LIBRARY
iflfe (Enllege
TORONTO
Shelf Xo.
Resistor Xo. y
Printed in Great Britain by
TJNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED,
THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON
THE FINALITY OF CHRIST
AND OTHER SERMONS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Price 3s. 6d. ; post free, 3s. lOd.
The Temple : A Book of Prayers.
The Necessity of Christ.
Price 4s. 6d. ; post free, 5s. Od.
Advent Sermons. I Sermons on God, Christ, and
I Man.
Price 6s. ; post free, 6s. 6d.
The Outlook for Eeligion.
Deals with the problems of the War and their effect on the religion
of the future.
The Theology of Jesus, and other Sermons.
The Safest Mind Cure, and other Sermons.
NEW SERVICE BOOK as used at the King s
Weigh House Church
4s. ; gilt edges, 4s. 6d. ; postage, 6d.
THE
FINALITY OF CHRIST
AND OTHER SERMONS
BY THE
REV. W. E. ORCHARD, D.D.
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1
First publisJied in 1921
(All rights reserved)
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE ECONOMICS OF THE INCARNATION . . .1
THE DISCOVERY OF GOD IN THOUGHT . 17
EVOLUTION AND THE FALL . . . . .33
CHRIST AS A SCHOOL OF CULTURE . . 49
THE NECESSITY FOR BE -EDUCATION . . 65
THE NECESSITY OF CONFESSION . . . . 81
THE REVIVAL OF CATHOLICISM . . . . . 97
THE INCONSTANCY OF HUMAN GOODNESS . . .. 113
THE QUEST FOR GOD . 129
THE FINAL HOPE FOR EVERY MAN . . . . 145
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HATE .... . 161
THE FINALITY OF CHRIST . 177
vii
The Economics of the
Incarnation
* For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that,
though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor,
that ye through His poverty might become rich." 2 COB.
viii. 9.
I I THERE is a tremendous theology involved
I in this simple statement which we cannot
evade. It does not say that Jesus was poor,
but that He became poor : it was a piece of volun
tary renunciation. But when was Jesus rich,
and when did He become poor ? There is no
possibility of referring this act of renunciation to
His earthly life ; it can only refer to the act of
the Incarnation by which He surrendered His
heavenly glory and His Divine majesty, and
adopted not only human life, but a life of poverty.
Here we have the doctrine of the pre-existence
of Jesus indubitably implied, a pre-existence
which for the moment St. Paul is content to define
as one of richness. And what a light it throws
upon St. Paul s use of the word grace. It stresses
its condescension, its voluntary and spontaneous
choice, the artistic beauty with which the act of
renunciation was made. We need all the fulness
which the word holds in New Testament usage
to bring out what it here contains.
2 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
But this passing reference to the doctrine of
the Incarnation is very welcome, because it helps
to rebut certain careless charges which have been
brought against the Apostle. In the light of
this text who can say that the doctrine of the
pre-existence of Jesus as a heavenly being was
an idea of St. Paul s invention, which he gradually
worked out, forced upon the Church, and so
corrupted the simple Gospel of Jesus, which made
no such claims? St. Paul does not argue with
his readers that this must be the truth about
Jesus Christ : he says, You know the grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ. He is appealing to things
that are commonly believed among them ; and
all the weight of his appeal would be lost if this
was a new doctrine, which was here sprung upon
them for the first time, or if it was an open ques
tion among the Church members at Philippi,
just a theological opinion which might or might
not be believed. Whenever this idea of the
Incarnation was incorporated into the Christian
faith, it was before this Epistle was written, and
it had already become generally accepted, and
was so surely believed that it could be appealed
to in order to extract from people a generous
contribution. It has to be very certain doctrine
on which you can go to people to get money
from them.
Then, again, it has often been charged against
St. Paul that he had so little interest in the earthly
life and teaching of our Lord ; he is so obsessed
with the doctrinal, ecclesiastical, and sacramental
aspects of Christianity. This is argued on the
assumption that his letters give his complete
The Economics of the Incarnation 3
scheme of preaching ; whereas they are often
letters called forth by some personal or practical
issue ; a great deal that they do not say is not
said because it can safely be assumed. We should
never have known that St. Paul had high sacra
mental notions if the Lord s Supper had been
reverently observed at Corinth. But not only
when St. Paul comes to the ethical part with
which nearly all his epistles close does he echo
again and again the teaching of Jesus Christ,
if not verbally, yet as one soaked in its meaning
and spirit ; very frequently, as here, we get a
reference which not only depends upon knowledge
of the life of Jesus, but implies an accurate and
detailed knowledge of the conditions of that life.
St. Paul knows that it was a life of poverty ;
Jesus was poor. And in the expansion of this
text which we get in the great passage in Philip-
pians, he tells us what we do not otherwise know ;
that Jesus took the position of a bond-slave.
Whether that means something of economic
slavery or not we do not know ; but it is the
Master s own description of how he regarded His
position among men.
Then St. Paul is sometimes blamed for his
unconcern for social conditions. He certainly
approaches them from a distance, with consider
able detachment, and never by way of command.
This was how he dealt with slavery. He would
not make it a matter of rule ; he did not exhort
slaves to run away from their masters ; but when
one had, he wrote that wonderful little letter to
Philemon which so skilfully pleaded that it would
be an act of beautiful Christian grace for him to
4 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
release Onesimus. It is not the method we believe
in. We go to war to set men free ; we tell the
slaves that it is their own fault if they are content
to remain slaves. But are we perfectly certain
that our way is best ? Are our emancipated
negroes really free ? Will violent revolution bring
men the liberty they seek ? And here St. Paul
is asking for a collection, which is a form of
charity, a species of redistribution. He will
not make it a matter of command. It all seems
very harmless. But look at the principle to which
he appeals. Not only does he appeal to the
tremendous renunciation of Jesus Christ, who
gave up all and reduced Himself to poverty,
but he uses a word which I am afraid will cause
some of us to fear. What is the standard he
wishes to reach by his voluntary method ? It
is one of equality. Twice does he say, " I speak
by way of equality." He does not expect them
to impoverish themselves in order to enrich their
suffering brethren ; he merely wants to bring
about an adjustment until there is neither abund
ance, or lack, but all stand on a basis of equality.
Here are obviously far-reaching applications to
be considered.
WHAT is THE SIGNIFICANCE OF OUR LORD S
POVERTY ?
1. The fact of Christ s poverty can hardly be
overlooked.
It is not only clearly indicated in the Gospels,
but there is something determinative about it ;
it is not accidental. It might be argued that
it was so, if Jesus had been born simply of the
The Economics of the Incarnation 5
will of His parents. But that we know is not
the Gospel account ; with that before us we
cannot argue that the circumstances of Christ s
birth were accidental ; and that not merely in
the way in which we might perhaps argue that
ultimately no birth is accidental. This would
have to be maintained as a matter of faith or
philosophy about birth in general ; but we do
not need to rest there in the case of our Lord.
