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THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  FURNACE 


MACMILLAN    AND    CO.,    Limited 

LONDON  .  BOMBAY  .  CALCUTTA  .  MADRAS 
MELBOURNE 

THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

NEW   YOnK    .    BOSTON    .    CHICAGO 
DALLAS   .    SAN    FRANCISCO 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


THE  CHURCH  IN  THE 
FURNACE 

ESSAYS    BY    SEVENTEEN    TEMPORARY 

CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND  CHAPLAINS  ON 

ACTIVE     SERVICE      IN     FRANCE     AND 

FLANDERS 


jf  EDITED    BY 

f!  b.   macnutt 

SENIOR    CHAPLAIN    TO   THE    FORCES,    CANON    OF   SOUTHWARK 


5^ 


Vv^ 


MACMILLAN    AND     CO.,    LIMITED 

ST.     MARTIN'S    STREET,    LONDON 

1917 


COPYRIGHT 


THIS   BOOK   IS 

DEDICATED 

TO 

THE    OHTTRCH    OP    ENGLAND    AT   HOME 

BY   SOME    OF    ITS   CHAPLAINS 

WHO    HAVE    SERVED   THE    ARMIES    IN   PRANCE 

AND    FLANDERS 

IN    PROUD    AND    THANKFUL    MEMORY 

OF 

OUR   BROTHER  CHAPLAINS 

WHO     HAVE     DIED     IN     THAT     SERVICE 


Killed  in  Action. 


E. 

P. 

DUNCAN. 

R. 

E. 

INGLIS. 

C. 

B. 

PLUMMER. 

M. 

B. 

PEEL. 

H. 

O. 

SPINK, 

J. 

R. 

STEWART. 

E. 

W. 

TREVOR. 

P. 

n. 

TUKE. 

H. 

B. 

ST.    J.    DE    VINE. 

P. 

R. 

HARBORD. 

H. 

H. 

EAST. 

G. 

M. 

EVANS. 

B, 

P. 

PLUMTRE. 

W, 

,    D, 

.    GEARE. 

B. 

0. 

RUCK  KEENE. 

W. 

L. 

8.    DALLAS. 

Died  of  Wounds. 

C.  E.    DOUDNEY. 

p.  W.    HEWITT. 

T.  G.    JONES. 

C.  W.    MITCHELL. 

C.  H.    SCHOOLING. 

C.  H.    GARRETT. 


Died  on  Active  Service. 

p.    J.    KIRWAN. 
E.    JOHNSON-SMYTH. 
H.    P.    LEDBITTER. 
D.    C.    WOODHOUSB. 
V.    C.    BODDINGTON. 
A.    M.    PRATT. 


September,  1917. 


For  the  proudly  guarded  lips, 

Streets  where  men  nor  strive  nor  cry, 
For  the  armies  and  the  ships. 

Youth  and  laughing  chivalry. 
For  the  things  that  shall  be  won. 

Clean  and  splendid  from  the  flame, 
For  the  brave  new  life  begun, 

Blessed  be  Thy  holy  Name  ! 

They  shall  see  who  are  imborn, 

That  remote,  resplendent  thing. 
Of  the  which,  forespent  and  torn, 

All  the  world  is  travailing. 
Lift  your  hearts  above  the  years, 

Thank  our  Lord  not  once  or  twice. 
For  the  horror  and  the  tears. 

Bitterness  and  sacrifice." — J.  S. 


"  War  will  only  be  overcome  when  a  moral  substitute  has  been 
provided  for  it  which  will  absorb  all  its  qualities  of  strenuousness, 
indignation  at  wrong,  indifference  to  property  and  life  ;  for,  to  the 
end,  justice  and  freedom  can  be  defended  only  by  the  courage, 
devotion,  and  self-sacrifice  which  fear  not  them  that  kill  the  body 
and  after  that  have  no  more  that  they  can  do." — ^John  Oman. 


"  Romance,  that  was 
The  coloured  air  of  a  forgotten  cause 
About  the  heads  of  heroes  dead  and  bright. 
Shines  home  :   we  are  accompanied  with  light 
Because  of  youth  among  us  ;  and  the  name 
Of  man  is  touched  with  an  ethereal  flame  : 
There  is  a  newness  in  the  world  begun, 
A  difference  in  the  setting  of  the  sim. 
Oh,  though  we  stumble  in  blinding  tears,  and  though 
The  beating  of  our  hearts  may  never  know 
Absence  in  pangs  more  desolately  keen. 
Yet  blessed  are  our  eyes,  because  they  have  seen." 

Laurence  Binyon. 


EDITOR'S    FOREWORD 

The  Church  is  in  the  furnace.  We  have  felt  the 
scorching  of  the  purgatorial  fires.  And  we  Chaplains 
not  least,  who  have  moved  where  the  flames  are 
hottest  and  have  seen  the  pure  metal  dropping  apart 
from  the  dross.  There  are  those,  doubtless,  to  whom 
such  language  will  seem  flamboyant  and  foreign  to 
the  facts.  They  have  feared  much  for  their  country, 
and  have  trembled  at  the  possibilities  of  disaster 
through  the  victory  of  the  Central  Powers.  They  may 
have  felt  a  mild  apprehension  for  their  religion,  as  the 
Church's  critics  have  waxed  eloquent  about  "  the 
failure  of  Christianity "  amidst  the  upheaval  of  a 
world-war  in  this  twentieth  century  after  Christ.  But 
the  fire  has  not  touched  their  churchmanship.  They 
hope  that  the  coming  of  peace  will  mean  more  or  less 
a  return  to  pre-war  conditions  in  the  Church,  with  a 
few  superficial  changes  to  popularise  worship  for  the 
men  who  come  back.  To  such  Churchmen  apocalyptic 
language  will  always  appear  to  be  as  melodramatic  as 
it  is  certainly  remote  from  the  smooth  proprieties  of 
sentiment  and  convention  which  make  up  the  only 
rehgion  they  know. 

But  there    are  many   others   who  have  felt  dm'ing 


X  EDITOR'S   FOREWORD 

three  years  of  war  that  only  imagery  hke  that  of  Patmos 
can  express  the  trials  and  experiences  through  which 
we  are  passing.  That  is  the  feeling  which  inspires  the 
title  of  this  book.  These  Essays  by  Clergy  of  the  Church 
of  England  who  are  serving,  or  have  served,  the  armies 
abroad,  are  the  expression  of  thoughts  which  have 
come  to  us,  under  the  intense  stress  and  strain  of 
Active  Service,  about  the  hfe  and  work  of  the  Church  as 
we  left  it  when  we  embarked  for  the  Front,  and  as  we 
see  it  now  from  afar.  We  came  out  dimly  expecting 
that  our  rehgion  would  pass  through  a  fierce  ordeal,  and 
actual  contact  with  warfare  has  not  belied  our  expecta- 
tions. The  test  has  been  sterner  than  any  of  us 
can  have  foreseen.  The  results  we  can  scarcely 
formulate  yet,  as  we  look  forward  to  returning  to  the 
old  surroundings.  But  one  thing  is  certain  :  we  can 
never  again  be  content  with  much  that  we  accepted  as 
quite  natm-al  in  those  far-away  days  before  we  came 
out  here.  We  have  seen  visions  and  dreamed  dreams, 
and  to  forget  them  or  to  refuse  to  act  upon  them 
would  be  treachery  to  the  Chm-ch  we  love.  Hope  and 
faith  have  been  saved  in  the  trenches,  but  they  have 
passed  through  a  burning  furnace ;  and  there  must 
needs  be  a  difference,  made  manifest  in  the  fiery 
process.  "  The  day  "  has  "  declared  it."  They  have 
been  "  saved,  so  as  by  fire." 

Several  points  should  be  made  clear  to  those  who 
read  this  book. 

It  is  in  no  sense  an  official  pronouncement  by 
Army  Chaplains  upon  the  subjects  with  which  it 
deals.  All  the  writers  hold,  or  have  held,  temporary 
commissions  in    the  Chaplains'  Department,  and  are 


EDITOR'S   FOREWORD  xi 

or  have  been  (with  one  exception)  ^  on  Active  Service 
in  France  and  Flanders,  for  longer  or  shorter  periods, 
under  the  conditions  upon  which  such  commissions  are 
given  to  civilian  clergy  during  the  period  of  the  war. 
They  have  no  authority  to  speak  for  anyone  but 
themselves,  much  less  for  the  Department  as  a  whole. 
It  will  be  seen  at  once  that  they  represent  very 
varied  standpoints  in  Church  thought.  Each  is 
responsible  for  his  own  Essay  alone,  and  has  written 
quite  independently  of  the  rest.  While  care  has  been 
taken  to  avoid  overlapping  as  far  as  possible,  there 
has  been  no  opportunity  for  conference  or  discussion. 
Nearly  all  the  Essays  have  been  written  in  circum- 
stances of  extraordinary  difficulty,  in  the  intervals 
between  battles  or  in  other  surroundings  where 
interruptions  are  many  and  frequent  and  leave  little 
opportunity  for  literary  work. 

I  draw  attention  to  these  facts  with  the  hope  that 
I  may  induce  the  meticulous  critic  to  look  upon  our 
work  with  less  readiness  to  dwell  upon  shortcomings 
which  might  have  been  avoided,  had  the  writers  been 
able  to  work  at  leisure  and  with  the  closer  co-operation 
that  would  have  been  possible,  if  we  had  waited  till 
the  end  of  the  war.  But  it  would  seem  likely  that 
any  value  the  book  may  have  will  be  found  to  lie 
in  the  fact  that  it  has  "the  smell  of  fire"  in  it, 
because  it  has  been  largely  written  in  the  very  midst 
of  experiences  which  urge  men  to  speak  the  truth  they 
see  as  never  before  in  their  lives. 

I  am  anxious  as  Editor  to  place  on  record  my 
gratitude  to  our  Chief,    the  Deputy  Chaplain-General 

^  The  writer  of  the  last  Essay. 


xii  EDITOR'S   FOREWORD 

of  the  British  Expeditionary  Force,  Bishop  Gwynne, 
without  whose  encouragement  and  support  I  could  not 
have  attempted  to  secure  and  to  organise  the  help  of 
so  many  of  his  Chaplains,  and  to  my  fellow- workers, 
who  by  their  always  ready  help  in  preparing  the 
volume  for  the  press  with  as  httle  delay  as  possible 
have  made  my  task  as  easy  and  dehghtful  as  it  has 
certainly  been  full  of  interest. 

If  anything  that  we  have  written  brings  help  to 
those  at  home  who  are  thinking  out  the  problems 
that  confront  Church  and  Nation  in  the  days  of  re- 
construction which  lie  ahead,  our  purpose  will  have 
been  achieved.  Achieved,  that  is,  if  such  thinking 
leads  to  action,  for  we  have  little  interest  in  merely 
adding  to  the  already  vast  mass  of  expressed  opinion. 
In  the  Church,  as  in  much  else  in  British  life,  thinking 
often  tends  to  evaporate  in  talk. 

F.   B.   M. 

St.  Omeh, 

September,  1917. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

EDITOR'S    FOREWORD .        is 


PREFACE 


By  the  Right  Rev.  Llewellyn  H.  Gwynne, 
C.M.G.,  D.D.,  Deputy  Chaplain-General  of  the 
British  Expeditionary  Force,  Bishop  of  Khar- 
toum. 

I.— THE   MORAL   EQUIVALENT   OF   WAR       . 

By  the  Rev.  Canon  Fredekick  B.  Macnutt, 
M.A.,  Senior  Chaplain  to  the  Forces, Com- 
mand, Canon  of  Southwark  and  Vicar  of  St. 
Matthew's,  Surbiton. 


FAITH 

II.—FAITH   IN    THE    LIGHT   OF   WAR  ...        35 

By  the  Rev.  F.  R.  Barry,  M.A.,  D.S.O.,  Senior 

Chaplain  to   the  Forces,  Division,  Fellow 

and  Lecturer  in  Theology,  Oriel  College,  Oxford. 

III.— BELIEFS   EMPHASISED   BY    THE    WAR  .        71 

By  the  Rev.  F.  W.  Worsley,  B.D.,  Chaplain  to 
the  Forces,  Chaplain-in-Charge  of  the  Chaplains' 
School,  Sub-Warden  of  St.  Michael's  College, 
Llandaff. 


xiv  CONTENTS 


FELLOWSHIP 


PAGE 


IV.— FELLOWSHIP   IN    THE   CHURCH     ...        99 

By  the  Rev.  Canon  M.  Linton  Smith, 
D.S.O.,  D.D.,  Senior  Chaplain  to  the  Forces, 
Division,  Hon.  Canon  of  Liverpool  Cathe- 
dral, Rector  of  Winwick,  Lancashire,  and  Ex- 
amining Chaplain  to  the  Bishop  of  Liverpool. 

v.— FELLOWSHIP   IN   INDUSTRIAL   LIFE       .      125 

By  the  Rev.  Bernard  W.  Keymer,  M.A.,  Chap- 
lain to  the  Forces, Infantry  Brigade,  and 

R.F.C. ;  Vicar  of  Eastleigh,  Hants. 

VL— AIEMBERSHIP   AND   LOYALTY  ....      147 

By  the  Rev.   Geoffrey  Gordon,  M.A.,  Senior 

Chaplain  to  the  Forces, Division  ;  formerly 

Assistant  Curate  of  St.  Margaret's,  Westminster. 


WORSHIP 

VII.— WORSHIP   AND    SERVICES 175 

By    the  Rev.   E.  Milner-White,  M.A.,  Senior 

Chaplain  to  the  Forces,  Division,  Chaplain 

of  liing's  College,  Cambridge. 


VIIL— WORSHIP   AND    SERVICES 213 

By  the  Rev.  Canon  C.  Saxisbury  Woodward, 
M.C.,    M.A.,     Late     Chaplain     to     the    Forces, 

Brigade,  Canon  of    Southwark,    Rector  of 

St.  Saviour's  with  St.  Peter's,  Southwark. 


CONTENTS  XV 

PAGE 

IX.— INSTRUCTION   IN   PRAYER 239 

By  the  Rev.  Maecell  W.  T.  Conran,  M.C,  M.A., 

Late  Chaplain  to  the  Forces, Brigade,  etc.. 

Society   of    St.    John   the    Evangelist, '  Cowley, 
Oxford. 


EDUCATION 


X.— THE    TRAINING   OF    THE   CLERGY     .      .      269 

By  the  Rev.  Neville  S.   Talbot,  M.C,  M.A.. 

Assistant      Chaplain-General Army,      Late 

Fellow  and  Chaplain  of  Balliol  College,  Oxford. 


XT.— RELIGIOUS       EDUCATION       AND       THE 

TRAINING   OF    THE   CLERGY        ...      291 

By  the  Rev.  T.  W.  Pym,  D.S.O.,  M.A.,  Deputy 

Assistant  Chaplain- General, Corps  ;  Chaplain 

of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge. 


GENERAL 


XII.— PERSONAL  RELIGION  IN  CHURCH  LIFE     319 

By  the   Ven.   Henry   K.    Southwell,   C.M.G., 

M. A.,  Assistant  Chaplain-General, Army; 

Archdeacon  of  Lewes. 


XIII.— MAN    TO   MAN 335 

By  the  Rev.  Canon  James  O.  Hannay,  M.A. 
("  George  A.  Birmingham  "),  Late  Chaplain  to 
the  Forces,  Canon  of  St.  Patrick's  Cathedral, 
Dublin. 

b 


xvi  CONTENTS 


PXOB 


XIV.— THE    SOLDIER'S    RELIGION 349 

By  the  Rev.  Philip  C.   T.  Crick,  M.A.,  Senior 

Chaplain  to  the  Forces, Division  ;  Fellow  and 

Dean  of   Clare  College,  Cambridge ;   Examining 
Chaplain  to  the  Archbishop  of  York. 


XV.— THE  RELIGIOUS  DIFFICULTIES  OF  THE 

PRIVATE    SOLDIER 375 

By  the  Rev.  J.  Studdert-Kennedy,  M.C,  M.A., 

Chaplain  to  the  Forces, Brigade ;   Vicar  of 

St.  Pavil's,  Worcester. 

XVL— WHEN    THE    PRIESTS   COME   HOME    .      .      409 

By  the  Rev.  Kenneth  E.  Kirk,  M.A.,  Senior 

Chaplain  to  the  Forces, Division  ;  Tutor  and 

Lecturer  of  Keble  College,  Oxford  ;  Examining 
Chaplain  to  the  Bishop  of  Sheffield. 

XVIL— THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE 429 

By  the  Rev.  Edward  S.  Woods,  M.A.,  Senior 
Chaplain  to  the  Forces,  Royal  Military  Academy, 
Sandhurst ;  Examining  Chaplain  to  the  Bishop  of 
Durham, 


PREFACE 

By   the  Right  Rev.   LLEWELLYN    H.    GWYNNE, 
C.M.G.,    D.D. 

Deputy  Chaplain-General  of  the  British  Expeditionary  Force  : 
Bishop  of  Khartoum. 


PREFACE 

In  writing  a  preface  to  this  collection  of  Essays 
by  Army  Chaplains,  I  want  to  emphasise  one  train 
of  thought  which  is  apparent  throughout,  and,  if 
possible,  to  explain  and  give  the  right  value  to  it. 

Discontent  is  a  characteristic  of  the  British  race 
and  is  often  our  peculiar  way  of  expressing  a  desire 
for  improvement.  We  acknowledge  grudgingly  any- 
thing really  good  in  our  constitution. 

During  the  Russo-Japanese  War,  a  British  Officer, 
attached  to  the  Japanese  Army,  was  much  impressed 
with  the  wholehearted  way  in  which  the  Japanese 
had  mobilised  their  resources  and  perfected  their 
equipment,  and  he  compared  unfavourably  the  un- 
preparedness  of  our  own  Army  for  any  great  emergency. 
This  he  expressed  to  a  Japanese  Officer,  who  knew 
England  well  and  replied  with  a  smile  :  "  When  the 
English  cease  to  be  discontented  with  themselves, 
that  will  be  the  sign  of  their  decline  and  fall." 

Our  Empire  rose  to  meet  the  great  occasion  in  1914, 
and  created  the  war  machine  which  is  the  wonder  and 
admiration  of  our  Alhes,  and  the  dismay  of  our  enemies. 
The  Germans  are  reported  to  boast,  as  one  of  their 
achievements  in  this  war,  that  they  have  taught  the 


XX  PREFACE 

English  to  fight  ;  and  this  I  suppose  is  partly  true. 
Our  machinery  of  war  has  been  brought  into  being 
to  counter  the  machinery  of  war  our  enemies  had 
prepared  for  years  in  order  to  subdue  Europe.  Rapidly 
we  assimilated  their  inventions  and  improved  on  their 
machinery  ;  otherwise  we  could  not  have  reached  the 
strong  position  we  hold  to-day. 

As  will  be  seen  in  the  following  Essays,  our  Chap- 
lains, who  are  part  and  parcel  of  this  fighting  machine, 
and,  according  to  the  highest  military  authorities, 
a  real  asset  to  our  fighting  forces,  have  studied  the 
stages  of  development  and  the  inner  working  of  this 
engine  of  war. 

This  knowledge  has  given  them  dreams  and  visions 
of  a  gi'eat  spiritual  fighting  machine,  which,  if  realised, 
may  overcome  the  spiritual  foes  of  humanity — the 
cause  of  all  wars — and  allow  the  Kingdom  of  God  to 
operate  upon  earth. 

In  almost  every  stage  of  the  development  of  our 
military  machine,  they  have  seen  a  parallel  to  what  the 
stages  of  the  creation  of  a  true  Church  Militant  might 
be  ;  namely,  a  discontent  with  the  present  disorder  and 
confusion  ;  a  reahsation  of  our  present  faulty  intelli- 
gence of  the  task  before  us,  and  of  our  indefinite 
grasp  of  our  true  objective  ;  and  the  conviction  that 
we  must  dare  to  scrap  that  which  is  out  of  date  and 
effete  in  our  methods,  so  as  to  be  able  to  mobihse  and 
unify  the  enormous  Christian  resources  now  lying 
dormant. 

This  vision  of  a  comprehensive  spiritual  Church 
Mihtant  is  not  confined  to  Chaplains,  and  there  are 
many  of  our  military  leaders  and  other  soldiers  of  all 


PREFACE  xxi 

ranks,  who  have  been  the  great  factors  in  bringing 
into  being  our  mighty  Army,  who  have  caught  sight 
of  the  vision  of  a  Church  of  Christ,  cathohc  enough 
both  to  transcend  all  our  different  points  of  view  and 
to  comprehend  the  moods,  tempers,  and  tastes  of  the 
different  races  who  have  gone  to  make  up  the  English- 
speaking  peoples  of  the  world.  These  men  have 
come  to  see  that  nothing  short  of  the  firm  grip  of  this 
ideal  can  undertake  an  effective  offensive  against 
the  powerful  forces  of  evil  which  will  still  threaten 
humanity  long  after  this  war  is  over. 

These  Essays,  which  express  the  personal  opinion 
of  some  of  the  most  able  Chaplains  in  France,  have 
reached  a  short  distance  on  the  way  to  reahsation  of 
the  great  vision.  They  are,  as  far  as  the  Church  of 
England  is  concerned,  chiefly  directed  toward  clearing 
the  ground,  and  I  feel  sure  that  other  Churches  are 
doing  the  same.  I  fu-mly  believe  that  the  discontent  to 
which  they  give  expression  is  not  a  sign  of  weakness, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  a  sign  that  we  are  willing  to  face 
the  facts.  Let  us  watch  and  pray  that  out  of  the  fire 
of  this  great  war  we  may  emerge  cleansed  and  purified 
of  the  dross,  to  start  afresh  with  bigger  ideas  and 
larger  hopes,  not  content  with  any  lesser  objective 
than  that  aimed  at  and  prayed  for  by  the  Unseen  but 
Ever-present  Commander  of  our  forces,  the  extension 
of  the  Rule  and  Kingdom  of  God  on  earth.  "  Thy 
will  be  done,  on  earth  as  it  is  in  Heaven." 

Llewellyn  H.  Gwynne, 

Bishop,  Deputy-Chaplain-Oeneral. 
France, 

September,  1917. 


THE  MORAL  EQUIVALENT  OF  WAR 


By  the  Rev.  FREDERICK  B.  MACNUTT,  M.A. 

Senior    Chaplain  to   the  Forces,  Command ;    Cation- Residentiary  of 

Soiithwark  Cathedral ;    Vicar  of  St.  Matthew's,  Surbiton. 

Author  of  '■'•  Advent  Certainties,''''  "  The  Inevitable  Christ,  "  The  Reproach 
of  War,'"  dr'f. 


NOTE 

The  following  Essay  includes  some  passages  from  a  sermon 
preached  by  the  writer  at  the  Consecration  of  the  Bishop  of  Peter- 
borough in  Westminster  Abbey  on  St.  Matthew's  Day,  1910,  and 
soon  afterwards  printed  in  the  Guardian  and  other  Church  papers 
under  the  title,  "  The  Moral  Equivalent  of  War." 

The  phrase,  "  Moral  Equivalent  of  War,"  is  derived  (as  will  be 
seen  on  page  6)  from  William  James,  The  Varieties  of  Religious 
Experience,  Lecture  XV.  In  a  later  work.  Memories  and  Studies,  XT., 
the  same  writer  renewed  his  search  for  "  a  substitute  for  war's 
disciplinary  function,"  and  for  militarism  as  "  the  great  preserver 
of  our  ideals  of  hardihood."  Instead  of  military  conscription  he 
proposes  "  a  conscription  of  the  whole  youthful  population  to  form 
for  a  certain  niunber  of  years  a  part  of  the  army  enlisted  against 
Nature."  "  Such  a  conscription,"  he  thought,  "  would  preserve  in 
the  midst  of  a  pacific  civilisation  the  manly  virtues  which  the 
military  party  is  so  afraid  of  seeing  disappear  in  peace." 

The  Hibbert  Journal  for  January,  1917,  contains  an  article  by 
Mr.  Harold  Begbie  entitled  "  National  Training,  the  Moral  Equiva- 
lent of  War."  The  value  of  Mr.  Begbie's  ideas  of  education  may  be 
gathered  from  his  contentions  that  "  the  State  needs  morality  but 
not  a  religion,"  that  religion  should  be  rigidly  excluded  from  all 
State  schools,  that  "  no  parent  ought  to  be  allowed  to  interfere," 
and  that  "  the  business  of  the  minister  of  religion  is  not  with  the 
school,  but  with  the  world  that  waits  for  the  child  when  the  door  of 
the  school  closes  upon  it."  It  is  no  surprise  to  discover  behind  such 
notions  of  national  training  the  Prussian  conception  of  a  State 
which  acknowledges  no  avithority  above  itself,  and  finds  no  place 
for  God. 


THE  MORAL  EQUIVALENT  OF  WAR 

During  many  months  of  war-experience  I  have  often 
tried  to  discover  what  impressions  were  being  most 
deeply  recorded  upon  my  mind.  At  first  all  was 
chaos.  To  go  up  into  the  line  straight  from  an  English 
parish,  reasonably  secure  from  the  dangers  and  horrors 
of  war-time,  is  to  be  plunged  into  surroundings  where 
for  a  time  at  least  the  personal  equation  has  a  quite 
undue  importance.  It  is  so  near  death,  and  it  is  so  hard 
to  die,  not  for  one's  own  sake  so  much  as  for  those  one 
must  leave  behind.  But  gradually  there  comes  a  change. 
A  man  begins  to  feel  the  relative  insignificance  even 
of  this  which  touches  him  most  nearly.  There  are 
other  things  which  far  outweigh  his  own  value 
to  his  people  at  home.  Are  there  not  tens  of 
thousands  just  like  himself,  with  home-folk  to  whom 
they  are  equally  dear,  and  much  more  likely  to 
be  kiUed  than  the  padre,  whose  risks,  though  often 
very  real,  are  so  much  less  than  theirs  ?  There  is 
duty,  there  is  service,  there  is  his  job  ;  and  these  are 
much  greater  things  than  the  preservation  of  his  Mfe. 
Presently  there  begins  to  dawn  upon  him  a  new 
conception  of  his  work.      He  becomes  a  soldier,  and 

3  B  2 


4    THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  FURNACE    i 

puts  first  things  first.  He  has  broken  away  from 
security  and  comfort,  and  there  are  times  when  he 
longs  for  them  as  he  longs  for  nothing  else,  and  loathes 
with  a  bitter  hatred  the  confusion  of  blood  and  dirt  which 
life  has  now  become.  But  with  wondering  surprise 
he  discovers  that  there  are  compensations,  and  that 
he  has  found  something  he  never  knew  before.  A  new 
sense  of  emancipation  hghts  up  a  new  cheerfulness 
inside  him,  and  he  feels  a  strange  freedom  from  care. 
Deep  down  in  his  soul — if  he  thinks  it  out — he  knows 
that  this  is  due  to  the  fact  that  he  is  learning  the 
meaning  of  utter  self-devotion  to  something  larger 
than  his  own  interests,  and  that  he  is  free  because  of 
it.  Suddenly  perhaps,  as  a  Christian,  he  finds  himself 
placing  this  new  freedom  and  what  lies  behind  it  into 
contrast  with  the  life  of  religion  as  he  has  hved  it  in 
the  past  and  as  most  men  live  it  in  their  safe,  comfort- 
able Church  life  at  home.  And  that  starts  a  series  of 
new  impressions  which  gradually  shape  themselves 
into  a  living  whole.  Veils  drop,  and  vistas  open,  and 
voices  are  speaking.  This  is  the  true  life,  hved  now  in 
a  setting  of  death,  but  life  as  it  might  be  and  ought  to 
be  lived  always  and  everywhere  and  in  every  setting. 
That  one  certainty  becomes  a  tribunal  to  which  he 
brings  all  experience  to  be  tried  and  tested,  and  in  view 
of  it  he  understands  a  thousand  things  which  had 
always  baffled  him.  Most  of  all  he  finds  it  judging  the 
Church  as  he  knows  it,  and  himself  as  its  minister  in 
days  that  now  look  strangely  remote  and  far  away.^ 

*■  In  generalising  itpon  tlie  Church  I  mean  throughout  this  Essay 
the  whole  body  of  its  baptised  members.  Of  these  there  are  very 
many  to  whom  much  that  I  have  written  does  not  apply  ;    but, 


I        THE   MORAL   EQUIVALENT   OF   WAR       5 

It  is  that  contrast  which  is  to  me  the  outstanding 
impression  of  the  Front.  The  contrast  between  the 
heights  to  which  men,  generally  unconsciously,  rise 
in  the  piu-suit  of  duty — the  self-giving,  the  sacrifice, 
the  whole-souled  service  of  the  Army,  and  all  the 
"  happy  vahancy  "  and  freedom  to  dare  the  impossible 
which  go  with  them — and  the  cold,  calculating,  un- 
inspired profession  of  Christianity  which  forms  so 
large  a  part  of  the  practical  religion  of  the  Church. 
The  contrast  between  the  pusillanimous  caution  and 
diplomatic  casuistry  with  which  we  Churchmen  have 
been  accustomed  to  face  om*  great  problems,  and  the 
stern  grip  of  realities  which  sets  its  face  to  take 
Bapaume  or  Messines,  and  starts  out  to  do  it  because 
it  ought  to  be  done,  and  demands  of  men  who  are 
ready  for  anything  that  they  shall  give  themselves  as 
the  price  of  doing  it.  The  contrast  of  the  high-sounding 
phrases  of  our  militant  hymns  and  ecclesiastical  discus- 
sions and  the  flabby  irresolution  of  our  plans  and  actions 
for  the  Kingdom  of  God,  when  compared  with  the 
unself-conscious  heroism  of  our  fighting-men  who  talk 
so  little  about  their  ideals  and  so  gloriously  fulfil  them, 
as  if  to  translate  ideals  into  action  were  not  only 
natural  but  inevitable.  To  feel  that  contrast  is  to 
find  oneself  questioning  whether  war,  as  the  militarists 
claim,  in  spite  of  aU  its  detestable  and  nameless  horrors, 
does  not  provoke  the  finest  expression  of  human  good- 
ness of  which  men  are  capable. 

being  a  minority,  they  do  not  determine  the  state  of  the  Church 
as  an  actual  corporate  society,  which  is  what  I  have  in  mind.  Nor 
do  they,  to  its  great  loss,  at  present  determine  its  policy  and  action. 
In  this  direction  self-government,  when  it  comes,  will  work  far- 
reaching  changes. 


THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  FURNACE 


One  autumn  evening  up  at  Ypres  in  1915,  after  one 
of  those  poignant  days  which  come  to  all  Chaplains 
in  the  line,  when  I  had  buried  four  officers  of  the 
battalion  I  love  best,  the  post  brought  me  my  copy  of 
a  weekly  journal.  I  sat  outside  my  tent,  dumb 
and  rebellious  "and  as  it  were  a  beast  before  Thee," 
till  tm^ning  over  the  pages  I  came  across  a  passage  from 
WiUiam  James.  It  occurs,  as  I  have  since  discovered, 
in  the  lectm-e  in  "  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experi- 
ence "  in  which  he  discusses  Asceticism  as  a  type 
of  Saintliness,  and  finds  in  it  strong  elements  of  likeness 
to  the  spirit  of  War  "  as  a  school  of  strenuous  life  and 
heroism."  "  One  hears,"  he  says,  "  of  the  mechanical 
equivalent  of  heat.  What  we  now  need  to  discover  in 
the  social  realm  is  the  moral  equivalent  of  war  :  some- 
thing heroic  that  will  speak  to  men  as  universally  as 
war  does,  and  yet  will  be  as  compatible  with  their 
spiritual  selves  as  war  has  proved  itself  to  be  in- 
compatible. "^  These  words  were  to  me  then,  and  ever 
since  have  been,  like  the  pulling  up  of  the  blinds  in  a 
dark  house.  The  philosopher  had  got  a  fast  hold  of 
reality,  though  he  suggests  only  tentatively  what  his 
"  moral  equivalent  "  is  to  be.  "I  have  often  thought," 
he  goes  on  to  say,  "  that  in  the  old  monkish  poverty- 
worship,  in  spite  of  the  pedantry  which  infested  it, 
there  might  be  something  like  that  moral  equivalent 
of  war  which  we  are  seeking.       May  not  voluntarily 

^  "  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,"  p.  367.  See  the  Note 
at  the  beginning  of  the  Essay. 


I       THE   MORAL   EQUIVALENT   OF   WAR       7 

accepted  poverty  be  *  the  strenuous  life,'  without  the 
need  of  crushing  weaker  peoples  ?  " 

There  is  no  thought  of  "  crushing  weaker  peoples  " 
in  the  British  Army  :  the  spirit  of  our  cause  is  utterly 
foreign  to  it.  Our  problem  is  rather,  as  all  of  us 
know,  to  break  the  tremendous  power  of  a  highly 
organised  nation  which  aspires  to  stamp  out  human 
liberties  under  its  own  iron  heel.  But  that  does 
not  affect  the  contention  that  asceticism  and  war 
alike  have  a  peculiar  power  to  call  out  and  to  develop 
human  capacities  which  for  the  most  part  have  been 
only  latent  in  the  vast  mass  of  civilised  mankind  in 
an  age  which  has  made  consistently  for  money-grabbing 
and  selfishness  and  for  the  supremacy  of  material 
interests.  Voluntary  poverty,  or  the  free  choice  of 
doing  without  a  great  deal  which  has  seemed  vital  to 
well-being,  would  surely  lead  to  "  the  liberation  from 
material  attachments,  the  unbribed  soul,  the  manher 
indifference,  the  paying  our  way  by  what  we  are  and 
do  and  not  by  what  we  have,  the  right  to  fling  away 
our  life  at  any  moment  irresponsibly — the  more 
athletic  trim,  in  short,  the  moral  fighting  shape. "^ 
It  is  a  great  challenge  which  the  distinguished  psy- 
chologist thus  throws  down — one  can  imagine  him, 
if  he  were  with  us  still,  renewing  it  with  aU  the  force 
which  it  must  have  now  in  the  light  of  three  years 
of  such  a  war  as  this  is — ^to  aU  who  care  for  the  highest 
interests  of  men  to  discover  some  way  by  which  they 
may  be  raised  to  their  highest  levels  without  climbing 
thither  with  hands  bathed  in  human  blood. 

Is  there  a  way  ?       That  for  us  Churchmen  is  the 
1  Ibid,  p.  368, 


8    THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  FURNACE     i 

question  of  questions  to-day.  I  felt  that  then  as  I 
sat  reading  the  words,  while  the  shells  came  desolately 
moaning  overhead  and  falling  upon  Poperinghe,  bursting 
with  the  famihar  thud  which  may  mean  death  or 
mutilation  for  somebody,  or  falling  into  the  anti- 
chmax  of  silence  which  proclaims  the  dud  and  seldom 
fails  to  provoke  the  jeering  %vitticism  of  the  British 
Tommy  at  the  expense  of  German  iron-foundries. 
And  I  have  often  felt  it  since  in  another  connection. 
The  contrast  which  I  outlined  above  is  not  less  startling 
than  another  which  reading  the  New  Testament  forces 
upon  the  troubled  conscience  of  a  Chaplain  on  active 
service.  I  mean  the  contrast  between  the  Christian 
life,  as  the  Gospels  and  Epistles  describe  it,  and 
the  life  of  the  average  Churchman  in  our  twentieth- 
century  world.  From  one  point  of  view  he  is  thankful 
for  it  ;  from  another  it  covers  him  with  confusion 
and  shame.  He  has  never  been  so  thankful  for  the 
New  Testament  as  now,  when  he  reads  it  with  a  new 
sense  of  the  utter,  glorious  reality  of  what  it  contains  ; 
but  the  measure  of  the  new  meaning  which  the  com- 
mentary of  experience  (better  than  the  best  of  the  books 
of  his  theological  masters)  has  given  to  it  is  the 
measure  of  his  shame  for  the  way  in  which  he  shares 
the  Church's  failure  as  a  whole  to  reproduce  its  hfe 
and  spirit  to-day.  It  is  no  depressed  pessimism 
which  makes  him  feel  this,  but  rather  insight  born  of 
contact  established  through  the  medium  of  vital 
experience  with  the  first  and  original  expression  of 
Christianity  in  the  writings  of  the  Apostles  and  with 
the  glaring  facts  of  life  on  the  edge  of  death  where 
men  and  Churchmanshij)  are    seen  as   they   are.       If 


I       THE   MORAL   EQUIVALENT   OF   WAR       9 

that  is  pessimism,  then  welcome  every  pessimist  into 
the  councils  of  the  Church,  and  all  power  to  his  elbow 
as  he  smites  hard  for  God. 

Think  for  a  moment  of  what  we  have  seen  since 
August,  1914,  in  the  response  of  the  nation  to  the 
demands  of  war.  The  war  record  of  England  is  not 
without  its  ugly  phases  ;  but  it  overflows  with  wonders 
which,  none  the  less  because  they  are  our  daily  common- 
places, can  never  fail  to  make  it  the  richest  and  most 
inspiring  tradition  in  our  history.  The  call  of  national 
necessity,  the  splendid  comradeship  of  service  on 
behalf  of  all  that  makes  life  moral  and  spiritual  and 
lifts  it  above  a  godless  chaos  that  is  ruled  by  brute 
force,  the  high  romance  of  giving  seK  away  for  the 
more-than-self  which  is  the  background  of  aU  idealism 
and  religion,  the  breaking  in  upon  smooth  easy  living 
of  a  sudden  demand  for  sacrifice — these  things  have 
been  a  trumpet-blast  to  the  soul  of  the  English  people 
during  these  past  three  years.  Men  who  once  appeared 
to  be  absorbed  in  trivialities  have  ridden  off  into  the 
unknown  with  "  a  great  glory  at  heart  that  none  can 
take  away,"  ^  and  heroism  which  seemed  to  have 
vanished  from  the  earth  has  looked  at  us  again  out  of 
quiet  shining  English  eyes,  splendidly  unconscious  of 
anything  but  that  it  is  fine  and  yet  quite  natural  to 
venture  aU  at  the  caU  of  duty.  We  have  seen  the 
smaller  interests  of  the  State  merged  in  the  great  flood 
of  patriotism,  and  the  partisan  loyalties  of  political 
life,  while  not  abolished,  yet  certainly  subordinated  to 
the  higher  demands  of  national  service.  Almost 
everywhere  we  have  heard  a  new  spirit  of  self-devotion 

1  Robert  Bridges. 


10        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  i 

confessing  the  obligation  to  give  one's  share,  however 
small,  to  the  whole  effort  of  the  nation.  How 
different  it  has  all  been,  and  still  is,  from  the  deadly 
inertia  of  the  past ! 

And  this  in  a  higher  degree  still  is  what  we 
clergy  have  witnessed  who  have  followed  our  men 
out  here  to  minister  to  them,  as  far  as  in  us  lies,  the 
help  which  religion  can  give  them  in  failure  or 
victory  to  be  worthy  of  their  vocation,  and  to  do  their 
duty,  whether  in  life  or  in  death.  We  have  lived  in 
closest  comradeship  with  the  young  subaltern  who 
used  only  to  think  of  his  silk  socks  and  the  shape  of 
his  felt  hat,  his  bank-account  and  his  revels  ;  and  we 
have  seen  him  changed  into  the  platoon  commander 
who  thinks  of  everything  but  himself,  and  is  ready  at 
any  moment  to  fling  his  life  away  in  the  doing  of  some 
deed  of  service  for  his  men.  We  have  mixed  daily 
with  the  hard-bitten  coal-miner  or  factory-worker 
from  the  North,  whose  language  would  set  an  iceberg 
on  fire,  or  the  rough  labom'er  from  some  "  haunt  of 
ancient  peace  "  in  rural  England,  with  a  head  as  hard 
as  the  sun-baked  clay  in  which  he  digs  trenches  in 
sum.mer  to  resist  a  counter  attack.  They  seemed  in 
old  days  incapable  of  anything  but  rebelliously  or 
listlessly  following  the  dull  routine  of  daily  work  with 
its  parentheses  of  often  gross  or  Im-id  recreations.  But 
now  we  know  what  fortitude  and  chivalry,  courage  and 
charity,  fidelity  and  devotion  lay  waiting  beneath  the 
forbidding  surface  for  the  demand  which  has  made 
them  the  magnificent  men  we  have  seen  fighting  in  the 
trenches,  marching  up  to  the  attack  and  booking  orders 
for   Hun   helmets,    or   almost   invisible   in   the   white 


I        THE   MORAL   EQUIVALENT   OF   WAR     11 

bandages    which    swathe    their    tortured    bodies    in 
Casualty  Clearing  Stations  or  Base  Hospitals. 

Let  no  one  think  that  we  padres  haye  come  to 
beheve  in  the  British  Expeditionary  Force  as  a  short 
cut  to  sanctity.  There  is  another  side  to  the  picture, 
and  it  is  not  bright.  A  man  is  not  a  saint  because  he 
proves  himself  to  be  a  hero  ;  and  there  are  more 
heroes  than  saints  in  the  Army  by  a  very  long  way. 
But  every  hero  has  at  least  some  of  the  qualities  of 
sainthood,  and  shows  that  he  is  of  the  stuff  whereof 
God  fashions  His  saints,  when  it  yields  itseK  to  the 
shaping.  And,  for  all  their  faults,  many  of  these  men 
are  so  much  nearer  sainthood  than  the  many  members 
of  the  Church  who  have  felt  the  pressure  of  the  great 
hand  and  have  failed  to  take  its  impress,  and  yet 
mistake  themselves  for  the  finished  product. 

Now  it  is  precisely  these  great  changes  of  spirit  and 
outlook  upon  life  which  we  have  witnessed  since  the 
outbreak  of  war  that  the  Church  exists  to  manifest 
and  to  kindle  always  and  everywhere  among  men  in 
their  relations  to  one  another,  and  above  all  in  their 
relations  to  God.  It  is  these  very  things  which  Christ 
claimed  from  His  disciples,  and  Himself  revealed  in 
His  life  and  death.  Christianity  has  always  demanded 
for  Jesus  Christ  and  His  kingdom  the  whole-hearted 
devotion  and  self-sacrifice  which  men  are  now  giving 
for  their  countr3^  The  unity  which  is  felt  under  the 
constraint  of  danger  and  flows  naturally  out  of  loyalty 
to  the  nation  is  a  Mving  image  of  the  unity  which  is 
to  spring  from  loyalty  to  Him,  absorbing  and  including 
in  itself  all  lesser  attachments  and  more  partial  affinities 


12        THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  i 

and  sympathies.  The  courage  which  attempts  the 
seemingly  impossible,  the  great  romance  of  riding  out 
through  danger  to  break  an  evil  power  and  to  win 
freedom  for  the  oppressed,  are  the  inner  secrets  of  His 
own  most  glorious  Cross  and  Passion.  "  He  that  loveth 
father  or  mother  more  than  Me  is  not  worthy  of  Me," 
"  He  that  taketh  not  up  his  cross  and  foUoweth  after 
Me  cannot  be  My  disciple."  As  we  send  our  sons  and 
brothers  overseas,  we  bow  our  heads  and  confess  that 
it  would  be  keener  pain  to  keep  them,  if  they  made  the 
great  refusal,  than  to  give  them  up  to  do  their  duty, 
even  at  the  cost  of  death. 

Not  ours  to  urge  you,  or  to  know  the  voice  ; 
No  stern  decree  you  followed  or  obeyed  ; 

Nothing  compelled  your  swift  unerring  choice. 

Except  the  stuff  of  which  your  dreams  were  made, 
To  that  high  instinct  passionately  true. 
Your  way  you  knew.^ 

Think  of  all  that,  and  then  set  over  against  it  the 
actual  Church  as  we  know  it  in  its  war  with  sin.  Does 
the  picture  suggest  that  we  are  revealing  to  the  world 
that  we  possess  in  Christianity  the  moral  equivalent 
for  war  which  the  philosopher  sets  out  to  discover  ? 

n. 

He  is  no  true  lover  of  Christ  and  His  Church  who 
whines  and  complains  when  he  hears  men  speak  of  the 
Church's  failure.  To  recognise  it  is  the  only  possible 
attitude  for  faith.  It  is  too  far-reaching  to  be  lightly 
glossed  over  with  complacent  di-eams  about  the  magni- 
tude of  a  Church  revival,  which,  whatever  it  has  done, 

1  Punch,  May  10,  1916. 


I        THE   MORAL   EQUIVALENT   OF   WAR     13 

has  failed  to  win  the  great  masses  of  British  manhood 
in  the  armies  now  in  the  field.  Our  sense  of  failure  will 
be  in  j^roportion  both  to  our  vision  of  the.  possibilities 
of  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  to  our  sense  of  the  splendour 
of  what  active  service  has  called  forth,  where  the  Church 
has  largely  failed  to  do  it,  in  the  lives  and  characters  of 
these  men.  One  could  wish  that  every  comfortable 
optimist  in  the  Church  at  home  had  to  pass  through 
three  months'  experience  with  a  Brigade  at  the 
Front.  If  he  were  really  serious  and  devout  he  would 
go  back  to  worship  in  his  parish  church  a  wiser  and  a 
better  Churchman.  Perhaps  if  the  fact  of  the  war 
itself,  with  its  revelation  of  the  weakness  of  the 
Church  as  a  factor  in  determining  international 
relationships,  had  brought  him  no  heart-searchings 
and  cross-questionings,  contact  with  the  men  who  are 
dying  for  the  future  of  humanity  would  convince  him 
that  something  is  wrong  with  the  Society  of  Jesus 
which  has  not  won  their  faith  and  service,  and  has  not 
even  impressed  upon  them  the  elementary  meaning  of 
what  it  stands  for  in  the  world. 

We  Churchmen  are  not  likely  to  forget  how  much  the 
nation  owes  to  the  Church,  and  how  much  more  it  is 
than  some  of  our  rather  shallow  critics  are  wiUing  to 
confess.  We  know  how  deep  a  desire  there  is  stirring 
in  the  Church's  heart  that  it  should  more  worthily 
translate  its  faith  into  action  and  fulfil  its  mission  to 
the  nation  as  the  Body  of  Christ.  We  have  seen 
thought  and  prayer  at  work  everywhere  in  the  National 
Mission  of  Repentance  and  Hope  among  men  of  very 
various  convictions  and  attachments,  and  we  believe 
that  the  tide  of  hope  and  desire  is  rising.     But  all 


14        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  i 

this  will  only  make  the  Christian  realist  more  ready  to 
recognise  failure  where  he  sees  it,  and  to  set  himself  to 
discover  its  causes.  There  is  no  question  of  ultimate  and 
absolute  failure,  for  that  the  Church  need  never  fear. 
It  cannot  as  a  body  come  to  utter  ruin,  for  it  is  founded 
upon  the  Risen  Christ,  and  its  hfo  is  His  own  immortal 
life  Who  "  must  reign  till  all  His  enemies  are  put  under 
His  feet."  But  the  Church  as  an  actual  human  society 
can  fail,  and  has  failed,  relatively  to  its  opportunities 
and  to  the  tasks  and  duties  which  it  exists  to  discharge 
for  mankind.  If  anyone  doubts  that,  let  him  come  out 
here,  or  at  least  lot  him  read  without  prejudice  some 
of  the  Essays  which  folloA\'  in  this  book.  That  the  long 
centuries  of  Christianity  in  England  have  impressed 
their  influence  upon  the  English  people,  just  as  a  good 
man  (or  more  still  a  number  of  good  men)  will  inevi- 
tably touch  and  uplift  any  society  in  which  he  moves, 
no  one  can  doubt.  A  good  mother  will  never  fail  to 
leave  her  imprint  upon  her  sons,  however  far  away 
they  may  drift  from  her  discipline  and  teaching  ;  but 
she  will  be  the  first  to  acknowledge  failure,  if  they  grow 
up  to  manliood  largely  indifferent  to  what  she  strove 
to  give  them  and  what  she  tried  to  make  them  in  their 
youth.  Why  are  the  vast  majority  of  the  men  who 
compose  our  armies  almost  completely  unconscious  of 
any  sense  of  fellowship  with  the  Church  of  their 
Baptism  ?  Why  is  the  religion  of  most  soldiers  so 
largely  inarticulate  that,  as  Donald  Hankey  has  told 
us  in  "A  Student  in  Ai-ms,"  they  fail  to  connect  the 
good  things  which  they  do  believe  and  practise  in  any 
way  with  Jesus  Christ  ?  Why  have  they  cast  off  what 
early  teaching  they  had  like  garments  which  do  not 


I        THE   MORAL   EQUIVALENT   OF   WAR     15 

fit" them  and  for  which  they  have  no  use  ?  Why  do 
they  think  that  a  Churchman  is  a  man  who  professes  to 
be  better  than  they  are,  but  is  probably  "  as  bad  as  I 
am  and  perhaps  a  good  deal  worse,"  as  one  Tommy 
bluntly  said  when  discussing  the  Church  1  Some  of 
our  sturdy  apologists  in  England  seem  to  look  upon 
those  of  us  who  ask  these  questions  as  gloomy 
Jeremiahs  who  are  weary  and  overstrained  by  their 
work,  shell-shocked  prophets  who  it  may  be  hoped 
will  recover  their  balance  when  they  get  back  to  the 
soothing  amenities  of  home. 

To  live  in  a  fool's  paradise  is  one  of  the  least  of  an 
Army  Chaplain's  temptations.  Nor  do  I  think  that 
as  a  body  of  clergy  we  suffer  from  an  excess  of  pessi- 
mising  fears.  We  have  tested  our  message  to  the 
utmost,  and  it  has  borne  the  test.  There  are  too  many 
points  of  contact  between  the  religion  of  the  Church  and 
our  men  to  feel  despondent  about  the  future,  if  only 
we  be  found  faithful  and  wise  stewards  of  the  heritage 
of  God.  But  the  one  really  impossible  thing  is  to 
decline  to  face  the  facts.  There  is  nothing  that  has  a 
larger  place  and  arouses  keener  interest  in  the  discus- 
sions of  chaplains  when  they  are  able  to  meet  and  to 
compare  notes  than  the  causes  of  the  failure  whose 
evidences  are  written  large  in  the  lives  of  the  men  in 
our  Brigades  and  Hospitals.  And  there  is  a  remarkable 
consensus  of  judgment  among  those  who  are  most  capable 
to  speak.  We  have  our  freaks,  of  course,  prophets  of 
small  things  and  private  fads.  Some  of  us  are  a 
long  time  in  shedding  our  traditional  predilections,  and 
only  move  slowly  to  a  clear  sight  of  the  large  things 
that  really  matter.     Some,  I  suppose,  will  return  like 


16        THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  i 

a  dog  to  his  vomit  when  we  come  home.  But  most  of 
us  agree  completely  about  the  main  causes  that  lie 
behind  the  Church's  failure  to  win  British  manhood, 
while  varying  standpoints  will  still  lead  to  varying 
emphasis  of  other  facts  in  our  corporate  life  which  few 
would  claim  to  be  of  the  same  relative  importance. 

To  trace  some  of  the  chief  causes  as  I  see  them  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  Army,  I  turn  to  the  contrast, 
which  I  have  stated  above,  between  the  nation  at  war 
and  the  Church  engaged  in  its  spiritual  conflict.  I 
assume  that  no  Churchman  who  reads  this  Essay 
but  will  agree  that  we  claim  as  a  Church  to  possess 
"  the  moral  equivalent  "  of  the  best  that  war  has 
brought  us  as  a  nation.  That  commits  us  to  the  test. 
Can  we  bear  it  ? 

(i)  The  most  obvious  cause  of  our  failure  is  our  faint- 
heartedness in  face  of  the  power  of  the  foe  whom  we 
are  fighting. 

Christianity  will  never  be  a  popular  rehgion  till 
Christ  through  His  Church  has  beaten  down  evil  in 
the  age-long  conflict  which  is  expressed  once  for  all 
in  His  Cross.  Calvary  is  the  epitome  of  Christian  faith 
and  Christian  living,  and  Calvary  is  pure  unmitigated 
war.  The  Cross  is  ever  a  scandal,  to  the  Briton  as 
to  the  Jew  and  the  Greek.  It  stands  up  still  between 
earth  and  heaven  as  the  symbol  of  War  which  leads  only 
through  wounds  and  bloodshed  to  its  destined  close. 
The  Lord  Christ  has  given  us  no  easy  expectation  of  a 
swift  campaign  that  marches  to  a  speedy  triumph  over 
a  broken  enemy.  But  as  He  passed  through  apparent 
downfall  to  the  victory  of  His  Resurrection,  so  He  calls 
us  to  follow  Him  in  every  battle  in  which  He  joins  issue 
with  the  powers  of  darkness,  through  many  a  vicissitude 


I        THE   MORAL   EQUIVALENT   OF   WAR     17 

of  failure,  to  the  final  issue  of  victory  and  peace.  Far 
off,  perhaps,  hes  the  latest  struggle  when  He  will  enter 
the  last  strongholds  of  sin.  And  meanwhile  not  every 
setback  of  His  army  is  due  to  lack  of  faith  and  courage  ; 
for  where  there  is  conflict  there  must  be  action 
and  reaction,  attack  and  counter-attack,  till  the 
decision  has  come.  This  is  the  alphabet  of  Christian 
warfare. 

But,  all  this  being  so,  can  the  Church,  as  it 
looks  out  over  its  battle-fields  to-day,  declare  to 
its  divine  Leader  that  it  is  fighting  as  He  did 
and  in  the  spirit  of  His  Cross  ?  So  often  yielding 
ground  to  a  hostile  offensive,  has  it  a  right  to 
throw  all  the  responsibility  for  its  defeats  upon 
the  world  ?  Can  it  claim  that  it  has  raUied  to  His  call 
when  its  every  regiment  is  full  of  men  who  have  long 
ago  lost  heart  or  never  had  a  battle-heart  at  all  ? 
"  Ye  have  not  yet  resisted  unto  blood,  striving  against 
sin."  If  every  coward  in  the  Church's  army,  to  say 
nothing  of  deserters,  were  to  be  spiritually  court- 
martialled  and  shot  for  cowardice  in  face  of  the  enemy, 
there  would  be  very  few  full  battalions  left  with  which 
to  carry  on.  And  some  of  our  gaitered  generals  and 
colonels  would  certainly  have  to  face  the  firing-party. 

(ii)  In  nothing  does  the  contrast  between  the  Church 
and  the  nation  in  arms  stand  out  more  distinctly  than 
when  we  bring  them  to  the  touchstone  of  Romance. 

The  uninitiated  observer  of  the  British  soldier, 
accepting  that  puzzling  person's  own  description  of 
himself,  may  well  fail  to  trace  the  presence  of  any 
strong  dramatic  impidse  or  inspiration  in  his  attitude 
to  the  war  and  its  meaning.  He  groans  and  grouses, 
is  fed  up  to  the  teeth,  and  often  seems  to  desire  one 

c 


18   THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  FURNACE     i 

thing  only,  and  that  is  to  go  home.  But  watch  him 
going  up  to  an  attack,  and,  discount  all  you  may  for 
battle-fever,  you  will  soon  find  out  your  mistake.  Ask 
him  whether  he  would  go  back  to  Bhghty  and  leave  his 
pals  in  the  lurch  to  fight  it  out.  Ask  him  whether,  if  he 
had  the  choice,  he  would  sacrifice  all  that  has  been 
done  and  suffered  to  the  desire  for  an  immediate  peace. 
There  would  be  romance  in  his  answer  ;  not  the  gilded 
caricature  of  sensational  fiction,  nor  the  lyrical  rapture 
of  the  poet's  lofty  di'eam, — if  you  were  not  an  officer 
he  would  probably  swear  and  ask  who  you  were  getting 
at — but  the  pure  romance  of  a  high  purpose,  shot 
through  and  through  with  the  glory  of  devotion,  not 
less  real  because  almost  subconscious  and  unable  to 
express  itself  except  in  deeds.  That  is  the  stuff  of 
which  our  war-romance  is  woven,  and  it  is  of  a  fabric 
and  a  pattern  fit  to  be  hung  in  the  palaces  of  memory 
for  all  the  generations  that  are  to  come. 

And  then  over  against  that  we  set  the  conventionahsm 
of  our  Church  hfe,  and  the  drab  absorption  in  petty 
activities  and  triviahties  which  we  have  hung  up  as  our 
ideals  of  service  in  the  Temple  of  God.  There  is  still 
many  a  church  in  England  where  rehgion  sits  in  home- 
spun and  is  fair  to  see.  But  Christianity  was  intended 
for  the  wide  world's  arena  ;  it  is  helmed  and  girded  for 
the  quick  encounter  ;  it  sends  out  its  knights  and 
men-at-arms  to  battle.  And  we  know  little  of  that, 
its  high  venture,  amidst  the  smooth  orderliness  or  the 
petty  disorder  of  the  Church  of  to-day.  We  have 
been  estabhshed  into  inertia  and  inanity  ;  and  what 
wonder  that  we  do  not  win  the  hearts  of  men  who 
respond  and  find  themselves  only  when  you  make  a 


I        THE   MORAL   EQUIVALENT   OF   WAR     19 

great  demand  upon  them  to  give  their  all  for  what 
they  feel  to  be  well  worth  it  ?  We  fail  because  we 
pitch  our  appeal  too  low.  We  make  it  easy  to  be  a 
Churchman,  and  men  answer  that  it  is  not  worth 
while. 

(iii)  Closely  related  to  this  lack  of  Romance  is 
the  fact  that  the  spirit  of  the  defensive  rather  than  the 
spirit  of  the  offensive  domina.tes  us  as  a  Church. 

"  Christianity,"  says  Mr.  Clutton  Brock,  "  has  lost 
its  power  of  coherence,  its  joy,  its  power  of  laughter, 
because  it  has  been  merely  on  the  defensive."  There 
we  stand,  entrenched  in  our  carefully  fortified  lines 
which  cover  the  narrow  territory  we  are  holding  on 
to,  without  the  strategic  initiative  that  goes  with 
victory.  We  are  afraid — so  many  of  us — to  take  risks 
and  make  history,  afraid  to  think  imperially  in  the 
cause  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  afraid  of  all  the  re- 
construction and  enterprise  that  must  go  with  war. 
We  rely  upon  apology,  and  dreading  the  disasters 
which  might  follow  frontal  attacks  upon  deeply- 
entrenched  evils,  we  strafe  them  from  a  distance  with 
long-range  fire.  Timid  and  divided  counsels,  which 
would  bring  certain  failure  on  the  Somme  or  at  Arras, 
first  limit  and  then  wreck  our  schemes  for  progress  and 
reform.  We  have  grown  contented,  or  are  only  feebly 
discontented,  with  our  limitations,  and  year  after  year 
we  settle  down  in  our  trenches  for  another  winter, 
satisfied  if  only  we  can  keep  the  enemy  out. 

"  Never,"  writes  the  notorious  popular  exponent  of 
German  militarism,  "  was  there  a  religion  more  com- 
bative than  Christianity. "1     He  does  not  realise  that 

^  Bemhardi,  "  Germany  and  the  Next  War,"  p.  29, 

c  2  " 


20        THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  i 

the  sword  which  Christ  brought  on  earth  has  its  point 
levelled  at  the  heart  of  the  creed  he  preaches,  and  that 
the  fire  which  he  feels  in  Jesus  is  a  fire  that  must 
presently  consume  it.  But  it  is  a  non-combatant 
Church,  in  the  spiritual  sense,  which  makes  it  possible 
for  his  distortions  of  Christ's  meaning  to  deceive  his 
followers.  Christ  means  us  to  be  "  the  salt  of  the  earth," 
and  few  of  us  have  any  real  conception  of  what  that 
would  mean  if  it  were  translated  into  terms  of  modern 
life.  The  Church  in  its  best  days  has  always  been  a 
centre  of  disturbance  in  an  evil  world,  and  we  disturb 
little,  because  we  are  too  politic  and  wise.  Instead  of 
concentrating  upon  great  aims,  we  tidy  up  the  irregu- 
larities of  our  organisation.  When  some  daring  soul 
bids  us  "go  over  the  top  "  and  express  our  religion 
in  terms  of  our  own  time,  we  shiver  with  apprehension 
because  it  might  mean  that  some  powerful  section  of 
the  Church  would  threaten  to  betake  itseK  to  the 
wilderness  or  sullenly  cut  off  financial  supplies.  Mr. 
H.  G.  Wells  teUs  us  that  "  the  Church  has  not  the 
courage  of  its  Creeds  "  ;  and  he  is  right,  because  we 
either  handle  them  so  timidly  that  we  are  easily 
desjDoiled  of  them,  or  care  for  them  so  httle  that  we 
give  them  away  to  every  new  demand  of  the  modern 
mind.  We  are  easily  fooled  because  we  are  tepid  in 
our  allegiance,  and  feebly  permit  almost  unlimited 
denials  because  we  hardly  know  what  we  believe.  And 
so  we  are  either  the  easy  victims  of  the  German  spirit 
of  destruction,  or  happy  slaves  of  dead  traditions 
who  have  never  learned  to  breathe  the  fresh  air  of 
apostolic  faith.  The  German  armies  would  be  in 
London  to-day  if  these  had  been  the  methods  and 


I       THE   MORAL   EQUIVALENT   OF   WAR     21 

this  the  spirit  in  which  the  nation  had  faced  the  tasks 
and  trials  of  the  great  war. 

(iv)  Membership  in  a  Church  which  thus  fails  in 
fighting-spirit  must  needs  mean  little,  and  for  a  vast 
body  of  its  members  loyalty  to  it  wiU  imply  but  small 
demands  upon  love  and  devotion.  The  fellowship 
which  it  offers  will  inspire  little  fruitful  co-operation, 
and  will  know  nothing  of  the  quick  thrill  of  comrade- 
ship which  is  "  knit  together  in  one  communion  " 
through  sacrifice  and  enthusiasm  for  a  great  cause. 
It  wiU  be  lacking  in  that  love,  strong  as  death,  for  a 
trusted  leader  which  does  not  easily  decline,  as  we  do, 
to  the  low  levels  of  partisan  attachments  and  exclusive 
sectional  loyalties. 

"  The  Army,"  says  the  first  of  the  "  King's  Regula- 
tions and  Orders  for  the  Ai'my,"  "  is  composed  of  those 
who  have  undertaken  a  definite  liabihty  for  service." 
It  is  one  of  the  root  causes  of  our  failures  that,  while 
this  is  true  of  the  Church  also,  it  is  a  liability  which  is 
not  recognised  by  more  than  the  comparatively  few. 
"  Christ  loved  the  Church  and  gave  Himself  for  it  .  .  . 
that  He  might  present  it  to  Himself  a  glorious  Church, 
not  having  spot  or  wrinkle  or  any  such  thing."  Not  a 
Church  which  in  Baptism  enlists  men  for  a  lifelong 
warfare,  and  allows  the  majority  of  them  to  pass  into 
a  permanent  reserve  which  is  never  called  up  for  active 
service.  Not  a  Church  which  is  a  spiritual  parallel 
to  pre-war  politics,  where  patriotism  was  buried  under 
the  rubbish-heaps  of  party -programmes,  and  had  lost 
the  sense  of  the  whole  State  in  contending  for  the  lop- 
sided development  of  its  parts.  It  was  not  to  be  a 
Church  which  grudgingly  and  tardily  recognises  and 


22        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  i 

uses  the  private  soldier  and  non-commissioned  officer, 
but  relies  almost  entirely  upon  an  officer-class,  not 
lacking  in  devotion,  but  singularly  unable,  because 
largely  untrained,  to  lead  and  inspire  the  man  in  the 
ranks,  and,  because  it  allows  him  to  think  that  httle  is 
expected  of  him,  secures  only  what  it  expects.  It  was 
to  be  a  Church  whose  chief  characteristic  is  a  unity 
based  upon  the  possession  of  a  unifying  life,  which 
grows  and  progresses  through  antagonism  with  a 
hostile  world,  instead  of  spending  its  energies  upon  a 
suicidal  clash  of  opposites  within  itself.  It  was  not 
to  be  broken  up  into  rival  forces,  each  acting  for  itself, 
with  an  almost  total  disregard  of  disciphne,  carrying 
out  its  operations  without  reference  to  any  general 
plan  of  campaign.  Its  Bases  were  not  to  be  thronged 
with  men  who  wear  its  uniform  but  refuse  to  go  up  into 
the  hne.  The  trains  in  France  move  very  slowly  up 
to  the  fighting  front  ;  they  move  more  slowly  still 
in  the  Church.  But  in  the  one  case  this  is  the  result 
of  the  pressure  of  traffic  due  to  a  constant  offensive  ; 
while  in  the  other  it  is  brought  about  by  the  blockages 
which  disorder  and  inefficiency  are  continually  causing 
on  the  lines,  and  by  the  lack  of  initiative  which  leaves 
us  content  to  carry  on  without  urgency  and  eagerness 
the  slow  and  perfunctory  operations  of  our  half- 
hearted campaigns. 

III. 

It  would  be  easy  to  follow  out  this  contrast  into 
further  detail,  especially  in  connection  with  the  more 
commonly  recognised  causes  which  lie  behind  the  failures 
of  tlie  Church  as  they  stand  revealed  by  the  war.   Selfish- 


I        THE   MORAL   EQUIVALENT   OF   WAR     23 

ness,  indolence,  timeserving,  and  woiidliness  ot  spirit 
have  each  their  contrast  in  mihtary  hfe.  More  obvious 
still  is  lack  of  discipline,  the  most  distinctive  quality 
developed  by  active  service  in  the  Army  and  the  most 
conspicuous  by  its  absence  in  the  Church.  Who  can 
estimate  the  increase  in  our  fighting-value,  if  the 
self-subordination  and  sense  of  obligation  which  are 
paramount  in  the  soldier  could  be  reproduced  and 
spirituahsed  in  the  average  Churchman  ? 

But  already  some  who  read  this  Essay  will  suspect  me 
of  such  a  mihtarising  of  temper  and  conception  that  it 
has  led  me  to  overlook  the  fact  that  religion  is  far  too 
great  a  thing  to  be  truthfully,  or  at  least  completely, 
described  in  terms  of  any  human  activity  or  organisa- 
tion whatever.  There  are,  I  know,  many  points  at 
which  the  analogy  which  I  have  been  pressing  com- 
pletely breaks  down.  For  one  thing,  there  can  be  no 
conscripts  in  God's  Church.  For  another,  reUgious 
experience  can  never  be  clothed  merely  in  the  imagery 
of  war  ;  it  has  depths  and  heights  where  peace  and  not 
war  alone  can  express  it.  The  true  "  moral  equivalent 
of  war  "  will  in  many  ways  be  utterly  unwarhke,  and 
the  devotee  of  militarism  will  find  himself  hopelessly 
baffled  if  he  attempts  to  find  it  only  on  the  levels  of  war. 

No  militarising  of  the  Church  on  the  side  of  mere 
organisation  will  ever  make  it  that  "  Church  mihtant 
here  on  earth  "  which  it  must  really  become  if  it  is  to 
fulfil  its  divine  mission  and  meet  the  demands  that  the 
tremendous  needs  of  men  are  making  upon  it  now.  But 
here  still  the  military  parallel  helj)s  us,  and  points  the  way 
to  a  solution  of  our  difficulties.  The  most  important  fact 
about  an  army  is  neither  its  organisation  nor  its  equip- 


24        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  i 

ment ;  the  very  soul  and  secret  of  its  victories  is  its 
morale.  Without  a  high  morale  munitions  and  guns 
are  all  useless.  And  here  we  arrive  at  the  crucial  point 
of  this  discussion.  Unless  this  is  to  be  only  another  of 
the  many  purely  destructive  criticisms  of  the  Church 
to  which  we  have  been  treated  ad  nauseam  since  the  war 
began,  modern  Books  of  Lamentations  whose  authors 
are  mourners  beforehand  for  a  moribund  cause,  it  must 
point  out  a  way  of  renewal  which  will  meet  the  causes 
of  failure  with  their  antidote  and  deal  with  them,  as  a 
good  general,  when  he  feels  himself  being  outfought, 
draws  upon  his  resources  for  the  means  for  changing 
defeat  into  victory. 

With  the  Church  as  with  the  Army  the  greatest  of 
our  problems  are  really  problems  of  morale.  Morale 
is  the  fruit  of  spirit,  and  it  is  spirit  more  than  anything 
else  in  which  we  are  lacking.  Our  armies  and  munitions 
out  here  are  the  product  of  British  spirit,  and  according 
as  the  barometer  of  that  spirit  has  risen  or  fallen  during 
these  past  three  years  has  been  our  progress  towards 
winning  the  war.  It  is  spirit  which  discovers  resources 
and  di-aws  upon  them  ;  it  is  spirit  which  develops  the 
quahties  of  leadership  in  those  who  possess  them  ;  it 
is  spirit  which  finds  ways  and  means  and  then  puts 
them  to  use.  Spirit  is  the  one  really  creative  force  in 
the  world.  Change  the  spirit  of  the  Church,  and  all 
else  will  follow.  AU  great  rehgious  movements  have 
been  due  to  spirit  and  personahty.  We  need  not 
mechanism  but  motive-power,  or  rather  both  as  the 
creation  of  spirit,  which  broods  over  the  chaos  of 
failure,  and  setting  its  divine  energies  to  work  calls 
forth  from  the  formless  deeps  the  organisms  into  which 


I        THE   MORAL   EQUIVALENT   OF   WAR     25 

it  breathes  the  breath  of  life.  Schemes  of  reform  and 
self-government,  re-statements  or  re-interpretations  of 
doctrines  and  creeds,  programmes  of  social  and  edu- 
cational improvement,  movements  towards  unity — 
we  have  debated  these  without  reahsing  that  they  are 
all  equally  valueless  unless  they  are  the  expression  of 
life.  Many  of  them  have  been  stillborn  because  they 
were  mere  ecclesiastical  contrivances  rather  than  the 
fruition  of  an  intense  hfe.  Faith,  hope,  and  love  are 
creative  forces,  which  must  needs  find  an  outlet  and 
scope  for  seK-reahsation.  Everything  else  runs  at 
last  back  up  into  that. 

But  spirit  needs  arousing,  or  it  may  lie  dormant 
and  inactive.  That  was  our  state  as  a  nation  before 
the  call  of  war  came,  and  slowly  and  surely  we  were 
stirred  out  of  our  sleep.  That  is  our  state  as  a 
Church  still,  with  signs  and  promises  that  we  are 
beginning  to  awake.  It  will  be  the  dawning  of  a 
great  day  for  the  Church  of  England  when  as  a  body  it 
hears  and  responds  to  the  caU  to  war. 

That  call  is  sounding  now  for  all  who  have  ears  to 
hear  it,  and,  hke  the  call  which  came  to  England  in 
1914,  it  is  the  call  of  a  great  and  pressing  danger.  The 
Church  has  never  been  slow  to  rally  to  the  defence  of 
its  schools  and  its  endowments,  and  to  defend  itseK 
against  attacks  in  these  and  like  directions.  But  there 
is  a  danger  now  which  goes  far  deeper  than  the  mere  loss 
of  opportunities  and  equipment.  The  cause  of  Christ 
hangs  in  the  balance.  The  issues  are  joined.  We  know 
that  for  the  Church,  as  far  as  we  are  concerned,  it  is 
now  or  never.  If  once  this  period  of  upheaval  passes, 
and  the  new  world  which  is  now  in  the  making  builds 


26        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  i 

itself  upon  foundations  which  are  as  hostile  or  indifferent 
to  Christ  and  His  Church  as  were  the  foundations  of 
the  age  which  has  gone  down  in  ruins,  the  future  of  the 
Church  in  this  and  its  succeeding  generation  will  be 
an  unutterable  darkness.  There  will  never  be  lacking 
those  who,  like  others  before  them,  will  hand  on  the 
torch  of  light  to  after-generations  ;  and  the  time  will 
come  at  last  when  the  Church  will  become  Christian 
enough  to  be  made  the  instrument  through  which  Christ 
will  come  to  His  own  among  men.  But  for  us,  we  shall 
have  failed  ;  and  as  a  Church  we  shall  correspond  to 
what  England  would  have  been  among  the  nations,  if 
in  the  hour  of  her  trial  and  danger  she  had  chosen  the 
easy  path  of  safety  which  so  quickly  would  have  proved 
to  be  the  path  to  downfall.  The  Church  cannot  be 
neutral  without  working  its  own  undoing.  "  Because 
thou  knewest  not  the  day  of  thy  visitation." 

Thus  in  this  time  of  the  Church's  testing  there  are 
certainly  some  of  the  elements  of  a  spiritual  equivalent 
to  the  facts  which  determined  the  attitude  of  England 
in  her  decision  to  make  war.  We  like  the  nation  have 
all  the  resources  for  achieving  a  glorious  issue,  if  we  will 
use  them.  We  have  laid  upon  us  the  demand  of  a 
cause  which  is  worth  the  sacrifice  of  everything  to  carry 
it  through  its  ordeal,  for  we  beheve  that  with  its  success 
or  failure  are  bound  up  the  destinies  of  each  successive 
generation.  It  needs  only  that  we  should  have  the 
faith,  first  to  call  each  other  to  battle,  and  then  to  go  on 
to  deeds  and  the  payment  of  the  price.  Have  we  the 
spirit  ?  It  all  depends  in  the  long  run  upon  that.  How 
did  the  Church  of  the  early  days  conquer  the  Roman 
Empire,  and  from  being  one  insignificant  sect  among 


I        THE   MORAL   EQUIVALENT   OF   WAR     27 

many  win  steadily  forward  till  it  openly  mastered  the 
old  gods  and  drove  them  from  their  thrones  ?  "  If  I 
may  invent  or  adapt  three  words,"  says  Mr.  T.  R. 
Glover,  "  the  Christian  '  out-lived  the  pagan,'  '  out- 
died  '  him,  and  '  out-thought  '  him."i  And  so,  from 
our  point  of  view  we  may  add,  he  "  out-fought  "  him. 
He  had  "  the  courage  of  his  creeds."  He  put  Christ 
first,  and  everything  else  afterwards,  or  in  comparison 
with  Him  nowhere  at  all.  He  was  a  better  man 
because  he  served  a  better  Lord.  He  valued  Him  and 
His  Kingdom  at  a  higher  price  than  the  possession  of 
life  itself.  He  put  into  his  religion  every  resource  of 
heart  and  mind  and  will  of  which  ho  was  capable.  And 
so  he  won  his  battle,  and  the  warrior  Church  of  those 
days,  following  Him  "  Who  goes  forth  conquering  and 
to  conquer,"  achieved  the  most  wonderful  triumph  in 
rehgious  history.  So  must  we.  So  can  we.  "  Deus 
vult."  But  if  so,  we  Churchmen  must  take  our  religion 
as  seriously  as  England  has  taken  this  war. 

I  have  spoken  of  spirit  as  being  of  the  very  essence 
of  morale,  and  of  the  lack  of  spirit  in  the  Church  as 
a  corporate  society  living  its  life  and  doing  its  work 
among  men.  "  Change  the  spirit  of  the  Church 
and  all  else  will  follow."  That  leads  us  beyond  the 
limits  of  our  mihtary  analogy  into  the  region  where 
faith  is  accustomed  to  think  of  the  revelation  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  and  of  the  Church  as  a  spiritual  body, 
created  and  sustained  by  the  Spirit  of  God.  These 
divine  facts  gain  fresh  meaning  and  force  when  we 
view  them  in  the  hght  of  what  we  have  been  thinking. 
There  need  be,  there  can  be,  no  lasting  failure  where 

1   "  The  Jesus  of  History,"  p.  213. 


28        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  i 

that  Spirit  reigns  supreme.  We  must  make  room  for 
Him  :  we  must  give  Him  scope  and  freedom  to  act. 
He  is  fire,  and  we  must  let  Him  scorch  and  consume  our 
hypocrisies  and  shams.  He  is  hght,  and  we  must  follow 
His  guidance,  translating  into  deeds  and  facts  the 
impulses  moving  within  us  which  we  so  often  allow  to  die, 
because  we  do  not  permit  them  to  pass  first  into  pohcy 
and  then  into  act.  He  is  Love,  and  Love  is  devotion 
and  sacrifice  hke  His  "Who  through  the  Eternal 
Spirit  offered  up  Himself  without  spot  to  God."  He  is 
Life,  and  "  He  that  raised  up  Christ  from  the  dead 
shall  also  quicken  om-  mortal  bodies  by  His  Spirit 
that  dwelleth  in  us."  All  our  problems  are  problems 
of  the  Spirit,  and  we  can  solve  them  all  if  He  equips 
and  inspires  and  leads  us  forth  to  war. 

The  directions  in  which  the  Spirit  is  leading  the 
Church  in  this  great  crisis  of  om^  Ufe  can  only  be 
discovered  by  the  collective  wisdom  of  a  Church  which 
really  sets  itseK  with  a  new  energy  of  determination 
and  enterprise  to  find  out  and  to  do  the  Will  of  God. 
But  some  things  seem  already  to  stand  out  clear  and 
distinct. 

(i)  We  must  claim  at  all  costs  the  right  to  self- 
government,  or  rather  the  right  to  fulfil  our  duty  to 
live  the  fife  to  which  Christ  calls  us  in  modern  England. 
It  may  be  that  in  making  that  claim  we  may  be  forced 
to  sacrifice  a  great  deal,  and  to  encounter  opposition 
which  can  only  be  overcome  by  surrendering  the 
dubious  advantages  of  an  Estabhshment  which,  how- 
ever much  it  is  worth,  is  not  vital,  and  is  of  incom- 
parably less  value  than  liberty  to  be  true  to  ourselves 
and  true  to  our  Lord. 


I        THE   MORAL   EQUIVALENT   OF   WAR     29 

(ii)  We  must  make  an  end  of  our  present  chaotic 
sectionalism,  and  in  the  spirit  of  a  larger  loyalty  to 
Christ  attain  to  some  sohd  agreement  upon  what 
membership  in  the  Church  of  England  really  demands 
both  in  faith  and  practice.  We  must  reach  some 
settlement,  not  narrowed  in  the  interests  of  party, 
and  not  the  result  of  facile  compromise,  but  the  expres- 
sion of  common  faith  and  common  life.  I  beheve  that 
the  new  responsibilities  involved  in  the  possession  of 
self-government,  and  the  possible  imminence  of  rupture 
attended  by  the  frightful  evils  waiting  upon  a  further 
rending  apart  of  Churchmen,  will  teach  many  of  us  that 
a  great  deal  which  we  have  hotly  contended  for  is  due 
more  to  custom  and  heredity  and  our  traditional 
separation  into  rival  camps  than  to  necessary  allegiance 
to  essential  Truth.  As  with  the  nation  in  the  early  days 
of  the  war,  a  great  common  danger  will  reveal  a  deeper 
unity  than  we  had  suspected,  and  drawing  the  Church 
together  in  the  face  of  threatened  disaster  will  drive  us 
perforce  to  put  first  things  first  in  Churchmanship  as 
we  did  in  citizenship. 

(iij)  We  must  recognise  the  fact  that  the  Church  in 
England  is  a  missionary  Church,  and  no  longer  look 
upon  ourselves  as  the  nation  regarded  from  an  ecclesi- 
astical point  of  view — a  legal  fiction  which  has  done 
deadly  hurt  to  the  sense  of  obhgation  inspired  by  a 
clearly -recognised  and  defined  membership.  Recovering 
that,  we  shall  recover  also  the  missionary  spirit. 

(iv)  We  must  give  its  right  place  in  all  our  thinking 
to  the  great  formative  fact  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 
Only  so  can  we  escape  from  the  parochiaUsm  of  our 
present  outlook  ;  and  the  recognition  of  Christ's  world- 


30        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  i 

wide  Kingship  will  give  a  breadth  and  glory  to  our  ideals 
and  aims  which  will  win  the  devotion  and  service  of 
many  who  have  been  quite  untouched  by  our  lower  and 
narrower  appeals  in  the  past. 

(v)  We  must  face  our  social  evils  in  a  new  spirit, 
no  longer  regarding  them  with  the  mild  uneasiness 
which  evaporates  in  talk,  but  "  with  a  permanently 
troubled  conscience  "^  which  will  never  rest  till  the 
Spirit  of  Christ  has  won  expression  for  Himself  through 
the  whole  system  of  our  common  social  hfe. 

(vi)  Lastly,  we  must  aim  at  the  co-operation  of  all 
the  Christian  forces  in  the  nation,  and  not  only  aim 
at  it  (aiming  at  things  with  us  so  often  only  means 
discussing),  but  take  steps  to  secure  it,  demanding  of 
others,  and  they  of  us,  that  if  it  is  really  necessary 
that  reunion  should  come  only  at  the  end  of  a  long 
movement,  we  shall  at  least  be  always  on  the  move 
towards  it,  and  be  doing  and  thinking  things  which  make 
steadily  for  the  time  when  "  they  shall  be  one,  as  Thou, 
Father,  art  in  Me,  and  the  world  shall  believe  that  Thou 
hast  sent  Me." 

It  is  on  lines  like  these  that  the  Church  will  reveal 
to  the  world  its  "  moral  equivalent  of  war."  Have 
we  the  battle-heart  to  rally  to  His  call  Who  "  came 
not  to  bring  peace  but  a  sword,"  that  is,  peace  only 
after  victory  ?  Only  thus  can  we  be  worthy  to  claim 
for  Him  the  faith  and  service  of  men  who  have 
learned  the  freedom  which  is  his  alone  who  believes 
that  love  of  self  is  less  than  love  of  honour,  and  duty 
more  than  life  itseK.  It  means  war;  but  it  is  war  with  all 
war's  glory  and  without  its  horrors,  because  it  is  war  to 

^  Tlie  Bishop  of  Oxford  in  a  Church  Congress  sermon. 


I        THE   MORAL   EQUIVALENT   OF   WAR     31 

liberate  men  and  not  to  enslave  them,  to  build  and  not 
to  destroy.  War  !  whose  weapon  is  not  force  but 
faith,  whose  motive  is  not  the  lust  of  gain  but  the  love 
of  souls  ;  and  wherever  it  passes  it  leaves  behind  it  not 
broken  homes,  and  shattered  lives,  and  wasted  wealth, 
but  the  em'ichment  of  humanity  in  all  its  relations  with 
the  grace  and  fulness  of  God.^ 

^  This  Essay,  as  being  introductory  to  a  series  of  more  or  less 
closely  related  chapters,  deliberately  treats  its  subject  only  generally, 
even  in  the  closing  attempt  to  indicate  directions  for  progress.  I 
must  refer  the  reader  to  the  Essays  which  follow  for  an  application 
of  the  Christian  war-spirit,  more  in  detail,  to  the  questions  with  which 
they  deal.  But  to  illustrate  the  moral  equivalent  of  war  in  the 
individual  man's  life,  I  should  like  to  quote  the  following  passage 
from  a  striking  paper  by  the  Rev.  A.  Herbert  Gray,  C.F.  in"  Chap- 
lains in  Council,"  a  Report  of  a  Conference  of  Chaplains  (published 
by  Edward  Arnold),  pp.  25-27: — "  Fundamentally  Christianity  is  a 
way  of  living  ordinary  life,  and  is  not  to  begin  with  a  mere  matter 
either  of  abstinence  or  of  attending  church.  A  saved  man,  to 
Christ's  thought,  is  a  man  living  all  day  and  every  day  in  a  certain 
way — the  way  of  a  disciple.  He  is  not  a  man  primarily  concerned 
about  his  own  sovil.  There  is  something  selfish  about  that — which, 
by  the  way,  Tommy  sees  quite  clearly.  He  is  primarily  concerned 
about  serving  Christ.  That  means  being  a  certain  kind  of  employer 
and  employee.  It  means  doing  business  on  certain  unselfish  and 
upright  principles.  It  means  a  certain  kind  of  home  life.  It  means 
being  a  certain  kind  of  husband,  father,  brother,  and  so  on.  It 
involves  a  certain  exacting  attitude  to  the  poor  and  all  sufferers. 
It  means  staying  in  the  world  and  there  proving  yourself  a  good 
friend — -a  sociable,  charitable  person.  It  means  keeping  cheerful  in 
trying  circximstances.  It  means  courage  and  endurance.  It  often 
means  self-sacrifice  and  a  measure  of  loneliness  and  opposition.  It 
is  so  hard  that  it  is  ridiculously  impossible  to  any  man  who  is  not 
daily  sustained  by  the  grace  of  God.  .  .  .  But  it  is  also  a  great 
positive  and  glorious  enterprise  which  entirely  fills  life,  and  calls  for 
all  the  greatest  qualities  of  the  human  spirit— the  virile  ones  as  well  as 
the  gentle  ones.  .  .  .  We  have  appealed  to  men's  fears  .  .  .  and 
men's  emotions.  .  .  .  But  have  we  sufficiently  appealed  to  men's 
latent  heroism,  to  their  capacity  for  self-sacrifice,  to  their  readiness  for  a 
great  adventure  ?  I  doubt  it.  And  until  we  do  we  cannot  hope  to 
win  the  average  man." 


II 
FAITH    IN   THE    LIGHT   OF   WAR 

By  the  Rev.  F.  R.  BARRY,  M.A.,  D.S.O. 

Senior  CAaplaiii  to  the  Forces,  - — -  Dhnsion  ;  Fellow  and  Lecturer  in 
Theology,  Oriel  College,  Oxford. 

Author  of  "  The   War  and  Religion^ 


II 
FAITH   IN   THE   LIGHT    OF    WAR 

I. 

FAITH    IN    THE    LIGHl'    OF    WAR. 

A.  Faith  is  a  plant  that  flourishes  in  adversity. 
Like  every  other  faculty  it  seems  to  reach  its  fullest 
development  by  reacting  to  resistance.  It  calls  forth 
all  its  latent  capacities  to  overcome  an  unfavourable 
environment.  And  such  emphatically  is  War.  It  is 
untrue — as  must  be  roundly  stated  from  the  outset 
— that  War  is  a  reviver  of  Religion.  I  had  at  one  time 
a  vague  idea  that  it  is  so,  but  experience  definitely 
confutes  it.  Indeed,  if  I  may  write  quite  personally,  it 
has  had  for  me  the  opposite  result.  It  is  for  myself 
at  any  rate  a  constant  struggle  to  keep  the  spiritual 
sense  alive  at  all.  It  is  only  to  be  done  by  very  great 
effort.  The  fatal  step  of  "  perfect  adaptation "  to 
surroundings  is  a  death-trap  -which  is  always  set.  If 
this  is  so  for  the  padre  it  is  hkely  to  be  at  least  as  much 
so  for  the  soldier.  And  observation  appears  to  bear 
this  out.     Most  men,  I  beheve,  would  give  the  same 

D  2 


36        THE   CHURCH   IN  THE   FURNACE         ii 

report.  The  notion  that  the  life  of  active  service 
produces  a  kind  of  spiritual  exaltation  must  rest  on 
ignorance  of  its  conditions.  Every  speck  of  glamour 
or  romance  has  disappeared  from  warfare  long  ago  : 
it  is  just  an  orgy  of  monotony.  And  (so  far  at  least 
as  I  can  observe)  the  combined  circumstances  of  this 
life  do  distinctly  make  against  Rehgion.  The  opposite 
view,  so  popular  in  pulpits,  seems  to  be  largely  based 
on  the  sad  tradition  which  associates  Rehgion  with 
"  hard  times."  This  is  the  typically  British  outlook 
which  looks  upon  catastrophes  and  tragedies  as  in  a 
special  sense  the  acts  of  God — associating  Him  with 
"  the  King's  enemies  "  as  alone  beyond  the  scope  of  a 
Lloyd's  pohcy.  So  people  speak  of  men  as  turning  to 
God  because  they  are  always  face  to  face  with  death. 
And  we  often  hear  that  War  is  quite  um'ivalled  for 
"  putting  the  fear  of  God  into  a  man."  But  surely 
it  is  a  very  anaemic  faith  which  can  only  find  its  God  in 
the  abnormal,  when  every  other  hypothesis  has  failed. 
And  the  thought  of  being  turned  to  God  by  fear  seems 
to  me  extremely  blasphemous. 

And  yet  there  is  this  much  truth  in  the  common 
view.  Faith  is,  by  its  classical  definition,  "  testing  the 
reality  of  the  Unseen. "^  The  very  weight  of  circum- 
stances against  it  makes  its  challenge  and  its  oppor- 
tunity. And  the  collapse  and  failure  of  the  seen  may 
show  the  unseen  in  a  clearer  light.  So,  I  think,  it 
has  been  in  these  times.  Everything  visible  has  failed 
us,  and  we  have  been  flung  back  on  the  Invisible.  Sick 
with  the  horror  of  the  merely  actual  we  have  turned 
with    fresh    inquiry    to    the    Real.     And    Faith    has 

^    Tlpayndroov  f\eyxos  ou  $\fTrofj.fVQ)V. — Heb.  xi.    1. 


II  FAITH  IN  THE   LIGHT  OF  WAR         37 

triumphed.  Wherever  it  had  before  any  genuine 
existence  the  sense  of  the  Unseen  has  now  been 
deepened. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  it  appears  to  have  been  so  always. 
Artists,  poets,  and  philosophers — aU  who  "  commerce 
with  Eternity  " — normally  find  their  conviction  is  not 
shaken  but  rather  confirmed  by  the  pressure  of  outward 
circumstance.  Nearly  all  the  greatest  works  of  genius 
have  been  created  in  times  of  storm  and  stress.  And  it 
has  not  been  less  so  with  religion.  The  Psalms  and 
Prophets,  the  Phaedo,  the  Apocalypse,  the  Medita- 
tions and  the  Civitas  Dei  are  amongst  the  standing 
evidence  of  this.  And  the  supreme  example  of  all 
others  is  the  dying  word  of  Jesus — "  Father,  into  Thy 
hands  I  commend  my  spirit."  Through  all  the  un- 
plumbed  darkness  of  those  hours  He  could  still  hold 
fast  the  Father's  hand.  Now  these  verdicts  of  Faith's 
experts  are  immensely  strengthening  to  us  when  we 
are  faced  with  like  conditions.  For  in  these  days  we 
have  to  live  very  largely  on  the  faith  of  other  people. 
We  have  then  here  at  once  a  vindication  of  the  need  for 
institutional  religion.  The  Church  can  be  regarded 
from  other  standpoints,  som.e  of  which  we  shall  see 
later  on.  But  at  present  I  would  simply  dwell  on 
this,  that  a  man's  rehgion  cannot  stand  alone.  The 
individual's  faith  needs  reinforcing  by  corporate  and 
traditional  experience.  Only  of  course  it  can  never  be 
proved  valid  save  by  personal  trial  and  assent.  Each 
must  make  the  venture  for  himself.  And  on  the  whole 
these  are  days  of  Faith's  victories. 

Of  this  there  is  a  good  deal  of  evidence.  I  cite  first 
what  may  be  called  the  rediscovery  of  the  outlook  of 


38        THE    CHURCH    IN   THE   FURNACE  ii 

the  Prophets.  Behind  that  cynical  attitude  to  the  war 
which  so  distresses  you  at  home  in  your  patriotic  studies 
there  is,  I  think,  for  most  men  here  some  vision  of  a 
spiritual  interpretation.  Many  gibes,  for  example,  have 
been  spent  on  the  fact  that  both  sides  offer  prayer  for 
victory.  But  they  are  really  very  superficial.  Surely 
this  is  truly  testimony  to  the  faculty  we  are  discussing 
— ^the  sense  that  can  discern  an  Arbiter  over  and  behind 
our  human  conflicts,  the  faith  that  can  see  a  Throne  set 
up  in  Heaven.  And  there  is,  I  think,  a  widespread 
feeling,  even  though  it  is  not  always  articulate,  that 
all  the  horror  has,  as  we  say,  a  meaning — that  it  is 
something  more  than  '  merely  bestial.'  To  the  sensi- 
tive and  highly  educated  it  is  rather  like  reading  Shakes - 
perian  tragedy.  There  we  can  read,  without  pain  or 
disgust,  a  drama  which  is  packed  with  '  pity  and  fear  ' 
because  we  are  lifted  high  above  the  facts  to  the  ideal 
principles  and  laws  of  which  they  are  the  dreadful 
incarnation.  I  had  an  experience  like  this  myseH. 
My  Brigade  was  fighting  desperately  on  the  Somme  on 
September  26th  and  the  two  days  following.  On  the 
29th,  worn  out  and  atheistic  and  quite  incapable  of 
prayer,  I  began  glancing  at  my  prayer  book.  I  shall 
never  forget  the  rush  of  light  that  came  with  the 
Michaelmas  '  Epistle.'  The  real  war,  after  all,  is  the 
War  in  Heaven.  And  the  dragon  and  his  angels,  and  all 
the  blood  and  misery  and  blindness — they  are  cast  out 
at  the  last !  God  in  the  end  is  stronger  than  all  else, 
and  He  is  the  only  key  to  human  history. 

Unconsciously  here  I  have  passed  from  Prophecy 
to  what,  in  the  days  when  we  discussed  these  things, 
was    technically    known     as     Apocalyptic.     That    is 


II  FAITH   IN  THE   LIGHT   OF   WAR         39 

significant.  One  can  see  out  here  that  the  sharp 
distinction  we  used  to  draw  is  extremely  artificial. 
It  is  only  in  times  of  so-called  Peace  and  Progress — 
when  in  our  prosperity  we  say  '  I  shall  never  be 
removed  ' — that  the  Apocaljrptic  outlook  is  strange 
and  alien.  In  these  days  we  can  enter  into  it.  We 
can  see  it  is  merely  calling  in  another  world  to  redress 
the  balance  of  the  old  —  seeking  a  spiritual  clue  to 
history  when  history  itself  seems  to  have  fallen  in. 
Indeed  to  myself  at  least  that  kind  of  writing  becomes 
more  full  of  meaning  every  day.  The  conditions  of 
one's  life  and  work  on  service,  where  orderly  develop- 
ment and  planning  are  not  ever  to  be  looked  for, 
where  '  sufficient  for  the  day  '  is  a  gospel  and  '  prepared- 
ness for  anything  '  a  creed — these  seem  to  drive  one 
to  the  "Crisis-Ethic."  It  may  well  be  that  such  a  life 
was  needed  to  enable  one  to  understand  the  Bible. 
You  can  only  appreciate  interpretations  when  you 
really  know  the  facts  to  be  interpreted.  (See  also 
page  57.) 

Now  I  think  we  may  say  this  attitude  is  preserved 
to-day  in  the  strongconviction,  helddespiteall  challenge, 
of  the  absoluteness  and  reality  of  our  values.  One  is 
struck  by  the  increased  demand  for  poetry  by  the 
people  who  buy  books  not  less  than  by  the  quantity 
and  quality  of  the  new  verse  which  is  being  published. 
I  believe,  too,  that  despite  the  squalor  and  desolation 
in  which  we  normally  live  our  sense  of  Beauty  has 
grown  more  strong  and  deep.  The  clouds  and  sunset 
are  still  sacramental.  The  poppies  on  our  way  up  to 
the  trenches,  the  primrose  in  the  deserted  garden 
when  we  get  back,  are  very  "full  of  divinities  "  for  us. 


40        THE   CHURCH   IN  THE   FURNACE         ii 

They  help  us  to  realise  that  after  all  the  sane  and  pure 
and  beautiful  endures,  untouched  by  the  passing 
madness  of  mankind.  Again  it  is  seen  in  that  amazing 
power  of  detachment  which  our  Students  in  Arms  out 
here  display.  I  have  seen  two  subalterns  sitting  in 
a  shell-hole  in  the  middle  of  the  fiercest  shelling,  playing 
calm,  enthusiastic  chess.  Take  up  a  dozen  books  of 
soldiers'  verse.  The  subjects  do  not,  as  a  general  rule, 
turn  upon  the  war  at  all.  '  Mud  and  blood  and  khaki 
are  conspicuously  absent.'  They  are  concerned  with 
Wiltshire  Downs  and  Cotswolds,  with  the  Cher  and 
King's  and  country  rectories,  or  with  the  hopes  that 
he  behind  the  stars.  To  them  the  phrase  "  realities 
of  war  "  is  entirely  inadmissible.  As  the  men  all  feel 
that  their  real  lives  are  not  here  at  all  but  across  in 
'  Bhghty,'  so  to  Faith  the  Real  is  elsewhere.  But  we 
can  firmly  lay  hold  of  it  here.  We  have  prayed  to 
God  in  No  Man's  Land :  we  know  full  well  that  He  is 
'  omnipresent.'  When  we  pass  through  the  waters 
He  is  beside  us.  His  work  is  before  and  His  reward  is 
with  us.  We  '  endure  as  seeing  Him  who  is  invisible." 
B.  So  far,  then,  we  have  seen  the  independent  and 
substantial  existence  of  Faith  at  least  not  overthro\vn 
by  this  experience.  But  now  we  must  become  a  great 
deal  more  definite.  For  though  Faith  is  (as  Kant 
would  say)  'autonomous, 'a  genuine  faculty  of  knowledge 
submitting  to  no  test  outside  itself — '  judging  all  things 
and  itself  judged  of  none  ' — yet  it  is  of  the  essence  of 
its  claim  that  it  is  Reality  with  which  it  comes  in  contact. 
That  is  to  say  that  we  must  also  look  more  closely  at 
the  content  of  our  Faith.  Here  our  present  experience 
is  invaluable.     It  tests  not  only  Faith  but  also  faiths. 


II  FAITH   IN   THE   LIGHT   OF  WAR         41 

Many  of  our  cherished,  untried  faiths  (in  the  sense  of 
behefs)  may  very  likely  have  to  be  surrendered.  For 
this  life  is  the  religious  winnowing-fan,  the  purger  of 
the  spirit's  threshing-floor.  It  separates  the  kernel 
from  the  husk.  One  can  see  now  that  some  things 
long  accepted  do  not  fit  the  facts  of  our  experience 
and  therefore  cannot  be  admitted  true.  Indeed  the 
theological  difficulties  are  at  the  present  time  the 
most  acute.  Traditional  Christianity,  I  fancy,  seems 
to  most  men  more  remote  than  ever  from  the  actual 
concerns  of  life.  And  the  most  pressing  task  before 
the  Church  now  is  to  show  that  the  faith  she  holds  is 
truly  an  interpretation  of  hard  facts.  Men,  it  is  true, 
are  not  interested  in  dogma  :  but  they  ache  for  a  solu- 
tion of  the  Universe.  What  we  need  now  is  a  creed 
that  is  bold  enough  to  state  essential  things  essentially. 
All  that  the  most  enlightened  minds  are  seeing  really 
lies  at  the  heart  of  Christianity.  But  we  are  so  choked 
by  accumulations,  so  occupied  with  trivialities,  that  we 
do  not  let  men  see  what  we  really  stand  for.  Mr.  Wells 
in  preaching  what,  at  bottom,  is  inherent  in  the 
Christian  outlook  thinks  he  is  propagating  its  suc- 
cessor.^ And  amongst  aU  the  innumerable  '  objections  ' 
and  doubts  I  have  discussed  with  men  out  here,  I  do 
not  think  there  has  been  one  which  questioned  the 
central  attitude  of  Christ.  They  are  all  concerned  with 
unimportant  details  supposed  to  be  vital  to  the  whole 
position.  The  Church  has  specialised  in  irrelevancies, 
and  she  will  never  grip  this  age  with  these.  It  is  an 
age  that  is  hungering  for  reality.     Our  social  life  at 

1  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  did  not  read  Mr.  Wells's  great   book, 
purposely,  till  I  had  written  this  Essay  in  draft. 


42        THE   CHURCH   IN  THE   FURNACE         ii 

the  front  well  illustrates  this.  I  suppose  everybody 
notices  the  marked  increase  in  friendliness  and  comrade- 
ship the  nearer  one  gets  to  the  fu-ing-line.  (Unfortu- 
nately one  also  sees  it  lessening  at  every  stage  of  the 
journey  to  the  coast.)  I  take  it  that  our  grasp  of 
reality  tightens  as  we  get  nearer  the  "  Black  Hole." 
The  front  shrivels  up  all  pettiness  and  smallness  and 
external,  arbitrary  distinctions.  We  know  there  that 
a  man's  a  man  for  a'  that.  So  in  Religion.  This 
experience  unmasks  the  often  really  grotesque  unim- 
portance of  some  things  hitherto  considered  binding, 
and  throws  new  emphasis  on  things  forgotten.  It 
leaves  us  the  essentials  of  our  religion  in  holy,  awe- 
inspiring  simplicity. 

Let  me  then  venture  to  examine  shortly  some  of 
the  prevalent  theologies  which  have  been  found  wanting 
at  their  trial,  and  try  to  suggest  how  real  Christianity 
supphes  the  true  solution  in  their  stead. 

(i)  And  first,  I  think  we  see  how  lamentably  in- 
adequate is  the  traditional  idea  of  God.  If  one  learns 
anything  in  this  life  it  is  the  difference  between  Good 
and  Evil.  And  the  weakness  of  the  current  Theism 
is,  to  my  own  mind,  that  it  is  not  moral.  That  is 
what  lies  at  the  back  of  so  much  scepticism.  Many 
officers  express  this  feehng  in  such  remarks  as  "I 
should  feel  a  hypocrite  if  I  ever  went  to  church  again." 
"If  God"  (said  another)  "ever  governed  Europe  He 
certainly  does  not  any  longer  now."  And  their 
impression  is  that  Christianity  has  no  real  answer 
for  these  times.  But  surely  there  is  here  true  cause 
for  hope.  For  what  we  reaUy  find  in  such  an  attitude 
is  something  very  far  from  sceptical.     It  is  the  triumph 


II  FAITH   IN   THE   LIGHT   OF   WAR         43 

of  the  moral  sense  over  an  invertebrate  theology  which 
left  no  room  for  ethical  distinctions.  Certainly  a  God 
whose  providence  "  ordained  "  the  present  situation 
would  not  be  one  whom  we  honestly  could  worship. 
It  would  be  our  duty  to  defy  his  will.  But  is  there 
any  reason  to  think  He  did  ?  For  us  there  are  only 
two  ways  open  to  the  understanding  of  God's  Nature 
— through  the  character  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  the  integral, 
developed  conscience.  And  neither  of  these  two  lines 
of  approach  can  possibly  lead  to  any  such  conclusion. 
Perhaps  a  convenient  test-case  is  provided  by  the  use 
of  the  prayer  '  Thy  will  be  done.'  In  common  usage 
it  is  an  expression  of  acquiescence  in  the  inevitable — 
an  equivalent  of  the  phrase  "  what  will  be  will  be." 
When  some  glorious  boy  is  killed  by  a  chance  shell 
people  say,  "  Yes,  it  is  very  sad,  but  it  was  God's  will 
that  he  should  die."  We  are  even  ordered  to  give  God 
"  hearty  thanks  "  because  it  hath  "  pleased  Him  to 
deliver  this  our  brother  out  of  the  misery  of  this  sinful 
world."  I  utterly  refuse  to  believe  that  statement. 
Too  much  colour  is  lent  it  by  that  prayer.  Of  course 
it  is  true  that  God  '  overrules '  the  evil,  bringing  good 
out  of  the  heart  of  it  both  for  the  sufferer  and  for 
others.  That  is  just  the  faith  of  the  Resurrection. 
The  Crucified  is  always  vindicated.  No  crucifixion 
but  issues  in  larger  life  and  triumph.  But  I  am  con- 
cerned now  with  the  death  itself.  And  surely  just 
because  a  thing  occurs  it  is  not  necessarily  the  will  of 
God.  The  test  of  that  is  its  goodness  or  its  badness. 
And  the  fact  is  we  have  drawn  no  clear  distinction 
between  God  and  what  is  symbohsed  by  "  the  devil." 
There  are  still,  I  believe,  some  speculative  thinkers  who 


44        THE   CHURCH  IN  THE   FURNACE         ii 

say  that  evil  is  '  unreal.'  They  ought  to  spend  an 
hour  in  the  firing-hne.  If  we  beheve  that  is  the  will 
of  God  there  is  an  end  to  any  ethical  rehgion.  That 
is  burned  upon  one's  mind  up  there.  The  revelation 
of  naked,  unmasked  evil  in  its  most  revolting  shapes 
throws  one  back  more  and  more  on  Dualism.  I  know 
this  attitude  is  out  of  date.  But  it  is,  after  all,  the 
religion  of  Jesus  Christ.  He  thought  of  Evil  as  the 
Giant  in  Armoiu-  (Luke  xi.  21),  the  adversary  of  God's 
purposes  (Matt.  xiii.  28)  ;  and  Himself  as  the  champion 
of  the  Kingdom  of  God  over  against  the  Oppressor  and 
his  hosts.  The  Will  of  God,  for  Him,  is  only  done  as 
pain,  disease,  and  slavery  and  wrong  give  way  to  joy 
and  health  and  liberty  and  righteous  dealing,  and  the 
powers  of  evil  are  beaten  and  warred  down.  So  that 
for  Him  the  prayer  '  Thy  wiU  be  done '  is  inseparable 
from  the  thought  of  the  Kingdom.  It  is  not  a  cry  of 
passive  resignation — a  '  virtue '  which  He  never 
inculcated.  It  is  the  soldier's  prayer  of  consecration. 
"  Make  me,  at  whatever  cost  to  me,  the  instrument 
of  Thy  WiU  and  Thy  Kingdom." 

If  Dualism  be  the  final  word  it  does,  I  admit,  make 
nonsense  of  the  Universe.  For  metaphysics  there 
must  be  some  higher  truth.  And  I  think  it  is  in  the 
Cross  that  Christianity  offers  what  '  transcends  '  the 
contradiction  :  for  there  we  see  the  already  perfect 
God  revealed  in  conflict  with  the  evil  that  thwarts 
Him.  But  for  religion  what  we  called  Duahsm  is  the 
only  possible  attitude.  Rehgion  is  not  concerned 
with  God  in  His  ultimate,  essential  nature — did 
anyone  ever  pray  to  the  Absolute  ?  —  but  with 
God  in   His   manward  relations.      And  there,   if   we 


II  FAITH   IN   THE   LIGHT   OF   WAR         45 

'  transcend '  our  consciences,  we  transcend  religion 
altogether. 

