
deal of secret, tender, delicate emotion in the hearts of many boys,
which cannot be summarily classed and dismissed as subjective.
Sermons should be brief and ethical, I believe. They should aim at
waking generous thoughts and hopes, pure and gracious ideals. Anything
of a biographical character appeals strongly to boys; and if one can
show that it is not inconsistent with manliness to have a deep and
earnest faith, to love truth and purity as well as liberty and honour,
a gracious seed has been sown.
Above all, religion should not be treated from the purely boyish point
of view; let the boys feel that they are strangers, soldiers, and
pilgrims, let them realise that the world is a difficult place, but
that there is indeed a golden clue that leads through the darkness of
the labyrinth, if they can but set their hand upon it; let them learn
to be humble and grateful, not hard and self-sufficient. And, above
all, let them realise that things in this world do not come by chance,
but that a soul is set in a certain place, and that happiness is to be
found by interpreting the events of life rightly, by facing sorrows
bravely, by showing kindness, by thankfully accepting joy and pleasure.
And lastly, there should come some sense of unity, the thought of
combination for good, of unaffectedness about what we believe to be
true and pure, of facing the world together and not toying with it in
isolation. All this should be held up to boys.
Even as it is boys grow to love the school chapel, and to think of it
in after years as a place where gleams of goodness and power visited
them. It might be even more so than it is; but it can only be so, if we
realise the conditions, the material with which we are working. We
ought to set ourselves to meet and to encourage every beautiful
aspiration, every holy and humble thought; not to begin with some
eclectic theory, and to try to force boys into the mould. We do that in
every other department of school life; but I would have the chapel to
be a place of liberty, where tender spirits may be allowed a glimpse of
high and holy things which they fitfully desire, and which may indeed
prove to be a gate of heaven.
Well, for once I have been able to finish a letter without a single
interruption. If my letters, as a rule, seem very inconsequent,
remember that they are often written under pressure. But I suppose we
each envy the other; you would like a little more pressure and I a
little less. I am glad to hear that all goes well; thank Nellie for her
letter.--Ever yours,