His Mother was chosen by the Holy Ghost. About
that choice to bear the Saviour of the world
we are compelled to believe that it was selective
and determined by Mary s entirely, and perhaps
solitary, suitability for that tremendous mission.
Theology has emphasized the conditions of nature
and character which that must have demanded.
Without disputing these, we can draw attention
to other conditions, and we can assume that
these w r ere also necessary. Although of royal
descent, she must have been poor, and married,
not only to a peasant craftsman, but to one who
could not secure that accommodation in an inn
which money can generally purchase, even when
it is reputed to be full. It is often pointed out
that the poverty was not absolute, nor was it
anything like that cruel and humiliating destitu
tion which our modern system has produced,
where, if a man is once by his carelessness or
another s cruelty pushed outside the industrial
machine, he must literally starve to death. In
Palestinian society there were opportunities to
get work ; and even if a man would not work,
he could always make a fair living at begging, as
at that time there was no Charity Organization
6 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
Society to teach that mendicancy is a crime as
much on the part of those who encourage it as with
those who practise it. The family at Nazareth
was neither destitute nor dependent, though it
was a household where garments were patched
until they could stand it no longer. The Apostles
were men who, as with fishermen generally, owned
their own boats. But they could all be denomin
ated as poor.
And our Lord s teaching is explicit, and uncom
fortably so. It is quite possible to make out
that He could not have demanded the renunciation
of all personal possessions as a duty for all who
believed on Him, though He evidently did for
His immediate followers. It can be pleaded that
He never condemned riches as such, since He
accepted the hospitality of the rich, and was
friendly with them; nor did He teach that the
possession of private property was a sin ; but
the most careful reading of the Gospels reveals
that Jesus regarded riches as a tremendous danger
to the soul, and as an almost insuperable obstacle
to entering the Kingdom of God. It has been
pointed out that in the Parable of the Rich Man
and Lazarus the rich man goes to hell for no other
crime than that he was rich, since the beggar at
his gate was regularly fed from his broken food :
he went to hell, although he practised charity.
On the other hand, our Lord s teaching recognizes
that there is a poverty which is the enemy of
religion, which leaves one always thinking about
where the next meal is coming from, or how one
is going to get clothes to keep out rain and cold ;
and His message of the Kingdom definitely states
The Economics of the Incarnation 7
that when the Kingdom is put first, when the
sovereignty of God over the whole of human life
is recognized, then all necessaries will be added
to men. And it is a sufficient and even beautiful
necessity that will then be guaranteed. There
will be clothing as beautiful as the flowers which
adorn the field ; there will be food enough to
keep one strong and happy ; there will be
houses in which one can retire into one s own
chamber and shut the door and pray.
The Church is often blamed because it has
neglected all this side of Christ s teaching. There
has been a tremendous discussion about apostolic
succession, and it has been held to be absolutely
necessary to the continuance of the Church and
the validity of its sacramental acts ; but there
has been little concern that the successors of the
Apostles should live the same sort of life. The
attempts of the poor to secure their just wages,
and even the right to work for a living, have been
regarded by the Church in general as preposterous
and impossible ; and the schemes which have
been suggested for finding a more certain and
equal economic basis have been denounced as
subversive, and even atheistic. Yet right in the
heart of the most rigid conception of the Church,
where Socialism, as involving the condemnation
of private property as sin, is denounced as a heresy,
we have had the growth of the monastic system
and the ascetic idea, which says as plainly as
possible that if you want to follow Christ perfectly,
among other things, you must renounce all posses
sions, and live on charity, or in a communistic
order. Poverty is one of the evangelical precepts,
8 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
and is held up as the perfect way. It is a mediaeval
survival ; it has been continued in many strange
forms, and with curious evasions ; but there it
remains, and its testimony cannot be mistaken.
2. Is St. Paul s application of merely religious
significance ?
What is actually meant by poverty and riches
here ? Are both poverty and riches economic,
or both spiritual, or the poverty economic and
the riches spiritual ? These are not academic and
mistaken questions. The text sounds very beau
tiful if you read it merely devotionally ; but
the moment you try to understand the meaning
of its terms you must ask these questions, and
you must answer them. The simplest solution
is that which has preferred to ignore the economic
interpretation, and to take both the poverty and
riches in a theological sense, the one referring to
the human condition, and the other to the divine ;
when the text would simply mean that Jesus
became man in order that He might lift us all
to God ; accepted for the time the poverty of
the human condition in order that the glorious
riches of the eternal world might be open to us
all. But it would be difficult for St. Paul to pass
so easily as he then does to what is without doubt
an economic application of his text. He argues
from it that those who are rich ought to help
their poorer brethren. Therefore we seem bound
to infer that the interpretation must be economic.
But does it then mean that Jesus endured poverty,
as He endured the penalty of sin, in order that
He might set us free from it and enable us to
be rich ? Is there not sanction here for what
The Economics of the Incarnation 9
is often alleged to be the aspiration of all classes
to-day, that every one should be rich, with houses
and food and clothing in abundance and of the
best ? Was our Lord s condemnation of riches
only of comparative riches, of the riches which
entails poverty? Would He have objected if
every one was rich ? It is difficult to read the
Gospels and believe that it was the mere com
parison, the mere existence side by side of riches
and poverty ; it looks as if Jesus believed riches
to be a danger to the soul.
If we can accept neither of these interpretations,
then it is only left open to us to take poverty in
one sense and riches in another : that economic
poverty is to be accepted in order to gain spiritual
riches. This is a very unsatisfactory explanation
to suggest. Indeed, the whole treatment of the
subject will probably only move some to impa
tience. If the Gospel is as ambiguous as all this,
of what guidance can it be for to-day ? But we
must be patient even if we are only going to prove
that the Gospel will not yield a consistent mes
sage. It is possible that we cannot read it clearly
for the complications that we have introduced
into the subject ; that the difficulties are in our
own double-mindedness. And we must remember,
too, that our Lord s way of teaching was obviously
intended to compel us to search for the truth.
Therefore we must not dismiss the different inter
pretation of these terms " rich " and " poor " as
impossible because it is complicated. The truth
is that the terms poverty and riches had become,
through historical circumstances, inextricably con
fused : they were partly economic and partly
10 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
religious. Poor had come to mean pious, because
the poor were actually pious, and the pious had
found they were compelled to be poor. Riches
less often, but sometimes, is equivalent to violent,
as may be seen in the parallel : " They made His
grave with the wicked, and with the rich in His
death."