We  are  bound  to  hold  fast  our  own  moral  judgment. 
But  that  entails  the  definite  recognition  that  many- 
things  happen  which  are  not  willed  by  God,  and  are 
indeed  opposed  to  what  He  wills.  If  so,  then  God 
must  be  in  some  sense  finite.  But  we  can  worship 
only  what  is  perfect,  and  that  indeed  is  what  we  mean 
by  "  God."  One  can  see,  however,  that  between  the 
two — -God  in  His  eternal  selfhood  and  God  as  known 
by  us  in  time — there  is  no  real  contradiction.  Chris- 
tianity is  simply  founded  on  its  claim  to  bridge  the  Gulf. 
We  worship  nothing  that  is  less  than  God.  That,  so 
far  as  I  can  see,  is  the  real  weakness  of  Mr.  Wells's 
position.  But  we  say  that  our  God  in  His  manward 
aspect,  that  is,  in  Creation  and  Redemption,  is  a  Being 
who  is  limited  and  striving. 

It  is  here  that  we  pass  to  the  second  point. 

(ii)  The  failure  of  this  nebulous  Theism  almost 
necessitates  the  Christian  outlook — God  in  terms  of 
Jesus  Christ.  Still  more  so  does  that  unexamined 
faith  bound  up  with  the  current  theory  of  "  Omni- 
potence." Its  inadequacy  as  an  explanation  and  the 
discontent  that  is  widely  felt  with  it  are  summarised 
in  the  oft-repeated  question,  Why  does  God  allow  the 
war  to  go  on  ?  That  question  must  not  be  dismissed. 
Those  who  are  at  all  accustomed  to  metaphysical  ways 
of  thinking  probably  see  that  it  has  no  real  meaning. 
To  the  plain  man  it  is  a  genuine  problem.  I  think  it 
is  clear  that  Christianity  holds  the  key  to  riddles  of 
this  kind.  No  doubt  the  fact  that  they  can  be  asked 
at  all  shows  how  httle  we  have  really  grasped  it.     But 


46        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         ii 

I  certainly  claim  that  so  far  from  being — as  superficially 
they  might  well  seem — arguments  against  the  Christian 
attitude,  they  show  that  it  alone  is  satisfactory. 

In  a  sense  the  war  has  not  produced  new  problems. 
It  has  only  heavily  underlined  the  old  ones.  The 
'  blank  misgivings  '  with  regard  to  suffering  have  always 
been  in  the  minds  of  thinking  men.  But  many  have 
never  been  stung  by  them  before,  and  now  through 
the  experience  of  these  years  feel  the  pains  of  an 
implacable  doubt.  Only  the  Gospel  can  afford  an 
answer.  None  but  the  Lamb  that  has  been  slain  can 
open  that  sealed  book  of  mystery  (Rev.  v,  1-11).  We 
cannot,  indeed,  state  unambiguously  why  it  is  that 
things  are  so.  We  can  see  that  it  is  good  that  they 
should  be  so — which  leaves  us  satisfied  and  calm. 
And  the  clue  is  simply  to  press  what  is  implied  in  the 
ancient  faith  in  Christ's  "  Divinity." 

The  Church  retains  the  so-called  Nicene  Symbol, 
but  has  not  yet  had  the  courage  of  her  creed.  We 
count  Athanasius  among  the  immortals.  And  it  is 
clear  that  in  the  main  and  broadly  his  contention  was 
extremely  right.  We  cannot  worship  what  only 
*  resembles  '  God.  But  it  has  taken  us  sixteen  hundred 
years  to  realise  for  ourselves  the  truth  he  stood  for. 
He  meant,  I  suppose,  that  in  Jesus  Christ  we  see  not 
anything  less  than  God  but  God  Himseff — that  when 
men  ask  us  What  is  your  God  like  ?  we  point  to  Jesus 
for  the  final  answer.  Tliat  gives  us  a  new  standard  of 
measurement  for  all  our  thought  about  the  Deity. 
And  that  is  just  the  "  Good  News  about  God  "  which  is 
the  pivot-faith  of  Christianity.  We  know  God  "  in 
the  face  of  Christ."     This  at  any  rate  is  what  I  mean 


II  FAITH  IN  THE   LIGHT  OF  WAR         47 

by  "  being  of  one  substance  with  the  Father."  But 
this  conclusion  gets  obscured  because  we  are  too  apt 
to  fix  as  permanent  that  part  of  the  position  which  is 
transitory — the  categories  with  which  the  old  thinkers 
worked.  And  so  we  have  taken  on  into  the  substance 
of  our  modern,  Western  Christianity  conceptions  which 
are  wholly  foreign  to  it.  We  still  attempt  to  state 
the  Christian  theory  about  the  nature  of  Divinity  in 
the  terms  of  a  non-Christian  system.  In  spite  of 
Christ  we  still  conceive  of  God  far  too  much  like  Jews 
and  ancient  Greeks.  One  often  feels  that  conventional 
Christianity  contains  very  little  that  is  distinctly 
Christian.  It  still  retains  those  old  ideas  of  God  which 
the  Christian  Gospel  claims  to  supersede. ^  God  is 
thought  of  still  as  an  Olympian,  passionless,  remote  and 
static,  high  '  above  the  battle '  of  human  life.  He  is 
credited  with  an  '  Omnipotence  '  almost  physical  in 
its  conception,  little  removed  from  Zeus  and  his  Golden 
Chain.  He  is  made  a  despot,  a  policeman,  a  puritan, 
a  scribe,  a  militarist.  And  these  imagined  attributes 
of  Deity  are  then  transferred  to  the  Person  of  Our 
Lord,  through  whom  alone  we  know  what  God  is  like. 
Hence  comes  the  paralysing  unreality  of  the  '  orthodox  ' 
presentation  of  the  Christ. 

But  this  is  juggling  with  holy  things.  If  we  really 
believe  in  the  Incarnation — that  God  is  shown  to  us  in 
a  human  life — we  must  take  it  in  its  widest  reach. 
We  mean,  I  suppose,  that  the  character  of  God  is — in 
terms  of  human  experience — the  character  of  Jesus 

1  An  illustration  lies  ready  to  hand  in  the  retention  by  the  Church 
of  England  of  the  old  Semitic  Decalogue  by  way  of  preface  to  her 
Eucharist. 


48        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         ii 

Christ.  "  He  that  hath  seen  Me  hath  seen  the  Father." 
If  so,  it  must  be  revealed  in  the  whole  of  Jesus,  in  the 
fuU  range  of  His  life  and  in  His  death.  It  has  been 
said,  I  know,  very  often  lately,  but  cannot  at  this  time 
be  too  much  emphasised,  that  we  must  finally  give  up 
the  pre-Christian  theory  that  God  is  incapable  of 
suffering.  We  must  rather  see  that  there  is  that  in 
God  which  we  can  only  speak  of  as  heroic,  akin  to  what 
we  men  call  self-sacrifice.  Surely  that  is  the  heart  of 
the  Christian  Gospel — that  God's  is  the  love  and 
loyalty  and  heroism  which  we  see  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 
We  measure  God  entirely  by  that  standard.  We 
conceive  of  Him  in  terms  of  the  Cross — the  symbol 
not  of  weakness  and  defeat  but  of  power  and  courage 
and  devotion  and  the  glory  of  triumphant  sacrifice. 
This  does  not  empty  God  of  His  Deity.  When  we 
speak  of  God  we  can  only  mean  the  source  of  aU 
perfection  and  all  values.  Christians  see  that  Love 
is  their  completion,  the  ultimate  and  all-embracing 
good.  But  love  is  perfected  in  sacrifice.  It  must  ever  be 
a  self -giving  and  a  pain.  The  human  cross  is  the  symbol 
in  time  and  space  of  Love's  real  and  eternal  nature. 
So  we  imply,  when  we  say  that  God  is  Love,  a  Perfection 
which  can  only  be  manifested  in  continual  becoming 
and  in  strife.  And  here  I  think  we  really  do  touch 
something  which  has  a  meaning  for  our  generation. 

Probably  each  age  must  emphasise  some  one  particular 
aspect  of  Christianity,  and  none  must  think  that  it  can 
see  the  whole.  And  in  this  present  time  when  all  the 
old  world  has  fallen  in  and  the  plans  of  the  new  have 
not  yet  been  disclosed,  we  must  very  likely  be  content 
with  a  '  transitional '  theology.     He  is  a  rash  man  who 


II  FAITH   IN   THE   LIGHT   OF   WAR         49 

thinks  to  expound  more.  But  still  I  would  maintain 
that  for  us  at  present  the  God  of  the  Cross  alone  has  a 
true  appeal.  For  the  war  has  modified  to  some  extent 
our  ideals  and  our  standards.  It  has  thrown  new 
emphasis  on  sacrifice  and  the  more  active  embodiments 
of  Love.  At  any  rate  it  has  shown  new  heights  of 
splendour  and  new  depths  of  goodness  in  ordinary- 
men.  And  imperatively  we  must  find  in  God  quahties 
which  correspond  to  these.  We  can  only  worship  a 
God  who  is  the  source  and  archetype  of  the  great 
soldier- virtues.  The  Christian  God  is  the  answer  to 
that  need.  All  that  we  know  about  Him  comes  to  us 
in  an  heroic  hfe  and  heroic  death.  He  is  not  outside 
the  struggle  against  evil.  He  is  in  it,  in  the  turmoil 
and  the  pain,  sharing  with  us  in  the  toil  and  conflict, 
striving,  battling,  sacrificing,  overcoming.  God  rides 
before  us  conquering  and  to  conquer.  He  lays  His 
claim  upon  oiu?  loyalty,  enlists  us  in  His  great  adven- 
tm^e,  calls  us  to  responsive  heroism.  The  cause  comes 
first,  and  only  as  men  lose  themselves  in  it  can  they  attain 
the  true  end  of  their  being  and  "  find  themselves  "  and 
their  salvation.  Christ  came  to  enable  us  to  live  (as  He 
Himself  has  put  it)  overflowingly  (John  X,  10,  Uepiacrov) 
— to  act,  to  do,  to  work,  to  strive,  to  suffer,  and  in  the 
striving  and  the  pain  to  know  that  we  are  trying  to  do 
God's  will  and  work.  And  that  is  the  peace  that  passes 
understanding.  "  Lo  I  come  to  do  Thy  will,  0  God  " — 
that  is  the  backbone  of  the  Christian  life. 

There  is  silence  in  the  evening  when  the  long  days  cease, 
And  a  million  men  are  praying  for  an  ultimate  release 
From   strife   and   sweat   and  sorrow — they  are  praying  for  peace 
But  God  is  marching  on, 

E 


50        THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  ii 

Wejpray  for  rest  and  beauty  that  we  know  we  cannot  earn, 
And  we  are  ever  asking  for  a  honey-sweet  return  ; 
But  God  will  make  it  bitter,  make  it  bitter,  till  we  learn 
That  with  tears  the  race  is  run. 

And  did  not  Jesus  perish  to  bring  to  men,  not  peace, 

But  a  sword,  a    sword  for  battle  and  a  sword  that    should    not 

cease  ? 
Two  thousand  years  have  passed  us.      Do  we  still  want  peace 
Where  the  sword  of  Christ  has  shone  ? 

Yes,  Christ  perished  to  present  us  with  a  sword. 
That  strife  should  be  our  portion  and  more  strife  our  reward. 
For  toil  and  tribulation  and  the  Glory  of  the  Lord 
And  the  sword  of  Christ  are  one.  ^ 

"  God  is  marching  on  " — to  victory.  The  sweat  and 
tears  and  blood  are  not  in  vain.  Good  is  wrung  out  of 
the  grip  of  evil,  triumph  out  of  what  appears  defeat. 
For  it  is  the  Omnipotent  who  strives  and  suffers,  and 
"  the  Lord  remaineth  a  King  for  ever."  Here  is  the 
Gospel  of  the  Resurrection,  the  ultimate  victory  of  the 
Cross.  Ours  is  essentially  a  victorious  faith,  just 
because  it  is  a  faith  in  God,  the  perfect  and  unconquer- 
able Goodness.  It  is  "  the  bringing  in  of  a  better  hope  " 
(Heb.  vii,  17) — "  crucified  in  weakness,  raised  in 
power."  God  accepts  our  hmitations,  sharing  with  us 
in  the  battle  :  but  through  His  agony  He  overcomes. 
"  His  righteousness  standeth  hke  the  strong  mountains. 
His  judgments  are  like  the  great  deep."  Love  is 
stronger  than  death  and  Good  than  Evil.  Righteous- 
ness must  conquer  at  the  last.  The  Kingdom,  in  the 
end,  is  irresistible. 

That  is  growing,  in  my  own  mind,  into  the  one 
supreme  and  overmastering  faith,   which  shrivels  up 

^  From  "  Peace,"  in  Marlborough  and  other  Poems,  by  the  late 
Charles  Hamilton  Sorley  (Cambridge  University  Press). 


II  FAITH   IN   THE   LIGHT   OF   WAR         51 

all  lesser  loyalties.  We  have  seen  things  too  great  in 
our  generation  to  be  able  to  rest  content  with  any- 
thing less.  At  last,  I  believe,  we  know  what  Jesus 
stands  for.  Prophets  and  Kings  have  desired  to  see 
the  things  which  we  see  in  our  day  and  have  not  seen 
them.  We  cannot  placidly  go  back  to  conventional 
Christianity — the  rehgion  of  respectability  and  anxious 
avoidance  of  small  faults.  No  padre  certainly,  and 
probably  no  man,  can  find  rest  for  his  soul  when  the 
war  is  over  in  the  rehgion  of  parochial  activities.  We 
must  have  a  faith  that  is  elemental :  simple  and 
majestic  and  compelling.  I  am  quite  prepared  to  see 
such  large  developments  in  the  coming  form  of  Chris- 
tianity that  the  rehgion  of  our  sons  and  grandsons 
would  seem  to  be  almost  another  faith  if  it  were 
witnessed  by  our  grandfathers.  But  in  fact  they  too 
"will  inherit  the  same  faith,  understood  to  be  living  and 
dynamic,  and  set  forth  to  men  in  such  a  way  as  to 
meet  the  needs  of  our  own  time. 

There  is  at  least  one  form  of  Christianity  for  which 
the  world  should  have  no  use  again.  The  rehgion  of 
mere  pious  sentimentality,  whether  of  the  type  of  the 
P.S.A.,  or  of  that  most  unvirile  Jesus-worship  with  its 
lavish  use  of  "  gentle  "  and  of  "  sweet  " — these,  one 
feels,  must  surely  disappear.  We  have  looked  on 
facts  with  open  eyes,  the  child-hke  trait  which  Jesus 
always  sought ;  and  sentiment  means  shutting  one's 
eyes  to  facts.  Let  us  have  the  courage  to  say  bluntly 
that  Christianity  worships  only  God,  and  God 
made  known  to  us  in  Christ.  We  seek  to  identify 
ourselves  with  Jesus,  and  so  to  be  made  one  with  the 
will  of  God.     So,  at  least,  in  all  humility,  I  believe  it 

E  2 


52        THE   CHURCH  IN  THE   FURNACE         ii 

right  to  teach.  So  regarded  it  may  or  may  not  be  found 
to  be  patient  of  the  old  forms  and  expressions.  But 
it  is  possible  just  now  for  us  to  worship  no  One  less 
than  a  tremendous  God,  in  the  midst  of  Whose  Throne 
is  a  Lamb  that  has  been  slain. 


II. 

WAR    AND    THE    SOLDIER's    FAITH. 

It  may  well  be  that  what  I  have  so  far  written 
is  coloured  too  much  by  my  personal  outlook.  Let 
us  then  make  the  attempt  to  be  more  objective  and 
bring  it  to  the  test  of  facts.  Is  there  any  real  evidence  ? 
To  answer  that  it  is  necessary  to  touch  on  the  much 
discussed  and  much  disputed  question  of  the  effect  of 
war  upon  the  soldier's  faith.  What  is  the  religion  of 
the  soldier  ?  Published  statements  differ  very  widely, 
and  what  I  have  to  say  is  extremely  tentative,  simply 
based  upon  my  own  experience.  It  has  been  both 
limited  and  unimportant.  I  really  have  no  claim  to 
be  listened  to.  But  any  value  a  book  like  this  may  have 
depends  on  keeping  to  personal  experience.  About  the 
hospitals  I  can  say  nothing,  and  only  very  little  about 
the  Bases.  What  follows  apphes  chiefly  to  the  rough 
and  ready  existence  of  the  front  and  the  areas  close 
behind  the  lines. 

(i)  It  is  probably  best  to  say  at  once  that  the  alleged 
rehgious  revival — in  the  sense  in  which  it  is  intended — 
is  something  nobody  has  ever  seen.  Unlike  miracles, 
it  does  not  happen.  If  it  did  it  would  be  most  sus- 
picious, an  extremely  dangerous,  exotic  growth.     For 


II  FAITH   IN   THE   LIGHT   OF   WAR         53 

it  cannot  be  too  clearly  recognised  that  war  is  a  spiritual 
narcotic.  At  the  front  men  simply  dare  not  think 
much.  We  know  too  well  how  close  to  us  madness 
lies.  "  It  doesn't  do  to  take  it  seriously."  There 
are,  as  we  have  said,  some  Giants  of  Faith  who  are  able 
to  rise  right  above  it.  But  they  are  certainly  not 
'  average  '  men.  For  the  majority  it  is  very  different. 
And  the  most  horrible  thing  about  war  in  the  end — 
worse  than  all  the  physical  disgusts  so  carefully  kept 
from  you  by  the  papers — is  that  it  means  the  cancerous 
destruction  of  the  highest  spiritual  faculties  and  a 
progressive  lowering  of  standards.  Of  course  it  is 
not  in  the  least  surprising.  A  life  that  varies  between 
infernal  monotony  and  unnameable  obscenity,  with 
never  any  privacy,  leisure  or  comfort,  is  not  very 
fruitful  soil  in  which  to  seek  for  new  growths  of  spiritual 
power.  It  is  an  unexampled  testimony  to  the  golden 
goodness  of  human  nature  that  there  is  so  much  real 
religion. 

For  I  do  take  an  optimistic  view.  The  journalist's 
remark  that  "  irreligion  is  the  keynote  of  the  British 
Army  "  is  absurd  as  well  as  libellous,  and  betrays  a  sad 
want  of  that  sympathetic  insight  which  can  see  behind 
appearances.  It  is  true  that  men  do  not  flock  in  crowds 
to  services,  that  their  language  is  astounding,  that  they 
sing  profane  and  ludicrous  parodies.  But  all  such 
things  are  wholly  on  the  surface,  and  we  are  out  now 
to  discover  truth.  I  make  no  claim  to  understand  the 
men  properly.  Each  day  one  feels  the  failure  more 
acutely.  But  I  do  maintain  that  there  is  in  the  Army  a 
very  large  amount  of  true  religion.  It  is  not,  certainly, 
what  people  before  the  war  were  accustomed  to  call 


54        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  ii 

religion,  but  perhaps  it  may  be  nearer  the  "  real  thing." 
It  is  startling,  no  doubt,  and  humiliating  to  find  out 
how  very  little  hold  traditional  Christianity  has  upon 
men.  It  is  not  only  their  confounding  ignorance  of 
the  elementary  Christian  facts — not  one  in  ten,  I 
should  think,  has  a  clear  idea  of  what  our  religion  is  or 
implies,  or  offers — but  that  they  fail  to  see  how  it  bears 
upon  or  helps  them  in  our  present  circumstances.  And 
very  many  have  an  honest  feeling  that  it  would  be  a 
positive  handicap.  Clearly  something  has  gone  very 
far  wrong.  So  far  as  I  am  able  to  estimate  we  are 
faced  now  with  this  situation,  a  Christian  life  combined 
with  a  pagan  creed.  For  while  men's  conduct  and 
their  outlook  are  to  a  large  extent  unconsciously 
Christian,  their  creed  (or  what  they  think  to  be  their 
creed)  most  emphatically  is  not.  Yet  it  surely  should 
be  possible  by  interpreting  them  to  themselves  to  show 
them  Christ  the  Completer  of  their  Faith  (Heb.  xii.  1), 
the  embodiment  of  what  they  really  value. 

I  do  not  contend  that  the  English  are  all  Angels.  The 
normal  man  finds  moral  self-control  as  difficult  a  task 
as  he  could  wish  for.  It  is  doubly  hard  for  men  in 
this  life.  Separated  from  their  women-kind,  completely 
stripped  of  their  individuality,  trained  to  an  abnormal 
state  of  physical  fitness,  with  scarcely  any  prospect  for 
the  future,  almost  the  only  pleasures  open  to  them  lie 
in  crude  and  animal  reactions.  All  this  admitted. 
Nevertheless  I  feel  that  out  here  one  is  very  near  to 
the  spirit  of  Christ.  There  is  a  general  wholesomeness 
of  outlook,  a  sense  of  justice,  honour  and  sincerity,  a 
readiness  to  take  what  comes  and  '  carry  on,'  a  power 
of  endurance  genuinely  subhme,   a  light-heartedness 


II  FAITH   IN   THE   LIGHT   OF   WAR         55 

and  cheeriness  (nearly  always,  I  believe,  put  on  for  the 
sake  of  other  people),  a  generosity  and  comradeship, 
which  are  obviously  Christ-like.  And  when  they  say 
they  "  don't  hold  with  religion  "  they  mean  the  sort 
of  stuff  which  they  quite  wrongly,  as  a  rule,  suppose 
the  Chaplain  stands  for.  Every  padre  should  always 
have  this  text  unforgettably  before  his  mind  :  "  Jesus 
looking  upon  Mm  loved  him  and  said  unto  him,  One 
thing  thou  lackest."  Imagine  him  as  one  of  our 
boy  lance-corporals,  full  of  laughter  and  glorious 
instincts,  exactly  the  kind  of  boy  that  Jesus  wanted, 
but  with  one  further  step  to  go  to  find  Him.  All  of 
these  are  "  boys  that  Jesus  loves."  But  comparatively 
few  yet  reahse  it.  What  we  have  to  do,  then,  now 
is  to  show  them  that  all  the  best  things  in  their  lives 
at  present — what  we  call,  though  they  would  not, 
their  ideals — are  essentially  and  truly  Christian,  and 
that  Christianity  '  goes  one  better,'  a  further  step  on 
in  the  same  direction,  and  gives  them  power  to  take 
that  step  themselves.  We  must  also  show  that  the 
Faith  of  the  Church  does  give — what  the  faith  of  the 
Sunday  school  it  seems  does  not — a  rational  account 
of  the  facts  of  hfe,  both  historically  and  psychologically, 
and  a  clue  to  their  solution.  None  of  us  here  are 
interested  in  doctrines  or  care  very  much  what  "  the 
Church  has  always  taught."  But  there  is  a  widespread, 
living  curiosity  about  the  problems  of  life  and  religion 
so  far  as  they  can  be  seen  to  bear  on  conduct.  The 
amount  of  discussion  which  goes  on  in  tents  and 
billets  and  dugouts  on  these  matters  would  perhaps 
surprise  the  uninitiated.  A  direct  and  simple  treat- 
ment of  rehgion  as  a  matter  of  experience,  using  modern 


56        THE    CHURCH   IN   THE    FURNACE  ii 

thoughts  and  phraseology,  is  always  listened  to  with 
rapt  attention. 

(ii)  But  in  all  this  we  have  been  anticipating.  Let 
me  try,  if  possible,  in  a  few  sentences  to  describe  the 
religion  of  the  soldier. 

There  is,  then,  first  a  startlingly  strong  belief  in  the 
efficacy  and  power  of  Prayer,  both  for  others  and  for 
self.  The  extent  to  which  men  pray  for  those  at  home, 
for  them  far  more  intensely  than  for  themselves,  is 
truly  Christian  and  impressive.  The  one  way  to  be 
sure  of  holding  men  in  speaking  to  them  at  our  services 
is  to  grip  on  to  the  thought  of  home.  One  feels  most 
definitely  in  an  atmosphere  of  genuine  contact  with  the 
Unseen  when  they  are  singing  (as  we  do  each  Sunday) 
Hymn  No.  595  in  A.  &  M.— "  Holy  Father  in  Thy 
mercy.  ..."  And  after  all,  if  we  are  right  in  con- 
ceiving God  as  "Our  Father,"  Home  and  Religion  ought 
to  go  together.  It  may  be  said  that  there  is  nothing 
here  but  an  emotional  enjoyment  of  whatever  can 
remind  us  of  '  Blighty.'  Even  if  that  be  true  it  is 
something  to  start  from.  It  is  a  '  longing  for  the  further 
shore '  which  is  essentially  a  rehgious  instinct,  a 
reaching  beyond  oneself  in  the  right  direction.  It  is  a 
sense  we  can  foster  and  enlarge. 

Naturally  the  prayers  for  ourselves  turn  chiefly  upon 
physical  preservation.  I  grant  this  is  not  a  very  high 
development.  But  after  all  it  is  prominent  in  the 
Psalms,  and  is  (to  an  extent  we  had  forgotten)  in  the 
background  of  the  Gospels.  It  needed  a  spice  of 
bodily  danger  and  discomfort  to  show  us  the  sim- 
phcity  and  greatness  of  the  Religion  of  the  Bible. 
Probably  few  of  us  who  write  in  this  book  had  ever 


II  FAITH   IN   THE   LIGHT   OF   WAR         57 

before  been  really  cold  or  hungry,  much  less  faced 
with  the  constant  possibility  of  a  violent  and  beastly 
death.  Much  that  before  seemed  rather  remote  to  us 
in  the  markedly  physical  colouring  of  the  Bible  is  very 
pregnant  with  encouragement  now.  "  The  Lord  shall 
preserve  thy  going  out  and  thy  coming  in."  Think 
what  that  means  when  you  leave  your  bit  of  cover 
while  heavy  shelling  is  in  progress  !  Those  psalms 
like  XCI  and  CXX,  the  most  famous  parts  of  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  they  carry  for  us  now  a  new 
significance.  It  is  true  that  these  prayers  of  the 
men  are  largely  magical.  For  example,  they  stop 
praying  when  they  come  out  of  the  line  ;  or  they 
think  that  physical  safety  exhausts  the  answer  or 
failure  to  send  an  answer  to  their  prayer.  But  we 
must  remember  we  are  deahng  now  with  a  religion 
that  is  quite  rudimentary.  And  here  at  any  rate  we 
have  a  real,  living  contact  with  the  Supernatural — 
a  foundation  upon  which  to  build.  It  is  a  basis  in 
experience,  not  dogma,  and  so  one  on  which  we  can 
confidently  work.  For  myseK,  I  am  increasingly 
convinced  that  the  average  man  is  essentially  religious, 
though  his  rehgion  may  not  take  the  form  of  its  official, 
organised  presentation. 

But  this  strong  behef  in  the  power  of  prayer  yet 
seems  to  co-exist  in  most  men's  minds  with  a  quite 
hopeless  and  pagan  belief  in  Fate — "  If  your  number's 
on  it  you'll  be  for  it."  They  do  not  conceive  of  the 
God  to  whom  they  pray  as  making  any  real  revolution 
in  their  outlook  on  the  Universe.  In  particular  they 
fail  to  see  that  the  privilege  of  prayer  makes  any 
claim  on  their  fives  as  a  whole.     The  rehgion  of  the 


58        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE    FURNACE  ii 

Army  is,  I  think,  to  a  large  extent  un-ethical.  The 
moral  sense  has  not  yet  got  to  work  on  it.  "  Thy  will 
be  done  "  to  them  means  fatalism,  the  equivalent  of 
"  what  will  be  will  be."  Contrast  what  it  meant  to 
Him  Who  taught  the  words — a  consecration  of  Himself 
to  service.  We  may  say,  then,  that  we  have  a  belief 
in  God,  but  that  this  belief  is  not  yet  ethical.  They 
do  not  yet  see  what  God  means  to  their  lives.  The 
remedy,  of  course,  is  just  the  Gospel.  I  try  to  begin 
at  the  other  end — which  apparently  was  Our  Lord's 
way  of  starting — and  show  them  instead  what  their 
lives  mean  to  God.  That  gives  us  at  once  an  ethical 
appeal,  by  changing  the  emphasis  from  "  my  need  for 
God  "  into  the  Gospel  of  "  God's  need  for  me,"  And 
that  gives  life  a  new  magnetic  pole. 

I  confess  that  out  here  it  often  seems  impossible 
to  retain  belief  in  an  "  individual  providence."  One  is 
taken  and  another  left  in  such  a  devil's  dance  of  waste 
and  accident.  But  on  reflection  one  sees  that  this  is 
wrong.  Surely  we  cannot  expect  an  all-sovereign  God 
to  revoke  the  laws  of  gravitation  in  the  interest  of 
prayerful  "  favourites."  That  is  the  very  negation  of 
all  sovereignty.  We  have  had  too  crude  a  notion  of 
God's  "  providence."  Do  we  mean  less  to  God  if  we 
are  wounded  or  our  bodily  existence  shattered  ?  The 
sparrows  are  still  God's  when  they  fall  to  the  ground. 
Possibly  we  should  also  think  of  "  Providence  "  from 
God's  end,  so  to  speak,  and  not  from  ours.  We  should 
conceive  it  too  in  terms  of  Purpose.  His  Kingdom 
and  His  plan  are  universal.  That  is  to  say  they  are 
both  incomplete  till  each  individual  enters  and  takes 
part.     Whether  Hive  or  die  this  purpose  holds.     What- 


II  FAITH   IN   THE   LIGHT   OF   WAR         59 

ever  circumstances  are,  there  is  still  a  calling  and  a 
work  for  me,  a  place  for  me  to  fill  in  the  perfect  whole. 
That  is  just  the  meaning  I  have  for  God.  And  there- 
fore whatever  (as  we  say)  happens  to  me  I  can  still 
say  in  perfect  confidence,  "  0  God,  Thou  art  my  God, 
Thy  lovingkindness  is  better  than  the  life  itself." 
Nothing  could  be  more  individual  than  that.  We  can 
'  cast  all  our  care  on  Him '  j  ust  because  '  it  matters  to 
Him  about  us  '  (1  Peter,  v.  7,  avTw  [xiXei  Trepl  vjjlwv) 

Now,  if  we  can  put  the  matter  thus,  it  certainly 
seems  that  it  will  correspond  to  something  that  the 
men  already  have.  Their  conduct  gives  the  lie  to 
their  fatalism.  They  have  really  an  unconquerable 
conviction  that  life  is  thoroughly  worth  while.  But 
this  can  only  rest,  as  a  matter  of  logic,  on  belief  in  God 
as  a  God  of  purpose,  which  we  can  share  and  help  to 
realise.  Life  has  no  point  at  all  apart  from  that,  and 
the  Universe  negates  our  aspirations.  In  that  case 
we  are  merely  sentient  inmates  of  a  cosmic  lunatic 
asylum. 

For  the  rest,  the  creed  of  the  British  Army  is  briefly 
comprehended  in  these  sayings  :  Keep  smiling  :  Carry 
on.  (Men  always  speak  of  their  exhausting  fatigues 
as  '  carrying  on  the  good  work.' )  There  is  not  one  of 
us  who  does  not  hate  this  life  with  all  the  personality 
we  have.  But  "  it's  got  to  be  done  "  and  we  have  got 
to  "  stick  it,"  and  we  simply  dare  not  indulge  in 
introspection.  This  '  carelessness  '  is  a  great  source 
of  heartsearching  to  many  devoted  shepherds  of  this 
flock.  But  where  in  all  the  literature  of  Christianity 
is  there  any  sanction  for  anxiety  ?  The  emphasis  is 
entirely  the  other  way.     ^apaelre  :  ^^  /xepi/xvdre  :     Be 


60        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  ii 

of  good  cheer  :  Do  not  worry !  There  are  very 
many  depressing  tracts  about  which  turn  on  "  being 
face  to  face  with  death."  But  this  preoccupation  with 
our  end  seems  to  me  excessively  unchristian.  It  is  as 
though  we  worried  all  day  long  whether  we  should  have 
bad  dreams  at  night.  Our  business  is  to  live  with  all 
our  might  and  leave  the  issue  in  the  hands  of  God. 
One  of  the  greatest  difficulties  we  have  to  face  here  is 
the  superstition  which  prevails,  chiefly  with  officers 
and  N.C.O.'s,  that  if  men  begin  to  '  turn  religious  ' 
they  will  at  once  begin  to  "  get  the  wind  up."  If 
Christianity  really  did  mean  that  it  would  quite 
obviously  be  useless.  And  unfortunately  we  have 
often  made  it  seem  so.  So  observers  say  the  men  are 
'  irreligious  '  because  they  refuse  to  take  things  here 
too  seriously  and  can  even  make  a  joke  of  death. 

But  what  could  be  more  Christian  in  spirit  than  the 
universal  song  of  the  men  out  here — 

Pack  up  your  troubles  in  your  old  kit  bag 
And  smile,  smile,  smile. 

It  is  not,  I  grant,  what  has  generally  been  emphasised, 
but  surely  it  is  really  very  Christian.  And  Christianity 
really  gives  the  basis  on  which  this  unquenchable 
optimism  can  rest.  It  is  that  which  I  have  discussed 
throughout  this  section — unshaken  faith  in  God  Who 
has  a  purpose  which  we  exist  in  the  world  to  carry  out. 
Look  at  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  Our  Lord  forbids 
us  to  be  anxious  ;  God,  He  says,  knows  all  about  it. 
Take  the  worries  of  each  day  as  they  come.  "  Don't 
go  worrying  about  yourselves,  but  put  God  and  His 
Kingdom  first."  "  Have  faith  in  God,  and  there's 
nothing  you  cannot  do."     There  are  two  qualities  that 


II  FAITH   IN   THE   LIGHT   OF   WAR         61 

stand  out  here — absolute  devotion  to  a  cause,  rising 
above  our  limitations  in  it,  and  unswerving  confidence 
in  a  Leader,  "  casting  all  our  care  on  Him."  These,  I 
think,  are  two  of  the  main  factors  in  the  fellowship  of 
the  British  Army  and  in  the  Christianity  of  Christ. 


III. 

CAN    CHRISTIANITY    MEET    THE    PRESENT    NEED  ? 

A.  The  only  report  we  shall  ever  think  '  good  news  ' 
in  a  communique  is  the  end  of  the  war.  That  really 
is  the  one  thing  that  we  care  about.  Yet  candidly, 
it  is  to  me  in  some  moods  the  thing  I  dread  and  shrink 
from  most  of  all.  It  is  not  only  the  thought  of  the 
inevitable  reaction  for  the  nation  as  a  whole.  It  is 
for  these  very  boys  that  one  loves  in  France  and  longs 
to  see  released  from  this  hateful  life.  What,  for  them, 
is  the  moral  and  reMgious  future  ?  Nearly  everything 
depends  on  the  atmosphere  to  which  they  return.  It 
is  probably  true  that  the  effect  of  the  war  on  the  minds 
of  those  who  have  been  through  it  can  only  be  reaUy 
gauged  when  it  is  over.  At  present  one  is  inclined  to 
a  hopeful  view.  A  short  but  interesting  speU  of  work 
in  a  large  convalescent  depot  on  the  coast  was  a  most 
encouraging  experience.  When  the  men  are,  for  a 
brief  while,  their  own  masters  with  peace  and  leisure 
and  comparative  comfort,  there  is  a  magnificent 
responsiveness  and  quite  an  eagerness  for  religious 
teaching.  Moreover,  the  enthusiastic  way  in  which 
they  generally  speak  about  their  padres  "  up  the 
line  "  shows  that  some  of  our  labour,  at  least,  is  not 


62        THE   CHURCH  IN   THE   FURNACE         ii 

in  vain.  But  as  a  rule  I  doubt  if  it  goes  farther  than 
an  ideal  and  desire  due  to  the  personal  influence  of 
their  own  chaplain.  The  teaching  has  to  come  when 
they  get  home.  Is  there  a  Gospel  ready  that  will 
grip  them  ?  It  is  clear  that  they  will  need  something 
really  strong.  For  the  first  few  months,  at  any  rate, 
after  peace  is  bound  to  be  a  time  of  relaxation.  The 
sudden  removal  of  a  now  habitual  discipline  and  of  such 
moral  stimulus  as  this  life  supphes  is  bound  to  make  for 
"  letting  ourselves  go."  "  I  will  have  a  time,"  is  the 
admitted  prospect  of  very  many,  officers  and  men. 
And  the  question  is  whether  what  we  find  at  home  will 
be  such  as  to  help  or  to  arrest  this  process.  The  natural 
Christianity  of  this  Army  at  once  so  glorious  to  watch 
and  to  us  professing  Christians  so  abasing — making 
us  conscious  all  the  time  of  being  in  the  presence  of 
our  spiritual  superiors- — was  created,  as  it  were,  ad  hoc, 
called  forth  by  these  special  circumstances.  It  will 
not  last  on  into  the  days  of  peace  unless  it  is  given  a 
powerful  ideal  sanction.  We  can  only  keep  the  best 
that  the  war  has  done  if  we  present  a  living  Christianity. 
So  it  all  comes  down,  in  the  end,  to  the  Church  at  home. 
Now  one  feels  bound  to  say,  quite  brutally,  that  if 
the  Church  of  England  is  in  the  future  what  it  was 
before  the  war  we  have  lost  these  men  for  Christ 
irrevocably.  Unless  we  can  really  manage  to  get  into 
touch  with  the  average  manhood  of  our  nation,  I  see 
very  little  moral  hope  for  England.  The  question  of 
services  and  '  Prayer-Book  Reformation  '  lies  outside 
the  scope  of  this  Essay.  I  feel  about  it  as  strongly  as 
anybody.  But  it  is  after  all  a  superficial  matter. 
The  one  thing  needful  for   us  is   a  new  spirit — the 


II  FAITH   IN   THE   LIGHT   OF  WAR.        63 

rushing  mighty  wind  of  a  new  enthusiasm.  Conversa- 
tion with  very  many  '  Tommies  '  about  the  position 
of  the  Church  of  England  suggests  that,  there  are  in 
the  end  two  stumbhng  blocks.  The  first  is,  chiefly 
at  any  rate,  intellectual — "  I  cannot  understand  what 
it's  all  about."  Our  presentation  has  been  remote, 
unreal,  divorced  from  the  concrete  needs  of  actual 
life.  And  the  second  is  very  much  more  serious,  though 
essentially  connected,  a  far-reaching  ethical  objection. 
The  Church,  they  say,  does  not  stand  to  the  nation  for 
what  they  noAv  believe  is  the  spirit  of  Christ.  Our  talk 
of  brotherhood  is  simple  cant — the  Church  is  the 
private  preserve  of  one  social  class,  taking  its  moral 
attitude  far  too  clearly  from  the  predilections  of  that 
circle.  (The  rehgious  always  used  to  condemn  Our 
Lord  for  consorting  with  people  who  were  "  not 
respectable.")  I  cannot  honestly  deny  this  charge. 
They  also  accuse  the  Church  of  moral  cowardice  in 
not  protesting  against  social  wrong  and  not  insisting 
on  the  Christian  standards. 

B.  Now  these  appear  from  the  Gospels  to  be  the 
accusations  brought  by  Christ  against  the  religion  of 
His  own  contemporaries — an  intellectual  unreality  and 
a  scrupulosity  in  conduct  which  overlooked  the  things 
that  matter  most.  He  met  them  both  by  His  preaching 
of  the  Kingdom.  There  was  a  definite  Gospel  for  the 
simple,  and  an  all-embracing  and  concrete  ideal  for 
the  actual  aspirations  of  the  day.  It  was  also  something 
that  demanded  effort,  only  to  be  founded  by  the  Cross. 
It  certainly  seems  that  all  that  men  are  saying  about 
the  application  of  Christianity  to  the  facts  of  our 
world  as  we  know  it,  both  for  national  life  and  inter- 


64        THE   CHURCH  IN  THE   FURNACE         ii 

national,  both  as  an  explanation  and  a  task,  can  be 
brought  down  to  this  same  simple  remedy.  Let  us 
boldly  do  what  Jesus  did,  and  put  the  Kingdom  and 
the  Cross  in  the  very  centre  of  our  preaching.  That 
will  give  a  real  explanation,  and  an  unescapeable  appeal. 
I  doubt  if  we  could  retain  our  sanity  unless  we  saw 
in  these  present  heavy  hours  what  the  Jew  called  the 
'  Woes  of  the  Messiah  ' — the  birth  pangs  of  a  happier 
day  to  come.  It  is  only  "  through  much  tribulation  " 
that  we  can  "  enter  into  the  Kingdom  of  God."  And 
surely  if  the  war  has  taught  us  anything  it  is  that  man 
is  at  his  best  and  highest  when  great  and  hard  things 
are  demanded  of  him.  A  Gospel  of  ease  will  have  no 
real  converts.  There  is  laid  up  an  immense  reserve 
of  heroism  and  a  readiness  to  live  for  visions,  and  that 
is  what  we  have  to  hberate.  It  can  be  done,  perhaps, 
in  many  ways,  and  I  do  not  claim  to  have  found  the 
philosopher's  stone.  But  to  me — and  I  write  simply 
for  myself — ^it  is  growing  every  hour  more  certain  that 
the  Cross  alone  is  the  answer  to  our  needs.  I  feel  that 
my  task  is  merely  to  suggest  that  in  future  we  preach 
unflinchingly  the  Cross,  with  all  our  emphasis  upon 
it,  as  the  Wisdom  and  Power  of  God.  All  the  lines  of 
man's  philosophy  seem  to  me  to  meet  in  it.  Philosophy 
we  know  to  be  imperfect  ;  our  prophesying  we  know 
to  be  for  a  day  :  but  in  the  most  splendid  thing  in  the 
spirit  of  man — his  love,  his  loyalty,  his  heroism — we 
have  a  clue  which  we  know  cannot  wholly  fail  us,  but 
must  lead  us  past  the  reflection  to  its  Object  (1  Cor.  xiii). 
And  that  is  how  I  have  ventured  to  set  forth  the  Cross 
in  its  meaning  for  our  generation. 

Now  in  all  that  was  said  about  the  Crucifixion  by 


II  FAITH   IN   THE   LIGHT   OF   WAR         65 

Christ  Himself  and  His  best  interpreters,  there  are 
clearly  traceable  two  main  connexions.  It  is  bound 
up,  on  the  one  hand,  with  the  Kingdom,  and  on  the 
other  with  UniversaUsm.  It  negates  all  artificial 
differences,  of  rank,  of  creed,  of  nationahty.  Give  men 
some  stupendous  common  task,  overwhelmingly  worth 
hving  for  and  dying  for,  and  you  have  a  tie  which  is 
closer  than  any  other.  So  long  as  we  are  bent  upon 
"  soul-saving  "  we  shall  never  have  a  real  comrade- 
ship. It  is  bound  to  be  a  centrifugal  tendency.  Selfish- 
ness is  by  nature  anti-social.  Offer  service  in  a 
corporate  effort  and  at  once  you  transcend  every 
other  claim.  We  in  our  day  are  able  to  see  Paul's 
meaning  in  speaking  of  the  fellowship  of  Christ's 
sufferings  (Phil.  iii.  10).  It  is  now  an  actual  fact  of 
our  experience.  All  the  world  is  drinking  of  one  cup, 
and  its  wine  is  life  that  is  poured  out  for  others.  All 
mankind  are  partakers  of  one  loaf — a  body  which  most 
literally  and  truly  is  being  given  to  be  broken.  Perhaps 
we  have  here  som^e  light  on  the  marvellous  attitude  of 
the  British  soldier  to  his  enemy.  When  two  men 
are  together  in  mortal  pains,  what  does  it  matter  what 
language  they  happen  to  speak  ?  Common  suffering 
overleaps  all  barriers.  The  middle- wall  of  partition 
must  go  down.  And  in  this,  one  trusts,  is  the  great 
hope  for  the  future — that  social  prejudices  and  dis- 
tinctions, that  international  jealousies  and  rivalries, 
denominational  and  party  '  interests,'  may  be  '  stripped 
bare  '  and  vanquished  and  surpassed  by  the  Cross  of 
all  Mankind. 

They  would  be,  if  we  will  only  take  the  next  step, 
and  think  of  it  in  the  fight  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

F 


66        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         ii 

What  one  dreads  most  is  to  lose  in  the  years  to  come  the 
comradeship  we  have  won  in  the  years  of  war.  A 
soldier  wrote  that  in  six  months  after  peace  it  will  be 
but  a  '  radiant  and  wistful  memory.'  Shall  we  go  back 
to  fight  with  one  another  ?  There  is  no  doubt,  I  fear, 
that  Government  action  and  the  attitude  of  many 
left  in  England  are  generating  a  very  menacing  and 
alarming  amount  of  ill-will  in  our  present  Army.  A 
relapse  into  the  ways  of  the  so-called  peace  of  the 
years  immediately  before  the  war  can  only  be  avoided 
by  great  effort.  The  only  certain  counter-influence  is 
to  enlist  us  all  in  a  common  enterprise,  united  by  a 
single  vast  ideal.  Preach  the  Kingdom  of  God  in 
its  sublimity,  in  all  its  range  and  all  its  glorious  hopes, 
show  us  it  is  something  for  us  all,  call  us  all  to  live  and 
work  for  it,  enlist  us  all  in  the  service  of  the  Master, 
and  make  Him  living,  concrete  and  appealing.  Do  not 
offer  us  '  Church  privileges  '  or  tell  us  that  we  ought 
to  go  to  Church.  Charge  us  rather  with  Church 
responsibilities.  Show  us  God  as  the  King  of  all  the 
world ;  bid  us  consecrate  ourselves  and  act  and 
live.  Then  I  believe  you  will  find  that  the  Church 
of  England  has  a  place  she  has  never  held  before.  There 
is  the  making  of  a  lasting  comradeship,  embracing  all 
the  sections  of  our  people.  The  one  hope  lies  there,  in 
a  common  ideal,  which — as  a  famous  book  has  put  it — 
will  cause  the  duchess  and  the  navvy  to  ask  one 
another,  '  What  are  we  doing  for  It  ?  '  And  such  an 
ideal  Jesus  preached  and  died  for.  Nor  can  we 
possibly  stop  our  thought  at  England.  Show  mankind 
that  we  have  a  single  task,  for  which  the  nations  exist 
to  co-oj)erate,  making  each  its  special  contribution,  and 


II  FAITH   IN   THE   LIGHT   OF   WAR         C7 

we  have  gone  far  to  solve  the  international  problem. 
Only  an  ideal  can  end  war  ;  only  a  common  faith  can 
bring  men  together.  But  the  Kingdom  won  by  the 
Cross  is  universal.  '  And  all  the  nations  of  the 
world  .  .  .  shall  bring  their  glory  into  it.' 


Traditional  Christianity  is  on  its  trial.  The  next  few 
years,  I  believe,  will  give  the  decision  whether  it  will  or 
will  not  be  the  world's  religion.  More  and  more  men 
are  turning  away  unsatisfied  from  what  we  have  been 
accustomed  to  set  before  them.  More  and  more 
they  are  coming  to  see  the  meaning  of  what  we  have 
forgotten  or  obscured.  The  '  new  religion '  they 
think  they  are  discovering  is  really  bound  up  in  the 
Christian  Gospel.  It  is  for  us  not  to  be  '  apologetic,' 
but  actively  to  seize  the  situation  and  interpret  it  in 
the  light  of  Christ.  There  is  no  finality  in  human 
life,  in  religion  any  more  than  in  other  spheres.  We 
can  only  speak  to  the  men  of  our  own  day,  in  the  terms 
which  they  can  understand.  But  Christianity  holds 
the  key  of  the  future.  If  we  can  strenuously  '  buy  up  ' 
the  present  we  can  leave  the  future  to  its  own  develop- 
ments. The  Spirit  of  God  is  living  and  progressive. 
If  we  can  win  our  own  age  for  our  Master  it  is  all  the 
stewardship  that  is  asked  of  us  :  and  our  world  will  be 
saved — yet  '  so  as  by  fire.' 


F  2 


Ill 
BELIEFS  EMPHASISED  BY  THE  WAR 

By  the  Rev.  F.  WILLIAM  WORSLEY,  B.D. 

Chaplain   to   the   Forces,    Chaplains'  School  of  Instruction,    B.E.F.  ; 
Subwarden  of  St.  Michael's  College,  Llanda(f. 

Author  of  "  The  Apocalypse  of  JesusT  "  The  Theology  of  the 
Church  of  England,""  ^c. 


Ill 
BELIEFS  EMPHASISED  BY  THE  WAR 

I  HAVE  been  asked  to  write  about  the  War  and 
Theology.  One  has  heard  of  the  process  of  putting 
the  Gospel  in  a  nutshell  ;  one  has  not  heard  of  anyone 
who  has  carried  it  out  successfully.  So  here  it  will 
only  be  possible  to  say  a  little  about  one  or  two  points 
of  theological  teaching  which  men  have  lately  been 
inclined  to  thrust  into  the  background — largely  because 
there  is  not  room  in  the  front  row  on  a  limited  stage 
for  all  the  actors — to  which  the  war  has  pointed 
meaningly,  beckoning  them  to  the  front. 

The  war  has  once  more  focussed  our  attention  upon 
the  fact  that  the  spiritual  war  is  a  reality  and  that  wo 
have  to  fight  against  a  cruel  and  relentless  foe  ;  it 
reminds  us  that  every  weapon  will  be  needed  and  that 
we  have  to  go  into  training.  St.  Paul  was  so  strong 
and  so  right  about  that,  and  the  men  of  his  day  under- 
stood it  when  it  was  put  to  them.  Athletics  and 
mihtary  life  were  two  things  that  men  were  familiar 
with  and  interested  in  under  the  Empire,  and  the 
analogy  was  clear  and  useful  when  it  was  pointed 
out.     Thus  we  read  of  men  going  into  physical  training 


72        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        iii 

in  order  the  better  to  endure  the  physical  tortures 
devised  for  them  by  their  adversaries.  The  same 
analogy  holds  good  to-day,  and  men  have  the  same 
reasons  for  seeing  the  force  of  it.  "  We  wrestle  not 
against  flesh  and  blood,"  but  through  it,  7r/309  ra 
TTvev/xaTtKO.  T>)9  TTOvrjpLa^;  ev  Tot<;  eTrovpavioi,<;. 

There  has  not  been  as  yet  any  alhance  between 
these  powers  against  all  that  Christianity  stands  for, 
but  it  will  come  unless  we  forestall  it.  Our  warfare 
has  lately  been  far  too  half-hearted — the  main  reason 
being,  it  is  to  be  feared,  that  so  many  different  trumpets 
have  been  sounding  in  so  many  diverse  camps.  It  is 
also  sadly  true  that  there  is  no  sign  of  an  aUiance 
between  the  different  Christian  bodies ;  thus  there 
is  no  immediate  likelihood  of  that  fundamental  unity 
which  is  so  essential  to  success.  In  our  owti  camp 
too  there  have  been  heard  rather  a  diversity  of  trumpet 
sounds.  It  would  appear  that  successive  trumpeters 
rather  prided  themselves  on  the  fact.  It  is,  they  would 
assure  us,  of  the  esse  of  the  Church  of  England.  It  is 
time  we  replied  firmly  and  finally,  /t^  'yevoLjo. 

One  thing  seems  to  have  become  apparent  :  it  is 
time  that  the  central  body  of  Enghsh  Churchmanship, 
which  has  piloted  the  Church  through  many  squalls, 
and  to  which  the  quiet  yet  steady  progress  of  the 
Church  has  been  largely  due,  should  now  become 
articulate.  Let  us  definitely  ask  the  Bench  of  Bishops 
for  a  lead  in  the  matter  of  a  real  discipline  and  of  the 
limits  of  theological  speculation.  Let  us  have  a  clear 
statement  of  what  is  considered  to  be  essential,  which 
will  provide  us  with  a  minimum,  and  what  is  not  ; 
what  is  allowed  and  what  will  not  be  tolerated,  which 


Ill     BELIEFS  EMPHASISED  BY  THE  WAR     73 

will  give  the  maximum.  The  principle  of  the  Church 
of  England  with  regard  to  Theology  is  evident  enough  : 
state  clearly  what  is  de  fide,  and  do  not  endeavour  to 
define  minutely  doctrines  which  Christ  left  undefined. 
There  are  regions  in  which  faith  must  reign  supreme  ; 
into  these  reason  can  only  dare  to  penetrate  as  a  wide- 
eyed,  wondering  child,  clutching  at  Faith's  hand  and 
asking  for  guidance  and  illumination.  In  the  recog- 
nition that  most  of  the  catastrophes  of  history 
are  due  to  want  of  balance  she  deliberately  adopted  a 
via  media,  striking  a  balance  between  two  extremes, 
both  of  which  she  believes  to  be  clean  off  the  rails  of 
primitive  Catholic  Christianity.  The  evident  desire  of 
the  Reformers — and  the  Church  has  never  departed 
from  that  desire — was  to  include  as  many  as  possible 
of  those  who  tended  in  either  direction,  but  it  is  surely 
time  that  some  definite  limits  were  laid  down. 

It  was  recently  suggested  by  a  chaplain  of  some 
hterary  eminence  that  most  of  the  preaching  to  the 
Forces  was  concerned  with  answering  questions  which 
the  men  never  asked.  Is  it  not  an  important  part  of 
the  chaplain's  work  to  lead  men  to  ask  these  questions  ? 
If  it  be  possible  to  answer  such  questions  as  : 
"  Why  does  not  God  stop  the  war  ?  "  without  treating 
of  the  Nature  and  Being  of  God,  of  the  relation  in  which 
He  stands  to  humanity,  of  the  methods  chosen  by  Him 
of  deahng  with  a  creature  whom  He  has  endowed  with 
free-will,  namely,  the  Incarnation  and  its  extension, 
and,  above  all,  of  the  way  in  which  His  Will  can  be, 
and  very  often  is,  withstood,  why,  then  there  can  be 
no  need  for  us  chaplains  at  all.  The  answer  is  either 
simply  that  there   is  no    God,  or  that  He  is  only  a 


71        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        iii 

puppet  God,  and  therefore  powerless.  Or  else  it  involves 
much  definite  teaching  about  rather  complex  problems . 
It  is  much  simpler  to  say,  "Hang  your  questions, let's 
get  on  with  the  war,  "  but  it  will  not  help  honest 
inquirers .  From  what  one  knows  of  the  average  sermon 
preached  by  the  average  man  every  Sunday  in  times 
of  peace  and  war  alike  one  would  hardly  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  there  is  too  much  emphasis  on  theology 
in  the  preaching  of  to-day.  By  all  means  let  us  place 
a  proper  accent  on  Christian  ethics,  but  it  can  scarcely 
be  said  that  the  average  churchgoer  knows  all  that 
there  is  to  know  about  the  central  facts  of  the  Christian 
Faith.  Many  a  lajanan  will  say  that  he  dislikes 
dogma,  because  he  has  inherited  that  phrase  from 
mid- Victorian  days  ;  in  many  cases  he  will  not  know 
what  it  means. 

Again,  many  of  those  who  make  it  their  duty  to 
"  teach  "  in  their  sermons  have  specialised  in  one  or 
two  points  of  theology,  and  not  infrequently  these 
consist  of  matters  of  no  particular  importance.  One 
man  will  be  wrapped  up  in  mediaeval  ideas  about  the 
saints  or  the  sacredness  of  the  number  seven  for  the 
sacraments,  while  another  has  never  escaped  from  the 
Calvinistic  horrors  of  predestination  into  which  he 
tumbled  as  a  young  student.  In  either  case  every 
sermon  preached  is  much  coloured  by  the  general  set 
of  ideas  which  surrounds  the  darling  doctrine  of  the 
individual.  The  Church  has  made  excellent  provision 
for  the  treatment  of  the  whole  Faith  in  her  selection 
of  Epistles  and  Gospels  for  the  Sundays.  She  has 
been  careful  to  set  before  us  in  these  Scriptures  a  sane 
and  useful  combination  of  doctrine  with  its  practical 


Ill     BELIEFS  EMPHASISED  BY  THE  WAR     75 

issuer.  But  so  many  of  us  are  wiser  than  the  Church. 
The  war  has  made  most  of  us  ask  questions,  and  many 
of  the  questions  bring  us  right  up  against  the  real 
mysteries  of  life.  Yet  for  St.  Paul  a  mystery  was 
something  that  had  been  half  revealed,  the  other 
half  of  which  we  are  to  spell  out  for  ourselves  in  the 
light  of  what  has  been  told  to  us.  We  realise  now  more 
than  ever  how  little  we  know  of  what  we  ought  to 
have  known,  how  little  we  were  prepared  for  a  great 
catastrophe,  because  we  had,  as  cowards,  shirked 
facing  small  ones.  We  are  made  to  see  how  little  we 
had  taught  while  we  had  the  opportunity,  and  how 
far  we  have  been  from  seeking  of)portunities  when 
they  were  not  very  apparent.  What  the  Church  needs 
— all  will  admit  it — is  a  sound  constructive  poHcy,  a 
real  uniformity  which  is  something  more  than  a 
surface  rigidity  of  exactness,  hiding  many  sores. 
This  involves  a  definite  lead  from  those  in  authority, 
as  we  have  said,  in  short  a  wholesome  and  workable 
discipline  which  is  based  upon  a  wide,  sympathetic, 
and  intelligent  outlook  upon  the  problems  of  modern 
life,  and  which  runs  through  and  applies  to  all  ranks. 
Whether  we  shall  get  it  or  no  is  another  story. 

The  appearance  of  another  volume  from  the  pen 
of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  makes  us  realise  the  need  for  definite 
teaching  more  than  ever.  There  is  no  reason  for 
regarding  Mr.  Wells  as  a  new  papal  constellation  in 
the  ecclesiastical  horizon.  He  has  a  perfect  right  to 
his  opinions.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  call  to 
water  down  the  teaching  of  the  Church  in  order  to 
meet  him  halfway  ;  nor  is  there  any  warrant  for 
such  a  course.     If  we  wish  to  be  Christian  let  us  say 


76        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        iii 

so  boldly,  and  be  ready  to  accept  gladly  any  consequent 
stigmata  ;  if  not,  let  us  do  the  other  thing.  There 
will  always  be  those — as  there  have  always  been — 
who  demand  simpler  theologies  and  who  cry  out  for 
short  cuts  to  a  better  knowledge  of  God.  We  may  be 
thankful  for  such  a  desire.  If  they  find  Him  it  is  not 
for  us  to  cavil  ;  we  are  not  the  Holy  Ghost.  The 
purpose  here  is  to  suggest  certain  points  which  need 
emphasis  just  now  ;  it  is  an  endeavour  to  indicate 
some  things  with  regard  to  which  we  may  perhaps  find 
ourselves  in  general  agreement  one  with  another  so 
that  we  may  all  join  in  presenting  them  definitely  as 
affording  a  satisfactory  answer  to  many  of  the  questions 
which  men  have  learnt  to  ask.  An  age  of  science 
demands  a  certain  amount  of  exactness  in  replies  that 
we  have  to  make,  and  yet  there  is  such  a  thing  as 
speculative  theology,  though  perhaps  we  shall  do  well 
not  to  over-emphasise  that  side. 


SIN. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  present  generation 
has  entirely  lost  all  sense  of  the  awfulness  of  sin.  Time 
was — some  of  us  can  still  remember  it — when  publicity 
constituted  in  a  large  measure  the  punishment  for 
wrong-doing.  The  most  dreadful  thing  about  sin  to-day 
is  its  unblushing  shamelessness.  You  may  quote 
Nietzsche  by  the  yard,  and  you  may  point  to  many 
more  modern  disseminators  of  his  doctrines  in  less  repul- 
sive forms,  in  the  endeavour  to  account  for  the  fact  ; 


Ill     BELIEFS  EMPHASISED  BY  THE  WAR     77 

it  is  the  fact's  self  that  matters,  that  has  to  be  -dealt 
with.  And  this  is  certainly  something  which  calls  for 
intelligent  teaching.  Men  are  all  out  against  a 
particular  habit  when  it  produces  bad  results  on  a 
large  scale — witness  the  agitation  against  venereal 
disease.  But  they  do  not  seem  to  see,  or  perhaps  do 
not  choose  to  see,  that  the  cure  for  the  disease  lies 
in  no  new  treatment  of  the  diseased,  but  in  the  applica- 
tion to  humanity  in  general  of  the  old  treatment,  the 
old  moral  laws,  which  give  sound  and  sensible  teaching 
against  adultery  and  fornication. 

"  The  moral  equivalent  of  war."  What  is  there  for 
us  to  teach  about  sin  ? 

(a)  If  evil  be  a  negative  thing,  then  there  is  no  need 
for  war.  The  conquest  of  the  world  for  Christ  is  a 
matter  of  simple  education.  Can  anyone  be  found  so 
blind  as  to  uphold  this  hypothesis  ?  Your  struggling 
God,  Mr.  Wells,  seems  to  have  a  definite  opponent. 
In  your  own  struggling  towards  Him  you  seem  to  be 
conscious  of  active  opposition.  It  is  not  enough  to 
say  that  He  is  fighting  through  a  mass  of  self-imposed 
limitations — which  any  sensible  person  will  feel  to  be 
true — for  this  would  not  account  for  the  cruelty  that 
has  to  be  encountered  or  the  Passion  which  has  to  be 
endured.  A  God  whose  mere  self -imprisonment 
necessitated  such  things  were  scarcely  a  God  to 
whom  we  should  feel  attracted  with  lives  filled  with 
worship  and  hearts  brimmed  with  love.  I  do  not 
quarrel  with  terms  which  the  metaphysician  dubs 
anthropomorphic.  To  show  God  as  Love  and  then 
to  define  that  love  as  a  fixity  of  will  on  the  side 
of    all    that    is    holy    and  good  and  true   is    to   put 


78        THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        in 

forward  a  fine  conception  and  one  which  we  feel 
to  be  correct.  But — laus  Deo — there  is  very  much 
more  to  follow. 

Having  expressed  some  aspects  of  His  infinity  in 
finite  nature,  He  deigns  to  speak  to  it  in  its  own  language 
and  to  make  His  self -manifestation  to  it  comprehensible 
in  the  only  possible  way.  He  has  translated  His  love 
into  terms  of  human  life.  A  mere  will  could  not 
display  sacrifice  satisfactorily  to  a  being  composed  as 
men  are  composed,  nor  would  its  fixity  of  interest  and 
passionless  regard — however  intense — be  accepted  by 
such  beings  as  love.  It  is  a  little  weak  and  very  human 
to  say  in  consequence  that  He  is  a  finite  God.  But  it 
is  in  many  cases  a  sign  of  grace,  the  evidence  of  an 
arrival  at  a  temporary  halting-place  in  the  stupendous 
progress 

From  the  finite  to  infinity, 

And  from  man's  dust  to  God's  divinity. 

Evil,  then,  with  all  its  evidences  of  victories  over 
the  manifested  side  of  God,  shows  every  sign  of  being 
a  positive  thing.  From  positive  we  pass  to  personal. 
I  am  old-fashioned  enough  to  believe  in  a  personal 
fons  et  origo.  I  simply  accept  and  am  not  prepared  to 
argue.  It  is  not  a  vital  point.  In  any  case  Evil 
presents  itself  as  finite,  for  its  victories  show  no  signs 
of  finality,  and  there  are  other  reasons  multitudinous 
and  obvious. 

(6)  But  some  man  will  so.y  (to  use  a  Pauline  formula) 
"Is  it  not  true  that  war  is  a  great  purifier  ?  "  Yes, 
in  some  cases.  There  are  doubtless  many  Mr.  Britlings, 
men  who  stood  with  one  foot  on  the  primrose  path  of 
dalliance,  whose  little  cosmos  was  turned  completely 


Ill     BELIEFS  EMPHASISED  BY  THE  WAR     79 

upside  down  by  the  advent  of  war,  and  who  learnt  to 
see  that  life  was  real  and  earnest  and  that  that  kind  of 
life  was  not.  They  realised  not  only  that  country 
came  before  politics,  not  only  that  duty  was  higher 
than  pleasure,  but  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  truth, 
and  that  it  comes  before  anything  else  ;  that  life  is 
greater  than  death.  These  thoughts  lead  us  on,  as 
they  will  lead  Mr.  Britling  on — I  hope  that  he  will 
write  a  pamphlet  about  it — to  see  that  God  is  love  and 
life  and  hapj^iness,  that  God  is  all  in  all,  and  that  sin 
is  beastly  and  brutal  and  cruel — and  unnecessary  ;  if 
that  be  an  anti-climax  I  leave  it,  for  it  is  the  thing 
that  we  need  to  learn. 

But  then  for  every  one  such  there  are  at  least  two 
who  came  out  here  from  sheltered  homes  to  learn 
filthy  language,  lying  and  loose  jesting  from  others 
who  had  always  done  these  things.  There  are  two 
more  who  had  always  looked  at  womanhood  through 
spectacles  rose-coloured  by  the  sweet  memory  of 
mother  and  sisters,  but  who  learnt  all  too  quickly 
to  look  open-eyed  upon  shame,  themselves  unshamed. 
They  were  told  so  often  that  "  French  people  look  at 
these  things  differently  ;  they  are  not  prudes."  And 
there  is  one  poor  lad  who  sits  in  the  corner  of  the  billet 
listening  with  ears  tingling  and  with  quickened  pulse — 
half  indignation,  half  curiosity,  newly-aroused — to 
stories  told  by  his  fellows  about  haunts  of  vice,  invested 
by  them  with  some  sickening  sort  of  glamour.  He 
draws  nearer  to  the  edge  of  the  vortex,  is  sucked  in, 
to  emerge  disgusted,  disillusioned — but  diseased. 

Then,  too,  while  the  greedy  paw  of  this  bloodthirsty 
tyrant  is  crushing  the  life  out  of  many  of  our  best  and 


80        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        iii 

noblest  in  the  many  lands  to  which  its  tentacles 
reach,  and  is  leaving  many  others,  maimed  and  broken, 
to  grope  and  crawl  through  the  rest  of  life,  so  many  at 
home  seem  as  yet  to  be  scarcely  touched  by  the 
consciousness  of  what  war  is  and  means.  And  some 
are  fattening  themselves  upon  it,  so  do  not  in  their 
heart  of  hearts  desire  peace. 

Once  more  when  peace  does  come  there  will  be  the 
inevitable  reaction  with  its  horrid  tale  of  greedy 
excesses,  and  even,  worst  of  all,  its  basenesses  and 
sufferings  consequent  upon  a  cheapened  view  of  the 
value  of  human  life  together  with  a  cessation  of  a  fine 
system  of  discipline. 

All  this  cries  out  for  an  intelligent  preaching  of  the 
awfulness  of  sin  based  on  an  intelligent  appreciation 
of  the  Nature  and  Being  of  God. 

(c)  Has  the  war  revealed  God  or  obscured  Him  ? 
Or  are  we,  perhaps,  just  where  we  were  ?  So  far  as 
individuals  are  concerned  the  answer  depends  so  much 
on  varying  circumstances  in  different  cases.  The 
attitude  of  men  in  general  would  probably  be  to  say 
that  there  is  no  place  for  God  in  the  battle  front,  since 
all  the  accompaniments  are  so  alien  to  all  preconceived 
notions  of  the  Deity.  We  know  that  most  preconceived 
notions  about  matters  religious  are  hopelessly  wrong. 
There  is  so  much  of  acquiescence,  of  credulity,  of 
superstition  abroad  that  Faith  has  got  crowded  out 
to  a  large  extent.  When  men  say  "  I  have  been 
thinking,"  and  proceed  to  relate  what  their  thoughts 
are,  one  finds  a  jumble  of  elemental  things,  sadly 
tortured  and  twisted  by  being  brought  for  the  first 
time  in  such  lives  face  to  face  with  hard  fact — the 


Ill     BELIEFS  EMPHASISED  BY  THE  WAR     81 

penalty  which  men  have  to  pay  for  having  treated 
religion  as  a  thing  apart. 

God  does  not  speak  with  the  voice  of  guns  nor 
through  any  instruments  of  death.  We  must  not 
hope  to  hear  Him  in  the  thunder  of  the  heavies  nor  in 
the  rattle  of  machine-guns.  He  is  not  in  the  storm, 
the  earthquake,  or  the  fire,  but  afterwards  in  the 
moments  of  calm  those  who  attune  their  ears  may 
catch  an  echo  of  the  still,  small  voice. 

He  was  a  God  of  war,  fighting  and  conquering,  to 
the  ancient  Israelite,  and  is  a  God  of  peace  and  joy, 
soothing  and  inspiring,  to  the  mystic.  Both  were  real 
experiences.  Yet  He  can  only  falsely  be  a  God  of 
money,  with  interests  centred  in  exchange,  to  the 
financier,  or  a  God  of  barter,  with  thoughts  mainly 
fixed  on  market  prices,  to  the  merchant.  There  is 
some  criterion — the  test  of  genuine  experience.  Is  He 
a  God  of  pain,  Himself  wounded  and  dolorous,  to  the 
sufferer  ?  Is  He  a  God  of  sorrow,  grieved  and  heart- 
wrung  by  human  sin  ?  I  know  only  of  God  as  He  is 
revealed  to  me  in  Jesus,  who  pointed  to  the  Father, 
"  He  that  hath  seen  Me  hath  seen  the  Father,"  and 
through  the  intimate  relationships  with  Him  that 
are  possible  in  and  through  our  Lord.  In  Jesus  I  see 
such  overmastering  love  and  gentleness  and  pity, 
such  complete  sympathy  and  identification  with  human 
life,  all  bound  up  with  manifested  intention  to  empower 
and  heal,  that  I  say  "  Yes  ;  somehow — though  I 
dare  not,  cannot  say  how — He  suffers  in  and  with  the 
sufferer." 

What  use  then  to  vex  busy  minds  with  abstruse 
reasonings  as  to  the  origin  of  sin  or  the  problem  of 

G 


82        THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         iii 

evil  ?  God  forbid  tliat  we  should  go  on  saying  that 
we  are  not  worrying  about  our  sins.  But  why  worry 
as  to  how  they  came  to  be  possible  or  whence  the 
principle  proceeded  ?  It  is  there  in  man's  life  and 
grieves  a  divine  heart.  All  the  sin  of  the  world  could 
never  quench  divine  love  or  prevent  the  untiring 
stretching  out  of  the  Divine  Lover  towards  His  errant 
child.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  small  sins,  so-called, 
can  easily  block  the  entrance  to  the  soul,  and  the 
accumulation  of  sins  makes  love  ineffective,  since  the 
object  of  it  has  "  dug  himself  in  "  in  hostile  territory. 
How  many  a  David  there  has  been  of  late  in  our  own 
stricken  land  who,  as  he  stands  reading  the  fateful 
telegram  telling  of  the  death  of  a  sordidly  peccant 
Absalom,  has  forgotten  all  else  in  one  great  heart-cry 
of  grief.  And  God's  love  must  be  greater  than  man's. 
But  men  must  learn  the  awfulness  of  sin  before  they 
can  hope  to  appreciate  the  meaning  of  pardon  and 
restoration  through  love.  And  yet  it  can  only  be  love 
that  will  teach  them  to  fight  it  ruthlessly,  as  it  deserves, 
and  conqueringly. 


II. 

THE   SACRAMENTAL   VIEW    OF   LIFE. 

Man,  with  his  curious  commixture  of  seen  and 
unseen,  belonging  to  two  different  worlds,  is  yet  in- 
telligible as  a  whole.  I  speak  of  the  nature  of  man  ; 
individuals  are  elusively  unintelligible  even  to  them- 
selves. It  seems  mercifully  fortunate  that  God  under- 
stands, and  that  the  method  and  means  of  salvation 


Ill     BELIEFS  EMPHASISED  BY  THE  WAR     83 

are  in  His  hands.  The  Incarnation  is  too  vast  and  too 
complete  a  conception  to  be  the  outcome  even  of  the 
conglomerate  experience  of  many  ages  of  men.  The 
two  reahties — Man  and  God-man — form  the  basis  of  a 
sacramental  theory  of  life,  and  both  come  from  God. 
The  one  is  the  initial  experiment  of  Divine  self-expres- 
sion, the  beauty  of  which  became  marred — yet  not 
irretrievably — by  the  misuse  of  the  divinest  part  of 
man.  That  is  odd  and  it  needs  a  volume,  but  no 
matter.  The  second  experiment  was  final  as  an 
incident,  but  eternal  as  a  principle.  Else  it  were  but 
an  invitation  to  dumbest  despair.  The  method 
intended  by  the  principle  has  for  its  object  the  re- 
inspiring  of  the  race — offspring  of  the  first  experiment 
— by  setting  in  motion  an  ever  active  force  of  renewal. 
Why  did  it  take  the  form  of  an  incarnation  ?  I 
suppose  first  because  we  humans  have  our  comprehen- 
sion limited  to  human  things — mysticism,  other- 
worldliness,  will  always  be  "  caviare  to  the  general "  ; 
and,  secondly,  because  the  appeal  of  God  is  not  to  a 
part  of  man,  but  to  the  whole.  In  some  mysterious 
way  we  believe  in  the  resurrection  of  the  body  ;  I 
say  "  mysterious  "  because  the  moment  we  try  to 
define  the  resurrection-body  we  only  succeed  in  pro- 
ducing statements  which  would  destroy  any  sane  man's 
belief  in  that  article  of  the  Creed.  "  Do  not  define  " 
may  be  a  confession  of  weakness  so  far  as  it  touches 
our  knowledge,  but  it  is  a  confession  of  strength  so 
far  as  it  applies  to  Faith.  But  the  "  one  divine  far-off 
event  to  which  the  whole  creation  moves  "  includes, 
I  take  it,  the  redemption  of  the  body.  It  is  incon- 
ceivable how  this  is  to  be,  yet  the  very  fact  of  the 

G  2 


84        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        iii 

Incarnation  says  that  it  is  so  ;  we  can  only  bow 
before  the  decision,  recognising  humbly  that  at  j)resent 
"  we  see  in  part." 

The  two  experiments,  then,  in  self-expression  on  the 
part  of  God  were  sacraments,  as  we  understand  sacra- 
ments, that  is  to  say,  outward  and  visible  signs  of 
inward  and  spiritual  realities.  The  second  was  an 
eternal  principle,  the  definite  aim  of  which  was  the 
re-establishment,  by  renewal,  of  the  first.  This  can 
only  be  effected — a  glimpse  into  the  obvious — indi- 
vidually. We,  as  a  body  of  Churchpeople,  have  not 
fully  appreciated  this  sacramental  view  of  life,  and 
many  have  fought  against  it.  Again  many  have 
been  far  too  restricted  in  their  application  of  it  to  the 
scheme  of  salvation,  held  back  partly  by  a  fear  of 
Romanism  and  partly  by  the  statement  of  the  Catechism 
that  two  of  the  sacraments  are  generally  necessary  to 
salvation.  It  was  a  statement  necessitated,  like  many 
others  in  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  by  a  special 
set  of  circumstances  in  a  peculiar  age.  We  can  now 
go  back  to  St.  Augustine  and  see  that  the  Church  is  a 
great  sacrament,  the  Body  of  Christ,  which  includes  a 
number  of  sacraments,  at  the  head  of  which  are  Baptism 
and  the  Supper  of  the  Lord. 

If  the  war  has  called  upon  us  spiritually  for  any- 
thing at  all  it  has  demanded  shrilly  that  we  view  with 
common-sense,  that  we  set  ourselves  to  learn  and  appre- 
ciate, this  sacramental  view  of  life,  and  the  method  of 
Christ  in  the  Church  for  dealing  with  it.  It  will  not 
be  possible  to  insist  upon  a  special  sacredness  for  the 
number  seven.  I  do  not  know  why  we  should  follow 
blindly — as    men    in    earlier    centuries    followed— the 


II     BELIEFS  EMPHASISED  BY  THE  WAR     85 

lead  of  Peter  the  Lombard  in  this  matter.  The  only 
compelling  reason  apparently  is  to  be  found  in  the 
orders  of  the  Council  of  Trent.  And  yet  that  Council 
has  no  more  to  do  with  us  than,  say,  any  given  meeting 
of  the  British  Association.  It  is  an  interesting  event 
in  the  history  of  the  stifling  of  religious  experience,  and 
of  that  most  anti -Christian  of  all  reHgious  methods — ■ 
the  stereotyping  of  the  method  of  salvation.  It  is 
of  great  importance  for  a  certain  religious  sect,  but  has 
nothing  to  do  with  us,  surely. 

St.  Paul's  great  anxiety  was  "  that  the  ministry  be 
not  blamed."  In  the  general  failure  of  the  Church's 
members  to  appreciate  the  magnitude  of  the  sacramental 
and  its  issues  we  must  lay  the  blame  upon  the  ministry. 
We  live  in  the  dispensation  of  God  the  Holy  Spirit,  yet 
who  would  think  so  from  reading  or  hearing  most  of 
the  public  utterances  of  teachers  ?  So  many  seem  to 
imagine  that  all  that  there  is  to  be  taught  about  the 
Blessed  Spirit  can  be  said  on  Whitsunday.  One  thing 
has  specially  struck  very  many  of  us  out  here,  and  that 
is  the  readiness  of  men  to  appreciate  the  idea  of  the 
activities  of  the  Spirit  of  God.  It  will  never  be  easy 
for  men  to  appreciate  the  inner  significance  of  the  Cross 
of  Christ.  Its  beauty  as  an  emblem  of  sacrifice  is 
obvious  to  all,  but  the  aspect  of  personal  cross-bearing 
is  the  hardest  lesson  of  life.  Is  it  not  better  far  to 
bring  men  into  close  relationship  with  the  Holy  Spirit 
in  the  full  belief  that  when  He  is  come  He  will  guide 
them  into  all  truth  ? 

And  after  all  the  efficacy  of  all  sacraments  is  the 
result  of  the  working  of  the  Spirit.  Sacramental 
method  and  reality  are  both  summed  in  the  Eucharist. 


86        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        iii 

Wc  may  well  take  it  as  an  example  of  the  Church  of 
England's  point  of  view  in  the  matter  of  sacraments 
in  general.  It  is  unfortunate  that  our  Office  alone 
among  the  Liturgies  of  the  Church  omits  the  Epiclesis. 
The  Romans  at  least  speak  of  it,  even  if  it  be  not 
very  apparent.  It  necessitates  an  emphasis  in  our 
teaching  upon  the  underlying  fact.  A  few  dull  souls 
contend  that  it  does  not  really  matter,  since  the 
omission  even  of  the  Prayer  of  Consecration  would 
not  be  a  matter  of  great  moment.  If  that  be  so,  what 
is  it  that  makes  this  service  different  from  any  other  ? 
We  in  France  can  testify  that  there  are  many  who 
value  it  as  such.  They  tell  us  that  it  is  full  for  them 
of  a  special  life  and  peace  and  joy  and  that  their  own 
lives  seem  emptier  when  they  are  kept  away.  Is  that 
merely  the  result  of  some  mental  gymnastic  ?  If  so, 
the  development  of  such  power  would  suffice  to  produce 
the  required  result  without  ever  attending  the  sacra- 
ment. Another  will  tell  you  that  he  can  worship  in 
a  Roman  church  where  he  knows  that  the  Sacrament 
is  reserved,  but  finds  it  difficult  to  do  so  in  an  English 
church  where  there  is  no  reservation.  This  seems  to 
tend  in  the  direction  of  fetish — scientificall}^  we  should 
think,  I  suj)pose,  of  auto-suggestion.  If  the  presence 
of  God  depends  upon  that  we  shall  soon  out- Wells 
Mr.  Wells.  It  becomes  increasingly  apparent  that 
theologically  the  practice  of  Reservation  for  the 
purpose  of  worship  is  indefensible. 

Can  a  Divine  Presence  be  localised,  as  Moses  thought 
it  to  be  localised  in  the  matter  of  the  burning  bush  ? 
Again  we  can  only  go  to  Jesus.  According  to  His  own 
claims,  in  Him  there  was  such  localisation,  and  from 


Ill     BELIEFS  EMPHASISED  BY  THE  WAR     87 

Him  came  the  promise  of  a  continuance,  e.g.  where 
two  or  three  are  gathered  in  His  name.  From  Him 
too  came  the  promise — for  it  was  no  less — "  This  is 
My  Body,"  Is  it  wise  to  define  philosophically  how 
this  comes  about  ?  Is  it  not  more  in  accord  with 
ancient  practice  to  see  and  feel  and  touch — and  adore  ? 

I  need  Thy  presence  every  passing  hour, 

must  be  the  cry  of  every  Christian  heart,  and  it  must  be 
that  ever-Presence  that  makes  actually  more  intense 
the  moment  of  contact,  when  in  Communion  we  touch 
the  hem  of  His  garment  with  the  hungering  desire  to 
be  made  whole. 

So  with  the  Holy  Word,  the  spoken  exhortation, 
confirmation,  penance,  the  ministry,  and  so  on  through 
the  precious  hst,  God  the  Holy  Spirit  is  working  His 
miracles  of  grace  where  Faith  comes  wide-eyed,  large- 
hearted,  prayer-laden,  with  quickened  receptivity 
determined  to  assimilate. 

Thus  to  all  such  questions  as  "  How  can  a  man  be 
born  again  when  he  is  old  ?  "  "  How  can  this  man  give 
us  His  flesh  to  eat  ?  "  "  Hath  the  Son  of  Man  power 
on  the  earth  to  forgive  sins  ?  "  and  so  forth,  there  is 
but  one  answer,  "  I  thank  God  through  Jesus  Christ 
our  Lord."  It  should  not,  then,  be  "  Do  you  beheve 
in  the  Blessed  Sacrament  ?  "  but  "  Do  you  beheve  in 
Jesus  ?  "  The  denial  of  the  Presence  in  the  Eucharist 
is  more  than  a  denial  of  Divine  omnipresence,  or  even 
of  Divine  immanence.  The  Blessed  Sacrament  is 
"  afire  with  God  "  more  intensely  than  is  "  the  wayside 
bush."  To  deny  that  involves  the  denial  of  the  true 
doctrine  of  the  Incarnation.     How  God  can  locahse 


88        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        iii 

His  presence  I  do  not  pretend  to  know  ;  that  He  does 
so  I  know  as  surely  as  I  know  anything. 

Once  more  the  crucifix  is  stamped  upon  every  word 
of  the  service.  This  is  the  way  along  which  we  must 
lead  men  if  we  are  to  bring  them  to  the  Cross.  Enough 
paper  and  ink  have  already  been  wasted  in  the  course  of 
the  world's  story  on  arguments  about  the  sacrificial 
aspect  of  the  Eucharist.  Really  one  might  as  well 
argue  about  the  Christian  view  of  God.  It  was  a 
positive  delight,  an  accepted  duty,  to  do  so  when  one 
was  first  ordained  ;  but  now  ?  No  one  who  has  knelt 
at  the  Holy  Mysteries  amid  the  din  of  shot  and  shell 
will  have  failed  to  see  the  obvious  truth  that  the 
Eucharist  is  sacrifice.  The  Christian  who  comes  there 
to  meet  his  Lord  feels  powerfully  that  he  must  learn 
to  say  "I  bear  in  my  body  the  marks  of  the  Lord  Jesus  ' ' ; 
the  pictured  Lamb  with  His  hands  and  feet  and  head 
and  side  punctured  with  wounds  that  tell  of  love,  and 
ask  for  no  less,  cries  "  sacrifice  "  in  each  communion 
so  loudly  that  we  see  the  need  for  engraving  upon  our 
lives  the  motto  of  St.  Paul,  "  I  die  daily." 

From  this,  the  highest  point  of  sacramental  union 
with  our  Leader,  we  soldiers  of  the  Lion  of  the  tribe  of 
Judah  can  learn  the  fighting  value  of  all  other  means 
of  grace.  Their  object  is  the  same,  each  in  its  own 
degree — to  equip  us  for  the  more  effective  batthng 
against  the  powers  of  evil  so  rampant  in  the  world. 
War  is  a  sordid  and  horrible  thing,  but  it  can  be 
waged  gloriously  in  the  spirit  of  "  gallant  and  high- 
hearted happiness,"  when  the  motive  is  pure  and  un- 
defiled.  Much  more  true  is  this  of  the  Christian 
campaign.     Only  cut  the  throat  of  selfishness  and  bury 


Ill     BELIEFS  EMPHASISED  BY  THE  WAR     89 

it  unhonoured  and  unsung  at  the  first  cross-roads  of 
life.  The  sacraments  are  the  pledges  of  fellowship, 
the  love  chains  of  the  brotherhood,  the  gloriously 
encirchng  bands  of  the  Body  of  Christ,  the  kisses  of 
Jesus  for  His  Bride,  Perish  the  thought  that  conceives 
them  as  merely  sentimental.  They  are  all  power, 
and  communicate  the  fierceness  of  the  Man  of  Sorrows 
against  all  that  is  wrong.  But  no  one  need  fight  a 
lonely  battle  in  some  unnoticed  corner.  Each  can 
summon  the  full  resources  of  the  great  army  to  his 
side.  In  this  way  weakhngs  have  become  more  than 
conquerors,  and  Avill  do  so  again. 


III. 

THE    FUTURE    LIFE. 

The  Church  of  England  seems  to  have  shrunk  from 
dealing  with  this  subject  because  of  a  somewhat  foolish 
fear.  It  was  felt  in  Reformation  times  that  some 
abuses  could  only  be  dealt  Math  by  eliminating  entirely 
the  practice,  which  led  to  the  abuse,  from  the  Book  of 
Common  Prayer.  It  is  rather  like  the  process  of  cutting 
off  your  nose  to  spite  your  face.  It  is  true  that  we 
gather  from  the  writings  of  several  of  the  Reformers 
that  in  their  opinion  the  time  would  come  when  with 
the  proper  safeguards  Prayer  for  the  Departed  could 
be  restored.  That  time  has  never  come.  But  to-day 
men  are  asking  questions  about  the  state  of  the 
departed  ;  they  want  to  know  whether  the  Church 
can  shed  any  light  on  the  subject.     We  still  have  to 


90        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        iii 

proceed  warily  for  three  reasons  :  (a)  it  is  a  subject 
which  has  been 

Profaned  by  every  charlatan 
And  soiled  by  all  ignoble  use  ; 

(6)  the  spiritualist  has  renewed  his  activities,  and  seems 
to  some  of  us  to  profess  too  much,  an  attitude  of  mind 
not  unknown  among  some  preachers  who  have  consti- 
tuted themselves  specialists  ;  (c)  we  are  face  to  face 
with  the  studied  reserve  of  Jesus  and  His  disciples  in 
the  matter. 

Yet  all  that  we  know  must  come  from  Scripture. 
We  need  not  trouble  ourselves  with  current  Jewish 
eschatology.  Our  Lord,  for  instance,  used  it  as  the 
background  for  the  parable  of  Dives  and  Lazarus, 
but  He  was  teaching  a  moral  lesson,  and  not  giving 
instruction  about  the  future  life.  But  we  find  Him 
telling  the  dying  thief  that  he  would  enjoy  that  day 
the  companionship  of  his  Master  in  Paradise — ^that 
gives  us  a  definite  abode  of  departed  sj^irits,  to  use  a 
well-known  phrase  ;  we  should  be  more  correct  perhaps 
if  we  said  a  definite  state  of  waiting.  "To  be  with 
Christ  "  is  St.  Paul's  term,  which  implies  some  conscious 
recognition  of  Him  and  some  comfort  from  the  realisa- 
tion of  His  nearness.  The  thief  had  much  to  learn. 
His  initial  act  of  faith  was  analogous  to  that  which  we 
enjoy  at  the  moment  of  conversion,  which  is  the 
beginning  of  a  long  process.  The  why  and  the  wherefore 
of  our  existence,  our  relation  to  God,  our  possibilities 
in  another  sphere — these  are  points  about  which  he 
knew  nothing  and  with  regard  to  which  we  are  hazy. 
Further,  the  process  of  the  taking  of  his  manhood 
into   God    through  Jesus   could    scarcely    have    been 


Ill     BELIEFS  EMPHASISED  BY  THE  WAR     91 

comijleted  either  by  his  confession  of  faith  or  by  his 
act  of  dying. 

But  we  are  told  by  St.  Peter  of  certain  activities  of 
Jesus  in  the  newer  state,  and  in  consequence  the  Church 
has  seen  fit  to  insert  a  clause  in  the  Creed  on  the  subject 
of  His  entry  into  that  state.  We  read  of  a  mission  in 
that  region,  a  preaching  to  the  spirits  in  prison — a 
most  Christ-like  thing.  It  can  only  mean  a  self -revela- 
tion of  Jesus  to  those  beyond  the  veil,  which  postulates 
a  state  in  which  there  is  conscious  activity  and  a 
continuity  of  life.  (Can  we  dare  to  say  that  this 
only  refers  to  victims  of  catastrophe  ?)  The  thought 
is  not  developed,  which  is  an  excellent  sign,  nor  is  it 
drawn  out  at  length  in  the  later  work,  the  Aj)ocalypse, 
which  is  also  healthy.  These  facts  tell  us  plainly  that 
we  are  not  meant  to  know  a  great  deal  about  the 
future  life,  but  we  know  enough  to  fill  us  with  hope  and 
thankfulness. 

On  the  face  of  it  the  mere  shedding  of  the  body 
cannot  make  great  changes  at  once  in  the  character. 
This  removes  the  chief  medium  of  temptation  for  a 
large  proportion  of  peoj^le.  But  I  should  hesitate 
before  saying  that  anyone  is  beyond  the  reach  of 
temptation  just  because  he  has  passed  from  this 
sphere.  I  can  see  no  warrant  for  so  saying.  It  must 
be  allowed  that  with  a  clarified  vision  and  a  larger 
outlook  temptation  may  be  bereft  of  much  of  its 
power  ;  yet  a  life  which  has  been  given  wholly  to  some 
kinds  of  sin,  such  as  lying,  hatred,  and  blasphemy, 
would  find  plenty  of  opportunity  for  continuing  them. 
The  Bible  is  particularly  hard  on  liars,  and  we  can 
quite  understand  the  attitude.     On  the  other  hand, 


92        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        m 

given  a  deep-seated    desire  for   spiritual  progress,   a 
real  ambition  for  worship,  there  will  be  an  instant 
beginning  of  a  real  forward  movement  as  soon  as  the 
limitations  imposed  by  the  flesh  are  removed.     The 
first  and  most  obvious  process  must  be  that  of  purifica- 
tion.    As  St.  Paul  puts  it,  "  We  have  all  sinned."     We 
all  know  well  enough  that  every  sin  has  a  lasting  effect. 
We  know  also  that  each  one  has  effects  outside  the 
life  of  the  person  who  commits  it.     Some  suffer  real 
and  agonised  remorses  in  this  world  in  the  recollection 
of  these  wider  results  ;   but  some  do  not.     It  is  perhaps 
a  matter  of  temperament.     One  cannot  suppose  those 
who  cause  much  pain  and  suffering  to  others  in  the 
world,  and  who  do  not  worry  about  it,  are  therefore 
going  to  escape  scot-free.     Hell  has  been  over-defined 
by  some  fooHsh  people,  but  it  has  been  under-defined 
by  others  more  foolish.     Some  of  us  know  something 
of  what  hell  means  in  this  life,  and  cannot  but  feel 
that  it  will  be  even  more  of  a  reality  when  sensitiveness 
is  quickened.     The  Church  of  England  bids  us  pray 
thus  for  a  soul  on  the  point  of  departure  :  "Wash  it, 
we  pray  Thee,  in  the  Blood  of  that  immaculate  Lamb 
that  was  slain  to  take  away  the  sins  of  the  world  ; 
that   whatsoever   sins   and   defilements   it   may   have 
contracted  in  the  midst  of  this  miserable  and  naughty 
world,  through  the  lusts  of  the  flesh  or  the  wiles  of 
Satan,  being  purged  and  done  away,  it  may  be  presented 
pure  and  without  spot  before  Thee."     The  Prayer-book 
gives  no  order  as  to  what  to  pray  when  the  soul  has 
actually  departed.     As  it  is  only  then  that  the  process 
referred  to  can  be  experienced,  it  seems    sensible  to 
continue  the  same  prayer. 


Ill     BELIEFS  EMPHASISED  BY  THE  WAR     93 

It  is  clear,  then,  that  officially  we  recognise  a  process 
of  cleansing  and  purifying  in  preparation  for  a  perfect 
communion  with  an  all-pure  God.  The  more  that 
process  is  carried  out  here,  the  less  it  will  be  needed 
afterwards.  To  argue  "  Why  worry  about  it  at  all 
here,  if  it  can  be  done  afterwards  ?  "  is  quite  vicious. 
And  with  such  an  opinion  goes  the  claim  that  a  man 
who  dies  in  battle  is  for  that  reason  necessarily  saved. 
Many  of  us  have  met  a  similar  belief  in  popular  theology 
before  the  war.  We  have  stood  at  the  bed  upon  which, 
lay  the  body  of  a  hardened  and  oft-convicted  criminal 
to  hear  some  relative  say  "  Ah,  poor  dear,  he's  in 
heaven  now."  All  these  views  seem  to  leave  utterly 
out  of  sight  the  central  point,  the  continuity  of  existence. 
A  wise  old  writer  put  the  matter  in  a  nutshell  :  "  He 
that  is  righteous,  let  him  be  righteous  still ;  he  that 
is  filthy,  let  him  be  filthy  still." 

I  suppose  that  the  chief  interest  among  the  masses 
for  the  moment  centres  round  the  possibility  of  com- 
munion with  the  departed  such  as  is  dealt  with  in 
"  Raymond."  It  may  as  well  be  stated  at  once  that 
all  that  the  Church  of  England  can  give  will  mean 
comfort  and  hope  to  the  true  Christian,  while  to  those 
who  are  only  curiously  inquiring  it  will  mean  dis- 
appointment. Communion  with  the  departed  is  a 
soUd  reality  in  the  Body  of  Christ,  a  communion 
cemented  by  prayer  which  is  mutual.  There  can  be 
little  room  for  doubt  on  the  subject  in  the  minds  of 
Christians.  The  dej)arted  have  their  needs,  though  we 
know  little  enough  of  their  nature.  For  these  they 
themselves  will  pray.  But  their  prayers  are  far  less 
likely  to  be  purely  selfish  now  than  when  they  were 


94        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        iii 

with  us.  Memory  will  be  keener  than  ever  and  love 
more  strong.  Their  prayers  for  us  should  be  of 
immense  value  and  might  well  explain  some  of  the 
phenomena  of  life.  For  ourselves,  we  have  now  got 
beyond  the  once  popular  attitude  expressed  by 
Swinburne  : 

Thou  art  far  too  far  for  wings  of  words  to  follow, 
Far  too  far  off  for  any  thought  or  prayer 
*♦*«** 
Our  dreams  pursue  our  dead  and  do  not  find. 

We  feel  that  in  prayer  we  and  they  together  are 

Bound  by  gold  chains  about  the  feet  of  God. 

And  we  shall  probably  frame  our  petitions  on  the  lines 
of  the  prayer  in  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  already 
quoted. 

Yet  surely  there  is  a  moment  of  closer  nearness  in 
the  Holy  Mysteries.  Bishop  Gore  worked  out  for  us 
some  thoughts  on  the  corporateness  of  the  Church 
Catholic  as  conceived  in  the  idea  of  feeding  on  the 
Body  of  Christ.  The  thought  really  lies  too  deep  for 
words  ;  but  we  feel  that  it  means  the  imparting  of  a 
wonderful  reahty  to  the  union  between  us  and  ours  in 
Him.  That  they  still  feed  on  the  Heavenly  Food  we 
can  scarcely  doubt.  The  need  for  signs,  symbols,  and 
sacraments  passes  with  the  passing  of  the  body,  but 
the  realities  behind  them  remain,  and  the  need  for 
those  realities  can  never  pass. 

It  must  be  of  some  importance  that  they  are  still 
human.  No  notice  seems  ever  to  be  taken  of  this  fact. 
If  the  purpose  and  method  of  the  Incarnation  had 
been  the  conversion  of  the  Godhead  into  flesh  the  whole 
thing   would    have   been  of  transitory   meaning    and 


Ill     BELIEFS  EMPHASISED  BY  THE  WAR     95 

importance,  as  flesh  is.  Half  our  outlook  upon  life 
seems  to  be  based  upon  that  erroneous  assumption  ; 
and  a  good  deal  of  our  practice  and  teaching.  But  the 
whole  scheme  of  redemption  was  calculated  to  deal 
not  with  flesh  but  with  something  not  transitory — 
manhood.  The  purpose  in  view  was  the  taking  of  the 
manhood  into  God.  Our  eternal  glory  will  be  that  we 
are  human,  and  we  shall  never  be  gods.  So  the  work 
of  the  after-life  is  the  being  knit  closer  into  the  Body 
— the  manhood — of  Christ  in  order  that  one  day  the 
perfect  whole  may  be  taken  into  God  in  a  final  act  of 
redemption  and  oblation. 

We  gather  from  words  and  actions  of  Our  Lord  that 
family  ties  are  too  much  accentuated  by  us  in  this 
life  ;  He  drew  the  attention  of  His  hsteners  away  from 
the  Holy  Mother  and  other  relatives  who  asked  for 
Him  to  the  contemplation  of  the  greater  family.  And 
it  seems  probable  that  the  attention  of  all  will  be, 
beyond  the  veil,  more  surely  fixed  on  that  wider  aspect 
of  the  brotherhood.  Our  sorrows  and  our  yearnings 
are,  perhaps,  a  httle  too  selfish,  though  it  sounds  a 
hard  word. 

The  whole  question  is  summed  in  this  :  Is  Christ 
a  reahty,  truly  and  personally  present  with  us  ?  If  so, 
there  can  be  no  difficulty  about  communion  with  our 
departed. 

***** 

This  may  all  be  scrappy  and  staccato.  The  aim  is  to 
show  that  far  from  needing  a  lessening  of  dogmatic 
teaching  this  generation  needs  more  than  anything  else 
real  definite  instruction,  and  particularly  in  the  matters 
here  touched  upon,  as  the  war  has  pointed  out.     Yet 


96        THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        iii 

our  aim  must  not  be  to  divide  but  to  unite.  That 
way  progress  lies.  It  is  not  here  possible  to  deal  with 
speculative  theology  save  to  enter  a  plea  that  some 
freedom  be  allowed  to  us.  We  do  not  know  all  that 
there  is  to  know  about  God  and  His  methods  ;  and 
even  though  our  attempts  at  a  higher  knowledge  in 
newer  circumstances  draw  upon  us  the  unkindly 
criticism  of  the  orthodox,  we  shall  not  be  deterred 
from  our  pilgrimage  in  search  of  truth. 

Man  knows  partly  but  conceives  beside, 

Creeps  ever  on  from  fancies  to  the  fact, 

And  in  this  striving — this  converting  air 

Into  a  solid  he  may  grasp  and  use — 

Finds  Progress — man's  distinctive  mark  alone. 

Not  God's,  and  not  the  beast's.      God  is — ^They  are, — 

Man  partly  is,  and  wholly  hopes  to  be. 

— Browning. 


IV 

FELLOWSHIP    IN   THE   CHURCH 
By  the   Rev.    M.    LINTON  SMITH,    D.S.O.,    D.D. 

Senior  Chaplain  to  the  Forces,  ■  Divisioti  ;  Hon.   Canon  of  Liverpool 

Cathedral ;  Rector  of  Winwick,  Lancashire  ;  and  Examining  Chaplain  to 
the  Bishop  of  Liverpool. 


H 


i 


IV 
FELLOWSHIP    IN   THE   CHURCH 

No  one  who  has  had  much  experience  with  the 
Expeditionary  Force  in  France  can  fail  to  be  struck 
with  the  extraordinary  goodfellowship  and  friendly 
co-operation  which  exist  between  its  members,  quite 
apart  from  any  official  organisation  or  control ;  and 
advantage  is  taken  of  it  in  many  different  ways.  The 
wise  man  who  wants  to  reach  some  fairly  distant 
point  avoids  the  railways,  with  their  irksome  stoppages, 
and  the  restrictions  of  the  R.T.O.  (odious  initials  for 
Railway  Transport  Officer),  who  naturally  thinks  more 
of  avoiding  delays  than  of  the  comfort  or  convenience 
of  the  hundreds  who  pass  continually  through  his 
hands  ;  he  launches  out  boldly  on  to  the  main  roads, 
questions  every  passing  lorry  till  he  finds  one  that  will 
serve  him  for  the  whole  or  part  of  his  journey,  and  then 
boards  it  without  ceremony,  to  find  that,  if  the  front 
seat  of  comfort  is  full,  one  of  the  occupants  is  almost 
sure  to  vacate  a  place,  and  take  his  post  on  the  rattUng, 
bumping  tailboard,  to  allow  the  wayfarer  to  travel  in 
comparative  ease.     The  chaplain  who  rides  alone  (some 

H  2 


100      THE   CHURCH  IN  THE   FURNACE         iv 

chaplains — tell  it  not  in  Gath — still  ride  a  horse,  none 
have  ever  had  two,  or  travelled  in  state  with  an 
orderly),  when  he  reaches  some  point  of  call,  dis- 
mounts, and  finds  at  once  a  bystander  who  comes 
forward  and  offers  to  hold  the  horse,  or  to  take  it  to 
the  nearest  stable,  and  not  infrequently,  if  his  stay 
be  prolonged,  he  is  met  on  his  return  with  the  news 
that  his  horse  has  been  watered  and  fed,  though  fodder 
is  scarce,  and  rations  nicely  calculated  ;  nor  is  any 
reward  expected.  It  is  manifested  in  other  ways  ; 
there  is  nothing  which  holds  the  citizen  soldier  of  the 
New  Army  to  his  duty  and  his  post  as  strongly  as  this 
seKsame  sense  of  fellowship.  Two  examples  must 
suffice :  On  the  first  Sunday  spent  by  a  new  division 
in  France  the  chaplain  of  one  of  the  brigades  had 
arranged  a  celebration  for  a  battalion  containing  many 
earnest  communicants  in  the  ranks — men  used  at  home 
to  communicate  fasting — at  an  early  hour  which  he 
believed  would  be  free  ;  some  officers  ajjpeared,  but 
no  men  ;  when  the  secretary  of  the  Brigade  branch  of 
the  C.E.M.S.  was  asked  the  reason,  his  reply  was, 
"  If  we  had  come,  we  should  have  had  to  leave  our  share 
of  the  fatigues  to  others,  and  that  would  not  have 
commended  our  religion."  Nine  months  afterwards 
the  same  division  had  been  drawn  out  of  the  Somme 
battle,  having  lost  very  heavily  indeed  in  casualties, 
and  had  gone  to  a  quieter  part  of  the  line.  Less  than 
a  fortnight  later  the  chaplain  passed  a  di-aft  on  the 
road,  marching  to  join  its  units  ;  most  of  the  faces  were 
new,  but  among  the  rear  files  were  several  well-known 
ones.  "  Why,  lads,  you  were  hit  at  Guillemont,  weren't 
you  ?  "  was  the  greeting.     "  Yes,  but  when  we  heard 


IV  FELLOWSHIP   IN  THE   CHURCH        101 

that  the  boys  were  going  into  the  hne  again,  we  asked 
to  be  allowed  to  rejoin  at  once,"  was  the  cheerful  reply  ; 
their  wounds,  slight  as  they  were,  were  not  a  fortnight 
old,  and  the  strain  of  an  attack  which  had  failed  and 
cost  their  battalion  very  dear  was  written  on  their 
faces.  But  to  be  "  with  the  boys  "  they  were  ready  to 
face  it  all  again. 

This  feehng  of  fellowship  persists  through  all  barriers, 
and  crosses  all  lines  of  demarcation.  The  fact  that  so 
many  officers  of  the  New  Armies  have  served  in  the 
ranks,  and  have  obtained  their  commissions  there- 
from, has  done  a  good  deal,  Avithout  any  marked 
prejudice  to  discipline,  to  blur  the  sharp  line  which 
existed  in  the  standing  army  between  officer  on  the 
one  hand  and  N.C.O.  and  man  on  the  other.  The  social 
differences  between  ranks  have  largely  vanished,  as 
the  manhood  of  the  whole  nation  has  poured  forth  to 
serve  in  the  field  ;  and,  strong  as  was  the  feeling  of 
comradeship  between  officer  and  men  of  the  best  type 
in  the  Regular  Army,  it  may  be  asserted  with  confidence 
that,  especially  when  the  shortness  of  acquaintance 
between  all  ranks  in  the  Service  Battalions  is  taken 
into  account,  the  fellowship  of  the  New  Army  is  more 
thoroughgoing  and  all-pervading. 

But  fellowship  is  essentially  a  characteristic  of  the 
New  Testament.  This  essay  is  written  far  from  com- 
mentaries and  concordances,  but  St.  James  seems  to 
be  the  only  apostolic  writer  who  fails  to  use  Koivwvelv 
or  its  compounds  ;  and  his  emphasis  on  brotherhood 
(his  favourite  address  is  dSeXcfjoi,)  contains  the  idea. 
The  writer  to  the  Hebrews  prefers  fieTex^iv,  but  the 
other  root  occurs.    The  Petrine  writings  also  express 


102       THE   CHURCH  IN  THE   FURNACE       iv 

the  idea  without  the  word,  save  that  in  2  Peter  we  find 
the  phrase  Koivwvoi  Trj<i  Oeia^  ^ycreo)?.  But  when 
we  turn  to  St.  Paul  and  St.  John,  the  verb  and  its 
cognates  are  in  constant  occurrence  ;  true,  the  latter 
uses  it  more  frequently  of  man's  relation  with  God, 
hut  the  opening  words  of  his  first  epistle  give  both 
aspects  (1  John  i,  3)  ;  and  while  St.  Paul  emphasises 
rather  the  fellowship  between  man  and  man,  such 
passages  as  Eph.  ii,  5-7,  where  compounds  of  aw-  give 
the  idea,  express  his  sense  of  fellowship  with  the  Divine. 
Finally  the  historian  of  the  development  of  the  early 
Church  pictures  fellowship  at  work,  ahke  in  the  first 
beginnings  of  the  faith,  when  the  members  of  the 
Jerusalem  Church  had  all  things  in  common,  and  in 
the  last  picture  which  he  presents,  the  arrival  of  the 
apostle  Paul  at  Rome,  when  the  members  of  the  Church 
in  that  city  came  out  to  meet  the  prisoner  and  conduct 
him  in  honour  on  the  final  stages  of  his  journey. 