The interpretation of economic poverty and
spiritual riches is, however, forced upon us by
the facts of the Incarnation. No one can deny
that Jesus was in this life economically poor ;
and few would hold that the life of the spiritual
world was economic at all ; there the riches must
be spiritual. And it is the teaching of the Gospel
in more than one place that economic poverty is
the necessary prelude to spiritual riches. We are
to sell all we have that we may have treasure in
heaven. We are to be faithful with the un
righteous mammon if we are to be entrusted
with the true riches. We are to make friends
by means of the mammon of unrighteousness, that
when it fails, they may receive us into everlasting
habitations. And this is not to be condemned
as the device of making the poor content with
their poverty by promising them something in
heaven afterwards. Heaven is to be possessed
now. Blessed are the spiritual poor, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven. Heaven is to come for
us here as the reward of ordering life on a basis
of poverty. That seems to be the teaching of
Jesus. Has it any guidance for the practical and
pressing problems of these times ?
The Economics of the Incarnation 11
WHAT is THE APPLICATION OF THIS TO OUR
PRESENT DISTRESSES ?
1. Let us contrast how the economic struggle
of our time appears.
On the one hand, those who are in the modern
movement for the emancipation of labour from
industrial slavery are profoundly convinced that
that movement has in it an idealistic element
which is truly religious. They declare that there
is an unselfishness, that there is a sense of a mighty
cause which is the cause of humanity, that is
nothing but the translation of Christian principles
into the realms of economics. They feel that
same thrill of hope and conviction which has
characterized religion ; and for many people the
emancipation of the working classes has become
the substitute for religion. Yet to many others
it presents an entirely different spectacle. It seems
nothing but a desire on the part of the working
classes to tyrannize over others, to use the powers
they possess to wreck this present system out of
mere vengeance and spite, and thereby bring
suffering upon all, only to discover that they
have destroyed one system in order to put nothing
in its place. For it will be found that there is
nothing but anarchy and starvation to follow.
Some take a middle position, though it is some
what detached. They blame both sides equally.
The whole struggle is between the " haves " and
the " have nots," as they generally phrase it ; it
is engendered on both sides by greed and the
desire to be rich quickly and without work. Both
classes are entirely unchristian in their attitude ;
12 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
nothing is to be gained by hating the rich : it is
not the Christian programme to make everybody
rich.
The first thing that has to be said about these
opinions is that they may be right or wrong, but
they do not help us in the present situation.
The forces which represent government, employ
ment, and those living on invested capital, and
the forces which represent the governed, the
employed, and those living on wages, are separating
out into two great hostile camps. It is useless to
point out that they overlap and have common
interests in many ways. There is a difference of
feeling to be reckoned with, and that feeling has
reached a stage when it means war. Efforts to
bring both sides together often only exasperate
both sides. There can never be a reconciliation
of capital and labour under the present system.
Moreover, this system is certainly going to dis
appear. Whether it is overturned by revolution,
or coming to a stop through merely ceasing to
function, its days are numbered. But has any one
thought what are going to be the results of the
attempt to overturn it by revolution, or how long
drawn out its expiring efforts will be ? The Labour
Movement might persuade the economic, profes
sional and business world that the interests of
all mankind were identical with the Labour Move
ment : that would be one way of advance. But
before the programme of Labour could succeed,
if it could get its way, it would have to get a
religious sanction, inspiration, and loyalty. Last
May Day I watched the Labour procession strag
gling into Hyde Park. There was a great deal
The Economics of the Incarnation 13
pathetic about it, but there was something pro
phetic, too. Near to the end of the procession there
came a group carrying a crucifix leading a section
of those who were both for religion and labour,
both for Christianity and revolution, both for
dogma and Socialism. If that crucifix could work
up the line until it headed and dominated the
procession it would mean more, not only for the
Labour Movement, but for the Church. After all,
is it not the Church s place ? Would not Christ
be most at home with such people ? Would it
then not be in the apostolic succession ? Whose
fault is it that the procession was headed by the
Socialist Sunday Schools, that the presence of the
crucifix seemed to many so out of place ? Is not
the fault with Christian people ? Many may dis
like these economic convictions. They may be
wrong : we are not infallible. But what is your
alternative, what is the Christian basis ? It is
no use standing aside and criticizing, saying we
have nothing to do with these questions, saying
that Socialism would not work until all men were
Christians. Will it work until all Christians are
Socialists ? There may be hate, carelessness,
ignorance among these people ; they may not be
the class we should choose to associate with ; but
what about our Lord s association with us ?
Must we not follow Him in going down to the
people, instructing them, making their cause ours ?
2. What ultimate solution does the Incarnation
point out ?
We can suggest that it stands for individual
poverty and corporate riches : Jesus became poor
that we might be rich. This is what the Franciscan
14 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
scheme worked out to, and not without some
thing natural and right about it : individual
members of the community having the barest
modicum of personal possession, but the Order
as a whole being rich. There is no reason why
people should not be content to be individually
poor if the community could be rich. People
only want to get individually rich because there
is no corporate possession of the fundamental
necessities, there is no corporate provision of
work if it is wanted, no corporate reserve for
emergencies. All those things which spell riches,
ownership of land, things of expensive beauty,
could be communally owned. That is how it is
in heaven. There they do not use gold for lining
pockets, but they do for paving the streets ;
they do not adorn themselves with jewels, but
they build the walls with them. That is not mere
poetry ; it is sober economics. We see that a
little in building our churches. We do not feel
it right to spend too much on our private house,
but whoever thought it wrong to spend millions
on a church ? And there can be no objection to
it if the Church is the house of God, and therefore
the home of the people.
The second suggestion is that economic poverty
should go alongside spiritual riches. The question
might remain over, What would be the standard
of poverty if things were more equalized ? It has
been said that if the property of rich men was
all divided up, it would not make a very great
difference to the poor ; the standard of equality
would not be much above that of decent poverty
to-day. That may be so, but that would not be
The Economics of the Incarnation 15
contrary to Christianity, for our Lord never hoped
to see people wealthy ; He did not think it was
good for the soul. But it is this dead level which
frightens some people. They say it would take
away all incentive if there were not rewards to
encourage us. It is the hope of living in Park
Lane which keeps London at work, and if there
were no chances of Park Lane no one would work
at all. It must be admitted that if the reward
of getting rich was removed, some people would
never work, but it is questionable whether that
characterizes the working class more than it does
the upper class. Still, there is the need of pro
viding some substitute for this bait of possible
millionairedom. And surely that is just what
religion is for : it gives to us the idea of living for
others, serving others, sacrificing ourselves for
others. And that idea is seizing hold of many
people ; it only wants an organism through which
it can *be carried out ; and it can only be carried
out if the products of labour belong to the com
munity. Some will object that the dead level
will be so uninteresting. We shall have no more
patrons of art and letters, no persons set apart
by wealth and leisure to be poets and artists.
But is the present system a true friend to the
arts ? Was it a wealthy nation which produced
the Bible, or built the cathedrals, or painted the
great pictures ? We do not want a dull and colour
less life. But cannot spiritual things provide the
rich realities, and can they ever be known to be
real until they are held alongside a relative poverty
a poverty that has to work, and to work hard,
for very little ? If we want to make religion a
16 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
real thing, we must cultivate an imagination which
can enjoy spiritual realities. This struggle after
riches, this mad bid for pleasure at all costs, this
recourse to intoxication what is it but the sign
of a soul that has lost the true riches ?
What, then, is the Church s way and the Chris
tian contribution ? It is the preaching of the
Kingdom of Heaven the Kingdom which means
righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.
It is to persuade people that these are the things
that count. It is to show that Christian doctrine
commits us to an economic basis, which cannot
be very different from that which Socialism pro
poses. It is for the Church to evangelize the rich,
and try to convert them to take the people s
position, to call upon youth to renounce posses
sions, position, superiority. That will discover the
objective of Christianity, that will renew the faith.
It will re-establish doctrine, show the necessity of
the Church, bring back the Sacraments, make it
easy to believe in God. It will not only redeem
labour, it will renew the Church, and it will save
the world.
The Discovery of God in
Thought
" He hath made everything beautiful in its time : also
He hath set the world in their heart, yet so that man
cannot find out the work that God hath done from the
beginning even to the end. ? ECCLESIASTES iii. 11.
translation of a very difficult Hebrew
original makes a somewhat depressing, but
unfortunately only too true statement concerning
man ; for it does seem that this passing, secular
scheme of things holds his heart. But it is just
possible, as the Revisers marginal reading suggests,
that the word translated " world " really means
" eternity " ; and then the text becomes one of
the profoundest in the Bible, and agrees with what
the deepest philosophy has discovered, namely,
that the sense of eternity or endlessness in the
thought of man prevents him from finding complete
satisfaction in the works of God in nature, however
beautiful they may be. Therefore, although the
observation of nature may teach him much, it is
in his own thoughts that man will best discover
God.
It is this way to God through thought that I
want to commend. Unfortunately, it is a very
neglected way, and that for three reasons. It is
assumed that it is a way which only a few can
18 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
take. Thought comes very difficult to most people.
Consistent, exploring, persistent thought is an
exercise of which they soon tire indeed, of which
they seem almost incapable. But we have to
distinguish carefully between the complicated
processes which a trained philosopher may use
and the swift and simple process of intuition, which
may yet arrive at exactly the same end by what
is after all precisely the same road. By means of
intuition, if the word has any intelligible meaning,
we arrive in a flash at the end which reason only
reaches with immense labour ; and this gift of
intuition is possessed by many who have little
logical training and no philosophical knowledge.
The logician or philosopher only goes slowly over
the same ground, testing every step. What is
wanted by simple or learned alike is sincerity :
the desire to reach the truth ; persistence : the
refusal to stop short of the end ; clearness : the
abhorrence of vagueness and the careful registration
of all conclusions reached. This kind of thinking
is possible to everyone, and in matters of religion
is a duty which devolves upon all. " Why do ye
not judge for yourselves what is right ? " " What
think ye ? " " Prove all things : hold fast that
which is good."
Another reason why this way to God is so deserted
is that so many seem to have lost themselves in
taking it. There is an idea abroad, in which free
thinkers and religious people often agree, that
thinking about religious subjects leads to scepticism
and even to atheism. Catholicism demands the
submission of the individual mind to the decisions
The Discovery of God in Thought 19
of the Church, lest one should miss one s way
and lose the truth altogether ; and this demand
seems to be sanctioned not only by the number
who by trying to think for themselves have made
shipwreck of faith, but also by the utter confusion
and disagreement into which individual thinking
leads so many. The people who call themselves
rationalists claim, with a dogmatism that puts
Catholicism into the shade, that if you think along
the lines of pure reason you will have to abandon
all religion ; but the truth is that philosophers,
believing themselves to follow pure reason, still
come to very different conceptions of the universe.
But not only Catholics dread individual thought ;
Protestants do also. I was early warned not to
go too deeply into things ; if I did not lose my
faith in the process, I certainly should my reason.
Now, I take authority to be neither a prohibition
of thought nor a substitute for thought ; for even
if you accept the authority of the Catholic Church
in such a way that you never do any more thinking,
because it has all been done for you already, you
first of all have to decide that the Catholic Church
is a body which possesses this authority ; a piece
of very difficult reasoning. I take it rather that
the use of authority is to compare with and check
one s own thinking by reference to a larger body
of thinkers ; and I think it is not unfair to say
that Catholic Theology represents the greatest
consensus of free thinking upon important subjects
that mankind has achieved. At some point we
must search for agreement, but surely it is best to
do that after we have been thinking for ourselves ;
20 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
for, as Newman has finely said, " truth is wrought
out by many minds working freely together."
The third reason why the way of thought is
so often neglected is that it seems to encourage
subjectivism, a danger of which people are not
sufficiently afraid ; instead, they seem to revel in
it. The danger of subjectivism is encouraged by
the careless way in which we often speak of seeking
for God within rather than without. The dis
tinction is psychologically meaningless. We search
the world without by means of mind, and mind
is neither within nor without, but is the door be
tween the visible and the invisible. It is as foolish
to speak of finding God within, as if we carried
Him about in a little box, as of finding Him without.
It is a worse danger of subjectivism when a man
tests matters of religion only by what appeals to
him or what satisfies him. That may be all very
well for choosing the colour of your clothes or
the kind of food you prefer ; but it is no criterion
for religion, which must be what every man needs.
Equally dangerous is the attitude which has
been taken up lately among thoughtful men who
a generation ago would have proclaimed themselves
sceptics. In revolt from the barren negations into
which scepticism was leading them, they have
fashioned a " God of the heart " about whose
objective reality they do not care or inquire.
That is a fatal and an entirely irreligious attitude.
The supreme religious concern is for reality. Is
it true ? If it cannot abide that test it is not
religion.
Let us now try this somewhat neglected way for
The Discovery of God in Thought 21
ourselves, and since it evidently has difficulties
and pitfalls, let us inquire first
How TO SEARCH FOR GOD IN THOUGHT.
1. We must look carefully both to the end and
the beginning of our thought.
A great deal of what passes for thought is nothing
else than a procession of ideas ; it does not matter
in what order they come, and they are submitted
to no test. That is not thinking ; and often we
are led away by ideas because they are attractive,
beautiful, or, in these days, because they are novel
or paradoxical or suitable for making people jump.
This is not what is meant by thought, which must
be an orderly consistent process in which we try
to discover truth in its wholeness and finality.
Now, it is always well to be wary of any train
of thought until you see where it leads, where it
ends up. You must carry your thought to its
logical conclusion before you dare admit it as true.
That does not mean that if it seems dangerous
or destructive of all that you have believed in,
you must give up thinking along that line. No !
truth though the heavens fall. Suppose that, as
far as you can, you think things clearly through,
and you can see that your thinking is going to
lead you to the conclusion that Christianity is
wrong or that there is no God. I do not mean that
then you are to stop ; it is a serious conclusion, and
you will want to go back and test every step ;
but this alone should not deter you. I mean you are
to go on, but ask yourself a still further question;
22 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
for there is one : If there is no God, what then ?