It  would  be  hard  to  maintain  that  fellowship  is  one 
of  the  distinctive  marks  of  the  Christian  Church  at  the 
present  day  ;  it  is  not  wholly  absent  ;  but  it  finds  its 
expression  rather  in  the  smaller  units  of  the  parish  and 
the  congregation  than  in  any  conscious  bond  of  union 
between  members  of  a  great  society,  whether  we 
confine  the  term  "  Church  "  to  our  o^vn  communion 
or  use  it  more  loosely  and  widely  to  cover  the  various 
and,  too  often,  rival  bodies  which  profess  and  call 
themselves  Christian  ;  they  would  all  claim  fellowship 
with  the  Lord,  but  fellowship  one  with  another  is 
conspicuous  by  its  absence  ;  the  more  widely  that  the 
term  "  Church  "  is  used,  the  less  can  fellowship  be  said 
to  be  one  of  its  characteristics. 


IV  FELLOWSHIP   IN  THE   CHURCH        103 

This  contrast  with  the  teaching  and  practice,  of  the 
New  Testament  naturally  challenges  inquiry  ;  and  the 
experience  of  the  nation  in  arms  robs  of  its  force  the 
excuse  that  the  growth  and  size  of  the  society  have 
rendered  impossible  that  personal  knowledge  between 
man  and  man  which  is  alleged  to  be  necessary  for  true 
fellowship :  there  is  no  such  personal  knowledge 
amongst  the  members  of  the  Expeditionary  Force  as  a 
whole,  and  yet  the  sense  of  comradeship  is  a  great 
reality,  and  has  its  immediate  fruits  in  a  ready  and 
painstaking  co-operation. 

It  will  not,  perhaps,  be  unprofitable  briefly  to  inquire 
what  are  the  causes  of  this  defection,  especially  with 
regard  to  our  own  communion  ;  the  blame  cannot  be 
laid  merely  upon  Anglo-Saxon  independence,  and  love 
of  individual  freedom,  though  that  has  played  its  part 
in  weakening  the  sense  of  membership  among  EngMsh- 
speaking  Christians  ;  the  army  in  France  with  its 
strong  consciousness  of  fellowship  is  drawn  from  the 
same  race  as  the  Church  of  England,  and  indeed  some 
70  per  cent,  of  the  troops  are  nominally  Churchmen. 

The  last  phrase  suggests  another  factor  :  the 
principle  "  cujus  regio  ejus  religio  "  is  by  no  means 
unknown  in  Western  Christendom,  and  its  recognition 
is  fatal  to  that  earnest  conviction  and  strenuous  faith 
which  are  the  true  basis  of  Church  membership  ;  but 
this  reason  would  not  account  for  the  lack  of  fellow- 
ship between  convinced  Christians  and  devout  Church- 
men :  let  us  narrow  the  scope  of  our  inquiry  to  these  ; 
for  if  they  were  to  show  a  true  KOivwvta,  the  efifect 
upon  the  fringe  of  nominal  members  would  be  very 
great. 


104.      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        iv 

Three  causes  stand  out  prominently  as  contributory 
to  disunion  in  the  Church — partisanship,  social  distinc- 
tions, and  suspicion  between  clergy  and  laity  ;  let  us 
deal  briefly  with  each  of  these  in  turn. 

(1)  The  Church  of  England  is  confessedly  a  via 
media  ;  her  boast  is  that  it  hath  been  her  wisdom 
"  to  keep  the  mean  between  the  two  extremes  "  :  she 
represents  on  the  rehgious  side  the  hopeless  illogicahty 
and  the  genius  for  compromise  which  are  characteristic 
of  the  race ;  and  consequently  she  has  room  within  her 
borders  for  very  different  types  of  religious  expression  : 
she  has  set  her  bounds  wide  ;  her  appeal  to  Holy  Writ 
deals  only  with  what  is  to  be  required  of  her  members 
in  faith  or  practice,  and  does  not  exclude  voluntary 
uses  which  may  commend  themselves  to  her  children, 
though  she  has  definitely  ruled  out  certain  practices 
which  history  proves  to  have  been  useless  or  mis- 
chievous :  she  requires  comparatively  little,  she  allows 
much.  If  the  circumstances  of  her  revolt  from  Rome 
gave  her  for  the  first  two  and  a  half  centuries  of  her 
existence  a  predominantly  Protestant  aspect,  the 
secession  of  the  Methodists  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century  destroyed  the  predominance  of  that  element, 
and  left  room  for  the  Oxford  Movement  to  set  the 
pendulum  swinging  to  the  other  extreme.  Both  High 
Churchman  and  Low  Churchman,  Evangelical  and 
Catholic,  have  confidently  appealed  to  the  formularies 
of  the  Church  as  justifying  their  existence  within  her 
fold  :  so  far  they  have  been  right  ;  but  when  they 
have  gone  further,  and  have  claimed  that  these  same 
formularies  deny  the  right  of  their  opponents  to  a  like 
position,  they  have  been  untrue  to  the  spirit  of  the 


IV  FELLOWSHIP  IN  THE   CHURCH        105 

mother  that  bare  them.  The  old  Adam  is  not  dead  in 
the  Church  ;  human  nature  is  always  ready  to  claim 
privileges  and  shirk  responsibihties  ;  and  there  are 
few  higher  responsibilities  which  the  privilege  of 
Church  membership  lays  upon  those  who  enjoy  it  than 
the  duty  of  so  bearing  themselves  towards  their 
brethren  who  claim  to  share  the  privilege,  but  differ  in 
the  incidence  of  its  interpretation,  as  to  reduce  possible 
friction  to  a  minimum,  and,  on  the  condition  of  self- 
denying  loyalty  to  the  society  and  her  Lord,  of  agreeing 
to  differ  in  peace  and  love.  The  desire  to  forward  one's 
own  side  at  all  costs,  and  the  refusal  to  recognise  the 
rights  of  others,  which  are  of  the  essence  of  partisan- 
ship, have  much  to  answer  for  in  the  weakening  of 
the  sense  of  fellowship. 

(2)  There  can  be  httle  question  that  social  distinc- 
tions have  done  great  harm  ;  they  have  attacked  the 
Church,  and  the  Church's  counter-attack  has  been 
feeble.  The  very  nature  of  the  Reformation  in  England, 
working  from  above  downwards,  tended  to  give  wealth 
and  position  an  undue  prominence  ;  and  instead  of 
democracy  coming  to  its  own  first  in  Church  govern- 
ment, and  then  spreading  to  the  civil  sphere,  the  process 
has  been  reversed.  No  one  can  examine  the  rehgious 
divisions  of  our  country  without  reahsing  how  closely 
they  correspond  with  certain  social  lines  of  cleavage  ; 
the  alliance  between  squire  and  parson  in  the  country 
lost  the  Church  her  hold  on  many  rural  districts  ;  the 
social  exclusiveness  of  Church  circles  repelled  the  self- 
made  men  of  the  Industrial  Revolution  ;  the  com- 
placent churchmanship  of  the  employer  has  often 
ahenated  the  sympathies  of  the  employed,  who  see 


106      THE   CHURCH  IN  THE   FURNACE        iv 

almost  exclusively  a  wholly  different  side  of  his  char- 
acter. Men's  religious  instincts,  clamantly  demanding 
expression,  have  di'iven  them  to  the  formation  of 
societies  where  they  feel  at  home,  in  which  their  abiHties 
find  employment,  and  for  the  support  of  which  they  feel 
a  definite  responsibihty.  They  have  found  fellowship 
by  the  formation  of  smaller  societies,  drawn  from 
narrower  circles,  and  lacking  the  widening  influence 
which  a  truly  cathohc  Church  should  exercise  upon  her 
children  ;  they  and  the  Church  ahke  have  been  losers 
by  this  withdrawal ;  and,  quite  apart  from  the  bicker- 
ings and  jealousies  which  arise  between  the  different 
bodies,  unrestrained  in  their  development  by  any  clear 
sense  of  a  common  cause  and  a  common  aim,  fellow- 
ship has  been  weakened  by  the  separation  of  the 
religious  hfe  of  the  country  into  almost  sympathy- 
tight  compartments. 

(3)  The  third  cause  which  may  be  reckoned  as 
operating  against  true  fellowship  is  the  suspicion  which 
exists,  not  without  some  reasonable  ground,  between 
clergy  and  laity.  Anti -clericalism  is  by  no  means 
unknown  in  England,  though  we  may  be  thankful  that 
it  has  not  taken  the  openly  anti -religious  form  in  which 
it  is  found  on  the  Continent ;  it  smoulders  below  the 
surface,  and  only  blazes  up  occasionally,  as  when,  to 
take  a  well-known  instance.  Colonel  Kenyon-Slaney 
proposed  his  amending  clause  to  the  Education  Bill  of 
1902,  and  brought  to  light  what  staunch  supporters 
of  the  Church  thought  of  unlimited  clerical  control  in 
the  elementary  schools.  More  often  it  finds  expression 
from  individuals,  when  a  layman  is  given  his  fling  (too 
rare  an  occurrence)  before  a  gathering  of  parsons,  or 


IV  FELLOWSHIP   IN   THE   CHURCH        107 

some  brusque  north-countryman  says  exactly  what  he 
thinks — and  a  httle  more — of  his  vicar.  The  layman's 
suspicion  proceeds  from  various  causes  ;  from  an 
ignorance  due  to  lack  of  a  frank  interchange  of  ideas 
and  familiar  intercourse  ;  from  the  autocratic  position 
given  by  the  parson's  freehold,  and  its  inconsiderate 
abuse  in  reckless  changes  and  ill-considered  expendi- 
ture ;  from  the  idea,  not  without  justification,  that  the 
clergy  are  so  certain  of  the  rightness  of  their  ends,  that 
they  are  not  always  very  scrupulous  as  to  the  means 
taken  to  attain  them  ;  and  from  the  knowledge  that 
a  man  who  is  always  putting  high  ideals  before  others 
is  in  grave  danger  of  allowing  his  practice  to  fall  far 
short  of  his  preaching.  The  parson  on  the  other  hand 
finds  that  the  criticism  of  his  work  has  often  been  made 
without  any  serious  attempt  to  understand  its  difficul- 
ties, and  that  those  who  are  most  clamorous  for  a  share 
of  management  and  control  are  the  least  ready  to  bear 
the  toil  of  spade-work  or  the  burden  of  responsibility. 
But  this  mutual  suspicion  and  lack  of  trust  are  a  deadly 
atmosphere  in  which  to  grow  the  fair  fruit  of  fellowship. 

Such  are  the  main  apparent  causes  of  the  lack  of 
fellowship  in  our  own  communion  ;  how  far  has  the 
experience  of  the  war  supplied  a  corrective  ? 

It  has  certainly  helped  to  break  down  the  barrier 
of  ignorance,  with  its  resulting  suspicion,  between 
clergy  and  laity  ;  chaplains  have  for  the  most  part 
lived  in  the  mess  with  the  officers  of  their  units,  and 
have  not  infrequently  changed  from  one  unit  to 
another.  What  the  experience  at  the  Base  may  be  is  a 
matter  beyond  the  knowledge  of  the  present  writer  ; 
but  to  live  in  a  mess  with  a  unit  on  the  march  or  in  the 


108      THE   CHURCH   IN  THE   FURNACE        iv 

trenches  is  to  be  brought  into  very  intimate  contact 
with  its  members  ;  to  eat  and  sleep  in  the  same  room 
with  four  or  five  other  men  does  not  leave  much  room 
for  any  mistakes  as  to  character.  The  chaplain  has 
occupied  no  sheltered  position  ;  his  rank,  as  a  rule,  is 
mediate,  above,  but  only  just  above,  the  subaltern, 
and  below  that  of  the  field  officer  :  true,  the  traditional 
respect  of  the  Regular  Army  for  the  padre  has  on  the 
whole  lived  on,  but  no  traditional  respect  will  save  him 
if  he  fails  to  "  make  good  "  by  his  own  character  and 
personality  ;  it  gives  him  his  chance  and  nothing  more  ; 
if  he  tries  to  win  favour  by  lowering  his  own  standard, 
he  is  forthwith  condemned,  "  You  can  say  an3rthing 
you  like,  apparently,  before  our  padre,"  was  the 
contemptuous  remark  of  a  young  stafE  officer  ;  "I  can 
understand  a  '  boy,'  and  I  can  understand  a  '  padi-e,' 
but  I  can't  understand  a  man  who  tries  to  be  both," 
was  the  comment  of  another.  But  in  the  large  majority 
of  cases  the  respect  and  affection  of  those  with  whom  he 
has  lived  have  been  the  chaplain's  reward ;  suspicion 
or  aversion  has  been  changed  into  confidence.  And 
the  chaplain  on  the  other  hand  has  learned  to  revise 
his  standard  of  judgment  ;  he  has  lived  with  men 
who  look  on  life  with  eyes  very  different  from  his 
own  ;  he  has  found  that  some  of  the  acts  for  which 
he  has  condemned  others  prove  to  be  very  superficial 
to  their  true  character ;  he  has  found  under  rough 
exteriors,  and  rougher  tongues,  a  genuine  goodness 
and  a  sincere  directness  which  rouse  his  respect,  a 
hatred  for  meanness  and  crookedness  which  appeals 
strongly  to  him,  and  a  capacity  for  uncomplaining 
endurance  and  continuous  self-sacrifice  before  which 


IV  FELLOWSHIP  IN  THE   CHURCH        109 

he  stands  in  wondering  admiration.  He  has  learned, 
as  never  before,  to  know  men,  and  knowing  them  to 
respect  and  love  them  ;  and  so  on  his  side  as  well  a 
change  has  come,  and  the  old  distrust  has  been  removed. 
It  may  be  urged  that  the  number  of  chaplains  is  very 
small  in  comparison  to  the  vast  numbers  engaged,  and 
that  their  influence  on  the  life  of  the  nation  in  arms 
must  be  infinitesimal ;  but  if  the  verdict  of  those  in  high 
command,  men  with  special  facilities  for  forming  a 
judgment,  is  to  be  taken,  their  influence  is  out  of  all 
proportion  to  their  numbers.  One  definite  fact  may  be 
alleged  in  support  of  this  assertion  :  early  in  the  war 
the  visits  of  the  chaplain  to  the  fighting  hne  were 
viewed  with  suspicion  and  hedged  with  restrictions  ; 
that  suspicion  and  those  restrictions  have  almost 
entirely  vanished  :  one  army,  which  at  the  outset  of 
important  operations  limited  very  severely  the  activi- 
ties of  its  chaplains,  in  less  than  three  months  withdrew 
all  such  hampering  orders  and,  on  the  one  reasonable 
condition  that  they  did  not  accompany  the  actual 
waves  of  an  attack,  gave  them  complete  freedom  of 
action. 

The  reader  will  by  this  time  be  inclined  to  exclaim 
that  the  point  of  view  taken  by  this  Essay  is  an 
excellent  illustration  of  the  charge  brought  against  the 
Church  that  its  main  interest  lies  among  the  educated 
and  moneyed  classes  ;  for  in  deahng  with  the  removal  of 
prejudice  during  the  war,  it  has  spoken  only  of  the 
chaplains'  relations  with  ofiicers,  and  left  the  men  out 
of  view  altogether.  Such  an  objection  is  at  first  sight 
a  weighty  one,  but  further  consideration  will  show  that, 
things  being  as  they  are,  the  chaplains  drawn  like  their 


110     THE   CHURCH  IN  THE   FURNACE        iv 

brethren  from  the  educated  classes,  and  ranking  in 
the  Army  as  officers,  the  question  of  breaking  down 
prejudice  among  the  men  is  intimately  connected  with 
the  whole  question  of  social  distinctions  within  the 
Church  ;  and  for  that  reason  it  has  seemed  better  to 
reserve  the  question  of  the  improvement  of  feeling 
among  the  men  till  that  point  is  being  dealt  with. 

The  crudest  prejudice  amongst  the  men  is  probably 
that  of  the  old  Scotch  gillie,  who,  seeing  two  parsons 
tugging  at  the  oar,  expressed  his  surprise,  on  the 
ground  that  he  had  always  thought  that  "  all  meenisters 
was  auld  weemen  "  :  the  covert  sneer  in  the  columns  of 
a  paper  more  remarkable  for  wit  and  vivacity  than 
for  the  accuracy  of  its  information — that  one  of  the 
signs  of  an  attack  was  the  number  of  chaplains  who 
rolled  up  near  the  front — is  perhaps  a  sufficient  evidence 
that  it  has  vanished  in  the  light  of  facts. 

The  question  of  the  chaplain's  rank  is  much  less 
easy  to  deal  with.  It  is  certainly  useful  to  him  in  his 
official  character  ;  in  his  dealings  with  the  orderly  room 
or  the  brigade  office,  in  his  work  of  organising  and 
arranging  services,  he  would  certainly  be  at  a  distinct 
disadvantage  without  it.  In  his  relations  with  the  men 
it  is  rather  a  hindrance  to  be  overcome  ;  it  removes 
him  to  a  distance  ;  the  duty  of  frequent  saluting  is 
irksome,  and  certainly  adds  to  the  irritation  which  a 
certain  class  of  man  seems  to  feel  at  the  very  sight  of 
a  parson  ;  but  the  hindrance  can  be  overcome  :  the 
second  thoughts,  at  least,  of  that  chaplain  must  have 
been  a  kind  of  devout  pride  to  whom  the  reply  was 
made,  when  he  offered  to  call  in  an  older  and  more 
experienced   man,     "  No,  thank  you,  sir  ;     if   I   was 


IV  FELLOWSHIP  IN  THE   CHURCH        111 

talking  to  him,  I  should  feel  that  I  was  speaking  to  an 
officer  and  a  gentleman." 

It  is  soon  recognised  that  the  chaplain,  despite  his 
badges, — the  use  of  any  title  is  against  orders — 
is  different  from  other  officers,  that  he  takes  a  more 
personal  and  unofficial  interest  in  the  men  with  whom 
he  has  to  deal,  and  that  he  is  often  able  to  do  things 
for  which  the  combatant  officer  or  doctor  has  no 
leisure.  In  the  earher  days  the  organisation  of  canteens 
and  recreation  rooms  in  places  as  yet  unreached  by 
the  Y.M.C.A.  or  Church  Army  was  largely  the  work  of 
the  chaplain,  and  gave  him  a  valuable  point  of  contact 
with  his  flock  ;  these  were  often  quaint  and  apparently 
comfortless  places  ;  in  one  the  only  rule  was  that  mud 
might  be  put  anywhere  save  on  the  ceiling,  a  concession 
justified  by  the  state  of  the  trenches  close  behind  which 
it  lay.  But  soon  the  value  of  these  places  was  officially 
recognised,  and  divisions,  brigades,  and  even  battahons, 
began  to  run  their  own,  even  then  often  employing 
the  chaplain  to  supervise.  It  is  hard  for  those  who 
have  not  seen  the  actual  conditions  to  realise  the 
immense  advantage  to  the  men  of  having  places  close 
behind  the  line  where  at  all  hours  hot  drinks  may  be 
procured,  and,  when  transport  allows,  cigarettes  and 
other  supplements  to  rations  may  be  purchased. 

The  great  meeting-place  for  chaplain  and  man  was 
undoubtedly  the  trenches  ;  when  first  the  request  was 
made  to  be  allowed  to  visit  there,  the  usual  reply  was 
"  Why,  padre,  you  can't  have  services  up  there  !  " 
But  there  was  no  other  opportunity  of  getting  to  know 
individuals  of  anything  like  equal  value  ;  regular 
visiting  by  day,  with  care  not  to  awaken  the  sleepers, 


112      THE   CHURCH  IN  THE   FURNACE        iv 

or  distract  the  look-out,  and  an  occasional  night  patrol, 
even  if  it  were  impossible  to  live  up  in  the  line,  brought 
parson  and  flock  together,  one  by  one,  as  nothing  else 
could.  It  has  been  maintained  by  men  of  long  experi- 
ence with  much  reason  that  this  has  been  the  greatest 
opportunity  they  have  had.  "  I  do  nothing  for  the 
men,  and  yet  they  always  seem  glad  to  see  me  up 
there,"  was  the  comment  of  one  chaplain  recently  ; 
and  to  be  a  welcome  visitor  means  that  prejudice  has 
vanished  and  class  distinction  is  not  felt. 

But  there  is  another  side  on  which  chaplain  and  man 
have  been  brought  together,  and  that  in  the  direct 
exercise  of  ministerial  functions.  Whatever  may  have 
been  the  case  in  the  Regular  Army,  in  a  large  number  of 
service  battalions  it  has  been  among  the  men  that 
the  chaplain  has  found  the  greatest  response  to  his 
ministrations  ;  officers  have  sometimes  excused  them- 
selves for  absence  from  services  on  the  ground  that 
they  did  not  wish  to  spoil  "  the  men's  show."  In  the 
battalions  best  known  to  the  writer,  it  has  been  the 
men  who  have  given  the  lead  in  their  support  of  Church 
work  ;  they  have  recognised  that  the  chaplain  is  out 
for  their  good,  that  they  are  his  first  interest  and  care, 
that  their  convenience  is  studied  in  the  arrangement  of 
services,  and  if  the  chaplain  stands,  as  he  usually  does, 
for  the  Church  in  their  eyes,  they  have  come  to  learn 
that  in  the  eyes  of  that  Church  social  or  official  distinc- 
tions give  no  special  claim  on  her  services,  but  that  she 
ministers  without  favour  to  all  men  alike.  The  influ- 
ence of  this  impression  on  so  large  a  proportion  of  the 
manhood  of  the  nation  as  find  themselves  out  here 
cannot  but  be  felt  on  the  country  as  a  whole  when  they 


IV  FELLOWSHIP   IN   THE   CHURCH        113 

return,  and  another  of  the  great  hindrances  to  fellow- 
ship will  have  been  in  some  measure  removed. 

To  turn  now  to  the  question  of  partisanship,  it  may 
be  said  at  once  that  the  outlook  here  is  most  hopeful  ; 
it  has  been  conspicuous  by  its  absence.  Chaplains  of 
every  shade  of  opinion  and  school  of  thought  have 
worked  together  without  any  shadow  of  difference  ; 
we  have  heard  with  mingled  amusement  and  irritation 
that  good  folk  at  home  have  been  exercised  because 
an  undue  proportion  of  men  of  this  party  or  that  have 
been  sent  out  ;  the  question  out  here  about  any  man 
is  not  "  To  what  party  does  he  belong  ?  "  but  "Is  he 
capable  by  character  and  life  of  influencing  men  for 
good,  and  winning  them  for  God  and  His  Church  ?  " 
For  this,  the  magnitude  of  our  opportunity  has  been 
in  large  measure  responsible  ;  but  other  causes  have 
also  been  at  work  ;  we  have  been,  for  our  own  great 
good,  under  discipline.  There  lies  before  the  writer 
the  account  of  a  recent  vestry  meeting  at  which,  when 
an  attempt  was  made  by  the  parishioners,  mainly 
ex-office-bearers,  to  protest  against  certain  changes 
lately  made  in  the  services,  the  clerical  chairman 
closed  all  discussion  by  the  remark  "  We  are  not 
concerned  at  this  meeting  with  the  worship  in  the 
church."  One  wonders  what  would  have  happened 
to  the  chaplain  who  attempted  to  take  a  similar 
position  with  the  friendliest  brigadier  or  commanding 
officer.  We  have  been  given  wonderful  freedom  in 
the  exercise  of  our  ministry,  but  the  discipline  has 
been  there,  to  restrain  eccentricities  and  curb  idiosyn- 
crasies, and,  though  it  has  been  rarely  exercised,  we 
have  been  the  better  for  its  presence  in  the  background. 

z 


114      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        iv 

And  it  must  be  remembered  with  regard  to  the  future 
that,  now  that  a  great  proportion  of  the  nation  has 
learnt,  as  never  before,  what  true  disciph'ne  means,  it 
will,  less  than  ever,  tolerate  a  seK -assertive  indiscipline 
on  the  part  of  the  clergy.  More  than  once  the  uniform 
worship  and  rigid  disciphne  of  the  Roman  Church  have 
been  held  up  as  a  pattern  to  us  by  thoughtful  men 
out  here  ;  it  has  been  easy  to  point  out  how  foreign 
such  a  rigidity  is  to  our  national  character,  and  the 
argument  has  always  carried  weight.  But  variety  and 
elasticity  are  not  inconsistent  with  discipline  and 
reasonable  submission,  and  these  will  undoubtedly 
be  demanded  of  any  who  are  going  to  exercise  influence 
in  the  days  to  come. 

But  it  is  not  merely  discipline  which  has  checked 
aberrations,  and  brought  men  almost  to  a  common  use  ; 
it  is  the  force  of  circumstances  which  has  guided  many 
chaplains  to  administer  the  Eucharist  at  any  hour  of 
the  day  or  night,  in  order  that  men  under  great  pressure 
of  work,  or  in  daily  peril  of  their  lives,  might  not  be  de- 
prived of  the  opportunity  of  making  their  Communion. 
It  was  a  man  who  normally  would  advocate  fasting 
Communion  who,  before  his  battalions  went  into  action 
on  the  Somme,  went  round  evening  by  evening  to  each 
company  in  turn,  holding  service,  and  celebrating  for 
each,  with  the  result  that  from  those  two  battalions 
over  one  thousand  men  made  their  Communion.  It  is 
force  of  circumstances  which  has  brought  men,  normally 
accustomed  to  a  Puritan  simplicity  of  ritual,  and  marked 
absence  of  ornament,  to  use  cross  and  candles  as  they 
celebrated,  in  barn,  or  stable,  or  dug-out,  that  the 
surroundings    might    help   to    fix   the    minds    of    the 


IV  FELLOWSHIP   IN   THE   CHURCH        115 

worshippers  on  the  great  purpose  of  their  presence. 
It  was  a  chaplain  of  undoubted  Protestant  upbringing, 
and  equally  unquestioned  Protestant  principles,  who 
fitted  up  a  little  chapel  in  a  front-line  village,  with 
loot,  or,  as  he  called  it,  salvage,  from  the  wrecked 
church,  so  that  the  altar  glowed  with  a  cope  of  crimson 
velvet  and  cloth  of  gold,  the  walls  were  hung  with 
coloured  plaster  of  Paris  reliefs  of  the  Stations  of  the 
Cross,  and  the  reredos  presented  to  all  eyes  the  legend 
"  Ite  ad  Joseph."  It  has  not  been  by  surrender  of 
principles  that  this  harmony  has  been  brought  about  ; 
it  has  been  no  intolerant  and  ignorant  toleration  which 
has  led  to  these  results  ;  against  the  danger  of  that 
attitude  we  have  striven  again  and  again,  but  we  have 
been  driven  by  force  of  circumstances  to  approximate 
to  one  another  in  that  which  we  have  found  to  be  the 
dBid(f)opa  :  we  have  been  gently  shepherded  by  a 
benevolent  discipline  from  "  every  man  doing  that 
which  is  right  in  his  own  eyes,"  and  we  may,  we  believe, 
humbly  claim  that  in  the  great  task  which  has  been 
committed  to  us,  in  the  great  opportunity  with  which 
we  have  been  entrusted,  we  have  been  guided  by  the 
One  Spirit  into  a  harmony  of  co-operation,  and  a 
freedom  from  vexatious  differences  which  have  allowed 
us  to  work  together,  each  as  he  has  been  led,  for  the 
building  up  of  the  Body  of  Christ  among  the  manhood 
of  our  race. 

And  what  has  been  of  value  out  here  may  fairly  be 
supposed  to  be  efficacious  at  home.  It  is  not  that  new 
remedies  have  been  discovered  ;  the  old  ones  have 
been  applied  under  new  circumstances,  and  the  new 
circumstances  have  given  them  an  added  force.  There 

I  2 


116      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        iv 

must  be  the  resolute  setting  of  the  good  of  the  whole 
above  the  good  of  any  part  or  section,  the  self -discip- 
line and  self-restraint  which  count  harmonious  co- 
operation as  a  higher  thing  than  party  advantage  ;  it 
must  be  made  clear  that  the  interests  of  the  Church  lie 
in  men  because  they  are  men,  not  because  they  have 
position,  or  wealth,  or  education  ;  and  there  must  be 
the  patient  but  determined  effort  primarily  on  the  part 
of  the  clergy  to  break  down  by  personal  intercourse 
and  scrupulous  fair  dealing  the  barrier  of  suspicion 
between  themselves  and  the  laity. 

If  we  may  give  a  few  moments'  consideration  to  the 
question  of  fellowship  in  the  Church  in  a  larger  sense, 
it  may  at  once  be  said  that  the  personal  relations 
between  the  chaplains  of  the  dififerent  rehgious  bodies 
have  on  the  whole  been  excellent  ;  beyond  this  a  clear 
line  of  distinction  must  be  drawn. 

On  the  one  hand  the  official  recognition  of  the  various 
Nonconformist  bodies,  and  the  appointment  of  an 
adequate  supply  of  chaplains  to  minister  to  their  some- 
what scanty  and  scattered  congregations,  have  been 
wholly  for  good  ;  a  real  grievance  has  been  removed,  and 
opportunities  have  been  given  for  friendly  co-operation 
and  mutual  support.  Where  the  Nonconformist  chaplain 
has  been  a  true  Nonconformist  and  set  himself  to  look 
after  his  own  flock,  and  to  seek  to  reclaim  the  wanderers 
from  any  fold,  relations  have  been  of  the  pleasantest 
possible  nature  ;  the  only  friction  has  occurred  where 
a  man  has  settled  down  with  some  unit,  claimed  it  as 
his  own,  and  attempted  to  minister  to  all  the  men  therein 
irrespective  of  their  real  denominational  connection  ; 
such  cases,  always  rare,  have  steadily  tended  to  become 


IV  FELLOWSHIP   IN   THE    CHURCH        117 

rarer.  On  the  whole,  as  far  as  the  writer's  experience 
has  gone,  mutual  arrangements  about  funerals,  occa- 
sional jointservicesonspecial  occasions,  e.g'.,  the  National 
Mission,  or  a  memorial  service  after  an  action,  and  a 
general  exchange  of  good  offices  have  led  to  a  real  and 
friendly  understanding,  which  makes  for  fellowship, 
even  through  and  across  the  dividing  lines. 

It  were  much  to  be  wished  that  as  much  could  be 
said  for  relations  with  the  Roman  Communion.  The 
contemptuous  refusal  of  permission  to  use  if  only  the 
naves  of  the  churches  for  services  will  not  be  soon 
forgotten  ;  usually  the  only  large  buildings  in  the 
villages,  the  official  denial  of  any  permission  to  make 
use  of  them,  and  the  rigorous  watch  kept  to  see  that 
this  refusal  was  enforced,  have  driven  men  to  worship 
in  barn  and  school,  and  at  all  seasons,  even  with  snow 
upon  the  ground,  in  the  open  air  ;  it  has  doubled,  and 
more  than  doubled,  the  work  of  the  Church  of  England 
chaplains,  who  have  often  had  to  duplicate  their 
services  because  there  was  no  building,  apart  from  the 
church,  large  enough  to  accommodate  their  congrega- 
tions. And  in  another  direction  the  same  rigidity 
has  been  manifested.  Two  scenes  live  in  the  writer's 
memory.  Two  men  of  a  battalion  were  killed  up  in 
the  front  hne  ;  no  Church  of  England  chaplain  could 
be  brought  up  in  time  for  the  funeral  before  their 
battalion  was  reheved,  and  the  Roman  Catholic  priest 
refused  to  say  prayers  over  the  dead,  standing  by  the 
graveside  while  the  commanding  officer  of  the  regiment 
read  a  service  ;  it  is  fair  to  say  that  this  action  was 
afterwards  repudiated  by  a  higher  authority.  Again, 
seventeen   bodies   were  laid  in  a  trench  grave,   one 


118      THE   CHURCH   IN  THE   FURNACE         iv 

Roman  Catholic,  one  Nonconformist,  and  fifteen 
Church  of  England.  The  priest  was  asked  in  courtesy 
to  take  his  service  first,  and  the  other  two  chaplains 
stood  reverently  by  ;  as  soon  as  they  started  their 
joint  service,  the  priest  moved  off  alone,  and  by  the  time 
the  service  was  over  was  out  of  sight.  If  such  be  the 
spirit  of  the  younger  priests,  regretfully  it  must  be  said 
that  for  the  present  fellowship,  as  far  as  they  are  con- 
cerned, is  being  rendered  impossible. 

So  far  the  question  has  been  looked  at  purely  from 
the  human  side  ;  the  relations  between  man  and  man 
in  the  Divine  Society  have  been  dealt  with  ;  weaknesses 
have  been  noted,  and  hopeful  signs  pointed  out.  But 
the  New  Testament  use  of  the  word  Koivwvia  reminds 
us  that  in  this  connection  human  relations  cannot  long 
be  treated  separately  from  the  relations  of  man  with  his 
God.  St.  Paul  may  emphasise  the  one  aspect,  St.  John 
the  other,  but  each  is  also  conscious  of  another  side 
than  that  on  which  he  lays  emphasis.  And  this  must  be 
so  by  the  nature  of  the  case,  for  that  which  draws  men 
into  fellowship  with  one  another  in  the  Church  is  the 
desire  for,  and  the  attempt  to  realise,  fellowship  with 
the  Church's  Lord.  He  is  the  magnet  which  draws 
men  together,  and  men  who  have  felt  His  influence 
are  instinctively  attracted  the  one  to  the  other. 

The  motive  forces  of  religion  have  been  defined  as 
the  desire  for  fellowship  and  the  sense  of  ahenation  : 
they  are  the  centripetal  and  centrifugal  forces,  the  play 
between  which  brings  man  into  his  due  orbit  of  duties, 
centring  in  his  Maker.  Of  these  it  may  be  said  frankly 
that,  for  the  most  part,  the  sense  of  alienation  has  been 
little  felt  by  men  out  here  ;  from  whatsoever  cause  the 


IV  FELLOWSHIP   IN   THE   CHURCH        119 

barrier  which  sin  has  raised  between  the  child  and 
the  Father  has  not  been  clearly  realised.  For  this 
reason,  probably,  there  has  been  a  general  agreement 
that  to  speak  of  a  great  rehgious  revival  among  the 
troops  is  to  be  guilty  of  serious  exaggeration :  as  the 
meaning  of  the  Cross  can  only  be  reahsed  in  proportion 
as  a  man  has  been  conscious  of  his  "  far-offness  "  from 
God,  deep  rehgious  conviction  has  not  been  a  common 
experience. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  has  been  a  real  awakening 
of  the  rehgious  spirit  ;  the  desire  for  fellowship  has 
been  very  widely  felt,  and  very  plainly  expressed.  The 
natural  instinct  in  the  hour  of  danger  has  been  to  turn 
to  prayer,  even  among  those  who  had  long  forgotten 
the  habit  ;  rehef  from  danger  has  been  expressed  in 
the  same  way.  A  chaplain  at  one  of  the  main  dressing 
stations  on  the  Somme  resolved  to  offer  to  pray  with 
every  man  of  his  brigade  who  passed  through  ;  at 
last  among  the  wounded  there  came  a  young  officer, 
of  careless  life  and  free  speech,  and  the  chaplain's 
courage  almost  failed  him,  but  he  made  the  offer,  and 
was  surprised  by  the  reply  "  Yes,  please,  padre,  it's 
just  what  I've  been  wanting  "  ;  and,  the  prayer  said, 
the  lad  settled  down  on  his  stretcher  to  sleep  hke 
a  little  child.  No  one  who  has  censored  letters 
after  units  have  come  out  from  a  battle  can  fail  to 
have  been  struck  with  the  expressions  of  thankfulness 
to  God  for  preservation  which  those  letters  contain. 
It  may  be  argued  that  this  does  not  imply  much  ;  it 
at  least  is  fresh  evidence  of  the  deep-seated  and,  under 
certain  circumstances,  irrepressible  desire  for  fellow- 
ship with  God,  which  it  is  our  mission  to  arouse  and 


120      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         iv 

foster  ;  it  should  give  reason  for  hope  to  the  man  who 
has  been  depressed  by  an  apparent  lack  of  response  on 
the  part  of  those  with  whom  he  has  to  deal  ;  and  it 
gives  a  valuable  ground  of  appeal  for  future  service  on 
the  part  of  those  who  in  the  hour  of  stress  have  found 
relief  by  turning  to  their  Father. 

But   the   most   remarkable   manifestations    of   this 
desire  for  fellowship  have  occurred  in  connection  with 
the  great  sacrament  of  f ellowshii^  itself  :  the  experience 
of  chaplains  has  varied  very  much  in  this  matter,  but 
there  is  a  considerable  body  of  evidence  to  show  that 
among  troops  di-awn  from  very  different  sections  of 
society  there  has  been  awakened,  in  the  face  of  danger, 
a  craving  for  the  pledge  of  God's  companionship  which 
is  given  therein  :  to  call  this  cowardice  is  to  pass  a  very 
harsh  judgment,  one  which  no  man  has  the  right  to  pass 
who  has  not  known  the  intense  mental  and  moral  strain 
of  going  "  over  the  top  "  under  heavy  shell  and  machine- 
gun  fire ;  for  the  men  who  have  satisfied  their  craving 
have  gone  out  to  do  their  duty  in  life  or  death  with  the 
best  of  their  fellows.     One  instance  has  akeady  been 
given  of  the  way  in  which  men  avail  themselves  of  the 
opportunity  of  communicating  before  action  ;    other 
chaplains  have  discussed  with  the  writer  the  difficulty 
of  dealing  with  the  ignorance  of  uninstructed  communi- 
cants, whom  it  is  yet  hard  to  repel,  as,  face  to  face  with 
death,  they  ask  for  the  pledge  of  their  Lord's  dying 
love.      The  most  striking  service  in  the  memory  of 
the  writer  was  one  on  the  eve  of  an  attack  during 
July,  1916  :    it  was  under  a  blazing  sun,  in  a  hollow 
among   the   dusty   chalk   hills,    with   four   battalions 
bivouacking  on  the  surrounding  slopes  ;  a  busy  road, 


IV  FELLOWSHIP   IN   THE    CHURCH        121 

with  a  railway  by  its  side,  ran  past  the  spot ;  but  over 
five  hundred  men  gathered  round  for  a  voluntary 
service,  and  more  than  two  hundred  remained  to  kneel, 
undistracted  by  their  surroundings,  and  to  receive  the 
holy  Food  ;  and  next  day,  as  the  wounded  drifted 
back  through  the  dressing  station,  man  after  man 
expressed  his  thankfulness  for  the  support  which  the 
sacrament  had  given  to  him  in  the  hour  of  stress. 

It  is  on  this  desire  for  fellowship  with  God,  deep 
hidden  in  many  men,  yet  coming  to  the  surface  in  the 
hour  of  their  need,  that  we  must  rely,  as  the  foundation 
on  which  to  build  up  the  religious  life,  in  which  fellow- 
ship with  man  plays  so  large  a  part.  That  sense  of 
fair  play,  which  is  one  of  the  noblest  heritages  of  our 
race,  will  make  men  who  have  relied  on  God  in  the 
hour  of  their  need  hesitate  before  they  disown  Him 
under  easier  conditions.  And  as  they  learn  to  serve  Him 
with  a  loyalty  such  as  that  which  they  have  shown  to 
King  and  country,  they  will  be  drawn  together  by 
that  very  loyalty  into  a  closer  fellowship  one  with 
another  ;  for  "  This  commandment  have  we  from 
Him,  That  he  who  loveth  God  love  his  brother  also." 


FELLOWSHIP   IN   INDUSTRIAL  LIFE 


By  the  Rev.  BERNARD  W.  KEYMER,  M.A. 

Chaplain  to  the  Forces,   Infantry  Brigade  and Brigade,  R.F.  C.  : 

Vicar  of  East/eigh,  Hants. 


FELLOWSHIP  IN   INDUSTRIAL   LIFE 

There  are  few  questions  more  important,  more 
bewildering,  and  yet  more  absorbingly  interesting 
than  that  of  "  Reconstruction  "  after  the  War.  I  have 
no  doubt  that,  if  ever  anyone  takes  the  trouble  to 
criticise  this  paper,  one  of  the  chief  criticisms  will  be 
that  it  is  just  "  Idealism."  But  is  not  this  spirit  the 
starting  point  of  all  the  greatest  and  best  things  ? 
In  a  leading  article  recently  published  in  the  Times, 
entitled  "  The  Supreme  Test,"  the  following  words 
appeared  :  "  Idealism  is  a  priceless  factor  in  the  lives 
of  nations  as  of  men.  It  raises  them  above  themselves  \ 
it  makes  the  Divine  Spark  which  lies  hidden  in  the 
breasts  of  the  most  commonplace,  choked  and  smothered 
to  all  seeming  by  the  daily  round  of  petty  tasks,  of 
trivial  pleasures,  and  of  sordid  cares.  In  a  moment  it 
glorifies,  illuminates  and  transfigures.  It  is  the  great 
driving  force  of  the  history  which  it  makes  and  unmakes 
with  wondrous  rapidity  and  resistless  power.  It  is 
amongst  the  first  gifts  of  great  leaders,  and,  above  all, 
of  the  great  leaders  whose  mission  it  is  to  fire  the 
imaginations,   to   stir   the   hearts,   and  to   move   the 


126      THE   CHURCH   IN  THE   FURNACE  v 

consciences  of  millions.  But  idealism,  however  exalted, 
and  however  ardent,  is  almost  worthless,  or  may  work 
positive  evil  in  such  leaders,  when  it  is  not  checked  and 
balanced  by  clear  judgment  and  by  practical  common 
sense."  The  greatest  movement  the  world  has  ever 
known  took  place  as  a  social  movement  when  St. 
Peter  claimed  the  fulfilment  of  the  prophecy  "  Your 
young  men  shall  see  visions  and  your  old  men  shall 
dream  dreams,"  and  vindicated  his  idealism  by  the 
"  practical  common  sense  "  with  which  he  claimed  the 
allegiance  of  all,  on  the  ground  that  "  the  promise 
(of  the  Holy  Spirit)  is  unto  you  .  .  .  and  as  many  as 
the  Lord  our  God  shall  call." 

It  is  therefore  abundantly  clear  that  if  anyone  hopes 
to  do  any  good,  to  stir  any  enthusiasm,  or  to  stimulate 
any  human  activities,  he  must  approach  life  in  a 
generous  and  optimistic  spirit.  There  are  indeed  many 
who  say  "  Who  will  show  us  any  good  ?  "  But  they 
are  not  prophets,  though  perhaps  they  may  serve  a 
useful  purpose  in  tempering  the  fine  cutting  edge  of 
idealism  with  the  practical  common  sense  which  will 
leave  it  efficient,  but  also  will  make  it  serviceable  and 
lasting. 

In  this  spirit  let  us  try  to  approach  the  great  subject 
which  the  title  of  this  paper  suggests.  But  before  going 
any  further  I  must  impress  upon  the  reader  the  import- 
ance of  remembering  the  limitations  which  the  character 
of  this  book  as  a  whole  places  upon  the  writers.  It  is 
evident  that  a  book  of  essays  dealing  with  such  vast 
subjects  as  are  suggested  could  serve  no  purpose  unless 
it  is  clearly  understood  that  it  is  an  attempt  on  the  part 
of  chaplains  who  are  in  the  thick  of  this  great  world- 


V       FELLOWSHIP  IN  INDUSTRIAL  LIFE     127 

struggle  to  suggest  what  contribution,  if  any,  the 
revelation  of  the  spirit,  life,  and  activities  of  the  men  who 
are  engaged  in  it  has  to  make  towards  the  solution  of 
great  problems.  Volumes  might  be  written  upon  the 
subject  of  "  Industrial  Fellowship  "  in  itself,  but  they 
should  be  written  by  specialists  in  the  subject,  and  this 
the  writer  of  this  Essay  makes  no  sort  of  claim  to  be. 
The  Essay  will  be  just  an  attempt  (not  from  the  economic 
but  the  spiritual  standpoint)  to  distinguish  the  obvious 
hindrances  which  stand  in  the  way  of  "  Industrial 
Fellowship,"  to  see  what  hope  the  war  and  all  it  has 
revealed  of  human  nature  and  its  possibilities  gives  us 
in  connection  with  the  removal  of  such  difficulties,  and 
to  suggest  what  part  the  Church  may  take  in  endeavour- 
ing to  use  the  revelation  which  has  been  given  in  these 
days  for  the  furtherance  of  the  cause  of  peace  at  home. 
A  Whitsuntide  in  France  in  1917  gave  wonderful 
meaning  to  the  Pentecostal  hymn  : — 

"  Anoint  and  cheer  our  soiled  face 
With  the  abundance  of  Thy  grace. 
Keep  far  our  foes,  give  peace  at  home  ; 
Where  Thou  art  guide  no  ill  can  come." 

The  great  struggle  in  which  we  are  engaged  is  a 
struggle  to  secure  the  happiness  and  peace  of  the 
world.  And  yet  even  when  such  a  statement  as  this 
is  made  we  are  conscious  at  once  that  it  presents  us 
with  baffling  and  bewildering  thoughts.  It  seems  hard 
to  believe  that  the  brutal  and  horrible  method  of 
warfare  can  be  the  ideal  method  for  securing  so  noble 
an  end.  We  are  driven  to  acknowledge  that  this  seems 
at  the  present  stage  of  human  development  to  be  the 
only  practical  means  open  to  us  by  which  to  secure  a 


128      THE   CHURCH   IN  THE   FURNACE  v 

great  object.  And  further  there  are  many  who  find 
themselves  honestly  unable  to  accept  the  happiness  of 
the  world  as  the  object  for  which  we  are  fighting. 
They  are  convinced  that  material  ends  and  aims  are 
what  really  are  inspiring  and  influencing  the  British 
Empire  in  these  days.  But  this  is  exactly  where  the 
ideahstic  view  is  of  such  vital  importance.  We  could 
do  no  greater  wrong  to  the  thousands  who  have  made 
and  are  making  the  "  great  sacrifice,"  and  to  the  even 
greater  number  who  against  all  selfish  and  natural 
instincts  have  encouraged  them  in  their  devotion  to  a 
high  and  noble  call,  than  to  suggest  that  such  a  God-like 
spirit  had  a  sordid  end  in  view.  Men  may  do  brave 
deeds  for  ignoble  ends,  but  it  is  scarcely  thinkable  that 
men  and  women  should  give  what  is  dearer  to  them  than 
life  itself  for  selfish  ends  and  should  glory  in  doing  so. 
Again  and  again  one  has  met  men  out  here  who  have 
repudiated  warmly  any  very  high  aim  and  purpose  as 
being  behind  their  response  to  the  call  of  duty,  but  one 
scarcely  ever  fails  to  find  that  this  attitude  is  but  the 
cloak  of  a  noble  and  unassuming  nature.  We  should 
take  it  amiss  (and  there  would  be  every  cause  for  our 
resentment)  if  other  nations  accused  us  of  being  fired 
by  low  or  selfish  aims.  We  should  claim  the  right  to 
be  judged  by  our  best  men  and  their  motives.  I  write 
these  words  because  I  cannot  help  feeling  that  the 
industrial  world  is  largely  suffering  from  just  such  a 
manifest  handicap  due  to  the  incompleteness  of  the 
development  of  human  relationships,  and  from  the 
refusal  on  the  part  of  very  many  to  attribute  any  but 
sordid  motives  to  those  who  uphold  the  cause  of  the 
industrial  world. 


V        FELLOWSHIP  IN  INDUSTRIAL  LIFE     129 

Why  should  we  resent  strikes  or  look-outs  (I  do  not 
of  course  mean  in  war-time)  as  the  weapons  of  the 
industrial  world  so  long  as  we  feel  conscientiously 
justified  in  resorting  to  warfare  as  a  means  of  bringing 
about  peace  and  happiness  ?  Why  should  we  be  so 
ready  to  say  that  the  workers  care  for  nothing  but  a 
rise  in  their  own  wages  and  a  share  in  somebody  else's 
wages,  or  that  the  aim  of  the  capitalist  is  to  use  human 
machines  to  inflate  profits,  so  long  as  we  are  indignant 
if  mere  material  ends  are  suggested  as  the  object  of 
the  great  struggle  in  which  we  stand  side  by  side  until 
victory  is  assured  ? 

We  claim  for  ourselves  as  a  nation  in  these  days  a 
generous  and  kindly  judgment  of  our  methods  and 
motives,  but  we  are  well  aware  that  time  alone  will 
show  whether  such  an  estimate  is  deserved  or  not.  May 
we  not  hold  that  the  industrial  world  in  its  struggle  for 
power  and  influence  has  an  equal  right  to  appeal  to 
the  tribunal  of  coming  years  for  a  vindication  of  its 
methods  and  motives  ?  We  have  faith  that  if  this 
great  war  gives  to  our  Empire  a  position  and  influence 
such  as  she  never  had  before  she  will  use  them  for  the 
glory  of  God  and  the  happiness  of  His  people.  Can  we 
not  have  equal  faith  that  when  the  industrial  world 
has  secured  position  and  influence  they  will  be  used 
for  similarly  noble  ends  ? 

I. 

WHAT   LABOUR   AND    CAPITAL   ARE    WORKING   FOR. 

This  brings  us  to  the  question  as  to  what  labour  is 
really  striving  for — a  question  which  is  of  vital  import- 

K 


130      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  v 

ance,  sinceTthere  can  be  no  lasting  foundation  for 
industrial  fellowship  either  between  capital  and  labour 
or  in  the  ranks  of  labour,  other  than  a  clear  under- 
standing of  the  ideals  and  aims  of  the  parties  concerned. 

Our  hope  for  the  future  happiness  and  well-being  of 
the  industrial  world  rests  solely  upon  the  harmonious 
co-operation  of  capital  and  labour,  and  this  will  only 
be  secured  by  a  mutual  understanding  of  their  respec- 
tive ideals  and  difficulties.  Judged  by  their  best 
exponents,  labour  and  capital  are  both  out  for  the 
same  end — "  the  happiness  of  the  whole."  The  root 
desire  of  labour  is  for  "  opportunity,"  and  opportunity 
of  the  noblest  kind,  the  "  lifting  of  millions  out  of 
material  misery  to  a  manner  of  life  satisfying  to  them- 
selves and  worthy  of  human  beings,"  the  "  opening  to 
millions  and  millions  the  door  to  the  highest  values  of 
life." 

"  Man  doth  not  live  by  bread  alone."  The  unrest 
in  the  industrial  world  to-day  has  not  its  roots  solely 
in  poverty  and  want.  There  is  something  deeper 
still  at  work.  The  wage-earners  are  filled  with  a 
vague  but  profound  sentiment  that  the  industrial 
system,  as  it  is  now,  denies  to  them  the  liberties,  oppor- 
tunities, and  responsibilities  of  free  men.  The  heart  of 
the  difficulty  is  not  wages  or  hours  of  work,  but  the 
general  status  of  labour,  its  insecurity,  and  its  lack  of 
freedom  in  the  ordering  of  its  own  life.  Labour  feels 
itself  to  be  always  oppressed  and  on  the  defensive, 
and  it  desires  to  "  secure  the  initiative  "  and  thereby 
gain  freedom  of  action  and  possibility  of  unrestricted 
growth  and  development.  The  demand  of  labour  is 
a  demand  to  be  put  upon  a  higher  level,  a  level  whicli 


V       FELLOWSHIP  IN  INDUSTRIAL  LIFE     131 

is  not  of  necessity  selfish,  but  where  the  opportunity 
for  self-devotion  really  begins.  Labour  has  never 
conceived  of  itself  as  engaged  simply  in  a  struggle  for 
ascendancy,  and  for  the  material  fruits  which  ascend- 
ancy would  bring  with  it ;  its  aim  is  to  remove  what 
denies  and  does  violence  to  humanity. 

And,  on  the  other  hand,  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that  there  are  hosts  of  capitahsts  who  regard  their 
wealth  as  a  trust,  their  employees  as  men  with  souls, 
and  not  as  "  hands  "  or  machines,  and  who  are 
genuinely  anxious  in  the  conduct  of  their  business 
to  seek  the  happiness  of  the  whole.  It  will  at  least 
tend  to  encourage  a  hopeful  spirit  in  our  attitude 
towards  the  great  industrial  problem  if  we  recognise 
the  fact  that  the  best  exponents  of  the  ideals  of  both 
labour  and  capital  have  a  common  object,  the  happi- 
ness of  the  whole,  which  is  the  Christ-ideal,  "  I  am 
come  that  they  might  have  life  and  that  they  may 
have  it  more  abundantly,"  and  that  it  is  the  failure  of 
many  to  fulfil  their  ideals,  not  the  ideals  themselves, 
which  stands  in  the  way  of  peace  at  home. 

II. 

WHAT  CAPITAL  AND  LABOUR  NEED. 

Capital  and  labour  are  having  the  truth  brought  home 
to  them  that  they  are  complementary  to  each  other, 
and  that  in  their  fellowship  lies  the  hope  of  the  indus- 
trial world  in  the  future.  This  does  not,  however, 
mean  that  self-interest  is  to  be  the  basis  of  that  fellow- 
ship, or  that  so  noble  an  ideal  is  to  be  merely  utilitarian 
in  its  attainment.     Capital  and  labour  will  secure  the 

K  2 


132      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  v 

happiness  as  well  as  the  prosperity  of  the  industrial 
world  when  each  learns  that  the  will  to  love  is  stronger 
than  the  will  to  power.     A  beautiful  article  apj^eared 
in  the   Times  Literary  Supplement  for  March    15th, 
1917,  entitled  "  Wilfulness  and  Wisdom."     The  writer 
of   the   article   pointed   out  that    "  the   German   has 
chosen  to  glorify   openly  and  to  carry  to  a   logical 
extreme  the  peculiar  error  of  the  whole  Western  world 
— ^the  belief  that  the  highest  function  of  man  is  to  work 
his  will  upon  people  and  things  outside  him,  that  he 
can  change  the  world  without  changing  himseK.     The 
Christian  doctrine,  preached  so  long  in  vain  and  now 
almost  forgotten,  is  the  opposite  of  this.     It  insists 
that   man   is   by   nature   a   passive,    an   experiencing 
creature,  and  that  he  can  do  nothing  w^ell  in  action 
unless  he  has  first  learned  a  right  passivity.  .  .  .     His 
will,  in  fact,  must  be  the  will  to  love,  which  is  the  will 
to  experience  in  a  certain  way  ;    and  out  of  that  will 
to  love  right  action  will  naturally  ensue.   ...     But  it 
is  the  very  lack  of  experiencing  power  that  drives  men 
of  great  energy  to  violent  action  .   .   .  and  there  is  a 
profound  weakness  in  this  very  refusal  of  experience, 
in  their  incapacity  to  be  aware  of  men  or  things  except 
as  they  are  of  use  to  them." 

The  writer  goes  on  to  speak  of  Napoleon  as  a  man 
who  "  lost  the  sense  of  any  reality  whatever  except  his 
own  action  ;  he  saw  the  world  as  a  passive  object  to 
be  acted  upon  by  himself."  He  further  instances  the 
mechanical  devices  of  the  war  as  showing  that  we  "  see 
internal  reality  as  a  material  for  us  to  work  in  "  and 
as  the  expression  of  the  fact  that  "  the  will  for  action 
has  ousted  the  will  to  experience." 


V       FELLOWSHIP  IN  INDUSTRIAL  LIFE      133 

Now  is  it  not  true  to  say  that  the  attitude  of  mind 
expressed  by  the  term  "  will  to  experience  "  sums  up  all 
the  very  qualities  which  we  feel  are  essential  needs  of 
the  industrial  world  to-day  ?  Are  not  these  the  quali- 
ties which  are  needed  as  the  basis  of  a  real  industrial 
fellowship  :  sympathy,  discipline,  education,  and  above 
all  a  sense  of  God  ?  These  are  the  qualities  which 
will  enable  both  the  working  man  and  the  capitalist 
to  grasp  the  fact  and  make  it  a  real  factor  in  their 
mutual  relations  ;  that  not  merely  in  a  blind  enforce- 
ment of  their  wills  upon  existing  conditions,  but  in  a 
changed  outlook,  lies  the  hope  of  the  happiness  of  the 
whole.  The  change  must  come  in  men  and  their 
attitude  as  well  as  in  things.  "  Reverence,"  "  the 
will  to  experience,"  or  "  receptivity,"  are  all  terms  which 
suggest  the  common  root  from  which  spring  those 
qualities  which  are  so  patently  needed  to-day.  Sym- 
pathy will  lead  men  to  see  each  other's  point  of  view, 
ideals,  and  difficulties.  Discipline  will  govern  on  the 
one  hand  excess  profits  and  on  the  other  restricted 
output.  Education  (if  truly  education)  will  develop 
esprit  de  corps,  a  wider  and  more  human  outlook,  and 
foster  that  sense  of  God  which  will  prevent  materialism 
from  holding  the  field  both  as  the  method  of  reform  as 
well  as  the  ideal  of  life. 

III. 

WHAT    THE    WAR    IS    DOING. 

The  fact  that  the  Great  War  found  us  as  a  nation 
unprepared  and  pre-occupied  has  had  at  least  one 
advantage — it  has  enabled  us  to  see  in  a  most  striking 


134      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE    FURNACE  v 

way  the  effect  of  the  crash  upon  us  as  we  actually 
were.  Our  unpreparedness  has  made  the  revelations 
of  the  war  more  definite  and  clear-cut.  Men  came 
from  the  slums  or  the  ball-rooms  of  our  great  city 
and  by  their  wonderful  heroism,  dogged  tenacity,  and 
ready  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  revealed  almost  in  a  flash 
the  unsuspected  possibilities  and  undreamed-of  capaci- 
ties which  lay  dormant  in  human  nature.  The  call 
was  big  enough  to  bring  out  all  that  was  best  and 
noblest  in  our  men  and  to  kill  much  that  was  mean 
and  unworthy.  And  I  believe  that  it  is  this  revelation 
of  the  possibilities  in  other  men  which  has  been  the 
foundation  of  the  very  real  fellowship  which  has  been 
developed  during  these  years  of  war.  True  it  is  that 
a  common  end  in  view,  common  dangers,  common 
hardships,  common  victories,  common  reverses,  a 
common  system  of  disciphne,  common  catchwords, 
jokes  and  songs,  and  a  common  life  have  done  much  to 
break  down  barriers  and  open  the  hearts  of  men  to 
men,  and  of  class  to  class.  Yet  I  firmly  believe  that 
the  most  real  contribution  which  the  war  has  made  to 
fellowship  has  been  the  revelation  of  men  to  each 
other,  the  fact  that  "  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men  " 
have  been  enabled,  nay,  compelled,  to  see  each  other 
as  they  really  are  ;  for  nothing  so  clearly  reveals  men 
as  they  are  like  war.  The  war  and  the  life  we  live 
out  here  have  stimulated  the  "  will  to  experience,"  and 
we  are  "  learning  to  learn  "  every  day  and  under  all 
kinds  of  circumstances.  The  war  is  dealing  shrewd 
blows  every  day  to  prejudice,  criticism,  and  suspicion  ; 
blows  from  which,  please  God,  these  evil  spirits  may 
find  it  hard  to  recover,  and  which  will  prevent  them 


V        FELLOWSHIP  IN  INDUSTRIAL  LIFE     135 

from  again  taking  their  usurped  places  in  the  fighting 
hne  of  the  forces  of  evil.  Nothing  has  such  power  to 
change  one's  prejudices  about  men  or  classes  as  to 
be  under  shell  fire  with  them,  to  spend  week  after  week 
with  them  in  rat-infested  dug-outs  or  water -logged 
trenches,  to  go  up  into  the  air  with  them,  or  to  see  the 
spirit  in  which  they  daily  face  hazards  by  land  or  air. 
Prejudice,  that  subtle  enemy  of  progress,  is  receiving 
rough  handling  out  here.  New  and  untried  men  of 
all  kinds  and  classes  are  continually  coming  out  to 
battalions,  batteries,  or  squadrons,  and  again  and  again 
undreamed-of  qualities  are  revealed  by  them  under  the 
searching  test  of  warfare.  We  thought  they  "  didn't 
look  up  to  much,"  and  the  next  moment  they  strike 
us  dumb  by  some  gallant  deed  or  by  their  dogged 
endurance.  Whether  we  are  finding  that  purses  can 
be  made  out  of  sows'  ears,  or  that  what  we  thought  was 
a  sow's  ear  was  something  of  very  different  fibre,  I 
cannot  tell — at  any  rate  the  fact  remains  that  we  are 
certainly  developing  our  teachabihty  in  a  most 
wonderful  way.  The  war  has  given  us  the  chance  of 
standing  side  by  side  with  each  other  in  our  own  naked 
manhood  with  so  many  of  the  trimmings  of  common 
life  removed,  and  as  a  result  our  preconceived  estimates 
have  to  go  to  the  wall.  And  this  is  true  on  both  sides. 
The  war  has  brought  many  of  the  "  submerged  tenth  " 
for  the  first  time  in  their  fives  into  close  touch  with 
the  "  idle  rich,"  while  it  has  led  many  of  the  well-to-do 
to  rub  shoulders  with  the  poorer  classes  in  a  way  which 
they  have  never  done  before.  It  is  in  valour,  in  deeds 
of  heroism  and  fives  of  endurance,  that  the  common 
manhood  proves  its  existence,   and,   short  of  death, 


136      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  v 

perhaps  the  V.C.  is  the  greatest  leveller  we  know,  for 
it  overrides  all  social  or  class  distinctions.  And  it 
points  out  to  us  the  true  line  of  approach  to  each  other. 
You  cannot  patronise  a  man  who  does  the  sort  of  thing 
one  sees  done  every  day  out  here  ;  you  can  only 
reverence  him  and  try  to  learn  from  him  ;  and  true 
fellowship  must  be  based  on  mutual  reverence  and 
respect,  upon  an  attitude  of  mind  and  heart  which, 
thank  God,  the  war  is  doing  so  much  to  give  us.  The 
Bishop  of  Stepney  writes  in  his  little  book,  "  In  the 
Day  of  Battle  "  :— 

"  And  what  about  our  social  relations  ?  the  bitter- 
ness that  has  parted  rich  from  poor  ?  the  contempt  of 
class  for  class  ?  Shall  we  ever  revive  the  old  scorn 
with  which  we  looked  one  upon  another  ?  Will  people 
talk  any  more  about  '  the  idle  rich,'  the  '  degraded 
poor '  ?  One  hardly  knows  which  is  the  more  splendid 
figure  at  the  present  moment.  Is  it  the  young  officer, 
with  all  the  happy  memories  of  Public  School  and 
University  behind  him,  with  the  brightest  future 
England  can  offer  ahead  of  him,  with  all  the  wonderful 
joy  and  vigour  of  his  early  manhood  ?  His  men  are 
praying  him  in  vain  to  take  just  a  bit  more  care.  Yet 
he  runs  the  risks  he  will  not  let  them  run.  He  courts 
the  danger  which  he  bids  them  avoid.  He  seems  to 
care  so  much  for  them,  so  little  about  himseK.  We 
read  the  grievous  loss  of  officers  in  the  casualty  lists. 
It  would  take  many  years  of  effort,  it  would  take  more 
than  an  eternity  of  talk,  to  remove  the  suspicions,  the 
distrusts,  which  self-effacing  gallantry  of  that  sort 
drives  clean  away.  Or  is  it  the  lad  from  nowhere  in 
particular,  brought  up  anyhow,  a  '  bad '  start  in  life ; 


V        FELLOWSHIP  IN  INDUSTRIAL  LIFE     137 

'  bad  '  environment,  with  everything  against  him ; 
spoiled,  you  would  say,  by  their  regularities,  broken 
by  the  disheartenment  of  uncertain,  ill-paid  work  ? 
You  little  knew  what  was  in  him  when  you  spoke 
scornfully  of  him,  or  swept  up  him  and  the  like  of  him 
in  your  summary  of  despair.  For  after  all  he  is  the 
man  who  stands  firm  and  fearless  in  that  iron  wall  of 
heroic  resistance,  to  which  you  owe  your  safety,  your 
very  life.  He  is  the  man  who  shares  his  last  drop  of 
water  with  the  dying  German  ;  whom  the  women 
and  children  of  the  terror-stricken  villages  welcome  and 
love.  He  is  the  man  who  can  face  the  worst  and  face 
it  with  a  smile. 

"  Class  prejudice  !  it  does  not  always  find  expression 
in  contemptuous  Avords  ;  it  often  lies  silent  in  our 
hearts.  It  is  at  the  roots  of  our  false  judgments,  our 
thoughtless  disregard,  our  unwilhngness  to  know  and 
understand,  the  blundering  condescension  of  our 
philanthropy,  our  suspicion  of  those  who  wanted  to  be 
kind." 

And  then  too  the  war  has  not  only  transvalued  our 
values  by  making  us  reahse  that  service  is  the  greatest 
thing  in  the  world,  for  the  only  man  for  whom  we  "have 
no  use  "  is  the  man  who  isn't  "  doing  his  bit,"  but  it 
has  revealed  the  spirit  of  unselfish  service  to  be  a 
very  happy  thing.  I  beheve  that  the  secret  of  the 
indomitable  cheerfulness  of  our  men  under  all  sorts  of 
impossible  conditions  has  its  roots  in  the  happiness 
which  comes  from  the  consciousness  that  they  are 
"  doing  their  bit  "  for  others  or  have  made  a  really 
unselfish  offering  for  others.  It  is  this  knowledge  which 
causes  men  to  glory  in  tribulation,  which  makes  "  Bill  " 


138      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  v 

and  "  Alf,"  who  have  each  lost  an  arm,  sit  side  by  side 
at  the  concert  at  the  C.C.S.,  "  so  as  we  can  'ave  a 
clap."  '"'  Bill  puts  'is  'and  out  and  I  smacks  it  with 
mine  !  " 

And  we  must  not  forget  that  not  a  little  is  being  done 
to  develop  that  spirit  which  is  represented  by  the 
expressions  "  honour  of  the  shop  "  or  "  pride  in  the 
firm,"  and  which  would  clear  away  so  many  difficulties 
in  the  way  of  industrial  fellowship.  The  friendly 
rivalry  which  exists  between  companies,  flights,  and 
the  like,  is  making  men  take  pride  in  their  job,  and  is 
doing  in  narrower  circles  what  the  war  is  doing  for  the 
nation,  developing  esprit  de  corps  without  which 
fellowship  is  impossible. 

Finally  the  war  has  shown  us  that,  although  character 
and  common  manhood  are  levellers  which  know  no 
exceptions,  we  need  have  no  fears  lest  the  acceptance 
of  this  criterion  may  mean  the  abolition  of  discipline. 
No  one  who  has  been  privileged  to  see  or  know  anything 
of  our  Canadian  brothers  can  doubt  this.  You  cannot 
see  much  of  the  Canadians  without  loving  them  and 
admiring  them,  and  several  of  them  have  told  me  quite 
openly  that  they  realise  the  fact  that  discipline  was 
at  first  somewhat  lacking  amongst  them,  but  that 
they  have  not  only  learned  the  importance  of  it,  but 
have  achieved  it  in  a  wonderful  degree.  The  experi- 
ment in  democracy  which  has  been  made  throughout 
all  our  armies  is  specially  noticeable  amongst  the 
Colonial  troops,  and  it  is  an  experiment  which  has 
surely  been  extraordinarily  successful.  Democracy 
has  shown  itself  capable  of  being  trusted  and  has 
proved  itself  to  be  possessed  of  powers  of  self -discipline 


V        FELLOWSHIP  IN  INDUSTRIAL  LIFE     139 

as  well  as  of  self-reliance.  If  we  are  patient  we  may- 
yet  see  a  similarly  successful  experiment  made  in  the 
Russian  Army.  This  fact  will  hearten  us  to  meet  any 
possible  developments  in  industrial  life. 

When  summing  up  the  lessons  of  the  war  we  must 
beware  of  an  unfounded  optimism. 

In  the  extremely  valuable  and  interesting  publica- 
tion by  the  "  Garton  Fellowship  "  entitled  "  Memo- 
randum on  the  Industrial  Situation  After  the  War," 
the  following  words  appear  : — 

"  There  is  a  prevalent  belief  that  the  '  brotherhood 
of  the  trenches  '  and  workshops,  the  spirit  of  co-opera- 
tion and  self-sacrifice  which  has  made  possible  our 
efforts  in  the  War,  will  rem.ain  as  a  permanent  factor 
in  our  national  life.  A  great  deal  has  been  said  of  the 
effect  of  discipline  upon  the  men  who  have  served  at 
the  front,  and  it  is  widely  assumed  that  on  their  return 
they  will  be  more  amenable  to  management  and  less 
responsive  to  agitation.  Those  who  argue  thus  do  so 
mostly  on  general  principles  and  probabilities.  But 
it  is  no  use  arguing  that  certain  conditions  ought  to 
produce  certain  effects  if  the  facts  show  that  they  do 
not.  There  is  evidence  that  many  of  the  men  who 
return  from  the  trenches  to  the  great  munition  and 
ship-building  centres  are,  within  a  few  weeks  of  their 
return,  amongst  those  who  exhibit  most  actively  their 
discontent  with  present  conditions.  Among  those  who 
have  fought  in  Flanders  or  who  have  been  employed  in 
making  shells  at  home,  there  are  many  who  look  forward 
to  a  great  social  upheaval  following  the  War.  To 
some  this  may  be  distressing  and  almost  incredible. 
The  facts  remain,  and  the  facts  must  be  faced." 


140      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  v 

Yes,  it  would,  indeed,  be  a  mistake  to  assume  that 
the  disciphne  to  which  men  have  been  subjected  in  the 
Army  will  operate  in  the  direction  of  making  them  more 
ready  to  "  take  it  lying  down  "  when  they  are  no  longer 
under  the  restraint  of  such  discipline  ;  nor,  indeed, 
would  it  be  fair  to  measure  the  effects  of  the  War  by 
the  conduct  of  men  who  have  exchanged  the  strain  of 
the  trenches  for  the,  in  many  ways,  equal  strain  of  the 
munition  factory. 

Time,  rest,  and  altered  conditions  will  be  necessary 
before  the  new  spirit  can  m.ake  itself  felt — that  spirit 
which  will  gradually  bring  about  a  better  relationship 
between  employer  and  employed,  and  so  achieve  the 
hand-in-hand  advance  of  character  and  environment. 

Because  the  nation  presents  a  united  front  now  and 
fellowship  is  a  fait  accompli  out  here,  it  does  not 
follow  of  necessity  that  a  solution  has  been  found 
of  the  difficulties  which  loomed  so  largely  at  home 
before  the  war  and  which  even  since  the  outbreak 
of  war  have  raised  their  heads ;  but  we  cannot 
help  feeling  that  a  great  change  has  been  wrought 
and  that  all  may  be  summed  up  in  the  fact  that  we 
are  learning  receptivity. 

A  readiness  to  see  the  other  side,  to  make  allowances, 
to  work  for  the  happiness  of  the  whole,  to  serve  joy- 
fully, and  in  the  free  spirit  of  self-discipline,  are 
products  of  the  war,  are  the  signs  of  a  greater  recep- 
tivity, and  will,  please  God,  be  brought  home  by  our 
men  to  pave  the  way  to  a  happier  industrial  life  after 
the  war. 

As  "  A  Student  in  Arms  "  writes,  "  When  the  war 
is  over,  and  the  men  of  the  citizen  army  return  to  their 


V        FELLOWSHIP  IN  INDUSTRIAL  LIFE     141 

homes  and  their  civil  occupations,  will  they,  I  bonder, 
remember  the  things  that  they  have  learnt  ?  If  so, 
there  will  be  a  new  and  better  England  for  our  children. 
One  would  like  to  prophesy  great  things.  In  those 
days  great  talkers  and  boasters  shall  be  of  no  account, 
for  men  shall  remember  that  in  the  hour  of  danger 
they  were  wanting.  In  those  days  there  shall  be  no 
more  petty  strife  between  class  and  class,  for  all  shall 
have  learnt  that  they  are  one  nation,  and  that  they 
must  seek  the  nation's  good  before  their  own.  In 
those  days  men  shall  no  longer  pride  themselves  on 
their  riches,  or  on  the  material  possessions  which 
distinguish  them  from  their  brethren,  for  they  shall 
have  learnt  that  it  is  the  qualities  of  the  heart  which 
are  of  real  value. 

"  Men  shall  be  prized  for  their  courage,  their  honesty, 
their  charity,  their  practical  ability.  In  those  days 
there  shall  be  no  false  pride,  for  all  have  lived  hardly, 
all  have  done  dirty  and  menial  work,  all  have  wielded 
pick  and  spade,  and  have  counted  it  no  dishonour  but 
rather  glory  to  do  so.  In  those  days  charity  and 
brotherly  love  shall  prevail  mightily,  for  all  shall  have 
learnt  mutual  understanding  and  respect." 

IV. 

WHAT    THE    CHURCH    CAN    DO. 

It  is  up  to  the  Church  to  spiritualise  the  ideals  of 
the  industrial  world  ;  to  see  that  the  New  Jerusalem 
has  a  height  equal  to  its  length  and  breadth.  The 
Church  and  the  industrial  world  are  at  one  in  their 
ideal — the  happiness  of  the  whole  ;  the  Church  must 


142      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  v 

never  fail  to  uphold  the  facts  that  without  God  pro- 
sperity may  be  attainable,  but  never  happiness  ;  that 
the  motive  of  the  happiness  of  the  whole  must  include 
the  happiness  and  glory  of  God  Who  is  One  of  the 
whole,  for  He  is  their  Father,  and  that  only  through 
Him  is  such  an  ideal  attainable. 

And  if  the  Church  is  to  exert  any  influence  it  will 
only  be  by  her  learning  receptivity — by  her  learning 
to  see  men  as  they  really  are,  by  trusting  them,  by 
understanding  the  difficulties  of  rich  and  poor  ahke. 
Donald  Hankey  says  :  "We  are  willing  to  do  things 
for  the  poor,  but  we  are  not  wiUing,  we  are  shocked 
and  grieved,  Avhen  the  poor  try  to  do  something  for 
themselves.  ...  We  will  not  admit  the  right  of  the 
labourer  to  freedom  and  opportunity  and  self-respect, 
though  we  are  wiUing  to  give  him  instalments  by  way 
of  charity."  Until  we  have  learnt  to  learn,  our  worship 
can  have  no  plain  and  evident  relation  to  the  lives  of 
men,  and  Churchmen  will  merely  seem  to  be  impossible 
people  with  a  patronising  attitude  towards  many 
whose  lives  and  devotion  are  infinitely  superior  to  our 
own. 

I  was  privileged  to  see  a  letter  to  a  friend  from  one 
who  is  in  close  touch  with  industrial  life,  and  he  writes  : 
"  The  Church  ought  not  to  attach  itself  or  hold  aloof 
from  any  movement  of  national  importance.  The 
message  of  the  Church  goes  deeper  than  any  movement, 
and  the  parson  who  sees  his  whole  duty  in  forwarding. 
Sociahsm  or  land  reform  or  defending  the  Estabhsh- 
ment  is  obviously  a  shallow  person  ...  on  the  other 
hand,  for  the  Church  to  hold  aloof  from  causes  and 
movements  which  command  the  enthusiasm  and  un- 


V        FELLOWSHIP  IN  INDUSTRIAL  LIFE     143 

selfish  devotion  of  thousands  is  to  imitate  the  priest 
and  the  Levite  and  pass  by  on  the  other  side. 

"  The  business  of  the  Church  towards  movements  is 
surely  the  same  as  towards  individuals — to  take  them 
as  they  are — understand  their  needs  and  difficulties, 
find  out  their  best  side  and  help  it  as  much  as  ever  it 
can.  Sympathy  and  encouragement  from  '  outsiders  ' 
are  worth  a  tremendous  lot  to  labour  people  and  may 
save  them  from  falling  into  bitterness  and  hatred.  It 
is  quite  true  that  they  often  make  their  appeal  on  low 
grounds,  but  they  will  do  it  less  in  so  far  as  they  are 
better  men,  and  that  is  just  where  the  Church  can  help 
them.  The  same  is  true  of  restriction  of  output — 
which  is  also  not  confined  to  workmen.  Anyone  who 
takes  a  salary  for  work  inefficiently  done,  e.g.  a  teacher 
who  does  not  prepare  his  lessons  or  keep  abreast  of 
his  subject,  or  the  business  man  who  takes  overlong 
week-ends,  is  guilty  of  the  same." 

And  again  we  must  be  thorough  and  practical  in 
our  sacrifices  if  we  are  to  commend  our  religion.  It 
is  often  stated  that  the  chief  reason  for  the  neglect  of 
religion  is  the  fact  that  the  Church  is  other-worldly 
and  seems  to  take  but  little  interest  in  the  things  of 
this  world ;  but  I  venture  to  suggest  that  a  more  genuine 
reason  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  for  all  her  spiritual 
ideals  she  appears  to  the  man  of  the  world  to  be  keeping 
a  keen  eye  on  things  temporal.  Religion  finds  a  rebuke 
as  well  as  a  suggestion  in  the  following  "  Limerick  ": — 

There  was  an  old  lady  of  Leeds 

Who  tried,  in  turn,  all  of  the  Creeds, 

When,  disgusted,  she  found 

That  each  left  her  aground, 

She  attended  to  other  folks'  needs. 


144       THE   CHURCH   IN  THE  FURNACE  v 

It  is  the  very  thoroughness  of  the  spirit  of  self- 
sacrifice  to-day  which  has  given  to  it  its  joy  and 
gladness,  and  we  must  learn  to  "  live  dangerously." 
There  are  hosts  of  men  of  good  will  ready  to  side  with 
religion  if  only  they  saw  it  in  its  proj)er  glory  ;  clear 
in  its  aim,  strong  in  its  purpose,  undaunted  and  un- 
ashamed ;  claiming  for  Christ  that  which  belongs  to 
Him — that  dominion  over  the  hearts  and  lives  of  all 
men,  at  all  times,  in  all  places,  and  in  all  things,  which 
is  His  right. 

Nor  must  we  forget,  as  the  Bishop  of  Winchester 
has  said,  "  The  harder  social  problems  need  the  dis- 
entangling and  the  solving,  which  can  only  be  wrought 
by  men  and  women  who  find  the  Divine  secrets  of 
disinterested  life,  and  moral  courage,  and  insistent 
equity." 

In  conclusion,  let  us  approach  the  great  problem  of 
industrial  fellowship  with  patience,  but  with  a  great 
and  hopeful  heart  after  the  experiences  of  the  last 
three  years.  When  the  War  is  over  what  will  live  on 
will  be  the  spirit  men  showed  and  what  it  cost  them 
rather  than  the  results  achieved.  The  doing  of  a  thing 
is  always  of  more  value  than  the  thing  done,  and  in 
the  achievement  of  industrial  fellowship  is  a  field  for 
the  development  of  national  character  and  Christianity. 
God,  Who  is  ever  striving  to  bring  good  out  of  evil, 
has  allowed  us  to  see  in  war  a  force  which  whilst  it 
destroys  men  creates  manhood,  and  He  has  opened 
the  door  to  a  wider  fellowship,  through  which  we 
must  and  shall  pass,  which  leads  to  the  happiness 
of  the  whole  and  therefore  to  His  glory. 


VI 

MEMBERSHIP   AND    LOYALTY 

By    the    Rev.    GEOFFREY    GORDON,    M.A. 

Senior  Chaplain  to  the  Forces,  Division  ;  formerly  of  St.  Margaret'' s, 

Westminster. 

Author  of  ^^  An  Interpreter  of  War''''  and  Joint  Author  of 
"  Papers  frotn  Picardy." 


VI 
MEMBERSHIP    AND    LOYALTY 

War  has  been  for  all  of  us  a  time  of  new  experiences, 
and  so,  except  for  those  whose  minds  are  hermetically 
sealed  by  shell-proof  bias  and  fact-resisting  prejudice, 
these  years  have  been  a  time  of  learning.  New  experi- 
ences sometimes  teach  new  truth.  More  often  they  give 
newinsightintotruthssooldthattheyhadbeenforgotten. 
For  many,  the  most  intense  of  these  new  experiences 
has  been  the  facing  of  frequent  and  prolonged  bodily 
fear.  Before  the  war  the  criminal  and  the  schoolboy 
knew  its  meaning,  but  as  civilisation  had  driven  the 
robber  from  about  our  paths  and  the  burglar  from 
beneath  our  beds,  bodily  fear  had  become,  for  most 
of  us,  an  unfamiliar  thing.  We  were  sometimes 
startled  by  motor  bicycles,  we  were  nervous  of  the 
dentist,  but  intense  and  prolonged  fear  was  not  within 
the  range  of  our  experience.  But  now,  for  those  of 
us  who  have  lived  the  life  of  the  trenches,  it  has  become 
a  common  experience,  as  familiar  as  it  was  to  our 
ancestors  before  peace  and  the  protecting  policeman 
had  smoothed  the  path  of  man. 

'''  L  2 


148      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         vi 

Faced  with  this  new  experience,  we  have  seen  new 
meaning  in  a  very  old  truth.  We  have  learnt  that  so 
long  as  men  are  thinking  about  themselves  they  cannot 
escape  from  fear,  but  when  their  thoughts  are  dominated 
by  the  sense  of  responsibility  for  others,  or  by  the  claims 
of  their  work,  fear  almost  always  vanishes,  or,  if  it 
does  not  vanish,  at  any  rate  ceases  to  affect  their 
actions.  All  ranks  alike  have  discovered  in  these  days 
of  war  that  self-centredness  is  the  root  of  fear,  and 
that  seK-forgetfulness  is  essential  to  physical  courage  ; 
and  perhaps  this  has  helped  us  to  relearn  the  ancient 
truth  that  self -forgetf  ulness  is  the  secret,  not  of  courage 
alone,  but  of  all  human  virtue. 

In  spite  of  the  many  demoralising  and  degrading 
effects  of  war,  there  has  come  into  the  world  a  greatly 
increased  power  of  self-forgetfulness  both  among 
soldiers  and  among  those  at  home,  and  this  self-forget- 
fulness is  the  cause  of  whatever  of  good  there  is  in 
the  character  results  which  have  emerged  in  these 
bewildering  years. 

In  theory,  all  Christians  would  admit  at  once  the 
need  of  self-forgetfulness.  It  is  absolutely  central  to 
the  teaching  of  our  Lord.  By  word  and  by  more 
powerful  example.  He  taught  the  doctrine  of  sacrifice. 
The  paradox  that  a  man  must  lose  himself  in  order  to 
find  himself  is  repeated  in  slightly  varying  forms 
more  often  than  any  other  saying  in  the  Gospels.  It 
is  obviously  crucial,  and  yet  in  most  of  our  religious 
teaching  it  has  been  relegated  to  the  realm  of  the 
unpractical  or  else  explained  away. 

The  greater  part  of  Protestant  teaching  is  frankly 
individualistic    and    self-centred.     It    has    descended 


VI  MEMBERSHIP   AND   LOYALTY  149 

through  steady  gradations  of  selfish  prayers  and  anti- 
social hymns,  till  it  reaches  its  final  degradation  in 
that  definitely  and  shamelessly  un-Christian  chorus 
which  was  recently  so  popular  at  Revivalist  meetings-— 
"  That  will  be  glory — glory  for  me."  Such  teaching  is 
perhaps  more  longsighted  and  wiser  than  teaching 
which  fixes  man's  hopes  on  commercial  gain  or  indi- 
vidual advancement  in  this  world,  but,  in  its  nature, 
it  is  identical,  for  selfishness  does  not  cease  to  be  selfish 
because  its  gains  are  transferred  from  the  balance  of 
this  world  to  the  pay-sheet  of  the  world  to  come. 

Catholic  teaching  lays  much  more  stress  on  the 
corporate  ideal,  but  here  also  the  obligations  of 
loyalty  and  membership  are  more  often  than  not  used 
as  means  to  individual  ends,  and  the  driving  motive 
is  selfish  rather  than  social. 

If  the  Church  is  to  become  again  a  great  force  in 
human  affairs  she  must  somehow  recover  the  secret 
of  all  virtue,  that  forgetfulness  of  self  which  was 
central  to  the  teaching  of  her  Lord,  but  which  His 
Protestant  followers  have  so  largely  forgotten,  and 
which  His  Catholic  servants  have  so  often  misused. 

War  has  shown  us  the  character-building  power  of 
an  appeal  which  is  utterly  divorced  from  any  selfish 
motive,  an  appeal  which  is  essentially  social  and 
corporate.  Men  point  to  the  demorahsing  effects  of 
war  ;  it  is  not  these  that  are  surprising.  The  marvel 
is  that  out  of  war  any  good  has  come  at  all.  Good 
has  come,  and  it  is  due  almost  entirely  to  the  fact 
that  men  have  in  these  years  been  Hving  not  for  self 
but  for  a  cause. 

What  exactly  the  cause  is  which  has  really  stirred 


150      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         vi 

men's  loyalty  it  would  be  difficult  adequately  to 
define.  Men  have  become  self -forgetful  because  they 
have  attained  to  a  sense  of  membership  and  because 
they  have  been  inspired  by  loyalty  ;  but  it  is  not  a 
single  loyalty  nor  an  exclusive  membership  that  has 
moved  them. 

We  have  all  been  stirred  at  times  by  a  vague  feeling 
that  we  are  out  for  a  world-wide  cause,  the  service  of 
civilisation,  the  maintenance  of  ideals  of  truth,  honour, 
justice  and  right  dealing  between  the  nations.  This 
vague  allegiance  has  not  had  to  stand  alone  ;  it  has 
been  reinforced  by  our  new-found  patriotism,  for 
however  lamely  we  express  it,  the  fact  that  we  are 
fighting  and  working  for  England  has  made  a  real 
difference. 

The  Cause  has  had  real  character-building  results, 
but  fighting  for  civilisation  and  for  England  would  not 
have  had  the  same  effects  on  the  combative  mind  of 
man  unless  it  had  also  a  negative  aspect.  It  is  the 
determination  to  beat  the  Germans  which  has  given 
force  and  doggedness  to  our  loyalty.  The  conscious- 
ness of  fighting  for  a  cause  is  immensely  reinforced  by 
the  consciousness  of  fighting  against  a  clearly  recognised 
enemy. 

Nor  has  our  sense  of  membership  had  to  find  its 
only  satisfaction  in  loyalty  to  the  Grand  Alliance  of 
Civilisation  and  to  England.  We  are  all  proud  of 
being  members  of  the  British  Army  in  the  field  and 
are  jealous  for  its  honour,  and  still  more  for  the  honour 
of  the  unit  to  which  we  directly  belong.  Other  people, 
for  instance,  have  their  own  ideas  about  the  comparative 
excellence  of  different  divisions.     I  know,  without  any 


VI  MEMBERSHIP   AND   LOYALTY  151 

possibility  of  doubt,  which  is  The  Division  pre-eminent 
among  the  n  all.  I  have  known,  also,  which  was  the 
best  brigade,  and  I  have  had  more  than  a  suspicion 
as  to  which  was  the  best  regiment  in  that  brigade.  A 
chaplain's  personal  certainties  do  not  go  to  the  lower 
subdivisions,  but  other  men  are  not  less  passionately- 
loyal  to  particular  companies  and  even  platoons  and 
sections.  Nor  is  that  intimate  sense  of  membership 
in  one  particular  unit  altogether  jest.  Any  mention 
of  the  nth.  Division  stirs  in  me  really  deep  feelings — ■ 
feelings  which  are  akin  to  the  religious  emotions,  in 
that  they  spring  from  the  very  depths  of  my  being. 
If  such  feelings  of  membership  and  loyalty  can  be 
aroused  in  us  who  are  perhaps  only  attached  for  a  few 
months,  one  can  understand  the  self -obliterating  force 
of  a  membership  which  lasts  for  half  a  lifetime. 

These  lesser  loyalties  are  not  in  any  way  inconsistent 
with  the  larger  loyalty  to  the  great  cause.  The  sense 
of  being  a  member  of  a  particular  platoon  does  not 
prevent  a  man  from  being  conscious  of  his  membership 
of  the  greater  whole.  Lesser  loyalties  have  of  course 
their  dangers,  but  they  are  risks  which,  if  the  spirit  of 
membership  and  loyalty  is  to  flourish,  must  inevitably 
be  run.  Obstructive  regimentalism  is  not  altogether 
unknown  ;  company  jealousy  sometimes  runs  to 
dangerous  extremes.  But  the  man  who  really  cares 
for  his  regiment  nearly  always  learns  devotion  to 
the  larger  whole,  and  A  company's  contempt  for 
B  company's  wiring  does  not  greatly  interfere  with 
their  joint  work. 

The  soldier  lives  in  a  series  of  concentric  circles,  and 
they  all  claim  his  loyalty  without  necessary  competi- 


152      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         vi 

tioii  and  without  cxclusiveness  ;  but  they  all  lack 
force  and  magnetism  unless  there  is,  in  their  claim,  an 
element  of  personality.  Personal  leadership  has  had 
a  strong  influence  on  character  throughout  the  war. 
In  the  tense  emotions  of  the  early  months,  the  character 
of  King  Albert  was  a  really  important  influence.  Our 
own  King  and  Lord  Kitchener  have  evoked  unsuspected 
capacities  in  the  men  of  our  race  ;  but  the  part  that 
has  been  played  by  personal  leadership  has  been 
increasingly  large  lower  down,  in  the  smaller  of  the 
concentric  circles.  It  is  almost  impossible  to 
exaggerate  the  influence  of  company  commanders 
and  platoon  leaders. 

All  that  is  best  in  our  soldiers  has  been  brought  out 
by  their  self -giving  to  a  Cause  ;  by  their  sense  of 
membership  in  various  corporate  wholes  ;  by  greater 
and  lesser  loyalties.  These  loyalties  reinforced  by 
personal  allegiance  to  leaders  great  and  small  have 
helped  to  overcome  that  self-centredness  which  is  the 
enemy  of  all  true  human  progress. 

This  corporate  claim,  of  the  value  of  which  we  have 
received  such  overwhelming  evidence,  is  to  a  great 
extent  unheard  or  unrecognised  in  contemporary 
religion  ;  and  it  is  the  practical  absence  of  this  appeal 
which  accounts  for  the  abstention  of  the  best  of  those 
who  remain  outside  all  organised  religion — to  the 
damage  of  the  Cause  and  to  their  own  great  loss. 

It  may  be  worth  while  to  pay  a  round  of  parochial 
visits  in  an  ordinary  parish  at  home  and  from  these 
to  form  some  estimate  as  to  the  attitude  of  a  typical 
working-class  constituency  to  their  Church  ;  and  it 
will  be  illuminating  on  such  a  round  to  have  always 


VI  MEMBERSHIP   AND   LOYALTY  153 

in  the  back  of  our  minds  the  conception  of  the  Church 
as  an  army  out  to  beat  the  Devil  just  as  the  British 
Army  is  out  to  beat  the  Kaiser. 

On  such  a  round  the  home  parson  will  find  some 
splendidly  keen  supporters,  some  really  Christian 
families  ;  visits  such  as  these  give  him  immense 
encouragement  and  are  as  springs  of  water  in  dry 
places  ;  but  for  our  present  purposes  we  must  not 
linger  over  these.  In  a  parish  where  he  has  not  yet 
had  time  to  form  those  personal  friendships  which 
break  down  prejudice,  he  will  find  the  majority  of 
households  indifferent  if  not  hostile.  Indeed  it  has 
been  one  of  the  joys  of  chaplains' work  out  here  that  our 
reception  has  been  so  very  different  from  that  to  which 
we  were  accustomed  at  home.  The  recently  arrived 
pastor  visiting  his  flock  as  vicar  or  curate  of  a  parish  in 
England  certainly  could  not  count  on  a  hearty  welcome 
at  any  large  proportion  of  the  houses  which  he  visited. 
The  same  pastor  visiting  his  flock  in  the  trenches,  as 
their  padre,  even  though  newly  appointed  and  a  total 
stranger,  is  almost  sure  of  a  generous  reception  and 
the  often  embarrassing  offer  of  a  share  in  the  latest 
parcel  from  home,  and  a  mugful  of  tea  from  the 
ubiquitous  dixie. 

Leaving  aside  the  welcoming  families  with  whom  it  is 
so  tempting  to  stay,  let  us  pay  a  series  of  visits  to 
more  typical  houses  at  which  our  reception  will  be 
indifferent  or  hostile. 

At  some  houses  our  knock  will  elicit  no  answer  ;  a 
face  may  appear  for  a  moment  at  the  window  and  a 
curtain  may  shake,  but  a  second  knock  will  win  no 
further  response.     These,  too,  we  must  leave  on  one 


154      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         vi 

side,  for  there  is  no  compulsion  for  tlie  cause  of  God, 
there  are  no  conscripts  in  His  army. 

At  No.  1  our  knock  is  answered  almost  at  once,  for 
the  master  of  the  house  happens  to  be  in  the  front 
passage  at  the  m^nent  of  our  call.  Directly  he  sees 
that  the  visitor  is  the  parson  he  calls  the  missus — 
"  Mother,  here's  the  gentleman  from  the  church  to 
see  you  "  ;  and  we  have  considerable  difficulty  in 
persuading  him  that  the  object  of  our  visit  is  as  much 
to  see  him  as  to  see  his  wife.  The  conception  of  the 
Church  as  a  fighting  army  makes  this  very  common 
attitude  seem  more  than  ordinarily  irrational.  Without 
in  any  way  wishing  to  minimise  the  splendid  work 
which  women  have  done  in  the  last  three  years,  it  is 
obvious  that  we  should  have  made  a  poor  show  against 
the  Germans  if  the  Army  had  been  recruited  from  women 
only.  If  less  obvious,  it  is  not  less  certain  that  the 
militant  Church  will  make  but  little  headway  against 
the  forces  of  evil,  if  her  work  is  regarded  as  exclusively 
the  women's  concern. 

At  No.  2  the  woman  who  opens  the  door  greets  us 
civilly  enough.  A  shadow  crosses  her  face  for  an 
instant.  She  had  hoped  it  was  the  milk-  or  the  cat's- 
meat-man,  but  she  is  too  polite  to  express  in  words 
her  disappointment  that  it  is  only  the  parson.  She 
invites  us  in,  and  we  find  her  husband,  a  prosperous 
artisan,  sitting  in  his  shirt  sleeves  by  the  kitchen 
fire.  We  have  not  come  in  anything  like  an  accusing 
spirit,  but  almost  at  once  he  is  on  the  defensive.  "  I 
live  a  decent  sort  of  life,  I  do.  I  never  do  anyone 
any  'arm.  I'm  a  good  living  chap.  I've  never  done 
any  'arm  to  anyone."     The  phrase  "  never  done  any 


VI  MEMBERSHIP   AND   LOYALTY  155 

'arm  "  recurs  with  wearisome  frequency.  "  No  harm  " 
— what  an  ideal  for  the  free  soul  of  man  ;  and  yet  over 
and  over  again  it  is  uttered  as  if  it  were  the  summit  of 
human  perfection. 

Apply  to  it  the  Army  conception.  Imagine  a  German 
attack.  The  sergeant  going  round  the  line  finds  one 
of  his  men  sitting  on  the  fire-step  smoking  his  pipe. 
The  sergeant's  language  is  unprintable  in  a  book  by 
chaplains.  "  What's  the  matter,  sergeant  ?  I  'aven't 
done  any  'arm,  'ave  I  ?  What's  all  the  row  about  ? 
I  'aven't  done  anything  wrong."  The  sergeant  would 
not  take  long  to  explain  the  uselessness,  for  a  soldier, 
of  such  an  ideal.  It  is  not  less  inadequate  for  a 
Christian. 

On  the  walls  of  the  sitting-room  at  No.  3  we  notice 
that  there  hang  several  Sunday-school  certificates,  and 
behind  the  glass  doors  of  a  rarely  opened  bookcase 
there  are  one  or  two  highly-treasured  prizes  granted 
for  "  proficiency  in  religious  knowledge."  This  man  is 
ready  enough  to  talk,  and  he  tells  us  with  pride  of  his 
success  in  Sunday  school  and  Bible  class  and  club.  "  I 
used  to  have  a  lot  to  do  with  the  Mission  round  the 
corner,  and  I  used  to  go  regularly  to  church — but  I 
gave  it  up  because  somehow  I  didn't  seem  to  get  any 
good  out  of  it." 

His  proficiency  in  religious  knowledge  does  not 
seem  to  have  made  him  acquainted  with  the  text 
"It  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive  "  ;  but  if 
you  compare  the  Church  to  a  fighting  army  the 
irrelevance  of  such  an  objection  becomes  overwhelm- 
ingly obvious.  The  man  who  joined  the  Army  to  get 
something  out  of  it  would  be  thought  half-witted  ; 


156      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         vi 

you  join  not  to  get  but  to  give,  in  one  of  the  finest 
phrases  in  our  modern  language,  "to  do  your  bit." 

At  No.  4  the  sight  of  the  parson  provokes  at  once  a 
torrent  of  antagonistic  self-praise.  "  I  can  be  good 
by  myself.  I  don't  need  to  go  to  church.  I  can  be  as 
good  as  any  of  them  folks  without  joining  on  to  them." 

Can  a  man  be  "  good  "  by  himself  ?  I  very  much 
doubt  it  ;  but  I  am  quite  sure  that  even  if  by  himself 
he  can  be  good,  he  cannot  by  himself  do  good,  or  at  any 
rate  that  he  cannot  do  nearly  as  much  good  by  himself 
as  he  could  in  co-operation  with  others.  The  Army 
has  made  that  abundantly  clear — a  well-disciplined 
and  united  regiment  acting  in  close  union  would  be 
more  than  a  match  for  many  times  the  same  number  of 
men  acting  in  isolation  from  one  another. 

The  householder  at  No.  5  takes  a  shghtly  different 
hne.  He  does  not  want  to  be  good  on  his  own,  but  he 
is  impatient  of  the  formalism  of  the  Church  and  has 
thrown  himself  eagerly  into  the  activities  of  a  little 
Bethel  in  the  neighbourhood. 

The  imagination  staggers  before  the  thought  of  the 
number  of  different  and  independent  units  which  would 
have  sprung  into  being  if  every  "  grouser  "  in  the 
Army  had  thought  that  dissatisfaction  with  red  tape 
and  formalism  justified  him  in  starting  or  joining  some 
irregular  force  under  independent  command.  All  such 
bodies  might  have  the  same  fundamental  purpose,  all 
their  men  might  be  moved  with  the  same  zeal  for 
beating  the  enemy,  they  might  all  be  "  going  the  same 
way,"  but  the  victory  of  the  Germans  over  the 
British  Army  would  have  been  as  easy  as  is  the  victory 
of  the  Devil  over  the  divided  forces  of  Christ. 


VI  MEMBERSHIP   AND   LOYALTY  157 

These  five  visits  would,  I  believe,  be  recognised  by 
most  parochial  clergy  as  affording  not  unfair  examples 
of  common  objections  to  the  Church  which  they  hear 
on  their  visits  at  home.  There  are  four  others  which 
we  hear  more  commonly  out  here,  but  which  are  on 
much  the  same  lines. 

(a)  "  Well,  sir,  I  hke  the  services  out  here  and  the 
Church  is  all  right,  but  our  parson  at  home,  sir,  .  .  .  ! 
You  couldn't  go  to  church  or  have  anything  to  do 
with  him." 

Perhaps  his  parson  at  home  is  ...  !  many  of  us 
are  .  .  .  !  !  very  much  so.  But  if  you  think  of  the 
Church  as  an  army  the  poorness  of  an  officer  is  all  the 
more  reason  for  effort  on  the  part  of  the  rank  and  file. 
A  badly  led  company  will  probably  never  be  very 
effective,  but  every  soldier  would  admit  that  if  the 
officer  is  useless  the  sergeant-major  must  carry  on,  and 
if  he  is  inefficient,  the  other  non-commissioned  officers 
and  men  must  make  extra  efforts  to  do  without  the 
leadership  which  is  their  right. 

(6)  Again,  we  meet  men  who  profess  to  beheve  in 
Jesus  Christ,  but  who  admit  that  they  are  too  slack  to 
take  any  active  part  for  His  service.  British  opinion 
formed  no  hesitating  opinion  as  to  the  moral  worth 
of  men  who  beheved  in  England  but  were  too  mean- 
spirited  to  serve  her  in  her  hour  of  need. 

(c)  There  are  many  who,  while  beheving  in  Christ 
and  having  a  wish,  if  not  a  will,  to  follow  Him,  are  held 
back  by  a  consciousness  of  unworthiness  due  often  to 
some  definite  sin.  "  Christ  is  the  world's  Saviour, 
but  His  work  is  not  for  such  as  I."  Men  find  it  very 
hard  to  grasp  the  central  miracle  of  Christianity,  the 


158      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         vi 

miracle  of  forgiveness.  Tliey  find  it  liard  to  take 
Christ  quite  simply  at  His  word,  and  to  believe  in  the 
possibility  of  the  new  start,  the  possibility  of  a  real 
usefulness  in  those  who  have  sinned  deeply.  These 
years  of  war  should  have  shown  us  the  inherent 
potentialities  latent  in  many  whom  the  world  deemed 
wastrels.  The  weedy,  narrow-chested  clerk  has  attained 
physical  strength  from  army  drill  and  disciphne.  The 
careless  good-for-nothing  has  often  developed  a  moral 
courage  which  has  astonished  himself  not  less  than  his 
friends. 

(d)  Then  there  is  that  last  obstacle  which  among 
Englishmen  is  perhaps  the  most  important  of  all  ; 
important  by  reason  of  the  numbers  that  it  keeps  away 
and  still  more  important  by  reason  of  their  qualit3^ 
The  fear  of  hypocrisy  is  the  great  conscientious  objection 
which  keeps  so  many  out  of  the  army  of  Christ,  and  large 
numbers  of  those  thus  rendered  non-combatant  are  the 
sincerest  and  the  best,  the  very  men  whom  most  we  want. 

It  is  worth  while  to  examine  a  little  this  idea  of 
hypocrisy  which  has  in  men's  minds  so  attached  itself 
to  the  profession  of  religion.  The  average  man  is, 
I  think,  inclined  to  suspect  that  the  majority  of  religious 
people  are  more  or  less  hypocrites.  But  it  is  worth 
remembering  that  the  ordinary  German  is  convinced 
that  the  majority  not  only  of  religious  Englishmen  but 
of  all  Englishmen  are  equally  hypocritical.  Does  not 
this  utterly  unfair  judgment  rest  in  both  cases  on  the 
same  fallacy  ?  Is  it  not  due  to  an  assumed  division  of 
mankind  into  the  good  and  the  bad — to  an  anticipa- 
tion in  this  life  of  the  division  into  the  sheep  and  the 
goats  which  the  Bible  postpones  till  the  final  Judgment 


VI  MEMBERSHIP   AND   LOYALTY  159 

Day  ?  If  to  be  religious  meant  to  be  good,  then  every- 
one of  us  failing,  stumbling  Christians  is  a  hypocrite 
indeed.  If,  however,  as  our  prayers  and  hymns 
indicate,  to  be  religious  means  not  that  you  are  good 
but  that  you  are  trying  to  be  good,  the  accusation 
falls  to  the  ground.  The  true  division,  in  this  life, 
is  not  between  the  good  and  the  bad,  but  between  those 
who  try  and  those  who  have  given  up. 

We  Englishmen  are  fighting  for  freedom,  for  honour, 
for  purity  and  justice.  The  German  knows  how  far 
we  are  from  living  up  to  those  ideals,  and  therefore  to 
profess  them  seem.s  to  him  sheer  hypocrisy.  He  has 
set  himself  alow  ideal  and  lives  strenuously  up  to  it,  and 
he  despises  a  race  whose  ideal  seems  so  far  out  of  reach. 
We  are  not  hypocrites,  so  long  as  we  are  sincere  in 
aiming  at  the  great  ideals  which  we  profess,  however 
far  we  may  be  from  their  attainment. 

We  have  paid  our  round  of  visits  and  we  have  met 
with  nine  different  reasons  which  account  for  the 
abstention  of  men  from  organised  religion.  Others,  of 
course,  are  kept  away  by  definitely  intellectual  dis- 
belief, or  by  wilful  wickedness  ;  but  I  am  convinced 
that  the  real  problem  before  the  Church  is  not  so  much 
with  these,  as  among  the  much  larger  numbers  of  men  of 
good  will  who  are  not  actively  opposed  to  us,  but  who 
are  indifferent  to  the  Church  for  one  or  more  of  the 
nine  reasons  which  we  have  been  considering.  (1)  There 
is  the  attitude  which  regards  religion  as  a  matter 
exclusively  for  women  ;  (2)  there  is  the  satisfaction 
with  the  negative  attitude  of  harmlessness  ;  (3)  there 
is  abstention  on  the  ground  that  no  particular  benefit 
is  apparently  being  received  ;    (4)  there  is  the  absence 


160      THE   CHURCH   IN  THE   FURNACE        vr 

of  the  sense  of  the  need  of  any  co-operation  at  all  ; 
(5)  there  is  the  preference  for  co-operation  with  some 
irregular  force  ;  (6)  there  is  discontent  with  the  of&cial 
leader  in  the  locality  ;  (7)  there  is  sheer  slackness  ; 
(8)  there  is  the  sense  of  unworthiness  ;  and  (9)  there  is 
the  deep-rooted  sense  that  to  profess  an  unrealised 
ideal  is  somehow  hypocritical.  All  these  are,  I  believe, 
common  objections  and  account  for  the  abstention  of 
the  majority  of  those  men  of  good  will  whose  co-opera- 
tion the  Church  so  sorely  needs.  If  you  consider  them, 
in  the  light  of  the  conception  that  the  Church  is  an 
army  out  for  an  ideal  and  out  to  beat  the  Devil,  just 
as  the  British  Army  is  out  for  a  cause  and  out  to  beat 
the  Kaiser,  every  single  one  of  those  nine  typical 
objections  falls  to  the  ground. 