Not so much, What then shall I do ; how shall
I order my life ? We leave all practical considera
tions aside for the moment. But, What about
my thinking ; what value is there now in my
search for truth ; what does truth actually mean ?
If there is no God, is there such a thing as truth,
and can thought reach it ? For if the conclusion
that there is no God involves the further con
clusion that there is no truth, I have come along
a line which has landed me in absurdity. My
conclusion has denied my premise, and discredited
the whole process of reasoning.
And I advise you, if you cannot find any step
in your reasoning to be wrong, to go back to the
beginning and examine where you set out from ;
see if the starting-point was right, examine the
presumptions ; see if you really began at the
beginning. Now, this is admittedly difficult, for
it is impossible, as all philosophy has proved, to
start from something that does not already assume
something before it, which does not already take
something for granted. Descartes, you will re
member, tried to get back to the very beginning
in his thought, and he proposed as the only possible
starting-place : I think, therefore I am. But, as
subsequent philosophers have found out, there
were a good many unexamined presumptions in
that statement. Who, or what, is I ? In using
the pronoun " I " he has already assumed his
conclusion / am. " I " ; that involves the unity
of the subject, the differentiation from its object,
and their reconciliation ; all sorts of things. And
The Discovery of God in Thought 23
it is on this first statement that philosophy has
been ever since engaged. First philosophy turned
itself to the problem of what thought is, and how
it brings true knowledge of objects and itself ;
that is called epistemology. And because this
question could not be answered without assump
tions, philosophy has turned to investigate what is
meant by " I " ; that is called psychology. It
cannot be said that the results have taken us
any nearer to the beginning of things.
Now, is that not just what the tired thinker
called " The Preacher " declared ? " He hath made
everything beautiful in its time ; He hath set
eternity in their heart ; but no one can find out
the beginning or the end of things or thought."
Well, even if so, it is very salutary for one who
prides himself on his thinking to be able to recognize
that while he believes he thinks clearly on the
little scale of thought that he can use, he cannot
see where his thought leads him or where it
begins. At any rate, that gives us humility.
Leaving that for the present, I propose as the
next caution :
2. Examine what is involved in thought itself.
This sounds a formidable exercise, and indeed
it is ; but it can be made simple. Let us look
at it this way : I cannot find where my thought
comes from, and I cannot see where my thinking
is going to lead me ; but at the same time I cannot
stop thinking ; if I do, I shall stop living. I must
think ; and I shall get nothing done unless I do.
What, then, is involved in this necessary act of
thought ? Now, let us suppose that we are going
24 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
to set ourselves to solve the problem of existence,
to find the meaning of the universe, to search
for the origin and destiny of our being, to try to
find God ; what we must first ask ourselves is
whether our thought is capable of dealing with
such vast problems. We immediately become very
humble and say, of course not. How can I expect
my thought to solve anything so complicated and
deep-seated ? So you become an agnostic ; you
say, I do not know. But it is impossible to rest
in such a position. There are really very few
agnostics. Very few say, I do not know, and stop
there. They go on to say, We cannot know ;
which is not agnosticism, but dogmatism. It
declares that thought is unmatched to its task.
But to be sure of that you must first have done
a lot of thinking. So all the time we are being
forced to think. Our thought may be inadequate
to solve these problems, but it is all we have, and
we had better see what use we can make of it.
But if we are shut up to using our thought, and
if we are bound to trust our thought, we must go
on to inquire what would be required to make our
thought the way to truth. It involves one of
three propositions : (1) Our thought is the product
of the physical machinery of our brains, and there
fore ultimately of the material universe. This is
called Materialism. We can reject it at once.
For if it is true that all thought is the inevitable
outcome of material changes in the brain, then the
very idea of truth has been destroyed ; for the
outcome of all brains is then of the same value.
No one can think differently from what he does ;
The Discovery of God in Thought 25
he can no more help it than he can help his other
physical processes. Materialism is then only an
inevitable way of thinking which certain kinds of
brains have ; and that tells you all about its
value. If you ask, Is it true ? the answer is, there
is no meaning in the term. Thus materialism, as
a theory of what is true, is a conclusion that vitiates
its own claims. Looking to the end lands us in
absurdity. (2) It is our thought which creates
the universe ; thought is the only reality. This
is called Idealism, but " Ideaism " would be better,
It declares that we never perceive anything but
ideas, and that what we take to be something out-
side us is really only an idea in our heads. Now,
no one can disprove that. And in the reaction
from the materialism which is now so discredited,
people are adopting idealism. They tell us that
we each make our own world, that the world
is nothing but our own thoughts, and therefore
if we only look after our thoughts we can make our
own world and live in it with ease. Pain, evil
and sin are not real ; it is only thinking makes
them so. But then surely, by the same argument,
there are no such things as pleasure or good ;
and if there is no error, there is also no truth.
Although this theory is difficult to disprove, it
disproves itself, for it makes truth meaningless ;.
anything we think is true. But no one really
believes in it for long, simply because we are always
bumping into things which no amount of thought
will think away. (3) There must be thoughts, and
there must be also things. This position is called
Realism, and it is often rejected because it is simply
26 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
common sense, which philosophers are often too
proud to accept. It involves the conclusion that
though thought and things are so utterly different,
you can think truly about things, because things
are translatable into thought and thought into
things ; and this must be because there is some
thing which connects them. This something must
be higher than them both, something from which
they both derive their being and their possible
harmony. And this involves Theism, the belief
in God who is Spirit and who yet created things
in order to give Spirit expression. Now, when
ever we think, we are assuming that there is some
relation between things and thought, that this
relation is not to be found in reducing the one to
the other, but in supposing the existence of Spirit
from which both derive. Whenever you think
you assume that. Therefore God is the funda
mental datum of all thought. If your thought
leads you to the conclusion that there is no God,
then you deny in your conclusion what you assume
in the process, which is absurd. All thinking
involves faith in God, who alone makes thinking
possible, of value, and will guide it to the truth.
3. Use all the faculties of your mind.
Reasoning is not the only faculty of mind ;
there is also feeling, and there is action ; indeed,
the mind always uses all three, or no one of
them is ever really done. Now, rationalists are
tkose who say that the only test of truth is that
which is given by pure reason ; so that we must
eliminate all feeling, and we must disregard what
its results on action will be. Now the truth is
The Discovery of God in Thought 27
that there is no such thing as pure reason
devoid of feeling. If we are going to search
for truth, we must first have some strong
feeling to move us to undertake the task :
there must be a desire for truth. There must
be the feeling that truth exists and is possible to
attain. But even when we find truth, how shall
we know that we have found it ? Very largely
by feeling. Sometimes when we have argued
about a thing we come to a certain conclusion, or,
more often, other people drive us by argument
to some conclusion which, although we cannot
see any way of escape, we feel is wrong. Feeling
cannot determine logic, but it can often reveal
to us that a thing is wrong before we can find the
logical proof of it. Logic never goes wrong, when
it is rightly used ; but logic is full of fallacies for
the unwary ; and feeling is often a very valuable
check. So when you come to a conclusion which
strikes you cold, which rouses no emotion, which
kills all feeling, you may very rightly inquire where
you have gone wrong, since it was feeling which
led you to commence the search. And action,
too, is a test. It is not the test which some have
proposed namely, that the success of action
determines whether a thing is true ; for that evacu
ates the term " truth " of its meaning ; it deter
mines success and not truth. And although we
may hope that eventually nothing but truth will
prevail, that involves great faith in God. Yet
reason remains the master- faculty of the mind, and
is not to be determined by the success of action ;
though the failure of action may often reveal
28 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
to us that reason has been unconsciously outraged.
Therefore you must use feeling, and you ought to
test things by action ; for if these are put out
of court by what seems reason, you may doubt
whether it is reason at all. It is in the ringing
together of these three that we have the assurance
that the truth is reached. Therefore set before
yourself the highest desires you have, test them
by reason, see if you can believe in them sufficiently
to venture all upon them ; and when they hold
together thus, encouraging the heart, satisfying
the mind, giving power to the will, that is what
is called faith. This, then, is how the search for
God in thought should be conducted.
Now we can turn to inquire
WHAT THOUGHT DISCOVERS ABOUT GOD.
1. The Immanence of the Transcendent.
When we think, we find that involved in all our
thought is something which itself transcends
thought. This transcendence splits up into three
analysable parts eternity, infinity, and perfec
tion. If we try to think backward or forward the
mind gets tired, but never so tired that it cannot
see that its thinking ought to go on further still.
W 7 e know that there is no beginning or end to
anything, and that wherever we draw a line in
time, there is still more time beyond it. This
illimitable time we call eternity. Something always
has been, and always will be. Eternity, ever-
lastingness, is in our hearts. It conditions all
our thinking; it makes us discontented with
anything that comes to an end. But this inability
The Discovery of God in Thought 29
to think an end to time is also an inability to
think an end to space. As far as the eye can
travel we know that there is further distance
still, and when thought can go no further we know
that there is still further to go. But there is a
more wonderful thing still in our mind, and that
is the thought of the infinite in perfection the
moral infinite. There is nothing so beautiful that
there is not something conceivably more beautiful,
nothing so good that there is not something con
ceivably better.
Now these notions are not to be regarded as
negative abstractions of the mind set over against
the only realities : the temporal, the limited, and
the imperfect. We only realize the brevity of
time, the limits of what we see, the imperfection
of all we reach, because over against this, and as
its background, there is the infinite. And it is
no passive idea which may interest philosophers
or communicate something wonderful to mystics ;
it is one of the most active things in our life. It
is the sense of the enduring which makes death
so really inconceivable and immortality the ever
disturbing dream of man. It is the sense of
the infinitely great which makes it impossible
for us to be content with the visible world
which only blinds our sight ; it is the pressure
of moral perfection which has given us the con
ception of God. And these thoughts are the real
springs of human progress, the discontent which
disturbs us, the spur of all our striving ; so that
nothing we can ever reach in this world is likely
to satisfy man. It is this infinite, however dimly
30 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
conceived, and by so many disregarded, which
is the positive against which all else is set as
unnatural and negative. Our endless disappoint
ment with ourselves, and our continual criticism
of others, arises from this pervading sense of the
infinitely perfect. Man s feeling of sin is the great
witness to the existence of something sinless.
The continual reference of the mind back from
its own thinking to its infinite ground is the
great discovery of philosophic thought.
2. The activity of the passive.
We have seen now the infinite conditions of our
thought, but there is about it a certain strange
passivity and quietness which cannot be its ulti
mate reality. What is this eternity we have dis
covered : is it merely the existence of unmeasured
time ? W T hat is it that transcends all the distance
we can measure : is it simply empty space ? The
thought is corrective, restful ; but why does it
simply make us sleepy ? Would these thoughts
not stop all effort with the reflection that all will
soon be over and our efforts end only in stillness ?
Would not the sense of illimitable space merely
make us feel that our world and especially ourselves
are so small that they are lost and worthless ?
This is corrected by that other infinite the
moral infinite. That seems to urge us on, never
to let us rest with the sense of accomplishment.
Here is a clue that what seems so passive, almost
destructive of our thought and activity, is really the
spring of all thought and being. It is for the lack
of sensing this moral infinite that some religions
and some philosophic ideas have been so desolating
The Discovery of God in Thought 31
and paralysing in their effect. But if the spirit
is brought to quiet before these wonderful thoughts
and is held in stillness, two things soon make
themselves felt : that these are the great realities,
and that this is what is alive. When we are still ,
then this background is seen to move and throb.
We are not at a background on which our lives
are pinned like butterflies impaled, vainly trying
to get free. This is that in which we live and
move and have our being ; and therefore itself is
life and movement and the source of all that is.
This conviction does not come very easily ; thought
itself does not come to it all at once, though it is
never denied by thought ; but it is something which
can be easier felt than thought. This is where it
is necessary to wait and be still, to meditate and
to listen. Here is a point where thought lays down
its busy ways and confesses it has brought us
as far as it can. But deeper thought, the working
of the unconscious mind, soon discovers that
eternity, infinity, perfection is not just emptiness,,
no mere idea, but is being, spiritual activity,
supreme personality.
3. The impulse towards the incarnation of the
Divine.
What shall be our relationship to this which
thought has discovered ? It cannot be mere
activity on our part ; for THIS is the active against
which our bustle is mere fuss. It cannot be mere
passivity on our part. It must be a new relation
ship in which that greatness, that immortality,
that perfection is increasingly absorbed by us in
a life of communion, submission, dedication and
32 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
service. As we wait on the threshold of the infinite
we grow ashamed at our own littleness, we are
moved to make ourselves more like that which
we have discovered ; there is a constant pressure
which bids us become like that which we have
glimpsed in thought. Thought has therefore
brought us to God, infinite, immanent, incar
nating ; it has brought us to God, the Father,
the Spirit, and the Son. The whole of Christian
revelation is assumed in the inspiration, the activity,
the direction of our thought. If you will only
think you may work your way through all the
great religions with their differing conception of
God, but you must come at last to the religion
which sums them all up. All this, if you think
things together, and to the end, and if you examine
the implications of your thought as you go. Here
in your own mind is a clue which, if followed to
the end, will bring you face to face with God.
Evolution and the Fall
" Through one man sin entered into the world."
ROM. v. 12.
" For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth
for the revealing of the sons of God." ROM. viii. 19.