Now  that  is  surely  a  very  significant  and  a  very 
suggestive  fact.  It  does  not  mean,  of  course,  that  if 
such  a  conception  of  the  Church  was  widely  taught 
and  generally  accepted,  all  these  objections  would  be 
immediately  abandoned.  Every  clergyman  knows  that 
ingrained  prejudices  will  operate  long  after  every 
rational  foundation  for  them  has  been  admittedly 
surrendered.  But  it  does  suggest  that  a  large  shifting 
of  emphasis  on  to  that  aspect  of  the  Church  would,  in 
time,  produce  results  which  it  is  impossible  to  over- 
estimate. 

I  have  tried  to  make  two  definite  points,  to  establish 
two  clearly-defined  propositions. 

I.  That  the  best  character  results  of  war  have  come, 
in  the  main,  from  the  self -obliterating  power  of  member- 
ship in  one  or  more  of  several  corporate  bodies  pledged 
to  accomplish  a   common  ideal.     (It  is  a  significant 


VI  MEMBERSHIP   AND   LOYALTY  161 

fact  that  the  word  '  unit  '  is  now  apphed  not  to  the 
individual,  but  to  the  regiment  or  other  body  to  which 
the  individual  belongs.  The  individual  is  no  longer  the 
unit.     He  is  a  part  "  doing  his  bit  "  of  the  larger  whole.) 

11.  That  (leaving  on  one  side  wilful  opposition  or 
deliberate  shirking)  the  objections  which  keep  the 
majority  of  men  away  from  the  Church  would  lose  all 
rational  foundation  if  once  we  grasped  the  conception  of 
the  Church  as  an  army,  a  militant  society  pledged  to  get 
things  done  in  the  same  way  that  the  British  Army 
exists  to  accomplish  certain  unmistakable  ends,  certain 
definite  purposes. 

These  two  propositions  taken  together  seem  to 
indicate  that  the  vital  problem  before  the  Church  is 
to  discover  how  best  to  encourage  that  attitude  of 
mind  in  which  men  think  of  themselves  not  merely  as 
individuals  moving  to  individual  ends,  but  as  bound 
to  one  another  in  a  common  membership,  pledged  to  a 
common  loyalty,  moving  to  a  corporate  end. 

It  is  clear  that  self-forgetfulness  is  essential  to  the 
highest  development  of  character  and  to  the  accomplish- 
ment of  any  really  great  achievement,  but  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  it  cannot  be  directly  taught,  that  it  must 
be,  in  a  sense,  incidental.  The  Church  has  always 
taught  her  children  the  importance  of  sacrificing 
money,  pleasure,  comfort,  and  so  on.  But  such 
sacrifice  undertaken  for  an  individual  heavenly  end 
is  of  course  a  mere  travesty  of  the  sacrifice  of  self.  It 
may  be  more  enlightened  than  what  is  ordinarily 
called  selfishness,  but  most  emphatically  it  is  not  the 
reality.  It  is  not  even  a  lower  degree  of  true  self- 
sacrifice.     It  is  different  altogether  in  kind. 

M 


1C2      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         vi 

The  sin  to  which  religious  people  have  always  been 
most  prone  is  the  sin  of  idolatr3^  They  have  falsely 
identified  symbol  and  reahty.  They  have  claimed  for 
channels  of  truth  that  they  are  themselves  the  spring  ; 
for  vehicles  of  grace  that  they  are  themselves  what  they 
convey.  The  Israelites  put  wood  and  stone  in  the 
place  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts.  Christians,  too,  at  different 
stages  in  the  development  of  our  religion  have  claimed 
for  a  society  or  a  book  an  authority  which  of  right 
belongs  to  God  alone. 

The  same  tendency  has  appeared  in  the  Christian 
attitude  to  sacrifice,  the  tendency  to  put  the  symbol 
in  the  place  of  the  thing  symbolised.  The  sacrifice 
of  money  or  comfort  may  be  a  useful  and  educative 
symbol  of  the  sacrifice  of  self,  just  as  the  offering  of 
bulls  and  goats  was  a  predictive  type,  a  preparatory 
symbol  of  our  Lord's  one  oblation  of  Himself.  But 
it  is  when  you  begin  to  identify  the  symbol  with 
the  thing  symbolised,  the  token  with  the  reality,  that 
idolatry  begins.  (Perhaps  that  is  why  many  earnest 
people  are  so  extraordinarily  irritating  in  Lent.) 

The  sacrifice  of  things  may  be  a  most  valuable 
discipline,  preparing  men  to  hear  and  freeing  them  to 
obey  the  call  of  a  great  cause  and  the  summons  to  a 
real  membership  in  a  society  pledged  to  advance  it. 
Self-sacrifice,  the  real  surrender  of  the  self,  cannot, 
from  its  very  nature,  be  deliberately  attained.  It 
must,  if  it  is  to  be  a  real  losing  of  the  self,  be  a  result 
of  something  else,  of  a  membership  and  a  loyalty 
strong  enough  to  override  the  too  assertive  claims  of 
the  individual  self. 

In  this  time  of  war  mankind  has  shown  a  marvellous 


VI  MEMBERSHIP   AND   LOYALTY  163 

power  of  self-forgetfulness,  a  magnificent  capacity  for 
loyalty.  For  that  loyalty  the  ultimate  claimant  is 
and  can  be  none  other  than  God  Himself.  The 
supreme  cause  is  the  cause  of  His  Kingdom.  That 
God's  work  may  be  accomplished,  that  His  Kingdom 
may  come  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven,  our  membership 
is  claimed  and  our  loyalty  is  sought  by  His  representa- 
tive here  on  earth,  the  Church  of  the  Universal,  the 
Eternal  Christ,  the  Incarnate  God. 

And  so  it  is  the  Church's  primary  duty,  not  so  much 
to  teach  sacrifice  or  other  moral  qualities,  but  to 
sound  her  call  and  to  devote  herself  to  her  cause,  in 
a  way  sufiiciently  imaginative  and  enterprising  to 
enlist  the  sympathy  of  all  men  of  good  will,  and  then, 
incidentally,  she  will  produce  in  them  the  power  of 
sacrifice  and  those  other  qualities  which  she  desires. 
By  such  a  method  she  will  produce  these  character 
results  more  thoroughly  and  without  the  taint  of  self- 
consciousness  which  has  in  the  past  so  often  marred 
them. 

It  is  the  experience  of  other  societies  that,  though 
they  may  make  men  value  their  membership  by  what 
they  are,  the  sense  of  membership  can  only  be  fanned 
to  a  passionate  loyalty  by  what  they  do. 

Again  to  take  our  illustration  from  the  Army. 
The  regiment — what  it  is,  and  what  it  has  done  in 
the  past — of  itself  makes  men  proud  to  belong  to  it 
and  jealous  of  its  traditions.  Their  sense  of  member- 
ship will  so  far  affect  men's  individuality  that  they  will 
be  anxious  not  to  disgrace  the  corporate  whole  of 
which  they  are  a  part.  But  when  the  regiment 
is    actually    doing   things,    the  sense   of   membership 

M  2 


164      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         vi 

will  be  stirred  to  a  self-devouring  flame,  and  the 
man  who  at  other  times  was  but  mildly  conscious 
of  his  dependence  on  and  care  for  his  regiment  will 
utterly  forget  self  in  passionate  love  for  the  unit 
to  which  he  belongs,  and  in  whole-hearted  determina- 
tion to  do  his  share  in  enabling  it  to  accomplish  its 
purpose. 

Another  illustration  from  an  entirely  different 
sphere  may  help  to  bring  out  the  point  that  the  sense 
of  loyalty,  though  always  present,  will  be  active  or 
quiescent  according  as  to  whether  the  body  which 
claims  our  loyalty  is  doing  things  or  merely  existing. 

At  the  Public  School  to  which  I  had  the  honour 
to  belong  we  played  cricket  in  the  summer,  and  in  tlie 
winter  played  a  form  of  football  which  was  unique 
to  our  own  school.  At  cricket,  of  course,  we  played 
against  other  schools,  and  in  consequence  all  through 
the  summer  term  we  were  school-conscious,  and  our 
sense  of  membership  rose  to  boiling  point  on  the  daj- 
of  the  principal  match  of  the  season.  At  football 
there  were  no  School  matches  of  any  real  importance, 
and  so  the  schoolboys'  need  of  loyalty  was  concentrated 
on  the  House,  and  in  the  winter  term  we  were  just  as 
House-conscious  as  in  the  summer  we  were  School- 
conscious.  Summer  and  winter  alike,  we  felt  ourselves 
members  both  of  School  and  House,  but  in  the  winter, 
when  the  School  was  doing  nothing  to  arouse  and  stir 
our  sense  of  membership,  the  lesser  loyalty  was  over- 
whelmingly the  stronger. 

What  our  Church  is,  with  her  venerable  associations 
and  her  glorious  past,  makes  us  proud  to  belong  to  her, 
but  our  sense  of  membership  will  only  be  strong  and  life- 


VI  MEMBERSHIP   AND   LOYALTY  165 

affecting  if  she  does  active  and  vigorous  things  in  such 
a  way  as  to  call  for  our  cooperation  and  to  evoke  our 
loyalty. 

Of  course  membership  has  first  to  be  made  a  recog- 
nised reality.  Entrance  to  a  school  makes  an  immediate 
and  admitted  difference.  The  acceptance  of  the  King's 
shilling  changes  radically  a  man's  whole  life.  Baptism, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  hardly  recognised  at  all  as  admis- 
sion to  membership  ;  and  the  restoration  to  men's 
minds  of  the  truth  that  Baptism  enrols  us  in  a  definite 
society  is  perhaps  the  first  step  towards  any  progress 
at  all.  But  once  we  have  in  some  degree  attained  the 
sense  of  membership,  we  need  to  have  it  fanned  into 
activity  by  a  Church  which  is  really  doing  active 
things.  The  Church  exists  to  offer  corporate 
worship  to  God,  and  to  do  purposeful  work  for 
the  world.  The  first  cannot  be  accomplished 
while  the  worship  of  the  congregation  is  delegated 
to  a  selected  choir.  The  second  will  not  be 
achieved  till  we  kill  for  ever  the  conception  that 
the  Church  exists  for  the  benefit  of  the  faithful  few 
who  attend  her  services. 

The  Church  of  God  is  the  supreme  claimant  on  earth 
to  our  loyalty,  but  the  war  has  shown  us  the  amazing 
power  of  the  lesser  loyalties,  and  if  the  spirit  of  self- 
sacrifice  is  to  be  fostered,  these  must  be  encouraged. 

Ml'.  Wells  in  "  War  and  the  Future  "  has  made  the 
discovery  that  the  only  hope  for  the  world  is  to  be 
found  in  our  common  loyalty  to  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

"  What  comm-on  end  can  there  be  in  all  the  world 
except  this  idea  of  the  world  kingdom  of  God  ?  What 
is  the  good  of  orienting  one's  devotion  to  a  firm,  or 


16G      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         vi 

to  class  solidarity,  or  La  Repiiblique  Fran9aise  or 
Poland  or  Albania  or  such  love  and  loyalty  as  people 
express  for  King  George  or  King  Albert  or  the 
Due  d'Orleans — it  puzzles  me  why — or  any  such 
intermediate  object  of  self-abandonment  ?  We  need 
a  standard  so  universal  that  the  platelayer  may  say 
to  the  barrister  or  the  duchess,  or  the  Anzac  soldier 
to  the  Sinn  Feiner  or  the  Chinaman,  '  What  are  we 
two  doing  for  it  ?  '  And  to  fill  the  place  of  that  '  it  ' 
no  other  idea  is  great  enough  or  commanding  enough 
but  only  the  world  kingdom  of  God. 

"  However  long  he  may  have  to  hunt,  the  blind  man 
who  is  seeking  service  and  an  end  to  bickerings  will 
come  to  that  at  last  because  of  all  the  thousand  other 
things  he  may  clutch  at,  nothing  else  can  satisfy  his 
manifest  need." 

"...  The  world  kingdom  of  God  .  .  .  nothing 
else  can  satisfy  his  manifest  need."  Every  Christian 
will  welcome  such  a  confession  of  faith.  At  any  rate, 
so  far  as  this  world  is  concerned,  it  expresses  exactly 
the  Cathohc  ideal,  the  world-wide  Kingdom  of  God 
transcending  all  that  makes  for  division  and  for 
bickerings  among  men.  Mr.  Wells  has  discovered  a 
catholic  ideal,  but  like  all  converts  he  shoAvs  in  his 
new-found  zeal  an  impractical  exclusiveness.  He  does 
not  see  the  "  good  of  orienting  one's  devotion  to  .  .  . 
any  intermediate  object  of  self-abandonment."  The 
suggestion  that  loyalty  to  a  larger  cause  makes  devo- 
tion to  the  intermediate  causes  useless  and  unnecessary, 
and  the  attempt  to  secure  the  larger  loyalty  by  dis- 
couraging the  sense  of  obhgation  towards  lesser  societies, 
is  altogether  to  ignore  the  lessons  of  human  experience. 


VI  MEMBERSHIP   AND   LOYALTY  167 

The  would-be  cosmopolitan  who  will  not  narrow  himself 
by  love  of  country  is  rarely  capable  of  any  real  self- 
devotion  to  the  international  ideal  which  he  professes. 
The  '  lover  of  humanity '  is  more  often  than  not 
utterly  miserable  in  a  third-class  railway  carriage. 

Earlier  in  this  Essay  I  gave  some  illustrations  of  the 
various  loyalties  that  are  moving  the  minds  of  men  out 
here.  Their  zeal  for  various  concentric  circles  ranging 
from  the  cause  of  the  Great  Alliance  to  the  particular 
platoon  shows  that  the  larger  and  smaller  loyalties 
are  not  necessarily  inconsistent.  We  must,  I  think, 
encourage  everywhere  the  sense  of  membership,  and 
everything  that  tends  towards  corporate  life  ;  family 
feeling,  school  esprit  de  corps,  industrial  solidarity, 
local  patriotism  and  nationalism,  as  well  as  the  idea  of 
the  world  kingdom. 

There  is,  of  course,  no  necessary  inconsistency 
between  the  lesser  and  the  larger  loyalties.  A  man 
may  be  zealous  for  the  interests  of  his  family,  and 
yet  a  most  loyal  townsman  ;  his  local  patriotism  may 
be  strong  without  in  any  way  diminishing  his  love  of 
country  or  his  zeal  for  the  Empire.  Indeed,  not  only 
are  these  lesser  loyalties  not  inconsistent,  they  are 
necessary  stages  in  our  education  for  the  wider  fellow- 
ship ;  a  man  is  not  likely  to  be  a  self-sacrificing  patriot 
unless  he  has  first  learnt  the  lesson  of  the  smaller  circles, 
unless  he  has  learnt  to  put  the  interest  of  his  family  or 
his  town  before  his  personal  advantage. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  there  is  a  very  real  danger 
that  such  lesser  circles  may  tend  to  become  exclusive, 
that  the  passionate  loyalty  of  a  man  to  some  narrow 
society  may  become  petrified  and  incapable  of  extending 


168      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         vi 

outwards  to  the  larger  circles.  There  is,  in  this  pro- 
gressive education  in  the  art  of  fellowship,  the  danger 
of  arrested  development.  A  boy's  keenness  on  his 
school  is  a  splendid  thing,  but  there  are  some  people 
who  remain  schoolboys  all  their  life,  and  then  an 
admirable  childlike  quality  degenerates  into  a  harmful 
childishness.  Local  patriotism  was  and  is  a  magnificent 
thing.  To  civic  pride  we  owe  our  finest  architecture, 
our  cathedrals  and  our  guild  halls.  To  it  we  owe  much 
of  our  progress  in  education,  town  vying  with  town  in 
the  care  and  wealth  lavished  on  its  encouragement. 
In  the  Middle  Ages  local  patriotism  was  vigorous  and 
fruitful,  but  also  it  was  at  this  point  that  there  was  then 
the  greatest  danger  of  arrested  development.  Local 
and  provincial  patriotism  tended  to  become  exclusive. 
The  towns  which  had  fought  so  eagerly  for  their 
charters,  their  privileges,  and  their  liberties  were,  all 
too  often,  indifferent  to  the  welfare  of  the  country  as  a 
whole.  That,  of  course,  is  a  danger  which  has  not  yet 
entirely  passed,  local  selfishness  is  not  altogether  un- 
known !  But  it  is  not  now  the  real  danger  point.  In 
the  political  sphere  we  are  faced  not  so  much  by  the 
perils  of  provincial  narrowness  as  of  an  exclusive 
Nationalism.  In  the  industrial  sphere  the  danger  is 
from  syndicalist  and  class  selfishness,  and  in  the 
ecclesiastical  from  mere  parochialism. 

Parochialism  and  a  narrow,  exclusive  nationalism 
may  lead  us  to  disaster  ;  but  the  disaster  if  more 
conspicuous  is  less  fundamental  than  the  tragedy  which 
is  the  result  of  sheer  individualism.  Germany  has 
perverted  the  first  of  God's  commandments  into — Thou 
shalt  have  none  other  gods  but  Germany.     "  Deutsch- 


VI  MEMBERSHIP   AND   LOYALTY  169 

land  iiber  alles."  It  is  an  idolatry,  and  so  far  as  it 
has  meant  placing  the  interests  of  the  State  above  the 
claims  of  God  it  has  led  to  tragedy  and  wrong  ;  to  a 
war  in  which  the  moral  claims  of  God  and  the  interests 
of  the  world  as  a  whole  have  been  made  subservient 
to  the  supposed  necessities  of  the  nation-state  which 
claims  of  her  citizens  an  exclusive  loyalty.  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  so  far  as  the  idolatry  of  country  is 
better  than  the  idolatry  of  self  it  has  led  to  heroic 
qualities  of  endurance,  self-sacrifice,  and  devotion. 

The  risks  are  great,  but  they  are  worth  running, 
Nietzsche  was  nearer  than  many  of  us  Christians  to 
the  spirit  of  our  Master  when  he  bade  us  "  Mve 
dangerously,"  Christianity  is  always  a  launching 
out  into  the  deep.  If  we  encourage  the  sense  of 
membership  in  all  these  minor  societies,  there  is  a 
chance  of  moving  towards  real  Churchmanship — to 
real  self-giving  of  the  individual  to  the  service  of  the 
Body,  If  in  everything  else  we  are  strictly  individual- 
istic, if  there  are  to  be  no  minor  memberships,  then 
the  individual  habit  of  mind  will  have  become  so 
strong  that  our  Churchmanship  will  be  a  caricature,  we 
shall  use  our  membership  for  individual  ends,  instead 
of  giving  our  individual  selves  to  the  service  of  the 
whole,  for  the  man  who  has  never  learnt  to  devote 
himself  to  the  interests  of  some  lesser  society  will 
never  be  capable  of  self-abandonment  to  the  world 
Kingdom  of  God. 

Membership  is  of  the  essence  of  Christianity.  The 
Christian's  life  opens  with  enrolment  at  Baptism, 
"  wherein  I  was  made  a  member  of  Christ,"  The 
purpose  of  the  Society  is  at  the  heart  of  the  Christian's 


170      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         vi 

prayer,  "Hallowed  be  Thy  Name.  Thy  Kingdom  come." 
But  it  is  to  Leadershijj  that  we  must  look  for  the 
vitalising  spark  which  will  make  our  membership  a 
real  character-forming  and  life-affecting  force.  Earthly 
leadership  is  in  commission  to-day.  The  time  of  single 
outstanding  personalities  has  gone  past.  The  spread 
of  education  has  on  the  one  hand  made  men  less  willing 
to  follow  blindly,  and  on  the  other  hand  has  given  to 
larger  numbers  in  some  degree  the  faculties  of  leader- 
ship. However  much  we  care  for  the  corporate  side 
of  our  religion,  we  have  got  to  use  our  personahties, 
and  on  all  of  us  to  whom  in  any  degree,  in  small  circles 
or  in  great,  the  faculty  of  leadership  has  been  given, 
there  is  laid  the  obligation  of  employing  that  gift  for 
the  advancement  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  here  on  earth. 

Leadership  is  what  the  world  needs,  and  every 
convinced  Christian  is  bound  to  try  to  use  the  gift 
which  has  been  given  him  to  lead  men  towards  the 
realisation  of  the  world  idea  of  the  Kingdom,  but  over 
and  beyond  our  f)uny  powers  we  are  conscious  of  the 
supreme  leadership  of  the  Captain  of  our  Salvation. 
Christianity  is  membership,  but  it  is  also  loyalty — 
loyalty  to  a  Person.  Membership  always  involves 
duties.  But  for  the  members  of  Christ,  the  life  of 
duty  is  the  hfe  of  faith.  Faith  is  self-committal  to  a 
person.  Seeking  to  live  the  life  of  duty  does  not,  for 
us,  mean  the  attempt  to  obey  a  code  of  dead  rules  ;  it 
is  the  effort  to  conform  our  lives  to  the  living  will  of 
a  living  Person,  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord. 

A  strong  sense  of  membership  is  essential,  not  only 
for  the  sake  of  what  it  may  enable  us  to  achieve,  but 
also  for  the  good  of  our  own  individual  life.     It  is  only 


VI  MEMBERSHIP   AND   LOYALTY  171 

in  loyalty  to  a  cause  and  in  membership  of  a  body 
pledged  to  advance  it  that  we  can  hope  for  self -losing, 
and  without  self-losing  there  can  be  no  self-finding. 
Self -surrender  to  a  false  ideal  may  well  have  disastrous 
results,  and  there  are  forms  of  corporateness  which 
crush  individuality  beneath  the  deadening  hand  of 
power. 

The  lesser  societies  to  Avhich  men  belong  owe  a 
double  duty  ;  upwards  and  outwards  to  the  larger 
Society  of  which  they  form  a  part ;  inwards  and  down- 
wards to  the  individuals  who  compose  them. 

The  German  conception  of  the  State  fails  in  both 
directions  ;  it  does  violence  alike  to  humanity  as  a 
whole  and  to  the  individual.  Regarding  the  State  as 
supreme  and  ultimate,  it  wrongs  the  larger  conception 
of  the  world  kingdom  ;  regarding  the  individual  as  a 
mere  instrument  to  increase  the  power  of  the  State, 
it  destroys  his  individual  freedom  and  crushes  down 
his  soul.  And  so  it  fails  both  upwards  and  downwards. 
The  ideal  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  cannot  fail  upwards 
because  it  is  not  an  intermediate  loyalty,  but  has,  of 
right,  that  supreme  position  which  the  German  nation- 
state  falsely  arrogates  to  itself.  It  does  not  fail  down- 
wards because  its  welding  force  is  not  power,  but  love, 
and  it  is  only  in  love  that  individuality  can  really  grow 
and  flourish. 

Our  membership  is  membership  in  Christ  ;  our 
loyalty  is  loyalty  to  Christ  ;  and  Christ  is  Love.  If 
our  membership  is  a  reality  and  if  our  loyalty  is  even 
unto  death,  we  shall  not  only  learn  f orgetf ulness  of  self, 
the  root  of  all  virtue,  but,  because  our  self-losing 
will  be  inspired  by  love,  we  shall,  in  losing,  find. 


VII 


WORSHIP    AND    SERVICES 


By    the    Rev.    E.    MILNER-WHITE,   M.A. 

Senior  Chaplain  to  the  Forces,  Division  ;  Chaplain  oj  Ki>tg's  College, 

Cainbrids.e. 


VII 
WORSHIP    AND    SERVICES  i 

New  churches,  new  services.  Three  years  we  have 
spent  in  sheds  and  barns  and  fields  and  orchards  and 
schoolrooms  and  dug-outs  and  mine-craters,  hastily 
adorned,  or  merely  tidied,  or  in  puris  naturalibus ; — a 
new  church  every  Sunday,  and  most  weekdays  ;  new 
services  in  them  ;  and  new  ideas  and  ideals  as  to  the 
scope  and  wealth  of  public  devotion. 

Now  these  things  have  actually  taken  place,  and 
are  history.  They  have  happened  naturally  without 
ecclesiastical  feeling,  or  ecclesiastical  notice ;  without 
a  thought  of  disorderliness  or  yet  any  sense  of  order  : 
liturgy  vanished  with  peace,  and  rubrics  paled  in  a 
redder  world.  An  immense  spontaneous,  amicable 
anarchy  has  sprung  into  being, — and  this  has  been 
the  Church  in  France. 

The  home  Church,  bishops,  liturgiologists,  clergy  and 
people,  must  recognise  and  allow  for  this,  for  it  spells 
change  when  those  who  for  three  years  have  almost 
forgotten  the  ordered  progress  of  the  Prayer-book 
return  to  their  altars.      The  thing  was  inevitable  and 

^  I  owe  much  in  this  paper  to  the  contributions  and  criticisms 
of  my  brother-chaplains  in  the  Division  :  and  special  light  and 
leading  to  the  Rev.  B.  T.  D.  Smith,  of  St.  John's  College,  Cam- 
bridge. 

175 


176      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       vii 

it  happened.  There  may  be  much  to  regret,  there  may 
be  danger  in  it  ;  wisdom  does  not  of  necessity  cry  aloud 
on  battlefields.  But  there  is  also  good  in  it,  simply 
because  it  was  found  necessary  during  the  most  intense 
years  of  living  that  Enghsh  manhood  has  known. 
From  so  long  and  valiant  and  agonised  an  attempt  to 
adapt  public  devotions  to  actual  need  may  well  come 
fruit  for  congregations  who  have  the  same  needs  and 
desires,  but  who  cannot  make  them  visible  or  audible 
in  the  same  way  as  can  a  dying  army.  As  for  the 
chaplains,  they  have  forgotten  all  of  that  slumberous 
ease  which  so  easily  attaches  to  the  recitation  of  an 
Office,  and  learned  that  every  prayer  and  sentence 
needs  effort  and  care.  We  are  a  new  race,  we  priests 
of  France,  humbled  by  much  strain  and  much  failure, 
revolutionaries  not  at  all  in  spirit,  but  actually  in  fact  ; 
and  while  often  enough  we  sigh  for  the  former  days, 
the  procession  of  splendid  offices  and  the  swell  of  the 
organ,  these  will  never  again  content  us  unless  or  until 
the  great  multitude  also  find  their  approach  to  God 
through  them. 

Sometimes  we  almost  shout  for  pain,  fearing  that 
our  brethren  at  home  will  misunderstand  us,  because 
they  have  not  known  the  things  that  we  have  known, 
nor  understand  the  lack  of  equipment  with  which  our 
Mother  sent  us  forth.  It  may  well  be  that  we  have 
grown  one-sided  or  too  many-sided  in  this  faneJess 
mim'stry  ;  and  truly  as  yet  none  of  our  hardly -gathered 
experience  has  been  defined  or  ordered.  The  following 
pages  hope  simply  to  set  down  the  facts  which  must 
be  reckoned  with,  because  they  have  been  facts  for  so 
long  and  are  beyond  question.     Afterwards  I  wish,  as 


VII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  177 

one  who  has  no  authority  or  claim  but  that  of  having 
observed,  to  suggest  not  details  but  directions  of 
change  in  public  services  and  their  conduct.  Fitness 
for  place  and  use  has  become  in  these  days  the  standard 
by  which  men  and  things  are  judged  ;  and  even  the 
Prayer-book,  august  and  beloved  ever,  stands  for  judg- 
ment. For  while  our  tribes  have  wandered,  dwelling  in 
tents  and  holes  of  earth,  it  has  been  at  best  semi- 
used  and  semi-usable  ;  and  we  have  come  to  look  upon 
it  from  the  unfamiliar  distance. 


Begin  with  Matins  and  Evensong.  In  France  they 
have  simply  disappeared.  When  a  building  behind  the 
line  has  been  available  for  services,  plus  the  crowning 
mercy  of  a  portable  harmonium,  some  inspiring 
attempts  at  Evensong  have  been  made.  But  these 
have  contained  usually  but  one  lesson  and  one  selected 
psalm  ;  while,  by  common  consent,  the  second  part  of 
the  prayers  has  been  left  to  the  priest's  improvisations. 
The  men  certainly  prefer  this  apparent  and  decent 
Evensong  to  less  conventional  services,  and  they  have 
even  been  known  to  request  their  chaplain  to  intone 
the  prayers,  as  being  more  "  home-like."  If  psalms 
are  selected  and  lessons  shortened,  and  both  made  to 
bear,  if  possible,  on  the  teaching  of  the  day,  dwelt 
upon  again  in  the  address,  there  seems  no  case  for 
dethroning  the  queen  of  offices. 

The  morning  parade  service  was  meant  unashamedly 
to  be  a  "  mangled  Matins."  There  are  as  many  versions 
of  it,  still  further  mangled,  as  there  are  chaplains. 
Yet  everywhere  it  rings   unmistakably  as   a   Church 

N 


178      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       vii 

service  ;  and  carries  a  distinct  atmosphere  of  "  C.  of  E." 
about  it,  whether  it  glow  with  the  spiritual  force  of  its 
conductor  or  fall  dead.       This  atmosphere  does  not 
spring  from  the  exceeding  virtue  or  power  of  Matins, 
but  from  the  fact  that  portions  of  the  framework  of 
Matins  and  Evensong  are  the  only  "  popular  "  devotions 
universally  possessed  by  the  Enghsh  people.       This 
framework  consists  of  the  opening  sentence.  General 
Confession,  Absolution  (often  replaced  by  the  Comphne 
form,  or  the  collect  for  21  Trinity),  Lord's  Prayers 
Versicles  and  Creed.      Observe,  this  is  not  at  all  the 
liturgical  framework  of  Matins,  but  a  skeleton  devotions 
which  is  built  upon  further,  according  to  the  wish  of 
the  chaplain,  with  a  lesson,  hymns,  prayers,  and  address 
in  any  order,  at  any  length,  on  any  subject.      Once 
drop  the  notion  that  such  parade  and  voluntary  services 
have  anything  to  do  with  a  liturgical  office,  and  the 
result  is  not  unsatisfactory.     Indeed  it  has  proved  an 
invaluable  blessing  and  help  to  chaplains  and  men 
ahke,  that  both  can  take  for  granted  the  common 
knowledge  of  one  skeleton  popular  devotion  :   nothing, 
in  truth,    puts    the    weird    British    temperament    so 
wholly   at   ease    as    to    start    repeating    the  General 
Confession. 

We  have  had  to  work  with  the  tools  at  hand.  In 
brief  big  parades,  in  little  billet  devotions,  we  have 
possessed  one  well-known  scheme.  It  may  not  be 
perfect,  but  it  has  served — Confession,  Lord's  Prayer, 
Creed.  And  while  most  of  us  yearn  for  more  and  better 
schemes  of  popular  devotion,  we  must  pay  the  tribute 
of  great  gratitude  for  the  splendid  work  that  this  has 
done.     No  longer  can  it  be  accounted  a  "  mangled  " 


VII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  179 

or  "  boiled  down "  Matins  or  Evensong  ;  it  exists 
in  its  own  right,  however  meagre  it  be,  as  the  one 
perfectly  popular  devotion  for  the  mass  of  our 
people. 

Here  emerges,  then,  the  first  demand  of  the  revo- 
lutionaries. They  have  no  wish  to  interfere  with  the 
structure  of  the  liturgical  offices,  nor  with  their  use 
whenever  profitable.  But  they  do  want  more  and 
fuller  and  wider  schemes  of  popular  devotion,  that  shall 
have  a  place  in  the  Prayer-book,  that  can  be  known 
and  loved  by  all  from  childhood  ;  simple  in  language, 
intimate  in  feeling,  and  alight  with  the  story  and  heart 
of  our  Lord  ;  that  can  sink  into  peaceful,  homely 
prayer,  and  spring  into  the  beloved  hymn  effortlessly; 
and  draw  our  eyes  to  Christ  and  our  hearts  to  His 
Church  in  new  and  richer  ways. 

More  drastic  will  be  the  changes  clamoured  for  in 
the  Burial  Office.  The  present  one  has  failed  badly  in 
the  days  of  death.  The  writer  has  found  a  curious 
interest  in  making  a  collection  of  the  services  said  or 
read  by  all  the  Church  of  England  padres  he  has  met 
by  a  graveside.  Not  one  has  been  the  same  as  another  ; 
and  not  one  has  been  that  in  the  Prayer-book.  The 
structure  indeed  has  been  preserved,  and  here  again 
it  serves  to  continue  the  distinct  atmosphere  of  the 
Church.  The  opening  sentences  remain,  but  some  are 
new  sentences  ^  ;  either  psalm  or  lesson  remains,  but 

1  New  sentences.  Usual  are  "  Though  I  walk  through  the  valley 
of  the  shadow  of  death.  .  .  .  "  ;  "  Greater  love  hath  no  man  than 
this  .  .  .  "  ;  "  Now  we  see  through  a  glass  darkly  ;  but  then  face 
to  face  ..."  The  second  is  hardly  suitable  to  peace  conditions, 
but  the  third  is  an  inspiration ;  due  to  the  Rev.  and  Hon.  Maurice 
Peel,  killed  at  BuUecourt,  May,  1917. 

N    2 


180      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       vii 

it  is  a  new  psalm  or  a  new  lesson/  or  the  old  one 
shortened.  Thence  to  the  end  of  the  Lord's  Prayer, 
it  remains  as  in  the  Prayer-book — often  with  the 
addition  before  the  committal  of  a  prayer  to  hallow 
the  grave.  The  concluding  prayers  are  one  and  all 
different.  Only  one  chaplain  have  I  found  who  did 
not  pray  directly  for  the  dead,  2  and  none  who  forgot 

1  Exact  liturgiologists,  who  are  few,  use  a  psalm,  generally  23  or 
130.  Of  alternative  lessons,  the  most  frequently  used  are  Rev.  vii, 
9-17,  St.  John  xii,  24-26,  and  1  Thess.  iv,  13  to  the  end.  Most 
often  the  Corinthians  lesson  is  abbreviated  to  the  first  three  and  last 
six  verses. 

2  The  prayers  employed  seem  to  go  by  cycles,  according  to  '  the 
use,'  as  it  were,  of  different  divisions,  etc.  One  such  group  uses 
over  the  grave  the  Prayer  of  Commendation  (in  the  Visitation  of 
the  Sick)  curtailed  ;  another  the  prayer  in  the  Forms  ap- 
pointed for  war,  Part  III.,  a  Memorial  of  such  as  have 
fallen  in  the  service  of  their  country.  (S.P.C.K.)  A  larger 
number  employ  the  following  prayers,  or  variants  of  them. 
"  Almighty  God,  we  commend  to  Thy  lovingkindness  the  soul  of 
Thy  servant,  who  has  given  his  life  to  defend  us.  Accept,  O  Lord, 
the  offering  of  his  self-sacrifice  ;  and  grant  to  him  with  all  Thy 
faithful  servants,  a  place  of  refreshment  and  peace,  where  the  light 
of  Thy  countenance  shines  for  ever,  and  where  all  tears  are  wiped 
away  ..."  and  "  O  Almighty  Lord,  the  God  of  the  spirits  of  all  flesh, 
fulfil,  we  beseech  Thee,  the  purpose  of  Thy  love  in  those  who  are 
at  rest,  that  the  good  work  which  Thou  hast  begun  in  them  may  bo 
perfected  unto  the  day  of  Jesus  Christ  ..."  Others  I  have  heard  are 
the  beautiful  prayer  in  the  Roman  Office,  ' '  Grant,  O  Lord,  that  while 
we  lament  the  departure  of  this  Thy  servant  ..."  (see  "  Prime 
and  Hours,"  '  Commendatio  Animae,'  p.  292) ;  and  that  most  perfect 
one  abbreviated  from  the  Litany  of  St.  James,  "  Remember,  O 
Lord,  we  beseech  Thee,  the  souls  of  them  that  have  kept  the  faith, 
both  those  whom  we  remember,  and  those  whom  we  remember  not, 
and  grant  them  rest  in  the  land  of  the  living,  in  the  joy  of  Paradise, 
whence  all  pain  and  grief  have  fled  away,  where  the  light  of  Thy 
countenance  ever  shines  ;  and  guide  in  peace  the  end  of  our  lives, 
O  Lord,  when  Thou  wilt  and  as  Thou  wilt,  only  without  shame  or 
sin."     (I  quote  as  I  have  heard  tlio  prayers  actually  used.) 


VII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  181 

the  mourners  at  home.  The  result  has  been  an  office, 
no  less  beautiful  but  far  more  human,  with  not  less 
but  more  true  and  ancient  divinity  in  it  ;  and  thereby 
deeper  suitability,  honesty,  and  comfort. 

Here  if  anywhere  the  witness  of  France  must  be 
overwhelming.  And  we  beg  you  and  beg  again.  Church 
of  the  homeland,  consecrate  to  perpetual  English  use 
the  variations  that  by  great  instinct  have  committed 
the  bodies  of  your  sons,  ten  thousand  times  over,  to 
their  victorious  bed  of  earth. 

The  change  we  demand  is  thus  not  in  structure,  but 
in  matter.  It  is  remarkable  to  behold,  this  reluctance 
of  the  Enghsh  priest  to  vary  structure,  and  the  readi- 
ness with  which  he  changes  matter.  He  can  be  trusted 
not  to  impoverish.  His  changes  all  add  something  ; 
not  in  length,  for  he  reduces  the  length  of  prayers  as 
well  as  lections,  preferring  the  briefer  collect  form  to 
the  seventeenth-century  model  ;  but  into  them  he  puts 
more  than  the  present  office  possesses, — the  bigger 
untimorous  faith  of  Catholic  Christianity,  and  a  juster 
measure  of  Christian  consolation  for  those  that 
mourn. 

No  chaplain  takes  liberties  with  the  text  of  the  Holy 
Communion  Office,  although  the  ignorance  and  slack- 
ness of  Church  of  England  men  with  regard  to  the 
Eucharist  are  his  gravest  trouble.  As  a  rule,  he  tries  to 
shorten  the  service.  The  King's  prayer  is  left  out.  The 
Ten  Commandments  are  seldom  repeated,  and  yield  to 
the  two  New  Commandments,  or  the  threefold  Kyrie. 
Lately  there  has  been  a  distinct  tendency  to  drop  the 
last  two  Comfortable  Words.  When  time  matters 
seriously,  the  service  begins  with  the  Church  Militant 


182      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE    FURNACE       vii 

or  the  Invitation.  The  one  important  change  I  have 
observed  on  occasion  is  the  placing  of  the  Prayer  of 
Oblation  after  that  of  Consecration, — and  no  one  has 
murmured.  The  problems  surrounding  the  Eucharist 
at  the  Front  are  educational.  How  shall  this  vast 
unsacramental  multitude  learn  the  service,  learn  to 
understand  it,  learn  to  love  it  ?  And  so  come  changes 
of  a  different  nature.  When  two  priests  have  been 
available,  one  to  celebrate,  the  other  to  instruct  in 
"  the  nave,"  the  result  has  resembled  a  children's 
Eucharist  at  home.  There  is  a  useful  and  wide- 
spread habit  of  breaking  up  the  prayer  for  the  Church 
Militant  into  its  component  sections,  prefacing  each 
with  a  bidding,  "  Let  us  pray  for  .  .  ."  The  Agnus 
Dei  many  congregations  delight  to  repeat  together, 
to  break  worthily  the  silence  after  the  Consecration. 
Great  use  has  been  made  of  hymns  in  the  obvious 
places,  and  during  Communion  ;  and  this  perhaps  has 
been  the  greatest  devotional  help  to  the  Eucharists  of 
France,  and  will  be  demanded  in  home  churches — 
only,  may  the  demand  be  anticipated  !  In  that  other- 
wise vast  numbers  of  men  would  be  excommunicated, 
and  because  men  are  rushed  up  to  battle  at  any  moment, 
afternoon  and  evening  Communions  have  become 
universal  ;  and  priests  of  the  Cathohc  school,  while 
taking  every  precaution  to  teach  that  this  is  an  emer- 
gency of  war,  have  led  this  development.  Lately,  the 
further  development  of  communicating  the  majorities, 
who  can  only  come  to  the  altar  in  the  evening,  with 
the  Reserved  Sacrament  has  been  tried  locally  with 
happy  results,  though  it  requires  first  a  little  explana- 
tion.      These  facts   will   compel  much   thought   and 


VII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  183 

adjustment  after  the  war,  for  the  controversies  of 
three  generations  are  bound  up  in  them.  For  the 
moment,  let  us  only  record  them  as  factSj  and  add 
that  they  do  not  cause  one  breath  of  controversy  at 
the  Front. 

One  other  word  with  regard  to  them  ;  for  they  have 
not  become  at  all  known  in  England,  and  may  cause, 
on  the  one  hand,  bitter  searchings  of  heart,  and  on  the 
other  may  seem  bald,  natural,  and  unimportant.  It 
needs  a  fierce  effort  of  imagination  to  understand  their 
importance.  First,  they  affect  the  whole  flower  of 
British  manhood.  Then,  the  tense  and  awful  moments 
of  which  they  have  been  the  centre  have  to  be  pictured 
and  heard.  You  must  hsten  to  the  roar  and  shaking 
of  great  guns  ;  must  see  the  poor  messy  surround- 
ings, where  the  white  linen  cloth  and  the  two  flickering 
candles  alone  speak  of  things  pure  and  lovely  ;  must 
feel  with  the  bowed  and  grimy  men  in  mud-brown  dress, 
torn  and  stained  and  even  bloody  ;  must  know  that 
the  minutes  in  front  hold,  the  minutes  just  past  have 
held,  the  issues  of  life,  death,  and  dreadful  maiming  ; 
and  that  what  we  have  described  as  "  children's 
Eucharists  "  and  "  evening  Communions  "  are  the 
passionate  care  of  a  Mother  weeping  for  her  children, 
and  the  conveyance  of  the  love  and  life  of  God  to  those 
who  must  have  nothing  less  and  nothing  else.  And 
so  the  ancient  futihties  of  conflicting  method  vanish, 
and  wise  old  disciphnes  are  out  of  place,  as  the 
educated  and  ignorant,  taught  and  untaught,  the 
godly  and  the  godless,  come  in  to  Christ,  and  go  out 
to  battle. 


184      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       vii 


II. 

So  much  for  our  record,  which  we  know  is  true.  In 
moving  on  to  conclusions  and  suggestions,  one  thing 
and  one  only  is  in  mind — that  the  British  race  pray 
and  worship  better.  We  do  not  suppose — we  know — 
that  no  mere  changing  of  services  will  work  this  greater 
change.  That  problem  begins  with  the  teaching  of 
infants  and  does  not  end  with  the  training  of  clergy. 
Not  even  a  new,  good,  simple  catechism,  not  even  a 
ministry,  perfectly  trained  and  beyond  reproach,  will 
of  themselves  evangehse  the  British  ;  and  much  less 
any  changing  of  details  in  a  Prayer-book.  Further, 
the  experiments  of  France  have  often  been  mere 
adaptation  to  abnormal  circumstance  ;  and  these  need 
to  be  thoughtfully  sifted  from  those  which  hold  deeper 
significance.  Our  revolution  craves,  not  the  spending 
of  our  present  capital,  but  the  adding  to  it  ;  it  concen- 
trates, not  on  verbal  or  other  details,  but  on  new 
provision  to  meet  needs  revealed  in  the  day  of  need. 

Thus,  it  has  appeared  that  the  Prayer-book  as  it 
stands  is  a  volume  that  serves  only  those  who  are 
highly  instructed  in  the  Faith.  A  trowing  of  hard 
experience  this.  Hardly  a  soldier  carries  a  Prayer-book, 
because  there  is  little  in  it  he  can  use.  We  never 
guessed  of  old  how  removed  it  was  from  common  wants  ; 
nor  how  intellectual  are  its  prayers  and  forms  of  devo- 
tion. Its  climate  to  the  simple,  ardent  Christian  is 
often  ice.  The  warm  romance  of  man's  pilgrimage  to 
God  is  absent  from  it,  because  it  takes  early  stages  for 
granted  and  can  be  used  only  by  those  who  have 


VII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  185 

ascended  many  hills  of  difficulty.  How  we  have  blushed 
for  the  incomprehensibility  even  of  the  Collects  ! 

Again,  the  Prayer-book  in  a  peculiar  way  reflects 
the  mind  of  the  Church  to  the  nation.  It  is  the  public 
programme  of  British  institutional  Christianity  ;  an 
official  demonstration  of  the  interests  and  passions  that 
we  bring  to  the  throne  of  God.  Men  mark  that  these 
interests  are  curiously  remote  from  those  of  an  eager 
and  well-meaning  world,  from  its  life,  society  and 
work.  For  example,  the  problems  of  labour  press 
upon  us,  and  vast  Christian  issues  hang  upon  them. 
But  the  Prayer-book  cares,  on  the  face  of  it,  for  none 
of  these  things  ;  and  the  Church  therefore  stands  con- 
demned by  the  millions.  If  only  a  "  Litany  of  Labour  " 
lay  within  its  covers,  what  a  reproach  would  be  done 
away  with  !  And  more — it  would  preach  Christian 
social  obligation  as  a  thousand  sermons  could  not  ;  the 
mere  fact  of  being  "  in  the  Prayer-book  "  would  make 
it,  so  to  speak,  a  "  general  routine  order  "  ;  the 
conscience  of  Churchpeople  would  be,  insensibly  and 
surely,  taught  and  moved  ;  the  witness  of  the  Church 
to  social  righteousness,  unanswerable  before  the  toiling 
masses. 

This  is  but  one  example  of  a  general  principle.  The 
demonstrative  and  educative  value  of  the  Prayer-book 
has  never  been  made  use  of,  so  that  the  whole  scope 
of  prayer  has  been  narrowed  except  to  the  few  who 
think  and  hunger  most.  We  ask  for  wider  employ- 
ment of  this  book's  tremendous  power,  to  unite  modern 
need  to  the  Presence  and  purpose  of  God.  And  this, 
whether  the  need  be  ignorance  of  God  or  small  ability 
in  prayer,  or   social,  or  individual,  or  imperial  and 


186      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       vii 

missionary.  May  the  Prayer-book  be  no  longer  our 
master,  but  our  servant.  It  is  the  grander  vocation. 
And  this  leads  on  to  a  third  demand  :  That  the 
Church  show  some  of  the  courage  and  decision  of  the 
trenches,  and  be  bold  to  experiment.  That  it  fear  not 
to  admit  into  its  common  manual  new  services  and 
devotions  which  are  confessedly  experimental.  They 
can  be  placed  with  "  Forms  of  Prayer  at  Sea  "  and 
"  Accession  Services  "  after  the  Psalms  ;  and  revised, 
withdrawn,  added  to,  every  five  or  ten  years.  Why 
should  there  not  be  a  variable  portion  of  the  whole 
volume  just  as  there  are  variable  portions  of  every 
liturgy  within  it  ?  Where  lurks  danger  here,  or  con- 
troversy ?  But  the  sympathy  and  wealth  and  hope  and 
education  of  it  would  become  more  manifest  ;  the 
treasure  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  would  not  be 
diminished  because  a  man  brings  forth  from  it  things 
new  as  well  as  old. 

III. 

The  subject  of  public  devotions  has  not  aroused 
the  interest  of  the  Church  as  have  those  of  ceremonial 
and  sacraments.  A  few  years  before  the  war  ap- 
peared Canon  Bullock  Webster's  "  Churchman's  Prayer 
Manual  "  ;  and,  as  his  preface  stated,  it  was  a 
first  attempt  to  fill  a  gap.  What  a  confession  ;  and 
what  disasters  have  followed  our  blindness  in  this 
direction  !  At  a  time  when  in  the  home  churches  the 
homefolk  hungered  for  intercession,  and  when  in  French 
billets  the  short  service  of  prayer  was  often  the  only 
type  of  service  convenient  or  possible,  the  clergy  had 


VII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  187 

no  such  thing  that  was  known  and  loved  at  hand,  and 
the  people  no  idea  of  public  prayer.  In  both  spheres 
devotions  depended  for  their  grip  and  joy  upon  the 
priest's  personahty  and  abihty;  and  by  common  consent 
we  were  found  wanting,  stiff,  unversed.  We  conduct 
prayers  even  worse  than  we  preach. 

But  the  clergy  must  not  bear  all  the  blame.  The 
people  were  at  least  equally  unready,  unpractised, 
awkward.  The  Church  had  never  studied  or  learned 
the  art  of  praying  together.  In  France  we  have  been 
found  to  be  a  most  prayerless  people  ;  and  it  is  at 
least  possible  that  this  is  because  we  have  gone 
the  wrong  way,  or  no  way  at  all,  about  praying 
together.  Many  of  our  ecclesiastical  troubles  trace 
back  to  the  same  source.  Why  do  our  most  devout 
clergy  drift,  often  with  an  unwilling,  compulsory  drift, 
toward  Reservation  for  Adoration,  Benediction,  the 
Rosary  ?  Not  because  they  are  "  Romanists,"  but 
because  the  Roman  Church,  however  doubtful  be  the 
actual  form  of  her  popular  devotions,  has  understood 
the  spirit  and  principles  of  them  aright,  while  we  have 
hardly  thought  about  the  matter. 

Two  men  only  have  seen  far  and  tried  hard.  To 
Canon  Bullock  Webster  the  Church  owes  much.  His 
book  has  widened  the  scope  and  improved  the  form  and 
content  of  public  devotions  everywhere.  Yet  as  a 
whole  it  only  enriched,  codified,  made  available, 
methods  already  in  existence  among  keen  parish  priests  : 
it  did  not  attempt  seriously  to  revolutionise  them. 
Father  Conran  in  haylofts  and  trenches  made  revolu- 
tion. Whether  his  particular  system  takes  root  or 
not,  it  was  based  on  new  principles. 


188      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       vii 

And  this  exactly  is  what  we  need  here,  new  principles. 
New  study  of  the  subject,  new  experiment,  revolution. 
One  glance  at  the  present  field  of  congregational  prayer, 
and  the  usual  provision  for  it,  shows  our  desperate 
poverty. 

First,  there  are  the  forms  set  out  by  authority, 
usually  consisting  of  prayers,  short  and  long.  However 
beautiful  these  may  be  in  themselves — and  too  often 
they  arouse  the  angriest  criticism — as  a  public  devotion 
they  AvhoUy  fail.  They  may  not  indeed  be  meant  for 
such  use  ;  they  are  meant  to  fit  into  the  formal  public 
offices,  especially  Matins  and  Evensong.  Perhaps 
they  do  so.  But  why  is  this  the  only  need  catered 
for  by  high  authority  ? 

Next  come  Litany  forms,  which  bear  the  burden  and 
heat  of  the  day.  They  at  least  recognise  the  human 
principle  that  it  is  good  for  the  congregation  to  have 
spoken  share  in  petition.  They  possess  other  virtues. 
Besides  giving  the  congregation  their  common  pleading, 
the  Litany  form  is  familiar.  There  happens  to  be  a 
Litany  in  the  Prayer-book,  which  is  better  known  no 
doubt  than  it  is  popular.  Familiarity  of  form  is  a 
mighty  aid  to  public  devotion,  as  it  makes  for  ease  and 
concentration.  But  if  the  form  is  bad  or  imperfect  or 
non-popular,  its  virtue  of  familiarity  does  not  help 
much.  The  Litany  forms  in  common  use  are  7iot  bad, 
and  non-popular  only  because  imperfect.  Such  forms 
are  almost  always  modelled  on  the  Prayer-book  Litany, 
which,  with  all  its  amazing  beauty,  is  too  cold  and 
severe  for  poj)ular  use.  It  has,  for  such  a  purpose, 
the  crowning  defect  of  laying  all  the  stress  on  pure 
petition,  and  of  requiring  a  great  effort  of  mind,  rather 


VII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  189 

than  a  play  of  emotion  :  devotional  intimacy  and  the 
atmosphere  of  the  Presence  and  love  of  Christ  hardly 
exist  in  it.  It  demands  too  much.  A  saint  might  pray 
it  well  if  he  had  a  week  to  do  it  in  ;  but  the  better 
test  is  a  child,  and  children  have  a  horror  of  this  above 
all  j)rayers.  Compare,  without  any  comparison  of 
theological  excellence,  the  Prayer-book  Litany  and 
the  Roman  Litany  of  the  Sacred  Heart  :  the  reason 
for  the  unpopularity  of  the  one  is  the  reason  for  the 
popularity  of  the  other. 

Missionary  intercessions,  again,  play  a  large  part  in 
English  informal  services.  They  are  of  any  and  every 
type,  used  most  devoutly  by  the  devout,  but  useless 
for  larger  employment  as  a  second  part,  for  instance, 
of  a  Sunday  evening  service.  It  is  surely  a  mistake  to 
possess  only  such  specialised  forms  of  missionary 
petition  as  can  only  be  imposed  on  the  missionary- 
hearted.  Once  more,  the  fault  is  that  all  emphasis  and 
effort  go  into  pure  petition. 

Fourthly,  we  have  found  the  need,  in  France  as  in 
England,  of  preparation  services  for  Holy  Communion. 
But  who  can  truthfully  say  that  any  form  supplies  the 
need  well  ?  With  all  the  wealth  and  poignancy  of 
the  circumstances  attending  the  Institution,  of  the 
meaning  of  the  Sacrament,  and  of  our  actual  Liturgy, 
how  does  our  present  provision  catch  or  introduce 
them  ?     It  utterly  fails. 

Now  the  bare  listing  of  these  efforts  reveals  our 
lack.  It  reveals  also  complete  chaos,  but  that  is  less 
important.  Examine  these  main  types  emerging  from 
the  chaos,  and  at  once,  positively  and  negatively,  the 
failure  is  understood. 


190      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       vii 

Almost  the  whole  emphasis  in  each  case  is  laid  on 
the  petition  offered,  on  the  words  of  prayer  used.  So 
our  thoughts  are  nailed  to  earth  ;  and  we  must  all  the 
while  think  ;  not  feel,  not  see. 

No  single  devotion  that  we  possess  is  devoted  simply 
to  God  and  His  Christ.  It  seems  incredible ;  but  look 
at  fact.  No  wonder  there  springs  up  an  impulse  for 
pure  devotion  before  the  Reserved  Sacrament. 

Yet  follows  a  fact  still  more  incredible,  especially 
in  a  communion  that  sets  the  knowledge  of  the  Scrip- 
tures so  high.  Into  none  of  our  devotions  do  we 
interweave  our  knowledge,  and  the  life,  of  Christ.  Our 
prayers  arise  from  our  carefully  selected  and  literary 
thoughts,  not  out  of  the  picture  of  God  Whom  we  have 
seen,  not  out  of  His  longings  and  His  tremendous 
historj^  We  start,  it  is  true,  with  "  God  the  Father, 
God  the  Son,  God  the  Holy  Ghost,  Holy,  Blessed,  and 
Glorious  Trinity  "  ;  but  how  cold,  unkindHng,  and  alas  ! 
perfunctory,  that,  compared  to  the  devotional  wealth 
contained  in  one  chapter  of  any  Gospel.  The  Infancy, 
the  Life  of  temptation  and  love,  the  Passion,  the 
Way  of  the  Cross  peer  out  of  every  line  of  Roman 
public  devotions.     Are  they  wrong,  or  we  ? 

Further,  we  leave  each  member  of  our  little  congrega- 
tion to  a  loneliness  of  prayer.  His  own  effort  is  his  own 
chief  concern.  The  sense  of  the  fellowship  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,  of  our  own  brotherhood  in  the  faith,  of  the 
Communion  of  Saints  around  us,  praying  with  us,  one 
mighty  host  of  the  redeemed  at  their  great  work— 
these  things  are  not. 

And  even  in  the  petitionary  clause,  so  prominent,  we 
fail.     It  rarely  touches  common  homely  need.     During 


VII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  191 

the  war,  priests  have  had  their  flock  at  their  doors. 
In  the  farmyard  outside  our  billets  passes  before  our 
vision  every  detail  of  the  life  of  men,  from  the  morning 
wash  to  the  spoken  curse.  We  go  out  and  come  in 
with  them.  We  censor  even  their  thoughts  as  they  find 
expression  in  home-letters.  Neither  the  present  Prayer- 
book,  nor  any  prayers  we  have  ever  heard,  enter  into 
the  problems  and  difficulties  of  actual  existence.  In 
the  writer's  division,  the  chaplains  made  and  make 
an  immense  effort  to  bring  these  things  into  public 
prayers ;  and  it  has  proved  the  hardest  of  tasks.  We 
have  had  no  training  for  it :  church  language,  church 
tradition,  and  our  own  powers  of  sympathy,  unexercised 
along  such  hues,  braked  and  blocked  our  progress. 

But  all  these  are  great  first  things,  in  prayer  as  in 
the  life  of  faith  ;  and  we  leave  them  out.  They  are 
the  big  simple  things  too,  the  things  of  love  that  give 
warmth  and  loveliness  to  difficult  belief.  They  are 
therefore  the  things  that  draw  the  people  to  God,  and 
make  real  the  world  and  work  of  the  Spirit.  We  need 
not  labour  so  piteously  over  strings  of  petitions,  for 
it  is  more  fruitful  to  see  the  face  of  Christ.  What 
could  not  public  devotions  do,  if  they  but  honestly 
gave  first  place  to  first  things  !  And  the  lack  is  deeply 
felt,  consciously  by  priests,  ever  trying  to  force  the 
genuineness  of  prayer  upon  their  people  ;  and  no  less 
strongly  by  the  people,  who  find  it  harder  to  define 
their  hunger,  and  drift  away  from  a  prayer  at  once  too 
lofty  and  too  low — wandering  too  often  into  indifference, 
into  sectarian  byways,  or  to  Rome. 

New  systems  of  prayer  are  hard  to  introduce  ;  that 
is  why  we  crave  the  Prayer-book  to  help  itself    and 


192      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       vii 

help  us.  That  would  at  once  universalise  in  our 
Communion  the  wider  scope  and  ideals,  and  the  actual 
experiments,  so  that  they  would  have  fair  trial  in  every 
diocese,  and  at  all  ages  of  man,  from  childhood  onward. 
A  hundred  years  will  pass,  and  maybe  a  thousand 
experiments  be  made,  ere  England  learns  to  pray  better 
and  to  love  prayer.  Only  let  the  first  of  these  experi- 
ments be  made  at  once,  with  all  the  authority  that  our 
Mother  can  give,  so  that  the  years  be  shortened. 

It  will  not,  therefore,  be  out  of  place  if  the  following 
principles  of  public  devotion  be  set  forth  as  a  real  result 
of  French  experience. 

(i)  Any  intercession  or  devotion  to  be  of  general  use 
and  popularity  must  reduce  the  personal  element  of 
the  conductor  to  a  minimum.  The  emphasis  here  is 
on  the  word  "  general."  What  was  wanted  for  the 
rough  churchless  work  in  France,  what  will  be  wanted 
for  any  similar  work  that  is  done  in  England  after  the 
war,  is  a  devotion  the  framework  of  which  is  known 
generally — as  well  known  as  the  General  Confession, 
Lord's  Prayer,  Versicles,  Creed.  Strong  and  saintly 
priests  can  always  radiate  their  spiritual  power,  whether 
through  such  a  known  scheme,  or  through  their  own 
improvisation.  But  theirs  is  not  the  need  ;  we,  the 
majority  of  clergy  who  are  weak,  timid,  ordinary, 
dealing  with  weak,  timid,  ordinary  people,  need  a 
scheme  not  wholly  dependent  on  our  spiritual  power  ; 
one  familiar  to  the  congregation,  so  that  confidence 
be  estabhshed  on  both  sides,  and  the  power  of  old 
association  be  wedded  to  the  due  proportion  of  faith, 
lovingly  secured  and  glowingly  set  in  order. 

(ii)  In    deahng   with    Englishmen,    the   converse   is 


VII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  193 

yet  more  true — the  share  of  the  congregation  must  be 
raised  to  a  maximum.  Even  in  the  old  offices,  advance 
can  be  made  to  this  end.  The  former  custom  of  clergy 
and  people  reciting  together  the  General  Thanksgiving 
has  been  universally  restored  in  France,  and  added  to 
by  the  common  recitation  of  many  another  well-known 
prayer.  Order  does  not  suffer  ;  reality,  sincerity  and 
atmosphere  gain  enormously.  The  versicles  in  France 
have  moved  from  triumph  to  triumph  ;  and  we  have 
known  the  congregation  time  after  time  burst  into 
their  Stainer  settings  with  less  than  no  encouragement 
from  the  chaplain  !  Men  love  to  have  their  part,  and 
with  our  unique  reverence  and  orderliness  during 
service  it  can  be  safely  given  to  them,  to  the  help  of 
everybody  and  to  a  distinct  growth  of  warmth  and 
impressiveness. 

(iii)  The  devotion  or  framework  must  be  learned 
from  childhood.  Therefore  in  most  respects  it  must  be 
simple,  that  children  can  understand  ;  and  profound, 
that  children  and  parents  and  the  aged  pray  it  happily 
together.  A  sound  test  of  any  devotion  is  the  power 
it  has  over  the  mind  of  a  child.  Here  again  the  Russians 
and  Romans  find  no  difficulty  ;  but  we  scarcely  try 
to  mould  the  minds  of  our  children  to  devotions  that 
will  help  them  all  their  lives.  The  spiritual  grasp  of  a 
child  is  not  small,  although  it  be  the  grasp  of  atmosphere 
and  emotion  rather  than  of  intellect.  Even  in  England 
the  httle  boy  can  kneel  side  by  side  with  the  saint,  and 
pray  the  Lord's  Prayer  no  less  well ;  but  we  have 
provided  few  other  devotions  for  them  in  common, 
and  make  httle  use  of  good  models  such  as  the  Agnus 
Dei  and  Salvator  Mundi.     Again  we  hug  the  heresy, 

o 


194      THE   CHURCH   IN  THE   FURNACE       vi 

that  prayer  is  first  and  last  a  work  of  the  mind, 
rather  than  of  the  humble  soul  or  the  adventurous 
heart. 

(iv)  We  need,  then,  a  framework  or  skeleton  (perhaps 
more  than  one)  of  some  rigidity,  with  infinite  power  of 
variation  and  adaptation  to  the  particular  season,  or 
mood,  or  intention. 

(v)  And  now  we  arrive  at  the  crucial  point  of 
*'  atmosphere  "  or  "  stress."  The  right  word  to  define 
this,  our  pitiful  need,  is  not  easy  to  find.  It  is  a  question 
of  devotional  intimacy  ;  of  subduing  the  emphasis  on 
petition  to  the  knowledge  of  the  Presence  ;  of  adding 
love  and  joy  and  tears  and  the  desire  to  kneel  to  our 
approach. 

Would  that  the  home  clergy  could  see  us  struggling 
to  achieve  for  ourselves  and  the  groups  of  willing  but 
unpractised  men  the  sense  of  God's  Presence  in  our 
midst.  Every  detail  of  environment  fights  against  us. 
Past  stoic  endurance  of  unintelligible  collects  has  led 
the  men's  minds  to  expect  no  reality  or  meaning  in 
the  "  prayer  "  part  of  the  service.  Dirt  and  damp  make 
it  impossible  to  kneel.  Even  behef  in  prayer  has 
perished.  And  the  padre  stands  in  the  midst  resolved 
that  the  Presence  shall  be  known,  and  the  prayers 
mean  and  help  much.  The  whole  brunt  falls  on  him  ; 
he  has  to  explain  prayer,  say  prayer,  and  himself  feel 
prayer,  in  a  few  successive  sentences,  not  in  church 
language,  but  everyday  language.  Every  devotion 
becomes  a  hard  battle  ;  the  building  of  a  spiritual  house 
from  the  bottom-most  foundation,  with  all  the  bricks  to 
be  made,  and  mere  wisps  of  straw  wherewith  to  make 
them. 


VII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  195 

These  things  ought  not  to  be  ;  but  they  are.  They 
will  not  mend  at  once,  but  they  will  never  mend  unless 
we  teach  by  our  public  devotions  a  more  intimate, 
human,  understandable,  pictorial,  worshipful  manner  of 
prayer.  Cannot  this  ideal  be  more  nearly  reached  by 
attention  to  atmosphere  and  substance  in  these  ways  ? 
— By  making  the  substance  of  the  devotion  wholly 
or  mainly  evangelical.  Remembering  that  "  he  that 
hath  seen  the  Son  hath  seen  the  Father,"  our  prayer 
might  aim  at  re-enacting  the  life  of  Christ,  at  entering 
into  His  longings,  at  picturing  His  love  and  work,  His 
Incarnation,  Passion,  Triumph.  Thus  the  old  familiar 
story  breathes  its  meaning  through  our  petitions,  and 
relates  itself  to  our  needs,  big  and  little  ;  the  sight  of 
God  is  constant  through  the  speaking  of  our  hopes  and 
confessions  ;  nay,  God,  Christ,  constitutes  our  very 
devotion,  so  that  it  all  becomes  an  act  of  adoration 
and  recollection  and  submission  of  self.  Thus,  while 
the  whole  act  proceeds  from  the  heart  and  soul  as 
well  as  from  the  mind  of  each  of  us,  it  also  proceeds 
throughout  from  the  known  desires  and  heart  of  Jesus 
our  Lord.  Mark  how  the  most  "  popular  "  devotion 
we  possess — "  the  Story  of  the  Cross  " — exactly  does 
this  very  thing  ;  and  the  people  rightly  love  to  pray  it 
for  all  its  bad  poetry.  Father  Pollock's  metrical 
litanies  in  Hymns  Ancient  and  Modern  abound  in 
virtue.  Otherwise  we  possess  few  such  evangelical 
acts  of  prayer.  Two  fulfil  the  above  conditions — the 
magnificent  "  Litany  of  the  Holy  Spirit  "  used  only 
by  the  clergy,  where  the  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
from  Creation  onwards  is  portrayed  from  clause  to 
clause  ;  and  Dr.  Dearmer's  "  Litany  of  Labour,"  which 

o  2 


196      THE   CHURCH   IN  THE   FURNACE       vii 

with  revision  and  abbreviation  (of  the  second  peti- 
tionary half  only)  I  long  to  see  in  the  Prayer-book. 

By  attention  to  special  forms  and  methods  of 
devotion  which  have  proved  themselves  to  the  Enghsh 
mind.  Singing  has  a  worth  impossible  to  exaggerate. 
It  is  no  mere  matter  of  "  liking  a  tune  "  :  careful 
watching  has  convinced  me  that  a  hymn  mediates  to 
an  Enghshman  a  better  country  ;  is  his  chosen  sacra- 
ment of  approach  to  God.  Mark  again  that  the 
Story  of  the  Cross  is  a  hymn  sung.  The  Three  Hours 
service  owes  much  of  its  appeal  to  the  hymns  that  are 
an  integral  part  of  it  in  our  churches  ;  and  the  people 
love  to  repeat  "  From  step  to  step  and  woe  to  woe,  To 
Calvary  with  Christ  we  go."  Metre  in  any  case  appeals 
to  the  reserved  Briton,  for  by  its  means  he  can  lift  up 
his  voice,  together  and  in  time  with  his  shy  neighbours. 
The  Enghsh  hymn  has  impressed  and  delighted  the 
native  Catholics  of  France ;  has  acted  better  than  any 
church-bell  in  bringing  men  to  church ;  has  given  the 
one  general  glimpse  out  of  a  bad  world  of  wars  into  a 
blessed  one  of  purity  and  peace  ;  has  followed  the  fallen 
to  his  grave  ;  and  has  been  raised  in  triumph  by  the 
mortally  wounded  on  the  field.  The  time  is  ripe  for  a 
regularised,  a  sympathetic,  and  a  scientific  use  of  hymns 
in  every  public  devotion.  And  how  they  reinforce  that 
evangehcal  passionate  element  in  prayer  that  we 
need  ! 

By  the  appeal  to  the  eye,  which  was  made  to  help 
us,  and  which  we  have  wickedly  neglected.  The  two 
GrapJiic  pictures  "  The  Great  Sacrifice  "  and  "The  White 
Comrade  "  really  helped  the  personal  religion  of  many 
men.    Englishmen  now  love  the  crucifix,  and  the  wayside 


VII  WORSHIP  AND   SERVICES  197 

Calvaries  have  persuaded  more  prayers  than  all  the 
chaplains  put  together. 

By  careful  use  of  particular  moments.  The  most 
important  of  these  is  the  beginning,  when  the  congre- 
gation must  be  led  into  the  Presence  of  God.  The 
conductor's  greatest  responsibility  will  always  come 
here.  A  good  start  colours  the  whole  act ;  a  bad  one 
spoils  it.  The  whole  method  of  beginnings  needs  wise 
thinking  out.^ 

By  the  inclusion,  not  only  of  devotions  which  invite 
a  response,  but  of  good  spiritual  exercises  to  be  said 
by  all  together.  All  missioners  in  England  know  the 
value  of  united  "  acts  "  of  Faith,  Love,  Self-oblation, 
Penitence,  and  Praise  ;  and  they  have  made  the  whole 
difference  to  the  reality  of  prayer  in  France  again  and 
again.  I  have  found  especially  helpful  and  popular, 
amongst  others,  the  lovely  prayer  of  St.  Richard  of 
Chichester  and  the  Compline  Antiphon  to  the  Nunc 
Dimittis.      If   such  a  practice   were   made  customary 

1  The  beginning  is  above  all  the  place  for  the  use  of  silence. 
Silence  is  most  important  and  so  often  misused.  Surely,  in  any 
mixed  assembly  of  men  and  women  at  all  stages  of  spiritual  growth, 
it  should  be  employed  only  for  grasping  and  recalling  the  Presence 
of  God  and  our  sense  or  picture  of  Him.  It  should  not  be  used 
for  individual  intercession  at  such  a  time,  not  at  all.  Independent 
acts  of  prayer  by  the  people  are  too  hard  for  them  in  the  midst  of 
a  congregational  act  ;  and  this  perhaps  has  been  historically  proved 
by  the  gradual  dropping  and  disappearance  of  the  liturgical  pause 
between  the  Bidding  and  its  Collect.  We  all  know  how  disturbing 
and  unsatisfactory  the  attempt  to  form  our  own  prayers  can  be, 
when  the  conductor  says  "  Let  us  pray  for  a  few  minutes  in  silence 
for  "  this  or  that.  Either  the  silence  ends  ere  we  have  begun,  or 
we  end  while  yet  the  silence  continues.  This  difficulty  vanishes  if 
the  silence  be  used  (at  the  start  and  at  intervals  afterwards)  only  for 
re-intensifying  the  sense  of  God's  Presence  or  Christ's  love,  or  the 
Holy  Spirit's  fellow-utterance. 


198      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       vii 

by  the  Prayer-book  the  gain  surely  would  be 
tremendous. 

The  intimacy  which  makes  men  love  prayer  springs, 
after  all,  from  these  few  things — the  sense  of  the 
Presence  of  God,  the  emphasis  on  the  loved  facts  of 
His  Life  and  Love  as  Man,  and  the  completeness  of  the 
share  of  each  and  all  in  the  common  act  of  prayer. 

What,  finally,  are  the  actual  schemes  for  which  the 
rebels  beg  the  authority  of  the  Prayer-book  ?  There 
are  eight  at  least,  and  the  whole  of  them  would  hardly 
add  a  dozen  pages  to  it — about  the  space  devoted  to 
the  Thirty-nine  Articles  of  Religion. 

1.  A  skeleton  devotion  to  introduce  and  end  any 
special  intercession  for  Church,  State,  necessity,  etc., 
that  can  be  used  at  any  time,  in  church  or  out  of  it. 

2.  A  skeleton  service  of  Preparation  for  Holy  Com- 
munion ;   and  a  short,  simple  Thanksgiving. 

3.  An  act  of  Thanksgiving  and  Praise. 

4.  A  devotion  of  the  Passion.  This,  at  least.  Better 
still,  others  of  the  Incarnation  and  the  Incarnate  Life, 
too. 

5.  A  Litany  of  Devotion  of  the  Saints — to  help 
cleanse  the  rust  from  our  belief  in  the  Communion  of 
Saints,  which  eats  quietly  into  the  whole  English 
armoury  of  working  rehgion. 

6.  A  missionary  devotion. 

7.  A  Litany  of  Labour. 

8.  An  evening  commendation,  preferably  the  simplest 
form  of  Compline  that  exists,  for  Compline  is  much  used 
already,  and  has  stood  all  time's  tests. 

Easy  room  would  be  found  in  these  for  a  few  mag- 
nificent collects   which   have   well  earned  their  place 


VII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  199 

in  the  Prcayer-book  (such  as  "  0  God,  Who  hast  made 
of  one  blood  all  nations  for  to  dwell  on  the  face  of  the 
earth  ..."  and  "  0  Lord,  Who  in  a  wonderful  sacra- 
ment hast  left  us  a  memorial  of  Thy  Passion  .  .  .") 
and  which  the  clergy  would  be  glad  to  have  at  hand, 
and  not  hidden  in  this  or  that  manual  of  devotion. 

But  if  anything  be  done,  may  all  be  done  boldly, 
without  stint  of  space  and  without  fear  of  novelty. 
May  all  be  done  simply,  in  language  understood  of  a 
child.  And,  not  least  in  moment,  may  all  be  done 
swiftly,  to  be  ready  at  once  for  the  new  race  that  returns, 
and  for  the  children  who  have  passed  through  the 
burning  fiery  furnace  ;  who  turn  again  to  their  Church, 
and  wish  to  begin  anew  at  the  beginnings. 

IV. 

Our  poverty  in  other  directions  has  led  men  to  search 
out  the  hidden  treasure  ;  and  a  manhood  in  need  has 
begun  to  gaze  upon  the  Holy  Communion.  Attendance 
at  it  is  meagre  enough  still ;  the  understanding  of  it 
feeble  even  amongst  the  attendants  ;  any  sense  of 
obhgation  toward  it  non-existent.  The  great  festivals 
spell  sorrow  and  torture  to  the  keen  priest.  But  the 
improvement  since  the  early  days  of  the  war  is  clear. 
Everybody  now  knows  that  there  is  such  a  service  ; 
numbers  qualify  themselves  to  partake  by  Confirma- 
tion. In  the  base  hospitals  a  chaplain  can  spend 
all  his  time  preparing  men  for  what  they  know 
they  have  missed  at  the  Front ;  but  even  at  the 
Front,  whole  companies,  who  have  no  intention 
to  communicate,  will  present  themselves  voluntarily  at 


200      THE   CHURCH  IN  THE   FURNACE       vii 

the  Eucharist — often  to  the  amazement  and  bewilder- 
ment of  their  padre.  The  growth  of  communicants  is 
real  if  slow,  though  most  are  occasional,  not  regular. 
It  is  the  more  notable,  because  the  sad  surprise  of  the 
war  has  been  the  fact  that  the  "  Cathohc  "  laymen  and 
servers,  who  might  have  worked  missionary  miracles, 
as  a  class  have  failed  the  chaplains.  They  have  had 
every  chance  :  search  for  them  and  pressure  upon 
them  are  faithfully  performed,  but  they  have  found  the 
surroundings  too  rough.  Of  course  there  are  glorious 
exceptions. 

Everything  fights  against  the  service.  Early  morning 
Communion  is  made  hard  to  impossible  by  the  demands 
of  mihtary  life  :  it  needs  great  personal  sacrifice  and 
initiative,  and  so  challenging  a  confession  of  a  man's 
faith,  that  few  are  ready  to  make  it  often.  It  is  un- 
fortunate that  in  any  case  the  absence  of  the  godly  at 
his  Communion  means  that  the  godless  must  do  his 
mihtary  fatigue.  General  opinion  counts  it  a  service 
for  saints  only,  or  designed  for  "  windy,"  desperate 
moments.  On  the  chaplains'  side,  the  necessary 
preparations,  the  carriage  of  vessels  and  furniture 
many  miles,  add  to  their  difficulties.  In  the  place  of 
hushed  churches,  we  have  only  the  most  deplorable 
makeshifts  of  buildings,  dirty,  noisy,  liideous  ;  and 
outdoor  Communion  in  summer,  if  romantic,  is  un- 
devotional.  Whether  there  be  no  communicants  or  a 
hundred  is  wildly  uncertain. 

Yet,  as  faith  would  expect,  the  Eucharist  has  proved 
itseK  to  thousands  to  whom  it  was  scarcely  a  name 
before.  And  if  hymns  be  added  to  increase  the  congre- 
gation's part,  to  vary  the  kneehng  posture,  and — dare 


VII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  201 

^e  say  ? — to  add  something  modern  and  familiar  to 
the  dignity  of  ancient  language  and  to  the  solemnity 
of  mystery,  it  fulfils  perfectly  every  principle  of  popular 
devotion  quite  apart  from  the  Gift  and  the  Presence 
there.  At  officers'  conferences,  where  the  officers  are 
plain  men,  who  do  not  themselves  communicate  often, 
and  prefer  the  Matins  tradition  of  Sunday  observance, 
there  is  astonishing  consent  that  the  Eucharist  hence- 
forth must  be  the  chief  service  of  the  day,  and  put  in 
the  chief  place  of  time  and  honour.  Be  it  repeated, 
it  is  the  sturdy,  uncontroversial,  unceremonial,  central 
body  of  Churchmen  who  speak  thus. 

In  the  administration  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  it  goes 
without  saying  that  every  good  principle  of  pubfic 
worship  finds  its  highest  expression.  The  problem 
before  the  Church  therefore  is  different  here,  and  two- 
fold— to  make  the  liturgy  fully  intelhgible,  and  its 
celebration  whoUy  accessible. 

Of  these,  the  first  is  the  more  important.  By  making 
the  liturgy  "  intelhgible  "  is  not  meant  a  mere  simph- 
ijing  away  of  aU  its  mystery,  which  happily  were 
impossible,  nor  yet  a  modernising  of  its  ancient  dignity  ; 
but  a  deeper  and  more  thorough  teaching  of  its  meaning, 
its  course  and  its  evangelical  action.  I  am  anxious 
to  avoid  discussing,  indeed,  any  changes  which  have 
not  been  called  for  by  war  experience,  e.g.  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  Canon,  however  important  these  things 
be  in  themselves.  The  matter  in  hand  is  not  personal 
preference,  not  even  hturgical  propriety,  but  the 
facts  and  lessons  of  France. 

On  these  grounds  there  are  a  few  simplifications, 
almost   beyond   controversy,  minor  but  useful,   that 


202      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       vii 

could  be  made.  That,  in  accordance  with  the 
Scottish  Office,  and  general  use  in  Flanders,  the 
New  Commandments  and  threefold  Kyrie  be  placed 
as  alternatives  to  the  Ten  Commandments :  and 
the  King's  Prayer  be  left  out  after  them.  That 
the  long  exhortations  and  proper  prefaces  be  printed 
in  an  appendix  to  the  Office,  so  as  to  render  the 
following  of  the  liturgy  simpler  to  the  uneducated 
and  the  young.  And  that  the  customary  additions 
before  and  after  the  Gospel,  and  also  the  Benedictus, 
and  Agnus  Dei,  be  added  in  their  place  as  at  least 
permissible.  As  things  are,  we  have  to  carry  about 
some  hundreds  of  extra  little  books  in  which  the  actual 
service  is  straightforwardly  set  out,  or  else,  throughout 
its  course  continually  announce  the  number  of  the  page 
we  have  reached. 

Harder  is  the  question  of  re-wording.  Words 
carry  not  only  meaning  but  atmosphere  with  them. 
There  is  an  archaism,  a  remoteness,  that  is  dignified  ; 
there  is  also  one  that  is  unsympathetic.  In  France  one 
has  been  conscious  here  and  there  of  an  unsympathetic 
tinge  to  Prayer-book  expression.  Here  it  is  too 
purely  ecclesiastical,  there  too  "  aristocratic. "^  The 
comment  of  a  Nonconformist  has  justice  in  it  :  "  Your 
Prayer-book  smacks  of  the  court,  not  of  the  home." 
The  last  half  of  the  Church  Militant,  except  for  its 

^  These  qualities  are  seen  at  their  worst  in  the  Baptismal  Offices. 
Imagine  '  Baptism  of  such  as  are  of  riper  years '  being  read  to  a 
group  of  typical  Tommies  on  the  eve  of  action,  as  has  happened 
more  than  once.  An  office  four  times  as  short  and  ten  times  as 
comprehensible  might  raise  the  lost  dignity  of  Holy  Baptism  by 
enabling  it  generally  to  be  administered  in  the  course  of  a  public 
office,  when  the  church  is  full. 


VII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  203 

timidity  toward  the  departed,  is  perfect  as  a  prayer  ; 
but  the  section  dealing  with  King  and  Nation  has  by 
then  destroyed  its  reahty  and  living  touch,  just  at  a 
point,  too,  where  the  fighting  folk  were  most  anxious 
to  pray.  It  is  more  than  a  matter  of  changing  the 
bad  archaisms  "  indifferent,"  "  curates,"  "  lively  "  :  re- 
drafting is  necessary. 

The  element  of  "  homeliness  "  may,  however,  be 
introduced  more  easily  by  way  of  enrichment.  It  would 
be  most  helpful  to  the  use  of  Holy  Communion  as  our 
most  intimate  devotion,  if  Collects,  Epistles,  and  Gospels 
were  provided  for  Church,  national,  and  family  occasions 
— for  a  birthday,  a  marriage  ,  a  burial ;  for  commemo- 
ration of  the  departed,  of  the  Lord's  Supper ;  for  the 
guidance  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  harvest  thanksgiving, 
special  necessity,  war,  travellers,  emigrants,  colonists, 
foreign  missions  ;  for  St.  George,  St.  Patrick,  St.  David, 
Indeed,  richer  provision  for  saints'  days  links  up  with 
the  crying  urgency  of  recognising  the  heroes  of  faith, 
as  the  nation  is  set  upon  celebrating  its  heroes  of  battle. 
It  is  appalling  to  think  that  (except  for  a  name  in  a 
calendar)  we  do  not  even  remember  officially  St. 
Augustine  and  others  who  brought  us  Christ.  A  new 
appreciation  of  history,  and,  more,  of  its  spiritual 
meaning,  has  spread  through  these  hosts.  Pray  heaven 
the  official  book  of  prayer  and  faith  neglect  and  lose 
it  not. 

Yet  so  far  we  have  scarcely  touched  the  fringe  of 
our  new  task.  The  incredible  ignorance  of  officers  and 
men  alike  with  regard  to  the  Lord's  own  service,  its 
foreignness  hitherto  in  their  religious  experience — this 
it  is  the  Church  must  rouse  herself  with  furious  energy 


204      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       vii 

to  dispel.  For  three  years  we  priests  of  France  have 
watched  it  aghast.  And  it  is  so  tragic  because  men 
do  approach  the  Holy  Communion  wistfully  as  a  thing 
divine  and  wonderful  ;  with  honest  hope  that  the  love 
and  strength  of  God  will  somehow  there  be  mediated 
to  them.  And  first  they  are  baffled  by  their  ignorance 
of  the  service  itself.  The  shyness  that  this  causes  during 
its  progress  is  painful  to  priest  and  congregation  ahke, 
and  often  robs  both  of  any  feeling  but  awkward  dis- 
comfort. The  people  have  to  be  told  to  stand  for  the 
Gospel ;  at  other  points  of  the  service  they  know  not 
what  to  do  ;  timidity  prevents  them  making  their 
responses  at  Sursum  Corda  and  elsewhere,  or  else 
they  make  them  with  an  ashamed  mutter  ;  the  Amen 
after  Consecration  goes  by  default  always.  They 
have  to  be  minutely  directed  how  and  when  to  come 
up  for  Communion.  Vast  numbers  have  no  idea  how 
to  receive  ;  in  early  days  we  had  usually  to  give  notice^ 
that  each  communicant  must  not  drain  the  whole 
chahce.  Often  confusion  reigns  after  the  Blessing 
unless  a  hymn  be  sung,  or  a  httle  office  of  thanksgiving 
said. 

Now  if  the  ignomnce  of  these  surface  details  be  so 
great,  how  an  hundredfold  greater  is  the  ignorance  of 
Communion  and  Eucharist  behind.  The  course  of  the 
service,  to  all  but  a  fraction  of  our  communicants,  is 
an  arbitrary  enigma,  a  jumble  of  lections  and  prayers 
leading  up  to  a  moment  when  they  know  they  must 
keep  very  quiet,  and  then  come  forward  and  take — 
Something  ;  and  then  go  back  to  further  prayers.     Can 

^  The  wisdom  of  doing  this  was  impressed  on  a  group  of  us  '  Tem- 
poraries'  on  our  arrival  in  France  by  an  experienced  Regular  C.F. 


VII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  205 

we  blame  them  ?  Have  any  of  us  learned  to  under- 
stand the  bearing  of  each  lection  and  prayer  except 
by  our  own  efforts,  or  from  long  experience  of  a 
devotional  manual  ?  Really,  if  this  ignorance  is 
incredible  as  it  is  painful,  the  supineness  of  us  clergy 
in  having  allowed  it  is  no  less  so.  We  have  taken  it 
for  granted  that  familiarity  with  the  Communion  service 
will  bring  with  it  full  understanding ;  but  we  have  not 
noticed  that  this  familiarity  has  never  been  obtained  ; 
and  that  even  if  it  had,  understanding  does  not  neces- 
sarily follow.  Where  there  is  neither  familiarity  nor 
understanding,  there  is  naturally  no  love  ;  and  the 
Sacrament  repels  rather  than  benefits.  In  this  evil 
case  stands  England. 

Go  deeper  still.  The  very  inward  attitude  and 
disposition  to  be  adopted  during  the  service  and  toward 
the  Sacrament  are  unknown  and  therefore  unpractised. 
No  preparation  is  made,  and  therefore  expectation  is 
weak  and  muddled.  Men  do  not  worship  there,  because 
they  have  no  idea  what  worship  is.  They  do  not  bring 
their  dearest  needs  and  longings  there,  because  a  service 
is  a  thing  which  has  to  be  followed,  not  used  ;  and 
far  be  it  from  them  to  add  any  private  prayer  of  their 
own  to  it  ;  no  notion  of  coming  with  "  special  inten- 
tion," or  of  independent  spiritual  venture,  has  occurred 
to  them.  The  moments  of  silence  are  moments  of 
uncomfortable  waiting,  or  even  of  looking  about. 
What  they  actually  receive,  they  do  not  know  ;  and 
therefore  make  no  exercise  of  faith  in  regard  to  It. 
The  mystical  entry  by  imagination  or  love  into  the 
passion  of  their  Christ  set  forth  is  far  beyond  their 
conception.      Even  the  simple  knowledge  that  Com- 


206      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       vii 

munion  is  an  act  of  brotherhood  is  not  grasped,  much 
less  any  less  earthly  doctrine.  Yet  the  Power  of  the 
Presence  does  work  among  the  dim,  dim  understand- 
ings of  men  ;  and  the  hungry  come  in  greater  and 
greater  numbers  to  be  filled. 

There  is  laid  upon  us,  then,  a  gigantic  effort  of 
instruction.  Our  old  Confirmation  standards  of 
teaching  the  Eucharist  look  utterly  puny,  and  sinful, 
in  the  light  of  war  lessons.  And  the  call  waxes  more 
urgent  still,  when  we  see  how  minute  a  proportion  of 
Church  of  England  men  have  even  this  understanding 
that  is  so  dim.  Instruction  by  ear  only  has  proved  a 
desperate  failure.  There  seems  to  be  but  one  way  of 
coping  with  the  situation,  that,  whether  we  like  it  or 
not,  our  people  henceforth  be  taught  by  eye  as  well 
the  central  devotion  of  Christendom,  from  earliest 
childhood.  We  must  do  it,  and  all  do  it,  "  for  their 
sake,"  and  damn  bygone  ecclesiastical  prepossession. 
So  that  the  child  grows  up,  not  only  at  home  in  the 
service,  not  only  conscious  of  its  primacy  and  obliga- 
tion, not  only  aware  of  its  splendid  content,  meaning, 
gift  and  action,  but  also  able  to  wield  all  these  things 
himself  familiarly  for  his  own  need  and  Godward 
thirst,  and  to  a  worthier,  happier  reception  of  the  Body 
and  Blood  of  Christ. 

We  want  avowedly  to  encourage  non-communi- 
cating attendance,  not,  maybe,  for  itself,  but  for  its 
end.  Communions  then  will  increase  in  number, 
for  no  Englishman  will  be  content  with  less  than  a 
whole  share  of  sacred  possessions  ;  and  they  will  be 
better  communions,  better  understood,  less  timid. 
There  is  no  training  or  teaching  of  the  Eucharist  that 


VII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  207 

is  full  or  abiding  except  that  which  can  be  given 
during  and  by  the  Eucharist  itself.  If  attendance  be 
encouraged,  the  chance  of  instruction  is  many  fold 
increased  ;  and  with  instruction  and  familiarity  alone 
come  to  the  Englishman  the  love  of  Communion,  and 
the  power  to  worship.  To  many  these  statements  are 
platitudes  ;  would  they  could  see  how  France  has 
resaid,  reshouted,  them  :  to  others  they  seem  dangerous 
— will  they  not  think  it  out  again  in  the  name  of  the 
multitudes  of  their  fallen  to  whom  the  gate  of  loveliest 
grace  was  for  ever  shut  upon  earth  ? 

And  in  our  new  teaching,  we  want  to  begin  with  the 
simplest,  clearest  things.  It  were  a  very  thin  concep- 
tion of  Holy  Communion  to  understand  it  as  a  striking 
act  of  brotherhood,  but  that  much  is  easily  taught  and 
easily  grasped ;  and  once  grasped  it  means  more 
perhaps  than  we  divines  realise  to  a  world  of  weak  and 
toiling  men,  who  are  sick  for  that  very  thing.  Proclaim 
the  act  of  brotherhood,  and  the  next  issue  will  soon 
become  manifest,  that  it  is  also  the  acceptable  hour  of 
the  Lord. 

Only  if  the  task  of  instruction  be  taken  everywhere 
in  hand  will  the  problem  of  "  accessibility  "  be  solved 
without  bitterness.  It  is  easy  to  say  "  Where  there's 
a  will  there's  a  way,"  but  probably  to  many  at  home, 
especially  in  the  industrial  centres,  the  impossibility 
of  receiving  or  attending  Holy  Communion  in  the 
morning  is  as  great  as  among  the  fighting  troops. 
Only  we  have  not  seen  it.  We  have  provided  for  those 
who  keep  normal  hours  or  can  freely  leave  home  ; 
but  not  for  those  who  work  all  night,  or  start  labour 
at  dawn,  or  are  tied  tiU  evening  by  household  duties. 


208      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       vii 

At  least  let  us  discover  the  facts  and  face  them.  For 
anything  is  better  than  that,  among  the  populations 
to  whom  we  minister,  any  section  or  any  single  soul 
be  perforce  excommunicate.  And  the  virtual  excommu- 
nication of  a  parent  generally  involves  that  of  his 
children.  .  .  . 

At  once  the  allied  questions  of  evening  Communions 
and  of  Communion  with  the  Reserved  Sacrament  open 
up.  They  are  serious  on  two  sides  to  priests  who  deem 
one  or  other  of  the  practices,  except  perhaps  in  gravest 
emergency,  disloyal  to  the  Church  and  dangerous  in 
consequences.  The  war  has  proved  decisively  that  the 
mass  of  laymen  find  nothing  unseemly  in  either.  In 
France  the  grave  emergency  has  been  ever  present. 
The  distinction  there  between  day  and  night,  as  that 
between  Sunday  and  weekday,  tends  to  vanish  ; 
the  morning  is  always  a  time  of  strenuous  labour,  and 
the  evening  is  sometimes  a  time  of  rest.  In  any  case, 
it  has  been  unthinkable  to  the  shepherds  to  allow  the 
flock,  ordered  out  at  any  sudden  moment  to  death,  to 
go  unhouseled.  Frankly  and  gladly,  "  for  their  sake  " 
accepting  the  situation,  many  of  us  have  come  new  to 
afternoon,  evening,  and  night  Communion.  Such 
occasions  naturally  draw  throngs  of  men  sobered  and 
earnest.  We  have  guarded  the  practice  so  far  as 
words  can,  by  declaring  it  a  war  emergency,  not  to  be 
looked  for  at  home,  and  by  instructing  carefully  through 
the  course  of  the  service.  The  writer  knows  one  great 
priest  who  then  and  then  only  indulged  in  majestic 
ceremonial  to  drive  home  the  feeling  that  this  was  an 
exceptional  proceeding  !  But  it  is  without  doubt 
due  to  these  evening  Communions,  or  to  the  instruction 


VII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  209 

given  at  them,  that  the  Blessed  Sacrament  has  grown 
larger  in  the  love  of  warriors. 

Equally  necessary,  but  more  rare,  if  they  are  to  be 
provided  with  the  Food  of  spiritual  strength  at  the 
hour  of  crisis,  has  been  the  carrying  of  the  Reserved 
Sacrament  to  positions  where  not  only  the  Communion 
service,  but  even  reception  in  more  than  one  kind,  has 
been  out  of  the  question.  Explanation  is  hardly  needed 
then,  but  tell  them  that  they  are  receiving  Communion 
as  the  wounded  in  their  hospital  bed  receive  it  (only 
in  hospital  it  is  almost  always  possible  to  communicate 
in  both  kinds)  and  they  understand  perfectly. 

The  religious  atmosphere  on  such  occasions  is 
unique  and  wonderful,  but  it  is  not  the  atmosphere  of 
the  morning  Communion  ;  it  seems  verily  a  different 
service,  reminiscent  of  the  Roman  Exposition  and 
Benediction,  It  is  the  coming  of  the  weary  and  heavy- 
laden  for  rest  and  solace,  rather  than  the  awaking  of 
the  heart  right  early  to  the  joy  and  strength  of  new 
pilgrimage,  of  accepted  and  confronted  duty.  The 
element  of  sacrifice  and  self -offering  is  absent  from  it  ; 
all  stress  is  upon  the  blessing  and  peace  given.  Some 
chaplains,  indeed,  fear  its  effect  upon  the  moral  of  men 
about  to  fight  and  endure.  But  this  is  clear — evening 
Communion  in  either  manner  cannot  be  a  substitute 
for  the  stronger,  better  Communion  of  morn. 

And  there  is  the  further  dilemma,  that  evening 
Communion  ministers  disastrously  to  the  Enghshman's 
laziness  in  things  religious.  Amongst  one  hundred 
soldier  communicants,  while  it  is  genuinely  impossible 
for  some  forty  to  present  themselves  in  the  morning, 
the  other  sixty  half -deliberately  choose  the  easier  way, 

p 


210      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       vii 

In  the  long  run,  as  a  regular  practice,  this  will  weaken 
and  degrade  the  very  Service  in  which  we  trust  to 
exalt  them.  If  there  is  a  "  peace  emergency  "  which 
can  only  be  met  in  similar  ways,  it  would  seem  wise 
to  create  a  sharp  distinction  between  the  morning  and 
the  evening  act.  Now  Communion  with  the  Reserved 
Sacrament  achieves  this  exactly  by  its  seeming  dis- 
advantage, that  it  is  an  act  of  Communion,  not  one 
of  corporate  worship.  Thereby  the  distinction  is  at 
once  set  up,  that  the  morning  Eucharist  is  the  great 
corporate  offering  of  the  brotherhood's  love  and 
worship ;  and  the  evening  Communion,  something  less 
than  that,  and  different,  although  giving  in  the  same 
measure,  which  is  beyond  measure,  the  gift  of  Christ. 
On  these  ancient  matters  of  controversy,  the  chaplain 
rebels  wish  to  ask  nothing  but  this  :  that  search  be 
made  with  new-opened  eyes  to  find  whether  or  no  there 
are  not  sections,  even  classes,  of  people  for  whom  the 
morning  provision  is  useless  or  uiu-easonably  hard ; 
and  that,  if  so,  other  provision  be  publicly  made  ; 
and  we  priests  be  less  bewildered  by  conflict  between 
church  order  and  the  people's  need,  and  hurried  into 
practices  often  overrash,  always  too  individual.  We 
return  to  the  same  plea,  that  even  here  in  the  Holy  of 
Holies  the  home  Church  fear  not  to  experiment,  so 
only  the  flock,  the  whole  flock,  be  fed.  And  no  less 
earnestly  do  we  pray  her  forgiveness  where  in  the 
pitifulness  of  our  impotence  as  priests  we  have  turned 
in  France  to  blame  her  or  improve  her  ways  as  those 
that  know  the  Spirit  better  than  do  her  Spirit-led 
generations. 


VIII 
WORSHIP    AND   SERVICES 

By  the  Rev.  C.  SALISBURY  WOODWARD,  M.C., 

M.A. 

Late  Chaplain  to  the  Forces,  Brigade  ;  Canon  and  Precentor  of  Souih- 

tvark  Cathedral ;  Rector  of  St.  Saviour's  with  St.  Peter's,  Sonthwark. 


P  2 


VIII 

WORSHIP   AND    SERVICES 

Judged  by  one  standard  the  subject  of  the  present 
Essay  is  a  comparatively  unimportant  one ;  by  another 
it  is  amongst  the  most  vital  of  all  which  affect  our 
religious  life.  When  we  consider  the  tremendous  facts 
of  the  existence  and  purposes  of  God,  of  His  revelation 
in  Jesus  Christ,  and  of  the  meaning  and  destiny  of 
human  life,  the  question  of  the  particular  mode  in 
which  we  should  address  ourselves  to  the  Almighty 
becomes  almost  insignificant,  and  the  interminable 
wranglings  over  this  or  that  form  of  public  worship 
seem  only  to  argue  an  amazing  blindness  to  the  nature 
of  the  Divine  Being.  But  when  we  look  at  the  ma.tter 
from  a  more  human  standpoint  we  realise  its  import- 
ance, for,  so  long  as  the  Church  exists,  the  generality 
of  men  will  instinctively  base  their  ideas  of  religion 
upon  her  public  presentation  of  it,  and  form  their 
conception  of  the  character  of  God  from  the  manner 
in  which  she  teaches  them  to  approach  Him.  Just 
as  the  Pagan  imagined  the  Godhead  to  be  like  unto 
the  gold  or  silver  or  stone,  graven  by  art  or  man's 
device,  which  filled  his  temples,  so  will  the  normal 


214      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      viii 

Englishman  judge  of  the  Almighty  by  the  worship  of 
a  Christian  Church.  While,  therefore,  the  considera- 
tion of  our  Church  services  cannot  claim  to  rank  in 
essential  importance  with  other  subjects  dealt  with 
in  this  volume,  as  a  matter  of  practical  moment  it  is 
b}''  no  means  the  least  vital. 

In  every  department  of  human  life  experts  are  apt 
to  speak  and  write  too  exclusively  from  the  expert's 
point  of  view  ;  they  live  in  an  atmosphere  and  express 
their  ideas  in  a  phraseology  with  which  the  lay  mind 
has  little  in  common,  with  the  result  that  the  expert 
seldom  succeeds  in  making  himself  intelligible  to  the 
layman,  nor  can  he  on  the  other  hand  enter  into  the 
experience  or  appreciate  the  requirements  of  his  less 
learned  brother.  This  is  peculiarly  true  in  the  religious 
sphere.  Of  the  hundreds  of  books  upon  questions  of 
religious  interest  which  issue  from  the  press  year  by 
year,  it  is  rare  to  find  one  which,  treats  the  subject  in 
a  manner  likely  to  appeal  to  those  who  have  not  made 
theology  a  special  study,  or  who  are  unfamiliar  with 
religious  phraseology.  It  is,  of  course,  difficult,  if  not 
impossible,  to  deal  with  doctrinal  questions  in  un- 
technical  language,  but  the  tendency  has  permeated 
the  whole  field  of  religion.  It  is  conspicuous  in  preach- 
ing, in  controversy,  and  above  all,  perhaps,  in  the 
religious  Press,  with  the  inevitable  result  that  the 
man  in  the  street  has  come  to  regard  Religion  as  a 
thing  apart.  Church  services  are  a  case  in  point. 
During  recent  years  there  has  been  a  considerable 
amount  of  discussion  upon  the  need  of  reforms  in  one 
direction  or  another  in  our  services  ;  the  question  has 
cropped  up  from  time  to  time  in  the  correspondence 


VIII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  215 

columns  of  the  Church  papers,  it  has  appeared  upon 
the  agenda  papers  of  innumerable  ruri  decanal  and 
diocesan  conferences,  it  is  occupying  the  serious  and 
prolonged  attention  of  Convocation  itself.  But  the 
discussion  has  for  the  most  part  been  carried  on  in 
the  "  expert  "  atmosphere  and  from  the  expert's 
point  of  view  ;  it  has  been  debated  ad  nauseam  by 
eminent  liturgiologists,  or  by  the  clergy  and  the  small 
body  of  devout  and  regular  worshippers,  whose  very 
familiarity  with  our  services  as  they  are  makes  them 
genuinely  incapable  of  considering  the  matter  through 
the  eyes  of  the  average,  unecclesiastically-minded 
layman.  Those  who  have  ventured  to  approach  the 
subject  from  a  more  detached  and  open-air  standpoint 
have  generally  been  reproached  with  unfaithfulness  to 
the  Church's  tradition  and  disloyalty  to  our  "  in- 
comparable liturgy."  In  a  word  the  tendency  of  those 
who  have  taken  part  in  these  discussions  has  been  to 
look  inwards  rather  than  outwards,  to  consider  the 
interests  of  the  minority  rather  than  those  of  the 
majority,  to  safeguard  the  past  rather  than  to  modify 
it  along  the  lines  of  modern  needs.  In  the  criticisms 
and  suggestions  which  foUow  it  is  my  aim  to  look 
at  the  subject  through  the  eyes  of  average  men  and 
women  who,  while  they  may  attend  church  with  more 
or  less  regularity,  are  in  no  sense  religious  experts  : 
these  form  the  bulk  of  our  congregations,  and  it 
is  with  a  view  to  their  spiritual  needs,  rather  than  to  a 
mere  reverence  for  antiquity,  that  our  services  should 
be  framed.  Nor  must  we  forget  that  even  these  are 
but  a  tiny  percentage  of  the  whole  population,  and  that 
amongst  the  great  majority  who  seldom  or  never  "  go 


216      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      viii 

to  church  "  there  is  probably  a  considerable  propor- 
tion who  would  find  their  way  there  if  they  discovered 
that  churchgoing  supplied  a  need  in  their  lives.  We 
are  far  too  ready  to  ignore  the  uncomfortable  fact  that 
of  late  years  churchgoing  amongst  all  classes  of  the 
community  has  steadily  declined  almost  in  proportion 
as  services  have  been  multiplied  and  elaborated. 

A  well-known  Bishop,  preaching  on  a  special  occasion 
in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  took  for  his  text  the  words 
"  What  mean  ye  by  this  service  ?  "  and  the  question 
affords  an  appropriate  basis  for  our  present  inquiry. 
Why  do  we  go  to  church  ?  What  is  in  the  mind  of 
the  man  in  the  pew  as  he  settles  down  in  his  place 
on  Sunday  ?  The  obvious  answer  is  a  simple  one  and 
may  be  found  in  the  opening  exhortation  of  Morning 
and  Evening  Prayer.  We  are  here  to  worship  God,  to 
sing  His  praise,  to  hear  His  Word,  to  ask  His  favour. 
But  a  little  inquiry  amongst  the  occupants  of  the  pews 
will  prove  that  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  such  an  answer 
would  be  untrue.  Nothing  is  to  be  gained  by  ignoring 
facts — popular  as  the  practice  is  amongst  Churchmen 
— and  however  unpalatable  the  truth  may  be,  it  is 
full  time  that  we  realised  that  even  amongst  con- 
ventionally religious  folk  the  instinct  for  worship  and 
indeed  for  prayer  itself  has  largely  disapjjeared. 
Modern  religion  is  tending  to  substitute  an  ethical 
for  a  supernatural  basis ;  its  ambition  is  to  develop 
character  rather  than  to  glorify  God,  it  is  more  con- 
cerned with  the  evolution  of  man  than  with  the  Person 
of  the  Almighty.  It  is  of  course  true  that  the  war, 
with  its  appalling  toll  of  human  life,  has  temporarily 
arrested  this  tendency,   and  turned   men's  thoughts 


VIII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  217 

to  the  world  behind  the  veil ;  but  even  so  the  desire 
has  generally  been  for  some  means  of  communication 
with  the  departed  rather  than  for  communion  with 
God,  and  in  any  case  it  is  very  doubtful  whether  such 
reachings  out  to  the  unseen  will  long  survive  the  close 
of  war.  As  a  result  of  this  emphasis  upon  the  human 
side  of  religion  the  ordinary  churchgoer,  so  far  as  his 
purpose  is  a  conscious  one  at  all,  is  more  concerned 
with  what  he  can  get  out  of  the  service  than  what  he 
has  to  give  through  it.  Men  will  tell  you  that  they  go 
to  church  because  it  does  them  good,  it  gives  them  a 
lift  up  and  helps  them  better  to  face  the  temptations 
of  the  week.  The  most  popular  parts  of  the  service 
are  the  music  and  the  sermon  ;  hymns  and,  to  a  less 
degree,  psalms  and  canticles  have  the  same  emotional 
effect  as  may  be  seen  in  the  singing  of  a  battalion  on 
a  long  and  tiring  march  :  the  words  matter  little,  but 
if  the  tune  is  an  appealing  or  inspiring  one  it  lifts  men 
out  of  themselves  and  makes  them  feel  good.  The 
sermon  too  is  valued  far  more  highly  than  is  generally 
supposed.  We  are  so  accustomed  to  hearing  sermons 
criticised  that  we  are  apt  to  assume  that  they  might 
almost  be  dispensed  with  ;  but  this  is  far  from  being 
the  case.  The  very  fact  of  criticism  presupposes  a 
certain  measure  of  interest,  and  any  preacher  who  can 
speak  clearly  and  intelhgibly  to  his  congregation  is 
sure  of  genuine  and  grateful  attention.  A  service 
without  a  sermon  is  commonly  held  to  be  a  very 
unsatisfactory  business.  But  the  prayers  are  frankly 
unpopular  ;  they  are  regarded  as  a  necessary  formality 
which  must  be  endured  in  the  same  spirit  in  which  in 
nursery  days  we  plodded  through  the  bread  and  butter 


218      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      viii 

stage  before  jam  and  cake  could  be  reached.  It  is 
probably  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  seventy -five  out 
of  every  hundred  churchgoers  spend  the  time  devoted 
to  prayers  in  somnolence  and  wandering  thoughts. 