FEW things could be less expected than that
the first popular theological controversy
to emerge after the Great World War should
be concerning the Fall of man. Most of us have
been brought up in the generation which succeeded
Darwin and which on the whole accepted his
account of the origin of man, namely that man
was not a specially created species, but that he
developed as a variation from some animal ancestry.
Those of us wiio have been trained in modern
Biblical criticism had never been taught that we
were to look in the early chapters of Genesis for a
scientific account of the creation of the world
or the origin of man. We were told that the
early chapters of Genesis are a monotheistic
adaptation of Babylonian cosmogonies and of
myths which exist in similar forms among all
peoples ; and we were to look for its inspiration
in the higher moral and theological level which
it reached, in its dignified and poetic beauty,
and in the general truth of its referring everything
existing ultimately to the creation of God, with
the exception of sin, which it traced to some
34 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
disobedience on the part of man. It therefore
never occurred to those of us who belong to the
last generation, not only in time but in sympathy,
that there could be any question of real conflict
between the story in the Bible and the account
given by science. The Biblical story of man s
creation and sin is a moral parable, and by its very
form is obviously meant to be so ; the story of
science is a hypothesis put forward to account for
a number of facts concerning the bodily structure
of man : its likeness to the bodies of certain animals,
the remains of primitive man, the biological history
of the human fcetus, and the backward condition
of existing savage tribes. The one tells the
inner and spiritual, and the other the outer and
physical history of man. Both may be perfectly
true.
But evidently there is something still not
cleared up. There always were a number of
unsolved questions, and they remain still in much
the same position ; not only detailed criticisms
of the possibility of the Darwinian hypothesis
being entirely true, but larger issues as to what
deductions as a whole were to be drawn from this
scientific account of man s emergence ; whether
it did not dispense with the idea of a Creator
altogether, and whether it did not discredit the
doctrine of the Fall and explain sin as due to the
survival in man of animal instincts. It may be
that the real issue has never been seriously faced.
But we have seen the failure of all efforts to make
evolution an automatic process which explained
the gradual emergence of sentient and conscien-
Evolution and the Fall 35
tient life from inorganic matter ; for philosophy
has exposed its assumptions and science has
never demonstrated its possibility. Since Darwin,
criticisms have arisen which have compelled
scientists to modify some of his conclusions;
especially his idea that evolution was due to
natural selection working upon infinite minute
variations to secure through the struggle for
existence the survival of the fittest. There has
come about a general admission that evolution
does not explain anything, but is the thing still
to be explained. The comparison of our early
Scriptures with the records and the primitive
myths from which they are supposed to be
derived has only served to bring out their indepen
dence and spiritual inspiration. But it may be
that we have perhaps too easily settled down
to the idea that there is nothing vital to religion
in what once was conceived to be an acute issue.
What is being raised now is the suggestion that
systems of theology which assumed that the story
of Adam in the garden was actual accurate history
must be falsified by that assumption. It is not
suggested that sin is not real or redemption un
necessary, but, somewhat vaguely, that sin and
redemption ought to be conceived differently ;
though exactly how is not stated. Evidently
the whole question must be threshed out again ;
but if so, it will have to be with the clear recog
nition that the situation has been modified on the
scientific side by criticism and further thought,
and that beyond the vague proposals to alter
doctrine to suit the scientific hypothesis, there
36 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
still lurks the supreme issue whether God is any
longer necessitated or whether any moral fall in
a creature like man is not a mistaken diagnosis
of his condition. SN)
It will perhaps contribute to the ease of the
discussion to remind ourselves that the actual
phrase " the Fall " occurs neither in the Bible nor
in the Creeds. The doctrine of the Fall is derived
primarily from St. Paul, who speaks of one man
through whom sin entered into the world, which
he transmitted to posterity : but he uses this only
to contrast it with our redemption by Christ,
and actually refers to Adam as a " figure " of him
that was to come ; so that it might be unjust to
St. Paul to think that he built upon the historicity
of Adam s sin. But if St. Paul can be blamed
for introducing this idea, it ought to be remembered
that he also introduced the idea of the evolution of
a new race of men, whose head was Christ, the
last Adam.
We can therefore examine the whole question
of the scientific account of the origin of man with
perfect calmness, while at the same time remaining
alert to questions whether proposals to alter
doctrine do not carry us further than their
authors contemplate or desire.
THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF MAN is IRRELE
VANT TO THEOLOGICAL AND MORAL QUESTIONS,
1. The origin of man does not determine his
career.
It has yet to be proved that the Darwinian
Evolution and the Fall 37
hypothesis is true. There are still many difficulties
against accepting it. If man has evolved from the
animal we ought to be able to find not only some
creature who can be called in popular phraseology
" the missing link," but many missing links
bridging what after all is a great gulf. The
remains bearing on this issue which have been
found are very few, and their significance is
hotly disputed by scientists themselves both
their age, and whether they are human or animal,
or mere abnormalities. When there are instanced
whole races of men such as the cave-dwellers, or
neolithic man, who are represented as very low
in the scale of progress, because they knew nothing
of the use of fire or metal, we come across two
disturbing facts, one that they could draw very
creditably, with accuracy and lifelike vigour,
and secondly that they had quite strong beliefs in
the existence of higher beings and in a life beyond
the grave ; in short, that they compare favourably
with many modern men in artistic expression and
religious sensibility. It is curious also that we
have existing to-day both animal species which
show no signs of development in a higher direction,
and savage races who cannot develop without
dying out. These races either sprang spontane
ously from animal ancestry at different periods
in different places, a hypothesis which science
does not welcome, and then we ought to find whole
tribes of intermediates, or, if they all sprang from
a common ancestor, as is more widely held, then
they must have degenerated, a possibility which
has to be seriously considered ; for their beliefs
38 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
often show survivals of some higher faith than
those which they now follow. In addition, we
know nothing in other branches of life where such
wide variations occur, as man s descent from the
higher quadrumana presupposes ; and although
species do vary, the whole problem of the origin
of species is complicated by the fact that our
classification into species is mainly for convenience
and is otherwise arbitrary.
But even if the Darwinian hypothesis is true,
it may only concern man s physical nature. Darwin
certainly thought that the division between animal
instinct and human intellect, between herd cus
toms and social morality, could be bridged by
allowing for gradual changes over enormous areas
of time ; but some of his distinguished disciples
have gravely questioned this, and have felt that
the emergence of man as a spiritual being, even
if as a spirit which inhabits a body originally
animal, demands a new development which repre
sents a new creation, a fresh invasion from a
spiritual realm. The fact that the animals remain
in existence without further development, that
many of them have developed along lines other
than that which is supposed to have issued in man
and have reached a finality of perfection along
those lines, as in the case of ants or bees, seems
to show that this hypothesis of the incarnation of
a spirit in a specially prepared body is not unreason
able. And this hypothesis does not allow us to
assume that this double ancestry of animal and
spirit is responsible for what we call sin, which
could then be explained as the result of surviving
Evolution and the Fall 39
animal instincts warring against and overcoming
man s spiritual nature ; for man s sins are not
mainly animal. What are often called bestialities
really constitute a libel on the animal creation,
for the animals are generally remarkably restrained
in their appetites, do know when they have had
enough, and do not indulge in sexual perversions,
save, strangely enough, where they have been
domesticated by man. And it is not man s herd
instinct that wars against his developed conscience ;
for his social sins are a repudiation of the herd
instinct in pursuit of a selfish individualism which
no savage would practice.