I  may  remark  in  passing  that  I  am  deliberately 
leaving  out  of  account  those  whose  churchgoing  is  of 
a  purely  conventional  or  of  a  compulsory  kind.  The 
former  class  is  a  steadily  diminishing  one.  Less  than 
a  generation  ago  it  was  the  proper  thing  to  attend 
church  at  least  once  on  Sunday  ;  to-day  the  fashion 
survives  in  some  neighbourhoods,  but  it  is  rapidly 
declining,  and  very  soon  it  will  be  rare  to  find  in  church 
adults,  in  any  class  of  the  community,  who  have  not 
come  there  of  their  own  personal  inclination.  Com- 
pulsory church  attendance  is  mainly  confined  to  the 
Army  and  to  our  public  schools.  Opinions  differ  as 
to  its  advisability,  and  some  opponents  of  the  practice 
have  perhaps  seen  cause  to  modify  their  views  after 
serving  as  chaplains  to  the  Forces  ;  but  on  the  whole 
the  evils  resulting  from  compulsory  religion  may  be 
said  to  outweigh  the  gains.  However  that  may  be, 
we  are  only  concerned  at  the  moment  with  those  whose 
attendance  at  church  is  voluntary. 

While  it  must  be  freely  admitted  that  the  motives 
for  churchgoing  which  have  been  sketched  above  are 
grievously  inadequate  and  incomplete,  it  would  be  a 
mistake  to  deny  their  value  altogether.  Those  who  only 
go  to  church  because  "  it  does  them  good  "  are  at  least 
on  the  right  road.  Their  conception  of  religion  is  a 
one-sided  one,  but  they  feel  the  necessity  for  religion 
of  some  kind,  and  thus  form  a  soil  into  which  it  should 
be   possible   to   implant   higher   ideals   and   worthier 


VIII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  219 

conceptions.  This  then  is  our  problem,  to  awaken 
the  instinct  for  worship  as  man's  bounden  duty  and 
service,  and  as  the  primary  object  of  church  attendance. 
There  are  two  alternative  policies  to  be  considered. 
The  one  aims  at  introducing  all  and  sundry,  no  matter 
what  their  spkitual  attainments,  to  what  is  acknow- 
ledged to  be  the  highest  form  of  worship,  the 
Eucharist,  with  every  outward  accompaniment  of 
ritual  and  ceremonial.  It  is  thus,  say  the  advocates 
of  this  policy,  that  we  shall  best  bring  home  to  the 
people  the  majesty  and  awfulness  of  God,  dwelling  in 
light  unapproachable,  and  arouse  in  them  the  instinct 
to  fall  low  on  their  knees  before  His  footstool. 
Worship,  they  say,  has  decayed  because  our  services 
have  become  cold  and  lifeless  and  commonplace. 
Restore  something  of  the  majesty  and  beauty  of  the 
past,  introduce  into  your  churches  an  atmosphere  of 
mystery  and  other-worldliness,  robe  your  priests  in 
elaborate  vestments,  let  the  altar  lights  gleam  through 
rolling  clouds  of  incense,  and  you  will  create  a 
craving  for  fellowship  with  the  Unseen,  which,  rein- 
forced by  careful  teaching,  will  express  itself  in 
humble  and  reverent  worship.  The  other  policy  is 
that  of  learning  to  walk  before  you  try  to  run,  of 
taking  men  at  the  point  at  which  they  now  stand, 
of  gradually  educating  them  in  the  meaning  and 
value  of  prayer,  with  a  view  to  leading  them  by 
slow  degrees  through  petition  and  intercession  to  praise 
and  adoration. 

I  am  anxious  to  avoid  the  endless  entanglements  of 
current  controverises,  for  we  are  not  here  concerned 
with  doctrinal  issues  ;    my  object  is  only  to  examine 


220      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      viii 

the  two  policies  side  by  side  as  a  practical  means  of 
attaining  the  end  which  both  have  in  common,  namely, 
the  stimulation  and  development  of  the  instinct  for 
corporate  prayer  in  its  highest  and  fullest  sense.  We 
have  too  long  allowed  the  question  to  be  obscured  by 
those  whose  chief  pre-occupation  is  a  passion  for 
orthodoxy,  and  whose  whole  conception  of  religion 
seems  to  be  wrapped  up  in  the  wearing  or  not  wearing 
of  a  particular  garment ;  the  adopting  or  not  adopting 
of  certain  postures  ;  and  meanwhile  the  churches  have 
been  steadily  emptying.  It  is  quite  certain  that  opinions 
will  always  differ  on  the  point  at  issue  ;  temperament 
and  tradition  will  weigh  the  scales  on  one  side  or  the 
other  ;  yet  with  our  present  object  in  view  the  deci- 
sion seems  clear  enough.  Granted  all  that  may  be  said 
for  the  inspiring  and  uplifting  influence  of  a  perfectly 
rendered  choral  Eucharist ;  granted  that  such  a  service 
is  the  highest  and  noblest  which  can  be  offered  by 
man  before  the  Throne  of  God  ;  granted — and  this 
is  a  large  assumption — that  the  congregation  is 
fully  instructed  in  the  meaning  of  the  service, 
we  remain  unconvinced  that  it  is  along  such  a  road 
that  we  shall  attain  the  end  we  have  in  view.  One 
teacher  may  attempt  to  attract  the  child  who  has 
not  yet  learnt  to  read  by  placing  before  him  an  extrava- 
gantly illustrated  story-book,  faultlessly  printed  and 
sumptuously  bound,  in  the  hope  that  the  little  one 
may  be  stimulated  by  the  beauty  of  the  book  to  master 
its  contents  ;  another  wiU  laboriously  lead  her  pupils 
through  the  drudgery  of  A  B  C,  and  so  through  words 
of  one  syllable  gradually  instil  in  slowly-growing  minds 
a  mastery  of  words  and  love  of  reading.     One  child  in 


VIII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  221 

a  hundred  may  respond  to  the  former  treatment,  the 
remainder  will  be  discouraged  by  the  length  and 
difficulty  of  the  words,  and  after  looking  at  the  pictures 
for  a  httle  while  will  give  up  in  despair  the  attempt 
to  extract  any  sense  out  of  the  letterpress  which 
explains  them.  Similarly,  in  worship,  to  plunge  a 
man  who  has  scarcely  learned  to  pray  into  the  highest 
and  most  elaborate  form  of  worship  is  little  hkely  to 
achieve  the  end  desired.  Here  and  there  abnormal 
souls  may  respond,  in  a  larger  number  of  cases  music 
and  atmosphere  may  attract,  but  the  vast  majority 
will  only  be  bewildered  and  confused,  while  it  does  not 
necessarily  follow  that  the  true  spirit  of  worship  will 
be  attained  even  by  those  who  regularly  attend  such 
services.  It  is  fatally  easy  to  judge  others  by  our- 
selves, to  forget  that  we  have  come  by  long  years  of 
training  to  appreciate  and  enter  into  what  we  now 
enjoy,  and  to  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  what  appeals 
to  us  is  meaningless  to  the  great  mass  of  the  population. 
The  alternative  policy  is  that  the  services  of  the 
Church  should  be  adapted  to  the  progressive  needs 
and  capacities  of  churchgoers.  We  would  reform  and 
modify  our  forms  of  worship  so  as  to  lead  men  on  from 
the  lower  to  the  higher,  providing  at  each  stage  what 
is  clearly  within  the  comprehension  and  in  harmony 
with  the  experience  of  those  for  whom  each  service  is 
primarily  intended.  It  is  not,  of  course,  proposed  that 
congregations  should  be  graded  into  classes  Uke  school 
children,  or  that  individuals  should  be  confined  to  this 
or  that  form  of  service  ;  but  that  our  services  should 
be  definitely  arranged  with  a  view  to  the  needs 
of  broad  classes  of  churchgoers,  and  that  the  individual 


222      THE   CHURCH   IN  THE   FURNACE      viii 

should  then  be  left  to  attend  whichever  type  of  service 
he  feels  to  be  best  suited  to  him.  It  will  no  doubt  be 
said  that  the  variety  suggested  already  exists  ;  we 
have  our  mission  services  and  our  solemn  Evensongs, 
our  plain  celebrations  and  our  choral  Eucharists,  and 
in  addition  a  host  of  special  services  of  every  kind  and 
variety — evangelistic,  devotional,  intercessional,  services 
for  men,  for  women,  for  children,  guild  offices,  prayer 
meetings,  and  many  others.  The  answer  is  that  the 
existence  of  this  heterogeneous  mass  of  services  proves 
the  existence  of  the  very  need  I  am  urging,  but  that 
they  are  chaotic  and  for  the  most  part  unauthorised, 
depending  more  upon  the  whims  and  fancies  of  the 
parson  than  upon  the  necessities  of  particular  congrega- 
tions. Moreover,  these  additional  services  are  rarely 
attended  by  those  with  whom  we  are  now  concerned  ; 
the  average  churchgoer  confines  himself  to  the  regular 
services  prescribed  for  Sunday  use,  and  it  is  to  these 
that  we  ought  to  devote  our  chief  attention,  and  in 
which  we  ought  to  press  for  reasonable  reform. 

It  is  more  than  probable  that  we  shall  continue  to 
have  with  us  the  host  of  special  services  to  which  we 
have  referred — though  it  is  open  to  question  whether 
the  clergy  would  not  often  be  far  more  profitably 
employed  in  the  homes  and  streets  of  their  parishes,  or 
in  their  studies,  than  in  incessantly  ministering  in  church 
to  the  same  little  handful  of  the  more  devout  members 
of  their  flocks — and  it  is  clearly  impossible  for  authority 
to  lay  down  precise  directions  with  regard  to  the 
innumerable  offices  which  have  by  now  received  the 
sanction  of  customary  use.  The  consent  of  episcopal 
silence  may  fairly  be  claimed  on  behalf  of  all  forms 


VIII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  223 

which,  while  they  are  not  to  be  found  in  the  Book  of 
Common  Prayer,  have  not  been  specifically  forbidden 
by  lawful  authority.  In  the  case  of  those  which  the 
Ordinary  has  definitely  refused  to  sanction  common 
honesty  will  leave  no  doubt  as  to  the  course  to  be 
pursued. 

I  propose,  therefore,  to  deal  only  with  the  regular 
Sunday  services  of  the  Church,  that  is  to  say  with 
Morning  and  Evening  Prayer,  and  the  Holy  Com- 
munion. In  spite  of  all  efforts  to  dethrone  them  from 
popular  favour,  it  is  to  the  former  that  the  ordinary  or 
elementary  churchgoer  will  in  all  probability  continue 
to  find  his  way  ;  in  one  class  of  society  the  morning 
office,  in  another  the  evening,  will  be  most  popular. 
Our  policy,  as  has  already  been  hinted,  would  not  be 
to  discourage  this  tendency,  but  so  to  modify  these 
services  as  to  fulfil  the  purpose  of  educating  those  who 
attend  them  in  the  spirit  of  prayer  and  worship,  and 
of  thus  leading  them  on  to  desire  and  appreciate  some- 
thing higher  and  better  than  they  already  know.  It 
cannot  be  denied  that  in  their  present  form  Matins 
and  Evensong  are  inadequate  ;  they  fall  between  two 
stools,  and  neither  satisfy  those  in  whom  the  instinct 
of  worship  is  highly  developed,  nor  those  who  need 
to  have  that  instinct  awakened  by  the  use  of  a  simple 
and  intelligible  form  of  prayer.  It  is  in  the  interests 
of  the  latter  class  that  I  desire  to  see  these  services 
reformed,  but  so  reformed  as  not  to  sacrifice  the  general 
form  and  structure  of  the  offices  as  they  have  come  down 
to  us.  One  thing  seems  certain,  namely,  that  a 
liturgical  form  of  service  is  desirable  and  indeed 
indispensable   for    the   carrying    out    of    our   policy. 


224      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      viii 

Generally  speaking  the  so-called  evangelistic  or  mission 
services  which  are  provided  on  Sunday  evenings  in  a 
good  many  parishes  do  not  attract  the  congregations 
for  whom  they  are  designed,  and  do  little  or  nothing 
to  create  in  those  who  do  attend  them  an  appetite  for 
a  worthier  and  more  dignified  type  of  worship.  I 
shall  doubtless  be  reminded  of  the  popularity  of  the 
free  and  easy  sacred  "  sing-songs  "  which  are  so  common 
in  the  Army  to-day,  but  I  am  inclined  to  beheve  that 
an  inquiry  amongst  the  men  would  show  that  there  is 
no  great  difference  in  their  minds  between  singing 
secular  songs  on  weekdays  and  joining  in  hymns  on 
Sunday.  It  is  the  tune,  not  the  words,  which  counts, 
and  in  any  case  it  is  doubtful  whether  there  is  much 
permanent  rehgious  value  in  the  singing  of  a  succes- 
sion of  rather  emotional  hymns,  followed  by  a  short 
talk  and  a  few  words  of  prayer  ;  the  tendency  seems 
rather  to  deaden  in  the  men  a  taste  for  genuine  worship. 

Assuming  then  that  a  liturgical  service  will  best 
meet  the  need  which  we  are  considering,  we  must  first 
ask  ourselves  what  are  the  legitimate  criticisms  which 
can  be  brought  against  our  present  forms  of  Morning 
and  Evening  Prayer.  They  are  sufficiently  obvious,  and 
have  been  so  widely  canvassed  that  I  need  scarcely 
do  more  than  tabulate  them. 

1.  The  language  of  many  of  the  prayers  is  out 
of  date,  and  therefore  unintelligible  if  not  actually 
misleading  to  the  majority.  "  We  have  erred  and 
strayed  like  lost  sheep,"  "  Graft  in  our  hearts," 
"  the  continual  dew  of  Thy  blessing,"  are  mean- 
ingless phrases  to  dwellers  in  great  cities  ;  "  there  is 
no  health  in  us,"  "thy  saving  health,"  "the  healthful 


VIII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  225 

spirit  of  thy  grace,"  have  physical  rather  than  spiritual 
associations  for  most  ;  "  inestimable  love,"  "  un- 
feignedly  thankful,"  "  thy  special  grace  preventing  us," 
"acknowledging  our  wretchedness,"  "true  andlaudable 
service,"  "  sore  let  and  hindered,"  are  but  random 
examples  of  words  which  have  passed  out  of  current  use 
and  either  lost  or  changed  their  meaning.  So  long  as  our 
prayers  are  couched  in  such  language  "  how  shall  he 
that  occupieth  the  place  of  the  unlearned  say  'Amen,' 
seeing  he  understandeth  not  what  thou  sayest  ?  " 

2.  The  subject-matter  of  the  prayers  is  unsatis- 
factory ;  it  is  too  general  and  abstract  for  common 
use.  The  favoured  few  who  can  read  their  particular 
petitions  into  prayers  of  a  general  nature  do  not  feel 
this  defect,  but  it  must  always  be  remembered  that 
only  a  small  minority  have  the  power  to  translate 
the  abstract  into  the  concrete.  Most  men  can  only 
call  a  spade  a  spade,  and  if  they  are  to  pray  with  reality 
at  all  the  prayers  must  speak  simply  and  definitely  of 
what  they  know  and  feel  and  need.  With  the  excep- 
tion of  half  a  dozen  prayers  for  use  on  special  occasions 
and  the  Litany,  which  is  too  long  and  embraces  too 
many  subjects  for  beginners  in  prayer,  this  need  is 
ignored  in  the  Prayer-book.  There  is  no  opportunity 
given  for  definite  prayer  for  the  work  of  a  parish,  for 
children,  for  foreign  missions,  for  those  engaged  in 
industry,  for  emigrants  and  colonists — to  name  a  few 
subjects  only  out  of  a  list  which  might  be  almost 
indefinitely  extended. 

3.  There  remains  the  question  of  the  Psalms  and 
lessons.  No  one  will  deny  that  the  Psalter  contains 
the  most  moving  and  inspiring  rehgious  poetry  in  the 

Q 


226      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      viii 

world,  but  two  criticisms  may  fairly  be  brought  against 
our  present  use  of  it.  In  the  first  place  the  Psalms  are 
obviously  of  unequal  value  from  the  point  of  view  of 
edification  on  the  one  hand  and  intelhgibility  on  the 
other.  It  is  impossible  to  defend  the  use  of  the 
imprecatory  Psalms  in  Christian  worship^ — "  Let  his 
children  be  fatherless  and  his  wife  a  widow  "  harmonises 
ill  with  the  injunction  to  love  our  enemies — and  it  is 
unfortunate,  to  say  the  least  of  it,  that  a  manifestly 
un-Christian  instinct,  which  it  is  sufficiently  difficult 
to  repress  at  such  times  as  these,  should  be  able  to  claim 
the  sanction  of  use  in  the  Christian  Church.  There  are 
also  many  Psalms  v/hich,  while  they  were  full  of  comfort 
and  inspiration  to  the  Jewish  nation,  which  could  fully 
enter  into  their  historical  associations,  have  little 
meaning  and  therefore  little  spiritual  value  for  English- 
men of  our  day,  ignorant  as  they  are  of  the  incidents 
of  Jewish  history  to  which  they  allude.  There  are, 
moreover,  isolated  passages  in  not  a  few  of  the  Psalms 
which  are  frankly  unintelligible.  How  many  of  those 
who  cheerfully  sing  "  or  ever  your  pots  be  made  hot 
with  thorns,  so  let  indignation  vex  him  even  as  a  thing 
that  is  raw,"  have  the  vaguest  idea  of  the  meaning  of 
the  words  which  they  profess  to  be  singing  to  the 
glory  of  God  ?  It  will  at  once  be  said  that  these  obscure 
passages  often  occur  in  Psalms  which  are  otherwise 
helpful  and  inspiring ;  the  obvious  answer  is  that  the 
offending  verses  should  be  deleted,  or,  if  that  is  thought 
to  be  imjDracticable,  that  it  is  surelj'^  preferable  to 
sacrifice   the   psalm  altogether  rather  than  introduce 

^  These  words  were  written  before  the  outcry  arose  against  the 
action  of  Convocation  in  this  matter.     We  live  and  learn. 


VIII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  227 

utterly  meaningless  language  into  our  public  worship. 
The  very  first  requirement,  if  prayer  and  praise  are  to 
be  real,  is  that  they  should  be  simple  and  intelligible. 

The  length  of  the  Psalms  prescribed  for  daily  use  is 
another  legitimate  cause  for  criticism  ;  the  average 
number  of  verses  prescribed  is  forty,  and  when,  in 
Morning  Prayer,  we  add  to  these  some  sixty  verses  in 
the  Canticles,  we  find  ourselves  singing  a  hundred  verses 
in  a  single  service.  It  is  little  wonder  that  many 
worshippers  occupy  themselves  before  the  clergy  enter 
in  reckoning  the  number  of  verses  to  be  said  or  sung 
that  morning,  and  breathe  a  sigh  of  relief  when  they 
find  them  to  be  below  the  average. 

Similar  criticisms  apply  to  the  lectionary.  The 
lessons  are  too  long,  they  are  often  unedifying,  and  they 
are  frequently  quite  out  of  harmony  with  the  teaching 
of  the  Church's  seasons.  Few  ordinary  churchgoers 
can  derive  much  help  or  comfort  from  listening  to 
long  passages  from  the  Pentateuch  or  the  historical 
books,  or  to  isolated  fragments  from  some  compli- 
cated doctrinal  argument  of  St.  Paul.  Simple  minds 
must  moreover  be  hopelessly  confused  by  hearing  an 
account  of  the  Crucifixion  of  Our  Lord  read  to  them  on 
one  of  the  Sundays  after  Easter,  or  by  listening  to 
the  incidents  which  followed  the  Resurrection  on  a 
Sunday  in  Advent ;  yet  both  are  Hable  to  occur  and 
do  actually  occur  in  the  present  year. 

But  enough  of  criticism  ;  it  is  time  to  turn  to  con- 
structive proposals.  The  advocate  of  Prayer-book 
revision  is  always  apt  to  be  met  by  a  blank  non 
possumus.  Our  services  are  fixed  by  law  and  without 
the  consent  of  Parliament  it  is  impossible  to  alter 

Q  2 


228      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      viii 

them.  We  need  not  dwell  upon  the  fact  that  such  an 
argument  would  have  proved  fatal  to  nine  out  of 
every  ten  reforms  which  have  ever  been  carried  through 
in  Church  or  State.  It  is  an  argument  which  puts  an 
end  to  all  possibihty  of  progress,  and  is  the  favourite 
refuge  of  the  multitude  which  loves  not  change.  Of 
course  there  will  be  difficulties  in  the  way,  of  course  the 
task  will  not  be  an  easy  one,  but  that  is  no  reason  why 
a  beginning  should  not  be  made,  and  made  at  once,  so 
that  we  may  be  ready  with  a  simpler  and  more  elastic 
form  of  service  for  the  time  when  the  men  come  home. 
It  is  a  little  difficult  to  make  concrete  proposals 
at  the  moment,  because,  as  is  well  known.  Convocation 
is  actually  engaged  in  drawing  up  an  additional  form 
of  late  evening  service  to  be  used  where  Evensong  has 
ah'eady  been  said.  I  venture  to  suggest  that  this  is  a 
mistake ;  what  is  wanted  is  not  an  additional  service, 
but  an  alternative  one,  to  be  used  in  churches  and 
chapels  in  which  Evensong  is  not  legally  compulsory. 
An  additional  form  will  necessarily  differ  very  widely 
from  our  present  Office  ;  it  will  probably  be  an  entirely 
new  service,  with  the  result  that  it  will  almost  inevitably 
fail  to  commend  itself  to  the  conservative  instincts  of 
those  who  have  long  been  familiar  with  the  Prayer- 
book  service.  The  outcome  will  be  that  in  a  com- 
paratively small  number  of  working-class  parishes  this 
additional  service  will  be  introduced,  probably  at  an 
inconvenient  hour,  the  majority  of  churchgoers  will 
continue  to  attend  the  usual  service  at  the  usual  hour, 
and  the  new  service  will  before  long  share  the  fate  of 
similar  experiments  in  the  past.  The  congregations 
attending  it  will  be  small,  the  clergy  will  be  discouraged, 


VIII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  229 

and  after  a  time  the  additional  service  will  be  quietly 
dropped.  But  if  the  policy  of  an  alternative  service 
be  adopted  there  will  be  no  need  to  depart  from  the 
general  structure  of  the  service  with  which  churchgoers 
are  familiar,  nor  from  the  hour  at  which  they  are 
accustomed  to  go  to  church.  The  new  form  will  be 
Evensong  as  we  know  it,  simplified  and  brought  into 
harmony  with  modern  needs,  and  those  who  attend  it 
will  not  feel  that  they  are  being  inveigled  into  something 
new-fangled  and  not  quite  respectable  ;  they  will 
instead  recognise  an  old  friend  in  a  new  and  more 
appropriate  dress.  It  would  be  legal  to  use  such  a 
service  in  all  mission  churches,  in  churches  where  the 
Prayer-book  services  are  or  can  be  said  at  another 
hour,  in  college  and  public  school  chapels,  and  in  the 
chapels  attached  to  hospitals,  workhouses,  and  other 
similar  institutions.  Were  an  authorised  form  in 
existence  it  would  certainly  be  widely  used  in  such 
places,  and  valuable  experience  would  be  gained  against 
the  day  when  the  Church  secures  liberty  to  vary  her 
services  without  the  intervention  of  the  State,  when 
one  may  fairly  hope  that  the  alternative  service  would 
become  the  normal  Sunday  office. 

The  following  are  the  lines  along  which  such 
a  form  might  be  drawn  up.  Keeping  our  present 
service  as  a  basis,  the  simple  Confession  and  Abso- 
lution of  Compline  might  be  substituted  for  those 
at  present  in  use.  A  limited  number  of  psalms 
should  be  carefully  selected  with  a  view  to  their 
simplicity  and  suitability  to  modern  needs,  and 
these  should  be  arranged  according  to  the  Sundays 
of  the  Church's  year,  and  not  by  the  days  of  the  month, 


280      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE     viii 

not  more  than  twenty  verses  on  the  average  being 
appointed  for  each  service.  The  lectionary  should  be 
entirely  redrafted  for  the  Sunday  services,  passages  of 
from  twelve  to  twenty  verses  should  be  chosen,  care 
being  taken  that  they  should  be  really  edifying,  in 
harmony  with  the  teaching  of  the  season,  and  having 
a  connection  of  thought  between  the  Old  Testament 
and  New  Testament  lessons.  After  the  Creed  some  such 
rubric  as  the  following  might  be  inserted  :  "  Here  shall 
follow  the  Collect  for  the  day  and  other  prayers  at 
the  discretion  of  the  minister."  In  this  connection  a 
varied  collection  of  prayers  covering  every  modern 
need  should  be  drawn  up  and  issued  by  authority. 
Many  such  collections  have  in  recent  years  been 
compiled  and  published  privately  ;  we  urgently  need 
an  official  and  authorised  book  of  additional  prayers. 
Granted  that  they  might  lack  the  literary  form  and 
beauty  of  our  present  Collects,  the  fact  that  they 
would  voice  modern  needs  would  be  a  gain  far  out- 
weighing the  possible  loss.  If  John  Smith  and  Thomas 
Jones  are  to  learn  to  pray  with  reality  they  must  be 
allowed  to  ask  for  the  things  they  really  need,  and  to 
ask  for  them  in  the  language  of  their  own  day,  not  in 
that  of  the  Elizabethans,  however  perfect  the  latter 
may  have  been.  The  service  might  close  with  a 
couple  of  set  prayers  said  by  the  whole  congregation, 
one  perhaps  for  protection  through  the  coming  night, 
as,  for  example,  the  beautiful  and  perfectly  simple 
prayer  commencing  "  Almighty  Father,  Who  in  Thy 
divine  mercy  dost  cover  the  earth  with  the  curtain  of 
darkness  that  all  the  weary  may  rest,"  and  the  other 
a  prayer  of  thanksgiving.     This  common  saying  of  the 


VIII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  231 

prayers  is  a  point  which  has  not  been  sufficiently  con- 
sidered. It  seems  obvious  that  the  congregation  will 
enter  into  the  prayers  with  far  greater  reality  if  they 
are  allowed  to  repeat  the  words  with  the  minister,  or 
sentence  by  sentence  after  him,  and  not  merely  listen 
to  him  saying  them  on  their  behalf. 

The  form  of  service  which  I  have  roughly  sketched 
out  has  been  in  use  in  a  South  London  church  during 
the  past  two  years  and  has  won  the  warm  approval 
both  of  the  regular  congregation  and  of  casual  visitors. 
Including  a  twenty  minutes'  sermon  and  the  usual 
hymns,  it  lasts  almost  exactly  an  hour  ;  the  little 
booklet  in  which  it  is  printed,  including  fifty  selected 
Psalm.s,  but  not,  of  course,  the  special  prayers,  costs 
twopence  a  copy  to  produce — were  a  large  number 
printed  the  price  would  probably  be  not  more  than  a 
penny. 

Is  it  too  much  to  expect  that  were  a  service  on 
these  lines  generally  adopted  it  would  go  far  to 
restore  reality,  to  make  men  and  women  of  all 
classes  feel  that  prayer  and  churchgoing  had  an 
intimate  relation  with  their  daily  hves,  and  to  create 
in  them  the  beginnings  at  least  of  the  instinct  of 
worship  ?  The  service  to  which  we  have  referred  is 
for  evening  use,  but  the  morning  service  might  well 
be  treated  in  the  same  way. 

It  is  with  a  good  deal  more  diffidence  that  we 
approach  the  subject  of  the  Holy  Communion,  for  to 
our  shame  this  service  has  been  a  battle-ground  for 
generations,  and  with  however  honest  a  desire  to  be 
uncontroversial  we  discuss  it,  it  is  almost  impossible 
to  avoid  giving  offence  in  one  direction  or  another. 


232      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE     viii 

All  I  can  do  is  to  assure  my  readers  that  I  am 
genuinely  anxious  to  avoid  partisanship,  and  to 
implore  them  to  consider  the  whole  question  on  its 
merits  and,  so  far  as  is  possible,  without  prepossessions. 
It  has  been  said  that  the  general  aim  is  to  provide  a 
graded  series  of  services  appropriate  to  the  needs 
and  spiritual  attainments  of  broad  classes  of  church- 
goers, and  I  have  attempted  to  sketch  what  may  be 
called  an  elementary  service  suitable  for  beginners  in 
the  art  of  worship.  This  will  be  in  the  main  subjective, 
that  is  to  say  the  chief  emphasis  will  be  laid  upon  our 
human  needs,  temporal  and  spiritual,  expressed  in 
simple  and  intelhgible  prayers,  together  with  psalms 
and  hymns  and  readings  from  God's  Word,  the  primary 
object  of  which  will  be  to  stimulate  higher  instincts 
and  to  inspire  to  nobler  ideals.  The  next  stage, 
according  to  our  programme,  will  still  lay  stress  upon  the 
subjective  side,  but  it  will  bring  the  worshipper  into 
closer  touch  with  the  divine  by  introducing  more  of 
the  mystical,  unworldly  element,  and  it  will  seek  to 
accustom  him  to  a  more  objective  type  of  worship. 
It  will  supply  his  developing  spiritual  needs  at  the 
same  time  that  it  teaches  the  reality  of  the  Divine 
Presence.  The  final  stage  will  be  purely  objective,  con- 
sisting of  unmixed  praise  and  adoration.  The  first 
stage  is  met  by  a  revised  and  simplified  Morning  and 
Evening  Prayer,  the  second  by  the  Holy  Communion 
in  its  simplest  form,  the  third  by  the  Eucharist  Avith 
such  varying  elaborations  as  may  suit  the  varying 
needs  of  different  congregations. 

Is  it  too  bold  to  suggest  that  the  time  has  come  for  a 
recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  Sacrament  of  the  Body 


VIII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  233 

and  Blood  of  Christ  contains  within  it  what  are  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  two  separate  services  ?  It  is  the 
highest  means  of  grace  and  at  the  same  time  the 
highest  act  of  worship.  My  belief  is  that  the  gain 
would  be  enormous  if  these  diverse  elements  in  the 
service  were  to  be  frankly  recognised  and,  broadly 
speaking,  kept  apart.  Might  we  not  at  one  celebration 
lay  all  the  emphasis  upon  the  humble  receiving  of  the 
sacred  Food,  at  another  concentrate  upon  the  joyful 
and  triumphant  worship  of  the  Crucified  and  Risen 
Lord? 

The  former  would,  of  course,  take  place  early  on 
every  Sunday  morning,  sometimes  at  midday,  and — 
dare  I  venture  to  suggest  it  ? — sometimes  also  in  the 
evening  for  those  in  town  and  country  for  whom  a 
morning  service  is  almost  an  impossibility.  It  would 
attempt  to  recover  something  of  the  simplicity  of  the 
Communion  of  the  early  Christians  ;  the  service  would 
be  shortened  so  that  on  normal  Sundays  it  should  be 
over  in  half  an  hour  ;  the  suggestion  that  it  should 
commence  at  the  Invitation,  "  Ye  that  do  truly  and 
earnestlj^  repent,"  is  worthy  of  consideration.  Where 
it  is  at  all  practicable  the  church  might  be  so  arranged 
that  the  Elements  could  be  carried  by  the  priest  to 
the  people  instead  of  their  coming  to  the  altar  rail 
to  receive  them,  a  perfectly  possible  plan  in  any  church 
where  chairs  are  provided  in  place  of  pews.  On  high 
festivals  an  introit  hymn  might  be  sung,  but  otherwise 
there  should  be  no  music,  and  the  whole  service  said 
in  the  natural  voice.  In  country  parishes  the  celebra- 
tion might  sometimes  on  summer  days  be  held  in 
the  open  air,  just  as  in  fine  weather  we  are  accustomed 


234      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      viii 

to  take  our  meals  out  of  doors.  Utter  simplicity  with 
a  minimum  of  ritual  should  be  the  dominant  note 
throughout.  Those  who  have  had  the  joy  and  privilege 
of  celebrating  for  our  men  at  the  Front  will  know  how 
enormously  these  simple  points  add  to  the  inspiration 
of  the  service.  We  have  had  our  Communions  in  the 
orchards  of  little  French  villages,  where  we  placed  a 
borrowed  table  under  the  shadow  of  the  fruit  trees, 
while  the  men  knelt  here  and  there  on  the  bare  grass 
around,  and  the  peaceful  cows  gazed  wonderingly  at 
the  sight.  We  have  celebrated  behind  our  lines  with 
an  ammunition  box  for  altar  and  a  shell-hole  for  the 
Sanctuary,  amidst  the  thunder  of  guns  which  ever  and 
again  drowned  the  familiar  words,  and  when  the  time 
for  Communion  came  we  passed  with  the  Bread  of  Life 
from  man  to  man  as  they  knelt  in  disorder  where  they 
could  find  kneeling  space  on  the  shell-torn  ground. 
And  whether  in  the  peaceful  orchard  or  on  the  field  of 
battle  we  all  felt  a  reahty  in  the  service,  a  nearness 
to  God,  a  true  feeding  upon  Christ,  an  actual  sharing 
of  the  one  Bread  which  we  have  seldom  experienced  in 
the  more  formal  celebrations  of  our  churches  at  home. 
Partly,  no  doubt,  it  was  the  effect  of  the  peculiar 
surroundings  of  the  moment  ;  even  more,  I  believe, 
the  sense  of  reality  was  due  to  the  absolute  simplicity 
of  it  all  ;  all  accretions  and  externals  were  stripped 
away,  we  were  just  a  band  of  brothers  breaking  bread 
together  with  gladness  and  singleness  of  heart. 

Finally  we  come  to  the  Eucharist  as  the  culminating 
point  in  our  series  of  services,  the  Church's  supreme 
act  of  worship.  Franldy  we  feel  that  it  is  doubtful 
whether  this  use  of  the  Sacrament  is  logically  defensible  ; 


VIII  WORSHIP   AND   SERVICES  235 

it  seems  clear  that  the  service  was  instituted  and 
made  use  of  by  the  early  Church  as  a  means  of  grace 
and  not  as  an  act  of  worship.  But  the  develop- 
ment may  be  regarded  as  a  legitimate  one  which 
has  been  inspired  and  guided  by  the  Holy  Spirit. 
There  are,  of  course,  very  many  loyal  Churchmen  who 
still  shrink  from  the  idea  of  a  celebration  which  is  not 
primarily  a  Communion,  and  they  are  perfectly  entitled 
to  their  view  ;  but  the  Eucharistic  element  is  so  strong 
in  our  Office,  and  it  seems  so  desirable  to  distinguish 
between  the  twofold  object  which  the  service  contains, 
that  we  do  not  hesitate  to  advocate  the  use  of, the 
service  as  a  great  act  of  praise.  I  do  not  propose  to 
dwell  at  length  upon  the  Holy  Communion  viewed  in 
this  light  :  any  revisions  that  may  seem  desirable 
should  be  dealt  with  by  experts,  for  the  issues  at  stake 
are  too  serious  for  incompetent  treatment.  My  only 
plea  is  that  we  should  not  attempt  to  establish  a 
universal  standard  in  the  accessories  of  the  service. 
Merbecke's  setting  sung  heartily  by  the  whole  congre- 
gation may  be  as  genuine  an  act  of  adoration  as  the 
most  faultless  rendering  of  far  more  elaborate  music. 
The  great  point  to  be  aimed  at  is  to  emphasise  the  fact 
that  at  this  service  we  have  come  to  worship  God  ;  at 
other  times  we  come  to  church  to  make  petition  for  our 
needs,  or  to  feed  together  upon  the  Bread  of  Life  as  our 
first  object  ;  now  we  are  here  to  forget  ourselves,  our 
needs,  our  difficulties,  to  lose  ourselves  in  the  praise  of  the 
Eternal.  The  ritual  may  be  elaborate  or  compara- 
tively simple,  the  music  may  be  as  nearly  perfect  as 
man  can  achieve,  or  it  may  be  almost  commonplace  ; 
the  thing  that  matters  is  the  intention  in  the  hearts 


236      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      viii 

of  the  worshippers.  If  they  have  first  learned  by 
experience  that  God  is  a  Father  Who  answers  beheving 
prayer,  if  they  have  gone  on  to  find  that  He  supplies 
their  souls  with  Bread  from  heaven,  they  will  have 
little  difficulty,  be  the  service  simple  or  ornate,  in  lifting 
up  their  hearts  and  giving  thanks  to  Him  in  the  Church's 
Eucharist. 

I  have  tried  to  put  into  words  ideas  which  are 
present  to  many  minds,  and  will  only  say  in  conclusion 
that,  though  I  have  not  actually  quoted  what  men  have 
said  upon  this  subject,  very  much  of  what  I  have 
written  arises  directly  from  experience  gained  in  the 
war  and  from  conversations  with  soldiers  at  the  Front 
and  elsewhere. 


IX 
INSTRUCTION    IN    PRAYER 

By  the  Rev.  MARCELL  W.T.  CONRAN,  M.C,  S.SJ.E. 

[Late  Chaplain  to  the  Forces,  Infantry  Brigade,  etc.) 

Author  of  "'  A  Chaplet  of  Prayer,"  "  The  National  Mission  :  How  it  may 
be  conducted  on  a  Basis  of^  Calling  upon  the  Name  of  the  Lord.''  " 


IX 
INSTRUCTION    IN    PRAYER 

We  are  nearly  all  agreed  that  the  great  need  of  the 
Church  of  England  to-day,  especially  in  view  of  our 
armies  returning  after  the  war,  is  reconstruction. 
The  time  demands  that  we  should  not  criticise 
those  who  are  venturing  on  new  methods  and  try- 
ing experiments,  but  that  each  of  us  should  do  his 
or  her  part  in  building  up  our  people  in  the  faith 
and  practice  of  the  Catholic  Church.  We  have  num- 
bers of  priests  ready  for  self-sacrifice — and  they  may 
be  counted  on  for  that — they  are  wilhng  to  go 
forward  if  they  can  see  their  way.  So  too  we  have 
numbers  among  the  laity  who  look  to  us  to  lead 
them.  In  the  Navy  and  Army  75  per  cent,  have 
entered  their  names  as  Church  of  England  men. 
They  have  been,  as  a  rule,  baptized  by  the  Church, 
many  of  them  confirmed,  have  made  at  least  one  Com- 
munion, and  look  to  be  laid  in  the  grave  with  the 
service  of  the  Church  read  over  them.  If  these  are  to 
find  religion,  it  is  in  the  Church  they  expect  to  find  it  ; 
we  have  on  the  whole  the  good  will  of  the  nation. 

Foundations  have  been  laid  and  settled.     There  is 


240      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        ix 

to  be  no  tampering  with  the  Creeds  or  the  Sacraments  ; 
we  are  sure  as  to  our  Orders  and  are  determined  to 
hand  them  on  to  those  who  shall  come  after,  as  our 
forefathers  in  the  Faith  handed  them  down  to  us. 

Thus,  as  the  Church  instructed  us,  so  we  in  turn 
have  taught  the  childi'en  in  our  day  and  Sunday 
schools,  in  prej)aring  them  for  Confirmation,  and  in 
sermons  innumerable.  Yet  since  the  war  broke  out 
we  have  discovered  that  most  of  this  teaching  was 
learnt  by  the  scholars  only  as  an  accomplishment  that 
would  tell  in  passing  the  diocesan  inspectors,  but  was 
to  have  no  more  moral  and  spiritual  effect  in  their 
lives  than  their  drill  in  reading,  writing,  and  arith- 
metic. Leaving  school,  they  dropped  churchgoing 
and  prayer,  just  as  they  dropped  the  recitation  of  the 
multiplication  table.  For  our  Church  services  have 
not  been  led  up  to  by  our  teaching,  and  were  never 
properly  comprehended  by  the  greater  number  of 
those  whom  we  taught.  In  almost  every  part  of  the 
services  in  church  there  are  words  and  phrases  which 
have  no  meaning  for  the  ordinary  man  ;  if  he  is  a 
churchgoer,  he  accepts  the  service  as  it  stands,  without 
taking  any  intelligent  part  in  it  ;  it  has  become  to  him 
merely  a  form.  Even  the  Lord's  Prayer  is  too  often 
repeated  mechanically  by  him,  without  attaching  any 
particular  meaning  to  the  words. 

It  is  hardly  better  with  the  books  of  devotion  given 
to  our  Confirmation  candidates.  These  books  are 
founded  on  the  Prayer-book,  and  wi'itten  in  the  same 
language ;  they  are,  as  a  rule,  beyond  both  the  intel- 
lectual and  spiritual  level  of  their  recipients.  For  a 
time  they  may  have  tried  to  use  them,  but  finding  no 


IX  INSTRUCTION   IN   PRAYER  241 

help  therein,  they  gave  them  up  and  put  them  on  the 
shelf  or  in  the  box,  only  to  be  brought  out  and  shown 
to  a  visitor  as  interesting  memorials  of  the  occasion 
when  they  were  given. 

When  these  children  whom  we  have  taught  to  pray 
do  pray — it  is  rarely  enough  that  they  do — they  either 
merely  repeat  the  Lord's  Prayer  and  perhaps  some  form 
used  by  them  in  childhood  and  still  remembered,  or 
else  they  simply  ask  what  they  want  from  God,  much 
as  Jews  or  Mohammedans  might  do,  without  any 
reference  to  our  Lord  as  the  One  Mediator  between 
God  and  man  ;  for  the  accustomed  closing  words 
"  through  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord  "  are  generally  no 
more  than  a  meaningless  formula  to  them.  The  rector 
of  a  large  church  in  which  I  had  been  giving  a  lecture 
on  prayer  told  me  afterwards  that  a  Church  school- 
master had  said  to  him  that  he  personally  did  not 
believe  in  pleading  with  our  Lord,  that  he  instructed 
the  children  when  they  prayed  to  go  to  God  as  they 
would  to  their  parents,  and  that  was  enough. 

Here  surely  is  the  clue  to  the  situation  of  which  we 
complain.  We  can  hardly  wonder  that  people  tell  us 
they  find  no  help  in  prayer  and  therefore  have  given  it 
up,  since  our  Lord  Himself  has  said  "  I  am  the  Way, 
the  Truth,  and  the  Life  :  no  man  cometh  unto  the 
Father  but  by  Me."  If  those  who  pray  neglect  this 
One  Way  to  the  Father,  how  can  they  expect  the 
blessing  ? 

A  wounded  officer  with  whom  I  was  travelling  by 
train  is  a  case  in  point.  He  told  me  that  before  the 
war  he  had  been  preparing  for  Holy  Orders,  but  that 
he  had  given  up  the  idea,  since  at  the  Front  he  had 

B 


242      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE    FURNACE         ix 

found  that  his  prayers  did  not  help  him,  though  he 
continued  to  say  them  from  a  sense  of  duty.  At 
home,  he  said,  he  had  prayed  as  a  matter  of  course, 
though  without  much  thought  as  to  what  he  expected 
from  his  prayers,  but  out  at  the  Front  it  was  different ; 
there  he  was  forced  to  ask  himself  how  much  help 
were  such  prayers  to  him,  and  he  was  bound  to  answer 
that  they  were  none.  He  added  that  other  officers 
in  his  regiment  said  the  same  thing  and  had  given  them 
up.  The  same  story  was  told  me  by  a  mother  who 
wrote  to  me,  much  distressed  because  when  she  had 
asked  her  boy  just  going  out  to  France  to  continue  his 
prayers  he  had  answered  that  he  had  left  them  off 
because  they  did  not  help  him.  Yet  many  men  want 
to  pray.  A  soldier  said  to  me  that  he  had  not  known 
how  much  religion  there  was  in  his  platoon  until  just 
before  an  attack,  when  first  one  and  then  another 
knelt  down,  until  nearly  all  were  upon  their  knees. 
Another  officer  told  me  that  before  making  a  charge 
near  Ypres  he  had  wanted  to  say  a  prayer,  but  that 
every  one  he  had  ever  learnt  went  out  of  his  mind, 
and  he  went  over  the  parapet  saying  nothing  at  all 
to  God. 

And  having  given  up  prayer,  they  have  forgotten 
the  main  facts  of  the  Christian  religion.  I  know  how 
largely  this  is  true  from  my  own  experience  in  preparing 
men  for  Confirmation.  On  one  occasion  I  became 
rather  impatient  with  a  man  whom  I  had  instructed 
two  or  three  times,  but  who  seemed  to  have  learnt 
nothing  at  all.  His  answer  was  that  it  was  a  long  time 
since  he  had  thought  about  such  things,  and  that  it 
was  difficult  to  begin  all  over  again.     A  friend  of  mine, 


I 


IX  INSTRUCTION  IN  PRAYER  243 

the  vicar  of  his  parish,  doubted  what  ahiiost  all  of  the 
chaplains  say  about  the  ignorance  of  the  men,  and 
told  me  he  could  vouch  for  every  one  of  his  lads  who 
had  gone  out  that  they  knew  the  facts  of  the  Creed. 
I  wished  that  I  could  have  heard  him  catechise  them, 
I  think  his  eyes  would  have  been  opened.  The  fact 
is  that  we  of  the  clergy  have  taken  too  much  for 
granted.  A  short  time  ago,  a  middle-aged  educated 
man,  on  my  saying  that  the  Nonconformists  made 
their  people  believe  in  grace,  asked  me  what  grace  was. 
Yet  he  is  a  communicant  and  goes  regularly  to  church 
every  Sunday.  The  result  of  all  this  is,  that  God  has 
become  to  our  people  an  abstract  idea,  or  a  mere 
Fate.  I  was  one  day  walking  round  the  trenches  when 
some  men  called  me  back  to  ask  me  if  I  thought  it 
mattered  if  they  put  their  heads  over  the  parapet  or 
not,  since,  they  said,  "  When  you  have  to  die,  then  die 
you  will,  and  not  before."  The  idea  of  a  Personal  God, 
a  loving  Father,  Who  ever  watches  over  us  for  good, 
and  with  Whom  we  have  to  co-operate,  seemed  never 
to  have  entered  into  their  minds  and  hearts.  It 
appears  to  be  necessary  to  say  this  again  and  again, 
since  there  are  both  clergym.en  and  laymen  who  believe 
all  is  well,  that  all  we  have  to  do  is  to  continue  on  the 
accustomed  lines,  only  perhaps  giving  more  intellectual 
sermons  on  Bible  difficulties,  important,  no  doubt, 
for  some,  but  altogether  failing  to  supply  the  need  of 
thousands  who  know  nothing  about  the  Incarnation, 
the  Atonement,  and  the  Risen  Life  given  to  us  in 
Jesus  Christ.  What  then  are  we  to  do  ?  Surely 
the  answer  is  plain.  Let  us  go  back  to  the  Bible, 
and  there  see  how  St.  Paul  took  pains  and  laboured 

R  2 


244      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        ix 

to  vitalise  Gospel  truth  by  his  teaching,  so  that  it 
became  a  living  power  in  the  lives  of  the  men  and 
women  who  learned  it,  not  a  mere  intellectual  formula 
to  be  put  to  no  use  and  soon  forgotten,  as  it  is  by  the 
greater  number  of  those  whom  we  teach  to-day. 

We  read  in  1  Cor.  i.  2,  that  the  Apostle  is  writing  to 
those  "  who  in  every  place  call  upon  the  Name  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ."  And  in  Acts  ii.  21,  we  read 
"  whosoever  shall  call  on  the  Name  of  the  Lord  shall 
be  saved."  These  and  other  texts  seem  to  show  that 
it  was  the  constant  practice  of  the  Christians  in  those 
times,  wherever  they  were  and  whatever  they  were 
doing,  to  remember  the  Presence  of  Christ,  who  He  is, 
what  He  has  done,  and  is  still  doing  for  us  now  in 
Heaven,  and  to  call  upon  Him  by  each  event  of  His 
Sacred  Life  to  save  them  and  help  them  in  every  danger, 
trial,  and  perplexity.  In  this  way  they  constantly 
called  to  mind  not  only  that  He  had  died  for  them  and 
for  them  had  risen  from  the  dead,  but  that  for  them 
He  was  alive  for  ever,  and  that  they  had  constant 
fellowship  with  Him  in  His  ascended  Life.  It  was  a 
victorious  prayer,  ever  claiming  His  victory  as  theirs, 
for  as  they  pleaded  with  Him  by  each  event  of  His 
Life,  they  liberated  for  their  immediate  help  and 
comfort  every  power  He  had  won  for  them  by  His 
holy  Nativity,  His  precious  Death,  Resurrection,  and 
Ascension,  And  we  know  that  the  result  was  that 
these  poor  ignorant  Christians,  mostly  of  the  slave 
class,  with  but  few  of  the  rich  or  educated  among 
them,  were  so  strengthened  that  they  were  able  to 
brave  all  the  cruelties  that  their  enemies  could  inflict 
upon  them,  until  their  constancy  conquered  even  their 


IX  INSTRUCTION   IN   PRAYER  245 

foes,  and  at  last  the  world  of  that  day  was  converted 
from  within  and  Rome  became  Christian.  Besides 
receiving  this  wonderful  power  to  endure,  the  Christians 
drew  the  Holy  Heart  of  Jesus  towards  them,  as  a  child 
might  draw  the  heart  of  his  father  by  running  to  him 
as  he  comes  from  work  and  throwing  his  arms  round 
him,  saying  "  Oh  Father,  you  have  done  so  much  for 
me  and  I  love  you  so  much,  do  give  me  what  I  want  !  " 
The  father  delights  to  see  the  love  of  his  child  expressed 
in  such  ways,  and  to  know  that  his  own  love  is  in  some 
measure  understood  and  requited.  When  he  is  so 
approached,  he  feels  much  more  ready  to  do  what  he 
is  asked  than  if  the  request  were  made  in  some  in- 
different and  ordinary  way.  So  did  the  early  Christians 
call  upon  the  Name  of  the  Lord,  and  draw  all  Christ's 
love  towards  them,  showing  their  own  love  and  re- 
ceiving from  Him  in  return  such  comfort  and  uplifting 
that  He  became  to  them  more  and  more  "  the  chief  est 
among  ten  thousand — and  altogether  lovely."  We 
seem  to-day  especially  to  need  such  prayer  in  our 
Church  in  order  to  lead  our  people  to  realise  Christ's 
love,  and  to  draw  His  love  towards  them,  and  with  it 
all  the  power  which  He  has  won  for  our  use  and  help 
in  the  trials  and  temptations  of  life  ;  and  also  to  go  in 
the  only  true  way  to  God,  the  Way  which  our  Lord 
Himself  is. 

At  the  Reformation  all  the  popular  devotions  of  the 
people  were  swept  away,  and  the  public  offices  of 
Matins  and  Evensong  of  our  Church,  which  before 
were  for  the  most  part  said  by  the  priests  and  religious 
alone,  were  substituted  for  the  use  of  the  faithful  in 
general.     But  these  have  proved  to  be  by  themselves 


246      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         ix 

too  advanced  for  the  common  use  of  simple  people, 
and  we  are  discovering  that  what  we  need  now  is  a 
devotion  that  shall  be  shorter  and  simpler,  that  all 
can  say  anywhere  and  at  any  time,  and  that  will  lead 
us  on  to  realise  that  personal  experience  of  our  Lord 
more  and  more  as  our  Friend  and  Brother,  our  Lord 
and  our  God.  Such  a  devotion  as  this  will  also  prepare 
our  mind  for  the  public  offices  of  the  Church.  There 
is  an  ancient  and  popular  method  of  prayer  long  for- 
gotten among  us  which  seems  just  what  we  want 
to-day  ;  by  it  each  great  event  in  our  Lord's  life  is 
taken  separately  and  in  order,  and  pleaded  before  Him. 
Thus  : 

By  Thy  Holy  Nativity  in  Bethlehem,  save  us  and  help  us,  O 
Lord! 

By  Thy  precious  Death  and  Burial,  save  us  and  help  us,  O  Lord  ! 

By  Thy  glorious   Resurrection,  save  us  and  help  us,  O  Lord  ! 

By  Thine  all-prevailing  Intercession  in  Heaven,  save  us  and  help 
us,  O  Lord  ! 

And  so  on. 

Certain  of  these  events  are  commemorated  in  the 
first  part  of  each  group  of  the  petitions,  in  order  that 
by  calling  them  to  mind  we  may  approach  Jesus  Christ 
with  greater  confidence,  and  also  that  we  may  remind 
Him  of  them  and  thus  move  His  Heart  to  grant 
that  which  we  ask  in  His  Name.  Some  of  them — 
such  as  His  Death  and  Resurrection — are  the  direct 
causes  of  our  salvation,  others  are  only  remotely  con- 
nected with  it,  but  in  either  case  all  are  mentioned  in 
the  popular  method  of  prayer  I  am  referring  to,  for 
the  same  purpose.  In  this  way  people  were  given  a 
simple  devotion  which  all  could  remember,  since  it 
embodies  the  chief  events  of  the  Life  of  our  Lord, 


IX  INSTRUCTION   IN   PRAYER  247 

taken  in  order.  It  is  founded  on  the  facts  of  the  Creed, 
which  being  thus  pondered  over  come  to  life  in  the 
hearts  and  minds  of  those  who  use  it.  It  can  be  used 
anywhere  and  at  any  time  :  men  to-day  have  told  me 
that  they  have  used  it  even  in  a  charge. 

The  devotion  awakens  new  interest  in  religion.  A 
chaplain  one  day  asked  me  to  come  and  see  a  patient 
in  hospital  whom  he  had  found  using  this  devotion 
and  who  explained  to  him  how  he  used  it.  What 
struck  the  chaplain  was  the  interest  which  the  man 
took  in  his  prayers.  He  was  full  of  it,  and  it  had 
made  him  wish  to  be  confirmed  and  become  a  com- 
municant ;  in  fact  it  had  changed  his  whole  religious 
outlook,  which,  before  he  had  used  the  Chaplet,  had 
been  purely  formal. 

It  leads  men  to  the  Father  by  the  one  and  only 
true  way  of  approach.  As  Christ  said,  "  I  am  the 
Way,  the  Truth,  and  the  Life  :  no  man  cometh  unto 
the  Father  but  by  Me." 

It  supplies  us  with  a  method  of  prayer  which  all  can 
use  and  enter  into  and  understand,  yet  which  none  can 
outgrow,  for  the  greatest  saint  can  never  get  beyond 
meditating  on  the  Life  of  our  Lord  and  pleading  it 
with  God  according  to  his  needs. 

It  creates  an  atmosphere  of  religion  vigorous  enough 
to  withstand  the  spiritually  depressing  atmosphere  of 
the  world  ;  and  when  the  lads  go  out  into  the  world 
in  their  several  occupations,  it  prevents  them  from 
forgetting  the  religious  instruction  they  received  in 
day  and  Sunday  schools,  since  it  is  to  them  a  constant 
reminder  of  the  Incarnation,  the  Atonement,  and  the 
Risen  Life  of  our  Lord. 


248      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        ix 

But  if  we  are  to  succeed  in  persuading  men  to  pray 
in  this  or  in  any  other  way,  we  must  continually  remind 
them  in  our  instructions  and  sermons  of  the  following 
considerations  : — 

1.  That  God  wants  our  prayer.  That  it  is  our  means 
of  becoming  fellow-workers  with  God.  A  wise  father 
will  not  give  all  he  wants  to  his  child  without  the  child 
taking  trouble  on  his  part,  for  the  father  knows  that 
if  he  does  his  gifts  will  not  be  appreciated.  A  well- 
to-do  Lincolnshire  farmer  of  the  old  school  once  told 
his  son  he  might  have  as  good  a  horse  as  he  liked,  but 
that  he  must  feed  and  groom  it  himself.  That  farmer 
was  a  wise  man ;  he  intended  that  his  son  should  appre- 
ciate his  gift,  and  should  get  to  know  and  be  fond  of 
his  horse,  by  taking  trouble  about  it.  So  it  is  with 
God.  He  is  willing  and  ready  to  give  us  all  that  we 
need,  but  He  waits  till  we  are  willing  to  take  the 
trouble  to  ask  Him  for  it,  for  He  knows  that  He  does 
so  for  our  good.  It  is  as  if  I  were  to  go  to  a  relation 
and  complain  that  he  had  given  what  I  specially 
wanted  to  someone  else,  and  he  were  to  answer  that, 
since  I  had  never  troubled  to  ask  him  for  what  I 
wanted,  I  could  not  wonder  that  I  did  not  get  it. 

2.  Ood  wants  us  to  persevere  in  prayer.  Christ,  Who 
alone  could  say  "  I  know  the  Father,"  has  taught  us 
that  the  way  to  get  our  petitions  answered  is  not 
merely  to  ask  once  for  what  we  want  and  then  to  leave 
it,  but  to  "  cry  day  and  night  unto  Him,  though  He 
bear  long  with  us  "  (St.  Luke  xviii.  7),  and  that  we 
must  be  importunate  with  God.  The  man  who  at 
midnight  sought  to  borrow  three  loaves  of  his  neigh- 
bour for  the  entertainment  of  an  unexpected  guest 


IX  INSTRUCTION   IN   PRAYER  249 

got  what  he  wanted  by  being  importunate  in  asking. 
"  Ask  and  it  shall  be  given  you  ;  seek  and  ye  shall 
find  ;  knock  and  it  shall  be  opened  unto  you.  For 
everyone  that  asketh  receiveth  "  (St.  Luke  xi.  9,  10). 
We  know  that  Christ  Himself  repeated  His  prayer 
three  times  in  Gethsemane,  saying  the  same  words. 
We  may  therefore  in  the  same  way  repeat  our  petitions 
that  we  may  learn  to  pray  more  earnestly.  And  as 
we  do  so,  we  find  that  they  are  not  vain  repetitions, 
which  they  necessarily  would  be  if  we  were  to  take  no 
trouble  in  trying  to  think  what  we  were  saying,  but 
that,  on  the  contrary,  each  repetition,  made  with 
attention  and  increasing  earnestness,  adds  intensity 
to  the  meaning  of  the  words  and  to  the  heart's  desire, 
as  in  the  case  of  our  Lord's  thrice  repeated  prayer 
in  the  Garden.  Unless  we  use  the  help  of  repetition 
in  our  prayer,  many  of  us  find  great  difficulty  in  con- 
centrating our  attention  on  what  we  wish  to  say. 
The  brief  petitions  may  easily  succeed  one  another  so 
quickly  that  we  m^ay  not  have  time  to  take  in  their 
deep  significance,  and  so  they  may  pass  without  our 
having  prayed  any  one  of  them  with  the  meaning  and 
earnestness  which  we  desire  to  put  into  them.  Besides, 
it  is  natural  for  us  to  repeat.  We  all  know  how  a 
child,  if  he  wants  anything  very  much,  will  run  to  his 
parent  and  say  "  Do,  do,  do  give  me  this  !  "  It  is  the 
same  if  we  want  anything  very  much  from  God.  We 
have,  I  suppose,  at  times  all  of  us  prayed  thus,  and 
perhaps  in  a  bitterness  of  spirit  pleaded  with  Him  for 
help  and  comfort,  and  how  many  know  that  it  has  not 
been  in  vain  ! 

When  we  most  want  to  pray,  it  is  often  when  we 


250  THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  FURNACE    ix 

do  not  wish  to  ask  many  things,  but  rather  to  keep  to 
the  one  which  is  the  whole  object  of  our  desire  at  the 
time — such  as  safety  for  some  loved  one  in  the  war, 
or  victory  for  our  forces,  or  conversion  for  one  gone 
astray  ;  and  we  need  a  method  which  will  enable  us  to 
concentrate  upon  this  for  some  considerable  time  or  as 
long  as  we  are  able  to  give  to  our  devotions.  Even 
when  we  say  the  Lord's  Prayer,  how  many  of  us  find 
that  the  petitions  follow  each  other  so  fast  that  we  have 
sometimes  come  to  the  middle  of  it  without  having 
really  prayed  at  all,  and  thus  all  the  first  and  perhaps 
the  most  important  part  of  the  prayer  has  been  lost. 
But  as  we  repeat  our  petitions,  we  learn  to  be  impor- 
tunate in  our  prayer  and  to  "  cry  day  and  night  " 
unto  God  to  save  us  and  help  us.  He  knows  our 
necessities  before  we  ask  and  our  ignorance  in  asking  ; 
and  therefore  we  need  not  spend  time  in  elaborating 
them  in  detail.  It  is  the  soul's  personal  approach  to 
God  that  needs  to  be  realised  more  and  more  deeply 
by  reiteration,  and  the  Merits  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
through  Whom  we  plead  for  help  as  the  needs  of  each 
day  press  upon  us.  We  know  perhaps  how  wearisome 
it  is  to  go  through  long  lists  of  intercessions,  as  we  have 
lately  tried  to  do,  and  how  the  result  of  the  Intercession 
services  sometimes  has  been  only  to  discourage  people 
and  make  them  drop  away  after  the  first  few  months 
of  the  war. 

3.  We  must  remember  our  'position  as  sinners  before 
God.  This  we  may  learn  from  the  parable  of  the 
Unmerciful  Servant  (St.  Matt,  xviii.  24),  although  its 
primary  intention  was  to  teach  the  duty  of  forgiveness. 
A  servant  is  brought  before  his    king  and  accused  of 


IX  INSTRUCTION   IN   PRAYER  251 

owing  him  ten  thousand  talents — that  is,  at  least,  two 
million  five  hundred  thousand  pounds.  As  he  has 
nothing  to  pay,  he  is  in  a  hopeless  position  and  is  con- 
demned to  slavery  together  with  his  wife  and  childi'en. 
And  we  are  in  a  like  hopeless  position  in  regard  to  God 
as  long  as  we  stand  upon  our  own  merits.  It  is  useless 
to  say  that  we  have  done  no  harm  to  anyone,  or  that 
we  are  as  good  as  others,  or  that  we  have  worked  hard 
and  been  upright  and  honest  all  our  days.  Such 
claims  are  irrelevant  ;  the  whole  life  of  redeemed  man 
is  his  debt  to  God,  and  the  failure  of  each  of  us  is  beyond 
calculation  ;  in  face  of  our  infinite  indebtedness,  any 
particular  merits  we  may  claim  count  for  nothing. 
Our  only  true  attitude  before  God  is  to  humble  our- 
selves as  did  the  servant  in  the  parable,  and  plead  for 
mercy.  We  can  ask  ourselves  have  we  ever  done  so  ? 
Have  we  ever  felt  ourselves  under  condemnation  ? 
It  is  true  we  are  unable  always  to  reach  very  deep 
feelings  of  contrition,  but  we  can  acknowledge  we 
have  no  righteousness  of  our  own,  and  believe  this  in 
our  hearts  to  be  true.  Then,  and  then  only,  we  can 
plead  the  one  perfect  Offering  for  Sin,  which  has  been 
made  on  our  behalf,  and  which  is  continually  being 
pleaded  by  our  Great  High  Priest  in  Heaven,  Who 
allows  us  to  unite  our  petitions  with  His  own. 

4.  The  value  of  united  prayer.  Christ  has  said,  "  If 
two  of  you  shall  agree  on  earth  as  touching  anything 
that  they  shall  ask,  it  shall  be  done  for  them  of  My 
Father  Which  is  in  Heaven."  Our  religion  is  social. 
United  to  Christ,  we  are  all  made  members  of  one  body 
in  Him.  Christ  is  the  Vine,  we  are  the  branches, 
living  with  one  and  the  same  heavenly  life  in  Him. 


252      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        ix 

We  are  no  longer  mere  souls  to  be  saved  individually, 
but  are  all  built  up  together  as  living  stones  in  one 
Spiritual  Temple,  Christ's  Body,  the  Church.  This  is 
expressed  in  the  Lord's  Prayer,  which  begins,  not 
"  My  Father,"  but  "Our  Father."  In  this  way  the 
Bible  teaches  us  that  we  are  never  to  regard  ourselves 
as  mere  individuals,  or  to  separate  ourselves  from  our 
brethren  in  religion  as  if  that  were  our  own  private  and 
personal  affair  alone.  We  are  promised  a  special 
blessing  when  we  are  united  together  in  common 
prayer.  Some  years  ago  I  was  on  a  holiday  in  Pisa, 
Going  into  a  church  there  one  evening,  I  found  it  full 
of  women,  evidently  a  women's  guild,  who  were 
saying  their  prayers  aloud,  without  any  priest  to  lead 
their  devotion.  I  felt  that  those  women  might  teach 
us  a  lesson  in  united  prayer ;  they  had  gone  together 
to  a  church  to  pray,  apparently  feehng  that  it  was  a 
spiritual  work  best  done  in  fellowship,  in  which  every- 
one could  help  all  the  rest,  and  in  which  God  was  most 
glorified  when  no  voice  was  wanting  to  the  common 
appeal.  How  many  of  us  in  our  ordinary  congrega- 
tions realise  this  ?  Might  we  not  have  bands  of  people 
who  at  stated  times,  and  with  permission  from  the 
incumbents  of  their  parishes,  would  meet  to  pray  aloud 
and  together  in  church  for  whatever  objects  they 
desired  ?  For  this  it  would  be  necessary  that  they 
should  have  a  recognised  method  of  prayer  which  all 
would  know  and  be  able  to  join  in,  and  I  think  the 
method  which  I  have  described  above  would  prove  to 
supply  what  is  wanted.  One  day  when  I  was  instruct- 
ing a  small  Confirmation  class  outside  a  billet  in 
France,  I  was  joined  by  first  one  and  then  another, 


IX  INSTRUCTION  IN   PRAYER  253 

till  I  had  about  eight  or  ten  men  with  me.  When  I 
asked  them  why  they  came,  since  they  had  all  been 
confirmed,  they  answered  that  they  were  accustomed 
to  say  the  devotion  together,  and  that  as  they  thought 
we  were  saying  it  they  would  like  to  join  in.  These 
too  had  realised  the  help  of  united  prayer,  and  were 
accustomed  to  practise  it  like  the  early  Christians, 
calling  upon  the  Name  of  the  Lord,  in  spite  of  the  dis- 
tractions of  the  ordinary  soldiers'  billet. 

5.  Fellow  citizens  of  the  saints  and  of  the  household  of 
God  (Eph.  ii.  19).  Has  the  article  of  our  Creed,  in 
which  we  say  that  we  "  believe  in  the  communion  of 
saints,"  any  meaning  for  the  majority  of  our  people  ? 
Is  not  Heaven  to  them  an  unknown  and  an  unknowable 
place  far  away,  in  which  God,  Whom  they  know  little 
about,  dwells  alone  ?  They  need  to  be  told  that  they 
are  already  citizens  of  Heaven — fellow  citizens  with 
the  saints  departed,  with  whom  we  are  all  of  one 
household  already  in  the  Catholic  Church.  They  need 
to  learn  that  the  saints  behold  us,  not  with  idle  sym- 
pathy, as  spectators  at  a  football  match,  who  look  on 
but  have  never  played  the  game  themselves,  but  that 
the  martyrs  and  confessors  and  all  the  saints  are  with 
us,  aiding  us  in  our  daily  conflict  as  our  comrades  in 
the  same  cause,  having  themselves  fought  a  good  fight 
and  won  it.  The  Apostle  wrote  to  the  desponding 
Hebrews  who  were  likely  to  go  back  to  Judaism  to 
hearten  them  in  the  struggle.  He  reminded  them  that 
they  were  already  "  come  unto  the  Mount  Sion,  the 
heavenly  Jerusalem,"  and  "  to  the  spirits  of  just  men 
made  perfect  "  (Heb.  xii.  22-3),  Our  people  also  thus 
need  to  be  lifted  up  to  realise  the  heavenly  Jerusalem, 


254      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         ix 

and  to  contemplate  "  Jesus,  the  Author  and  Finisher 
of  our  faith,"  surrounded  by  those  "  spirits  of  just  men 
made  perfect,"  who  have  a  real  part  in  our  prayers 
and  sacraments.  What  a  change  it  would  make  in 
our  worship  if  when  we  came  into  church  we  realised 
that  those  who  through  hundreds  of  years  had  wor- 
shipped there  still  worship  with  us  !  What  a  con- 
gregation we  should  feel  still  surrounds  us  ;  what  a 
body  of  prayer  and  praise  would  go  up  to  God,  from 
both  those  who  are  still  fighting,  still  running  their 
race,  and  those  who  have  won  their  rest  but  who  still 
worship  with  us  !  What  a  support  in  discouragement ; 
what  joy  and  what  wonder  !  All  the  church  would 
be  filled  with  awe  and  mystery,  everything  in  it  would 
have  its  meaning,  and  that  meaning  not  of  this  world, 
but  of  Heaven. 

In  the  growth  of  Spiritualism  among  us,  we  recognise 
the  disastrous  result  of  our  failure  in  teaching  this 
meaning  of  "  the  communion  of  saints."  Men  and 
women  crave  for  some  intercourse  with  their  dead. 
If  they  are  not  taught  the  truth  as  to  how  they  may 
have  it  in  right  ways,  they  will  try  wrong  ones,  and 
seek  what  they  need  through  mediums  and  other 
irreverent  experimentalists  in  the  supernatural  sphere 
— methods  that  have  always  been  condemned  by  the 
discipline  of  the  Catholic  Church.  On  the  other  hand, 
how  greatly  it  uplifts  and  cheers  us  to  know  that  when 
we  worship  we  are  worshipping  with  the  saints,  and 
that  we  have  the  help  of  their  prayers.  I  have  more 
than  once  been  spoken  to,  after  preaching  on  the 
communion  of  saints,  by  people  who  have  thanked 
me  and  said  that  they  are  sure  that  when  they  ask 


IX  INSTRUCTION   IN   PRAYER  255 

for  the  prayers  of  those  saintly  and  beloved  ones 
who  are  with  the  departed  they  are  not  doing  what 
is  wrong. 

6.  And  the  angels.  The  Apostle  says  "  Ye  are 
come  to  an  innumerable  company  of  angels  "  (Heb. 
xii.  22)  ;  and  our  Lord  told  Nathanael  that  hereafter 
he  "  would  see  Heaven  opened  and  the  angels  of  God 
ascending  and  descending  upon  the  Son  of  Man  " — not 
upon  a  visionary  ladder  which  would  vanish  away  on 
his  waking  from  sleep,  but  on  the  Son  of  Man  Himself. 
Wherever  there  is  a  communicant  living  in  grace, 
there  is  set  up  that  ladder  reaching  from  him  to  Heaven, 
and  on  it  are  the  angels  ascending  to  take  up  his  prayers, 
and  descending  to  bring  back  their  answers.  We  must 
learn  to  open  our  eyes  and  see  with  Elisha's  servant  at 
Dothan  the  horses  and  chariots  ready  to  help  and 
defend  us,  wherever  we  are  and  whatever  may  be  our 
danger.  How  many  have  believed  in  this  angelic 
host  surrounding  them  in  the  war,  v/hen  they  have 
heard  the  ping  of  the  bullets  passing  close  to  their 
heads,  or  when  shells  have  burst  only  a  few  yards 
away  and  yet  they  have  not  been  hurt.  Think  of  St. 
Peter's  angel  that  brought  him  out  of  prison,  and  of 
St.  Paul's  testimony  in  the  shipwreck  :  "  There  stood 
by  me  this  night  the  Angel  of  God,  Whose  I  am  and 
Whom  I  serve  "  (Acts  xxvii.  23).  Think  of  little 
children's  angels,  of  whom  Christ  said  that  they  always 
beheld  the  Face  of  His  Father  in  Heaven  ;  think  of  the 
Angel  of  the  Agony,  whose  help  the  Lord  did  not  refuse 
when  He  was  left  alone  by  His  Apostles  in  the  Garden. 
And  when  we  pray  in  church  the  angels  are  there  with 
us,  praying  and  worshipping  in  aweful  adoration  the 


256      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         ix 

God  Whom  they  see  and  Whom  one  day  we  hope  to  see 
with  them. 

7.  That  there  are  meeting -places  here  on  earth  between 
God  and  man.  The  Israehtes  had  the  Tabernacle  in 
the  Wilderness,  and  God  said  :  "  There  will  I  meet 
with  thee  and  I  will  commune  with  thee  from  above 
the  mercy-seat  "  (Ex.  xxv.  22),  and  "  I  will  appear  in 
the  cloud  upon  the  mercy-seat  "  (Lev.  xvi.  2).  So 
afterwards,  when  they  had  come  into  the  Promised 
Land,  although  Solomon  said  "  Behold,  Heaven  and 
the  Heaven  of  Heavens  cannot  contain  Thee,  how  much 
less  this  House  which  I  have  built,"  yet  when  he  had 
made  an  end  of  praying,  "  the  fire  came  down  from 
Heaven  "  and  "  the  priests  could  not  enter  into  the 
House  of  the  Lord  because  the  Glory  of  the  Lord  had 
filled  the  Lord's  House."  Therefore  every  Jew  was 
ordered  to  appear  before  the  Lord  his  God  three  times 
a  year  in  the  place  which  He  should  choose.  It  seems 
that  Christ  regularly  obeyed  the  command.  He  loved 
the  Temple.  He  called  it  "  My  Father's  House  "  and 
"  a  House  of  Prayer."  When  His  Mother  and  St. 
Joseph  had  lost  Him  for  three  days.  He  answered, 
"  How  is  it  that  ye  sought  Me  1  "  They  might  have 
known  that  He  would  have  been  in  His  "  Father's 
House."  And  in  the  last  book  of  the  Old  Testament 
we  read  the  prophecy  "  From  the  rising  of  the  sun 
even  to  the  going  down  of  the  same.  My  Name  shall  be 
great  among  the  Gentiles,  and  in  every  place  incense 
shall  be  offered  unto  My  Name,  and  a  pure  offering  " 
(Mai.  i.  11) — that  is,  the  offering  of  fine  flour.  So  it 
has  come  to  pass.  In  every  place  we  have  our  churches, 
meeting-places  between  God  and  man,  where  the  Holy 


IX  INSTRUCTION   IN   PRAYER  257 

Bread,  the  Eucharist,  is  continually  offered.  As  our 
Lord  promises  a  special  presence  and  a  special  blessing 
where  two  or  three  meet  in  His  Name,  so  is  there  still 
a  special  presence  and  a  special  blessing  promised  when 
we  gather  together  as  His  family  to  meet  Him  in  His 
House.  And  practically  we  find  that  when  people 
neglect  to  go  to  church  their  religion  dies  away  sooner 
or  later.  For  our  religion,  as  I  have  said,  is  social, 
and  if  a  man  wilfully  neglects  corjDorate  prayer  and 
worship  he  will  find  that  the  power  of  his  religion  be- 
comes less  and  less.  A  colonel  of  a  regiment  said  to 
me  one  day  that  it  did  not  do  to  give  up  parade 
services,  for  if  he  did  so,  he  presently  found  a  dif- 
ference in  the  men.  I  believe  that  this  is  true,  the 
recognition  of  God  in  the  parade  service  has  a  hidden 
influence  on  the  men,  though  they  themselves  may  not 
know  it,  and  if  the  sermon  goes  home  to  their  hearts, 
they  remember  it  and  talk  it  over.  Unfortunately 
at  the  Front  we  have  no  chm'ches,  so  have  to  extem- 
porise and  make  whatever  place  is  found  available  to 
look  as  much  like  a  church  as  possible.  The  altar  with 
cross  and  candles  and  the  surplice  of  the  minister 
contribute  to  this. 

At  home  we  have  opened  our  churches,  but  the  result 
has  not  been  encouraging.  People  come  in  quite 
reverently  ;  the  men  take  off  their  hats,  and  walk  round 
and  look  at  the  architecture,  the  monuments,  and  the 
decorations,  and  are  content  to  leave  the  sacred  place, 
without  one  prayer  to  God,  or  as  it  seems  without  even 
a  thought  that  He  is  there  and  in  His  Providence  has 
provided  the  place  and  the  opportunity  that  they  might 
meet  Him  there.     Why  is  it  ?     It  seems  not  to  have 

s 


258      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        ix 

dawned  on  them  that  the  church  is  their  Father's 
House,  and  that  they  are  at  home  there,  as  childi'en  are 
in  their  father's  presence — at  home  with  God  and  very 
near  Heaven.  Would  not  their  Father  hke  them  to 
speak  a  word  of  love  and  reverence  to  Him  ?  What 
would  an  earthly  father  think  of  his  boy  who  came  into 
his  presence,  looked  round,  and  then  went  out  with 
never  a  dutiful  word  or  sign  ?  And  what  must  our 
Heavenly  Father  think  of  His  children  who  never  say 
a  word  to  Him  as  they  come  into  His  House  ?  Have 
we  nothing  to  say  when  we  enter  a  church  ?  We 
teach  our  children  gracious  manners,  we  hear  a  mother 
say  to  her  child  "  You  must  speak  to  your  father 
with  love  and  respect."  So  we  must  teach  our 
people  to  speak  reverently  to  God,  Who  loves  to 
hear  them.  A  man  wrote  to  me  from  the  Front  and 
said  that  he  went  into  the  churches  there  when  he 
could  and  said  his  prayers.  He  had  learned  the  prayer 
I  have  described  above,  and  he  found  that  he  could  use 
it  on  such  occasions  and  was  helped  by  it.  If  we  taught 
our  men  to  pray  such  prayers,  they  would  in  time  get 
accustomed  to  make  happy  and  devout  use  of  the 
churches  at  home,  and  the  demand  for  open  churches 
would  become  so  great  that  few  would  be  found  locked 
up  from  Sunday  to  Sunday  as  so  many  unhappily 
are  now. 

8.  We  must  have  faith  ivhen  we  pray.  Christ  said 
"  AH  things  whatsoever  ye  shall  ask  in  prayer,  believing, 
ye  shall  receive  "  (S.  Matt.xxi.  22)."God  wants  our  faith, 
which  is  our  trust,  as  the  father  wants  the  trust  of  his 
son.  Partners  in  business  must  trust  each  other, 
masters  and  men  must  trust  each  other  or  things  are 


IX  INSTRUCTION   IN   PRAYER  259 

bound  to  go  wrong,  and  we  must  trust  in  God  if  we  are  to 
learn  to  pray.  If  we  wiU  trust  He  will  give  us  all  we  ask  ; 
what  may  seem  impossible  to  us  will  be  done,  and  even 
the  mountains  of  sorrow,  or  temptation,  or  hopelessness 
will  be  cast  into  the  sea.  If  only  we  will  beheve 
and  not  doubt  in  our  hearts  His  power  and  love, 
He  can  and  will  do  it,  and  we  can  have  the  faith  if  we 
wiU  to  have  it.  The  son  can  beheve  in  the  father,  the 
master  can  believe  in  his  men,  and  much  more  we  can 
believe  in  God,  and  those  who  do  so  find  God  is  good, 
and  that  tiieir  faith  which  they  have  won  by  His 
grace  brings  its  reward. 

9.  Prayer  must  be  explained.  People  have  somethnes 
got  accustomed  from  childhood  to  repeat  prayers 
which  they  could  not  understand,  and  go  on  saying 
them  without  attaching  to  them  any  meaning  what- 
ever. They  say  they  are  "  miserable  sinners,"  but 
they  do  not  believe  it  ;  how  often  a  dying  man  who 
has  been  guilty  of  breaking  most  of  the  Ten  Command- 
ments has  told  his  priest  that  he  did  not  think  he  had 
any  sins  on  his  conscience,  since  he  had,  as  he  said, 
"  done  no  harm  "  to  anyone,  and  had  worked  hard  and 
brought  up  his  family  respectably.  "  0  God,  the 
Father  of  Heaven,  have  mercy  on  us  miserable  sinners," 
are  words  that  have  no  reality  or  meaning  for  him. 
We  need  especially  to  explain  the  Lord's  Prayer — 
Hallowed  be  Thy  Name — a  prayer  that  God  may  be 
honoured  by  men  worshipping  Him  together  in  church  : 
Thy  Kingdom  come — God's  Kingdom  of  love  and  peace 
instead  of  all  the  present  hatred,  war  and  misery  : 
Thy  Will  be  done  on  earth  as  it  is  in  Heaven — that  all 
may  be  good  and  happy  as  souls  are  in  Heaven  :   Give 

s  2 


260      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        ix 

us  this  day  our  daily  bread — food  for  our  souls  as  well 
as  food  for  our  bodies,  houses,  clothes,  and  so  on. 
It  is  a  great  help,  after  some  such  short  explanation, 
then  to  say  the  Lord's  Prayer  slowly  all  together, 
thinking  of  the  meaning  and  really  'praying  each 
petition.  So  too,  when  using  the  devotion  sug- 
gested above,  it  is  well  at  times  to  explain  it  :  for 
instance,  when  we  say  the  words  "  By  Thine  all- 
prevailing  Intercession  in  Heaven,  save  us  and  help  us, 
0  Lord  !  "  we  can  recall  to  their  remembrance  our 
Lord  in  Heaven  knowing  and  pleading  for  those  whom 
we  love  at  the  Front.  He  knows  each  one,  and  He 
pleads  for  each  one  in  his  particular  dangers  and  hard- 
ships, when  we  at  home  know  nothing  of  what  they  are 
going  through. 

But  if  our  people  are  to  return  again  to  prayer, 
there  are  yet  two  other  things  which  we  can  do  to 
help  them. 

1.  We  can  make  our  churches  more  homely  and 
devotional.  Let  us  take  the  first — homeliness.  It  is 
possible  for  the  very  structure  and  arrangement  of  the 
church  to  express  God's  Welcome  to  His  children  who 
seek  Him  there,  and  the  grateful  love  and  joy  with 
which  they  come  into  His  Presence.  In  this  sense  the 
consecrated  buildings  of  the  Middle  Ages  possessed 
the  character  of  homeliness.  Then  as  now  the  love  of 
home  and  the  sense  of  beauty  implanted  in  human 
nature  inspired  the  building  of  each  man's  private 
house  to  be  the  nursery  of  all  that  was  dearest  to  him. 
But  when  Christian  men  set  themselves  to  build  the 
House  of  God,  this  instinctive  feeling  sprang  to  a  still 
loftier  aim,  and  blossomed  in  the  more  joyous  beauty 


IX  INSTRUCTION   IN   PRAYER  261 

of  the  shrine  built  for  Almighty  God.  The  art  that 
delighted  to  express  by  beauty  the  happiness  of  home 
in  the  building  of  the  knight's  castle  or  the  yeoman's 
house  among  the  fields,  expressed  the  same  happiness 
Avith  enthusiasm  and  sacrifice  in  the  raising  of  the 
minster  or  the  parish  church.  But  that  tradition 
was  discarded  three  hundred  years  ago,  since  when 
the  expression  of  love  and  joy  by  artistic  beauty  has 
been  reMgiously  excluded  from  our  church  building. 
The  House  of  Prayer  must  austerely  avoid  all  suggestion 
of  love  and  joy  in  worship.  The  church  is  no  longer 
to  be  the  majestical  House  of  God,  and  the  home  of 
His  children,  but  the  official  shelter  for  a  pubhc  service 
of  patience  in  sitting  under  a  sermon  once  a  week. 
Bare  whitewashed  walls  and  rows  of  benches  make  it 
look  appropriately  forlorn  and  penitential.  There 
is  no  doubt  that  our  Sunday  visits  through  centuries 
to  those  cold  white  walls  where  everything  is  stiff  and 
formal  have  had  their  chilling  effect  upon  us.  Our 
people  have  imbibed  what  our  dreary  church  buildings 
have  taught  them,  and  we  have  become  the  most  un- 
social, reserved,  and  self-centred  people  in  regard  to 
religion  in  the  world.  And  this  is  so  throughout  the 
Anglican  Communion,  not  in  England  only,  but  also  in 
America,  South  Africa,  and  everywhere  else.  Wherever 
we  find  the  Anglican  Church,  we  deplore  the  absence  of 
sympathy  and  brotherly  feeling  among  the  members 
of  our  congregations.  Everyone  is  content  to  have  his 
own  religion  for  himself,  and  feels  little  interest  in  the 
religion  of  those  who  Sunday  after  Sunday  worship 
with  him. 

I  beheve  this  has  come  about  naturally  through  the 


262      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        ix 

studied  absence  of  external  beauty  and  of  every  token 
of  grateful  love  and  joy  in  our  church  building.  The 
structure  and  arrangement  of  the  House  of  God  should 
sensibly  express  the  love  and  devotion  with  which 
His  people  seek  Him  there.  So  that  on  entering  the 
portal  they  may  be  impressed  as  Jacob  was  by  the 
vision  that  linked  earth  with  Heaven  :  "  This  is  none 
other  than  the  House  of  God,  this  is  the  Gate  of  Heaven  "  ; 
or  as  the  Psalmist  was  when  he  wrote  :  "0  how  lovely 
are  Thy  dwellings,  Thou  Lord  of  Hosts."  "  /  was  glad 
when  they  said  unto  me  let  us  go  into  the  house  of  the 
Lord.''  The  place  by  its  very  structure  and  all  its 
ordering  should  express  the  welcome  of  the  Everlasting 
Mercy  for  all  who  enter  it,  so  that  they  may  feel 
instinctively,  "  God  meets  us  here,  this  is  Home  for 
us." 

And  then  our  churches  must  teach  devotion.  The 
candles  on  the  altar  must  speak  of  Him  Who  said 
"  I  am  the  Light  of  the  World  "  ;  the  crucifix,  of  His 
Death  on  Calvary  for  our  sins ;  the  windows  filled 
with  pictures,  of  that  Life  in  which  we  have  to  follow 
Him  ;  the  lamps  hanging  before  the  altar,  of  the  seven- 
fold gifts  of  the  Holy  Spirit  ;  the  flowers,  of  the  beauty 
of  God.  All  these  things  are  surely  not  to  be  despised, 
for  they  do  help  ordinary  people  who  learn  as  much 
through  their  eyes  as  through  their  ears  ;  and  if  the 
Church  is  ever  to  be  truly  national  again,  it  is  of  the 
ordinary  people  she  must  chiefly  think,  and  not  only 
of  the  few  who  may  be  highly  cultured  and  artistic. 
Of  course  everything  in  the  church  must  frequently 
be  explained,  or  the  decorations  will  come  to  mean 
nothing  to  many  people,  whose  minds  will  only  be  dis- 


IX  INSTRUCTION  IN   PRAYER  263 

tracted  thereby  instead  of  being  led  on  to  God.  But 
let  us  remember  that  our  lads  abroad  have  become  used 
to  seeing  sacred  pictures  and  symbols  in  the  churches  ; 
they  have  become  used  to  the  Calvary  by  the  roadside  ; 
and  they  will  miss  them  when  they  come  home.  We  all 
know  what  an  impression  the  crucifix  standing  every- 
where has  made  upon  them,  and  how  they  have  noticed 
that  it  has  often  stood  unhurt  when  all  around  has  been 
destroyed  by  shells.  How  many  men  have  asked  me 
if  I  had  noticed  the  crucifix  between  Fleurbaix  and  the 
trenches,  unscathed,  although  only  a  few  inches  from  it  a 
shell  had  gone  through  the  wall  against  which  it  stood  ! 
2.  We  can  institute  pilgrimages.  The  National 
Mission  has  made  the  word  familiar  amongst  us  again, 
and  we  might  continue  to  employ  the  idea  now  that 
the  Mission  is  over.  Instead  of  aimless  excursions  for 
mere  pleasure,  which  are  too  often  occasions  of  drunken- 
ness and  other  sins,  why  should  we  not  have  pilgrimages 
of  prayer  to  various  churches  for  those  who  wish  to 
join  in  them  ?  A  congregation  might  meet  in  their 
church,  say  their  devotions  aloud  and  together,  praying 
for  whatever  might  be  the  intention  of  the  pilgrimage — 
as  for  instance  the  men  at  the  Front,  or  the  revival  of 
religion,  or  the  needs  of  the  parish — then  go  out  in 
procession,  singing  a  litany  or  hymn,  to  meet  the  con- 
gregation of  the  next  parish,  go  together  with  them 
again  to  church,  pray,  and  go  on  thus  to  the  third, 
according  as  time  might  allow.  Tea  might  be  served 
on  the  way,  and  so  a  happy,  social,  and  profitable 
afternoon  would  be  spent,  leaving  no  regrets  ;  the 
people  would  learn  to  love  their  churches,  they  would 
have  their  imagination  stirred,  be  bound  together  in 


264   THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  FURNACE    ix 

fellowship  one  with  another,  and  a  witness  would  be 
given  to  the  world  that  would  draw  others  in.  But 
if  all  this  is  to  be  done  we  must  possess  a  simple  and 
suitable  devotion,  such  as  all  can  use  and  understand 
and  none  can  ever  outgrow.  St.  Paul  seems  to  have 
given  his  converts  such  a  devotion  when  he  taught 
them  to  "  call  upon  the  Name  of  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,"  and  I  believe  we  can  have  just  what  the  Apostle 
commends  by  remembering  each  event  of  our  Lord's 
Life  in  order  and  pleading  it  before  Him,  as  I  have 
described  above.  That  is  the  only  way  I  know  of 
which  seems  to-day  to  have  much  prospect  of  success. 
"  The  Chaplet  of  Prayer,"  which  most  of  my  time 
since  my  return  from  France  has  been  spent  in  teach- 
ing, is  founded  on  a  devotion  hundreds  of  years 
old,  and  I  have  a  good  hope  that  it  will  be  found  as 
helpful  in  the  present  time  as  in  the  past.  I  know 
the  help  it  has  brought  to  myseK,  and  how  it  grows  upon 
thousands  as  they  learn  to  use  it.  I  suggest  the  small 
picture  edition  with  explanations  {Sd.,  S.P.C.K.)  as 
the  best  for  most  people. 

I  have  said  nothing  about  Matins  or  Evensong, 
because  I  think  that  our  people  have  first  to  acquire  a 
spirit  of  devotion,  which  they  certainly  do  not  possess 
yet  in  general.  When  they  have  first  learnt  to  pray 
by  using  simple  prayer  which  they  can  understand 
and  enter  into,  we  shall  discover  later  on  how  much  they 
are  capable  of  in  public  worship.  Probably  some 
simpler  form  of  Evensong  will  be  necessary  in  most 
parishes,  with  selections  of  psalms,  and  a  revision  of 
the  Lectionary  for  Sunday  use.  With  regard  to  making 
the  Holy  Communion  the  chief  Sunday  service,  it  will 


IX  INSTRUCTION   IN   PRAYER  265 

be  needful  to  explain  that  it  is  the  only  service  instituted 
by  our  Lord  Himself,  and  that  it  was  never  intended 
for  a  very  select  few  only,  but  for  all ;  that  all  other 
services  are  meant  to  lead  up  to  it  and  to  be  a  prepara^- 
tion  for  it ;  that  it  is  a  pleading  before  God,  in  union 
with  our  Lord  in  Heaven,  of  the  One  Sacrifice  for  the 
sins  of  the  whole  world.  This  has  hardly  been  gene- 
rally grasped  as  yet.  Our  people  have  hardly  any  idea 
of  pleading  with  God  by  what  Christ  has  done  and 
still  does  for  them.  They  do  not  realise  that  our 
Lord  is  present  with  us  in  that  service  in  the  most 
intimate  and  gracious  way  possible,  and  that,  as  He 
gives  Himself  to  us.  He  also  binds  us  to  Himself  and 
to  each  other  in  a  real  and  eternal  bond,  never  to  be 
broken  unless  we  break  it  ourselves  finally  by  deliberate 
and  unrepented  sin. 

We  shall  have  to  face  one  great  difficulty.  Our 
service  must  not  extend  much  over  an  hour  in  length. 
If  we  are  going  to  lengthen  it  by  gathering  large  num- 
bers of  communicants  at  the  chief  Sunday  service, 
the  congregations  will  soon  be  wearied  and  discouraged. 
The  remedy  seems  to  be  to  urge  people  to  communicate 
at  early  services,  and  to  come  again  to  a  later  celebra- 
tion to  offer  worship  and  thanksgiving  for  the  gifts 
they  have  received.  But  this  will  again  necessitate 
much  explanation. 

To  sum  up.  We  feel  increasingly  that  this  is  a  day 
of  visitation,  and  that  all  depends  upon  whether  or  not 
our  Church  will  be  enabled  to  take  the  opportunity.  I 
believe  that  it  has  been  doing  so  in  the  National  Mission 
and  in  other  ways.  But  very  much  more  needs  to  be  done 
if,  when  our  men  come  back  after  the  war,  those  who 


266      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        ix 

have  learnt  to  wish  for  rehgion  and  to  go  forward  are 
to  find  what  they  need  in  their  Church.  Certainly  if 
we  have  no  more  to  offer  them  than  what  we  offer  to 
the  ordinary  congregation  at  present,  they  will  not 
find  it.  They  will  feel  that  they  do  not  understand  our 
services,  that  there  is  a  lack  of  sympathy  amongst  us, 
that  we  offer  such  men  as  the  majority  of  them  are 
nothing  that  can  lead  them  to  God.  I  have  tried  to 
sketch  out  from  my  own  experience  and  from  what  I 
have  learnt  elsewhere  a  true  way,  as  I  believe,  of 
gathering  such  men  in.  I  am  convinced  that  it  is 
consistent  with  the  teaching  of  both  the  Bible  and  our 
Prayer-book,  that  it  is  a  way  in  which  God  seems  to  be 
leading  us  now,  and  that  if  we  go  bravely  and  humbly 
forward  with  it,  not  criticising  those  who  may  be  trying 
other  experiments,  but  each  of  us  trying  to  do  our 
own  "  bit  "  as  it  may  be  given  us,  then  we  may  indeed 
hope  and  trust  for  a  great  gathering-in. 


X 
THE  TRAINING  OF  THE  CLERGY 

By  the    Rev.   NEVILLE    S.   TALBOT,    M.C.,  M.A. 

Assistant  Chaplain-General,  Army  ;  Late  Fellow  and  Chaplain 

of  Balliol  College,  Oxford. 

Part  Author  of  "■  Foundations  "  ;  Author  of'-''  The  Mind  of  the  Disciples,^' 
"  Thotights  on  Religion  at  the  Front,"  &^i. 


X 
THE   TRAINING    OF   THE    CLERGY 

The  subject  of  this  paper  is  important  to  this  degree, 
that  unless  the  clergy  of  the  Church  of  England  are 
better  trained  in  the  future  than  in  the  past,  other 
measures  of  Church  reform  will  be  neutralised.  Even 
in  an  anti -sacerdotal  Church  its  clergy  are  inevitably 
the  register  of  its  spiritual  health  and  wealth.  A  Church 
can  hardly  rise  above  the  spiritual  level  of  its  pro- 
fessional representatives. 

A  layman  should  have  written  this  paper.  He,  with 
the  detached  insight  of  a  bystander,  would  have  judged 
more  clearly  than  one  of  their  own  number  as  to  how 
things  are  with  Church  of  England  padres — that  is, 
with  the  products  of  past  theological  training.  But 
any  priest  at  the  Front  can  see  one  thing  at  least, 
namely,  the  truth  of  what  has  been  said  in  the  first 
paragraph,  that  with  the  mass  of  men  in  things  religious 
a  vast  deal  depends  on  what  the  parson  is.  It  is  so 
because  with  most  Britishers  the  parson's  office  and 
functions  as  such  are  not  greatly  valued.  They  care 
far  more  about  the  man  than  his  office.  There  is, 
indeed,    to    speak    generally,    among    laymen    a    pre- 


270      THE    CHURCH    IN   THE   FURNACE  x 

liminary  aversion  from  the  clergy,  as  a  class,  which 
chaplains  have  had  to  overcome.  The  war  has  seen  it 
overcome  in  some  measure  by  devotion,  by  gallantry, 
and  by  methods  less  certainly  reputable,  such  as 
"  holy  grocery." 

There  is  danger  and  strain  to  chaplains  in  this.  It 
entangles  them  with  themselves  and  with  concern 
about  their  own  popularity  and  success.  On  the  other 
hand,  active  service  has  been  a  liberal  education  to 
them.  They  have  been  enabled  in  some  degree  to  see 
themselves  as  others  see  them. 

How  do  others  see  them  ?  I  suggest  that  they  have 
found  us  mostly  to  be  "  good  fellows,"  human  after 
all,  but  not  much  else — not  very  understanding,  not 
often  in  possession  of  an  interesting  message,  not  men 
of  real  craft,  not  genuine  physicians  of  the  soul.  Perhaps 
they  would  not  like  it  if  we  were.  But  anyhow  that  is 
what  I  as  a  parson  think  we  are — amateurs.  It  is  not 
enough.  We  have  our  version  to  learn  of  a  war  lesson 
which  has  many  other  applications  to  British  institu- 
tions. Lack  of  training,  rule  of  thumb,  drift  and 
makeshift  will  not  do.  They  can  only  lead  to  second- 
best.  The  war  has  summoned  us  as  a  nation  to  get  to 
first  principles,  to  scientific  understanding,  and  to 
the  mastery  of  life  which  flows  therefrom. 

I  take  that  lesson  of  the  war  as  my  starting  point. 
But  it  only  enforces  what  was  evident  before,  that  in 
times  of  change,  when  institutions,  traditions,  sanctions, 
and  other  legacies  from  the  past  pass  under  criticism 
and  revision,  there  is  no  way  of  salvation  other  than 
that  traced  by  living,  discriminating  and  understanding 
minds.     There  are  no  short  cuts.     It  is  true  of  other 


X         THE   TRAINING   OF   THE   CLERGY      271 

institutions  but  pre-eminently  of  the  Church,  that  they 
must  be  "  hke  unto  a  man  that  is  an  householder,  which 
bringeth  forth  out  of  his  treasure  things  new  and  old." 
Can  the  Church  of  England  be  such  a  "  discijjle  of 
the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  "  ?  Can  she  discriminate 
vital  and  main  truth  in  her  chief  authority,  the  Bible  ? 
Can  she  re-interpret  and  revise  her  Prayer-book  and 
Articles  ?  Can  she  find  a  way  of  true  religion  through 
the  quickly -growing  jungle  of  new  cults  and  recurring 
superstitions  ?  Only,  in  a  great  measure,  if  her  clergy 
are  men  of  clear,  tested,  and  fearless  understanding — 
if  they  are  well-trained  men. 

It  is  one  thing  to  point  out  these  facts,  but  another 
to  deal  with  them.  To  do  so  would  need  an  expert 
educationist  and  accredited  theologian.  The  writer 
can  only  make  a  hmited  contribution  to  the  subject 
based  on  his  own  experience  of  Oxford  and  Cuddesdon. 
That  experience  is  relevant  to  much  of  the  existing 
arrangements  for  clerical  training,  inasmuch  as  a  big 
fraction  of  the  men  who  have  hitherto  taken  Orders 
have  passed  through  a  university  and  have  spent  a 
year  at  a  theological  college  like  Cuddesdon. 

It  is  necessary  first  to  ask  how  present  arrangements 
came  to  be,  secondly  to  appraise  their  value,  thirdly 
to  suggest  improvements. 

(1)  The  Church  of  England  as  a  Church  has  never 
had  a  thorough  system  of  clerical  training.  As  recently 
as  mid- Victorian  days  men  could  enter  her  ministry 
with  scarcely  any  special  training.  When  the  older 
universities  were  entirely  (in  name  at  any  rate)  Church 
institutions,  men  slipped  into  Orders  as  a  gentlemanly 
profession  on  the  strength  of  established  and  received 


272      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         x 

tradition.  The  Cliurch  as  a  society  did  not  set  herself 
either  to  train  or  to  examine  closely  those  who  offered 
themselves  for  her  ministry.  Inherited  conventions  and 
assumptions  sm'rounded  individual  members  of  the 
Church,  and  like  a  slow  but  strong  stream  carried  some 
of  them  into  Orders.  This  system,  or  rather  absence 
of  system,  produced  a  minority  of  strong  men  of 
highly-marked  individuality.  A  few  profited  by  its 
freedom  and  assimilated  the  deposits  of  Christian 
tradition,  without  losing  individual  originalitjT^  and 
power.  The  Church  of  England  has  seldom  been 
without  great  men,  who  have  arisen  independently 
(or  because)  of  her  lack  of  system.  She  has  never  lacked 
"  characters,"  who  have  picked  up  their  own  training 
as  they  might.  But  with  the  more  commonplace 
majority,  reliance  on  the  tradition  of  orthodoxy 
prevalent  in  homes  and  universities  and  the  absence 
of  special  and  deliberate  training  produced  a  clerical 
standard  at  best  human  and  gentlemanly,  at  worst 
worldly  and  unconverted,  and,  whether  best  or  worst, 
generally  conservative.  It  was  therefore  mainly  to 
have  a  devout,  a  converted,  an  enterprising  clergy 
that  pious  champions  of  revival,  whether  Evangehcal 
or  Tractarian,  founded  post-graduate  theological  colleges 
(such  as  Cuddesdon).  A  year  was  enough  for  this 
spiritual  deepening  and  instruction.  The  main  founda- 
tions of  the  Christian  religion  were  solid  and  not  in 
question.  Social  and  economic  problems  did  not  appear 
to  be  related  to  moral  and  spiritual.  The  point  was  to 
establish  schools  of  earnest  devotion  and  pastoral  zeal. 
(2)  These  one-year  colleges  have  in  the  main  suc- 
ceeded in  the  aim  of  their  founders,  if  that  aim  has  been 


X         THE   TRAINING   OF   THE   CLERGY      273 

correctly  described.  That  there  are  a  great  number  of 
devoted  priests  in  parishes  at  home  and  in  the  mission 
field  is  due  in  a  large  measure  to  these  colleges.  If 
keenness,  loyalty,  and  activity  were  all  that  is  required 
of  the  priesthood,  the  present  colleges  know  how  to 
supply  the  demand.  Parishes,  especially  in  towns,  are 
commonly  hives  of  earnest  and  vigorous  organisation. 
As  such  they  witness  to  the  resurrection  of  the  Church 
of  England  from  her  eighteenth-century  death-in-life. 
They  have  acted  as  a  leaven  on  the  whole  life  of 
England.  They  have  made  great  contributions  of 
splendid  Christian  men  to  Britain-in-arms.  Further, 
these  colleges  have  generally  enshrined  themselves  in 
the  hearts  of  their  members,  as  the  means,  in  the  hands 
of  saintly  teachers  and  friends,  whereby  they  have  been 
"  blessed  with  spiritual  blessings  in  the  heavenly 
places  in  Christ."  Academic  and  outside  critics  are 
apt  to  neglect  or  ignore  the  spiritual  debt  which  men 
owe — say  to  Cuddesdon.  As  one  of  her  sons,  I  am 
proud  to  aver  that  she  represents  treasuries  of  spiritual 
riches  which  it  would  be  criminal  to  dissipate. 

And  yet  for  all  their  success  and  excellence  these 
colleges  are  open  to  the  charge  of  failure.  In  these 
days  more  than  energy  and  spirituality  is  required  of 
the  ministry.  Along  with  devotion  there  must  be 
understanding  of  the  world  and  its  needs,  under- 
standing of  the  Gospel  which  can  satisfy  the  needs. 
There  is  great  danger  to-day  in  the  exaltation  of  religious 
devotion  and  activity  over  love  of  the  truth.  During 
the  last  sixty  years  so  much  of  the  best  and  most 
intense  achievements,  whether  Evangelical  or  Catholic, 
have  been  reared  on  a  basis  of  reactionary  thought. 


274      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  x 

The  great  figures  in  the  modern  parochial  calendar 
have  frequently  been  impatient  of  liberal  thinking. 
And  by  contrast  with  them  the  protagonists  of  en- 
lightenment, whether  in  theology  or  social  affairs,  have 
often  appeared  to  be  academic,  spiritually  inept,  and 
unpossessed  of  a  message  for  plain  folk. 

There  is,  in  truth,  a  great  pressure  upon  men  in  the 
active  ministry  to  harden  them  against  thinking  and 
to  cU'ive  them  to  be  devoted  primarily  to  what  is 
efficient  in  catching  and  attaching  the  souls  of  men. 
It  may  be  called  the  pressure  of  parochial  pragmatism. 
It  tells  in  the  direction  of  championing  and  assuming 
as  healthy  anything  in  religious  method  which  arrests, 
warms,  comforts  or  pleases  the  human  heart.  This  is 
full  of  perils  of  which  men  absorbed  in  busy  activity 
are  apt  to  be  oblivious.  Religion  to-day  is  a  very  queer 
thing.  It  grows  strange  cults  as  fertile  soil  grows  weeds. 
If  a  Christian  priest  devotes  himself  exclusively  to  what 
is  religiously  satisfying  he  will,  without  knowing  it, 
allow  unhealthy  growths  to  take  root  in  the  garden  of 
the  soul.  Liability  to  morbid  development  is  inherent 
in  "  religiosity."  That  is  why  intellectual  and  moral 
candour  is  the  saving  complement  to  religious 
devotion.  Intellectual  honesty  is  meant  to  be  the 
great  antiseptic  in  religion.  Therefore,  to  repeat,  along 
with  devotion,  there  must  go  open-minded  under- 
standing. And  it  is  in  the  equipment  of  men  in  capacity 
for  understanding  that  the  present  theological  colleges 
are  open  to  the  charge  of  failure. 

The  reason  for  the  failure  is  complex,  and  the  blame 
is  by  no  means  to  be  laid  solely  at  the  door  of  theological 
colleges.      British  intolerance  of  thinking,  discomfort 


X         THE   TRAINING   OF   THE    CLERGY      275 

in  the  presence  of  living  ideas,  evasion  of  facts,  and 
suspicion  of  theory  are  participes  a'iminis,  together  with 
the  hmitations  of  school  and  university  education. 
Yet  none  but  very  blind  partisans  of  theological  colleges 
can  merely  waive  the  charge  which  laymen  bring 
from  far  and  near,  that  the  colleges  help  to  manufacture 
men  whose  minds  are  prone  to  prejudice,  soon  arrested 
in  growth,  and  feebly  exercised  in  the  understanding  of 
the  world  around  them.  There  is  truth  in  the  judgment 
that  the  theological  colleges  help  to  make  "  parsons  " 
of  men  at  the  expense  of  their  humanity  and  natural- 
ness, and  to  produce  the  mind  which  is  clerical  and 
yet  not  truly  professional.  In  a  word,  the  colleges 
represent  a  process  of  half -baking. 

The  last  word  of  the  preceding  paragraph  indicates 
the  main  reason  for  the  failure  which  is  fairly  to  be 
ascribed  to  the  colleges.  They  are  attempting  the 
impossible  in  point  of  time.  It  is  certain  that  to-day, 
no  matter  how  things  were  formerly,  the  average  candi- 
date does  not  arrive  at  a  theological  college  so  im- 
pregnated by  prevalent  Christian  tradition  that  he 
only  needs  a  year's  further  devotional  and  religious 
training  to  be  ready  for  ordination.  If  he  does  so,  he 
is  normally  in  urgent  need  of  being  challenged  to 
examine  that  which  hitherto  he  has  accepted  on 
authority.  In  other  words,  a  theological  coUege 
cannot  in  most  cases  rely  on  the  results  of  earlier 
training  and  thought,  but  has  itself  to  tackle  the  bulk 
of  the  task  of  making  a  man — so  far  as  training  can  do 
so — into  an  understanding  priest.  That  is  what  the 
principals  of  theological  colleges  have  been  trying  to 
do.      They  are  not  at  all  unaware  of  the  intellectual 

T  2 


276      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE    FURNACE  x 

needs  of  the  time.  But  they  are  attempting  tlie 
impossible.  For  the  normal  course  is  only  a  year  long. 
It  is  fatally  too  short.  Not  too  short  to  prepare  for 
the  Bishop's  examination,  not  much  too  short  for 
devotional  discipline,  but  fatally  too  short  for  thorough 
mental  development. 

For  few  candidates  for  the  ministry,  when  they  go 
to  a  theological  college,  have  thought  much  about  the 
Christian  religion  or  about  current  criticisms  of  it. 
Very  often  they  are  sound,  well-intentioned  athletic 
members  of  clerical  families.  Some  have  not  read  for 
honours,  but  are  pass  men  with  little  belief  in  their 
own  ability  to  think.  Some  have  acquired  but  a  slight 
capacity  for  reading  big  books.  They  are  commonly 
very  young  for  their  years  with  that  extended  youthf ul- 
ness  which  is  a  by-product  of  English  school  and 
university  life.    Many  have  seen  very  little  of  the  world. 

To  such  men  the  theological  college  is  at  first  a 
rather  disagreeable  means  of  teaching  them  discipline 
and  habits  of  devotion.  It  expects,  if  it  does  not  require, 
that  much  time  be  given  to  services.  It  is  throughout 
a  purveyor  of  lectures.  It  is,  ere  its  course  is  half 
way  over,  overshadowed  by  the  prospect  of  a  Bishop's 
examination,  for  the  safe  passing  of  which  there  are 
frequently  insistent  economic  reasons.  The  examina- 
tion is  one  which  makes  recourse  to  "  little  books  "  a 
powerful  temptation.  A  man's  interest  becomes 
concentrated  on  that  which  counts  for  examination 
purposes.  And  on  the  other  side  of  the  Bishop's 
examination  there  lies,  more  often  than  not,  the 
intricate  machinery  of  parochial  activity  to  catch  the 
newly-ordained  man  in  its  wheels. 


X         THE   TRAINING   OF   THE   CLERGY      277 

There  is  real  educational  vice  in  all  this.  It  means 
that  men  go  into  the  ministry  with  congested  minds, 
having  heard  of  a  number  of  questions  which  they 
have  not  examined  for  themselves.  It  means  that  their 
minds  little  resemble  that  of  a  good  physician — the 
mind  which  has  learnt  from  authority  and  has  assimi- 
lated tradition,  which  goes  out  to  apply  its  under- 
stood science  to  life  and  to  get  it  enriched  thereby — 
the  diagnosing,  acquiring,  ever-growing  mind.  It  is 
capacity  to  understand  and  to  learn  from  experience 
which  we  clergy  lack.  Thatis  why  weareduU.  Training 
cannot  and  ought  not  to  provide  answers  to  all  possible 
questions,  but  it  fails  if  it  does  not  exercise  and  develop 
a  capacity  for  facing  and  for  working  a  way  through 
the  questions  and  problems  which  experience  will 
raise. 

This  is  the  failure  of  present  theological  colleges. 
Their  training  of  men  who  have  to  minister  to  a  restless 
and  ever-increasingly  critical  world  is  on  the  intellectual 
side  a  half — even  a  quarter — training.  It  means  that 
men  go  out  into  the  ministry,  as  it  were,  loaded  with 
cargo  not  properly  stowed.  They  are  no  longer  laymen, 
yet  they  are  not  fully  priests.  They  are  "  odd  fish," 
self-conscious  and  uneasy,  committed  to  that  which 
they  do  not  fully  understand.  Lay  suspicions  of 
theological  colleges  as  the  means  of  stamping  men  with 
clericalism  are  not  altogether  beside  the  mark.  It  is 
hardly  too  m  uch  to  say  that  the  minimum  character  of 
training  at  theological  colleges  creates  a  maximum 
separation  between  clergy  and  laity.  For  there  is 
time  at  theological  colleges  to  contract  clerical  diseases 
but  not  time  to  get  over  them. 


278      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  x 

Of  course  there  is  much  to  qualify  these  generahsa- 
tions.  Some  men  survive  the  training  with  their 
native  powers  of  understanding  and  common  sense 
unimpaired.  Some  have  the  good  fortune  to  serve 
under  vicars  who  stimulate  their  minds  and  help  them 
to  learn  from  life  and  from  books.  Some  go  on  after 
ordination  to  read  the  books  which  lecturers  at  college 
alluded  to  in  the  hope  that  men  would  read  them  in 
after  days.  Some  are  constituted  so  that  they  are 
meant  to  be  independent  of  training,  and  are  fitted  to 
exercise  undisturbedly  a  ministry  of  love. 

Perhaps  with  the  majority  all  goes  fairly  well  in 
their  ministry  so  long  as  they  are  young  and  eager. 
But  for  many,  whose  powers  of  assimilation  have  not 
been  developed,  there  await  middle-aged  bafflement 
and  disillusion.  They  get  tired  of  knocking  at  doors 
which  they  cannot  unlock.  They  become  men  who 
have  "  stopped."  This  is  especially  disastrous 
to-day,  for  the  world  does  not  "  stop."  It  persists 
in  movement.  Hence  the  tension  between  modern 
thought  and  many  professional  representatives  of 
Christianity.  It  leads  to  clerical  fearfulness  and 
reaction.  A  man  in  taking  Orders  becomes  repre- 
sentative of  a  great  inherited  ecclesiastical  and  theo- 
logical system,  about  which,  as  education  spreads,  the 
mind  of  the  world  grows  more  and  more  critical.  The 
seas  upon  which  he  has  offered  to  help  sail  the  old 
ecclesiastical  ark  seem  to  be  in  an  uproar.  If,  in 
pre-ordination  days,  he  has  not  faced  the  weather  nor 
been  out  on  the  deep  waters,  he  will  frequently  not  get 
out  of  harbour  ever  after.  Dreadful  instances  of  founder- 
ing will  daunt  him.    He  will  become  weather-bound. 


X         THE   TRAINING   OF   THE    CLERGY      279 

(3)  What  is  the  remedy  ? 

The  finding  of  an  answer  will  partly  depend  on  a 
general  improvement  in  national  education.  Why 
should  men  leave  schools  and  colleges  so  ill-educated  ? 
What  theological  colleges  fail  to  do  British  education 
fails  to  do.  It  fails  to  train  the  mind.  It  abounds 
too  much  in  lectures  "  taken  down  "  and  "  got  up," 
in  little  books  and  trivial  examinations.  Avenues  of 
discussion  open  up  here  which  this  paper  must  leave 
on  one  side.  But  the  finding  of  a  remedy  will  depend 
more  immediately  on  what  can  be  done  (a)  at  the 
universities  (perhaps  especially  at  the  older  universities) 
and  (6)  at  the  existing  theological  colleges. 

(a)  The  universities. 

Universities  can  act  as  theological  schools.  They 
have — some  of  the  newer  universities  are  developing — 
theological  faculties.  A  man  can  take  his  degree  in 
theology.  This  raises  the  question  whether  it  is  not 
better  for  a  man  to  have  his  mind  trained  on  a  non- 
theological  subject  as  an  undergraduate,  and  to  go 
on  to  theology  as  a  graduate,  rather  than  speciahse 
on  theology  at  once.  I  have  heard  arguments  both 
ways,  but  I  suppose  that  it  will  be  generally  agreed^ 
that  non-theological  education  should  come  first  and 
theology  second.  At  any  rate,  there  are  two  ways  in 
which  universities  can  help  in  theological  training  ; 

(1)  by  providing  an  undergraduate  course  for  a  degree  : 

(2)  by  providing  a  graduate  course. 

As  regards  both  courses,   it  is  a  misfortune  that 

^  Here  I  can  hear  the  protesting  voice  of  the  man  in  the  Church 
of  England  who  is  perhaps  most  worthy  to  be  called  a  great  edu- 
cationist— Fr.  Herbert  Kelly,  S.S.M. 


280      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  x 

certainly  at  Oxford,  and  I  think  too  at  Cambridge,  the 
theological  faculty  and  school  are  relatively  so  much 
occupied  with  questions  of  Biblical  criticism,  so  httle 
with  metaphysical  and  moral  philosophy.  At  Oxford 
a  wealth  of  training  in  the  handling  of  great  philo- 
sophical questions — which  is  what  a  man  who  is  intend- 
ing to  take  Orders  most  wants — is  largely  confined  to 
the  "  Greats  "  school,  and  is  there  much  "  Avired 
round  "  by  classical  requirements. 

Yet  these  and  other  difficulties  should  not  deter 
from  action  those  who  believe  that  the  university  is 
the  proper  place  for  theological  training,  if  it  is  to  be 
in  touch  with  contemporary  thought.  There  is  the 
Scottish  Presbyterian  example  in  favour  of  their 
opinion.  I  will  only  say  here  that  it  will  be  essential 
to  the  effective  development  of  post-graduate  training 
at  universities  that  men  should  be  gathered  into  a 
comm^on  devotional  life  in  hostels  under  the  personal 
inspiration  of  a  spiritual  master.  For  they  need  to  be 
spiritually  won  and  morally  disciplined.  Otherwise 
mentally  they  will  weary  of  apjDarently  academic 
discussions,  and  morally  they  will  fail  to  cut  themselves 
free  from  the  failures  of  their  undergraduate  days. 
The  protagonists  of  theological  training  at  universities 
are  deluded  if  they  think  they  can  dispense  with  con- 
version as  an  integral  part  of  preparation  for  the 
ministry.     It  is  hard  to  be  converted  at  the  university. 

(6)  The  existing  theological  colleges. 

The  last  thing  is  to  despair  of  these  colleges.  What 
they  need,  and  what  those  who  are  concerned  with 
them  have  been  for  long  demanding,  is  more  time. 
They  have  in  them  a  power  of  winning  a  man's  whole 


X         THE   TRAINING   OF   THE   CLERGY      281 

being  to  a  personal  allegiance  to  our  Lord  which  is 
hardly  to  be  found  elsewhere.  Now  this  is  vital  to  the 
theological  training  of  Enghshmen.  For  in  many- 
Englishmen  intellectual  interest  is  only  aroused  and 
maintained  by  the  touching  of  his  heart  and  the 
bracing  of  his  will.  To  think  deeply  and  painfully  is 
uncongenial  to  him,  and  unless  he  is  stimulated  and 
disciplined  he  will  not  do  it.^ 

If  there  were  more  time,  say  at  Cuddesdon  or  Wells, 
the  two  elements  of  devotion  and  inquiry,  which  at 
present  are  nearly  crushed  by  pressure  of  time  into 
antagonism,  would  balance  and  fertilise  one  another. 
Nowhere  else,  I  believe,  could  there  be  a  freer  and  more 
energetic  exchange  of  views  than  within  the  common 
family  life  of  such  colleges,  of  which  the  size  is  too 
small  for  cliques  and  yet  is  large  enough  to  be  hetero- 
geneous. 

If  there  were  more  time  at  these  colleges  the  lectures 
could  give  way  largely  to  personal  teaching — to  what 
is  known  as  the  "  tutorial  system."  It  is  the  personal 
teaching  of  individuals,  in  which  the  pupil  does  not  take 
down  other  men's  views  in  lecture  notes  but  is  thrown 

^  Compare  some  words  of  Charles  Lister  about  Jtilian  Grenfell  : — 
"  I  don't  suppose  many  people  know  of  the  ardent  love  he  had 
for  honesty  of  purpose  and  intellectual  honesty,  and  what  sacrifices 
he  made  for  them,  and  sacrifices  of  peace  of  mind  abhorrent  to 
most  Englishmen.  The  Englishman  is  a  base  seeker  after  happiness, 
and  he  will  make  most  sacrifices  of  principle  and  admit  any  number 
of  lies  into  his  soul  to  secure  this  dear  object  of  his.  It  is  want  of 
courage  on  its  negative  side,  this  quality — and  svi'inish  greed  on  its 
positive  side.  Julian,  in  his  search  for  truth  and  in  his  search  for 
what  he  believed  to  be  his  true  self,  caused  himself  no  end  of  worry 
and  unhappiness,  and  was  a  martyr  who  lit  his  own  fires  with 
unflinching  nerve."  (Charles  Lister  :  Letters  and  Recollections, 
p.  187.) 


282      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  x 

by  the  tutor  upon  the  task  of  working  out  his  own  con- 
clusions, which  is  the  educational  secret  of  the  older 
universities,  perhaps  of  Oxford  in  particular.  Nowhere 
should  this  be  so  fruitful  a  method  as  in  theological 
colleges,  just  because  there  is  in  them  what  is  lacking 
on  the  nearly  uncharted  seas  of  modern  philosophical 
speculation,  namely,  a  main  compass  bearing  of  received 
orthodoxy  by  which  the  individual  can  navigate. 
Theological  colleges,  indeed,  with  their  corporate  life 
and  spiritual  atmosphere,  should  be  family  circles  in 
which  young  sons  are  free — as  they  are  in  a  good  home 
— ^for  the  widest  and  not  yet  responsible  development. 
They  should  provide  the  sustaining  environment  of 
Mother  Church  within  which  her  boys  can  adventure 
themselves,  and  experiment  and  doubt  and  stand  away 
from  acceptances  and  get  mentally  fogged  and  fight 
their  way  through  to  first-hand  understanding  and 
allegiance. 

Further,  the  tutorial  system  makes  discrimination 
among  individuals  possible.  ''  There  are  diversities 
of  gifts  but  the  same  spirit  ;  and  there  are  diversities 
of  ministrations  and  the  same  Lord."  This  great  law 
of  nature  and  of  grace  is  disregarded  by  the  pressing 
of  all  kinds  of  men  into  the  same  short  lecture  system. 
It  is  the  essence  of  tutorial  teaching  to  find  out  indi- 
vidual capabilities  and  leanings,  and  to  develoj)  men 
according  to  their  several  gifts.  It  is  wrong  and 
impossible  to  turn  men  into  one  mould,  or  to  make  all 
conform  to  one  ideal  of  what  the  fully-trained  man 
should  be.  The  ideal  should  be  there,  but  only  indi- 
vidual discrimination  can  decide  how  to  bring  this  man 
and  that  near  to  it.    There  will  always  be  some  to  whom 


X         THE   TRAINING   OF   THE   CLERGY      283 

philosophy  and  theology  and  "  questions  "  are  barred, 
who  yet  are  capable  in  other  ways,  whether  practically 
or  mystically,  or  lovingly,  and  are  as  vital  to  the  Church 
as  the  intellectualists. 

Time  then  is  required.  That  is  the  main  burden  of 
this  brief  paper.  Not  necessarily  the  same  time  of 
training  for  all.  That  must  vary  in  accordance  with 
the  previous  development  of  individuals.  Three  years 
are  needed  for  most  men,  for  none  less  than  two. 
Given  time,  sympathetic  open-minded  teachers,  and 
the  removal  of  the  spectre  of  examination  from  the 
horizon — at  any  rate  during  the  greater  part  of  the 
course — and  wonders  may  be  wrought. 

But  time  means  money.  Nothing  effective  will  be 
done  in  the  reform  of  theological  education  until  the 
Church  as  a  Church  grapples  with  its  financial  aspect. 
At  present  training  is  mostly  at  individual  charges  at 
the  end  of  a  costly  school  and  university  career.  It  is 
the  sense  in  young  men  that,  after  costing  their  parents 
so  much,  they  must  be  earning  their  own  living  which 
helps  to  hurry  them  into  the  ministry  before  they  are 
jiroperly  trained. 

Finance  is  the  key  to  the  whole  training  problem. 
It  alone  can  secure  a  condition  which  has  hardly  been 
mentioned  in  this  paper  and  yet  is  as  important  to  a 
man  who  is  to  be  a  priest  as  intellectual  and  spiritual 
culture,  namely,  knowledge  of  life  and  of  men.  It  is 
not  only  that  theological  courses  should  be  longer,  but 
in  many  cases  they  should  be  begun  later,  and,  if  begun 
earlier,  should  be  capable  of  interruption. 

Effective  provision  is  urgently  needed  against  the 
passing  of  an  unformed  boy  of  22,  with  no  knowledge 


284   THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  FURNACE    x 

of  life,  straight  from  school  and  university  to  a  theo- 
logical college  and  thence  into  the  ministry.  He  is  in 
danger  of  being  blinkered  all  his  life.  He  needs  to  be  a 
real  layman  before  he  is  a  parson.  The  average  age  of 
entry  into  the  ministry  should  be  raised.  Principals 
of  theological  colleges  would  not  dispute  this.  They 
try  to  postpone  the  premature  arrival  of  students. 
They  are  anxious  to  advise  men  to  gam  experience  in 
some  other  profession  before  taking  Orders.  But 
nearly  always  the  difficulty  is  money. 

Finance  is  the  sine  qua  non  of  tutorial  teaching. 
Larger  staffs  will  be  required.  For  where  one  competent 
man  can  try  to  teach  by  means  of  lectures,  it  will  need 
three  to  do  individual  tuition. 

Financial  provision,  again,  is  a  necessity  if  the 
ministry  of  the  Church  of  England  in  the  future  is  to 
be  less  of  a  one  class  and  well-to-do  character.  At 
present  the  cost  of  getting  ordained  is  prohibitive  to 
men  "  in  the  ranks  " — to  the  kind  of  men  who  in  this 
war  have  astonished  the  world. 

Finance,  lastly,  will  be  decisive  in  the  matter  of 
training  for  clergy  after  ordination.  After  all  the  priest 
is  like  the  engineer.  He  has  to  learn  his  job  not  only 
at  college  but  at  the  works.  Many  Britishers  will 
never  learn  much  from  books,  but  only  from  human 
documents  and  practical  experiment.  To  many  the 
study  of  psychology  or  the  science  of  teaching,  or 
moral  theology  or  sociology,  will  appear  abstract  and 
theoretical,  until  their  interest  in  those  subjects  has 
been  aroused  concretely  by  experience  and  action. 
Men  will  learn  as  they  go.  But  this  will  mean  a 
lengthened    diaconate,    the    maintenance    of   training 


X         THE   TRAINING   OF   THE   CLERGY      285 

and  study  centres  in  dioceses,  and  the  provision  of 
ways  and  means  for  a  return  of  some  men  from 
parishes  for  further  study  at  the  university  and  at 
theological  colleges.  The  Church  of  England  has 
hardly  begun  to  think  of  developing  a  real  science  in 
things  spiritual.  She  is  an  amateur  body.  But  the 
science  that  is  needed  must  not  be  left  only  to  pro- 
fessors. It  cannot  be  merely  an  affair  of  books.  The 
lessons  of  pastoral  experience  and  the  theories  of 
"  the  schools  "  are  necessarily  mutual  factors  in  the 
development  of  a  true  science  for  the  Christian  ministry. 
But  in  this  as  in  other  things  finance  will  be  decisive. 

So  far  this  paper  might  almost  have  been  written 
before  the  war.  But  the  war  is  creating  a  new  situa- 
tion which  has  to  be  faced.  The  supply  of  candidates 
for  ordination  has  run  nearly  dry,  because  it  has  been 
diverted  into  the  Services.  Many  of  the  men  who  had 
set  their  faces  towards  the  ministry  are  numbered 
amongst  those  who  have  given  their  lives  for  their 
country  and  her  cause.  Clearly  the  fortunes  of  the 
Church  after  the  war  are  going  to  be  vitally  bound  up 
with  the  passing  into  her  ministry  of  men  who  have 
borne  arms.  If  they  come  from  all  ranks  they  will 
constitute  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  a  Church  which 
has  hitherto  had  but  a  mainly  "  upper-class  "  ministry. 
The  first  thing  is  to  get  the  men.  Something  has 
already  been  done  to  that  end.  The  Archbishops  have 
put  a  letter  into  the  hands  of  chaplains  to  the  Forces 
inviting  officers  and  men  to  consider  the  claims  of  the 
ministry  and  assuring  them  of  the  intention  of  the 
Church  to  see  them  through  the  necessary  training. 


286      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE  x 

How  are  these  men,  with  "  the  smell  of  fire  "  on 
them,  to  be  trained  ?  I  find  it  harder  to  prophesy 
on  this  problem  than  to  write  about  past  experience. 
At  any  rate,  if  the  principles  underlying  the  above 
suggestions  for  the  reform  of  theological  training  are 
sound,  they  will  admit  of  apphcation  to  the  special 
circumstances  which  will  arise  after  the  war. 

Much  will  depend  on  the  frame  of  mind  in  which 
men  lay  down  their  arms.  That  is  difficult  to  forecast. 
Our  thoughts  on  this  subject  are  bound  to  be  fathered 
by  our  wishes.  Visions  arise  of  a  great  band  of  men 
arising  to  reinforce  the  ranks  of  the  ministry — men 
of  tested  and  grateful  faith,  graduates  in  a  school  of 
grim  reality,  experts  in  knowledge  of  human  nature, 
seasoned  in  self-sacrifice,  experienced  in  fellowship, 
converts  to  discipline.  What  might  they  not  do  for 
the  cause  of  Christ  could  they  but  bring  these  qualities 
unimpaired  as  equipment  for  a  ministry  in  His  name. 
They  might  be  a  bridge  over  the  gulf  of  misunderstand- 
ing which  divides  clergy  from  laity.  They  might  be 
fresh  means  of  communication. with  their  old  comrades 
in  all  walks  of  life. 

But  there  is  another  side.  If  they  will  have  learnt 
much  in  war,  they  will  also  have  much  to  unlearn  and 
forget.  They  will  probably  be  restless  and  in  reaction 
from  discipline.  Some  of  them  will  lack  initiative 
and  independence  through  having  had  so  much  done 
for  them  in  the  Army.  Many  will  have  suffered  from 
mental  and  moral  relaxation.  In  general  cultivation, 
it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say,  they  wiU  be  almost 
barbarians.  They  will  need  thorough  and  rigorous 
training. 


X        THE   TRAINING   OF   THE   CLERGY      287 

The  task  of  training  them  will  be  bigger  than  can 
be  compassed  by  theological  colleges  alone.  It  will 
call  for  the  help  of  Whitehall,  of  universities  both  old 
and  new,  of  the  Workers'  Educational  Association  of 
the  leaders  of  Labour.  There  should  be  in  these 
quarters  a  wealth  of  good  will  ready  to  co-operate  in 
seizing  the  educational  opportunity  which  the  end  of 
the  war  will  bring. 

The  special  part  which  falls  to  the  Church  is  to 
see  that,  as  regards  the  work  to  which  she  calls  men 
and  the  demands  she  makes  on  those  who  offer  to  do 
it,  hers  is  no  "  soft  option,"  but  a  high  enterprise  hard 
of  achievement.  She  must  see  that  the  conditions  of 
life  during  the  training  of  men  for  her  ministry  are 
unspoiling  and  simple.  She  must  be  ready  to  absolve 
men  from  the  knowledge  of  Greek  and  of  Latin.  She 
must  spare  them  the  insincerity  of  being  concerned 
with  the  Thirty-nine  Ai'ticles.  Her  chief  aim  must 
be  to  admit  them  by  sound  educational  method  into  a 
thorough  and  enlightened  understanding  of  the  Bible. 
She  must  set  herself  with  their  aid  to  give  utterance 
in  word  and  in  life  to  that  wonderful  Gospel  of  the 
Kingdom,  which  is  both  the  discovery  of  a  century's 
study  of  the  Bible  and  the  main  need  of  a  war-ravaged 
world. 


i 


XI 


RELIGIOUS    EDUCATION    AND   THE 
TRAINING    OF    THE    CLERGY 


By  the  Rev.  T.  W.  PYM,  D.S.O.,  M.A. 

'ant  Chaplain-  General,  Corps  ;  Chapl 

College,  Cambridge. 

Joint  Author  of  "  Papers  fro/n  Picardy.'''' 


Deputy  Assistant  Chaplain- General,  Corps  ;  Chaplain  of  Trinity 

College,  Cambridge. 


U 


XI 


RELIGIOUS    EDUCATION    AND    THE 
TRAINING    OF   THE    CLERGY 

A  DISCUSSION  of  Religious  Education  in  England 
to-day  may  fairly  start  with  the  assumption  that 
something  is  wrong  with  it — something,  that  is  to  say, 
over  and  above  obvious  defects  or  omissions  which  were 
commonplaces  long  before  the  searchlights  of  war 
displayed  the  whole  nakedness  of  the  land.  The 
beaten  tracks  of  those  criticisms  and  controversies 
of  the  past  are  unknown  to  me  ;  they  may  or  may 
not  intersect  the  line  of  construction  or  development 
which  seems  obvious  now.  But  the  urgent  and 
immediate  need  of  drastic  reform  may  perhaps  excuse 
the  ignorant  for  rushing  in  with  such  ideas  as  they  have. 

The  opportunity  of  association  with  the  English- 
man, the  man  in  the  street,  '  Jones,' — or  what  you  will 
— which  the  war  has  afforded  to  army  chaplains  have 
revealed  to  those  who  did  not  know  it  before  an  absence 
of  religious  education,  not  merely  deficiencies  in  its 
method.  These  two  are  really  one  and  the  same  ;  the 
one  and  only  fault  in  our  religious  education  is  that  it 

'''  u  2 


292      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        xi 

is  not  religious  education.  It  is  true  that  we  give  what 
is  called  religious  education  in  our  Sunday  schools, ^ 
but  though  we  may  teach  in  them  we  certainly  do  not 
educate,  and  even  what  we  teach  is  nothing  much  like 
the  Christian  religion.  In  so  speaking  we  are  not 
taking  into  account  the  instruction  given  in  the  home, 
for  that,  after  all,  varies  so  much  that  it  cannot  supply 
a  basis  for  any  broad  generalisation. 

Our  religious  instruction,  then,  does  not  educate  in 
religion  because  it  is  based  on  no  assumption  that 
religion  is  a  thing  which  concerns  the  child's  intelligence. 
As  a  child  is  taught — (and  '  taught '  only  means  '  told  ') 
— that  Jamaica  is  or  is  not  of  importance  because  figs 
are  or  are  not  grown  there,  so  he  is  taught  or  told  that 
there  are  ten  plagues  or  eleven  tribes  and  that  David 
and  Timothy  were  both  "  good  men."  Such  facts 
may  or  may  not  be  true  as  Jewish  history,  but  they 
have  no  more  a  place  in  religious  education  than  could 
be  found  for  Jamaican  fig-growing  in  "  Ruff's  Guide  " 
or  "  Bradshaw."  Nor  is  the  child — perhaps  fortu- 
nately enough — called  upon  to  think  of  these  things, 
but  only  to  remember  them.  Should  he  start  thinking 
he  might  indeed  select  David  as  his  ideal  with  results 
disastrous  to  himself,  and  might  come  to  other  con- 
clusions about  religion  which,  fortunately,  the  complete 
suppression  of  his  intelligence  on  the  subject  causes  to 
be  smothered  away.  If  perchance  he  struggle  to  escape 
from  the  folds  of  this  stifling  process  and  dare  ask  of 
his  teacher  such  questions  as  "  Who  made  God  ?  " 
or — having  been  '  paraded  '  for  church  on  Sunday — 

^  The  whole  question  of  rehgioiis  education  in  elementary 
day  schools  is,  for  various  reasons,  omitted  in  this  Essay. 


XI  RELIGIOUS   EDUCATION  293 

"  If  Solomon  was  really  a  wise  man  why  did  he  have 
hundreds  of  wives  ?  "  are  his  inquiries  taken  as  oppor- 
tunities for  '  educating  '  him  ?  Are  the  motions  of  that 
wonderful  m-asterpiece  of  God's  creation — the  human 
mind — towards  intelligence  greeted  with  delight  ?  Is 
he  encouraged  to  believe  that  he  is  doing  just  what  God 
meant  him  to  do — employ  his  mind  on  the  most  impor- 
tant subject  in  the  whole  universe,  the  Nature  and 
Character  of  God  HimseK  ?  Is  he  led  reverently  and 
honestly  towards  such  beginnings  as  he  can  appreciate 
of  a  proper  understanding  of  his  religion  ?  Generally 
not.  "  That  is  not  in  the  lesson."  "  You  must  never 
question  anything  in  the  Bible."  "  Hush,  Charlie ! 
You  mustn't  be  irreverent."  "  Little  boys  can't  under- 
stand these  things  ;  wait  till  you  get  older."  All  of 
which  answers  being  interpreted  read  thus  to  him  ten 
years  later  (if  he  remember  them  so  long) : 

"That  is  not  in  the  lesson  "  =  "  I  am  not  hereto 
answer  that  kind  of  question.  I  know  very  little  about 
God  and  know  no  way  of  answering  you  ;  but  you  must 
not  realise  this,  for  then  you  might  get  puzzled  about 
religion  or,  much  worse,  lose  confidence  in  me  as  a 
teacher." 

"  You  must  never  question  anything  in  the  Bible  " 
=  "  The  rational  safeguards  of  religion  are  so  flimsy 
that  you  must  never  lean  on  them." 

"Hush,  Charlie!  You  mustn't  be  irreverent  "  = 
"  Don't  set  such  a  bad  example  of  misguided  intelli- 
gence. You  should  always  retain  a  large  reserve  of 
stupidity  for  dealing  with  holy  things." 

"  Little  boys  can't  understand  these  things  ;  wait 
till  you  get  older  "  ="  Wait  till  you  get  older  and  then 


294      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         xi 

you  will  have  to  ask  someone  else,  so  I  shan't  come  into 
it  any  way." 

The  time  of  Confirmation  might  be  supposed  to 
remedy  previous  defects  in  religious  education,  but 
there  are  reasons  why  in  most  cases  it  does  not  do  so. 
The  profound  unaffected  thoughtfulness  of  childhood 
has  passed  ;  the  boy  mind  has  seized  upon  a  thousand 
interests  ;  adolescence  stirs  the  body  to  restlessness. 
Self-conscious,  he  will  not  ask  questions  at  a  class  of 
his  school  or  play  fellows.  He  comes  under  compul- 
sion, parental  or  otherwise  ;  he  generally  wants  "  to 
be  done,"  it  is  true,  but  chiefly  because  it  is  "  the 
thing,"  and  though  the  classes  are  a  bore  he  does  not 
wish  to  be  peculiar.  If  he  is  independent  enough  to 
assert  his  dislike  of  the  whole  proceedings  he  will  not 
often  escape  ;  coercion  or  the  unsuccessful  attempt  at 
it  will  often  set  him  in  an  attitude  of  antagonism 
towards  religion  and  parsons  for  life.  It  is  not  wholly 
a  cause  for  regret  that  there  is  such  a  large  leakage 
between  Sunday  school  and  Confirmation  class.  Many 
an  army  chaplain  has  had  cause  to  be  thankful  for  the 
countless  opportunities  presented  by  the  presence  of 
large  numbers  of  unconfirmed  men  in  his  charge.  For 
Confirmation  is,  as  it  were,  the  last  excuse  that  our 
Church  has — to  use  a  horrible  phrase — for  "  getting 
hold  of  a  man  "  ;  that  excuse  generally  passes  at  the 
age  of  fourteen  ;  if  a  boy  is  confirmed  by  that  age  and 
does  not  then  gain  some  sort  of  mental  appreciation 
of  the  scheme  and  fabric  of  the  Christian  religion,  the 
chances  are  that  he  never  will.  And  who  can  expect 
him  to  do  so  at  that  age  ?  The  curate  himself  only 
guarantees  that  he  knows  the  Catechism  ;    he  may, 


XI  RELIGIOUS   EDUCATION  295 

of  course,  be  interested  in  it  and  even  in  a  certain  way 
understand  it,  but  knowing  in  this  connection  need 
only  mean  cramming  like  a  French  verb  and  repeating 
by  heart  ;  so  much  additional  school-work,  in  fact. 
The  whole  Catechism,  indeed,  worded  as  it  is,  is  another 
fair  instance  of  the  lack  of  any  attempt  at  education. 
It  is  the  only  authoritative  instruction  in  the  faith,  yet 
its  language  is  difficult  enough  to  render  it  for  all 
practical  purposes  useless  unless  the  memory  can  retain 
not  only  the  verbal  repetition  but  the  explanations 
given  in  Confirmation  classes  years  before.  The  answer 
to  the  second  question  on  the  Sacraments  is  to  laymen 
a  monument  of  intricate  unintelligibility.  If  we  are 
to  have  a  manual  of  religious  instruction  at  all  it  should 
be  verbally  and  constructively  intelligible  and  based 
on  scientific  lines.  I  cannot  do  this  ;  I  am  not  an 
educationist  or  a  trained  teacher  ;  but  I  know  that  it 
can  be  done,  and  I  should  recognise  at  once  the  finished 
article.  It  would  not  in  the  least  matter — rather  the 
reverse — if  the  whole  manual  and  the  individual 
questions  were  too  long  to  be  committed  to  memory. 
Our  real  difficulty  about  Confirmation  is  this  :  we 
believe  that  the  gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit  through  the 
laying  on  of  hands  is  vitally  necessary  to  strengthen 
and  uplift  at  as  early  an  age  as  possible  ;  the  standard 
of  intelligence  demanded  by  the  Prayer-book  or  indeed 
by  the  requirements  of  the  situation  itself  is  not  high ; 
it  may  well  be  that  most  of  our  boys  understand  quite 
enough  to  make  them  fit  to  receive  the  grace  of  Con- 
firmation. But  it  is  not,  and  cannot  be,  that  under- 
standing of  the  Christian  Faith  which  is  the  proper 
equipment  of  a  man  of  God  in  a  pagan  world.    Yet  the 


296      THE    CHURCH    IN   THE   FURNACE       xi 

Church  as  it  works  at  present  can  never  remedy  this, 
once  Confirmation  has  taken  place.  It  can  exhort 
attendance  at  Bible  class  ;  it  may  preach  "  Read, 
read,  read,"  but  it  has  lost  its  opportunity.  The 
clergy  cannot — only  because  they  dare  not — give  away 
their  own  organisation  and  say  to  a  man  twenty, 
thirty,  or  forty  years  of  age,  "  Your  mind  is  full  of 
wrong  conceptions  as  to  the  Christian  religion  and  the 
Christian  life  ;  it  is  our  fault,  not  yours.  But  I  must 
ask  you  to  conform  to  one  of  the  many  Prayer-book 
rubrics  which  we  habitually  disobey  and  give  me  notice 
of  your  intention  to  make  your  Communion  on  Easter 
Day.  I  shall  then  not  administer  the  Sacrament  to 
you  unless  you  give  me  the  opportunity  of  explaining 
to  you  that  which  through  the  Church's  fault  you  have 
never  understood  or  been  allowed  to  forget,  and  of 
helping  you  to  discover  or  rediscover  what  Christ  is  to 
YOU.  This  Easter  we  do  not  want  our  offertories 
swollen  and  our  chancels  filled  by  men  who — many  of 
them — do  not  beheve  in  God  except  in  the  vaguest 
possible  way  and  whose  idea  of  Christianity  is  frankly 
Gilbertian."! 

Thus  the  weakness  of  the  Church  of  England  lies, 
not  in  the  large  number  of  nominally  Church  of  England 
men  who  are  unconfirmed,  but  in  the  larger  number  of 
men  who,  being  confirmed,  have  no  rehgious  education 
worthy  of  the  name. 

Before  passing  from  this  sfight  and  therefore  unfairly 

1  Even  supposing  such  an  attitude  to  bo  possible,  the  suggestion 
begs  tlie  whole  question  as  to  the  ability  or  otiierwise  of  the  individual 
clergy  of  our  Church  to  do  for  the  man  all  that  such  a  projiosal  would 
involve. 


XI  RELIGIOUS    EDUCATION  297 

incomplete  examination  of  '  religious  education,'  so 
called,  to  review  the  effect  on  mind  and  character 
of  the  grown  man,  let  us  consider  briefly  the  similarity 
of  the  defects  in  the  training  of  the  upper  classes  of 
boyhood.  The  parents  insist  on  the  prominent 
advertisement  of  religion  in  the  prospectuses  of  the 
schools  to  which  they  send  their  boys.  The  high  fee 
demanded  leaves  them  satisfied  with  a  course  which 
includes  sausages  on  Sunday,  a  gymnasium,  a  tiled 
swimming-bath,  "  Scripture,"  and  a  school  chapel  with 
a  D.D.  or  B.D.  attached  as  chaplain,  or  preferably  as 
French  or  science  master  with  chaplain's  work  thrown 
in.  Thus  they  delegate  the  most  important  and  most 
difficult  of  parental  responsibilities  to  paid — often 
underpaid — strangers  ;  nor  in  so  doing  have  they  the 
excuses  of  the  working-classes.  They  could  make 
the  time  ;  they  have  the  necessary  general  education 
to  fit  them  for  the  task  ;  books  and  teachers  are  within 
easy  access.^  But  religion  becomes  a  closed  book  at 
home  ;  natural  reserve  on  the  boy's  side,  ignorance, 
unthinking  belief  in  the  perfection  of  the  public  school 
system  on  the  parents'  side  combine  to  prevent  them 
ever  discussing  the  two  things  that  make  the  boy's 
very  life — his  body  and  his  spirit.  And  yet  often  enough 
father  and  mother  want  the  boy  to  be  "good "  and  are 
overjoyed  when  he  gets  top  in  the  Scripture  exam.  ; 
they  little  know  that  all  that  that  breathless  fact 
indicates  is  that  Harold  has  drawn  a  perfectly  exact 
and  most  beautifully  neat  map  of  St.  Paul's  missionary 
journeys,  not  omitting  to  mark  the  drainage  system 
and  mountain  ranges  of  Southern  Europe,  and  has,  by 

^  Books  certainly  ;  teachers  not  always,  but  of  them  more  later. 


298      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        xi 

a  feat  of  mental  gymnastic  worthy  of  a  better  cause, 
succeeded  in  disentangling  the  career  of  Jehoshaphat 
from  that  of  Ahab.  Meanwhile  compulsory  school 
chapel — often  either  wickedly  dreary  or  uninteUigibly 
over-elaborate — engenders  either  a  distaste  for  religious 
observances  or  at  any  rate  an  undesirable  familiarity 
with  them  and  a  wearied  sense  of  formality  in  attending 
them.  This  brings  us  to  another  weakness  in  our  system 
of  presenting  religion,  and  it  results  in  a  misconception 
which  affects  all  classes  alike.  We  encourage  or  at 
any  rate  allow  the  idea  that  the  be-all  and  end-all  of 
religion  is  to  "  come  to  church."  By  the  time  a  boy 
leaves  Sunday  school  or  pubhc  school  this  is  thoroughly 
ingrained.  The  view  generally  presented  to  him  of 
church  attendance  and  Communion  would  lead  one  to 
suppose  that  he  is  in  Standard  VI,  whereas  in  reality 
we  have  never  got  him  past  Standard  I.  Our  Matins 
and  Liturgy  must  have  been  purposed  for  worshippers 
with  greater  rehgious  understanding  and  devotional 
capacity  than  the  average  layman  as  the  Church  of 
England  turns  him  out.  In  the  majority  of  cases  he 
cannot  live  up  to  this  Standard  VI  form  of  worship, 
and  one  of  two  things  happens.  Either  he  doesn't 
notice  or  realise  that  this  is  so,  and  is  content  with  an 
outward  unthinking  formahty  culminating  in  a  sides- 
manship  ;  or  he  reacts  from  it,  recognising  that  it  is 
"  too  much  of  a  good  thing  for  him,"  hollow,  dreary, 
meaningless,  and  leaves  our  churches  half  empty 
accordingly. 

Lastly,  the  commonest  word  in  a  boy's  training  is 
*  Don't,'  and  his  rehgious  training  is  nearly  all '  Don'ts.' 
In  a  majority  of  cases  he  never  unlearns  this  negative 


XI  RELIGIOUS   EDUCATION  299 

view  of  religion,  which  is  Jewish  in  its  origin  rather 
than  Christian.  Often  enough  a  man's  positive  virtues 
are  directly  due  to  Christian  influences,  but  he  has  not 
learned  to  recognise  them  as  Christ-like. 

Whether  or  not  the  truly  magnificent  soldier  whom 
we  honour  is  a  production  or  accident  of  this  system  I 
do  not  propose  to  discuss.  But  let  us  examine  the 
proofs  in  the  man  of  the  flaws  in  the  boy's  training. 
He  believes  just  a  very  few  things  about  God,  but  could 
give  no  reason  for  the  faith  that  is  in  him.  The  children 
of  this  world  are  indeed  wiser  than  the  children  of 
light  ;  no  average  professing  once-a-year-communi- 
cant  member  of  the  Church  of  England  could  hold 
his  own  for  five  minutes  against  any  average  mildly 
intelligent — not  even  intellectual — agnostic.  The 
unbeliever  always  knows  better  what  he  disbelieves, 
and  why,  than  the  believer  knows  why  he  has  any 
faith,  what  good  it  is  to  him  or  anyone  else,  or  even 
what  it  means.  And  this  is  only  to  be  expected. 
Disbelief  has  the  monopoly  of  thought  in  the  average 
man.  When  he  starts  seriously  thinking,  as  few  men  in 
any  class  fail  some  time  or  other  to  do,  he  begins  with 
the  assumption  that  the  Christian  side  of  the  question 
has  already  been  put.  Did  he  not  go  to  Sunday  school  ? 
Of  course  he  did — he  won  a  Scripture  prize.  Sermons  ? 
Why  !  he  must  have  heard  hundreds  in  his  choir 
days  or  his  school  chapel.  He  was  confirmed  after 
many  classes.  Yes,  it's  only  fair  to  give  the  other  side 
a  chance  now.  He  attends  an  open-air  meeting,  reads 
a  book,  joins  in  a  discussion,  or  whatever  it  is  that  stirs 
his  mind.  He  hears  criticisms — so  easy  and  obvious — 
of  the  Church  and  cannot  reply  ;   he  hears  elementary 


300      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        xi 

objections  to  Christianity  to  which  his  religious  educa- 
tion has  supplied  him  with  no  answer.  He  assumes 
that  there  is  no  reply.  His  own  growdng  experience 
of  hfe  as  it  really  is,  of  men  and  things — not  necessarily 
alone  under  war  conditions — sheds  a  blaze  of  absurdity, 
or  at  any  rate  of  unlikelihood,  on  to  what  he  has  been 
taught.  His  common-sense  rebels,  as  very  well  it 
may.  Even  if  he  cares  enough,  if  home  or  some  other 
personal  influence  keep  alive  a  passion  for  righteousness 
or  a  mystic  temperament  refuses  to  abandon  a  sense 
of  the  unseen,  he  just  chngs  to  certain  fundamentals 
and  refuses  to  think  things  out.  Such  a  course  may 
satisfy  himself,  but  it  is  a  source  of  great  weakness  to 
the  Church.  He  dares  not  think,  he  must  avoid 
discussion  ;  often  enough  he  cannot  even  disclose 
himself  to  be  a  believer,  having  no  guns  to  defend  his 
position.  And  in  the  case  where  a  man  just  ceases  to 
believe  at  all  he  is  as  often  as  not  quite  honest  about  it 
and  proud  of  so  being.  He  thinks  that  he  has  given  a 
judicial  verdict  on  sufficient  evidence  and  does  not 
realise  that  the  counsel  for  the  defence  has  never  been 
allowed  to  state  a  case  at  all.  He  goes  in  search  of 
some  other  philosophy  of  hfe  which  affects  to  enlist 
the  intelligence  and  is  willing,  at  any  rate,  to  explain 
itself — or,  more  often,  he  simply  does  without. 

I  am  well  aware  that  this  Essay  up  to  this  point  is 
fiercely  indifferent  to  much  that  may  be  said  on  the 
other  side  and  ignores  many  exceptions  to  the  state- 
ments contained  in  it.  But  the  general  position  is  such 
that  exaggeration — where  it  can  be  fairly  so  named — 
may  be  excused  if  it  serves  to  emphasise  our  main 
failures  as  they  affect  large  numbers  of  baptised  and 


XI  RELIGIOUS   EDUCATION  301 

professing  Christians.  And  the  remedies  ?  The  first 
surely  is  to  observe  the  most  elementary  rule  of  educa- 
tion— that  nothing  should  be  for  any  reason  taught 
by  the  teacher  which  later  must  be  unlearnt  by  the 
pupil.  Is  the  Old  Testament  of  the  same  value  and 
importance  to  us  as  the  New  Testament  ?  Is  the  chief 
Christian  motive  fear  of  hell  or  punishment  ?  Does 
virtue  pay  ?  If  we  agree,  as  agree  we  must,  that  our 
religion  is  based  on  the  New  Testament,  that  the  Hell- 
fire  Gospel  offers  to  many  a  selfish  motive,  that  un- 
compromising virtue  does  not  necessarily  bring  in  this 
world  its  own  reward,  we  have  no  business  ever  to 
let  any  child  receive  a  wrong  impression  on  such 
subjects.  This  need  not  involve  us  in  any  controversy 
as  to  the  verbal  inspiration  of  the  Bible,  though  it 
would  be  well  for  the  Church  of  England  to  hold  one 
opinion  and  to  utter  one  authoritative  voice  on  that 
and  many  other  subjects.  But  let  that  pass.  Let 
us  suppose  that  we  are  all  agreed  to  accept  the  literal 
historical  accuracy,  say,  of  the  book  of  Jonah.  Is  the 
'  fact  '  of  that  prophet's  consumption  by  a  whale  of 
the  same  importance  as  the  fact  that  Christ  was  truly 
Man  yet  sinned  not  ?  If  not,  why,  in  pity's  name, 
should  we  give  that  impression  to  nine  out  of  every 
ten  children  who  ever  attend  our  churches  or  schools  ? 
I  speak  without  much  experience  of  the  process  ;  I 
could  not  here  and  now  produce  my  evidence.  But  I 
see  the  results.  The  results  are  a  suspicion  of  the  New 
Testament  because  of  the  Old,  or  an  adoption  of  the 
New  Testament  to  the  entire  exclusion  of  the  Old  as 
being  too  trivial.  The/ac^s  of  Bibhcal  or  Jewish  historj' 
are  so  persistently  pushed  into  the  child-mind  as  religious 


302      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        xi 

verities  of  the  supremest  importance  that  he  cannot 
see  the  wood  for  the  trees.  Where  we  do  try  to  draw  a 
moral  from  Old  Testament  history  it  is  always  the 
kind  of  lesson  that  pictures  God  as  the  policeman  round 
the  corner,  whereas  nearly  every  page  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, including  the  book  of  Jonah,  contains  infinitely 
more  accurate  and  more  useful  information  than  that. 
As  childhood  passes  into  boyhood  the  same  method 
continues.  The  child  has  to  unlearn  the  negative 
presentation  of  Christianity  ;  he  has  to  forget,  if  he 
can,  that  "  churchgoing  "  is  neither  the  beginning  nor 
the  end  of  the  Christian  life,  though  the  Church  itself 
functions  at  either  end  of  human  life.  The  instances 
may  not  be  well  chosen,  but  there  are  countless  things 
which  boys  and  girls  learn  about  religion,  in  hymns, 
in  Sunday  school,  in  sermons,  in  boqks,  in  impressions, 
which  some  day  must  be  unlearnt  if  ever  they  are  to 
be  earnest,  intelligent  Christians.  To  unlearn  what  has 
been  taught  when  we  were  young,  to  readjust  ideas, 
to  adapt  simple  and  early  instruction  to  later  experience 
of  life,  must,  under  the  best  circumstances,  be  a  delicate 
and  difficult  operation.  But  with  us  it  is  an  operation 
which  has  to  be  performed  unaided  ;  human  frailty 
in  the  face  of  temptation,  the  strength  of  outward 
things,  and  "  the  wisdom  of  the  children  of  this  world  " 
settle  the  rest. 

And  next  ?  Certain  truths  must  be  taught  with  a 
right  proportion  of  emphasis,  and  nothing  must  ever 
be  taught  that  needs  violent  readjustment.  With  this 
end  in  view  we  require  an  authoritative  manual  of 
instruction  (not  only  on  Church  doctrine)  as  a  supple- 
ment to,   or  alternative  for,   the  Church  Catechism.! 


XI  RELIGIOUS   EDUCATION  303 

Well  and  good.  But  there  must  be  an  attempt — outside 
and  beyond  this — to  educate  rather  than  to  teach. 
Take  Prayer  as  a  typical  illustration  ;  we  are  all 
taught  prayers.  Many  an  officer's  sole  petitions  are 
the  Lord's  Prayer  and  something  almost  as  out  of 
tune  with  his  present  life  as 

Grentle  Jesus,  meek  and  mild. 
Look  on  me,  a  little  child  — 

and  so  forth.  It  is  not  his  fault  that  his  training  in 
prayer  was  always  to  learn  by  heart  children's  prayers, 
boys'  prayers,  collects  and  so  forth  as  "  vain  repeti- 
tions." Seldom  was  he  trained  to  reach  out  towards 
God  and  express  himself  to  God  in  his  own  words,  or 
to  watch  for  God  ;  he  does  not  know  how  to  pray — 
"  Speak,  Lord,  for  Thy  servant  heareth."  Prayer  is 
represented  to  his  mind  as  a  kind  of  automatic  machine 
which  may  or  may  not  work  for  his  benefit.  The 
explanation  of  the  Lord's  Prayer  as  given  in  the 
Catechism  lays  a  quite  disproportionate  stress  on  the 
personal  advantages  for  self  and  friends  to  be  secured 
through  the  act  of  praying.  The  three  primary  devo- 
tions "  Hallowed  be  Thy  Name,  Thy  Kingdom  come. 
Thy  Will  be  done,"  receive  no  intelligent  emphasis  in 
the  answer  to  the  question  "  What  desirest  thou  of 
God  in  this  prayer  ?  "  And  no  reference  whatever  is 
made  in  it  to  the  condition  attaching  to  our  request 
for  forgiveness. 

So  much  and  much  more  is  needed  in  many  direc- 
tions. Sketchy  must  be  any  criticisms  that  omit  a 
reference  to  the  fundamental  flaw,  and  suggestions 
must  be  indefinite  that  do  not  urge  the  one  improve- 
ment necessary  as  the  source  of  all  others. 


304      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        xi 

The  weakness  of  religious  education  in  our  countrj^ 
is  the  weakness  of  us,  the  clergy.  There  is  no  fault 
in  it  which  ultimately  cannot  justly  be  laid  at  our 
door.  If  Sunday-school  teachers  with  all  their  devotion 
and  self-sacrifice  are  fruitless  in  their  efforts,  it  is  we 
who  trained  them  so  or  never  noticed  that  they  were 
not  trained  better.  If  sermons,  whether  to  children 
or  adults,  if  addresses  at  Bible  or  Confirmation  class, 
have  been  ineffective,  they  were  ours.  We  have  access 
to  the  homes,  we  have  a  fair  field  in  the  public  schools 
and  universities,  we  have  privileged  opportunities 
with  individuals  ;  the  product  too  is  ours.  Deus 
misereatur.  We  shall  be  told  that  we  are  not  nearly 
near  enough  to  being  saints  ourselves  ;  that  even  we 
talk  and  organise  too  much  and  pray  too  little  ;  that 
we  do  not  put  our  trust  in  and  stir  up  the  Spirit  of  God 
Who  is  in  us  ;  and  it  is  all  true.  We  shall  be  told,  and 
rightly,  that  our  theology  is  weak  and  our  course  of 
study  and  preparation  laughably  insufficient  in  length 
compared  with  that  of  the  Roman  Catholic  priest  or 
the  minister  of  most  of  the  denominations.  But  I 
would  direct  attention  to  the  fatal  weakness  of  our 
training  mentally  and  psychologically,  leaving  to  others 
the  discussion  of  the  spiritual  or  theological  aspect. 
And  in  such  criticism  as  I  make  I  must  be  understood 
still  to  speak  quite  generally.  The  limits  of  space 
imposed  upon  me  do  not  allow  of  a  recital  of  exceptions 
and  qualifications. 

(i)  We  are,  or  are  supposed  to  be,  the  chosen  ex- 
ponents of  Revealed  Truth,  and  as  such  to  teach  it  and 
to  preach  it  in  the  world,  yet  we  ourselves  do  not 
receive  proper  instruction  in  teaching  or  preaching. 


XI  RELIGIOUS   EDUCATION  305 

If  we  do  not  train  our  Sunday-school  teachers  in  the 
elements  of  educational  method  and  they  are  therefore 
bad  teachers,  it  is  because  we  do  not  ourselves  know. 
We  may  in  course  of  years  learn  how  to  present  know- 
ledge to  the  child-mind  and  how  best  to  provoke  the 
young  to  think  for  themselves,  how  best  to  train,  but 
we  could  have  been  told  a  great  deal  about  this  before 
ever  we  started.  We  were  not  told.  We  were  put  to 
practise  no  doubt  in  a  Sunday  school  as  laymen  and 
were  given  the  subject-matter  of  the  lesson  carefully 
arranged  under  headings,  but  of  educational  method 
we  were  left  wholly  ignorant.  We  thought  that  we 
"  had  a  way  "  with  children  and  that  that  was  enough. 
The  local  Sunday  school  to  us  as  laymen  was  as  the 
laboratory  to  the  would-be  man  of  science  ;  but  no 
student  of  science  will  become  a  chemist  by  the  mere 
fact  of  visiting  a  laboratory  and  reading  the  names 
on  the  bottles.  He  must  be  told  also  the  various 
combinations  of  chemicals,  the  action  and  reaction  of 
one  on  the  other,  the  proportion  required,  the  adjust- 
ment of  weights,  in  order  that  he  may  know  how  to 
handle  the  material  at  his  disposal.  We  have,  as 
teachers,  the  material,  the  facts,  the  superficial  know- 
ledge, but  we  are  not  trained  to  manipulate. 

Nor  are  we  instructed  how  to  preach.  We  present 
three  sermons  on  approbation  and  they  are  mildly 
criticised  by  an  examining  chaplain.  Any  man  of 
ordinary  education,  priest  or  layman,  could  in  the 
course  of  his  life  preach  one  or  two  sermons  which 
would  fairly  pass  any  examining  chaplain.  It  is  no  test, 
nor  is  it  seriously  contemplated  by  the  Ordination 
candidate  as  such.     Of  course  he  wants  to  make  the 


306      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        xi 

best  impression  possible,  but  the  sermon-test  is  never 
presented  to  him  by  those  in  authority  as  a  serious 
part  of  his  examination  for  Holy  Orders,  and  he  is 
allowed  to  take  for  granted  that  of  course  he  will  be 
"  licensed  to  preach."  There  is  another  form  of 
reliability  trial  ;  the  candidate  delivers  himself  on  a 
Sunday  in  church  before  the  staff  and  students  of  his 
theological  college  ;  and  on  the  lawn  or  in  the  common 
room  afterwards  they  pull  the  sermon  to  pieces  for 
him.  Its  orthodoxy  is  thereby  insured,  its  theology 
is  corrected,  and  a  friendly  battle  may  be  waged  as 
to  whether  or  not  it  is  sound  from  a  "  Kartholic  " 
point  of  view,  or  (in  another  type  of  college)  "  a  bit 
dangerous  "  from  an  ultra-Protestant  point  of  view. 
But,  valuable  as  some  such  criticisms  may  be,  it  is 
simply  comic  to  confine  the  critics  to  a  band  of  young 
embryo-clerics  in  the  close  atmosphere  of  a  theological 
college.  Our  life's  work  is  to  make  our  message 
intelligible,  not  to  university  men  particularly  interested 
in  our  own  specialised  work,  but  to  the  world  at  large, 
(ii)  We  are,  or  are  supposed  to  be,  the  defenders 
and  explainers  of  the  Christian  Faith  ;  we  are  regarded 
as — indeed,  tacitly  claim  to  be — the  experts.  We  have 
courses  of  lectures  delivered  to  us  on  the  heresies  of 
the  Early  Church,  yet  no  one  troubles  to  bring  those 
heresies  into  relation  with  modern  thought  or  to  tell 
us  that  the  man  in  the  street  reads,  not  Arius,  but 
Bernard  Shaw.  Ten  minutes'  digression  with  an  apology 
in  the  middle  of  an  hour's  lecture  suffices  to  dispose  of 
Christian  Science.  Spiritualism  is  perhaps  not  so  much 
as  mentioned — save  in  answer  to  a  question.  We  may 
have  done  much  on  our  own  initiative  to  read  the 


XI  RELIGIOUS   EDUCATION  307 

Moderns,  but  as  far  as  our  training  goes  we  are  not 
encouraged  to  study  them  nor  equipped  to  meet  them. 
Small  wonder  that  the  Gospel  we  deliver  to  others  in 
school  or  class  or  church  seems  to  ignore  and  belittle, 
or  at  any  rate  seldom  to  satisfy,  modern  doubt. 

(iii)  In  this  same  connection  we  lack  yet  more.  We 
may  obtain  a  fair  pass-mark  in  our  set-book,  "  Moberly 
on  the  Atonement  "  ;  we  may  produce  an  excellent 
test-sermon  on  the  same  subject — a  sermon  well 
balanced,  orthodox,  theologically  correct.  But  no 
one  has  ever  troubled  to  find  out  what  answer,  if  any 
— worded  in  intelligible  and  non-theological  language — 
we  could  give,  for  example,  to  a  member  of  the  Work- 
men's Educational  Association  who  blurted  out  to  us 
in  conversation  some  such  remark  as  this  :  "A  great 
deal  in  Christ's  teaching  appeals  to  me,  but  I  can't 
tolerate  the  idea  of  someone  else  being  punished 
for  my  sins,  nor  understand  why  God  should 
forgive  me  because  Jesus  died  on  the  Cross."  Our 
training  would  provide  us,  no  doubt,  with  the  ability 
to  preach  quite  a  decent  and  utterly  wearisome  sermon 
on  the  subject  two  Sundays  later  ;  but  what  we  need 
and  what  we  lack  is  the  understanding  that  the  problem 
— though  of  general  interest — is  wholly  individual  in  a 
unique  way  to  the  particular  man  who  is  speaking  to 
us.  If  true  followers  of  Christ's  method  and  example, 
we  are  messengers  to  the  individual  rather  than  to 
the  mass.  Yet  we  are  given  no  training  in  dealing  with 
individuals.  Our  apologetics,  as  far  as  we  have  any, 
are  negative  and  general  rather  than  positive  and 
particular.  I  mean,  we  are  invited  to  examine  objec- 
tions to  Christianity  and  are  pointed  to  the  answer  with 

X  2 


308      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE    FURNACE        xi 

the  implication  that  such  knowledge  so  formulated  is 
all  that  we  require.  Many  men  are  ordained  even  with- 
out such  knowledge,  and  when  it  is  obtained  it  is  due 
often  enough  to  the  initiative  of  the  man  himself  and 
not  to  the  guidance  of  those  responsible  for  his  training. 
But,  in  any  case,  this  is  not  sufficient  ;  it  concentrates 
attention  on  too  definite  a  line  of  approach  to  God. 
It  is  the  old  trouble  of  teaching  the  doubter  rather  than 
educating  him  ;  it  is  too  cut  and  dried.  We  should 
try,  not  so  much  to  prove  Christ  true  by  argument  in 
the  face  of  certain  criticisms  and  objections  and  along 
certain  beaten  tracks,  but  rather  to  help  the  doubter  to 
find  his  God  in  Christ.  He  can  find  Him  along  no 
general  line  of  approach  ;  he  will  not  have  started 
where  the  vicar  started  ;  he  will  not  correspond  in 
his  method  of  approach  in  exact  detail  to  anything 
laid  down  in  any  book  of  apologetics.  He  speaks  of 
his  difficulties  as  intellectual,  but  that  is  an  anaemic 
description  unless  we  realise  that  we  must  take  also 
into  consideration  his  age,  class  of  life,  profession, 
family  circumstances  and  temperament.  I  have 
referred  to  such  individual  treatment  as  Christ's  own 
method  ;  it  can  be  noted  in  His  dealings  with  the 
woman  at  the  weU,  Nathanael,  Nicodemus,  the  woman 
taken  in  adultery,  Mary  and  Martha,  St.  Peter,  St. 
Thomas,  the  dying  thief.  The  most  striking  case  of 
all  is  that  recorded  of  the  young  man  in  St.  Mark  x, 
where,  to  one  in  search  of  the  knowledge  of  God,  Christ 
replied  with  a  cut-and-dried  formula  which  was  the 
stock-in-trade  of  the  priesthood  of  the  day,  using  it 
as  a  test,  and  then  beholding  and  loving  him  answered 
the  individual.     We  examine  these  various  characters 


XI  RELIGIOUS   EDUCATION  309 

in  the  Gospel  story  without  often  realising  that  we  can 
trace  their  different  characteristics  only  because  we 
are  studying  their  contact  with  One  to  Whom  the 
individuality  of  each  was  of  the  supremest  interest 
because  he  cared  intensely  for  them.  If  we  met  them 
in  a  parish  we  should  class  them  together  ;  we  have 
had  no  sort  of  specialist  training  to  enable  us  to  regard 
them  as  distinct  one  from  the  other.  We  are  given 
one  intellectual  presentation  of  the  Faith ;  we  are  allowed 
to  be  content  with  one  narrow  line  of  approach  for — 
(let  us  put  the  Gospel  characters  into  modern  terms) — 
the  young  man  about  town,  the  middle-aged  intel- 
lectual, the  East-ender,  the  feeble  Christian  and  the 
fussy  Christian,  the  prostitute,  and  the  woman  who's 
gone  wrong  once  or  twice  because  "  Jack's  been  so 
long  away  in  France  and  a  woman  can't  help  these 
feehngs  sometimes." 

And  thus  to  the  point.  There  is  no  attempt  or  at 
any  rate  there  is  in  results  no  evidence  of  the  attempt 
either  at  our  universities  or  theological  colleges  to  teach 
us  any  practical  psychology.  At  the  age  of  twenty- 
three  or  twenty-four  we  are  supposed  to  be  experts  in 
dealing  with  boy  scouts  and  young  men,  but  many 
young  priests  could  not  so  much  as  spell '  adolescence  '  ; 
yet  there  is  much  that  they  could  have  been  told  about 
the  varying  mental,  moral,  and  emotional  phenomena  of 
this  stage. 

The  zealous  young  missionary  goes  straight  from  his 
ordination  to  preach  to  and  teach  middle-aged  men  who 
are  no  less  anxious  than  he  for  the  coming  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  though  they  may  no  longer  have  the 
fiery  enthusiasms  of  early  youth.      And  if  the  young 


310     THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        xi 

priest  is  out  of  sympathy  and  understanding  with  such 
men  it  is  not  altogether  his  fault  ;  nobody  has  ever 
drawn  his  attention  to  the  mental  and  emotional  changes 
brought  by  advancing  years  ;  there  exists  an  excellent 
book  on  the  psychology  of  middle  age,  but  his  trainers 
have  never  mentioned  it  to  him,  and  probably  would 
not  have  done  so  even  had  they  known  of  its  existence. 
He  is  called  upon  to  minister  amongst  women  ; 
intimate  acquaintance  with  women  outside  his  own 
family  is  often  very  limited.  There  is  much  that  he 
needs  to  know  and  might  be  told  about  marriage  and 
motherhood.  The  psychology  of  the  prostitute  in 
its  various  stages ;  the  close  connection  between 
rehgious  emotion  and  sexual  impulse  ;  the  strength  and 
extent  of  temptations  to  and  opportunities  for  im- 
morality which  have  never  come  within  the  range  of 
his  own  knowledge  or  personal  experience  ;  the  psy- 
chology of  the  drunkard  and  the  criminal ;  the  artistic 
temperament  ;  the  attitudes  towards  religion  and  life 
in  general  obtaining  in  different  strata  of  society  from 
his  own — he  is  told  nothing  of  all  these  things.  It  is 
genially  supposed,  I  know,  that  three  or  four  years  at 
a  university  and  a  year  spent  at  a  college  settlement 
or  in  travel  will  give  to  us  the  knowledge  of  mankind 
required  for  our  life's  work.  In  exceptional  cases  this 
may  be  partly  true,  but,  even  so,  the  Church  which 
commissions  us  makes  no  endeavour  to  discover  that 
we  are  so  instructed  or  to  repair  the  omissions.  The 
arguments  with  which  the  average  young  priest  is 
equipped  against  immorality  or  dishonesty  are  often 
pathetically  inadequate  because  they  are  drawn  only 
from  his  own  experience  of  life  and  based  too  often 


XI  RELIGIOUS   EDUCATION  311 

solely  upon  a  religious  faith  which  may  not  be  shared 
by  the  man  or  woman  to  whom  he  makes  his  appeal  ; 
nor  do  they  often  allow  for  individual  characteristics 
and  circumstances. 

There  is  no  royal  road  to  virtue  ;  there  is  no  rule  of 
thumb  for  saints  ;   there  is  no  beaten  track  to  God. 

The  laity  complain  that  we  do  not  understand  them. 
Small  wonder  !  We  say  that  our  service  as  army 
chaplains  has  taught  us  much.  A  large  part  of  it  we 
might  have  learnt  before. 

The  defects  and  omissions  in  our  training  may  be 
summarised  as  follows  : — 

(a)  We  have  to  teach  and  are  not  trained  teachers. 
(6)  Our  education  in  preaching  is  inadequate. 

(c)  We  do  not  know  the  layman's  point  of  view  and 
the  real  intellectual  obstacles  to  the  ordinary  man  in 
the  modern  world. 

(d)  We  are  not  trained  to  deal  with  the  individual. 
Medical  men  are  not  qualified  until  they  have  studied 
the  varieties  of  physical  development,  the  normalities 
and  abnormalities  of  bodily  disease.  We  are  supposed 
to  be  doctors  of  the  soul,  spiritual  advisers,  and  we 
are  supplied  with  no  expert  knowledge  of  the  varieties 
of  moral  and  spiritual  development,  the  causes  and 
courses  of  moral  disease  or  of  spiritual  debility. 

These  failures  of  the  past  might  be  remedied  in  the 
future  in  the  following  ways  : — 

{a)  Before  ordination  attendance  should  be  compelled 
at  a  course  of  lectures  on  educational  method  with 
practical  illustrations.     This  is  the  minimum. 

(b)  If  the  other  requirements  are  met  this  defect 
would  tend  to  disappear. 


312      THE  CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE         xi 

(c)  There  must  be  courses  of  lectures  on  the  Moderns, 
with  an  insistence  that  they  be  read.  It  may  or  may 
not  be  possible  to  insist  upon  a  knowledge  of  modern 
philosophic  thought  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term. 
But  the  minimum  required  is  a  thorough  acquaintance 
with  the  works  of  some  of  the  writers  who  influence 
the  ordinary  man  and  woman — Bernard  Shaw,  H.  G. 
Wells,  George  Moore,  Robert  Blatchford,  Mrs.  Besant, 
and  so  forth. 

{d)  Every  theological  college  should  have  as  a 
permanent  member  of  its  staff  an  expert  in  practical 
psychology  as  affecting  religion.  He  would  lecture, 
he  would  work  largely  by  discussion  in  common  room 
and  privately  ;  he  would  stimulate  interest  and  intelli- 
gence by  the  Socratic  method.  He  would  set  an  essay 
question  each  term  on  a  set-book.  One  example 
may  be  quoted  to  make  my  meaning  clear  : — 

Set-book — "  Sinister  Street,"  by  Compton  Mackenzie. 
Question — How  far  in  your  opinion  is  the  character 
of  Michael  true  to  life  ?  Do  you  conceive  aU  such 
phases  to  be  possible  in  one  individual  ?  What  mistakes, 
if  any,  were  made,  in  your  opinion,  by  those  who  had 
a  share  in  his  religious  development  ? 

In  addition  to  this  there  should  be  for  every  theo- 
logical course  without  exception  at  least  one  course  of 
lectures  delivered  by  a  woman.  She  would  speak  of 
marriage  and  motherhood,  the  moral  and  spiritual 
aspects  and  tendencies  of  adolescence  and  concej)tion 
from  the  woman's  point  of  view,  the  feminine  tempera- 
ment, and  so  forth. 

One  can  imagine  the  sort  of  examination  paper  that 
might  be  set  at  the  end  of  the  term  on  the  whole  matter 


XI  RELIGIOUS   EDUCATION  313 

of  individual  work.  The  value  of  the  answers  given 
would  lie,  not  in  their  correctness,  but  in  the  opportunity 
they  afforded  for  discussion  and  for  drawing  out  the 
student's  own  individuality  and  directing  it  along  the 
right  lines. 

All  these  ideas  may  read  regrettably  technical  and 
cold,  but  there  must  be  surely  method  and  intelligence 
as  well  as  enthusiasm  in  our  attempts  to  win  souls  for 
Christ,  and  nothing  need  be  cold  that  has  the  Love  of 
God  for  its  source  and  its  object.  It  is  because  we 
love  Christ's  sheep  one  by  one  that  we  must  spare 
no  pains  to  equip  ourselves  as  wise  and  faithful 
shepherds. 

We  may  consider  briefly  two  objections  that  will  be 
made  in  application  to  most  of  the  foregoing  sugges- 
tions. We  shall  be  told  (a)  that  most  of  such  knowledge 
will  come,  perhaps  can  only  come,  through  personal 
experience  and  that  it  cannot  be  learnt  beforehand. 
That  is  reasonable  enough  ;  every  year  of  his  minis- 
terial life  will  teach  a  man  more.  But  there  is  a  very 
great  deal  that  I  have  learned,  discovered,  experienced 
since  the  year  of  my  ordination  which  I  need  not  have 
been  left  to  find  out.  We  could  be  warned  what  to 
expect  ;  we  could  be  instructed  in  types  of  human 
experience  or  personality  ;  we  could  learn  certain  lines 
of  treatment  which  had  been  proved  to  be  useful  or 
helpful,  and  warned  against  others  that  were  bound  to 
fail.  A  university  career,  however  varied,  followed  by 
a  year's  travel  and  a  few  months  in  the  slums  cannot 
even  in  the  most  exceptional  case  give  any  young  man 
that  understanding  of  human  nature  that  he  will  need. 


314      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        xi 

And  if  anything  can  be  done  before  he  is  commissioned 
to  save  his  future  flock  in  his  first  curacies  from  the 
mistakes  through  which  at  their  expense  he  will, 
supposedly,  gain  the  necessary  experience,  it  should 
be  done. 

(6)  And  before  now  I  have  been  answered  thus  :  "  In 
all  that  you  say  you  surely  belittle  the  grace  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  in  ordination,  through  Whom  alone  the  gifts  of 
wisdom  and  understanding  can  come."  There  is  a 
very  pointed  reply  to  this  rebuke.  We  are  not  accus- 
tomed to  expect  God  to  make  good  unwarrantable 
deficiencies  or  omissions  ;  it  is  a  view  of  the  working 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  which  is  neither  sensible  nor  reverent. 
No  ordination  candidate  would  dare  to  utter  such  an 
evasion  to  any  Vice-Principal  who  deplored  his  slack- 
ness in  learning  the  varying  fortunes  of  the  Kings  of 
Israel  and  Judah.  The  reductio  ad  absurdum  would  be 
to  say  :  "  If  the  grace  of  the  Holy  Spirit  is  so  exercised, 
why  have  colleges  or  training  at  all  ?  " 

In  conclusion,  it  is  obvious  that  the  question  of 
length  of  training  and  the  problem  of  finance  and 
supply  He  behind  any  change  in  the  present  system. 
But  even  supposing  that  no  improvement  can  yet  be 
made  in  that  direction,  much  could  be  done  by  readjust- 
ment. There  is  one  readjustment  in  particular  which 
is  of  the  greatest  urgency.  An  average  programme  for 
the  more  fortunate  ordinand  after  leaving  the  university 
is  as  follows  : — 

(i)  Twelve  or  eighteen  months'  travelling  tutorship 
or  slumming,  or  some  of  each. 

(ii)  A  year  at  a  theological  college  concluding  with 
the  examination  and  ordination. 


XI  RELIGIOUS   EDUCATION  315 

I  suggest  the  following  change  :— 

(i)  A  year  at  a  theological  college,  which  shall 
include  the  passing  of  the  Bishop's  examination. 

(ii)  A  year  in  the  world — either  travelling  or  in 
business  or  social  work. 

(iii)  Three  to  six  months  at  a  theological  college  in 
retreat. 

The  advantages  would  be  : — 

(a)  The  candidate  would  be  freed  from  the  worry 
attendant  upon  passing  an  examination  just  at  the 
time  when  he  should  be  concentrating  entirely  upon  his 
own  spiritual  and  devotional  preparations.  It  is 
amazing  that  the  Bishops  should  ever,  except  in 
unavoidable  circumstances,  allow  a  man  to  do  any 
work  for,  or  to  have  any  anxiety  about,  an  exami- 
nation within  at  least  three  months  of  his  ordination. 

(6)  After  a  year  among  the  necessarily  narrowing 
influences  of  a  theological  college  the  man  would  be 
flung  once  more  into  the  world  to  rid  him  of  "  the 
ecclesiastical  touch  "  and  to  test  the  habits  of  devotion 
and  of  thought  under  conditions  similar  to  those  under 
which  he  proposes  to  teach  the  average  layman  to 
maintain  them.     Salutary  indeed. 

(c)  The  few  months  immediately  preceding  ordina- 
tion would  remain  for  revision,  meditation,  preparation. 

The  foregoing  study  of  the  training  for  Holy  Orders 
closes  with  the  diaconate,  but  there  is  much  to  be 
said  about  the  conditions  and  length  of  the  diaconate 
itself,  the  training  of  special  men  to  special  work,  the 
whole  question  of  the  selection  and  presentation  of 
candidates,  a  permanent  diaconate,  working-class  candi- 
dates— all  of  which  is  outside  the  scope  of  this  Essay. 


316      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE    FURNACE        xi 

Improve  the  training  of  the  clergy  and  what  will 
happen  ?  In  public  school  and  university,  in  private 
school  and  Sunday  school,  in  church  and  class-room, 
there  will  be  a  religious  education  worthy  of  the  name. 
Any  other  reform,  whether  it  be  of  the  Prayer-book 
or  of  ecclesiastical  organisation,  cannot  be  expected  to 
succeed  unless  it  is  accompanied  by  a  radical  change 
in  the  methods  by  which  are  trained  and  commissioned 
the  officers  of  Christ's  Church. 


XII 


PERSONAL    RELIGION    IN    CHURCH 

LIFE 

By  the  Ven.  henry  K.  SOUTHWELL,  C.M.G., 

M.A. 

Assistant  Chaplain-General, ■  Army ;  Archdeacon  of  Lewes. 


XII 

PERSONAL    RELIGION    IN    CHURCH 

LIFE 

It  is  an  acknowledged  fact  that  in  all  departments  of 
life  the  war  has  brought  great  changes.  It  has  set 
before  men  new  ideals,  given  them  fresh  views  of  Ufe, 
called  them  to  the  performance  ot  new  duties  involving 
much  sacrifice,  and  so  changed  the  whole  atmosphere 
of  our  social  life  that,  for  good  or  evil,  it  is  recognised 
that  England,  after  the  war,  cannot  be  the  same 
England  as  it  was  before.  In  every  direction,  too, 
the  war  has  opened  up  a  vast  field  of  inquiry,  and  we 
have  more  and  yet  more  Committees  and  Commissions 
"  sitting  to  inquire  and  report,"  and  suggestions  are 
poured  out  upon  a  busy  and  bewildered  world.  Apres 
la  guerre  is  the  cry  everywhere,  and  we  are  assured  that 
when  peace  comes  all  these  movements  and  activities 
will  settle  into  concrete  form  and  great  results  will 
follow  in  trade,  finance,  and  politics  and  generally 
in  the  whole  life  of  the  country  and  Empire.  Into  this 
field  of  inquiry  the  Church  has  entered — it  would  be 
strange  if  it  were  not  so — and  apart  from  the  special 
movements  which  have  been  set  on  foot  to  meet  the 


320      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       xii 

special  requirements  of  the  moment,  such,  for  instance, 
as  the  National  Mission  of  Repentance  and  Hope,  apart 
from  the  special  inquiries  into  every  aspect  of  Church 
life  which  are  being  carried  out  by  committees  ap- 
pointed for  the  purpose,  all  thoughtful  men  and  women 
are  asking  what  effect  the  war  has  had  upon  Religion 
generally,  and  particularly  what  ejffect  it  has  had  upon 
the  religion  of  the  men  who  are  serving  with  our  Forces 
in  every  corner  of  the  world.  Many  answers  have  been 
given  to  this  question  and  much  written  both  privately 
and  publicly  from  different  points  of  view  ;  but  I 
suspect  we  shall  not  be  able  to  form  any  true  estimate 
until  the  men  come  home,  and  settle  down  under 
"  peace  conditions."  Then  so  much  will  depend  on  the 
readiness  and  ability  of  the  Church  to  rise  to  the  occa- 
sion and  meet  an  opportunity  which  can,  probably, 
never  occur  again  in  the  history  of  the  world,  certainly 
never  again  in  our  day. 

It  is  a  big  question  which  the  Church  and  the  Church's 
leaders  have  to  face,  and  it  may  well  be  that  the  whole 
future  of  our  Church  for  generations  will  depend  upon 
the  answer  we  shall  give,  and  the  line  we  propose  to 
take.  Much,  no  doubt,  will  follow  from  the  delibera- 
tions of  the  various  committees.  Wise  changes  will 
be  made  in  the  public  services,  and  wide  latitude  given 
in  the  use  of  informal  or  less  formal  services  to  meet 
the  needs  of  the  miUions  of  men  who  have  been  attracted 
by  and  become  used  to  such  services  in  the  Field. 
Many  of  them,  perhaps  most,  have  never  been  attracted 
or  held  by  any  services  before  the  war :  but  I  must  add 
the  warning  that  we  have  no  guarantee  that  they  will 
be  attracted  or  held  by  any  form  of  service  when  the 


XII  PERSONAL  RELIGION  IN  CHURCH  LIFE  321 

special  war  conditions  are  removed,  and  the  need  for 
God's  help  seems  more  remote,  unless  we  can  do  some- 
thing to  create  and  maintain  in  religion  the  personal 
sense  of  responsibility  which  has  been  one  of  the  features 
of  their  service  in  the  State. 

Before  the  war,  and  even  under  war  conditions,  one 
has  noticed  a  tendency  both  in  Church  and  State  and 
in  the  individual  either  to  evade  responsibility  alto- 
gether, or  to  shift  it  on  to  other  shoulders.  In  the 
State  Commissions  have  been  asked  to  shoulder  burdens 
which  seemed  more  properly  to  belong  to  the  parent 
bod3^  Parents  have  expected  schoolmasters  not  only 
to  educate  their  children,  but  to  assume  the  chief 
responsibility  in  religion  and  morals,  and  where  there 
has  been  failure  they  have  assumed  that  it  is  the  school 
training,  not  the  home  influence  and  example,  that  is 
to  blame.  In  the  Church  the  laity  have  blamed  the 
clergy,  as  a  body,  for  the  "failure  of  religion,"  through 
lack  of  definite  teaching,  excess  or  defect  of  zeal,  and 
many  other  faults  of  omission  or  commission.  The 
clergy  have  blamed  the  laity  for  apathy  and  want  of 
interest  in  their  Church,  and  neglect  of  the  public 
services  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer.  The  capitalist 
has  blamed  the  "  working  man,"  and  the  "  working 
man  "  the  employer,  and  all  have  sought  to  shift  the 
burden  of  responsibilitj?^  from  their  own  shoulders  to 
those  of  others,  while  the  newspapers  have  selected 
their  own  special  scapegoats  and  sought  to  drive  them 
into  some  wilderness  outside  the  writers'  areas.  It  has, 
perhaps,  been  left  to  the  men  on  active  service  by 
sea  and  land  to  recognise  and  reconcile  the  Apostolic 
injunctions — "  Bear  ye  one  another's  burdens,  and  so 

Y 


322      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       xii 

fulfil  the  law  of  Christ,"  and  "  Every  man  f?hall  bear 
his  own  burden  "  ;  and  it  is  certainly,  to  my  mind,  in 
the  working  out  of  these  seemingly  contradictory 
orders,  and  the  recognition  of  personal  and  corporate 
responsibility,  that  the  way  of  salvation  lies  both  in 
Church  and  State.  Men  on  active  service  have  to  bear 
their  own  burdens,  and  share  with  others  those  which 
are  common  to  all,  and  responsibility,  in  the  field,  is 
pretty  sharply  defined  and  cannot  be  evaded  or  shifted 
on  to  other  shoulders.  This  sense  of  individual 
responsibility  in  a  corporate  life  is,  I  believe,  one  of 
the  outstanding  lessons  of  the  war  to  many  of  us, 
a  lesson  which  is  being  deeply  impressed  on  thousands 
and  tens  of  thousands  of  men  in  our  new  army,  and  it  is 
that  which  I  want  to  translate  into  the  field  of  reUgion. 
When  we  speak  of  "  The  Church  "  to  the  average 
layman  he  has  no  conception,  or  only  a  very  vague 
one,  of  the  meaning  of  the  term.  He  may  think  of  it, 
locally,  as  a  body  of  well-meaning  people  who  "  go 
to  church  "  and  generally  "  do  what  the  parson  says," 
and  he  associates  with  it  the  clergy,  churchwardens, 
district  visitors,  Sunday  school  teachers  and  other 
workers  he  knows,  who  touch  the  fringe  of  his  life. 
He  has  been  baptized,  perhaps  confirmed,  and  possibly, 
even,  he  is  an  infrequent  communicant  ;  but  he  has 
no  conception  of  any  personal  responsibility  in  the 
life  and  action  of  the  Church.  The  words,  "  ye  are  the 
Body  of  Christ  and  members  in  particular,"  have  no 
meaning  to  him  in  his  own  life.  He  retains  an  English- 
man's right  to  do  what  he  chooses,  and  exercises 
an  Englishman's  privilege  to  "  grouse  "  about  "  the 
Church's  failure  "  without  a  thought  in  his  mind  that 


XII  PERSONAL  RELIGION  IN  CHURCH  LIFE  323 

the  Church's  failure  is  partly  his  o\vii.  These  charac- 
teristics are  not  peculiar  to  what  we  call,  rather  stupidly 
in  these  days,  "  the  workmg  classes  "  ;  they  are 
common  to  all  classes,  and  are  found  equally  amongst 
Pubhc  School  and  'Varsity  men  and  those  who  form 
what  are  known  as  the  upper  and  middle  classes  of 
society.  In  the  Army,  and  the  Army  to-day  is  the 
Nation,  this  idea  of  the  Church  is  as  common  to  the 
officer  as  it  is  to  the  private.  I  believe,  in  all  truth,  that 
even  the  majority  of  those  who  are  regular  churchgoers 
and  communicants  at  home  neither  feel  nor  accept 
any  personal  responsibiUty  for  the  life  and  well-being 
of  the  Church.  If  they  think  of  it  at  all  they 
relegate  such  responsibility  to  clergy  and  "  representa- 
tive laity,"  just  as,  in  the  State,  we  send  men  mto 
Parliament  and  look  to  them  to  regulate  the  life  of 
the  nation,  reserving  to  ourselves  the  right  to  criticise 
and  grumble  at  the  results.  That  the  life  of  the  State 
has  been  enormously  quickened  by  the  wdder  interest 
shown,  under  the  stress  of  war  conditions,  by  the 
average  man,  and  the  inclusion  in  public  offices  of  men 
drawn  from  without  the  usual  circle  of  political  lite, 
will,  I  think,  be  acknowledged  by  all,  and  it  is  all  to 
the  good  that  such  men  are  taking  a  personal  share  in 
the  corporate  life  of  the  nation,  and  not  confining  their 
activities  to  their  own  private  affairs.  It  would  surely 
be  to  the  immense  benefit  of  the  Church,  if  we  could 
quicken  the  interest  of  the  great  bodj'  of  the  laity  in 
her  affairs,  and  bring  men  into  her  councils  from  outside 
the  small  body  of  "  representative  laymen  "  on  whom 
we  now  chiefly  rely  for  help  and  counsel.  But  it  would 
not  be  so,  it  might  even  be  disastrous,  if  the  appeal  to 

Y  2 


324      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       xii 

these  men  is  anything  less  than  the  appeal  of  Christ, 
and  if  they  should  come  to  the  Church  as  an  earthly 
body,  and  not  the  Body  of  Christ  of  which  they  are 
members  in  particular.  We  want  the  men,  we  want 
them  to  take  a  living  interest  in  the  Church,  we  want 
them  to  come  to  the  services  of  the  Church,  but  far 
more  we  want  them  to  come  to  God,  and  we  must  not 
and  dare  not  assume  that  it  is  the  same  thing.  Let 
me  put  it  in  this  way :  we  do  not  want  them  to  come  to 
church  "because  we  want  them,"  but  because  God 
wants  them,  and  we  shall  not  get  them  to  come,  or  if 
we  get  them  we  shall  not  keep  them,  unless  and  until 
they  realise  this,  and  realise,  too,  that  they  want 
God's  help  and  cannot  live  without  it,  and  that  God's 
help  is  given  in  a  very  special  way  to  those  who  seek 
Him  through  j)ra3^er,  and  praise,  and  sacrament  within 
the  Body  of  His  Church. 

I  have  sat  often  in  Convocation  in  the  days  before 
the  war,  and  in  Committee  since,  when  we  have  been 
engaged  in  discussion  on  the  revision  of  the  Prayer- 
book  and  kindred  subjects,  and  thought  that,  abso- 
lutely necessary  though  these  things  be,  they  are  not 
the  things  of  first  importance  in  the  Church's  life. 
Absolutely  necessary  they  are,  for  the  Church  must 
be  like  the  new  army  of  this  war,  and  while  retaining 
all  the  doctrine  of  the  Apostolic  Church  and  all  the 
practice  which  cannot  be  severed  from  the  doctrine, 
she  must  forge  new  weapons  and  learn  new  ways  and 
provide  fresh  means  to  meet  the  needs  of  modern  war- 
fare in  the  spiritual  fight,  and  enable  her  soldiers  to  stand, 
and  withstand  the  onslaughts  of  modern  thought  and 


XII  PERSONAL  RELIGION  IN  CHURCH  LIFE  325 

action.  This  great  world-wide  war  found  the  AUies 
unprepared  and  unprovided  for  the  struggle  that  lay- 
before  them,  and  the  enemy  gained  much  advantage 
from  the  fact.  Each  year  has  lessened  this  advantage, 
and  as  we  call  men  to  the  colours  to-day  we  are  ready 
to  clothe,  equip,  and  train  them,  pass  them  up  to  the 
line,  and  maintain  them  there  abundantly  supplied 
with  all  the  requirements  of  complex  modern  warfare. 
So  the  fighting  men  depend  upon  the  forethought,  the 
care,  and  the  organised  service  of  those  at  home.  Just 
so  must  the  Church  think  and  plan  and  have  all  ready, 
and  we  shall  owe  much  to  those  at  home  if,  sinking 
all  differences  which  are  not  differences  of  bedrock 
principle, — (no  man  maj^  cast  these  away) — they  will 
carry  through  at  once  such  revision  of  our  services  as 
is  needed  and  possible,  and  give  us  such  freedom  of 
action  as  may  lawfully  be  given  in  other  matters  to 
enable  us  to  adapt  our  methods  to  the  modern  need. 
But  revised  services  will  not  help  us  much  if  the  majo- 
rity of  the  men  stand  apart  in  the  future  as  they  have 
done  in  the  past  from  the  pubHc  worship  of  the  Church. 
Many  with  whom  I  have  spoken  were  neither  satisfied 
nor  dissatisfied  with  our  services  in  their  home  life, 
they  simply  had  no  use  for  them,  and  when  the  question 
is  put  "  Why  don't  men  come  to  church  ?  "  the  answer 
is  not  always  that  they  "  don't  like  "  the  services, 
or  the  parson,  but  that  they  have  found  no  need  in 
their  life  for  any  services  at  all,  and  therefore  they 
do  not  come. 

Tiie  problem,  therefore,  is  how  are  we  to  inspire Jn 
these  men  the  desire  for  prayer  and  worship,  and  above 
all  for  Communion,  that  central  act  of  Fellowship  with 


326      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       xii 

God   and   man,    without   which    all   Christian   life   is 
absolutely  incomplete  ? 

I  find  my  answer  in  the  record  of  this  war,  and  I  trace 
our  failure  in  the  past  to  a  widespread  misconception 
both  as  to  the  meaning  of  what  men  call  religion 
and  the  character  of  the  Christ  life  both  as  it  is  shown 
in  the  Gospel  and  in  the  world  to-day.  It  is  a  common- 
place to  those  who  have  seen  men's  lives  and  actions 
out  here,  and  it  must  be  so  to  those  at  home  who  have 
read  of  the  many  deeds  of  heroism  and  self-sacrifice 
in  this  war,  that  most  men  are  living  nearer  to  God 
than  they  or  we  have  realised.  And  it  is  not  only  the 
greater  deeds  which  are  recorded  that  make  one  sure 
of  this,  or  those  which  find  their  place  in  the  list 
of  "  mentions  "  ;  every  hour  of  the  day  and  night  men 
at  the  Front  are  showing  qualities  which  are  absolutely 
Christlike  in  their  character  and  in  their  influence  on 
other  men,  little  though  they  recognise  it  themselves, 
and  so  little  do  they  recognise  it  that  they  think  we 
cannot  be  speaking  seriously  when  we  say  that  it  is 
so.  These  are  the  men  "  whose  faith  was  never  in 
our  creeds  express'd,  but  in  their  human  lives  Christ's 
life  confess'd."  Those  who  blame  the  Church  for  the 
failure  of  the  past  will  probably  say,  and  say  with  much 
truth,  that  the  fault  lies  largely  with  the  clergy  ; 
that  we  have  preached  a  conventional  Christ  remote 
from  the  true  Christ  of  the  Gospel  and  daily  life,  and 
that  we  have  sought  rather  to  bring  men  to  church 
than  to  God,  or  at  least  that  we  have  not  taught  men 
how  to  find  God  in  Church  and  service  and  sacrament, 
or  how  to  connect  these  with  their  daily  life,  with  the 
result  that  men's  eyes  are  so  blinded  that  when  the 


XII  PERSONAL  RELIGION  IN  CHURCH  LIFE  327 

Christ  life  is  lived  in  their  midst,  nay  even  when  they 
are  very  near  to  living  it  themselves,  they  cannot 
recognise  it. 

Well,  granted  that  this  is  partly,  or  even,  if  you  will, 
largely  true,  it  will  not  help  us  to  dwell  much  upon  it 
except  in  so  far  as  it  gives  us  a  line  in  our  future  minis- 
trations, and  helps  us  to  avoid  the  old  mistakes. 
Probably  both  clergy  and  laity  could  break  a  good  many 
panes  of  glass  in  each  other's  windows  if  they  took  to 
throwing  stones,  but  it  would  be  neither  a  useful  nor 
a  very  seemly  process  in  our  present  distress,  and  I, 
for  one,  am  humbly  mlling  to  concede  the  point,  and 
admit  my  shortcomings,  if  it  will  help  to  bring  us  nearer 
to  the  end  we  have  in  view. 

Out  here  with  the  Expeditionary  Force  perhaps  the 
most  essential  difference  between  our  present  life  as 
chaplains  and  our  peace-time  work  as  clergy  in  the 
Church  at  home  has  been  in  our  hourly  association 
with  the  officers  and  men  to  whom  we  minister.  We 
live  in  the  homes  of  our  people,  we  eat  and  drink  and 
sleep  amongst  them,  we  are  with  them  in  the  field 
and  in  their  billets,  we  dress  like  them,  and  we  are 
learning  to  think  with  them.  We  may,  perhaps,  be 
teaching  them,  but  certainly  they  are  teaching  us,  and 
the  old  caste  barrier  is,  in  the  best  sense,  I  believe, 
being  broken  down  by  the  free  intercourse  and  exchange 
of  ideas  between  parson  and  people.  And  what  are 
they  teaching  us  ?  I  do  not  venture  to  speak  for 
others,  whose  experience  and  judgments  may  differ 
from  my  own,  but  simply  express  my  own  deep-rooted 
conviction.  These  men  are  preaching  Christ  crucified 
to  us,  though  they  do  not  know  it,  and  though  so  many 


328      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       xii 

of  them  do  not  consciously  come  to  the  Crucified  for 
help.  Many  a  one  whose  life  might  be  justly  criticised 
from  the  standpoint  of  religion  as  we  understand  it 
may  yet  say,  "  I  bear  in  my  body  the  marks  of  the 
Lord  Jesus,"  and  often  these  marks  have  covered  the 
marks  and  ugly  wounds  of  sin  and  shame.  They 
make  no  claim  to  "  righteousness,"  but  I  believe  they 
are  the  very  men  for  whom  Christ  in  His  time  on  earth 
Avould  have  found  a  place  in  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 
Many  of  them  come,  when  they  have  the  opportunity, 
to  such  services  as  we  can  offer,  and  I  believe  far  more 
would  come  to  Communion  if  we  could  only  get  them 
to  understand  its  connection  with  their  daily  life, 
and  that  it  was  ordained  to  be  the  "  ration  "  for  every 
fighting  soldier's  consta-nt  use,  and  not  the  "  iron 
ration  "  for  emergency,  to  be  touched  only  by  special 
order. 

*'  The  parish  priest  of  Austerity 

Climbed  up  a  high  church  steeple 
To  be  nearer  God,  so  that  he  might  hand 
His  word  down  to  the  people. 

"  And  in  serin  on  script  he  daily  wrote 

What  he  thought  was  sent  from  heaven. 
And  he  dropped  it  down  on  the  people's  heads 
Two  times,  one  day  in  seven. 

*'  In  his  time  God  said,  '  Come  down  and  die,' 

And  he  called  out  from  the  steeple, 
'  Where  art  thou,  Lord  ?  ',  and  the  Lord  replied — 
'  Down  here,  amongst  the  people-'  " 

I  have  no  idea  who  wrote  these  lines,  and  I  hope 
they  are  not  "copyright."  I  saw  them  by  chance 
in  a  Nonconformist  magazine,  and  apologise  to  an 
unknown  editor  for  stealing  them — they  rather  fit  the 


XII  PERSONAL  RELIGION  IN  CHURCH  LIFE  329 

case.  God  is  "  down  here  amongst  the  people,"  a.nd  we 
must  penetrate,  in  our  work,  to  the  personal  life  of 
those  to  whom  we  minister,  and  show  them  Christ, 
not  in  books,  or  sermon,  or  history,  but  in  the  lives  of 
men  and  women,  and  so  teach  them  to  fuid  Him,  and 
finding  Him  to  strengthen  their  lives  through  His 
in  the  Sacraments  and  services  of  the  Church.  We 
shall  but  be  following  our  Lord's  own  missionary 
example  during  His  three  years'  ministrj^  on  earth. 
The  first  disciples  were  attracted,  not  by  what  we  call 
religion,  or  by  services,  but  by  a  Man  and  His  life. 
They  learnt  to  know  Him,  to  love  Him,  and  to  trust 
Him,  and  they  asked  Him  to  teach  them  to  pray.  And 
when  His  Bodily  Presence  was  taken  from  them, 
their  trust  in  Him  was  so  great  that  they  remembered 
His  promises,  and  believed  His  word,  "  Lo,  I  am  with 
you  always  "  ;  they  obeyed  His  command  "  Do  this 
in  remembrance  of  Me,"  and  in  the  Sacrament  of  His 
Body  and  His  Blood,  and  in  the  prayers  they  had 
learnt  from  Him,  they  found  strength  sufficient  to 
make  their  lives  a  witness  to  His  own,  and  to  show 
Christ  to  the  world  as  a  living  power  among  men. 
It  was  this  personal  religion  of  men  inspired  by  the 
Holy  Spirit,  united  in  the  Fellowship  of  the  Divine 
Society,  and  fed  by  the  Sacraments  of  the  Church, 
which  began  the  conversion  of  the  world,  carrjdng  on 
all  that  Jesus  began  to  do  and  to  teach  in  His  life  on 
earth.  Our  men  have  shown  a  wonderful  capacity 
for  sacrifice,  unselfishness,  cheerfulness  and  many 
other  Christian  virtues,  but  not  directly  for  Christ's 
sake.  If  we  can  only  show  them  how  near  to  the  King- 
dom   of    Heaven    these   things    have    brought   them. 


330      THE   CHURCH   IN  THE   FURNACE       xii 

and  how  like  in  character  to  Christ  they  have  made 
them,  if,  in  a  word,  we  can  show  them  the  real  Christ 
of  the  Gospels,  so  truly  human  "  down  here  amongst 
the  people,"  and  teach  them  to  love  and  trust  Him 
as  His  first  disciples  did,  they  will  surely  come  to  church, 
to  prayer  and  sacrament,  not  because  we  ask  them  nor 
for  any  conventional  reason,  but  to  meet  Him  in  the 
place  of  His  own  appointing,  and  to  receive  from  Him 
the  Sacramental  Grace  which  only  He  can  give  to  enable 
them  to  maintain  in  their  lives  this  Christ -likeness. 
We  have  got  the  "  Body  of  Christ  "  in  our  midst, 
complete  in  its  organisation,  but  incomplete  in  its 
membership  ;  incomplete,  not  only  because  of  our 
unhappy  divisions  whereby  so  many  have  separated 
themselves  "  officially  "  from  its  ministration,  but  in- 
complete because  so  very  many  of  its  nominal  roll, 
the  men  with  C.  of  E.  identity  disks,  children  to  whom 
the  Church  gave  spiritual  birth  in  baptism,  are  not 
conscious  of  their  relationship,  or  of  the  duties  and 
privileges  which  are  theirs  by  right  in  this  Kingdom  of 
God. 

We  must  by  every  means  in  our  power  drive  home 
this  sense  of  personal  responsibility  to  the  Corporate 
Body,  teach  men  to  claim  their  rights,  and  use  their 
privileges.  Show  them  the  essential  union  between 
the  Body  and  its  members,  so  that  "  whether  one 
member  suffer  all  the  members  suffer  with  it,  or  one 
member  be  honoured  all  the  members  rejoice  with  it." 
In  the  universal  service  of  our  day  all  men  are  learning 
this  lesson  in  the  service  of  the  State  ;  it  is  impressed 
on  every  soldier  that  in  his  individual  life  and  by  his 
personal  conduct  and  character  he  honours  or  degrades 


XII  PERSONAL  RELIGION  IN  CHURCH  LIFE  331 

the  uniform  he  wears.  Cannot  we  teach  the  Soldiers 
of  Christ  this  lesson,  so  that  they  may  understand  that 
"  the  failure  of  the  Church  "  at  this  crisis  in  her  history 
is  an  individual  matter  and  most  largely  due  to  the 
failure  of  her  members  who  have  not  rallied  to  her 
support  ?  "I  am  a  scandal  to  the  Church  and  not 
the  Church  is  so  to  me  "  may  well  be  the  confession 
of  many  a  Churchman,  whether  priest  or  layman,  who, 
neglecting  his  duties,  has  yet  blamed  the  Church  for 
her  neglect  of-  him. 

May  God  give  new  vision  and  grace  to  all  estates 
of  men  in  His  holy  Church  that  every  member  of  the 
same  in  His  vocation  and  ministry  may  truly  and  godly 
serve,  through  our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ. 


XIII 
MAN   TO    MAN 

By   the    Rev.    JAMES    O.    HANNAY 

("George  A.  Birmingham.") 

Late  Chaplain  to  the  Forces  ;  Canon  of  St.  Patrick's  Cathedral,  Dublin. 

Author  of''''  The  Wisdom  of  the  Desert,'^  "  Spirit  and  Origin  of  Christian 
Monasticisin"  '■^Spanish  Gold"  d^t". 


I 


XIII 
MAN    TO    MAN 


FAITH. 

We  sat  together  under  the  shelter — the  insufficient 
shelter — of  the  verandah  roof  of  an  estaminet.  My 
companion  was  a  boy,  a  young  officer  who  had  that 
morning  received  his  orders  to  go  into  the  firing  line. 
We  sat  on  a  little  iron  table  and  swung  our  legs  while 
the  snow  fell  thick  on  the  road  outside  and  was  blown 
in  powdery  drifts  into  the  corners  of  the  verandah. 
We  were  waiting  for  a  tram,  a  lorry,  an  ambulance, 
or  any  other  vehicle  which  would  carry  us  into  the 
neighbouring  town. 

I  did  not  know  that  boy  at  all  well,  though  I  wished 
to.  It  is  not  an  easy  thing  to  know  these  young 
officers.  Twenty-five  years  or  so — I  had  lived  that 
much  longer  than  he  had — make  a  gulf  which  it  is 
exceedingly  difficult  to  cross.  Besides,  I  was  a  parson 
and  he  was — I  do  not  know  what  he  was  before  he 
took  to  soldiering.  That  made  another  gulf.  There 
is  no  use  denying  the  fact.     It  is  not  a  question  of 


330      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xiii 

class  or  military  rank.  It  is  hard  for  a  padre  to  get 
into  touch  with  men  in  the  ranks.  It  is  just  as  hard 
for  him  to  get  into  touch  with  commissioned  officers. 
The  officer  is  a  man.  The  private  is  a  man.  The  padre 
is,  officially,  not  quite  a  man  or  perhaps  a  little  more 
than  a  man,  at  all  events  something  else,  a  priest. 
Therefore  I  was  particularly  pleased  when  that  boy 
began  to  talk  to  me  about  the  things  he  was  really 
thinking. 

He  was  going  into  the  fighting.  He  told  me  he  did 
not  expect  to  come  out  alive.  This  was  not  a  reasoned 
belief.  He  had  not  been  working  out  chances  or 
dweUing  unduly  on  calculations  about  a  subaltern's 
expectation  of  life.  He  was  the  victim  of  one  of  those 
odd  convictions  which  we  call  presentiments  which 
turn  out  to  be  wi'ong  quite  as  often  as  they  are  fulfilled. 
I  forget  what  I  said.  I  daresay  it  was  "  what  I  ought 
to  have  said."  It  was  probably  inane  enough  to  put 
that  boy  off  talking  to  me  altogether.  But  it  did  not. 
He  went  on. 

"  I  wish  you'd  tell  me  what  you  think  about  it, 
padre,"  he  said.  "  Is  there  really  anything  after- 
wards ?  " 

I  cannot  give  his  exact  words,  for  I  do  not  remember 
them.  He  repeated  himself  a  good  deal.  He  did  not 
succeed  in  saying  at  once  what  he  wanted  to  say  ; 
but  he  made  his  meaning  quite  clear  to  me  in  the  end. 

"  I'd  hke  you  to  tell  me,"  he  said,  "  as  man  to  man 
what  you  really  think  about  it.  Do  we  go  on  living 
afterwards  in  any  sort  of  way  or ?  " 

He  struck  a  match  to  light  a  cigarette.  A  gust  of 
wind,  which  carried  a  flurry  of  snow  round  our  legs, 


XIII  MAN   TO   MAN  337 

blew  the  match  out  again.  I  daresay  it  was  that 
which  suggested  his  next  words  : 

"  Or  do  we  just  go  out  ?  " 

"  I  know  the  Creed,"  he  went  on,  and  he  did  not  say 
your  Creed,  or  the  Church's  Creed,  but  just  the  Creed. 
"  But  that's  not  what  I  want.  I  want  to  know  wliat 
you  really  believe  yourself,  as  a  man,  you  know." 

Then  I  suppose  he  felt  that  he  owed  some  sort  of 
apology  for  talking  to  me  in  such  a  way. 

"  You  mustn't  think  I'm  an  atheist,"  he  said,  "  or 
a  sceptic,  or  anything  like  that.  I'm  not.  I  used  to 
go  to  church  pretty  regularly.  I  used  to  go  to  Com- 
munion sometimes — with  my  mother,  you  know.  I 
never  doubted  about  any  of  those  things,  the  things 
I  was  taught.  I  supposed  they  were  all  right.  Any- 
how, I  didn't  bother.     But  now  I  want  to  know." 

When  Stephen,  the  first  martyr,  believed  that  he 
was  about  to  die,  he  saw  "  Jesus  standing  on  the  right 
hand  of  God."  My  friend's  position  was  plainly 
something  quite  different  from  his. 

And  this  boy's  case  is  not  unique.  It  is  not  even 
rare.  I  am  inchned  to  regard  it  as  typical.  Just  such 
is  the  attitude  of  ordinary  Englishmen  towards  the 
doctrines  of  the  Christian  faith.  They  know,  in  broad 
outline  at  least,  the  fundamental  truths  which  the 
Church  teaches.  They  have  so  far  accepted  these 
truths  that  they  have  not  denied  or  attempted  to 
deny  them.  But  they  have  not  connected  the  truths 
with  ordinary  life.  Life  is  one  thing,  real,  pressing, 
intensely  important.  The  Creed  is  another  thing,  very 
excellent  in  its  way,  deserving  of  a  certain  respect, 
but  belonging  to  a  different  region,  not  concerned  with 

z 


338      THE   CHURCH   IN  THE   FURNACE      xiii 

or  at  all  bearing  upon  practical  affairs.  The  attitude 
is  logically  impossible  and  intellectually  absurd.  But 
that  does  not  matter.  Very  few  of  us  are  troubled  by 
logic  or  inclined  to  give  weight  to  intellectual  con- 
siderations. We  have  our  faith  on  one  side  of  a  high 
wall  and  ourselves  on  the  other  ;  and  we  get  on  well 
enough  until — well,  the  time  came  for  that  friend  of 
mine  when  he  wanted  to  get  his  faith  over  the  wall,  to 
set  it  down  on  the  path  his  feet  trod,  to  find  out,  man 
to  man,  whether  there  was  anything  in  it. 

We  padres,  who  serve  or  have  served  with  the  Army, 
spend  a  good  deal  of  our  time  with  men  who  want  to 
talk  about  religion.  Most  of  those  who  come  to  us  or 
whom  we  get  at  are  already  religious  men.  They  are 
good  Churchmen  or  pious  Nonconformists.  What  they 
want  of  us  is  comfort  and  strength.  They  want  to  be 
assured  by  the  sound  of  the  human  voice  of  the  hope 
that  is  in  them.  They  want  to  hear  blessed  words, 
phrases  consecrated  as  the  expressions  of  their  souls' 
deep  emotions.  The  work  we  do  for  these  men  is  the 
easiest  part  of  om'  duty.  It  is  of  high  value,  and  if  we 
do  no  more  than  that  we  yet  do  something  real.  But 
these  men  are  a  small  minority  in  the  Army,  Six, 
eight,  ten,  twenty  of  them  will  collect  in  the  church 
tent  of  an  evening.  A  thousand,  two  thousand  do  not 
go  there  at  all.  There  are  also  men  with  "  difficulties," 
real  intellectual  difficulties,  or  the  crotchets  of  minds 
naturally  inclined  to  crankiness.  It  is  chiefly  the  latter 
who  come  to  the  padre,  and  I  do  not  think  we  do  much 
good  with  them.  But  these  again  are  a  small,  a  tiny 
minority.  Most  men  do  not  come  to  us  at  all  and  we 
find  it  very  difficult  to  get  at  them.     I  do  not  believe 


XIII  MAN   TO   MAN  339 

that  it  is  tlie  padre's  position  as  an  officer  which 
creates  the  difficulty.  In  tlie  old  army  it  may  have 
been  so.  But  our  vast  levies  of  civilian  men  have  not 
had  the  existence  of  a  super-class  hammered  into 
them,  and  they  would  not,  in  any  case,  recognise  a 
parson  as  belonging  to  it.  The  padre  is  remote,  not 
because  he  wears  a  Sam  Browne  belt,  but  because 
he  is  suspected  of  being  unable  or  unwilling  to  discuss 
plain  matters  "  man  to  man."  Exactly  the  same 
difficulty  existed  in  civil  life.  Army  discipline  has 
not  made  it  any  worse.  The  war  has  forced  us  to 
recognise  it,  and  that,  as  far  as  it  goes,  is  all  to  the 
good. 

"  I  believe  in  the  life  everlasting."  The  facts  of 
war,  continually  present  death  and  constant  danger, 
have  made  men  wish  to  drag  that  statement  out  of  the 
sanctified  shadows  of  Gothic  arches  and  set  it  in  the 
glaring  light  of  ordinary  day,  to  see  if  there  is  anything 
in  it.  They  want  to  do  the  same  thing  with  half  a 
dozen  more  similar  statements.  They  want  to  ask 
questions  about  them,  "  man  to  man."  Are  we,  the 
official  guardians  of  these  truths,  prepared  to  take  down 
our  altar  crosses,  on  which  our  eyes  have  rested  so 
long  with  peaceful  reverence,  carry  them  to  the  smith's 
forge,  and  see  how  their  metal  stands  the  test  of 
hammering  ?  That  is  exactly  what  the  ordinary 
soldier — and  the  ordinary  soldier  is  now  the  ordinary 
man — thinks  we  will  not  do. 

Plainly  this  is  not  a  matter  of  intellectual  scepticism, 
of  faith  blighted  by  the  higher  criticism  or  scorched  by 
the  materialism  of  science,  or  anything  of  that  sort. 
Men  like  my  friend  are  not  helped  by  our  apologetics. 

z  2 


340      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xin 

I  do  not  want  to  undervalue  the  reasoned  defences  of 
the  faith.  For  men  educated  in  a  certain  way,  pos- 
sessed of  active  minds  and  with  ample  leisure,  books 
written  against  higher  critics,  materialistic  philosophers 
and  other  enemies,  are  excellent  things,  stimulating 
and  agreeable  reading,  almost  as  stimulating  and  agree- 
able as  the  works  of  the  enemies  themselves.  But  they 
are  not  food  for  the  lambs  of  Christ's  flock  who  have 
never  heard  of  Harnack  and  would  never  have  heard  of 
Nietszche  if  some  orator  had  not  discovered  in  August, 
1914,  that  Nietszche  caused  the  war. 

Nor  is  it  any  use  saying  that  the  want  of  definite 
Church  teaching,  in  schools  or  from  the  pulpit,  is  respon- 
sible for  the  position  of  my  friend.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
that  boy  had  some  teaching,  quite  definite  as  far  as 
it  went.  He  knew  his  Creed.  He  knew,  or  at  one  time 
had  known,  his  Catechism.  He  had  been  prepared  for 
Confirmation.  He  actually  carried  about  with  him  a 
little  book  of  Eucharistic  meditations,  glowing  with 
teaching  so  definite  and  so  '  churchy  '  that  many  people 
would  have  cursed  it.  Yet  after  all  tliat,  he  wanted 
to  know  whether  he  would  live  on  in  any  fashion  after 
the  German  bullet  which  he  expected  went  through 
his  head.  I  have  no  doubt  that  definite  Church  teaching 
is  an  excellent  thing.  I  know  it  is.  Many  of  the  very 
best  men  I  met  out  in  France  came  from  parishes  at 
home  where  definite  Church  teaching  was  the  rule, 
but  no  amount  of  definiteness  will  create  the  sense  of 
reality.  I  was  once  taught  astronomy,  as  definitely 
as  I  could  be  taught  anything  ;  but  if,  by  some  freak 
of  fortune,  I  were  to  find  myself  in  a  position  in  which 
my  peace  of  mind  depended  on  my  certainty  about  a 


XIII  MAN   TO   MAN  341 

parallax,  I  should  be  in  an  evil  plight,     I  do  not  now 
know  what  a  parallax  is. 

The  fact  seems  to  be  that  we  have  been  teaching 
true  and  important  things  in  such  a  way  as  to  leave 
men  Avith  the  impression  that  they  do  not  matter. 
Partly  this  is  because  they  have  not  mattered  nearly 
enough  to  us,  the  teachers.  That  is  a  very  trite 
observation.  It  amounts  to  just  this  :  the  ordinary 
man,  the  baptized  outsider,  would  stand  a  much  better 
chance  of  having  a  sound  working  belief  if  the  inner 
circle  of  the  Church,  the  clergy  and  pious  laity,  were 
much  stronger  in  the  faith  than  they  are.  If  we  were 
strong  enough  in  religious  faith,  as  strong  as  we  are 
in  our  faith  in  the  security  of  the  5  per  cent.  War  Loan, 
we  should  not  find  so  much  difficulty  in  inducing  other 
people  to  believe  that  there  is  something  in  it.  Partly 
also  we  have  been  teaching,  along  with  the  very  impor- 
tant things,  a  number  of  other  things  which  are  not 
nearly  so  important,  which  do  not  strike  the  ordinary 
man  as  of  any  importance  at  all.  There  are,  when  all 
is  said,  very  few  things  in  the  Christian  faith  which 
are  of  vital  importance  for  practical  purposes  of  life 
to  most/men.  There  are  a  great  many  other  things 
which  m^ay  be  of  use  to  a  few  people,  but  must  always 
strike  common,  very  busy  men  as,  let  us  say,  trimmings. 
They  do  not  matter  much  to  anyone.  They  do  not 
matter  at  all  to  most  people.  By  emphasising  the 
comparatively  unimportant  and  laying  tremendous 
stress  on  what  is  sure  to  seem  unreal,  we  have  set  the 
vital  things  in  an  atmosphere  of  unreality.  It  would 
not  startle  us  much  if  a  man  were  to  say  :  "  Tell  me, 
as  man  to  man,  is  there  really  anything  in  that  theory 


342      THE   CHURCH  IN  THE   FURNACE      xiii 

of  yours  about  fasting  Communion  ?  "  It  does  startle 
us  horribly  when  he  asks  the  same  question  about  life 
everlasting.  Yet  it  is  very  natural  that  he  should.  We 
have  been  teaching,  not  perhaps  fasting  Communion, 
but  something  of  similar  importance  as  if  it  were  as 
vital  as  the  forgiveness  of  sins  and  life  everlasting. 
Common  sense  teaches  the  common  man  that  for  him, 
busy  with  life,  it  is  not  real  at  all.  He  has  inevitably 
come  to  feel  that  the  other  things,  which  we  have  never 
emphasised,  are  not  real  either. 


II. 

MORALS. 

In  ''  A  Student  in  Arms  "  there  are  some  chapters 
dealing  with  the  religion  of  our  soldiers.  Nothing  has 
been  written  on  this  subject  more  interesting  and  more 
stimulating  than  these  chapters.  In  them  Mr.  Hankey 
emphasises  the  fact  that  the  Church  and  the  clergy — 
organised  religion  and  clergy  of  every  kind — have 
singularly  little  influence  with  the  men  of  our  new 
armies  ;  and  this  other  fact,  that  the  men's  lives  are 
fine  examples  of  certain  virtues,  generally  considered 
to  be  essentially  Christian.  A  great  deal  has  been 
written  in  explanation,  denial,  and  supj)ort  of  these 
statements.  It  may  fairly  be  said  that  the  explanations 
have  failed  to  explain  and  the  denials  have  failed  to 
convince.  We  may  quote  the  Archbishop  of  Dublin,  a 
sober  and  careful  critic  of  the  testimony  of  direct 
observers,  in  general  support  of  Mr.  Hankey's  state- 
ments :    "  Only  a  minority  of  our  soldiers  are  accus- 


XIII  MAN   TO   MAN  343 

tomed  to  look  to  the  Church  as  their  spiritual  home, 
and  the  organised  institutions  of  the  Christian  religion 
have  little  attraction  for  them.  .  .  .  But  the  practical 
Christianity  of  the  trenches  is  very  real  and  very  Avide- 
spread.  Patience,  faithfulness,  cheerfulness,  unselfish- 
ness :   these  are  great  qualities." 

The  Archbishop  might  have  gone  further.  Instead 
of  making  his  own  list  of  virtues  he  might  have  taken 
almost  the  whole  of  St.  Paul's  list  of  the  fruits  of  the 
Spirit.  Our  soldiers — that  is  to  say  the  best  part  of 
the  young  manhood  of  the  Empire — possess  in  high 
degree  just  these  virtues,  love,  joy,  peace,  long-suffering, 
gentleness,  goodness,  meekness.  This  sounds  like  a 
paradox,  for  of  all  such  catalogues  none,  surely,  is  at 
first  sight  less  military  than  St.  Paul's.  But  if  we  take 
the  Apostle's  words  and  translate  them  into  a  language 
which  is  not  petrified  by  theological  use,  if  we  strip 
the  things  meant  of  the  reverent  draperies  of  ancient 
pieties,  we  see  at  once  that  instead  of  being  a  paradox 
this  is  a  sim.ple  statement  of  fact.  By  love  St.  Paul 
meant  more  than  comradeship  ;  but  he  did  mean 
comradeship,  which  elsewhere  he  calls  brotherly  love. 
In  joy  we  recognise  cheerfulness.  Is  peace — the  inward 
peace  which  exists  in  spite  of  war — anything  else  than 
an  outlook  upon  fife  untroubled  by  repining  and  fear  ? 
Long-suffering  is  surely  the  power  of  enduring,  un- 
rebelliously,  hardship  and  even  injustice.  Gentleness 
and  goodness  are  seen  in  unselfish,  untiring  care  for 
the  weak  and  suffering.  Is  it  not  true  that  meekness, 
the  ready  subordination  of  personal  will  to  the  will  of 
others,  is  the  inward  spirit  of  discipline  ?  St.  Paul 
would  surely  have  recognised  his  list  translated  thus  ; 


344      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xiii 

though  it  is  no  doubt  harder  for  us,  coated  with  the 
quickly-hardening  varnish  of  conventional  religious- 
ness, to  recognise  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit  in  lives  which 
display  everywhere  comradeship,  cheerfulness,  endur- 
ance, calm,  kindliness,  and  discipline. 

This  is  nearly,  not  quite,  the  Avhole  of  St.  Paul's 
list.  There  remain  faith  and  temperance.  Of  faith  I 
have  already  wTitten  something.  About  temperance 
there  is  this  to  be  said  :  There  is  in  England  a  certain 
sapless  Puritanism  which  is  perpetually  confusing  life 
with  vice,  which  is  indeed  so  much  afraid  of  life  that  it 
sees  no  hope  for  society  until  all  "  cakes  and  ale  " 
have  been  utterly  abolished.  It  is  the  spirit  of  a  minor 
bourgeoisie,  cramped  and  therefore  bitter.  It  has  from 
time  to  time  grossly  exaggerated  the  prevalence  of 
drunkenness  and  sexual  immorality  among  our  men. 
But  even  if  we  were  to  grant  the  truth  of  the  worst 
that  has  been  said  or  hinted,  if  we  were  to  get  up  another 
scare  about  "  war  babies,"  and  were  to  denounce  the 
Expeditionary  Force  canteens  as  homes  of  intemperance, 
we  might  still  demand  of  this  Puritan  spirit  an  entire 
readjustment  of  its  scheme  of  moral  values.  Christ 
certainly  regarded  these  open  and  obvious  sins  of  sense 
as  the  least  hopelessly  deadly.  Speaking  to  those  who 
in  His  days  mJstook  respectability  for  religion.  He  said, 
"  The  publicans  and  harlots  go  into  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  before  you." 

I  am  far  from  desiring  to  represent  our  men  as  saints, 
and  I  deplore  deeply  the  amount  of  drunkenness  and 
immorahty  which  certainly  exists.  But  I  resent  the 
talk  about  the  failure  of  Christianity  and  the  assertion, 
far  too  often  made,  that  our  soldiers  are  essentially 


XIII  MAN   TO   MAN  345 

irreligious.  If  English  Christianity,  or,  let  us  say,  the 
Anglican  Church,  has  failed,  it  is  in  this — that  it  has  not 
realised  or  understood  the  greatness  of  its  own  ac- 
complishment, the  wonderful  thing  it  has  done  in 
sending  out  into  the  world  men  inspired  with  the  spirit 
which  we  see.  If,  indeed,  it  is  true  that  these  men  are 
irreligious,  then  religion  is  something  other  than  what 
Christ  taught  ;  and  many  of  us  will  choose  ourselves 
to  bear  the  same  reproach,  to  be  set  down  along  with 
these  men  as  irreligious,  in  the  hope  that  at  last  Christ 
also  will  be  found  in  our  company. 

It  is  a  very  puzzling  thing  that  the  Church  has  failed 
to  recognise  religion  in  her  own  children,  and  that  her 
sons,  in  this  at  least  believing  what  the  Church  says, 
regard  themselves  as  irreligious.  Both  these  things  are 
so.  Men  who  are  constantly  doing  the  very  things  Christ 
wants  them  to  do,  whose  lives  are  obviously  affected 
by  His  Spirit,  will  say,  have  often  said  to  me,  "  But 
of  course  I'm  not  a  religious  man.  I  never  took  much 
interest  in  that  sort  of  thing.  I  don't  think  I've  been 
in  church,  except  to  be  married,  since  I  was  a  boy." 
Priests,  very  faithful  and  devoted,  will  complain  that 
religion  has  no  hold  on  the  majority  of  the  men.  Made 
bitter  by  the  disappointment  of  their  souls,  they  even 
gird  at  congregations  gathered  unwillingly  for  some 
compulsory  church  parade.  What  is  the  meaning  of 
this  painful  contradiction  between  fact  and  theory  ? 

I  suppose  that  the  Church  in  the  past  has  builded 
better  than  she  knew.  The  instinct  of  the  people, 
wiser  than  the  science  of  the  priests,  has  seized  upon 
the  essential  things.  The  clergy  have  been  occupied 
mainly  with  observances,  have  tried  to  train  men  to 


34G      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xiii 

do  this  and  that  outward  thing  in  this  or  that  little 
way.  We  have  been  endeavouring  to  tie  the  growing 
shoots  of  rose  bushes,  espaher-wise,  to  the  rigid  laths 
of  trellis  work.  We  have  failed  in  the  endeavour  ;  but 
while  we  mourned  our  failure  the  rose  trees  flowered. 
A  much  greater  thing  than  we  consciously  aimed  at 
has  been  accompMshed.  While  we  were  keeping 
registers  of  our  parochial  guilds,  men,  all  unknown  to 
us  or  to  themselves,  were  learning  the  meaning  of  the 
Cross  of  Christ.  Perhaps  the  Christian  tradition  of  a 
Christian  land  is  a  much  stronger  thing  than  we  guessed  ; 
and  it  has  not  been  in  vain  that  bells  have  knolled  to 
church  and  the  Cross  has  been  set  high  above  the  streets 
of  towns  and  the  pleasant  ways  of  country  places. 
Perhaps  the  many  prayers  said  daily  in  empty  churches 
have  not  been  said  uselessly,  but  in  some  way  beyond 
our  understanding  have  won  their  answer.  Or  would 
it  not  be  better  to  say,  simply,  humbly,  that  a  spirit, 
greater  than  any  of  ours,  has  been  at  work  in  the  nation, 
using  our  blind  efforts  to  its  own  ends  ?  Non  nobis, 
Domine,  non  nobis. 


XIV 
THE    SOLDIER'S    RELIGION 

By   the    Rev.    PHILIP    C.    T.    CRICK,    M.A. 

Senior  Chaplain  to  the  Forces^  Division  ;  Fellow  and  Dean  of  Clare 

College^  Cambridge ;  Examining  Chaplain  to  the  Archbishop  of  York. 


XIV 

THE    SOLDIER'S    RELIGION 
I. 

Not  very  many  years  ago  a  few  friends  whose  work 
lay  among  the  younger  members  of  one  of  our  old 
universities  were  comparing  their  experiences  and 
generalising  broadly  upon  the  characteristics  of  the 
average  undergraduate,  when  one  of  their  number, 
whose  name  is  well  remembered  for  his  sympathy 
towards,  and  the  influence  which  he  exercised  over, 
his  pupils,  interposed  with  the  remark,  "  There  is  no 
'  average  '  undergraduate."  Two  years'  experience  of 
work  in  France  has  shown  the  writer  that  this  saying 
is  profoundly  true  of  any  body  of  men,  and  must  serve 
as  a  necessary  qualification  for  any  tentative  generalisa- 
tion in  the  pages  that  follow.  In  our  citizen  army  of 
to-day  every  shade  of  thought  is  represented,  in 
matters  of  religion  as  in  other  spheres,  and  it  would 
be  almost  certainly  impossible  to  find  any  formula  that 
would  be  true  of  even  the  majority  of  men  now  serving 
in  France  in  respect  of  what  they  think  about  God 
and  the  things  of  God.  All  that  can  be  attempted  is  a 
general  impression  based  upon  a  limited  but  concrete 
experience  of  what  is  moving  in  the  hearts  and  minds 


350      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xiv 

of  some  at  least  of  the  officers  and  men  now  serving  in 
the  British  Army  on  the  Western  Front. 

Coelum  non  animnm  mutant  qui  trajis  mare  currunt. 
In  our  citizen  army  the  soldier  of  to-day  is  almost 
universally  the  civilian  of  yesterday,  and,  except  for 
the  undoubted  influence  which  the  war  has  had  upon 
his  mentality,  it  is  to  be  expected  that  his  attitude 
towards  religion  would  be  fundamentally  the  same  now 
as  it  was  in  peace-time.  In  other  words,  when  we 
speak  of  the  religion  of  the  soldier,  we  are  not  dealing 
with  the  religiaus  views  of  an  isolated  class  of  men,  so 
much  as  gauging  the  effect  upon  a  large  section  of  the 
nation  of  the  work  and  the  teaching  of  the  Church 
during  the  past  generation.  And  it  follows  that  our 
inquiry  will  entail  a  constant  reference  to  the  Church 
and  her  work  before  the  war.  It  may  be  emphasised 
in  passing  that  not  the  least  of  the  privileges  enjoyed 
by  chaplains  serving  with  the  array  in  the  field  is  the 
absolutely  unique  opportunity  given  to  them,  through 
their  close  association  with  men  of  all  classes,  of  obtain- 
ing an  insight  into  their  lives  and  thoughts  which  was 
quite  impossible,  to  any  comparable  extent,  under 
the  old  conditions  of  parochial  life. 

A  very  short  experience  of  work  among  soldiers 
seems  to  lead  inevitably  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
chief  element  in  the  situation  is  an  almost  universal 
lack  of  religious  education.  It  would  not  be  too  much 
to  say  of  the  great  majority  both  of  officers  and  men 
that  they  are  frankly  ignorant  of  most  of  the  intellectual 
propositions  of  Christianity  ;  and  in  consequence 
there  is  also  found  a  very  general  absence  of  what  may 
be    called    conscious    churchmanship.     There    are,    of 


XIV  THE   SOLDIER'S   RELIGION  351 

course,  exceptions  to  this,  as  to  all  generalisations. 
Individuals  may  be  found,  in  every  unit  in  the  Army, 
who  remain  faithful  to  their  Church  teaching  and  pro- 
vide a  nucleus  from  whom  chaplains  may  make  a 
beginning  in  the  extension  of  their  work  among  the 
other  men.  Or,  again,  there  are  small  units,  such  as 
casualty  clearing  stations,  which  stay  for  a  long 
period  of  time  in  the  same  place  and  retain  their 
personnel  practically  unchanged.  In  cases  such  as 
these,  where  the  chaplains  have  the  advantage  of 
personal  contact  for  a  considerable  period  with  a 
limited  number  of  men,  some  remarkable  results  have 
been  achieved.  Or,  lastly,  there  are  a  certain  number 
of  regiments  which  for  various  reasons — such  as,  for 
instance,  the  circumstances  under  which  they  are 
recruited — do  contain  a  preponderating  number  of 
men  who  have  been  trained  on  definite  Church  lines 
and  give  their  battalions  a  distinctly  religious 
atmosphere. 

But,  after  full  allowance  has  been  made  for  all  these 
exceptions,  it  still  remains  true  that  the  great  majority 
of  men  in  the  Army  cannot  be  said  to  be  in  any  sense 
closely  connected  with  any  branch  of  organised  Chris- 
tianity, or  really  interested  in  the  propositions  or 
problems  of  the  Faith.  And  it  is  here  that  it  would 
seem  to  be  profitable  to  consider  how  far  this  state  of 
things  may  be  traced  to  and  explained  by  conditions 
existent  before  the  war. 

The  present  writer  is  convinced  that  increased  powers 
of  observation  are  now  only  making  clear  results  that 
have  been  in  existence  for  some  time  past,  and  are 
directly   attributable   to   inefficiency,   partly   perhaps 


352      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xiv 

unavoidable  inefficiency,  in  the  system  of  religious 
education  as  prevalent  in  the  Church  at  home.  It  will 
be  useful  to  our  purpose  to  consider  as  briefly  as  possible 
the  circumstances  under  which  this  education  is  nor- 
mally given  and  received. 

To  take  first  the  case  of  those  classes  from  which 
the  men  serving  in  the  ranks  are  for  the  most  part 
drawn.  For  them,  opportunities  of  religious  education 
are  to  be  found  in  elementary  and  Sunday  schools. 
But  with  the  former  we  are  not  so  much  concerned, 
as  they  are  not  always  under  the  direct  control  of 
Church  authorities.  It  is  rather  in  the  Sunday  schools 
that  the  Church,  as  a  Church,  exercises  her  functions 
as  a  teacher,  and  it  is  these  that  we  propose  to  consider. 

It  is  a  matter  of  experience  that  in  practically  all 
parishes  in  England  boys  from  the  age  of,  say,  eight  to 
the  age  of  fifteen  or  sixteen  are  definitely  encouraged  by 
their  parents,  even  by  those  who  would  never  think  of 
coming  to  church  themselves,  to  attend  Sunday  school 
with  considerable  regularity.  This  attitude  of  the  parent 
is  worthy  of  careful  consideration,  as  it  is  very  germane 
to  the  whole  question  that  we  are  discussing.  It  is 
apparently  dictated  by  two  considerations.  First, 
there  is  the  vague  but  quite  genuine  feeling  that  their 
children  should  have  at  least  the  opportunity  of  learn- 
ing something  about  rehgion.  Being  either  unwilling 
or  unable  to  undertake  this  instruction  themselves, 
they  salve  their  conscience  by  handing  them  over  to  the 
parochial  clergy.  And,  secondly,  there  is  an  equally 
strong  though  less  altruistic  motive  to  be  found 
in  the  fact  that  the  parents  know  that  with  the  children 
safe  in  Sunday  school  they  can  rely  on  having  at  least 


XIV  THE   SOLDIER'S   RELIGION  353 

part  of  Sunday  afternoon  peacefully  free  from  the  duty 
of  parental  supervision.  This  latter  consideration  the 
writer  believes  to  be  seriously  important  from  the 
point  of  view  of  religious  education,  and  to  be  often 
minimised  or  left  out  of  sight.  Concrete  experience 
has  taught  many  parochial  clergy  that  an  intimation 
to  the  parents  of  any  particularly  riotous  Sunday- 
school  scholars  that  their  sons  will  be  excluded  from 
the  school  unless  their  behaviour  imj)roves  leads  almost 
invariably  to  parental  intervention  and  a  marked 
change  for  the  better. 

At  the  age  of  fifteen  or  sixteen  boys  generally  leave 
Sunday  school.  The  next  stage  in  a  well-organised  parish 
is  the  lads'  class,  leading  up  to  Confirmation.  But  there 
is  undoubtedly  a  very  serious  leakage  in  numbers 
between  the  Sunday  school  and  the  Confirmation 
class  ;  and  of  those  who  do  present  themselves  for 
Confirmation  a  comparatively  small  percentage  will 
be  found  five  years  afterwards  to  have  remained  active 
and  com.municant  members  of  the  Church. 

The  psychology  of  this  seems  fairly  clear.  The  boy 
of  sixteen  will  be  leaving  his  school-days  behind  and 
beginning  very  probably  to  take  rank  in  his  family  circle 
as  a  wage-earner  and  a  man.  He  is  also  getting  new 
experiences  of  life  and  making  a  fresh  circle  of  friends 
whom  he  wishes  to  cultivate.  As  he  is  working  all  the 
week,  Sunday  afternoon  is  the  obvious,  if  not  the  only, 
time  for  doing  this  ;  and  for  spending  Sunday  afternoon 
in  this  way  he  has  the  example  of  the  majority  of  the 
men  among  whom  he  now  mixes  as  a  fellow-workman. 

If  there  are,  as  is  most  probable,  lads'  classes  in  his 
parish,  attendance  at  these  entails  a  more  definite  act 

A    A 


354      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xiv 

of  choice  and  resolution  on  his  part,  in  the  absence  of 
the  "  parental  stimulus  "  which  largely  dictated  his 
attendance  at  Sunday  school ;  and  while  he  is  debating 
the  question  other  interests  crowd  in  upon  him  at  this 
most  impressionable  period  of  his  life,  and  in  many 
cases  the  regular  course  of  religious  instruction  is  broken 
off  and  never  resumed. 

One  other  point  may  be  noted  in  this  connection 
before  we  leave  the  question  of  the  Sunday  schools. 
The  parental  influence  that  we  have  discussed  above 
undoubtedly  makes  attendance  at  Sunday  school  on 
the  part  of  the  children  semi-compulsory  ;  and  this 
feeling,  even  if  not  very  explicit  in  their  minds,  is 
certainly  a  contributory  cause  to  the  reluctance  shown 
by  many  old  Sunday-school  scholars  to  continue  their 
religious  instruction  when  they  have  passed  the  Sunday- 
school  age.  The  corrective  to  this  may  be  found  in 
increased  efforts  to  make  the  Sunday  school  more 
attractive.  It  must  be  remembered  that  boys  attend- 
ing the  elementary  schools  during  the  week  are  con- 
stantly being  called  upon  to  learn,  and  to  answer  ques- 
tions on  what  they  have  learned,  and  if  too  much 
stress  is  laid  in  Sunday  school  on  the  duty  of  learning 
lessons,  such  as,  for  instance,  the  repetition  of  Collects 
and  short  passages  of  Scripture,  it  is  very  difficult  to 
dissociate  this  side  of  Sunday-school  instruction,  in 
their  minds,  from  the  burdensome  process  that  is  so 
large  a  part  of  the  routine  of  weekdays.  The  ideal 
that  should  be  aimed  at  is,  in  the  writer's  opinion,  the 
creation  of  a  feeling  that  attendance  at  Sunday  school 
is  not  so  much  a  necessary  duty  as  a  privilege  and  a 
real  pleasure.     If  this  atmosphere  can  only  be  made, 


XIV  THE   SOLDIER'S   RELICxION  355 

and  retained,  we  shall  have  done  much  to  neutralise 
the  otherwise  inevitable  reaction  that  is  so  often  observ- 
able in  boys  who  cease  attendance  at  Sunday  school, 
and  they  will  be  far  more  ready  and  wilhng  to  fall 
naturally  into  the  scheme  of  further  instruction  that  is 
provided  for  them  in  the  majority  of  parishes. 

We  are  concerned  primarily  with  the  task  of  tracing 
the  reasons  for  the  lack  of  interest  in  religious  matters 
which  is  observable  in  the  Army,  not  with 'suggesting 
remedies  ;  but  it  does  seem  clear,  in  the  light  of  what 
the  war  has  taught  us,  that  the  question  of  the  con- 
tinuity through  adolescence  of  some  form  of  religious 
education  will  have  to  be  faced  and  solved  by  the 
Church,  if  she  is  to  regain  her  hold  upon  the  men  of 
the  nation.  The  writer  would  like  to  record  his  per- 
sonal opinion  that  a  solution  may  possibly  be  found  ou 
the  lines  of  far  greater  co-operation  on  the  part  of  the 
laity.  A  clergyman's  Sunday  is  not  infinitely  elastic, 
and  Sunday  is  really  the  only  day  on  which  classes  can 
be  carried  on  with  consistency  and  success.  Under 
present  conditions  at  home  the  clergy  are  far  too  much 
occupied  with  their  work  in  Sunday  schools,  a  large 
proportion  of  which  in  some  cases  is  of  the  nature  of 
disciplinary  supervision.  It  ought  to  be  possible  to 
hand  over  Sunday  schools  almost  entirely  to  lay  control 
and  free  the  clergy  for  what  the  writer  believes  is  the  far 
more  important  and  urgently  needed  work  of  educating 
and  moulding  the  thoughts  of  our  young  men  from  the 
time  at  which  they  cease  attendance  at  Sunday  schools. 

In  the  case  of  the  young  officers,  we  seem  to  find  a 
somewhat  different  process  that  leads  eventually  to 
much  the  same  attitude  of  lack  of  interest  in  rehgious 

A  A  2 


356      THE   CHURCH  IN  THE   FURNACE      xiv 

matters,  A  large  though  diminishing  number  of  our 
officers  are  recruited  from  men  who  have  spent  some 
time  at  one  of  our  English  public  schools  ;  and  it  is  to 
these  schools  and  the  religious  education  there  obtained 
that  we  must  look  if  we  are  to  estimate  the  reasons 
for  the  attitude  towards  religion  that  is  very  largely 
adopted  by  boys  of  the  "  public  school  "  class.  Prac- 
tically every  public  school  has  a  system  of  compulsory 
chapel  attendance  on  Sundays  and  also  on  weekdays. 
These  services  are  regular  and  inevitable,  and  while  to 
some  boys  who  attend  them  they  are  welcome  and 
genuinely  helpful,  there  is  no  doubt  that  by  very  many 
they  are  regarded  subconsciously  as  part  of  the  school 
routine.  There  is  a  tendency,  which,  if  not  corrected, 
Ynay  become  a  habit,  to  look  on  Sunday  chapel  especi- 
ally as  very  much  similar  to  any  other  part  of  the 
inevitable  school  routine,  and  even  as  a  burden  that 
may  be  borne  in  patience  in  the  knowledge  that  the 
end  of  school-days  will  bring  freedom  from  this  as 
from  other  restrictions  upon  individual  choice  and 
liberty  of  action.  The  corrective,  obviously,  for  this 
attitude  is  the  stimulation,  by  means  of  sympathetic 
instruction,  of  an  intelligent  interest  in  religion  for  its 
own  sake  apart  from  school  discipline.  And  it  is  in 
this  particular  that,  in  the  writer's  opinion,  the  average 
pubHc  school  system  most  lamentably  fails.  Except 
for  occasional  sermons  in  the  school  chapel,  and  with 
the  other  exception  that  will  be  mentioned  later,  there 
is  in  most  schools  literally  no  systematic  attempt  to 
point  out  the  application  of  individual  belief  in  God 
to  the  ordinary  needs  and  temptations  of  daily  life. 
There  is  no  lack,  let  it  be  clearly  understood,  of  sym- 


XIV  THE   SOLDIER'S   RELIGION  357 

pathy  and  help  for  the  younger  members  of  the  school. 
There  are  few  public  school  boys  who  can  look  back 
upon  the  old  days  without  grateful  remembrance  of 
advice  from  a  housemaster  or  an  older  schooKellow, 
that  has  in  many  cases  been  of  the  utmost  benefit  to 
them.  But  the  point  is  that  such  help  and  advice  are 
occasional,  and  moreover  not  necessarily  connected 
with  religious  belief  at  all ;  indeed  in  many  cases,  owing 
to  the  habitual  reserve  of  schoolboys,  advice  or  help 
given  to  a  schooKellow  is  studiously  dissociated  by  the 
giver  from  any  suggestion  of  definitely  religious  motive. 
The  one  exception,  mentioned  in  passing  above,  is 
the  period  when  boys  at  a  public  school  are  prepared 
for  Confirmation.  At  such  times  personal  religion 
is  taught,  and  almost  always  with  great  care  and 
thoroughness.  But,  it  must  be  frankly  stated,  even 
Confirmation  is  in  many  cases  robbed  of  some  part  of  its 
compelling  power  as  an  epoch  in  a  boy's  life  by  its 
general  acceptance  in  the  public  opinion  as  a  normal 
event  in  every  boy's  school  career  when  he  reaches  a 
certain  age  or  a  certain  standing  in  the  school.  In 
many  schools  Confirmation  is  so  firmly  established  as 
usual  at  a  certain  age  that  although  no  pressure  is 
brought  to  bear  upon  individuals,  still  a  boy  of  Con- 
firmation age  does,  without  perhaps  exactly  realising 
his  own  process  of  thought,  feel  himself  called  upon  to 
show  cause  why  he  should  not  be  confirmed.  This 
attitude  towards  Confirmation  can,  of  course,  do  nothing 
to  affect  the  potential  value  of  the  rite  to  a  boy's 
individual  life  ;  but  it  certainly  does  afEect  the  attitude 
adopted  by  a  house  or  a  school  towards  religion  in 
general. 


358      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xiv 

It  is,  in  the  writer's  opinion,  the  inevitability  and,  in 
some  cases,  the  monotony  of  public  worship  during 
school-days,  combined  with  the  absence  of  the  cor- 
rective of  simultaneous  and  real  religious  education, 
that  account  for  the  very  large  number  of  old  public 
school  boys  who,  when  they  leave  school,  are  not  pre- 
disposed to  be  regular  or  enthusiastic  in  their  attendance 
at  church.  The  writer  would  like  to  say  in  this  con- 
nection that  he  has  no  desire  to  pose  as  a  critic  or  as  a 
reformer  of  our  public  school  system,  but  that  he  has 
during  the  past  few  months  taken  every  opportunity 
of  discussing  this  very  question  with  thoughtful  men 
from  a  number  of  different  public  schools,  and  that  he 
has  found  his  own  opinion  corroborated  and  put  in 
many  cases  even  more  strongly  than  he  has  put  it  in 
the  preceding  pages.  And  it  may  be  worth  mentioning 
as  subsidiary  evidence  that  during  eight  years'  experi- 
ence in  a  college  at  Cambridge  he  has  found  that,  when 
he  has  asked  men  the  reason  for  the  irregularity  of  their 
attendance  at  the  college  chapel,  the  answer  has  been 
given  with  perfect  frankness  by  nine  out  of  every  ten 
undergraduates,  that  "  they  had  had  enough  com- 
pulsory church  at  school,  and  thought  that  when  they 
came  to  the  university  they  might  be  allowed  to  think 
about  rehgion  for  themselves."  The  public  schools 
are  a  glory  and  an  asset  in  our  national  life,  and  public 
school  boys  have  shown  us  during  the  last  three  years 
that,  like  their  brothers  in  the  ranks,  they  know  how 
to  die  ;  but  it  is  not  so  certain  that  they  have  grasped 
in  its  fullest  meaning  what  Christ  would  have  them 
know  as  to  how  to  live. 


XIV  THE   SOLDIER'S   RELIGION  359 


II. 


As  the  old  professional  Army  became,  after  the  first 
few  months  of  war,  increasingly  leavened  with  the 
citizen  element,  so  a  situation  arose  of  compelling 
interest  for  all  who  had  eyes  to  see.  The  majority  of 
men  serving  as  officers  or  in  the  ranks  were,  before  the 
war,  admittedly  out  of  close  touch  with  the  teaching 
of  the  Church  and  with  the  individual  clergy  ;  and  they 
were  now  introduced  to  a  system  that  included  regular 
and  compulsory  attendance  at  Church  services,  and  also 
close  and  daily  association  with  chaplains  di*awn  from 
the  ranks  of  the  clergy  at  home.  When  the  religious 
history  of  England  in  the  early  part  of  the  twentieth 
century  can  be  seen  in  clearer  perspective,  it  is  certain 
that  this  situation  and  the  consequences  that  followed 
from  it  will  be  seen  to  have  been  of  the  most  crucial 
importance.  It  would  be  intensely  interesting  to 
follow  out  these  results  in  some  of  their  aspects  ;  to 
estimate  the  attitude  of  officers  and  men  towards 
church  parade,  and  show  how  it  was,  in  many  cases, 
insensibly  modified  by  increasing  friendship  between 
the  chaplains  and  the  congregation  ;  or  to  discuss  how 
much  of  this  change  has  been  due  to  the  introduction 
of  voluntary  services  as  well  as  the  parade  service  ; 
or  again  to  show  how  a  good-natured  but  indifferent 
tolerance  of  the  "  padre  "  and  the  things  for  which  he 
stood  changed  so  often  into  a  real  affection  for  the  man 
who  had  been  with  them  in  the  trenches  and  possibly 
pulled  them  in  from  No  Man's  Land  when  they  were 


360      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xiv 

wounded  ;  or,  lastly,  to  consider  how  far  the  large 
voluntary  services  that  are  normal  in  many  regiments 
are  to  be  attributed  to  personal  regard  for  the  chaplain 
who  conducts  them,  or  to  genuinely  increasing  desire 
to  learn  more  about  God  and  religion.  It  is  in  the 
examination  of  problems  such  as  these,  and  in  the 
answers  that  a  fearless  and  unbiassed  inquiry  will 
produce,  that  real  guidance  will  be  found  for  the  work 
of  the  Church  after  the  war.  But  the  limits  of  this 
Essaj^  preclude  such  a  wide  inquiry  ;  we  must  confine 
ourselves  to  an  attempt  to  analyse  as  far  as  possible 
the  content  of  the  soldier's  religious  attitude,  bearing 
in  mind  that  this  attitude  is  the  product  of  divergent 
forces,  which  include  both  the  memories  and  influence 
of  home  life  in  England  and  lessons  which  he  may  have 
learned  from  his  experience  in  France. 

With  regard  then,  first  of  all,  to  what  we  may  call 
organised  religion,  it  must  be  frankly  admitted  that 
the  average  soldier  is  not  conscious  of  any  allegiance 
due  from  him  to  the  authority  or  the  teaching  of  the 
Church.  One  simple  but  convincing  proof  of  this  may 
be  found  in  the  small  number  of  communicants  who 
may  be  expected  even  on  such  occasions  as  Easter 
and  Christmas  Day.  With  possible  reasons  for  this 
state  of  affairs  we  have  already  dealt  at  length  when 
considering  the  teaching  methods  of  the  Church  in 
pre-war  days,  and  we  need  not  return  to  that  subject. 
In  close  connection  with  his  lack  of  education  in 
religious  matters  is  the  soldier's  attitude  towards  God. 
He  does  believe  in  the  existence  of  God.  No  one  can 
be  called  upon  to  work  among  wounded  men  in  an 
ambulance  or  casualty  clearing  station  without  being 


XIV  THE   SOLDIER'S    RELIGION  361 

struck  by  this  almost  universal  fact.  But  his  belief 
in  God  is  in  a  state  of  arrested  development.  It  might 
almost  be  said  that  it  stops  short  at  the  Sunday-school 
stage.  God,  to  a  very  great  number  of  men,  is  an 
abstraction,  a  vague  "  One  above."  What  is  really 
lacking  is  a  grasp  of  the  Christian  view  of  God  as 
proclaimed  in  the  Incarnation,  the  God  who  took  on 
Him  our  human  nature  and  is  now  and  for  ever  Man, 
and  the  Friend  of  man  :  and  conversely  it  is  just  this 
view  of  Christ,  suffering  as  a  man  for  men  and  so  the 
Saviour  of  man,  that,  when  taught  in  Confirmation 
classes,  produces,  once  it  is  realised,  such  profound  and 
lasting  impressions  on  the  minds  of  men  who  are  them- 
selves suffering  for  the  sake  of  others. 

But  this  is  merely  the  negative  side  of  the  case. 
What  is  equally  true  and  far  more  striking  is  the  fact 
that  the  war  itseK  has  fostered  in  the  lives  of  the  vast 
majority  of  men  qualities  that  are,  to  say  the  least, 
potentially  Christian.  The  paradox  appears,  that  in 
the  hard  school  of  reality  men  are  finding  true  lessons 
which  it  is  the  peculiar  duty  of  the  Church  to  foster, 
and  which  they  were  either  unwiUing  or  unable  to 
learn  from  the  Church  before  the  war.  The  elementary 
principles  of  Army  life,  self -surrender  to  a  cause,  self- 
subordination  in  the  interests  of  a  common  purpose, 
regular  and  disciplined  habits,  are  but  the  Christian 
virtues  represented  with  a  particular  application. 
The  soldier  is  not  a  saint.  He  is  just  as  weak  and 
susceptible  to  temptation  as  he  was  in  civil  life  ;  and 
it  is  unwise  and  unfair  to  flatter  him.  But  in  spite  of 
this  he  is  a  man  in  many  ways  entirely  admirable. 
Deep    down    in    the    hearts    even  of    those  who  are 


362      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xiv 

superficially  the  most  careless  is  a  sense  of  vocation  :  life 
is  purposeful,  and  through  all  the  mist  of  disillusionment 
and  weariness  the  soldier  perhaps  remembers  that  he 
came  forward  voluntarily  to  fight  for  a  cause  because 
he  believed  that  this  cause  was  right,  and  that  it  was 
his  duty  to  see  that  right  conquered  wrong.  It  is  this 
sense  of  "  vocation "  that,  however  dimly  reahsed, 
explains  the  miracle  that  we  call  the  New  Armies, 
And  with  the  sense  of  vocation  come  inevitably  the 
loyalty  to  the  cause  and  the  spirit  of  brotherhood  that 
are  the  special  marks  of  the  British  soldier  of  to-day. 

We  have  called  these  qualities  potentially  Christian. 
But  can  we  dignify  them  with  the  actual  name  of 
religion  ?  And  if  we  cannot,  does  it  follow  that  the 
soldier  has  no  real  rehgion  at  all  ?  The  present  writer 
would  not  be  a  party  to  any  such  pessimistic  conclusion. 
What  does  seem  quite  clear  is  that  the  religion  of  the 
majority  of  men  in  the  Army  is  unconscious.  It  is  a 
creed  of  conduct,  more  or  less  divorced  from  theological 
presuppositions.  But  the  statement  that  religion  is 
unconscious  does  not  carry  with  it  the  corollary  that 
it  is  non-existent.  The  soldier  of  to-day  is  rehgious  ; 
but  his  religious  inclinations  have  not  been  sufficiently 
directed  into  the  channels  through  which  they  would 
have  found  conscious  and  increasing  expression.  For 
this  reason,  among  others,  we  are  faced  with  the  fact 
that  for  very  many  men  war  has  taught  them  more 
about  the  ideals  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  than  they  have 
learned  from  definitely  religious  agencies. 

The  realisation  of  this  fact  is  the  bounden  duty  of  the 
Church  ;  and  the  fact,  when  realised,  the  most  tre- 
mendous challenge  that  the  war  calls  upon  her  to  face. 


XIV  THE   SOLDIER'S   RELIGION  363 


III. 

How  is  this  challenge  to  be  met  ?  The  writer  ven- 
tures to  offer  some  suggestions,  not  because  he  wishes 
to  set  up  his  own  fallible  judgment  as  a  guide  for  others 
of  greater  wisdom  and  experience,  but  because  this 
Essay  would  be  incomplete  unless  some  such  sugges- 
tions formed  part  of  it. 

First  and  foremost,  as  the  National  Mission  so 
clearly  proclaimed,  there  comes  to  the  Church,  in- 
sistently, the  call  to  self-examination  and  self-know- 
ledge. The  Church  has,  to  a  large  extent,  failed  in 
this  generation,  and  this  failure  has  been  made  clear 
by  the  war.  The  Army  might  have  taken  with  it  to 
France  the  conscious  stimulus  and  consecration  of  the 
blessing  of  the  Mother  Church.  It  did  not  do  so  be- 
cause the  Church  lacked  the  authority  and  influence  to 
impress  this  message  on  the  hearts  of  her  individual 
children.  And  with  the  realisation  of  failure  will 
assuredly  come  repentance — a  turning  to  the  Master 
Teacher  to  find  out  in  what  her  failure  lay — and  an 
effort  to  live  more  closely  in  communion  with  Him 
that  His  will  may  be  done  more  faithfully  and  more 
effectually. 

And  conditioned  by  this  paramount  duty,  two 
thoughts  suggest  themselves  which  may  be  summarised 
each  in  one  word — education,  and  co-operation. 

The  laity  must  be  religiously  educated.  With  one 
aspect  of  this  question  we  have  already  dealt,  and 
it  will  only  be  necessary  to  repeat  our  conclusion. 
Means  must  be  found  generally,  as  they  are  now  in 


364      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xiv 

some  parishes,  of  preventing  the  di'ifting  away  of  so 
many  boys  who  leave  Sunday  school  from  further 
continuous  religious  instruction.  But  there  is  another 
aspect,  and  this  is  the  more  immediately  urgent  one. 
The  Church  has  an  unparalleled  opportunity  at  the 
present  moment,  in  the  mass  of  unconscious  Chris- 
tianity, as  we  have  called  it,  that  our  men  will  bring 
back  with  them  from  France.  It  is  true  that  they  have 
learnt  this  for  the  most  part  independently  of  the 
Church  and  her  teaching.  This  we  must  frankly 
admit  ;  but  even  the  more  for  this  reason  the  call 
comes  to  the  Church  to  mould  this  unconscious  but 
splendid  material  into  an  articulate  and  conscious 
faith.  How  is  this  to  be  done  ?  Hov/  is  Christ  to  be 
shown  forth  as  the  real  though  hitherto  unacknowledged 
King  of  all  the  aspirations  and  the  seK-sacrifice  that 
the  war  has  kindled  in  men's  hearts  ?  Simply,  as  He 
was  shown  forth  in  the  first  great  Mission  on  the  banks 
of  the  Jordan,  by  the  preaching  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 
It  is  the  Kingdom,  and  the  cause  of  the  Kingdom,  that 
is  so  little  understood  by  the  men  in  the  Army,  and 
which  when  proclaimed  to  them  makes  so  compelling 
and  illuminating  an  appeal.  The  writer  had  the  privi- 
lege of  a  discussion  on  religious  matters  with  the  officers 
of  a  Brigade,  and  walking  back  from  the  meeting  said 
half -jokingly  to  a  subaltern,  "  I  beheve  you  fellows 
think  that  all  we  clergy  care  about  is  getting  you  inside 
our  churches  " — to  which  at  once  the  answer  was 
given,  "  Well,  Padre,  is  not  that  so  ?  "  The  present 
moment  is  the  Church's  opportunity  of  teaching  men 
that  the  message  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  does  not  stop 
short  at  churchgoing,  but  includes  social  and  inter- 


XIV  THE   SOLDIER'S   RELIGION  365 

national  righteousness,  and  an  intelligent  interest  in 
the  life  of  the  nation  as  a  whole.  It  may  be  the  fault 
of  the  Church,  or  it  may  not  be,  but  the  majority  of 
men  have  never  realised  this  fundamental  fact.  If 
only  the  Church  can  translate  the  Atonement  into  the 
language  of  to-day,  and  show  the  men  who  have  lived 
in  the  trenches  of  Flanders,  and  seen  their  comrades 
lay  down  their  lives,  that  the  cause  that  they  have 
fought  for  is  part  of  the  crusade  that  the  Church  was 
founded  to  conduct  on  earth,  that  their  self-sacrifice  is 
a  shadow  of  the  Sacrifice  of  Calvary,  then  all  that  they 
have  found  to  be  true  in  life  will  be  swallowed  up  and 
consummated  in  the  vision  of  God,  and  of  the  spiritual 
war  that  He  is  ever  waging  against  the  powers  of  evil. 
Their  unconscious  Christianity  will  be  articulate  and 
alive,  and,  as  has  been  finely  said,  God  will  by  a  legi- 
timist revolution  come  into  His  own. 

But  if  this  is  so,  we  must  educate  the  clergy.  The 
Church  has  through  her  Avork  at  the  Front  made  it 
more  probable  than  ever  before  that  men  will  be  inclined 
to  listen  to  her  voice  during  the  process  of  social  recon- 
struction that  must  inevitably  follow  the  war.  And 
this  opportunity,  if  it  is  to  be  properly  used,  will  call 
for  clear  thinking,  we  may  almost  say  for  real  states- 
manship, not  only  on  the  part  of  the  leaders  of  the 
Church,  but  also  of  her  junior  representatives.  For 
this  call  the  clergy  must  be  prepared,  devotionally 
and  intellectually  ;  and  in  this  connection  it  is  per- 
tinent to  consider  briefly  the  question  of  the  training 
of  our  candidates  for  Holy  Orders.  The  present 
writer  feels  bound  to  record  his  opinion,  in  all  diffidence, 
that   at   present   there   are  not   sufficient   guarantees 


366      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xiv 

that  this  training  is  in  any  way  adequate.  As  a  small 
concrete  illustration,  the  qualifications  generally  re- 
quired from  candidates  who  present  themselves  from 
one  of  our  universities  are — 

(a)  that  they  should  have  obtained  the  B.A.  degree  ; 

(6)  that  they  should  have  been  for  one  year  resident 
in  a  recognised  theological  college,  or  have  attended 
two  courses  of  theological  lectures  at  their  university. 

With  the  loophole  thus  afforded  by  the  latter  alter- 
native, it  is  quite  possible  for  a  student  to  spend  two 
years  at  his  university  without  any  thoughts  of  Holy 
Orders,  and,  having  managed  during  his  third  year  to 
spare  twenty-four  hurried  hours  of  the  time  that  he 
would  otherwise  give  to  the  subjects  that  he  is  studying 
for  his  degree  (possibly  science  or  mathematics)  in  a 
theological  lecture-room,  to  present  himself  theoreti- 
cally as  fully  qualified  a  candidate  for  Holy  Orders 
as  a  man  who  has  had  one  year  or  more  of  specialised 
training  in  a  theological  college.  The  minimum 
qualifications  for  admission  to  Holy  Orders  in  our 
Church  compare  most  unfavourably  with  those  re- 
quired in  other  Churches,  or  in  other  callings,  such  as 
the  medical  profession.  With  the  tremendous  calls 
that,  God  willing,  the  nation  may  feel  moved  to  make 
on  its  clergy  in  the  way  of  advice  and  guidance,  it 
seems  at  least  possible  that  the  sound  policy  would  be 
to  ensure  a  higher  level  of  specialised  training  even  at 
the  cost  of  a  diminution  in  numbers. 

Again,  there  must  be  co-operation,  both  within  the 
Church  and  outside  it.  The  Missionary  problem  is 
one  that  cannot  be  discussed  in  a  few  paragraphs. 
But  two  or  three  points  may  be  noticed,  if  only  sum- 


XIV  THE   SOLDIER'S   RELIGION  367 

marily.  It  is  surely  time  that  the  Church,  to  borrow 
a  current  metaphor,  paid  some  serious  attention  to  the 
question  of  her  man-power  ;  and  this  can  only  be  done 
by  the  breaking  down  once  and  for  all  of  the  unreal 
distinction  between  the  "  Home  "  and  the  "  Mission  " 
field.  It  would  be  to  the  lasting  good  of  the  Church 
if  service  abroad  was  made  normal  and  not,  as  at 
present,  abnormal ;  and  if  every  candidate  for  Holy 
Orders  was  informed  as  a  matter  of  course  that  he 
would  be  normally  expected  to  serve  a  certain  number 
of  the  first  ten  years  of  his  priesthood  overseas.  With 
a  more  or  less  regular  annual  succession  of  clergy  due 
for  foreign  work,  it  would  be  possible  by  means  of  a 
central  authority  established  for  the  purpose  to  allocate 
reinforcements  to  areas  where  they  were  most  needed. 
And  the  effect  upon  the  Home  Church  of  having  a 
body  of  clergy  the  majority  of  whom  had  had  experience 
of  work  in  other  continents  would  be  one  of  immeasur- 
able benefit.  The  nation  that  sends  its  working  men 
to  conquer  Baghdad  and  defend  the  Suez  Canal  has 
learnt  to  think  imperially  ;  and  the  Church  that  is  to 
hold  its  allegiance  must  think  imperially  too.  To 
this  suggestion,  and  to  the  arguments  for  and  against 
its  practicability,  justice  cannot  be  done  in  this  Essay  ; 
but  it  is  one  that  merits  immediate  and  very  serious 
consideration. 

Again,  we  must  co-operate  with  the  laity.  The 
special  instance  of  Sunday  schools,  discussed  above,  is 
only  one  of  many  aspects  of  this  question.  If  one 
great  lesson  that  we  must  teach  our  people  is  the  mean- 
ing of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  another,  and  almost 
equally  vital,  is  the  real  meaning  of  the  priesthood  of 


368      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xiv 

the  laity.     Without  any   doubt  part  of  the  lack  of 
interest  shown  by  laymen  in  the  affairs  of  the  Church 
is  directly  attributable  to  the  fact  that  they  have  not 
been  sufficiently  instructed  in  their  duties  or  encouraged 
to  perform  them.     There  is  visible  at  the  moment  in 
England  a  considerable  movement  in  the  direction  of 
giving   laymen   a   larger   representation   and   a   more 
influential  voice  on  Church  councils  of  different  kinds, 
and  this   tendency  makes   entirely  for  good.     There 
are   many   directions   in  which   the  laity  could,   and 
ought  to,  relieve  or  assist  the  clergy  in  the  ordinary 
routine  work  of  the  Church  ;   for  instance,  as  is  in  fact 
increasingly  found  to  be  the  case,  in  the  matter  of 
finance.     And  this  deliberate  broadening  of  the  basis  of 
Church    oj)inion   must    be  wholehearted  and  without 
reserve  on  the  part  of  the  clergy.     On  many  questions 
laymen   keenly   interested   in  the   Church   have   pro- 
nounced and  helpful   views,  and   they   must   be    en- 
couraged to  give  voice  to  them,  even  at  the  risk  that  in 
some  cases  their  criticisms  and  suggestions  may  seem 
revolutionary  or  even  possibly  give  offence.     In  any 
Church,  and  especially  such  a  Church  as  ours,  which  is 
accused,  often  quite  unfairly,  of  undue  conservatism, 
criticism  from  within  would  be  a  healthy  and  sure 
proof  of  its  vitality.     Laymen  who  are  entirely  faithful 
to  the  Church  are  at  times  inclined  to  criticise  certain 
features  of  the  administrative  methods  of  the  Church, 
as  for  instance  the  unequal  distribution  of  emoluments, 
the  methods  adopted  in  some  cases  for  raising  money, 
the  absence  of  any  adequate  and  compulsory  super- 
annuation  scheme  that   will   enable  a   clergyman  to 
retire  in  season  and  not  continue  to  hold  a  benefice 


XIV  THE   SOLDIER'S    RELIGION  369 

when  he  is  really  incapacitated  by  age  or  infirmity  for 
the  discharge  of  his  duties.  These  criticisms  are  made 
in  all  honesty,  and  it  would  be  folly  to  pretend  that 
they  are  not  made.  The  remedy  seems  obviously  to 
be  that  the  laity  should  be  encouraged  more  than  they 
are  at  present  to  realise  their  duty  of  criticism  where 
criticism  is  needed,  and  of  effectual  co-operation  in  the 
task  of  introducing  necessary  reforms. 

And  we  must  co-operate  with  other  Churches.  This 
seems  to  the  writer  to  be  almost  the  dominant  lesson 
of  the  war.  Very  many  of  our  men  have  had  their 
faith  in  God  burned  into  them  in  the  hard  school  of 
reality.  They  have  found  God  because  they  felt  the 
need  for  Him  ;  and  for  them  He  is  the  great  principle 
of  love  and  unity.  They  will  have  simply  no  use  for 
any  Church  that  formulates  religion  in  terms  of  divi- 
sion ;  and  if  they  find  that  membership  of  any  religious 
body  in  which  they  wish  to  consecrate  and  make  effec- 
tive the  faith  that  has  become  theirs  brings  with  it  the 
necessary  consequence  of  suspicion  of  and  competition 
with  other  bodies,  they  will  keep  their  faith  to  them- 
selves, and  the  Church  will  have  lost  their  allegiance, 
perhaps  for  ever.  It  is  by  no  means  meant  that 
differences  are  to  be  minimised,  or  the  peculiar  heritage 
of  the  Church  abrogated  or  surrendered,  but  what  is 
meant  is  that,  in  the  great  battle  that  will  have  to  be 
fought  for  the  Kingdom  of  God,  it  will  be  courting 
failure  if  forces  are  dissipated  by  competition  or  un- 
willingness to  co-operate  as  far  as  possible.  If  there 
cannot  be  unity,  there  must  at  least  be  uniformity  of 
aim  and  a  liaison  as  close  and  sympathetic  as  that  of 
allied  armies  in  the  field.       It  is  no  doubt  more  easy 

B    B 


870      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xiv 

to  formulate  this  ideal  than  to  see  how  it  can  be 
achieved  ;  but  that  it  must  be  achieved  is  certain  if 
the  Church  is  to  fulfil  her  commission,  and  the  methods 
to  be  adopted  may  well  be  left  to  the  deliberation  of  the 
collective  wisdom  of  the  Church. 


IV. 

The  task  of  analysing  the  religious  attitude  of  the 
soldiers  of  the  Army,  and  of  suggesting  lines  on  which 
the  Church  may  be  better  enabled  to  cope  with  the 
problems  that  lie  before  her  in  her  dealing  with  them, 
is  one  of  extraordinary  difficulty,  and  no  one  can  be 
more  conscious  than  the  present  writer  of  the  imperfect 
and  fragmentary  way  in  which  it  has  been  attempted. 
Many  aspects  of  the  problem  have  had  perforce  to  be 
omitted,  others  very  cursorily  treated.  But  it  may 
perhaps  be  useful  if  the  conclusions  that  have  been 
arrived  at  are  presented  once  more  in  a  summary  form. 

It  w^ould  seem  that  the  mobilisation  of  a  large  section 
of  the  young  men  of  England  has  made  it  clear  that  the 
Church  has  not  succeeded  in  impressing  upon  the 
majority  of  them  a  sense  of  allegiance  to  her  teaching 
and  practices.  The  reason  for  this  failure  may  largely 
be  found  in  the  weakness  of  her  system  of  religious 
education,  and  this  is  worthy  of  the  most  serious 
reflection.  At  the  same  time  there  is  observable  in 
the  Army  a  considerable  amount  of  potential  Chris- 
tianity, of  qualities,  that  is  to  say,  which  are  closely 
akin  to  the  very  virtues  that  the  Church  has  always 
proclaimed  as  of  the  essence  of  the  teaching  of  Christ. 


XIV  THE   SOLDIER'S   RELIGION  871 

And  so  to  the  Church  is  given  the  wonderf ul'opportunity 
of  claiming  these  superb  quahties,  fostered  by  the 
circumstances  of  war,  not  for  herself  alone  or  for  her 
own  glory,  but  for  the  service  of  the  Kingdom  of  God — 
of  making  them  consciously  Christian,  and  relating 
them  to  the  knowledge  and  worship  of  a  personal 
Christ.  To  enable  her  to  achieve  this  end,  three  things 
appear  to  be  especially  necessary — seK-examination, 
education,  and  co-operation.  The  self-examination 
that  leads  to  repentance,  and  through  repentance  to  a 
deepened  faith  in  God  and  a  more  abiding  hope  for  the 
future  ;  the  education  of  clergy  and  laity  alike  ;  and 
the  broadening  of  the  basis  of  Church  work  and  Church 
thought  until  the  Church  becomes,  as  she  should  be, 
a  world-wide  brotherhood  on  the  interest  and  support 
of  which  the  cause  of  Christ  in  all  parts  of  the  world 
has  an  equal  claim,  and  in  which  clergy  and  laity  bear 
each  of  them  their  due  share  of  work  and  responsibility. 
One  looks  into  the  future.  God  grant  that  in  twenty 
years  from  now  it  may  be  said  that  the  coming  of  the 
Great  Shadow  over  Europe,  that  has  darkened  the  doors 
of  so  many  of  our  homes,  marked  also  the  dawn  of  a 
new  day  in  the  history  of  our  country,  and  that  in  and 
through  the  Church  of  our  fathers,  quickened  and 
instinct  afresh  with  the  Holy  Spirit,  men  who  had 
dared  all  for  England  caught  the  vision  of  an  even 
nobler  cause,  and  learnt  the  abiding  lesson  that  the 
greatest  of  all  battles  that  can  be  fought  is  for  Christ 
and  the  Kingdom  of  God. 


B  B   2 


XV 


THE    RELIGIOUS    DIFFICULTIES    OF 
THE    PRIVATE   SOLDIER 

BY     THE 

Rev.    G.    a.    STUDDERT-KENNEDY,    M.C,    M.A. 

Chaplain  to  the  Forces, Infantry  Brigade  ;    Vicar  of 

St.  Paul's,  Worcester. 


XV 


THE    RELIGIOUS    DIFFICULTIES    OF 
THE    PRIVATE    SOLDIER 

I.  War. 

"  He  has  not  got  any,"  said  my  friend  the  Anglo- 
Cathohc,  "you  are  doing  what  everyone  else  is  doing 
now,  reading  into  the  soldier  what  you  find  in  yourself. 
We  all  think  he  wants  what  we  want  him  to  want, 
and  is  short  of  what  we  can  supply.  Everyone  thinks 
he  possesses  the  panacea  for  all  religious  diseases. 
You  think  he  wants  thought  because  you  are  a  thinker. 
In  reality  the  private  soldier  does  not  think.  He  is 
either  simply  and  splendidly  rehgious  or  else  purely 
indifferent.  What  he  needs  is  definite  dogmatic 
teaching  on  the  full  Cathohc  Faith.  His  difficulties 
are  not  intellectual  but  moral."  An  exactly  similar 
reply  was  given  by  an  earnest  evangehcal,  only  that 
he  prescribed  simple  Gospel  teaching  and  more 
powerful  preaching  of  conversion. 

I  am  sure  that  both  replies  contain  truth,  but  I 
beheve  that  neither  contains  the  whole  truth.  The 
term    "  private  soldier "    is  dangerous.     Cla^ssification 


376      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       xv 

of  human  beings  is  always  perilous,  and  this  particular 
classification  is  specially  so.  The  very  deceptive 
uniformity  of  the  khaki  hides  an  endless  diversity  of 
body,  mind,  and  spirit.  All  the  brains  of  the  British 
Army  are  not  crowned  by  red  hats  or  even  by  officers' 
caps.  There  are  among  the  private  soldiers  of  the 
present  day  many  who  do  think,  and  think  deeply. 

Moreover,  if  the  soldier's  difficulties  are  always 
moral,  and  never  intellectual,  why  are  not  all  the 
cleanest  and  best  of  them  Christians  ?  One  can  under- 
stand the  indifference  of  men  who  are  evidently 
careless  and  slack  in  their  hves,  but  why  is  not  the 
best  N.C.O.  in  the  battahon  a  Christian  ?  Why  are 
the  men  whose  courage,  good  comradeship,  gallantry 
and  cheerfulness  we  are  bound  to  admire  indifferent 
to  Christianity  ?  That  is  the  question  that  all  of  us 
ask  ourselves. 

And  there  is  another  aspect  of  it.  It  is  impossible 
to  be  sure  that  all  the  indifference  which  is  accompanied 
by  moral  slackness  is  due  altogether  to  moral  causes. 
I  am  convinced  that  a  great  deal  of  what  we  class 
as  moral  indifference,  and  a  great  deal  of  the  indifference 
among  decent,  clean  men,  is  due  to  religious  difficulties 
which  give  rise  to  positive  unbelief.  There  is  in  the 
Army  of  to-day  a  great  deal  of  agnosticism  disguised 
as  indifference. 

Sometimes  they  can  formulate  and  express  their 
difficulties,  sometimes  they  can  formulate  but  not 
express  them,  and  sometimes  they  can  neither  formu- 
late nor  express  but  only  feel  them. 

The  man  who  can  formulate  and  express  his  difficulty 
will  come  to  you  with  a  question  or  an  objection.     He 


I 


XV  RELIGIOUS   DIFFICULTIES  377 

is  comparatively  rarer  but  by  no  means  non-existent 
in  the  Army.  The  man  who  can  formulate  but  not 
express  his  difficulty  will  listen  with  eager  attention 
to  any  teaching  which  appears  to  touch  and  grapple 
with  it,  but  will  exhibit  impatience  with  or  contempt 
for  dogmatic  teaching  which  ignores  or  hedges  about 
it.  The  man  who  can  neither  formulate  nor  express 
but  merely  feel  his  difficulty,  is  the  indifferent  man 
proper,  and  is  the  great  problem.  It  is  difficult  to 
get  him  to  listen  to  any  teaching  because  he  has  to 
be  roused  to  an  effort  in  order  to  think  consecutively. 
It  is  not  accurate  to  say  that  he  does  not  think  at 
all.  His  thought  is  there,  but  it  is  subconscious  and 
chaotic.  It  is  easy  to  say  that  he  does  not  think  he 
feels,  but  this  absolute  separation  of  the  emotions 
from  the  intellect  is  a  purely  abstract  process  useful 
for  purposes  of  psychological  analysis,  but  misleading 
if  pressed  too  far.  There  is  in  reality  no  such  thing 
as  thought  without  feehng  or  feehng  without  thought. 
Pure  emotion  and  pure  intellect  are  both  alike  abstrac- 
tions of  reality.  The  recognition  of  an  unexplained 
contradiction  is  a  feeling  of  irritation,  and  the  solution 
of  it  a  feeling  of  relief  ;  but  a  man  who  sees  a  contra- 
diction and  feels  irritated  by  it  does  not  always  try 
to  solve  it,  he  will  often  forget  or  try  to  forget  it. 
The  contradiction  hurts,  but  he  does  not  try  to  heal 
the  hurt,  he  takes  a  narcotic  instead.  The  trained 
thinker  who  meets  a  contradiction  sets  to  work  to 
solve  it,  and  takes  to  thought  ;  the  ordinary  man 
despairs  of  solving  it,  and  takes  to  drink,  or  cards,  or 
the  cinema,  or  writing  to  his  best  girl,  or  cursing  the 
sergeant-major — takes    to    anything,    in    fact,    which 


378      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        xv 

will  save  him  from  thought.  But  all  the  time  the 
contradiction  is  there,  a  dull,  aching  pain,  the  tooth- 
ache of  the  soul.  Such  a  man  does  not  declare  himself 
agnostic;  he  simply  Hghts  a  "fag,"  and  says  that  it 

is  a  "  durned  queer  business,"  and  that  he  is  "  d d 

if  he  knows  what  to  make  of  it." 

When  the  contradiction  hurts  very  badly,  such  a 
man  will  blaspheme,  and  his  blasphemy  will  burn 
round  one  side  of  the  contradiction.  I  remember  a 
man  who  came  down  a  communication  trench  during 
a  severe  bombardment  in  the  great  Somme  offensive 
and  met  me  there,  looking  after  the  wounded,  and 
as  soon  as  he  saw  I  was  a  parson  poured  out  the  most 
thrilling  blasphemies  against  God,  Jesus  Christ,  Chris- 
tianity and  parsons.  I  knew  it  was  not  personal,  it 
was  merely  that  the  contradiction  of  Christ  and  Herr 
Krupp  was  twisting  his  inside,  and  he  was  endeavouring 
to  break  it  down  with  linguistic  high  explosives.  All 
blasphemy  implies  a  kind  of  belief.  If  you  doubt 
that,  sit  down  and  try  to  blaspheme  Zeus  or  Odin  ; 
you  will  find  it  as  insipid  as  kissing  an  angular  maiden 
aunt. 

The  root  of  the  soldier's  blasphemy  is  the  same  as 
that  of  his  humour,  and  that  is  why  they  are  so  often 
mixed.  They  are  both  efforts  to  solve  a  felt  but 
unformulated  contradiction  in  life,  and  they  are 
both  essentially  Christian,  the  signs  of  a  lost  sheep 
of  the  Good  Shepherd. 

This  is  important  because  humour  and  blasphemy 
form  an  enormous  factor  in  the  general  atmosphere 
in  which  the  soldier  lives.  A  great  deal  of  his 
hum.our  is  blasphemous.     A  friend  of  mine  who  was 


XV  RELIGIOUS   DIFFICULTIES  379 

a  churchwarden  at  home,  and  met  me  one  night  in 
the  hne,  swelled  out  to  twice  his  usual  stoutness  with 

bombs,  and  declared  that  this  was  a  " funny  job 

for  a  churchwarden,"  was  a  case  in  point. 

Blasphemy  and  blasphemous  humour  are  both 
common  at  the  Front  because  the  Front  is  one  vast 
contradiction. 

"  I  believe  in  God  the  Father  Almighty,  and  a  trench 
mortar  has  just  blown  my  pal,  who  was  a  good-living 
lad,  to  pieces,  and  God  is  Love,  and  they  crucified  the 
sergeant-major,  and  peace  on  the  earth,  good  will 
towards  man,  and  I  stuck  my  bayonet  through  his 
belly,  and  Jesus  died  to  save  us  from  sin,  and  the  Boche 

has   been  raping  women,  and  this war    never 

ends"    (note  the  — ,   it  is  important  and  would 

probably  be  considerably  amphfied).  "  Christ,  there's 
the tea  up  ;  where's  my dixie  ?  " 

I  have  never  heard  that  said  because  it  never  was 
said,  but  I  have  heard  what  was  the  expression  of  it 
hundi-eds  of  times,  and  in  a  vision  I  have  seen  the 
tears  stand  bright  in  Jesus'  eyes,  and  heard  Him  laugh 
the  grand  loving  laughter  of  God. 

If  the  dear  old  chaps  who  said  it  could  have  seen 
Him  they  would  have  laughed  with  Him,  and  would 
have  said,  "  Sorry,  sir,  I  did  not  really  mean  it.  As 
you  were,  and  we  will  carry  on."  Why  cannot  they 
see  Him  ?  Because  of  the  contradiction.  The  first 
great  difficulty  of  the  private  soldier  is  war. 

"  Why  does  not  God  stop  it  ?  Any  decent  man  would 
stop  it  to-morrow  if  he  could,  and  God  is  Almighty 
and  can  do  anything,  then  why  does  He  allow  it  to 
20  on  ?  " 


380      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       xv 

It  is,  of  course,  the  old  problem  of  evil  in  an  acute 
form,  and  there  is  no  complete  and  logically  perfect 
solution  of  it.  But  can  nothing  be  done  to  mitigate 
the  mystery  of  it  ?  Some  would  reply  that  in  this 
final  mystery  reason  has  no  part  to  play,  it  is  the 
sphere  of  faith.  Faith  in  God,  and  Faith  alone,  can 
pierce  without  dissolving  the  contradiction  and  find 
God  good  behind.  It  is,  of  course,  undeniable  that 
Faith  has  done  this  again  and  again,  but  we  must 
beware  how  we  play  off  faith  against  reason.  Faith 
is  super-  but  not  contra-rational.  It  does  not  bid  us 
cease  from  thinking,  but  rather  bids  us  think  the 
more,  strong  in  faith  that  there  is  reason  in  the  ways 
of  God  with  men,  and  that  God's  mysteries  are  mysteries 
of  the  unknown  but  not  of  the  unknowable.  Faith 
is  a  food  and  a  stimulant  and  not  a  narcotic.  It  is 
meant  to  quicken,  not  to  kill,  the  power  of  thought. 
I  do  not  think  it  is  right  to  tell  men  that  they  must 
not  think  about  this  question,  and  it  certainly  is 
perfectly  useless  to  tell  them,  because  they  will  not 
obey. 

What  do  you  mean  by  the  word  "Almighty"  as 
an  attribute  of  God  ?  It  roUs  off  our  tongues  in  our 
creeds  and  prayers  and  sermons  very  easily  and  ghbly, 
but  what  does  it  mean  ? 

Everyone  ought  to  read  Mr.  H.  G.  WeUs's  great 
novel,  "  Ml-.  Brithng  Sees  It  Through."  It  is  a  gallant 
and  illuminating  attempt  to  state  the  question,  and 
to  answer  it.  His  thought  has  brought  him  to  a  very 
real  and  living  faith  in  God  revealed  in  Jesus  Christ, 
and  has  also  brought  relief  to  many  troubled  minds 
among  the  officers  of  the  British  Army.     I  know  that 


XV  RELIGIOUS   DIFFICULTIES  381 

from  conversations  I  have  had.  I  have  met  the  book 
everywhere  in  the  trenches.  As  yet  it  has  not  largely 
reached  the  private  soldier. 

But  I  am  sure  that  no  one,  not  even  Mr.  Wells 
himself,  having  thought  so  far  could  stop  there. 
"After  all,"  says  Mr.  Wells,  "the  real  God  of  the 
Christians  is  Christ  not  God  Almighty  ;  a  poor,  mocked, 
and  wounded  Christ  nailed  on  a  cross  of  matter  .  .  . 
Some  day  He  will  triumph."  However  strange  that 
may  sound  to  Christian  ears,  there  is  a  lot  of  truth 
in  it.  The  centre  of  our  worship  has  always  been 
Christ  and  Him  Crucified.  We  have  always  wor- 
shipped a  suffering  God. 

See  from  His  head,  His  hands,  His  feet, 
Sorrow  and  Love  flow  mingled  down. 
Did  e'er  such  love  and  sorrow  meet. 
Or  thorns  compose  so  rich  a  crown  ? 

Were  the  whole  realm  of  nature  mine. 
That  were  an  offering  far  too  small. 
Love  so  amazing,  so  divine, 
Demands  my  soul,  my  life,  my  all. 

That  is  about  as  good  a  summary  of  the  root  of  Christian 
devotion  as  one  could  get.  But  what  Mr.  Wells, 
who  is  not  yet  a  fully  conscious  Christian,  fails  to 
grasp  is  that  we  cannot  think  of  the  Cross  apart  from 
the  Resurrection. 

The  Gospel  of  the  Cross  without  the  Resurrection 
would  be  a  Gospel  of  despair,  the  revelation  of  a  power- 
less, pain-racked  Deity  caught  in  the  grip  of  creation 
and  held  fast.  The  Gospel  of  Christ  is  a  Gospel  of  Hope, 
a  Gospel  of  all-suffering  but  all-conquering  love  faced 
with  an   awful   and   inevitable   agony,    but   patiently 


382      THE   CHURCH  IN   THE   FURNACE       xv 

and  powerfully  overcoming  it.  It  is  the  Gospel  of 
a  transcendent  God  Who  makes  Himself  immanent 
for  Love's  sake,  and  thereby  takes  upon  Himself  a 
burden  and  an  agony  beyond  our  power  to  understand. 
The  attribute  Almighty  must  be  interpreted  in  the 
light  of  the  Cross  and  the  Resurrection,  and  in  that 
light  it  is  seen  to  mean,  not  that  God  has  no  difficulties 
and  no  sorrows,  but  that  God  is  able  to  overcome  all 
difficulties  and  to  rise  supreme  above  all  sorrows. 
Omnipotence  does  not  mean  that  God  can  do  anything 
which  we  imagine  He  ought  to  be  able  to  do,  but  that, 
faced  with  awful  obstacles  and  humanly  incompre- 
hensible difficulties.  He  is  nevertheless  able  to  grapple 
with  and  overcome  them.  God  is  iraTr^p  TravroKpdrwp. 
This  revelation  of  God  in  Christ  is  the  revelation 
which  the  story  of  the  growth  of  the  universe  as  it 
is  laid  before  us  in  science  and  in  history  would  lead 
us  to  expect. 

As  one  reads  the  amazing  story  of  development 
which  evolutionary  science  has  to  tell,  one  seems  to 
catch  a  glimpse  of  that  ever-struggling  but  ever- 
conquering  power  Who  works  unceasingly  behind  it 
all.  We  see  Him  struggling,  but  victoriously  strugghng, 
to  bring  order  and  beauty  out  of  chaos.  The  Spirit 
of  God  is  seen  at  war  with  necessity.  We  miust  call 
it  that  for  lack  of  a  better  name.  The  Catholic  Faith 
simply  calls  it  Satan,  the  adversary,  and  puts  its 
origin  in  the  misuse  of  free  will  by  spirit  created  before 
the  world  was.  This  is  not  a  solution  but  a  post- 
ponement of  the  problem.  But  the  adversary  is 
there,  in  nature  as  in  man. 

As  one  reads  the  story  of  science  and  the  struggle 


XV  RELIGIOUS   DIFFICULTIES  383 

of  nature  towards  perfection,  one  sees  staring  up  through 
the  pages  of  the  text-book  the  face  of  Christ  patient, 
pain-pierced,  and  powerful. 

So  through  the  thunder  sounds  a  human  voice 

Saying,  "  O  heart  I  made,  a  heart  beats  here  for  thee ; 

Face  my  hands  fashioned,  see  it  in  myself. 

Thou  hast  no  power,  nor  canst  conceive  of  mine. 

But  Love  I  gave  thee,  with  Myself  to  love, 

And  thou  must  love  Me,  Who  have  died  for  thee." 

It  is  not  for  nothing  that  Spring  and  Easter  coincide. 
A  perfect  spring  day  in  a  smihng  land  is  the  victory 
of  God  over  necessity  in  nature,  as  the  Resurrection 
is  the  victory  of  God  over  necessity  in  man.  It  is 
not  mere  poetry  but  truth  to  say  that  the  summer 
rose  is  dyed  red  with  the  life-blood  of  God.  All  good 
things  are  the  product,  not  only  of  God's  love  and 
power,  but  also  of  His  pain.  The  raiment  of  the 
lily  was  not  bought  for  nothing  any  more  than  is 
the  raiment  of  the  saints.  With  the  dawn  of  history 
the  struggle  of  God  becomes  more  intense.  The 
pressure  of  necessity  becomes  more  powerful.  History 
cries  out  for  that  prone  figure  in  the  Garden  sweating 
great  drops  of  blood,  and  demands  for  its  interpretation 
the  Cross  of  Calvary. 

"  History's  pages  but  record 

One  death  grapple  in  the  darkness  'twixt  old  systems  and  the  word. 
Right  for  ever  on  the  scaffold,  wrong  for  ever  on  the  throne. 
Yet  that  scaffold  sways  the  future,  and   behind  the  dim  unknown 
Sfcandoth  God,  within  the  shadow,  keeping  watch  above  His  own." 

No  better  summary  of  history  could  be  found  than 
those  great  hues  of  Lowell's.  To  meet  the  difficulty 
of  war  honestly,  we  have  to  face  the  facts  not  only 
of  this  war  but  of  history's  thousand  wars,  and  all 


384      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       xv 

the  cruelty,  barbarity,  and  sin  that  they  have  pro- 
duced. Belgium  is  but  the  latest  of  a  thousand  lands 
that  have  had  to  weep  for  their  children  and  refuse 
to  be  comforted  because  they  were  not.  Man's  history 
is  one  long  bloody  war,  with  burning  homes,  dishonoured 
women,  tortured  children,  and  all  war's  usual  atrocities 
repeated  like  a  filthy  tale.  That  fact  must  be  faced, 
and  Christianity  faces  it  in  the  tortured  figure  of  God 
incarnate  in  Whom  all  history  is  summed  up.  History 
is  an  intolerable  enigma  without  the  Cross  of  Christ. 
But  again  the  Cross  without  the  empty  Tomb  fails 
to  fit  the  facts.  There  is  an  agony  of  God  in  history, 
but  again  I  would  stress  the  truth  that  it  is  a  victorious 
agony.  There  is  progress  in  history,  there  is  a  real 
development  of  man,  a  real  development  of  the 
individual  and  of  society  toward  perfection.  The 
Kingdom  of  God  is  really  coming  and  has  been  coming 
all  down  the  ages.  It  is  on  this  point  that  Mr.  Wells 
falls  short  in  his  teaching.  He  does  not  do  justice 
to  the  Victory  of  God.  He  has  temporally  swung 
back  to  the  opposite  extreme  from  the  theologians 
and  has  allowed  the  mystery  of  evil  to  obscure  the 
mystery  of  good.  Necessity  is  not  really  uttermost 
or  ultimate,  it  is  essentially  temporary  and  contingent ; 
it  will  pass  away,  and  God  will  be  supreme.  All  this 
is  latent  in  Mr.  Wells's  teaching,  latent  but  not  yet 
patent,  and  it  needs  to  be  patent  and  emphatic.  There 
is  no  Gospel  apart  from  the  Resurrection.  "  The  world 
is  cruel,"  Mr.  Britling's  Letty  says.  "It  is  just 
cruel.  So  it  always  wiU  be."  "  It  need  not  be  cruel," 
replies  Mr.  Britling,  and  in  that  great  reply  is  all 
the  latent  power  of  the  Christian  Faith.     It  need  not 


XV  RELIGIOUS   DIFFICULTIES  385 

be,  it  must  not  be,  it  shall  not  be.  This  is  that  which 
overcometh  the  world,  even  our  faith.  "  I  believe  in  God 
the  Father  Almighty,"  is  an  act  of  faith,  not  a  decla- 
ration of  demonstrated  fact.  It  is  the  Christian  soldier's 
declaration  of  entire  trust  in  the  striving,  struggling, 
but  insuperable  Person  who  works  without  and  within 
the  universe.  It  is  the  Christian  Army's  oath  of 
allegiance,  and  its  battle-cry.  It  is  said  standing  to 
attention  with  our  faces  turned  towards  God's  altar 
and  the  dawn  of  day  whence  comes  the  final  victory 
of  Light. 

Too  often  in  the  past  this  first  clause  of  our  Creed 
has  been  interpreted  and  preached  in  such  a  way  as 
to  force  men  to  lay  upon  God  the  responsibility  for 
evil  as  though  it  were  in  some  mysterious  way  His 
Will.  God  has  been  represented  as  sending  and 
willing  plague,  pestilence,  famine,  disease  and  war. 
All  these  have  been  represented  as  the  visitation  of 
God.  This  has  led  to  a  very  popular  fatahsm  which 
is  a  pernicious  travesty  of  Christian  Truth.  Fatalism 
and  agnosticism  are  man's  chief  enemies,  they  cause 
more  sin  than  drink  and  selfishness.  It  is  this  fatalistic 
Christianity  which  has  no  appeal  to  men,  and  it  is, 
often  through  our  bad  preaching  and  teaching,  and 
their  consequent  ignorance,  the  only  Christianity  they 
know.  Christian  preaching  has  very  often  consisted 
in  pious  attempts  to  make  evil  good  in  order  to  save 
God's  face.  We  have  suffered  from  what  Hilary  of 
Poitiers  called  "  irreligiosa  soUicitudo  pro  Deo,"  and 
have  been  orthodox  liars  to  the  glory  of  God.  Passive 
resignation  to  evil  as  though  it  were  God's  will  has 
been    exalted    into    a    virtue,    and    consequently    the 

c  c 


386      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       xv 

Christianity  which  should  have  turned  the  world  upside 
down  has  been  turned  into  a  method  of  keeping  it 
as  it  is  and  meekly  accepting  its  wrong-side-upness  as 
the  discipline  of  Almighty  God.  The  Revolutionary 
Christ  has  been  disguised  as  a  moral  policeman.  Our 
preaching  of  the  Cross  has  been  stultified  in  the  same 
way.  The  murder  of  Good  Friday  has  been  separated 
from  the  other  murders  that  stain  man's  history 
and  represented  as  in  some  mysterious  way  the  Will 
of  God,  part  of  God's  plan.  The  spite  and  hatred  of 
the  priests,  the  treachery  of  Judas,  the  cowardice  of 
Pilate,  the  brutality  of  the  soldiers,  the  ingratitude 
of  the  crowd,  part  of  God's  plan,  because  God  willed 
that  Christ  should  die — what  a  God,  and  what  a  plan ! 
When  Christ  cried  in  the  Garden  "  Thy  Will  be  done," 
He  has  been  represented  as  submitting  to  the  Cross 
as  the  Will  of  God,  and  as  being  a  pattern  of  patient 
submission.  What  a  travesty  of  Truth  !  God's  Will 
was  of  course  the  j)erfect  life,  the  perfect  witness  to 
the  Truth ;  for  this  end  was  He  born  and  for  this  end 
came  He  into  the  world.  The  cry  in  the  Garden  was 
an  act,  not  so  much  of  submission  as  of  aspiration  and 
tremendous  resolve.  Christianity  is  not  the  gospel 
of  the  bowed  head  but  the  gospel  of  the  set  teeth. 
"Thy  Will  be  done"  in  the  Garden  was  the  supreme 
majesty  of  manhood  which  sent  Christ's  enemies 
reeling  backwards  to  the  ground,  and  is  the  revelation 
of  that  supreme  majesty  of  Godhead  which  shall  at 
last  send  all  evil  reeling  backward  into  its  native 
nothingness.  "  Thy  Will  be  done  "  is  not  pathetic, 
it  is  powerful,  with  the  power  of  the  suffering  but 
insuperable  God. 


XV  RELIGIOUS   DIFFICULTIES  387 

Here  I  think  is  the  teaching  which  will  mitigate 
if  it  does  not  destroy  the  bitterness  of  the  contradiction 
of  Christ  in  War.  We  preach  a  suffering  but  insuper- 
able God  at  war  with  evil  in  the  world,  at  war  with 
sin,  disease  and  death,  and  at  war  with  war. 

We  preach  a  God  ever  crucified  by  evil  but  ever 
rising  above  it,  Christ  crucified  but  risen  from  the 
dead.  Evil  is  not  and  never  can  be  the  Will  of  God, 
it  arises  from  necessities  the  nature  of  which  we  cannot 
fully  understand. 

What  the  necessities  were  which  God  had  to  over- 
come in  the  creation  of  the  material  world  we  cannot 
understand,  because  our  knowledge  of  them  is  limited 
by  our  knowledge  of  the  ultimate  nature  of  matter, 
which  is  nil. 

But  our  knowledge  of  the  necessities  arising  in  the 
evolution  of  man  toward  perfection  is  greater  because 
they  arise  out  of  the  nature  of  consciousness  which 
is  the  only  thing  we  know  about  from  the  inside,  and 
these  two  necessities  when  fully  realised  meet  many 
of  the  commonest  difficulties  in  the  soldier's  mind. 


II.  Why  does  God   allow   Evil  ? 

Even  when  you  have  made  it  clear  that  God  does 
not  will  war,  still  He  wants  to  know  why  God  permits 
it.  And  we  must  answer  because  He  cannot  help 
it.  Man  must  be  free.  An  element  of  independence 
and  spontaneity  is  an  essential  factor  of  personal 
consciousness.  Man  would  not  be  man  without 
freedom.  The  first  necessity  God  had  to  meet  in 
the  creation  of  self-conscious  personality  was  freedom. 

c  c  2 


388      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE    FURNACE       xv 

God  must  leave  us  free  to  sin  or  else  destroy  us.  Man 
cannot,  absolutely  cannot,  be  compelled  to  do  right. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  compulsory  virtue. 


HI.    Why     does     not    God    Punish    the 
Right  Man  ? 

A  soldier  in  hospital  badly  wounded,  to  whom  I 
had  explained  the  necessity  of  freedom,  replied  that 
he  understood  that  man  must  be  free  to  sin,  and  that 
sorrow  must  follow  sin.  "  But  what  I  can't  see," 
he  said,  "  is  why  God  does  not  punish  the  right  man. 
He  does  not.  He  seems  to  knock  a  wrong  'un  every 
time.  The  Kaiser  and  his  lot  sin,  and  my  old  dad 
is  breaking  his  heart  because  my  brother  has  lost 
his  legs.  Now  what  sense  or  justice  is  there  in  that  ?  " 
This  is  a  question  that  worries  soldiers  as  much  as 
any,  the  apparent  injustice  of  the  suffering  of  the 
innocent.  The  reply  seems  to  me  to  lie  in  the  demon- 
stration of  the  second  necessity  that  God  has  to  meet 
in  the  development  of  the  human  race,  viz.,  the  necessity 
of  unity.  Conscious  personality  must  be  in  a  measure 
independent,  and  cannot  be  completely  isolated.  A 
completely  isolated  human  personahty  is  an  absolute 
impossibility.  We  are  human,  and  we  progress  as 
human  beings  because  we  are  one  family,  and  share 
our  evil  and  our  good.  Speech,  writing,  and  the 
reason  which  invented  and  can  use  them  are  the 
hall  marks  of  humanity,  and  they  are  the  means  of 
our  unity.  We  share  the  good  that  others  win,  the 
product  of  their  hands  and  brains,  and  so,  and  only  so, 
do  we  progress.     We  reap  in  joy  what  others  sow  in 


XV  RELIGIOUS   DIFFICULTIES  389 

bitter  tears,  and  garner  into  our  treasury  of  blessings 
the  fruit  their  labours  bear.  That  is  the  very  law 
of  Love,  the  Love  that  makes  us  one.  Rightly  used, 
this  power  of  unity  is  the  greatest  blessing  we  possess, 
it  is  the  very  source  of  all  our  highest  joy.  It  is  the 
source  from  which  all  knowledge  comes.  It  is  the 
meaning  of  the  mystery  of  Music  and  Art.  The  music 
that  sings  in  a  great  musician's  brain,  the  glory  of 
form  and  colour  that  burns  in  fire  of  ecstasy  in  the 
soul  of  the  great  artist,  flow  out  to  bless  the  brains 
and  hearts  of  lesser  men.  This  interpenetration  is 
life,  as  Bergson  has  taught  us. 

But  when  by  virtue  of  his  freedom  man  uses  his 
powers  wrongly,  the  evil  that  he  does,  the  vicious 
product  of  his  hand  and  brain,  flows  out  to  curse  the 
human  family  through  those  very  channels  which 
were  meant  to  convey  the  highest  blessings.  These 
two  necessary  properties  of  freedom  and  unity  when 
wrongly  used  make  the  suffering  of  the  innocent  for 
the  guilty  inevitable.  That  boy  soldier's  dad  and  the 
Kaiser  are  one  in  the  unity  of  the  human  race,  and 
so  the  evil  results  of  Germany's  wrong  choice  of  ideals, 
her  substitution  of  Mars  for  Christ,  come  upon 
him  and  upon  his  childi-en,  and  they  suffer,  the 
innocent  for  the  guilty. 

IV.  What  is  God   Doing  ? 

"  He  is  out  of  it  all,"  a  man  said  to  me.  "Christ 
suffered  once  and  once  for  all,  and  then  ascended  into 
Heaven  to  wait  until  the  world  comes  round,  and  it 
seems  a  long  time  coming.     Christ  died  once  in  pain 


390      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       xv 

to  save  us  from  our  sins,  but  it  does  not  seem  to  have 
saved  us  much,  when  all  this  comes  as  the  result  of 
sin  after  two  thousand  years."  This  is  a  very  real 
difficulty.  There  is  no  one  for  whom  the  soldier 
has  such  supreme  contempt  as  a  bad  staff  officer  who 
wears  red  tabs  and  spurs  and  never  sees  the  trenches. 
And  to  him  that  is  how  God  appears.  Christ  was 
splendid  while  He  was  on  earth,  but  He  has  gone  into 
Heaven.  He  has  retired  to  the  security  of  Corps 
Headquarters  well  behind  the  line,  and  from  there 
He  directs  operations.  All  the  glory  with  which  we 
invest  the  glorified  Christ,  the  throne,  the  host  of 
waiting  angels,  the  triumphal  entry  into  Heaven,  all 
this  means  just  "  Red  tabs  and  spurs,"  and  they  do 
not  evoke  worship  or  even  respect.  The  pageantry 
of  Courts  and  thrones  which  supplied  past  ages  with 
the  symbols  wherein  to  express  the  glory  of  God  has 
lost  its  glamour  for  the  man  of  to-day,  he  is  too  deeply 
Christian.  Only  the  Cross  is  eternal,  it  is  the  only 
real  throne.  The  only  crown  the  modern  man  respects 
is  the  Crown  of  Thorns. 

A  muddy,  bloody,  suffering  but  unbeaten  Christ 
he  can  be  made  to  love  and  follow,  but  a  supreme, 
transcendent  potentate  is  to  him  as  contemptible  as 
the  Kaiser.  We  need  to  reinterpret  the  Resurrection 
and  Ascension  if  they  are  to  grip  the  mind  of  the 
soldier  of  to-day  or  the  citizen  of  to-morrow.  We  are 
witnessing  the  passing  of  the  monarch  absolute  from 
the  world  in  a  flood  of  blood  and  tears,  and  all  the 
metaphors  supplied  from  absolute  monarchy  must 
pass  too.  The  Ascension  needs  to  be  connected  with 
the  coming  of  the  Spirit,  the  coming  of  God  to  embark 


XV  RELIGIOUS   DIFFICULTIES  391 

upon  another  and  more  terrible  course  of  victorious 
suffering  in  the  Church  and  in  humanity.  God  comes 
again  in  the  Spirit  to  lead  His  army,  and  to  suffer 
with  it.  God  suffers  now,  and  is  crucified  afresh 
every  day.  God  suffers  in  every  man  that  suffers. 
God,  the  God  we  love  and  worship,  is  no  far  off  God 
of  Power,  but  the  comrade  God  of  Love :  He  is  on  no 
far  off  heavenly  throne.  He  is  up  in  the  trenches,  under 
the  guns  :  for  every  wound  a  man  receives  there  is 
pain  in  the  heart  of  God,  and  every  cry  of  agony 
finds  echo  in  God's  soul.  God  is  not  a  bad  Staff  Officer, 
but  a  gallant  and  fatherly  Colonel  who  goes  over  the 
top  with  His  men.  God  is  leading  the  world  at  cost 
of  awful  agony  to  its  perfection.  The  truth  of  the 
in-dwelling  of  the  Spirit  of  Jesus  Christ  and  the  suffering 
of  God  in  man  must  be  the  keystone  of  our  preaching. 
The  Church  is  God's  army,  in  which  He  dwells  and 
suffers,  and  we  must  preach  the  Church,  and  the  call 
to  its  warfare  under  the  leadership  of  God. 


V.   Why  are  there  so  many   Religions  ? 

But  when  we  try  to  preach  the  call  of  the  Army  of 
God,  we  are  immediately  faced  with  the  difficulty 
caused  by  our  unhappy  divisions.  The  soldier's 
point  of  view  is  that  they  are  different  religions,  and 
he  does  not  see  the  reason  of  or  the  necessity  for  them. 
The  whole  spectacle  of  the  divided  Church  he  regards 
with  humorous  contempt.  It  is  only  one  of  the 
many  grievous  losses  which  the  Church  suffers,  and 
it   is   not   my  province   either  to   demonstrate   what 


392      THE    CHURCH    IN   THE   FURNACE       xv 

needs  no  demonstration,  or  to  enter  into  a  discussion 
on  the  methods  of  fostering  unity.  The  point  we  have 
to  get  at  is  how  to  explain  their  existence  to  the 
ordinary  man,  and  turn  his  contempt  for  the  divided 
Church  that  appears  on  earth  into  loyal  love  of  the 
undivided  Church  which  exists  in  the  hearts  of  all 
true  followers  of  Christ.  Again,  I  think  we  need  to 
emphasise  the  two  truths  of  human  freedom  and 
human  unity,  and  to  state  that  the  army  of  Christ 
is  wounded  as  the  human  race  is  wounded  by  man's 
misuse  of  both.  The  army  of  Christ  is  an  army  for 
ever  in  battle  and  it  suffers  from  the  power  of  evil 
without  and  from  traitors  within  it.  Our  divisions 
are  due  to  attacks  from  without  and  betrayal  within. 
There  are  faults  and  sins  on  both  sides,  no  Church, 
and  no  Church  party,  has  a  monopoly  of  truth  or 
falsehood.  All  churches  are  but  poor  representatives 
of  Christ  at  present.  All  we  can  do  now  is  to  cling 
fast,  each  one  of  us,  to  what  we  hold  is  true,  and  try  to 
see  our  brother's  point  of  view,  and  work  for  the  unity 
which  is  to  be.  Meanwhile,  let  us  grasp  the  fact  that 
unity  can  exist  behind  divisions — witness  the  splendidly 
united  yet  sadly  divided  England  for  which  we  fight. 
A  hundred  parties,  a  continual,  seething  unrest,  and 
yet  a  very  real  unity.  So  behind  the  divisions  of 
the  Church  a  very  real  unity  in  Christ  exists.  Perfect 
unity  in  England  through  the  perfect  unity  of  the 
Church  is  what  we  must  work  for,  and  meanwhile 
our  most  important  lesson  is  to  learn  how  to  agree  to 
differ  and  yet  never  be  content  with  the  agreement. 
Interdenominationahsm  is  difficult,  but  in  it  lies  the 
only  possibility  of  solution. 


XV  RELIGIOUS   DIFFICULTIES  393 

VI.  Why  are  there  so  many  Hypocrites  ? 

The  divided  Church  finds  its  reflection  in  the  divided 
man,  or  the  hypocrite,  as  the  "  Man  in  the  Street  " 
calls  him.  There  are  in  the  world  many  real  hypo- 
crites, and  they  are  as  vile  and  as  grievous  to  Christ 
now  as  when  He  cursed  them  in  the  Temple  court ; 
but  they  are  not  nearly  so  common  as  the  man  in  the 
street  or  in  the  billets  supposes.  Most  hypocrites 
are  divided  men,  men  who  try  and  fail.  He  who 
tries  to  follow  Christ  must  be  prepared  to  fail,  and 
try  and  fail  again,  and  therefore  to  be  charged  with 
hypocrisy  by  his  fellow  men.  This  is  what  the  soldier 
is  not  prepared  for.  He  hates  to  think  himself  or 
to  be  thought  by  others  to  be  a  hypocrite.  "  I  would 
not  go  to  church  if  I  could  not  act  up  to  it,"  he  says, 
and  points  to  some  weak  brother  who  is  a  professing 
Christian,  and  perhaps  a  poor  specimen.  He  is 
always  hard  in  his  judgments  because,  never  having 
tried  to  live  by  the  Christian  standard,  he  does  not 
know  the  difficulty  of  it,  and  he  has  only  contempt 
for  failure.  He  feels  that  he  at  any  rate  is  honest, 
in  that  he  professes  nothing.  This  honesty  of  the 
lower  standard  is  one  of  the  commonest  bars  to  the 
profession  of  Christianity.  Now  what  we  can  point 
out  to  the  soldier  is  that  it  is  precisely  this  honesty 
of  the  lower  standard  that  we  are  fighting  against. 
The  Germans  openly  declare  that  Christ  has  nothing 
to  do  with  politics,  and  no  place  in  international  affairs  ; 
in  these  matters  force  is  the  only  arbiter.  War  is 
inhuman,  and  therefore  there  can  be  no  attempt  to 
humanise  war. 


394      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       xv 

No  nation  has  ever  been  purely  Christian  in  its 
international  pohcy,  or  in  its  method  of  conducting 
war,  therefore  all  profession  of  Christianity  in  these 
matters  is  hypocrisy.  And  this  charge  of  hypocrisy 
is  one  which  Germany  often  makes  against  Britain 
and  the  Allies.  The  German  is  and  always  has  been 
a  purist,  his  motto  is  thorough.  It  is  a  great  quality, 
but,  hke  great  quahties,  is  ghastly  in  its  results  when 
it  is  corrupt.  Corruptio  optimi  pessima.  The  Prussian 
nightmare  has  displaced  the  German  dream,  and  the 
perfect  music  of  the  "  Moonlight  Sonata  "  is  drowned 
by  the  barking  of  the  Kaiser's  Krupps.  Germany  is 
honest,  but  it  is  the  honesty  of  the  lower  standard, 
which  is  the  honesty  of  hell.  What  this  war  must 
do  if  we  are  to  win  a  real  victory  is  to  banish  from 
Germany  and  from  the  world  this  lower  honesty  and 
put  a  decent  striving  hypocrisy  in  its  place.  If  we 
cannot  be  human  we  must  at  any  rate  be  as  human 
as  we  can,  and  if  war  cannot  be  Christian  we  must 
make  it  as  Christian  as  we  can,  until  we  aboMsh  it. 
This  refusal  on  the  soldier's  part  to  profess  Christianity 
because  he  cannot  be  a  perfect  Christian  is  simply 
the  honesty  of  the  lower  standard  which  is  the  enemy 
of  progress.  If  man  is  to  grow  then  he  must  aim  higher 
than  he  can  reach.  There  is  nothing  easier  and  nothing 
more  fatal  than  to  profess  to  be  a  blackguard  and  to 
be  one. 

VII.  Repentance. 

And  that  leads  us  on  to  another  difficulty  of  the 
soldier  connected  with  Christian  Repentance.  What 
is  the  use  of  repenting  if  we  do  the  same  things  over 


XV  RELIGIOUS   DIFFICULTIES  395 

again  ?  A  man  who  does  that  must  be  a  hypocrite. 
If  he  once  repents  of  a  thing  he  ought  never  to  do  it 
again.  This  lofty  standard  has  much  good  in  it,  and 
as  a  standard  it  is  the  true  one  ;  but  again  he  misses 
the  point  of  repentance.  To  be  sinless  as  Christ  is 
the  aim  of  the  Christian  life,  and  it  is  an  aim  so  high 
that  alone  and  unaided  there  is  no  hope  at  all  that 
we  shall  ever  reach  it ;  it  is  only  possible  with  the  aid 
of  God,  and  then  only  through  much  strife  and  struggle 
with  the  powers  of  evil.  Conversion  may  be  and  often 
is  instantaneous  ;  sanctification  is  never  so.  Conversion 
is  the  vision  of  your  Leader  and  your  God  in  Christ, 
which  may  come  like  a  flash  of  lightning  blinding  in 
its  brightness,  or  may  come  gently  growing  like  the 
dawn ;  but  sanctification,  which  is  the  perfecting  of 
our  obedience  to  the  heavenly  vision,  is  always  a 
gradual  process,  accomplished  very  often,  like  the 
incoming  of  the  sea,  by  a  series  of  advances  followed 
by  retrogression.  It  is  in  reality  a  growth  in  friendship 
with  Christ.  Often  and  often  we  will  sin  against  Him, 
and  there  will  come  a  cloud  'twixt  us  and  Him,  a 
cooling  in  our  love  for  Him,  because  we  know  that  we 
have  something  in  us  which  He  hates  ;  then  if  our 
vision  be  a  true  one,  we  will  come  to  Him,  and  lay  the 
sin  or  sins  before  Him  and  ask  to  have  the  barrier 
broken  and  the  friendship  restored,  and  it  will  be 
restored  through  absolution  ;  but  it  will  come  again, 
and  probably  come  in  somewhat  the  same  way,  for 
when  men  sin  at  all  they  sin  along  the  weaker  lines 
in  their  nature,  and  we  will  need  to  come  again  and 
again  to  have  the  cloud  dispersed  and  peace  between 
us    and    Christ    our    Leader    restored.     This    is    the 


396      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       xv 

inevitable  road  to  perfect  friendship  with  so  high  and 
noble  a  friend  as  Christ,  and  in  it  there  is  nothing 
either  of  weakness,  beyond  the  weakness  of  our 
humanity,  or  of  hypocrisy.  All  this  is  common  sense 
to  Christians,  but  is  as  yet  but  little  understood  amongst 
those  who  look  on  Christianity  from  the  outside,  and 
who  have  for  many  years  abandoned  the  practice 
of  prayer,  which  is  the  drill-ground  of  friendship  Avith 
God. 


VlII.  Why  does  not  God  answer  Prayer  ? 

There  is  among  the  men  of  the  Army  a  good  deal 
of  intermittent  and  spasmodic  prayer,  especially  in 
times  of  trouble,  but  it  m_akes  one  rather  sad  on  the 
whole,  because  it  is  so  often  not  real  prayer  at  all. 
It  is  cruel  to  be  sentimental  in  this  connection,  and  to 
say  that  God  hears  and  answers  any  sort  of  prayer, 
because  the  facts  are  clean  and  clear  against  it.  I 
have  heard  men  praying  in  the  line  when  I  wished 
they  would  swear  instead,  because  their  prayers, 
which  were  purely  selfish,  expressed  nothing  but  a 
broken  will  and  the  horror  of  death.  It  is  a  dreadful 
sight  to  see  a  man  whimpering  out  prayers  for  personal 
protection  in  a  time  of  stress,  and  the  hard-bitten  man 
beside  him,  still  unbroken  and  unbeaten,  swearing 
through  his  set  teeth  puts  such  a  man  to  shame.  I 
beheve  that  much  of  the  absence  of  prayer  in  the 
Army  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  men  completely 
misunderstand  its  province  and  its  power,  and  are 
puzzled  about  the  whole  business.  Is  it  any  good 
praying  for  safety  ?    If  I  ask  God  in  a  gas  attack  to 


XV  RELIGIOUS   DIFFICULTIES  397 

shift  the  wind,  will  He  do  it  ?  If  not,  what  good  is 
prayer  ?  Will  prayer  shift  shells  ?  If  a  mother  prays 
hard  for  the  safety  of  her  son,  wiU  he  be  safer  for  that, 
will  it  protect  him  against  shells  ?  If  not,  what  is 
the  use  of  praying  ?  Is  not  the  best  attitude  to  take 
up  the  purely  fatalistic  one  ?  "If  my  name  is  on  it,  it 
will  get  me  ;  if  not,  it  won't.  If  it's  coming,  it's  coming  ; 
and  if  it  ain't,  it  ain't."  This  fatalistic  attitude  is 
almost  inevitable  from  what  little  experience  I  have 
had.  One  walks  along  a  trench,  with  trench  mortars 
hurtling  over,  and  the  terror  that  men  call  "  wind  " 
comes,  and  one  simply  cannot  avoid  the  conclusion, 
"  Well,  if  it's  coming,  it's  coming,  and  if  it  ain't,  it 
ain't,  and  I  can't  help  it,  let's  get  on  with  the  job." 
It  is  a  practically  inevitable  attitude,  and  I  believe 
that  as  far  as  it  goes  it  is  the  best  attitude.  One 
cannot  afford  prayers  for  personal  safety  in  times 
of  stress  ;  it  is  not  what  one  ought  to  be  thinking  about, 
and  it  entails  an  inevitable  slackening  of  that  attitude 
of  utter  indifference  to  death  and  danger  which  it  is 
one's  duty  to  cultivate. 

Moreover,  I  do  not  find  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament or  in  the  history  of  the  Church  the 
slightest  guarantee  that  such  prayers  will  be 
answered.  Christ  never  promised  that  prayer  would 
save  us  from  tribulation  in  the  world  :  He  honestly 
said  we  should  have  it  to  bear,  but  that  in  Him  we 
would  find  power  to  bear  and  overcome  it.  Following 
Christ  does  not  mean  taking  up  a  plush  cushion  of 
comfort,  but  a  wooden  cross  of  pain.  Presumably 
the  early  Christians  who  were  burned,  tortured,  cruci- 
fied, flung  to  lions,  and  visited  with  every  imaginable 


398      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE    FURNACE       xv 

form  of  pain  were  men  of  prayer,  but  it  never  saved 
their  skins.  God  did  not  intervene  to  quench  the 
fire,  or  shut  the  Hons'  mouths.  The  answer  to  their 
prayers  is  found,  not  in  their  escape  from  death,  or 
agony,  but  in  their  power  to  face  both  with  an  unbroken 
spirit  and  a  perfect  trust  in  God.  Christ's  own  prayer 
in  the  Garden  did  not  save  Him  from  the  Cross.  It 
was  not  possible  that  the  cup  should  pass  from  Him. 
His  is  the  pattern  prayer.  His  mind  is  occupied 
first  and  foremost  with  His  work,  which  is  God's 
Will.  He  hates  the  Cross,  and  wants  to  avoid  it,  if 
the  work  can  be  done  any  other  way,  but  that  comes 
first  and  foremost — Thy  Will  be  done.  That  is  the 
very  essence  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ.  His  job  first, 
His  pals  next,  and  Himself  last,  and  compared  with 
the  other  two  nowhere.  Only  prayer  in  His  Name, 
in  that  spirit,  is  prayer  at  all,  only  prayer  in  that 
spirit  has  any  power  to  help.  There  lies  the  redemp- 
tion of  the  fatalist  attitude.  The  true  prayer  in  time 
of  stress  simply  leaves  the  matter  of  life  and  death 
to  God,  and  concentrates  all  its  effort  on  the  prayer 
for  spiritual  power  to  do  God's  Will  whatever  comes. 
"  Seek  ye  first  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  His  righteous- 
ness, and  all  these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you." 
No  real  loss  can  come  to  one  who  seeks  first  and  fore- 
most to  do  God's  Will ;  all  loss  is  gain  when  endured 
for  Him,  and  in  the  very  heart  of  pain  endured  with 
God  we  find  the  secret  of  His  peace,  that  is  the  promise 
of  Christ  which  is  again  and  again  more  than  fulfilled. 
Prayer  is  not  a  means  to  protection,  but  a  means  to 
courage   and   nobihty   of   conduct. 

A  great  deal  of  the  prayerlessness  out  here  and  at 


XV  RELIGIOUS   DIFFICULTIES  399 

home  is  due,  I  believe,  to  a  wrong  conception  of  the 
province  and  power  of  prayer  in  hfe,  and  this  wrong 
conception  is  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  many  of  our 
public  prayers  and  much  of  our  teaching  about  prayer 
fall  short  of  the  high  and  heroic  standard  set  by  Christ. 
We  have  encouraged  people  in  the  idea  that  prayers 
are  a  protection  to  the  body  in  battle  and  have  coun- 
tenanced their  being  chiefly  directed  to  that  end,  rather 
than  to  the  spiritual  support  and  strengthening  of 
men  to  face  death  and  danger  with  the  single  and 
sole  aim  of  doing  God's  Will  in  both.  When  in  our 
prayers  for  those  we  love  we  have  said  Thy  Will  be 
done,  as  we  are  in  duty  bound  to  do,  we  have  made  it 
an  act  of  passive  submission  to  the  death  of  the  loved 
one  if  it  must  be  so,  with  our  energy  of  prayer  directed 
to  his  protection,  rather  than  an  act  of  supreme 
aspiration  for  the  loved  one  that  through  him  and  by 
him  God's  Will  may  be  done  whatever  the  cost  may 
be.  There  is  a  whole  world  of  difference  between 
these  two  prayer  attitudes,  so  much  difference  that 
it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  one  is  prayer  and  the 
other  not.  Much  of  the  prayerlessness  is  due  to 
disappointment  with  the  results  of  prayer  which  is 
not  real  prayer  but  a  pseudo-sanctified  selfishness. 
If  it  is  replied  that  for  a  man  who  is  married  or  has 
anyone  dependent  on  him  the  prayer  for  personal 
protection  is  not  selfish  but  dictated  by  love,  I  would 
simply  refer  to  the  stern  but  honest  words  of  Christ 
which  warn  us  that  God's  place  is  first,  and  no  other 
love  can  count  with  the  love  of  His  Will.  "  If  any 
man  come  to  Me,  and  hate  not  his  father  and  mother, 
and  wife  and  children,  and  brethren  and  sisters,  yea, 


400      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE        xv 

and  his  own  life  also,  he  cannot  be  My  disciple  "  (Luke, 
xiv.  26).  Stern  and  terrible  words,  stern  and  terrible 
conditions  of  true  prayer.  All  the  promises  and 
commandments  about  prayer  presuppose  these  con- 
ditions, and  apart  from  them  prayer  is  powerless. 
How  we  have  failed  to  enforce  those  conditions,  and 
how  cruel  we  have  been  in  our  efforts  to  be  kinder 
than  Christ.  The  whole  of  our  teaching  about  prayer 
in  peace  and  in  war  needs  to  be  raised  to  this  heroic 
level.  "  Thy  WiU  be  done,"  as  an  act,  not  of  passive  sub- 
mission but  of  intense  and  entirely  seK-forgetful 
aspiration,  is  the  essential  of  all  true  prayer.  Our 
prayers  for  and  with  the  sick  have  been  emasculated 
in  the  same  way.  We  have  made  a  half-hearted  prayer 
for  recovery  unless  it  be  God's  Will  that  the  sufferer 
should  die  of  disease.  Of  course  it  never  was  and 
never  could  be  God's  Will  that  a  man  should  die  of 
disease,  God's  Will  for  the  body  is  health  and  beauty, 
and  sickness  and  disease  are  due  to  sin  in  the  world. 
Our  duty  to  sickness  is  to  hate  and  detest  and  fight 
it  in  the  Name  and  by  the  Will  of  God,  and  the  whole 
energy  of  our  prayer  ought  to  be  poured  out  in  aspira- 
tion that  God's  Will,  which  is  health,  may  be  done  in 
our  body  in  order  that  God's  WiU  in  the  world  may 
be  done  through  it.  Selfish  prayer  for  recovery  is 
just  as  powerless  and  useless  as  selfish  efforts  to  acquire 
merit  by  submission  to  the  disease  as  if  it  were  sent 
by  God.  Disease  is  the  enemy  of  God  and  must  be 
fought  by  prayer.  War  is  also  the  enemy  of  God  and 
must  be  fought  by  prayer,  and  can  only  be  abolished 
by  prayer ;  but  the  noblest  prayer  a  man  can  offer 
against  war  is  the  giving  of  his  life  in  the  war  against 


XV  RELIGIOUS    DIFFICULTIES  401 

war.  The  man  who  dies  fighting  in  the  war  to  end 
war  is  on  the  road  to  abolish  it ;  the  man  who  dies  of 
disease  submitting  to  it  as  God's  Will  is  on  the  road 
to  perpetuate  it.  Prayer  is  never  mere  submission,  but 
always  tremendous  and  concentrated  aspiration ;  it 
is  never  occupied  with  self,  but  always  with  God's 
Will.  To  such  a  height  must  we  raise  prayer,  and  in 
so  doing  we  shall  do  much  to  abolish  the  difficulties  of 
it  in  the  mind  of    the  soldier  and  the  ordinary  man. 

It  ain't  as  I  thinks  'E'll  keep  me  safe 

While  the  other  blokes  goes  down, 
And  it  ain't  as  I  wants  to  leave  this  earth 

And  wear  an  'ero's  crown. 
It  ain't  for  that  as  I  says  my  prayers 

When  I  goes  to  the  attack  ; 
But  I  pray  that  whatever  comes  my  way, 

I  may  never  turn  my  back. 
I  leaves  the  matter  o'  life  and  death 

To  the  Lord  as  knows  what's  best, 
And  I  pray  that  I  still  may  play  the  man 

Whether  I  turns  East  or  West. 
I'd  sooner  that  it  were  East,  ye  know. 

To  Blighty  and  my  gal  Sue. 
I'd  sooner  be  there,  wi'  the  sun  in  'er  'air 

And  the  summer  skies  all  blue. 
Bvxt  grant  me,  God,  to  do  my  bit. 

And  then,  if  I  must  turn  West, 
I'll  be  unashamed  when  my  name  is  named. 

And  I'll  find  a  soldier's  rest. 


IX.  Is  THE  Bible  True  ? 

Men  have  always  sought  for  and  earnestly  desired 
an  infallible  authority  on  ultimate  questions,  an 
authority  conclusive  by  nature.  At  first  Christians 
sought  to  vest  the  Church  with  this  authority  and  make 

D    D 


402      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE       xv 

it  a  deadly  sin  to  doubt  it.  The  infallible  Church 
pubMcly  broke  down  at  the  time  of  the  Reformation, 
but  the  desire  for  an  absolute  authority  remained  as 
strong  as  ever,  and  the  Protestant  shifted  the  burden 
off  the  Church  and  placed  it  on  the  Bible.  This  was 
really  an  irrational  jumping  out  of  the  frying  pan 
into  the  fire.  Final  and  absolute  authority  in  ultimate 
matters  is  a  human  impossibility,  because  man  grows 
in  knowledge  of  Truth,  and  a  final  and  absolute  authority 
could  stop  that  growth ;  but  it  is  more  rational  to 
centre  authority  in  a  living  society  rather  than  in  a 
book.  The  scientific  discoveries  of  the  nineteenth 
century  made  this  idolatry  of  the  Bible  impossible 
for  thinking  Christians,  and  they  have  long  ago  out- 
grown it,  and  forsaken  all  mechanical  theories  of 
inspiration  ;  but  for  the  ordinary  man  the  truth  of 
Christianity  is  still  largely  bound  up  with  old  theories 
of  Bible  inspiration.  All  ideas  of  a  progressive  reve- 
lation of  God  to  man  are  still  foreign  to  his  mind.  He 
still  mixes  up  the  six  days'  creation  with  salvation 
through  Christ,  and  fails  to  hear  the  pleading  of  the 
Christ  because  Jonah  drowns  it  from  the  belly  of  the 
whale,  and  Balaam's  ass  shouts  louder.  He  is  naturally 
a  little  puzzled  by  the  parson  who  airily  laughs  away 
the  six  days'  creation  on  Monday  and  solemnly  from 
the  altar  gives  as  a  reason  for  keeping  Sunday  the 
fact  that  God  having  completed  the  creation  in  six 
days  rested  on  the  seventh,  and  hallowed  it.  He  cannot 
reconcile  the  two,  the  extreme  solemnity  of  the  affirma- 
tion of  the  Truth  and  the  extreme  levity  of  the  denial, 
and  it  is  odd,  isn't  it  ?  Truth  to  tell,  we  have  not  been 
quite  honest  about  the  Bible.     We  most  of  us  hold 


XV  RELIGIOUS   DIFFICULTIES  403 

one  theory  and  assent  by  our  silence  to  our  people 
holding  another.  Our  defence  generally  is  that  our 
people  do  not  want  higher  criticism  from  the  pulpit, 
but  rehgion.  That  is  true,  but  we  must  find  a  way 
of  giving  them  both.  I  could  not  be  a  Christian  if 
Christianity  were  really  bound  up  with  verbal  inspira- 
tion, and  I  cannot  blame  the  soldier  who  finds  he 
cannot  do  it  either.  I  respect  his  inteUigence.  We 
must  give  the  soldier  of  to-day  and  the  citizen  of 
to-morrow  the  Bible  we  ourselves  have  got  as  the 
product  of  sane  modern  criticism  and  BibMcal  research, 
and  we  must  alter  our  liturgy  to  avoid  undignified 
and  nonsensical  statements. 

X.  The  Muddle  op  the  Church. 

Not  long  ago  I  held  a  conference  of  about  300 
fighting  men  drawn  from  two  crack  regiments,  and 
invited  them  to  state  freely  their  reasons  for  religious 
indifference  among  men.  This  Essay  was  then  almost 
complete,  and  every  single  one  of  these  difficulties 
was  brought  up,  naturally  and  spontaneously,  by  the 
men.  There  were  others  which  it  would  be  well  for 
us  to  consider. 

One  difficulty  was  the  parson.  That  we  must  all 
recognise  as  a  melancholy  fact ;  one  of  the  chief  rehgious 
difficulties  of  the  private  soldier  is  the  parson.  He 
talks  in  an  affected  fashion,  and  very  often  talks 
nonsense.  The  Church  suffers  badly  from  dry  rot 
in  the  pulpit,  and  if  she  is  to  touch  the  soldier  she 
must  get  rid  of  it.  And  she  must  not  only  put  a  ban 
on  dry  rot,  but  she  must  also  ban  the  parsonic  manner, 

D  D  2 


404      THE   CHURCH  IN  THE   FURNACE       xv 

and  all  forms  of  affectation — they  come  between  the 
men  and  Christ.  The  Church  is  also  a  financial 
muddle.  The  soldier  sees  that  it  is  a  muddle, 
and  you  cannot  persuade  him  that  it  is  anything 
else.  The  Archbishoj)  of  Canterbury's  salary  is  of 
course  a  trust  fund,  but  the  fact  that  it  is  a  personal 
salary  sticks  in  the  ordinary  man's  throat.  Bishops 
should  not  live  in  palaces  and  pay  huge  sums  to  keep 
them  up,  and  parsons  should  not  live  in  barracks  and 
incur  bankruptcy  for  dilapidations.  It  is  awful  to 
realise  that  when  one  stands  up  to  preach  Christ 
the  soldier  feels  that  you  are  defending  a  whole  ruck 
of  obsolete  theories  and  antiquated  muddles.  It  is 
all  so  much  barbed  wire  through  which  one  has  to 
cMmb  before  one  finds  his  heart.  There  are  gaps  in 
the  wire  which  love  in  Christ  can  make,  but  there 
are  many  hearts  one  cannot  reach  because  of  the 
entanglements  of  absurdities  in  which  to  his  mind  the 
Gospel  of  Christ  is  involved.  Christ  will  satisfy  all 
men's  souls  if  we  can  show  Him  to  them  as  He  is, 
but  there  is  a  mist  of  many  lies  that  dims  the  vision 
now. 

Since  this  Essay  was  begun  I  have  been  engaged 
in  the  terrific  fighting  of  the  great  advance  on  the 
Messines — Wytschaete  Ridge.  I  am  suffering  as  we 
all  are  from  that  complete  paralysis  of  the  brain  that 
follows  a  supreme  effort.  For  the  last  ten  days  I 
have  not  thought  of  intellectual  difficulties,  but  only 
of  Christ  the  Captain  of  Mankind,  and  yet  I  am  con- 
vinced that  I  could  not  have  kept  my  vision  of  Him 
clear  through  all  this  horror  had  not  these  questions 


XV  RELIGIOUS   DIFFICULTIES  405 

been  fully  answered  in  my  mind.  One  picture  remains 
with  me :  a  wooded  ridge  wrapped  in  a  thick  black 
cloud  of  battle  smoke  through  which  I  peered  anxiously, 
knowing  that  men  I  had  learned  to  love  were  fighting 
there  for  their  very  lives,  and  behind  the  cloud  a  blood- 
red  sunset  with  the  single  evening  star,  hidden  from 
their  eyes.  It  remains  to  me  the  picture  of  the  world 
all  black  with  battle  smoke  which  dims  our  eyes  to 
Christ's  eternal  Truth.  But  I  pray  as  I  prayed  then 
that  when  the  smoke  has  cleared  away,  and  the  roar 
of  a  breaking  world  dies  down,  men  may  lift  up  their 
eyes  and  see  in  a  calmer,  cleaner  world  the  star  light 
in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ.  War  is  as  horrible  as 
Calvary,  but  it  may  end  in  the  glory  of  another  Easter 
dawn. 


XVI 
WHEN   THE    PRIESTS   COME   HOME 

By  the  Rev.  KENNETH  E.  KIRK,  M.A. 

Senior  Chaplain  to  the  Forces,  Division  ;   Tutor  and  Lecturer  of  Keble 

College,  Oxford ;  Examining  Chaplain  to  the  Bishop  of  Sheffield. 


XVI 
WHEN  THE    PRIESTS    COME   HOME 

Some  of  the  chaplains  who  have  been  on  active 
service  will  never  come  home,  of  course — never,  that  is, 
as  parochial  clergy.  The  powers  and  possibilities 
they  have  discovered  in  the  field  affect  their  view  of 
the  future  so  deeply  that  they  will  seek  some  kindred 
sphere  of  work — the  mission  field,  say,  or  the  Colonies 
— in  which  to  minister  with  the  freedom  and  the 
opportunities  they  have  had  in  France.  And  those 
who  are  content  or  constrained  to  return  to  parishes 
at  home  will  neither  be  content  nor  constrained  to 
fall  into  the  old  grooves  again.  Consciously  or  un- 
consciously, almost  all  of  them  have  changed  in  method, 
manner,  and  outlook — generally  be  it  said  for  the  better. 
It  is  possible  that  the  Church  at  home  will  be  shocked, — 
it  is  certain  she  will  be  surprised, — but  if  the  returned 
chaplain  remembers  the  things  he  has  learnt  and 
impresses  them  on  his  flock,  the  results  will  be  all  to 
the  good.  Many  of  these  things  are  indicated  by  other 
writers  in  this  book  ;  many  have  already  become 
truisms  ;  in  this  Essay  are  set  down  a  few  only  of 


410      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xvi 

those  which  may  be  most  dominant  when  the  priests 
come  home. 

Foremost  among  them  is  the  conviction  that,  hidden 
under  the  "  inarticulate  rehgion  "  of  the  British  soldier 
of  which  so  much  has  been  written,  lies  a  deep  and 
intense  reverence  for  the  priesthood.  Almost  any 
chaplain  can  evoke  it  :  the  few  who  fail  to  do  so  fail 
because  they  do  not  reverence  their  own  priesthood 
themselves.  It  is  almost  entirely  independent  of  the 
chaplain's  personaHty.  To  the  soldier — officer  or 
man — he  is  the  emissary  of  a  different  world  from 
that  in  which  they  fret  and  sweat  and  jSght.  He  may 
be  breezy  or  quiet,  tactless  or  diplomatic,  afiEable  or 
retiring  ;  he  may  preach  well  or  badly ;  but  still  he 
represents  another  world — a  better  world — of  spiritual 
things.  Even  though  he  be  a  drag  on  the  mess  and 
de  trop  in  the  billet,  he  is  at  all  times  looked  upon  as  a 
repository  from  which  can  be  drawn  the  pecuHar 
benefits  of  religion.  And  this  estimate  is  the  lowest 
which  even  an  unpopular  chaplain  need  fear,  unless 
he  prove  him.self  entirely  and  openly  unworthy  of  his 
vocation  ;  a  priest  more  richly  endowed  with  dis- 
cretion, zeal,  and  sympathy  is  actually  and  constantly 
expected  to  overflow  with  every  spiritual  force  that  the 
divine  ministry  can  provide. 

I  should  like  to  elaborate  this  point  ;  for,  if  it  is 
true,  it  is  of  enormous  and  alarming  importance  in  the 
demand  it  will  make  upon  clergy  after  the  war.  Most 
chaplains,  I  suppose,  have  felt  from  time  to  time  the 
irksomeness  of  belonging — in  a  famous  phrase — to  the 
"  super  world  of  officers.  "  Uniform,  badges  of  rank, 
position  in  mess,  salutes  and  their  acknowledgment, 


XVI     WHEN   THE   PRIESTS   COME  HOME     411 

seem  so  many  barriers  separating  them  from  the  men 
they  try  to  serve.  But  among  the  things  that  every 
chaplain  knows  is  the  extraordinary  ease  with  which 
these  barriers  can  be  broken  down.  So  great  is  the 
demand  for  the  priest  and  his  ministry  (what  is  actually 
demanded  of  him  I  will  try  to  say  in  a  moment)  that 
he  has  only  to  show  himself  in  the  slightest  degree 
accessible,  to  be  overwhelmed  with  appeals,  overt  or 
imphed,  for  help.  Nor  is  the  help  that  is  asked  for  of 
that  material  kind  which  is  so  constantly  expected  of  the 
parish  priest.  It  is  rather  the  advice,  comfort,  or  in- 
spiration which,  from  his  official  position  as  a  minister 
of  the  Gospel,  men  naturally  suppose  him  qualified 
to  dispense.  Furthermore,  in  addition  to  making 
himself  accessible,  he  may,  if  he  will,  deliberately 
force  his  priesthood  upon  the  consciences  of  men — not 
as  one  advocating  a  panacea  for  all  ills,  but  as  a  shep- 
herd tenderly  searching  for  the  ailments  and  needs  of 
his  flock  and  skilfully  offering  the  appropriate  remedy. 
If  he  does  so,  he  finds  in  almost  every  case  that  what, 
in  a  parish,  would  probably  be  resented  as  a  tactless 
interference  in  private  affairs,  is  now  welcomed  as  a 
much-needed,  much-desired  offer  of  help.  The  chap- 
lain, in  short,  ceases  to  be  an  officer  the  moment  he 
exhibits  himself  as  a  priest  ;  more  truly,  he  has  never 
been  an  officer  to  the  men  at  all,  though  they  treated 
him  as  one  until  they  could  find  the  priest  in  him  ; 
more  truly  still,  as  soon  as  he  shows  himself  a  priest 
he  shows  himself  also  the  perfect  officer — a  father, 
leader,  comforter  and  example  to  his  men. 

Let  me  illustrate  this,  for  it  is  a  point  which  might 
be  disputed.       There    is   a    chaplain    still   on  active 


412      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xvi 

service  who  never  exhibits  any  of  the  quahties  which 
are  alleged  to  appeal  to  men,  and  who  openly 
deplores  his  lack  of  them.  He  has,  he  says,  none  of 
the  conversational  refinements  which  gradually  lead  on 
from  discussion  of  current  affairs  to  conviction  of  sin. 
His  first  introduction  of  himself  to  an  unknown 
member  of  his  flock  usually  takes  this  form  :  "  Oh — I'm 
your  chaplain  ;  wouldn't  you  like  to  give  me  your 
mother's  name  and  address  so  that  I  can  write  to  her 
if  you  are  killed  ?  "  You  would  scarcely  call  this  a 
happy  opening  ;  but  because  it  touches  at  once  upon 
two  of  the  greatest  things  in  the  world — Love  and 
Death — it  unseals  almost  every  heart.  With  the 
ultimate  result  that  when  he  visits  a  billet  he  has  no 
need  to  lead  up  to  his  purpose,  but  someone  says  at 
once  :  "  Won't  you  preach  us  a  sermon,  Father  ?  " 
(you  have  to  caU  him  "  Father  "  ;  you  couldn't  call 
him  anjrthing  else)  ;  and  by  candle-light  in  a  ruined 
house  or  barn  he  meditates  aloud  for  them  upon  the 
life  of  Christ. 

It  would  be  idle  to  say  that  all  chaplains  achieve  this 
position  ;  some,  I  suppose,  have  little  sense  of  the 
romance,  diversity,  and  sacredness  of  their  vocation  ; 
others  still  retain  the  shyness  which  made  them 
unable  to  grip  the  consciences  of  a  majority  of  their 
parishioners  at  hojne  ;  many,  in  the  dreary  routine  of 
trench-warf are,are  in  danger  of  losing  their  zeal  for  souls, 
and  divert  their  energies  into  easier  but  less  sacred 
channels.  Yet  though  perhaps  the  position  is  attained 
by  few,  it  is  not  untrue  to  say  that  the  Army  holds  it 
open  for  all,  only  asking  of  them  that  they  should  step 
in  and  fill  it.     The  soldier  is  puzzled  and  disappointed 


XVI    WHEN   THE   PRIESTS    COME   HOME     413 

if  his  chaplain  is  affable  and  nothing  more  ;  he  honours 
and    loves    a  priest  who,  while  avoiding  tactless  in- 
quiries or  dull  iterations,  firmly  puts  spiritual  things 
first — provided  always  that  he  is  not  indulging  in  a 
kind  of  clerical  scalp -hunting,  but  is  evidently  inspired 
by  a  genuine  love  of  souls.     Here  is  a  fragment  from  a 
wounded  soldier's  letter  to  the  chaplain  of  his  battalion  : 
"  Dear   sir,    I   often    used   to     wish   you   would   talk 
seriously  and  privately  to  me  about  religion,  though  I 
never  dared  to  ask  you,  and  I  must  admit  I  seemed 
to  be  very  antagonistic  when  you  did  start." — And  it 
is  the  same  with  the  officers  as  with  the  men,  allowing 
for    natural    differences    in    education    and    maturity. 
The  chaplain  is,  of  course,  always  a  nuisance  to  the 
official  mind  ;    the  Army  gives  him  so  little  and  he 
wants   so   much — transport   and   horses   and   services 
and    reading-rooms    and  chapels  and  the  like  ;    and 
some  chaplains  seem  to  constitute  themselves  as  the 
skeleton  in  the  orderly-room  cupboard,  materialising 
at     untoward     moments     with     impossible     requests. 
But  in  spite  of  this  latent  element  of  friction  the  chap- 
lain should  find  among  officers  the  same  desire  for  his 
ministrations  as  among  men,  though  the  decencies  and 
demands  of  mess  etiquette  may  hide  it  rather  more 
deeply. 

This  then  is  the  first  of  the  things  that  every  chaplain 
knows — that  he  is  wanted,  badly  wanted,  as  a  priest  ; 
even  though  he  be  unfortunate  enough  to  be  merely 
"  tolerated  "  as  a  man.  He  knows  too— though  it  is 
hard  to  put  the  knowledge  into  words — exactly  what 
it  is  he  is  wanted  for.  He  knows  he  is  indispensable, 
because  he  is  the  one  representative  of  peace  in  an 


414      THE   CHURCH   IN  THE   FURNACE      xvi 

atmosphere  of  strife.  To  him  men  turn,  as  by  instinct, 
for  an  antidote  against  strain,  friction,  weariness  and 
depression.  There  are  other  antidotes,  of  course, 
some  of  them  dishonourable,  others  blameless,  but  often 
hard  to  come  by ;  yet  even  the  dullest  dog  of  a  chap- 
lain, so  long  as  he  can  keep  his  own  spirit  equable, 
comes  in  the  first  rank  among  the  influences  that  make 
life  tolerable  at  the  Front.  He  penetrates  into  every 
place,  from  the  guard-room  to  the  General's  mess  ; 
and  everywhere,  by  the  slightest  effort  of  courtesy, 
sympathy,  and  tact,  he  can  smooth  over  the  bruised 
or  broken  surface  of  the  soldier's  life.  "  I  think  the 
evenings  you  spent  with  us  in  the  hut  did  me  more 
physical  good  than  gallons  of  doctor's  medicine,  and 
more  moral  good  than  if  you  had  preached  us  a  sermon 
every  day  of  your  life  ;  and  I  know  Jack  and  Jimmy 
say  the  same  " — this  is  an  extract  (with  amended 
spelling)  from  a  very  ordinary  soldier's  letter  to  a  very 
ordinary  chaplain  ;  but  I  doubt  if  in  a  parish  at  home 
the  same  lads  and  the  same  chaplain  would  ever  have 
got  on  to  speaking  terms  at  all. 

For  remember  that  these  chaplains  are  no  special 
breed  of  richly -gifted  priests,  but  just  the  curates 
you  knew  in  your  parishes  before  the  war.  Their 
failings  are  as  obvious  now  as  then  ;  yet  no  one  who 
has  watched  their  work  at  the  Front  can  fail  to  see 
how  greatly  they  are  in  demand  as  ministers  of  con- 
solation. Even  when  inactive  habits  make  them  slow 
to  seize  the  countless  opportunities  that  offer,  their 
presence  in  billet,  dug-out,  or  trench  is  enough  to 
bring  a  soothing  influence  to  bear,  though  no  word  of 
religion  be  spoken.     Comfort,  joy,  and  peace  go  with 


XVI   WHEN  THE   PRIESTS   COME   HOME     415 

the  chaplain  on  his  round  of  visits ;  and  stay  behind 
when  he  has  gone.  For  they  do  stay  behind  ;  their 
effect  is  permanent ;  they  are  positive  and  powerful 
forces. 

And  here  we  reach  a  second  point  of  importance. 
We  are  apt  to  think  of  consolation  as  a  negative 
thing,  producing  a  sweet  and  placid  resignation  to  the 
Will  of  God.  This  is  not  even  a  Christian  point  of  view  ; 
it  is  certainly  not  the  one  in  vogue  in  France.  The 
consolation  expected  of  the  chaplain — the  peace  for 
which  his  ministrations  are  invoked — is  not  a  passive 
but  an  active  thing.  Were  he  simply  to  conjure  up 
a  weak  contentment,  a  transient  f orgetfulness  of  trouble, 
its  effects  would  quickly  vanish  the  moment  men 
emerged  into  the  inevitable  horrors  of  the  front  line 
or  the  inevitable  monotony  of  supply  and  transport 
duties.  A  ministry  that  gave  no  more  than  this  would 
be  as  superfluous  as  useless.  Something  much  rarer 
is  demanded  ;  and  it  is  because  the  chaplains  are 
able  to  supply  it  that  their  position  grows  even  more 
secure  and  their  presence  even  more  welcome  from  day 
to  day.  How  they  manage  it  is  hard  to  say  ;  but  they 
do  manage  it,  often  even  in  their  sermons — and  it  is 
not  easy  to  prepare  and  preach  a  good  sermon  at  the 
Front.  When  you  hear  of  a  certain  priest  (as 
you  constantly  do  hear  of  the  best  of  them)  that  "  he 
never  talks  about  religion,  but  just  gives  straight- 
forward manly  addresses  of  the  kind  men  love  to  listen 
to,"  it  does  not  mean — as  might  at  first  appear — that 
he  has  substituted  popular  ethics  for  real 
religion.  It  means,  on  the  contrary,  that  he  has  used 
his  opportunity  to  administer  not   a   narcotic   but   a 


416      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xvi 

stimulant ;  that  the  Gospel  he  preaches  is  not  a  false 
sentimentalism  but  a  genuine  inspiration.  And  in 
endless  cases  "  visits  "  and  "  talks  "  go  the  same  way 
as  sermons.  They  renew  in  the  soldier  that  sense  of 
the  dramatic — that  appreciation  of  himself  as  a 
dominant  character  in  an  enthralling  drama — which 
the  "  Student  in  Arms  "  held  to  be  an  essential  factor 
in  his  equipment  for  the  fight.  They  leave  men  not 
in  any  way  resigned  to  their  lot,  but  eager  to  amend  it  ; 
they  help  them  not  to  endure  but  to  transcend. 

This  distinction  between  a  ministry  that  provides 
at  best  a  momentary  and  elusive  forgetfulness  and  one 
that  gives  a  permanent  inspiration  is  not,  of  course,  a 
new  one  ;  but  it  has  been  marked  and  underhned  by 
what  we  have  seen  at  the  Front.  War-experience  has 
taught  many  chaplains  that  it  is  perhaps  the  funda- 
mental distinction  between  true  and  false  rehgion. 
Curiously  enough,  war-experience  has  shown,  also, 
that  it  may  be  the  fundamental  distinction  between  true 
and  false  art.  A  digression  on  this  point,  if  it  helps  to 
make  the  argument  clearer,  is  not  superfluous.  All 
dov/n  the  British  front,  often  well  under  shell-fire,  are 
a  row  of  "  gaft's  "  and  picture-palaces,  hastily  im- 
provised by  soldier-artistes  in  huts  or  barns,  or  more 
worthily  housed  in  genuine  French  theatres.  The 
romance  of  these  entertainments  has  yet  to  be  written, 
and  their  high  moral  value  to  be  appreciated.  With 
few  exceptions  they  present  triumphs  of  scene-painting, 
lighting,  music,  and  stage-craft  under  circumstances  of 
the  greatest  difficulty.  Their  ideals  are  often  far  in 
advance  of  those  of  more  ambitious  spectacles  at  home, 
and,  if  they  can  survive  the  crowning  test  of  peace, 


XVI    WHEN  THE   PRIESTS   COME  HOME     117 

might  profoundly  affect  the  artistic  sense  of  the  new 
England.  That,  however,  is  another  question  ;  what 
is  important  for  us  to  notice  is  that  they  in  their  turn 
give  an  instance  of  this  same  distinction  between  the 
ministry  that  consoles  alone  and  the  ministry  that 
inspires  by  its  consolation. ^  The  cinemas,  of  course, 
are  merely  instruments  of  forgetfulness,  and  so  are 
the  greater  number  of  the  "  turns  "  (do  not  blame  them 
for  this  ;  their  function,  though  not  the  highest,  is 
very  high  and  laudable)  ;  but  in  almost  every  per- 
formance there  are  also  passages  of  permanent  creative 
value.  Such  passages  may  be  either  serious  or  comic. 
If  the  first,  they  raise  the  soldier  out  of  himself  to  a 
higher  plane  of  ideals  ;  and  no  one  responds  more 
readily  to  the  influence  of  good  art  than  an  audience  on 
active  service.  If  the  second,  they  have  an  intimite  of 
insight  into  the  trials  of  trench-life  which  teaches  the 
soldier  not  simply  to  laugh,  but  to  laugh  at  his  own 
troubles,  and  by  laughing  to  rise  above  them.  I  have 
known  performers  of  wide  experience  and  eminent 
reputation  fail  with  a  trench  audience,  achieving  a 
momentary  success  but  forgotten  in  a  day  ;     whilst 

^  This  is,  of  course,  no  more  than  a  platitude  to  the  trained 
artist.  Mr.  Ffrang^on-Davies,  for  example,  in  his  Singing  of  the 
Future,  distinguishes  very  clearly  between  entertainment  (or  "  Art" 
so  called)  and  genuine  art.  "  '  Art '  which  leads  nowhere,^'  he  says, 
* '  cannot  be  compared  with  art  which  leads  somewhere  in  particular  ; 
song  which  limits  life's  ideals  is  despicable  when  judged  by  song 
which  expands  them."  Compare  also  Ruskin's  distinction  between 
the  landscape -painting  of  the  old  masters,  which  "  developed  and 
addressed  the  highest  powers  of  mind  belonging  to  the  human  race," 
and  that  of  Claude  and  Salvator,  "  imderstood,  as  far  as  it  went,  in  a 
moment,  but  ...  in  all  its  operations  on  the  mind,  unhealthy, 
hopeless,  and  profitless." 

E   E 


418      THE   CHURCH  IN  THE   FURNACE      xvi 

the  lilt  of  a  folk-song,  simply  sung  by  a  soldier-troupe, 
has  exercised  an  inspiring  influence  for  weeks ;  and  I 
knew  one  man  at  least  who  died  more  bravely  because 
the  words  of  such  a  song  came  into  his  mind — they  had 
lingered  there  for  months,  and  their  memory  was 
bright  enough  to  strengthen  him  at  his  death. ^ 

It  is  not  fanciful,  though  it  may  seem  so,  to  find  this 
distinction  between  the  art  that  pleases  only  and  the 
art  that  inspires  as  well,  even  among  the  peripatetic 
entertainers  of  the  Army.  For  all  of  them  have  been 
under  fne,  and  many  of  them  have  taken  their  share 
in  trench  warfare  and  in  battle  ;  so  that  they  have  a 
sympathetic  insight,  rich  from  their  own  experience, 
into  what  the  soldier  needs.  And  it  is  to  their  credit 
to  add  that,  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases,  their  aim  is 
not  simply  to  amuse  ("  to  give  the  boys  a  cheerio," 
as  a  breezy  but  unintelligent  performer  expressed  it) 
but  to  inspire  ;  to  help  their  audience  not  to  forget  the 
fighting,  but  to  fight  the  better. ^  One  of  them — 
after  prolonged  thought  on  the  subject — defined  the 
difference  between  what  may  be  called  respectively 
narcotic  and  stimulative  art   by  saying  that  the  latter 

1  Here  is  a  further  illustration.  A  string-quartette  of  soldiers 
(organised  by  themselves  in  their  spare  moments,  be  it  noticed, 
with  the  deliberate  purpose  of  playing  good  music  to  their  comrades) 
were  playing  in  a  base  hospital.  A  wounded  Australian  asked 
for  the  Barcarolle  ;  they  played  it,  and  he  died  before  it  ended. 
It  is  not  too  much  to  suppose  that  he  chose  the  melody  to  help  him 
to  die  simply  because  it    had  often  previously  helped  him  to  live. 

*  It  is  noticeable,  for  example,  how  keenly  on  the  whole  the  per- 
formers avoid,  and  the  audiences  resent,  the  introdviction  of  vulgarity 
into  these  performances.  "We  don't  want  that  sort  of  thing  out  here" 
is  a  quite  commonly  expressed  criticism — implying  that  art  is  too 
valuable  at  the  Front  for  the  smallest  part  of  it  to  be  wasted  in 
aimless,  even  though  amusing,  suggestiveness. 


XVI     WHEN  THE   PRIESTS   COME  HOME     419 

was  "  satisfying  "  and  the  former  not  ;  and  a  better 
description  would  probably  be  hard  to  find — for  the 
needs  of  men  in  the  shadow^  of  death  are  very  elemental, 
and  to  satisfy  them  is  a  high  achievement.  And  in 
exactly  the  same  way  the  chaplains  know  that  there  is 
a  ministry  of  consolation  which  "  satisfies  "  ;  in  that  it 
creates  and  maintains  a  spirit  of  high  effort  in  the  face 
of  all  difficulties  and  sorrows.  It  is  the  consciousness 
of  this  ministry  that  they  will  carry  back  to  their 
parishes  when  the  war  is  over  ;  this  form  of  con- 
solation they  will  try  to  exercise  there.  Their  aim  will 
be  not  so  much  to  dry  the  tears  of  neurotic  sufferers 
as  to  refresh  the  souls  of  highly-tried  warriors.  And 
in  so  far  as  they  are  able  to  codify  their  experience  and 
to  keep  it  intact  under  the  disintegrating  influence  of 
peace,  it  will  modify  their  life  and  methods  in  parochial 
work  in  many  important  directions. 

In  the  first  place  they  will  go  about  their  business 
with  a  new  and  buoyant  confidence.  We  used  to  be 
rather  apologetic  about  our  religion,  introducing  it 
with  subtle  phrases  of  suggestion,  like  a  politician 
wooing  the  votes  of  an  unsympathetic  electorate. 
In  other  cases  our  apology  took  the  shape  of  trucu- 
lence,  as  who  should  say  "  This  is  what  I  believe  ; 
take  it  or  leave  it  as  you  like  " — which  really  meant 
"  This  is  what  I  am  going  to  believe,  whether  it's 
true  or  not."  In  each  case  we  probably  assumed  the 
callousness  or  hostihty  of  our  audience  ;  we  certainly 
imphed  a  disbelief  in  our  own  Gospel.  All  that  is 
over  now.  We  know  that  the  Spirit  of  God  in  men's 
hearts  makes  them  eager  for  a  priesthood  exercising 
its  functions  without  a  veil  on  its  face  ;   we  know  too 

E  E  2 


420      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xvi 

that  in  countless  instances  our  own  words,  or  ministry, 
or  even  our  mere  presence — as  priests  more  than  as 
men — has  cheered,  refreshed,  and  strengthened  ;  we 
know,  in  short,  that  we  are  wanted.  This  confidence 
— which  is  a  confidence  not  in  ourselves  but  in  the 
Gospel  of  which  we  are  ministers — should  make  us 
bold  where  we  have  been  timid,  and  leaders  where 
we  were  laggards.  Moreover,  even  though  much  remains 
difficult,  uncertain,  and  at  cross  purposes  in  the  future 
of  the  Church,  we  shall  have  too  sure  a  sense  of  her 
divine  mission  and  her  supernatural  strength  to 
trouble  overmuch  ;  and  peevish  controversy  and  ill- 
tempered  denunciation  will  lose  much  of  their  present 
vogue.  We  shall  rest  content  to  retain  contrary 
opinions,  assured  that,  so  long  as  we  exercise  our  own 
ministry  unhesitatingly,  God  will  find  a  way  for  the 
dissensions  that  have  vexed  us. 

This  confidence,  too,  should  breed  in  the  priesthood 
a  brave  serenity  which  has  been  much  lacking  in  our 
Church.  The  Army  has  asked  of  its  chaplains  such  a 
serenity — a  sans-gene  that  brings  hope  and  strength  to 
others.  The  chaplains  have  been  able  to  give  it,  not 
so  much  because  they  had  it  to  give,  as  because  the 
mere  demand  for  their  help  gave  them  a  joy  and  peace 
and  confidence  which  they  could  hand  back  to  their 
flock.  Surely  the  life-history  of  many  priests  in  the 
past  has  followed  this  model  :  ordained  in  the  fu'st 
enthusiasm  of  a  great  vocation,  they  have  learnt  even 
in  the  earher  years  of  their  work  to  distrust  first  them- 
selves and  then  their  inspiration.  Different  causes 
have  led  to  this  result — the  preoccupation  of  the  parish 
with  worldly  affairs,  leading  the  priest  to  think  himself 


XVI     WHEN   THE   PRIESTS    COME   HOME     421 

unwanted  ;  the  timidity  of  the  priest,  making  him  see 
rebuffs  where  none  were  meant  ;  or  even  his  own 
tactlessness,  inspiring  opposition  not  to  his  mission 
but  to  his  person.  But  whatever  the  cause,  the  out- 
come is  the  same.  The  curate  by  degrees  becomes  a 
disappointed  man  ;  and  consoles  himself  either  with 
a  hobby  (natural  history  or  Church  history — it  makes  no 
difference),  or  by  confining  his  attentions  to  a  devout 
few,  or  by  exercising  himself  in  some  secular  sphere 
where  at  all  events  his  talents  or  personality  will  make 
him  valuable — as  a  few,  but  only  a  few,  of  the  clergy 
at  the  Front  have  been  content  to  be  called  good  chaps 
because  they  seemed  unable  to  become  good  chaplains. 

For  those  of  us  who  return  this  danger,  if  not  abolished, 
will  at  least  be  diminished  greatly.  Secure  in  the  faith 
that  our  ministry  is  much  wanted  and  much  wel- 
comed, we  shall  have  a  peace  of  mind  that  we  found  it 
hard  enough  to  attain  before.  And  in  this  connection 
our  duty  is  clear.  We  must  try  in  England  as  we 
tried  in  France  to  maintain  and  develop  by  every 
means  in  our  power  this  unruffled  calm  of  spirit, 
knowing  it  to  be  our  greatest  asset — the  one  thing 
above  all  others  that  people  wish  to  learn  from  us. 
By  prayer,  communion,  and  meditation  we  must  lay 
the  foundations  of  a  building  which  no  worldly  troubles 
can  shake. 

And  because  habits  react  upon  character,  we  must 
attempt,  even  in  externals,  to  adapt  our  behaviour  to 
the  same  rule  of  serenity.  A  high-pitched  voice,  a 
strained  or  restless  manner  ;  immoderate  laughter, 
unnatural  gloom — all  these  are  symptoms  of  an  un- 
balanced soul ;  and  to  restrain  them  and  cultivate  their 


422      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xvi 

opposites  will  at  all  events  help  to  restore  balance  and 
stability  within.  This  is  a  matter  to  which  those  who 
have  in  hand  the  training  of  the  clergy  might  well 
give  close  attention — how  to  teach  them  to  be  "  more 
natural  in  spiritual  things."  I  should  not,  of  course, 
wish  for  the  development  of  a  new  school  of  manners, 
however  good  in  themselves  ;  that,  in  the  end,  would 
simply  substitute  as  a  cult  the  placidity  of  a 
Grosvenor  for  the  posturing  of  a  Bunthorne.  But 
at  least  it  should  be  possible  in  theological  colleges 
to  instil  more  forcibly  the  avoidance  of  those  tricks 
which,  both  in  church  and  out  of  it,  too  often  make  the 
parson  unpleasantly  conspicuous.  Many  chaplains  have 
sloughed  them,  almost  miraculously,  at  the  Front ; 
cannot  they  discover  some  way  to  scotch  them  at  home 
as  well  ? 

More  important  than  this,  perhaps,  is  a  further  point. 
If  all  men  need  our  ministry,  we  must  make  ourselves 
accessible  to  all  men.  We  must  not  burden  ourselves 
unduly  with  organisations — the  impossibility  of  losing 
himself  in  organisation  has  been  one  of  the  chaplain's 
greatest  safeguards  at  the  Front.  We  must  be  con- 
tent to  waste  time  wisely  in  the  market-place — 
gossiping  like  Socrates  with  all  comers.  But  that  this 
time  may  be  wisely  wasted  in  giving  to  all  that  spirit 
of  serene  activity  which  we  have  learnt  to  recognise  as 
superlatively  Christian,  we  must  know,  more  than  ever, 
the  art  of  treating  men  as  individuals.  This  art  is 
given  to  some  ;  but  all  can  develop  it  with  the  develop- 
ment of  their  own  souls  ;  and  those  who  are  so  develop- 
ing it  can  forward  its  growth  by  study.  Moral 
Theology  has   been  much   abused,  yet    it  is  exactly 


XVI     WHEN   THE   PRIESTS   COME   HOME     423 

what  is  needed — the  science  of  applying  the  broad 
principles  of  Christianity  to  particular  cases.  It 
seems  to  involve  three  branches — the  discovery  of 
general  principles  ;  the  choice  of  the  one  most  applicable 
to  each  particular  case  ;  and  the  skilful  presentation 
of  it  in  such  a  form  that  it  meets  with  acceptance. 
In  each  of  these  branches  much  work  has  still  to  be 
done  to  bring  them  up  to  date.  For  the  first  we  must 
study  the  special  forms  which  sin,  temptation,  and 
suffering  take  to-day,  and  know  in  general — not  from 
book  learning  but  from  genuine  religious  experience — 
in  what  way  the  Gospel  is  a  specific  for  each.  For  the 
second,  the  clergy  must  apply  themselves  to  the  study 
of  character  and  its  diversities  with  far  more  industry 
than  in  the  past  ;  and  by  fearlessly  dissecting  them- 
selves must  learn  critically  but  sympathetically  to 
analyse  others.  It  is  pathetic  that  too  often  the  vicar 
or  the  curate  is  the  last  person  in  the  parish  to  detect 
a  hypocrite  or  rebuke  an  impostor  ;  pathetic,  also, 
that  often  he  is  the  last  to  recognise  excellence  in  an 
outward  pagan  or  lapsed  member  of  the  Church. 
For  the  third,  we  must  learn  to  command  acceptance 
of  what  we  teach  not  by  virtue  of  our  position  ("It 
must  be  right  because  they  do  it  at  St.  George's  "; 
— "  I  know  it's  true,  because  the  Archdeacon  said  so  "), 
nor  even  by  the  strength  of  logic, — for  logic  never 
convinced  an  unwilling  listener  ;  and  the  lesser  educated 
of  two  men  always  suspects  a  trap  in  the  arguments 
of  his  superior — but  by  the  manifest  truth  that  we  have 
applied  our  principles  to  ourselves,  and  that  they  have 
made  us  more  peaceful,  more  charitable,  and  more 
compassionate  than  before. 


424      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xvi 

Equipped  in  some  such  way,  the  parish  priest  of 
to-morrow  should  be  able  to  undertake  his  work  as  a 
physician  of  souls  with  greater  skill  and  a  firmer  touch. 
Insight  and  training  will  have  taught  him  to  recognise 
the  hidden  causes  of  spiritual  disorders  ;  he  will  be 
able  to  distinguish  between  the  "  feehngs  "  or  "  diffi- 
culties "  of  those  who  come  to  him  for  guidance,  and 
the  real  needs  of  which  they  are  only  symptoms  ; 
he  will  have  learnt  neither  to  mistake  deep  humihty 
for  apparent  callousness,  nor  morbid  self-denunciation 
for  genuine  contrition.  Experience  will  have  shown 
him  how  to  add  discriminating  treatment  to  wise 
diagnosis ;  when  to  be  stern,  when  to  be  tender ; 
what  spiritual  exercises  to  recommend  and  what  to 
deprecate  in  each  particular  case.  And  lastly,  sym- 
pathy and  study  wiU  have  fitted  him  to  administer 
his  remedies  in  terms  appropriate  to  the  education  and 
development  of  his  hearers,  and  in  a  manner  that  shall 
induce  compliance  without  violating  freedom  of  choice. 

And  here  is  a  final  prophecy  or  precept,  which  may 
perhaps  help  to  guard  against  possible  misconceptions. 
Though  an  enhanced  serenity  must  characterise  the 
new  priesthood,  it  will  go  hand  in  hand  with  an  en- 
larged ambition.  Few  of  us,  I  believe,  will  be  content 
to  go  back  to  the  restrained  and  limited  activities  of  so 
many  curates  before  the  war.  We  have  seen  two  things 
clearly  :  first,  that  there  is  no  man  so  dead  to  religion 
that  he  does  not  treasure  somewhere  a  respect  for  the 
priesthood  and  a  desire  for  its  ministrations  ;  secondly, 
that  there  is  no  human  activity  which  may  not  be 
ennobled  and  forwarded  by  the  influence  of  the  Gospel. 
On  the  first  count,  we  shall  claim  the  right  of  friendship 


XVI    WHEN   THE   PRIESTS   COME   HOME     425 

and  intercourse  not  merely  with  professed  church- 
goers but  with  people  of  every  kind  ;  and  shall  visit 
their  homes  with  far  more  initial  sympathy  and  a  far 
greater  expectation  that  they  will  respond.  It  is  not 
the  outsider  who  will  resent  this,  but  the  professed 
churchgoer  ;  he  will  fancy  himself  neglected,  and  will 
have  to  learn  that  religion  is  its  own  reward,  and  that 
he  cannot  claim,  as  a  sort  of  spiritual  bonus,  the  adula- 
tion and  obsequiousness  of  his  clergy.  On  the  second 
count,  we  shall  never  again  immerse  ourselves  so  tho- 
roughly in  our  services,  Sunday  schools,  and  church 
organisations  as  to  overlook  the  wider  activities  of 
society.  I  hke  to  think  of  the  parish  priest  as  fulfilling 
the  Shakespearean  stage  direction — "  Scene  :  a  public 
place.  Enter  First  Citizen;  " — for  his  ministry  should 
mostly  be  spent  neither  in  church  nor  in  the  homes  of 
the  faithful,  but  in  public  places  ;  and  he  should  be 
the  First  Citizen  of  his  parish,  sufficiently  well  known 
to  all  to  be  absolutely  at  home  with  each  ;  standing 
above  all  party  relationship,  but  consulted  by  the  leaders 
of  every  party — the  interpreter  between  social  classes, 
the  mediator  between  master  and  men,  the  peacemaker 
between  capital  and  labour.  And  so  the  word  "  par- 
son "  will  revert  to  its  old  proud  meaning  of  "  persona," 
and  the  priest  will  take  in  his  parish  a  position  ana- 
logous to  that  of  the  best  chaplains  in  the  Army. 

I  do  not  mean,  of  course,  that  the  parson  should  sit 
on  endless  committees  as  an  expert  in  education, 
housing,  hygiene,  labour  disputes,  and  the  Hke ;  but 
rather  that  he  must  show  sympathy  on  each  and  all 
of  these  questions  with  those  who — often  from  con- 
flicting points  of  view — are  attempting  to  find  their 


426      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE      xvi 

solution.  And  as  his  own  life  deepens  in  serenity, 
he  will  grow  less  anxious  to  speak  and  more  anxious 
to  learn,  and  at  the  same  time  the  pioneers  of  reform 
will  come  to  value  first  of  all  his  sympathy  and  then 
his  advice  ;  and  though  he  never  inaugurates  one 
pennyworth  of  organisation,  he  will  ultimately  find 
himself  at  the  back  of  every  movement,  inspiring, 
controlling,  or  restraining  as  the  need  may  be.  There 
are  Brigadiers  in  France  who  refer  almost  every  ques- 
tion affecting  the  well-being  of  the  men  to  their  chap- 
lains for  comment  and  advice  ;  when  the  character 
of  the  priesthood  has  so  developed  that  county  councils 
and  committees  do  the  same  by  the  clergy  at  home,  the 
Church  of  England  can  be  certain  that  her  ministry 
has  absorbed  the  lessons  learnt  by  the  chaplains  at 
the  Front. 


XVII 
THE    GREAT   ADVENTURE 

By   the    Rev.    EDWARD    S.    WOODS,    M.A. 

Senior  Chaplain  to   the   Forces,   Royal   Military   College,  Sandhurst . 
Exannning  Chaplain  to  the  Bishop  of  Durham. 

Author  of^'  Modern  Discipleship  and  what  it  means, ^^  "  Knights  in 
Armour"  and  Part  Author  of  ^^  The  Creed  of  a  Churchman.''^ 


XVII 
THE    GREAT   ADVENTURE 

"  The  true  God  is  not  a  spiritual  troubadour  wooing  the  hearts 
of  men  and  women  to  no  purpose.  The  true  God  goes  through 
the  world  like  fifes  and  drums  and  flags,  calling  for  recruits  along 
the  street."— H.  G.  Wells. 

It  is,  so  I  believe,  literal  truth  to  describe  the 
religion  of  Jesus  Christ  and  the  service  of  His  Kingdom 
as  "  The  Great  Adventure  "  ;  or,  with  yet  stricter 
accuracy,  as  "  The  Greatest  Adventure."  Of  that  I 
am  sure,  however  unfitted  this  pen  may  be  to  deal 
with  such  a  theme. 

After  three  years  in  the  school  of  war  men  are 
gathering  knowledge — and  much  of  it  is  bitter  to 
the  taste.  If  we  know  War  as  Curse,  as  naked  Sin, 
as  colossal  Waste,  we  know  it  too  as  fire  that  purges, 
as  fight  that  reveals.  War  is  a  sign-post  to  reality 
for  a  generation  that  was,  or  was  becoming,  half-bfind. 
It  is  an  index  of  things  as  they  are  ;  and,  for  that 
very  reason,  it  prods  men's  minds,  as  with  an  ox-goad, 
to  consider  things  as  they  might  be.  Among  these 
revelations  and  discoveries  some,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
stand    out    with    startfing    vividness;  and   they    are 


430      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE     xvii 

intimately  connected  with  the  theme  of  this  chapter. 
One  is,  that  there  exist  in  the  ordinary  man  hitherto 
unsuspected  reservoirs  of  heroism,  undi'eamed  of 
capacities  for  sacrifice.  Then  again — this  indeed  is 
no  new  discovery,  but  the  war  has  placarded  it  before 
men's  eyes — Christianity  is  seen  to  be  essentially 
not  static  nor  passive  nor  an  institutional  type  of  thing 
at  all,  but  an  enterprise,  a  Crusade,  an  Adventure,  a 
Cause  that  must  win  or  go  under.  And,  further,  the 
reason  why,  for  many  generations,  Christianity  has 
made  comparatively  little  headway  is  because  its 
exponents  and  representatives  have  usually  appealed 
to  men's  self-interest  rather  than  to  their  capacity 
for  self-sacrifice.  These  are  large  statements,  and 
to  justify  and  amphfy  them  will  be  the  task  of  the 
pages  that  follow. 

I.  Christianity  began  with  the  greatest  adventure 
in  history,  the  Divine  adventure  of  the  Incarnation. 
To  use  such  a  word  in  such  a  connection  is  not  mere 
hyperbole.  The  idea  of  daring  everything  for  the 
sake  of  a  great,  but  unassured,  result  is  one  that  lies 
at  the  very  core  of  Christianity.  What  else  was  it 
but  a  huge  adventure  when  Love  came  forth  from  the 
tents  of  Eternity  to  woo  and  win  the  heart  of  humanity  ? 
In  a  world  of  free  men  the  result  of  the  Incarnation 
could  never  have  been  a  foregone  conclusion. 

So  too  the  earthly  life  of  Jesus  Christ  seems  always 
to  be  tinged  with  this  sense  of  risk,  of  adventure.  For 
He  was,  as  recent  theology  has  re-discovered,  a  real 
man :  there  was  nothing  make-beheve  about  His 
humanity  :  He  did  not  wear  His  manhood  as  a  disguise. 
And,  as  a  real  man,  He  hved  by  faith.     He  had  set 


XVII  THE   GREAT  ADVENTURE  431 

out  on  the  tremendous  enterprise  of  coniinending  God 
to  men,  of  winning  men  to  God  ;  He  did  not  knoio 
if  and  how  far  His  enterprise  would  succeed.  Indeed 
within  a  very  few  years  it  brought  Him  to  the  Cross, 
which  to  the  men  who  loved  Him  appeared  no  less 
than  irretrievable  disaster  ;  while  to  Him,  in  those 
hours  of  utter  agony  of  mind,  it  must  have  seemed 
less  a  means  of  triumph  than  a  supreme  venture  of 
the  love  that  ever  drove  Him  on  to  dare  anything  and 
everything  for  His  purpose. 

In  the  same  way,  to  His  would-be  disciples  He  offers 
no  mere  "  salvation  "  but  an  adventure.  They,  human- 
hke,  cannot  help  wondering  what  they  are  going  to 
get  when  He  comes  into  His  "  Kingdom  "  ;  He  is 
always  trying  to  make  them  understand  their  dis- 
cipleship  is  much  more  a  matter  of  giving  than  of 
getting.  He  is  not  so  much  a  teacher  founding  a 
school,  or  a  sovereign  dispensing  favours,  as  a  crusader 
collecting  an  army.  He  captains  a  spiritual  "  Foreign 
Legion  "  of  men  who  are  required  to  dare  anything 
for  the  greatest  of  all  causes.  He  makes  it  quite 
plain  that,  from  the  material  point  of  view,  men  have 
everything  to  lose  and  nothing  to  gain  by  their  attach- 
ment to  Him  and  His  service.  "  If  any  man  will 
come  after  Me,  let  him  say  '  No  '  to  self,  and  take  up 
his  Cross  daily,  and  follow  Me.  .  .  .  For  whosoever  will 
save  his  life  shall  lose  it  ;  but  whosoever  shall  lose  his 
life,  for  My  sake  and  the  Gospel's,  the  same  shall  save 
it."  It  is  very  striking  how  frequently  and  how  strongly 
this  conception  of  Christian  discipleship  is  emphasised 
in  the  Gospel  story.  We  find  men  drawn  to  Him  by  a 
kind    of    irresistible    attraction,    but    they    evidently 


432     THE    CHURCH   IN  THE   FURNACE     xvii 

have  a  feeling  at  the  back  of  their  minds  that  they  are 
"let  in  "  for  what  is  probably  a  pretty  desperate 
enterprise.  "  Let  us  also  go,  that  we  may  die  with 
Him,"  cries  Thomas — voicing  no  doubt  what  the 
others  felt  too — when  the  Master  is  proposing  to  visit 
the  capital  at  a  crisis  when  such  a  visit  must  mean 
almost  certain  death.  They  find  it  very  difficult  to 
understand  anything  of  His  real  plans  and  hopes  ; 
in  this  instance  they  think  His  proposal  is  the  height 
of  folly  ;  but  they  have  come  so  to  love  and  trust  Him 
that  they  will  follow  Him  anywhere,  regardless  of  the 
consequences. 

There  is  no  question  that  the  time  has  come 
to  re-emphasise  and  re-assert  this  aspect  of  Christian 
discipleship.  I  am  not  saying  that  these  elements  in 
faith  and  service,  vital  as  they  are,  cover  the  whole 
ground  of  personal  Christianity.  But,  in  our  generation 
as  in  many  that  are  past,  they  have  unquestionably  been 
allowed  to  fall  into  the  background  of  Christian  think- 
ing and  Christian  experience,  both  in  individual  lives 
and  in  the  Church  as  a  whole.  In  many  quarters,  both 
within  and  without  the  Church,  the  idea  is  still  prevalent 
that  the  profession  of  Clu-istianity  involves,  strictly, 
an  acceptance  of  certain  religious  propositions,  an 
adherence  to  a  certain  kind  of  public  religious  worship, 
and  a  safe  insurance  for  the  soul  against  ultim.ate 
disaster.  Perhaps  that  is  why  Christianity,  as  thus 
presented,  has  often  seemed  to  appeal  chiefly  to  the 
mentally  shallow,  the  morally  feeble,  and  the  naturally 
pious — indeed  to  all  the  multitudes  of  the  unadven- 
turous  souls.  As  against  this  view  of  the  Christian 
religion   it   cannot   be   too   strongly   emphasised  that 


XVII  THE   GREAT   ADVENTURE  433 

faith  in  Jesus  Christ  involves,  first  and  foremost,  a 
species  of  adventure  :  an  adventure  along,  the  hne  of 
a  unique  and  tremendous  personal  relationship,  and 
into  the  region  of  a  wholly  different  and  very  difficult 
way  of  living. 

All  the  things  in  life  that  are  most  worth  having, 
says  a  great  American,  "  have  their  home  between  a 
risk  and  an  opportunity."  That  statement  is  certainly 
true  of  all  that  part  of  man's  outlook  and  experience 
that  we  call  "  faith."  Faith,  for  the  Christian,  is 
not  the  mechanical  use  of  some  credal  map  ;  it 
is  a  faring  forth  of  the  soul  into  an  mitrodden 
country.  Guided  though  he  may  be  by  the  accumu- 
lated experience  of  Christian  history,  each  fresh 
Christian  has  something  new  in  his  faith  ;  for  him  there 
is  in  it,  necessarily,  something  of  romantic  experi- 
ment. And  he  who  casts  in  his  lot  with  Jesus  Christ 
will  have  to  maintain  his  faith  against  odds  sooner  or 
later.  The  point  is  vividly  illustrated  by  R.  L.  Steven- 
son in  one  of  his  "  Fables,"  in  which  three  men  going 
on  a  pilgrimage  discuss  the  grounds  of  faith. ^  One, 
a  priest,  bases  his  faith  on  miracles ;  another,  a 
"  virtuous  person,"  on  metaphysics  ;  the  third,  "  an 
old  rover  with  his  axe,"  says  nothing  at  aU.  "  At 
last  one  came  running  and  told  them  all  was  lost  ; 
that  the  powers  of  darkness  had  besieged  the  Heavenly 
Mansions,  that  Odin  was  to  die  and  evil  triumph. 
'  I  have  been  grossly  deceived,'  cried  the  virtuous 
person.  '  All  is  lost  now,'  said  the  Priest.  '  I  wonder 
if  it  is  too  late  to  make  it  up  with  the  Devil,'  said  the 

^  This  summary  of  the  "  Fable  "  is  taken  from  R.  A.  P.  Hill's 
The  Interregnum,  p.  10 — a  very  sviggestive  book. 

F  F 


434     THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE     xvii 

virtuous  person.  *  Oh,  I  hope  not,'  said  the  Priest, 
'  and  at  any  rate  we  can  but  try.  But  what  are  you 
doing  with  your  axe  ?  '  says  he  to  the  Rover.  '  I 
am  off  to  die  with  Odin,'  said  the  Rover." 

Many  of  us  have  been  putting  our  rehgion  the  wrong 
way  round.  A  great  deal  of  modern  rehgion  is,  or 
was,  as  Ml'.  Neville  Talbot  has  reminded  us,  "  drenched 
with  self-regard."  The  official  exponents  of  Chris- 
tianity have  too  commonly  allowed,  or  even  encouraged, 
the  notion  that  a  Christian's  chief  function  is  to  save 
his  own  soul  ;  and  religion,  for  many,  has  tended  to 
become  a  refined  form  of  selfishness. 

In  this,  as  in  many  other  religious  questions,  the 
time  has  surely  come  for  serious  re-thinking  and 
re-stating.  Having  regard  to  the  extraordinarily  strong 
statements  which  Christ  made  on  the  subject,  it  is 
difficult  to  see  how  a  man  can  legitimately  call  himself 
a  Christian  unless  he  is  beginning  to  "  care  for  some- 
thing not  himself  more  than  he  cares  for  himself," 
unless  he  realises  perfectly  clearly  that  his  contact 
with  God  in  Christ  means  that  he  is  absolutely  com- 
mitted, body  and  soul,  to  the  Cause  for  which  Christ 
died  and  fives.  It  is  a  faulty  and  unworthy  conception 
of  God  and  of  man  which  pictures  Christianity  as  a 
sort  of  colossal  benefit  society  for  securing  the  safety 
and  happiness  of  that  section  of  humanity  which 
can  learn  correctly  its  formulae  of  admission.  God 
is  not  like  that.  In  Christ's  thought  of  Him, 
He  always  seems  to  be  more  concerned  with  "  out- 
siders "  than  with  the  "  elect."  It  cannot  conceivably 
be  any  form  of  selfishness  that  God  invites  men  to 
share.     It  is  truer  to  think  of  Him  as  "  going  through 


XVII  THE   GREAT  ADVENTURE  435 

the  world  like  fifes  and  drums  and  flags,  calling  for 
recruits  along  the  street  "  to  come  and  help  in  the 
Divine  adventure  of  a  world's  redemption. 

II.  And  what,  more  exactly,  is  the  nature  of  this 
Adventure,  this  Crusade,  into  which  Christ's  followers 
are  summoned  to  fling  all  their  energies  and  capacities  ? 
Christ  Himself  described  it  as  the  Kingdom  of  God, 
which  we  may  broadly  interpret  as  a  state  of  affairs 
in  which  men  individually  and  in  their  mutual  relation- 
ships, in  fact  in  all  their  living  together,  will  recognise 
and  give  effect  to  the  sovereignty  of  the  God  of  Jesus 
Christ.  Here  is  an  objective  broad  enough  for  a  race, 
high  enough  for  the  highest  human  ideahsm,  and 
sufficiently  immediate  and  practicable  to  attract  the 
devotion  of  every  single  heart  and  mind.  Even  its 
partial  realisation  would  be  enough  to  transform  the 
face  of  the  world.  The  truth  is,  we  are  as  yet  only 
in  the  very  early  stages  of  the  evolution  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God.  In  the  words  of  Mr.  Chesterton's  oft-quoted 
dictum,  "  Christianity  has  not  been  tried  and  found 
wanting  ;  it  has  been  found  difficult  and  not  tried." 
There  are  many  signs  that  the  time  has  come,  and 
that  men  see  that  the  time  has  come,  to  make  the 
experiment  of  applied  Christianity  on  a  scale  as  large 
as  the  world.  This  war  has  produced  in  the  general 
mind  of  humanity  a  ferment  of  thought  and  hope 
and  longing  such  as  history  has  never  before  witnessed. 
To  quote  Mr.  Wells  again — and,  whatever  may  be 
thought  of  some  of  his  views,  he  is  probably  justified 
in  claiming  to  be  a  "  scribe  to  his  generation  " — "  All 
mankind  is  seeking  God.  There  is  not  a  nation  nor 
a  city  in  the  globe  where  men  are  not  being  urged  at 

F  F  2 


43G      THE   CHURCH   IN  THE   FURNACE     xvii 

this  moment  by  the  Spirit  of  God  in  them  towards  the 
discovery  of  God.  .  .  .  The  Kingdom  of  God  on  earth 
is  not  a  metaphor,  not  a  mere  spiritual  state,  not  a 
dream,  not  an  uncertain  project  ;  it  is  the  thing 
before  us,  it  is  the  close  and  inevitable  destiny  of 
mankind."^ 

Whatever  may  be  the  total  significance,  for  all 
the  ages,  of  this  project  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  the 
immediate  task  for  our  own  generation  is  sufficiently 
clear.  Our  line  of  adventure  will  have  to  be  in  the 
three  closely  related  regions  of  international  relation- 
ships, of  race  contact,  and  of  all  that  accumulation 
of  social  and  industrial  strife  and  difficulty  and  um-est 
that  is  commonly  designated  as  the  "Social  Problem." 

It  is  hardly  thinkable  that  men  generally,  after  the 
object  lessons  of  this  war,  will  make  no  effort  to  import 
a  wholly  new  character  into  international  relationships. 
Indeed  there  are  many  signs  of  a  deep  and  widespread 
determination  to  find  a  solution  for  this,  the  greatest 
of  aU  the  "  reconstruction "  problems  that  now 
confront  the  world.  The  nations  simply  cannot  afford 
to  continue  indefinitely  hving  on  an  earth  where  armed 
might  rather  than  public  law  is  the  regulating  factor 
in  all  their  relationships  ;  they  cannot  do  other  than 
embark  on  "  the  enterprise  of  saving  the  earth  as  a 
place  worth  living  in."  If  there  were  no  other  com- 
pelling motive,  we  should  be  forced  to  keep  in  view 
this  goal  of  a  new  and  better  world  by  the  thought  of 
our  debt  to  the  dead.  Never  before  in  the  world's 
history  has  there  been  such  a  vast  dehberate  out- 
pouring of  human  life  ;  and  the  one  utterly  intolerable 

1  "  God  the  Invisible  King,"  p     131. 


XVII  THE   GREAT   ADVENTURE  437 

thought  is  that  these  millions  should  have  died  in 
vain.  Those  myriads  of  graves  on  all  the  Fronts 
should  save  us — and  we  in  England  need  it — from 
lowered  and  unworthy  aims,  and  should  hold  us 
steadfast  to  our  highest  idealism  and  the  one  true 
objective  of  a  new  world  of  brotherhood  and  good 
will. 

It  is  noteworthy  that  the  keenest  minds,  and  many 
of  the  greatest  leaders  in  the  Allied  cause,  have  never 
lost  sight  of  this  ultimate  aim.  Let  me  illustrate 
this  point  with  one  or  two  quotations.  Our  late 
Premier,  in  well-remembered  phrase,  insisted  on  "  a 
real  partnership  of  the  nations  "  as  being  an  essential 
part  of  our  war  purpose.  "  When  once  the  world," 
says  an  able  writer  in  the  Round  Table,  "  and  specially 
the  democratic  world,  has  proved  that  not  only  will 
it  not  tolerate  the  overthrow  of  right  by  might  but  is 
wiUing  to  combine  to  define,  obey  and  enforce  a  code 
of  public  right,  covering  the  whole  Earth,  mihtarism 
will  be  dead  and  the  world  will  be  free  as  it  has  never 
been  free  before."  And  here  are  some  weighty 
sentences  in  President  Wilson's  recent  official  Message 
to  the  Provisional  Government  of  Russia  :  "  Then,"  he 
urges  (after  the  war  for  Liberty  has  been  won),  '*'  the 
free  peoples  of  the  world  must  draw  together  in  a 
common  covenant,  some  genuine  and  practical  co- 
operation that  will  in  effect  combine  their  force  to 
secure  peace  and  justice  in  the  dealings  of  nations 
with  one  another.  The  brotherhood  of  mankind 
must  no  longer  be  a  fair  but  empty  phrase.  It  must 
be  given  a  structure  of  force  and  reahty.  The  nations 
must  realise  their  common  life  and  effect  a  workable 


438      THE   CHURCH  IN  THE   FURNACE     xvii 

partnership  to  secure  that  life  against  the  aggressions 
of  autocratic  and  self-pleasing  power. "^ 

There  are  no  greater  political  aims  than  these  ; 
but  it  is  important  to  realise  that  they  depend  upon 
a  profound  and  widespread  alteration  in  the  general 
mind  of  man.  Any  "  partnership  "  of  nations  that 
is  to  be  effective  will  mean  that  the  majority  of  men, 
individually  and  nationally,  prefer  fellowship  to  sel- 
fishness as  a  basis  of  society.  Such  general  preference 
could  only  be  the  result  of  a  tremendous  spiritual 
change  ;  and  where  save  in  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ 
is  to  be  found  the  spiritual  dynamic  to  work  this 
miracle  ?  Could  modern  Christianity  set  forth  on  a 
greater  adventure  than  that  of  capturing  men's  minds 
and  so  bringing  universal  brotherhood  from  the  realm 
of  dreams  into  that  of  fact  ? 

If  Christianity  is  really  capable  of  bringing  a  new 
savour  into  human  relationships  from  the  smallest 
to  the  widest  scale,  then  there  are  many  other  points 
in  the  life  of  the  world  where  it  is  badly  needed.  There 
are  phenomena,  especially  in  the  East,  which  though 
now  becoming  famihar  to  the  few  are  still  unappre- 
hended by  the  many,  phenomena  that  are  charged 
with  grave  menace  as  well  as  high  hope  for  the  years 
to  come.  India,  China,  Japan  are  waking  from  the 
sleep  of  ages  and  are  demanding — in  Japan's  case 
already  taking — their  places  in  a  world  which  through 
the  ever-growing  facilities  for  intercommunication  has 
now  become  "  a  single  neighbourhood."  The  time  when 
a  race  or  nation  could  live  its  own  life  in  complete 
isolation  from  all  the  rest  has  gone  never  to  return. 

»   The  Times,  11th  June,  1917. 


XVII  THE   GREAT  ADVENTURE  439 

And  what  is  to  regulate  this  new  contact  of  races  in 
an  overcrowded  world  ?  Think,  for  instance,  of  the 
Japanese  on  America's  Pacific  coast,  and  of  the  "  White 
Austraha  "  question.  Other  and  kindred  problems  are 
pressing  on  every  side.  Religions  and  civilisations  of 
hoary  antiquity,  undermined  by  Western  thought,  are 
beginning  to  crumble  ;  where  may  new  and  more  stable 
foundations  be  found  ?  The  so-called  backward  races 
are  for  the  most  part  either  controlled  by  or  "  in  the 
sphere  of  influence  of  "  larger  and  stronger  nations. 
Are  they  to  remain  in  a  state  of  permanent  serfdom  ? 
Are  their  labour  and  their  lands  to  be  exploited  by  the 
white  man's  commercial  greed  ?  Or  are  they  to  have 
adequate  opportunity  to  develop  and  fulfil  their  own 
destiny  ?  And  to  that  end  are  we  and  other  "  Imperial  " 
Powers  going  to  cleave  steadfastly  to  the  principle  of 
governing  in  the  interests  of  the  governed  ?  These 
are  large  and  difficult  questions.  And  let  it  be  stated 
at  once  and  emphatically  that,  if  Christianity  is  true, 
then  the  one  and  only  hope  of  their  satisfactory  solution 
lies  in  its  being  applied.  The  days  are  gone  for  ever 
when  "  Foreign  Missions  "  could  be  regarded,  or  dis- 
regarded, as  the  semi-private  fad  of  a  few  religious 
enthusiasts.  The  time  has  arrived  when  sane  and 
serious  men,  both  within  and  without  the  Churches, 
are  beginning  to  see  that  the  chief  hope  of  the  future 
lies  in  the  expansion  of  Christianity.  From  every 
side  that  conclusion  is  thrust  upon  us.  If  Christianity 
is  true,  then  its  destiny  cannot  be  less  than  world-wide. 
If  it  "  works,"  then  it  provides  that  which  all  men 
and  all  nations  fundamentally  need.  If  it  is  both  true 
and  effective,  then  those  men  and  nations  who  have 


440     THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE     xvii 

access  to  it  not  only  have  no  right  to  keep  it  to  them- 
selves, but  are  morally  bound  to  share  it  with  others. 
In  the  new  world-consciousness  and  the  new  longing 
for  world-wide  fellowship  there  is  no  room  for  a 
provincial  salvation.  "  The  unpardonable  sin  for  a 
modern  man,"  urges  the  writer  of  one  of  those  striking 
Saturday  articles  in  The  Times,  "is  to  despair  of  the 
human  family,  or  to  demand  a  safety  for  himself  or 
for  his  people,  which  is  not  offered  to  all.  We  are  not 
saved,  it  has  been  well  said,  except  in  a  saved  race." 
Could  any  generation  want  a  bigger  adventure  than 
that  of  "  making  Jesus  Kjng  "  over  the  hearts  and 
lives  of  all  its  contemporaries  ? 

And  then,  thirdly,  there  is  the  region  where  the 
adventure  of  "  applying  Christianity  "  is  perhaps 
more  difficult  and  more  imperative  than  anywhere 
else,  namely  the  problem  of  securing  justice  and  mercy 
in  the  world  of  industry.  "  Our  civilisation,"  it  has 
been  strikingly  said,  ''is  uneasily  poised  on  labour's 
slowly  straitening  back."  The  "  problem  of  peace  " 
for  our  own  land  is,  on  its  own  scale,  quite  as  acute 
as  that  which  confronts  the  world  at  large.  The 
desire  and  the  opportunity  for  reconstructing  our 
national  life  on  a  better  basis  than  that  provided  by 
universal  seK -interest  are  manifestly  reaching  a  climax. 
There  are  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  and  women 
in  these  islands  who  have  never  known  the  meaning 
of  "  life  "  in  its  fuUer  and  richer  sense,  and  who 
passionately  want  to  "  live."  There  are  large  numbers 
of  our  citizens  who,  as  long  as  their  dividends  come  in 
all  right,  know  and  care  little  or  nothing  about  the 
human  beings  who  produce  them.     There  are  some, 


XVII  THE   GREAT   ADVENTURE  441 

hard  and  merciless,  who  know  they  are  "  on  the  backs 
of  "  the  less  fortunate,  and  mean  to  stay  there.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  are  many,  at  the  top  as  well 
as  at  the  bottom,  who  hate  the  non-human  conditions 
of  our  present  industrial  system  and  long  to  find  a 
way  out.  And,  assuredly,  there  are  multitudes  of 
ordinary  people,  of  the  general  public,  who  desire 
eagerly,  pathetically,  to  find  some  better  way  of 
common  life  than  that  imposed  by  self-interest,  dis- 
trust, or  greed. 

The  number  and  complexity  of  the  problems 
involved  in  any  large  and  serious  attempt  to  re- 
build the  national  hfe  are  formidable  indeed  ;  such 
as  the  questions  of  wages,  employment,  pensions, 
housing,  marriage,  temperance,  education,  and  the 
hke.  To  attempt  to  treat  any  of  these  in  detail  would 
carry  us  beyond  the  scope  of  this  Essay.  Here  I 
will  only  indicate,  in  the  merest  outline,  what  must 
be  the  absolutely  essential  items  in  any  programme  of 
reform,  objectives  which  every  thoughtful  m.an  and 
woman  should  continually  contemplate  and  work 
for.  The  first  is  the  need  of  adequate  recognition  of 
the  personahty  of  the  worker.  Men  and  women 
must  be  treated  as  human  beings,  not  as  "  hands  " 
— God  forgive  us  as  a  nation  for  ever  allowing  the 
word  to  have  a  place  in  our  industrial  vocabulary  ! 
We  have  to  learn  the  profound  truth  of  Tolstoi's 
saying,  "  We  constantly  think  there  are  circumstances 
in  which  a  human  being  can  be  treated  without  affection, 
and  there  are  no  such  circumstances."  And  then, 
secondly,  human  beings  as  such  have  a  "  right  to  life  "; 
which  is  impossible  unless  they  are  conceded  a  "  living 


442      THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE     xvii 

wage."  And,  thirdly,  if  human,  beings  are  to  labour 
together  in  a  vast  and  complex  industrial  system, 
there  is  quite  certain  to  be  strife  and  injustice  involving 
grave  suffering  unless  the  whole  system  can  be  domi- 
nated by  a  real  spirit  of  mutual  understanding,  sympathy, 
and  good  will,  such  as  will  both  provide  an  atmosphere 
of  harmony  at  present  sorely  lacking,  and  give  birth 
to  practical  schemes  of  equalised  opportunity,  joint 
control,  profit-sharing  and  the  like.  Here  again,  all 
will  end  in  futile  aspiration  and  barren  talk  unless 
some  superlatively  strong  motive  and  moral  driving 
power  are  forthcoming.  And  where  can  they  be  sought 
with  any  prospect  of  success  save  from  Jesus  Christ 
Himself  ?  How  shall  men  learn  to  submit  their  lives 
to  the  law  of  Love  save  through  submission  to  the 
God  of  Love  ? 

III.  Such,  in  brief  outline,  is  the  "  adventure  "  which 
confronts  Christianity  in  the  modern  world.  If  only 
men  could  realise  the  nature,  and  hear  the  summons, 
of  this  Adventure,  then,  so  I  believe,  a  great  proportion 
of  those  who  are  now  Christians  chiefly  in  name  would 
become  Christians  indeed,  and  an  enormous  number 
of  fresh  recruits  would  flock  to  Christ's  uplifted  banner. 
For  the  war  has  taught  us  all,  what  we  had  almost 
forgotten,  that  a  great  response  can  always  be  evoked 
by  a  great  appeal.  The  capacity  for  heroism  and 
sacrifice,  not  in  the  picked  few,  but  in  the  average 
man  and  woman  confronted  by  a  really  big  demand, 
has  been  almost  of  the  nature  of  a  revelation.  Indeed, 
when  the  war  is  over,  it  may  well  be  that  many, 
combatants  and  non-combatants  alike,  will  feel, 
almost  regretfully,   that  something  has  gone  out  of 


XVII  THE   GREAT  ADVENTURE  443 

their  lives  :  some  great  compelling  force  and  motive 
urging  to  discipline  and  toil  and  sacrifice.  What  if, 
in  the  humdi'um  years  to  come,  men  should  find  to 
take  its  place  some  even  greater  and  more  lasting 
cause,  demanding  all  they  have  to  give,  filhng  life  full 
with  meaning  and  high  purpose  ?  What  if  at  last, 
as  a  race,  we  are  going  to  find  the  long-sought  "  moral 
equivalent  of  War"  ?  And  shall  we  ever  find  a  more  com- 
pelling equivalent  than  the  Adventure  of  applying  Chris- 
tianity to  a  desperately  needy  world  ?  "  We  shall," 
it  has  been  justly  urged,  "  continue  to  deserve  all 
the  horrors  of  war  that  Fate  cares  to  impose  upon  us 
until  we  render  Peace  as  energetic  and  passionate 
for  civilisation  and  love  as  War  is  for  destruction 
and  hate."  "We  need"— to  use  Mr.  Wells's  vivid 
picturing  once  again — "  a  standard  so  universal  that 
the  platelayer  may  say  to  the  barrister  or  the  duchess, 
or  the  Red  Indian  to  the  Limehouse  sailor,  or  the 
Anzac  soldier  to  the  Sinn  Feiner  or  the  Chinaman, 
'  What  are  we  two  doing  for  it  ?  '  And  to  fill  the  place 
of  that '  It '  wo  other  idea  is  great  enough  or  commanding 
enough,  but  only  the  world  Kingdom  of  God."  All 
the  "  war  virtues  " — far-sighted  planning,  quick  initia- 
tive, selfless  courage,  discipline,  leadership,  obedience, 
esprit  de  corps,  effective  co-operation  and  the  like — 
all  these  may  find  permanent  and  satisfying  vent  in 
the  crusade  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

And  what  prospect  is  there  of  men  generally  em- 
barking upon  this  great  adventure  ?  In  that  question 
is  involved  another,  which  cannot  be  avoided  if  our 
present  subject  is  to  be  properly  explored,  namely 
the  question  of  what  the  Church  is  doing  or  is  going 


444      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE     xvii 

to  do  in  this  matter.  I  am  well  aware  that  there  is 
a  vast  amount  of  Christian  aspiration  and  Christian 
living  that  is  quite  outside  the  "  Church."  But  in 
considering  the  enterprise  of  establishing  the  Kingdom 
of  God,  account  must  be  taken  of  the  organised  forces 
of  modern  Christianity.  It  is  this  organised  and  more 
or  less  visible  Christianity,  and  especially  that  part 
of  it  which  is  coterminous  with  the  Church  of  England, 
that  I  have  in  mind  when  using  the  expression  "the 
Church."  In  speaking  of  the  Church  and  the  oppor- 
tunity that  confronts  her  to-day,  any  language  that 
at  all  fits  the  situation  must  of  necessity  seem  ex- 
aggerated. For  it  is  a  situation  fraught  with  the  utmost 
peril  and  the  utmost  opportunity.  With  many  others 
who  are  looking  for  the  coming  Kingdom,  I  believe 
profoundly  that  the  Church  has  reached  the  cross- 
roads of  her  history  ;  that  she  has  now  got  her  chance, 
the  greatest  chance  in  all  her  long  existence.  Her 
chance  Ues  in  the  fact  that  she  holds  the  key  of  human- 
ity's unsolved  problems,  that  she  is  the  steward  of  that 
which  the  world  supremely  needs  ;  there  is  that  in 
her,  latent  and  potential,  which,  if  it  were  to  burst 
forth  into  overflowing  life,  would  christianise  the  world 
within  a  generation.  That  is  her  chance.  What  is 
going  to  be  done  with  it  ? 

It  is  quite  true  that  new  life  can  only  come  from  the 
living  God.  On  the  other  hand  God  does  not  as  a 
rule  carry  out  His  reconstructive  work  apart  from 
human  conditions  which  are  largely  a  matter  of  human 
creation.  Indeed,  in  the  matter  of  spiritual  renewal 
on  a  large  scale,  it  is  difficult  to  say  what  are  conditions 
and  what  are  results  ;  man's  longing  and  God's  response 


XVII  THE   GREAT   ADVENTURE  445 

appear  to  blend  in  a  process  where  it  is  hard  to  distinguish 
human  and  Divine.  So  that  there  is  no  need  or  excuse 
for  the  Church  to  wait  passively  for  some  fresh  divine 
afflatus.  There  are  things  that  can  be  and  ought  to 
be  done  at  once.  And  perhaps  the  most  important 
of  these,  for  us  to-day,  is  to  recover  this  sense  tJmt 
Christianity  is  an  Adventure,  an  Enterprise,  a  Crusade. 
The  Church  is  of  necessity,  of  Divine  necessity,  an 
institution  ;  but  her  whole  life  and  existence  have  for 
a  long  time  back  far  too  much  tended  to  become  merely 
institutional.  The  Christianity  of  the  Church  is 
regarded  as,  and  has  largely  become,  passive,  static, 
crystalhsed ;  whereas  Christianity  of  the  original  type 
is  energetic,  explosive,  revolutionary.  The  writer  of 
a  notable  article  in  a  recent  number  of  the  Contemporary 
Review  speaks  of  modern  Christianity  as  being  "  tied 
up  with  things  as  they  are  "  ;  "  the  Church,"  he  says, 
"  has  been  trying  to  referee  the  game  of  civihsation 
as  the  world  now  plays  it  rather  than  to  revolutionise 
the  game  itself.  .  .  .  This  is  the  real  spiritual  weakness  of 
our  time.  We  have  lost  sight  of  the  venturesomeneas  of 
faith.  We  decorate  the  tombs  of  Abraham  and  Luther 
and  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  men  who  hterally  went  out 
not  knowing  whither  they  went,  but  we  have  not  the 
courage  to  perpetuate  their  spirit  and  continue  their 
adventure.  ...  If  not  Christianity,  then  some  radical 
economic  revolution,  like  Sociahsm  or  Syndicalism, 
will  finally  break  the  evil  charm  that  seems  to  have 
settled  on  us  all." 

The  precise  nature  of  the  Adventure  on  which  the 
Church  is  called  to  embark  I  have  already  tried  to 
indicate.     Defined  more  closely,  and  from  the  Church's 


446     THE   CHURCH  IN  THE   FURNACE     xvii 

point  of  view,  it  means  that  her  true  Une  of  advance 
is  to  get  ahead  with  her  primary  task  of  spreading 
Christianity  in  a  largely  unchristian  world ;  driven 
by  a  passion  for  the  Kingdom  of  God  to  get  right  in 
among  men  with  her  message  and  life  ;  to  learn  to 
care  infinitely  more  for  winning  the  world  for  Jesus 
Christ  than  for  matters  affecting  her  own  hfe  and 
institutions,  and  to  utilise  all  her  resources  for  that  one 
tremendous  objective  ;  to  discover  and  experience  as 
a  Church  the  fundamental  Christian  law  that  "  he 
that  saveth  his  life  shall  lose  it,  but  he  that  loseth  his 
life  for  Christ's  sake  and  the  Gospel's,  the  same  shall 
save  it."  If  the  Church  could  recover  this  conception 
of  her  life,  could  realise  herself  not  as  an  end  but  as  a 
means  to  an  end,  then  she  would  surely  throw  herself 
at  once  with  new  zest  and  new  power  into  those 
pressing  tasks  of  reconstruction  which,  as  was  urged 
above,  cannot  be  accomplished  without  the  spiritual 
and  moral  dynamic  which  a  revived  Church  could 
supply.  The  need  of  men  and  of  nations  everywhere 
for  all  that  Christ  alone  can  give  would  cease  to  be 
the  care  of  a  department  of  the  Church  privately 
and  unofficially  administered  and  would  become 
the  engrossing  concern  of  the  whole  Chm'ch.  The 
problem  of  creating  a  real  comity  of  nations  based  on 
liberty  and  right  and  good  will  would  be  very  much 
nearer  solution  if  the  Christian  Churches  of  every  kind 
could  permeate  public  opinion  with  the  conviction 
that  such  an  ideal  is  not  only  desirable  but  practicable. 
The  Church  in  our  own  land  has  never  flagged  in  pro- 
claiming the  "  righteousness  of  our  cause  "  ;  but  we 
all  know  that,  and  what  many  of  us  long  to  hear  more 


XVII  THE   GREAT   ADVENTURE  447 

of  is  the  hope  and  j)i'ospect  of  a  new  human  unity 
such  as  a  truly  Catholic  Church,  commissioned  by  the 
Universal  Christ,  has  the  authority  to  proclaim.  And 
as  for  the  "  Social  Problem,"  of  a  truth  the  time  has 
come  for  official  Christianity  to  leave  its  ancient 
moorings  and  launch  out  on  the  broad  sea.  It  would 
indeed  be  an  adventure  for  the  Church  to  chmb  out 
of  her  middle-class  rut,  shake  off  the  clogging  accretions 
of  centuries,  and  go  on  a  crusade  for  social  justice 
and  the  brotherhood  of  man  !  The  Church  is  called 
to  stand  for  Christ,  His  thoughts,  plans,  ideals,  way  of 
living,  before  the  nation  and  the  nations  ;  and  to  think, 
as  we  must  think,  of  this  as  being  a  novel  kind  of  enter- 
prise for  the  Church  and  the  Churches  is  a  measure 
of  the  distance  we  have  travelled  from  pure  and  primi- 
tive Christianity. 

A  man  who  is  corpulent,  middle-aged,  and  out  of 
training  may  enter  for  a  race,  but  he  will  scarcely 
get  round  the  first  corner.  The  Church  is  hardly  fit 
for  her  Adventure  as  she  is  ;  the  hope  and  prayer  of 
her  sons  is  that,  fired  by  the  vision  of  what  might  be, 
she  may  train  and  discipline  and  purify  herself  for  the 
task  that  is  laid  upon  her.  Nothing  less  than  a  pro- 
found "  change  of  mind  "  (fieTcivoia),  a  thorough 
reformation  inside  and  out,  will  serve  to  fit  her  for  her 
work.  Let  it  be  said  plainly  that  such  reformation 
will  have  to  begin  with  us  clergy — our  need  of  it  is 
more  than  can  be  measured  ;  and  its  scope  will  surely 
have  to  include  as  a  minimum  these  things  (I  name  them 
only  :  space  forbids  elucidation).  First,  vision — the 
ability  to  see,  or  begin  to  see,  the  whole  situation 
as  God  sees  it.     Secondly,  unity  ;  how  can  she  present 


448     THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE     xvii 

a  united  front  to  the  powers  of  evil  while  whole  sections 
of  her  forces  are  at  loggerheads  with  other  sections  ? 
How  can  she  proclaim  the  brotherhood  of  man  while 
there  is  so  little  of  true  feUowshij)  within  her  own 
borders  ?  And  how  can  she  speak  for  Christ  to  the  world 
when  she  is  not  of  one  mind  and  has  not  any  effective 
means  of  corporate  utterance  ?  A  third  essential  and 
immediate  duty  is  that  of  re-stating  the  Christian 
rnessage  in  thought  and  language  that  the  ordinary 
man  of  to-day  can  understand.  There  are  multitudes 
of  men  and  women  Avho  long  to  hear  of  God  and  of 
Christ,  but  are  wearied  and  disgusted  with  the  con- 
ventional and  ecclesiastical  shibboleths  that  are  too 
often  offered  them  instead.  And  such  re-statement 
must  include  a  carefully  thought  out  attempt  to 
re-apply  the  message  to  modern  conditions.  What  for 
instance  does  it  really  mean  for  a  man,  as  to  his  ordinary 
daily  life,  to  be  a  follower  of  Jesus  Christ  in  this  modern 
world,  which  seems  so  remote  from  that  of  the  Gospels  ? 
There  are  unquestionably  large  numbers  of  men  and 
women,  many  of  them  unattached  to  any  Church, 
who  would  be  utterly  thankful  for  some  authoritative 
guidance  on  spiritual  things  :  such  matters  as  Christian 
(as  distinct  from  Jewish  or  Puritan)  Sunday  observance, 
the  truth  and  error  of  Spirituahsm,  the  question  of  the 
future  life,  the  nature  and  authority  of  the  Bible,  and 
the  like.  Fourthly,  there  is  the  question  of  the  Church's 
Public  Worship.  A  book  of  Common  Prayer  drawn 
up  several  centuries  ago,  and  largely  untouched  since, 
cannot  on  the  face  of  it  supply  aU  our  needs  to-day  ; 
and  the  time  is  long  overdue  for  the  Church  to  alter 
and  add  to  her  book  where  necessary,  and  to  give  to 


XVII  THE   GREAT  ADVENTURE  449 

her  liturgy  and  services  the  freshness  and  elasticity 
which  are  essential  to  true  worship.  And,  lastly, 
there  is  grave  need  of  reform  in  the  Church's  organisa- 
tion ;  the  machinery  of  her  work  is  out  of  date  and 
inadequate.  Such  questions  as  those  of  patronage 
and  finance  (including  the  payment  of  Bishops  and 
clergy),  representative  government,  the  connection  of 
Church  and  State,  the  work  and  status  of  laymen  and 
especially  of  women,  have  been  left  too  long,  and  cannot 
safely,  if  the  Church  is  to  become  really  free  to  do  her 
work,  be  left  any  longer.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the 
Report  of  the  Archbishops'  Committee  on  Church  and 
State  (1916)  and  the  Reports,  when  ready,  of  the 
five  Archbishops'  Commissions  of  Inquiry — appointed 
as  a  sequel  to  the  National  Mission  and  now  (Summer, 
1917)  at  work — wiU  lead  to  prompt  and  drastic 
action. 

For  indeed,  for  the  Church  of  England,  it  is  now  or 
never.  It  is  not  conceivable  that  the  voice  of  God 
could  sound  for  her  with  more  trumpet-like  clearness 
than  it  does  to-day.  For  her,  as  for  the  whole  Church, 
the  opportunity  is  fully  here  ;  the  adventure  of  giving 
herself  for  the  nation,  for  the  world,  is  almost  thrust 
into  her  hands,  so  that  she  cannot  turn  aside  from  it 
without  being  unfaithful  to  the  very  things  for  which 
she  stands.  Please  God,  this  great  adventure  may  yet 
be  accepted,  and  the  Church  be  true  to  her  vocation. 
If  not  ...  it  may  be  that  God  will  take  away  her 
candlestick  and  commit  His  Cause  to  some  new  and 
more  adequate  instrument. 

IV.  There  is  a  certain  danger  in  making  large  state- 
ments ;  and  it  may  perhaps  form  the  best  conclusion 

G    G 


450     THE   CHURCH  IN  THE   FURNACE     xvii 

to  this  paper  to  try  to  indicate,  however  briefly, 
something  of  what  the  "  Great  Adventure  "  would 
mean  personally  for  him  who  writes  and  for  those 
who  read,  for  any  in  fact  who  have  their  feet  on  the 
Way  and  their  faces  towards  the  Goal.  If  there  is 
to  be  any  general  discovery  of  the  practicability  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  then  each  one  of  us  must  be  prepared 
to  do  some  personal  exploring  in  what  may  be  largely 
untrodden  regions.  Despite  all  hindrances,  and  at 
whatever  cost,  the  Christian  must  keep  moving.  To 
become  static  is  as  great  a  danger  for  the  individual 
as  for  the  Church.  "  To  the  Christian,"  says  one  of 
our  foremost  thinkers,  "  the  status  quo  is  always  in- 
tolerable except  as  a  stepping-stone  to  something 
better."  Every  man,  especially  at  or  after  middle  age, 
is  dangerously  liable  to  take  himself  for  granted  as 
he  is  ;  to  discount  the  possibihty  of  fresh  change  and 
development.  Christ  showed  His  deep  knowledge  of 
men  in  insisting  that  if  we  are  to  be  true  Christians 
we  must  needs  become  like  little  childi^en,  with  the 
child's  glorious  sense  of  wonder,  romance,  expectancy, 
with  its  buoyant  feehng  that  all  life  is  brimful  of  the 
most  wonderful  possibihties  only  waiting  to  be  dis- 
covered and  explored. 

And  the  main  hne  of  advance  is  surely  clear  enough. 
It  is  both  practical  and  spiritual  ;  it  hes  across  the 
regions  of  living  and  of  thinking.  We  need,  on  the 
one  hand,  to  re-discover  and  re-experience  the  fact 
which  was  most  prominent  in  early  Chi-istianity, 
namely  that  to  be  a  Christian  involves  a  man  in  a 
new  way  of  life,  with  standards,  values,  and  practices 
other    and    higher    than    those    which    "  the    world " 


XVII  THE   GREAT   ADVENTURE  451 

accepts.  For  a  man  or  woman  deliberately  to  adopt 
the  way  of  Christ  in  the  midst  of  the  common  Hfe  of 
our  modern  world  is  invariably  a  real  adventure, 
and  a  risky  one.  How  many  of  us  who  accept  the  name 
of  Christian  have  fairly  embarked  on  it  ?  Have  we 
indeed  made  any  serious  and  deliberate  attempt  to 
think  out  what  this  adventure  would  imply  for  us 
personally  ?  It  would  doubtless  mean  different  things 
for  different  people.  It  is  not  always  easy  to  know 
exactly  what  the  wiU  of  Christ  really  involves  for 
ordinary  hfe  ;  it  may  sometimes  appear  to  conflict 
with  what  seem  to  be  obvious  duties  ;  duty  to  family, 
duty  to  health,  duty  to  inherited  wealth  or  position, 
loyalty  to  business  partners,  loyalty  to  class  or  country. 
Moreover,  the  man  who  is  genuinely  trying  to  do  what 
is  right  according  to  Christ's  standard — and  the  right 
path  is  surely  made  plain,  at  last,  to  everyone  who  is 
willing  to  foUow  it — may  easily  find  himself  misunder- 
stood by  fellow  Christians  whose  consuming  zeal  for 
the  Kingdom  is  inchned  to  narrow  their  judgments. 
Nevertheless,  for  the  majority  of  Christians,  this 
adventure  would  probably  entail  a  very  considerable 
readjustment  of  our  daily  living  ;  it  would  have  a 
disturbing  effect  on  many  things  that  we  tend  to  take 
for  granted  :  such  things  as  our  attitude  towards  and 
use  of  money,  our  work  as  employers  or  employed, 
as  buyer  or  as  seller,  and,  most  of  aU,  our  attitude 
towards  other  people — the  whole  region  of  our  social 
relationships.  We  should  probably  lose  some  friends, 
though  making  others ;  and  we  might  very  easily 
incur  dislike,  contempt,  or  hostihty.  But  is  there 
not  something  suspiciously  easy  about  a  rehgion  that 


452      THE    CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE     xvii 

makes  no  enemies  ?  And  can  the  world  be  christianised 
in  any  other  way  than  by  Christ's  followers  pursuing, 
severally  and  corporately,  the  personal  adventure  of 
"  appMed  Christianity  "  ? 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  advance  here  is  contingent 
upon  a  simultaneous  advance  in  the  region  of  faith. 
If  we  are  to  re-discover  the  Christian  way  of  life,  we 
must  have  the  motive  and  the  power  which  spring 
from  a  re-discovery  of  Christ's  sense  of  God.  There 
is,  in  all  of  us,  a  shortage  of  faith  ;  the  supreme  lack, 
in  every  life,  is  the  lack  of  God.  Our  real  weakness 
is  our  Spiritual  poverty.  We  have  been  paddling  on 
the  edge  of  the  limitless  ocean  of  the  life  in  Christ  ; 
the  time  has  surely  come  to  launch  out  on  to  the  deep. 
We  have  hardly  begun  to  discover  what  God  in  Christ 
wiU  do  through  those  who  will  make  room  for  Him 
to  live  and  act  in  them.  I  seem  to  see  the  time  drawing 
near  when  men  at  last,  men  who  long  for  the  Kingdom, 
wiU  give  God  an  adequate  chance  to  work  out  His  plans 
through  them,  through  their  glad  and  loyal  and 
single-hearted  co-operation.  .  .  . 

For,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  this  is  the  heart  and 
soul  of  the  Great  Adventure,  this  is  its  mystery  and 
romance,  that  God  reaUy  needs  us  men  and  women 
to  help  Him  carry  out  His  purposes,  and  deliberately 
ofifers  us  the  unique  joy  of  labouring  with  Him.  It 
is  just  here,  surely,  that  we  penetrate  to  the  inner 
heart  of  Christianity.  He,  the  Christ,  has  died  for 
me,  He  rescues  me  from  my  lower  self,  He  lifts  me  into 
the  intimacy  of  His  companionship,  "  I  am  His  and 
He  is  mine," — not  simply  for  the  purpose  that  I  may 
be   secure   and   happy   and    "  saved  "  ;   that,   though 


XVII  THE   GREAT   ADVENTURE  453 

joyfully  true  and  for  me  indispensable,  is  in  a  sense 
a  by-product  of  my  relationship  with  Him  ; — He  does 
all  this  that  I  may  be  able  to  fulfi]  the  highest  function 
of  my  being,  which  is  to  be  of  use,  howsoever  infini- 
tesimal, to  Him  and  to  humanity.  If  this  is  so,  if,  in 
this  sense.  He  needs  me,  if  I  can  really  be  of  use  to 
His  Cause,  how  can  I  possibly  hang  back  ?  How  can 
I  do  other  than  "  go  all  out  "  on  the  Great  Adventure  ? 
It  is  sheer  honour  to  spend  and  be  spent  for  Him  and 
His  Kingdom.  "God  takes  all.  He  takes  you, 
blood  and  bones,  house  and  acres.  He  takes  skill  and 
influence  and  expectations.  For  all  the  rest  of  your 
life  you  are  nothing  but  God's  agent." 

There  is  a  moving  passage  in  a  moving  book,  John 
Masefield's  "  Galhpoh,"  where  he  describes  how  the 
final  attack  at  Suvla  Bay  represented  a  kind  of  climax 
of  effort  and  opportunity,  led  up  to  by  infinite  toil 
and  sacrifice.  "  There  was  the  storm,  there  was  the 
crisis,  the  one  picked  hour,  to  which  this  death  and 
agony  .  .  .  had  led.  Then  was  the  hour  for  a  casting 
off  of  self,  and  a  setting  aside  of  every  pain  and  longing 
and  sweet  affection,  a  giving  up  of  aU  that  makes  a 
man  to  the  something  which  makes  a  race,  and  a  going 
forward  to  death  resolvedly  to  help  out  their  brothers 
high  up  above  in  the  shell-bursts  and  the  blazing 
gorse."  Which  is  a  parable,  as  well  as  history.  To 
the  Church  of  Christ  has  come  at  last  her  "  one  picked 
hour,"  her  supreme  opportunity,  her  final  summons 
to  fare  forth  with  God  in  His  great  Adventure.  The 
trumpet  is  sounding,  and  He,  the  hero  Christ,  is 
caUing  men  after  Him.  With  such  a  Leader,  in  such 
a   Cause,   pain   and  loss  are  forgotten,   and   sacrifice 


454     THE   CHURCH   IN   THE   FURNACE     xvii 

ceases  to  be  sacrifice.  To  be  His,  and  utterly  com- 
mitted to  His  adventure,  is  something  to  exult  about  ; 
it  is  that  which  turns  tears  into  joy.  "  Verily,"  as 
Samuel  Rutherford,  that  faithful  "  venturer  for  Christ," 
used  to  say,  "  Verily  it  is  a  King's  life  to  follow  the 
Lamb." 


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