But even if the appearance of conscious spiritual
life were a gradual evolution from animal instinct,
we should not have eliminated the possibility
that at some time in history man took a wrong
development. Although the story of man s dis
obedience in Genesis may be only a myth, a poetic
version of something that could not be described
historically, since it may have been a gradual
process, yet it has a certain scientific value and
a clear moral significance. It does not tell us
of a fall from some exalted intellectual or moral
state. Adam is depicted as completely uncivilized
and without moral consciousness. What is repre
sented is a choice which was an advance, but
not the best kind of advance, the preference of
knowledge to life. And this choice has been
continually repeated in the historic career of
man ; the lust of curiosity rather than the desire
for moral perfection ; the choice of the knowledge
of good and evil rather than of power to achieve
40 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
good. It is interesting to notice that in the de
velopment of the animal species this same sort
of choice seems to have been anticipated on a
lower level. Some animals have developed enor
mous strength in order to resist their enemies,
but these bulky creatures have been outdistanced
by those who developed brain instead of bulk :
compare the ant with the mammoth ; some
animals in fear armoured themselves with heavy
carapace for defence, while others trusted to the
ingenuity of movement : compare the tortoise and
the hare ; choices which nations now are making.
It looks as if to all creatures there was given some
freedom of choice, and that some took a choice
which led them to stagnation or a cul-de-sac ;
and that when man emerged he made the same sort
of mistake. Yet we cannot explain his mistake
as due to theirs, for it was from the stock which
had chosen the open way of advance that man
inherited.
2. The fact of evolution is neither an explanation
of the past nor guarantee of the future.
If it is a fact that there has been a gradual
development of life forms from one level to another,
and that this can be traced across all the gaps
between self-consciousness and animal instinct,
between vital phenomena and chemical action or
mechanical forces, so that we could say man has
developed from the very dust, we have only pushed
the question of origins further back, and in en
dowing matter with all the promise and potency
of life have only destroyed our definition of matter.
Moreover, this gradual rise and continual advance
Evolution and the Fall 41
have still to be explained. They are often taken
for granted as self-explanatory.
Two things are much more easy to explain ;
the one, that things should remain for ever the
same, for the reason is baffled by the appearance
of anything really new ; and the other, deteriora
tion, which on a naturalistic automatic hypothesis
is what we should expect. The explanation of a
series of continual infinitesimal changes is itself in
explicable, and that these tiny changes should serve
a distant purpose, and that one series should lead
upwards when so many others come to a standstill,
are facts which demand some other force than
the chemical or mechanical. And when it is
proposed, as some have done, that this force,
which otherwise might be called God, must be
regarded as also subject to evolution, we throw
away the one clue that we have. If God evolves,
how is that, and why does He evolve into some
thing better ?
The popular arguments that have been based
upon an evolutionary process conceived as inherent
and automatic are of the most baseless kind. If
evolution has been of this nature, then we can
trust it to go on evolving by the same process.
This belief has dominated our reading of the
past and our hopes of the future. A great deal
of the attempt to construct prehistorical condi
tions must still be classified as fiction based upon
insufficient and questionable evidence ; but that
is a small mistake compared with the argument
which assumes that because of this the future
of the world can take care of itself and that every-
42 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
thing we think and do to-day is necessarily better
than what we did and thought yesterday. The
progress of the human race in actual history is
being gravely questioned at present. About pro
gress in mechanical inventions and scientific
knowledge there can be no dispute, nor about the
growth in feeling, which has ended spectacular
suffering and the infliction of torture in order to
educate the soul ; but whether we have advanced
at anything like the same rate in morality and
in the adjustment of human relationships is open
to question. Those of us who have seen the most
cultured races in Europe going back in war-time
to conditions both of life and morals which are
only too reminiscent of cave-dwellers, if that is
not an insult to those little-known persons ; when
we have seen a whole people not only apathetic
to the frightful effects of the peace they make>
but actually justifying what is wholesale torture
in order to secure corporate repentance, it is
possible to question whether man has made any
considerable advance either in ethics or even in
sentiment. When one compares the culture of
ancient Greece, the religious ethics of the Hebrew
Prophets, and the art and social organization of
mediaeval times with the standards which control
us now, it is open to anyone to dispute any con
fident and cheerful view that we are growing and
in the right direction.
But there is no need to fall into the opposite
error, and conclude that the history of man is
the story of a constant decline from some golden
age far back in the past. The truth is that there
Evolution and the Fall 43
is a constant struggle going on in human history
between two ideals of progress, that which measures
by material and that which measures by spiritual
gain, and that man is continually taking the
former, when by taking the latter he could use
the material so much better. There is repeated
over and over again in all of us the tragic mistake
which we are told about in Genesis. If know
ledge could save us, we should have been saved
long ago. We not only choose the wrong kind
of knowledge, but even the knowledge of the
right does not enable us to follow it. It is not
only that the sublime teaching of Jesus and of
the Bible generally occurred so long ago, before
coal was discovered, or steam applied, or printing
used, but one can cull maxims from Greek thinkers
and from Indian and Chinese seers long before
then, which man has never yet followed. And
where there has been evolution it has been through
the work of great individuals, and in the main
through individuals who responded to spiritual
ideals and declared themselves to be in com
munion with God.
PERSONAL AND SOCIAL SALVATION.
1. What we are and what we may be are the
more pressing concerns.
The survey of the far distant past, the efforts ta
penetrate beyond the records and monuments and
reconstruct prehistoric times, the speculations as.
to how this world began and man emerged, are
fascinating and full of attraction ; but the vital
The King s Weigh House Pulpit
history of the race may be studied closer at hand
in our own personal problem. Just as the foetus
in the womb recapitulates the biological history
of the race, so does the state of the soul reveal
what man is and has been. We need not concern
ourselves too much whether there was a solitary
pair who first deserved to be classed as human
and whether that first pair sinned ; what more
concerns us is that we find the old story all too
wonderfully repeated in our own lives. Here we
find the same cleavage of knowledge and action,
the same sense of shame for what we are and for
what we have done.
This idea that man s inner condition confirms
the fact of a moral fall can be questioned, but
without conviction or proof. It is written in all the
intimate literature of the world ; indeed it is the
attempt to depict this condition which has given
us our greatest literature. If we are inclined to
excuse our sinfulness as due to lack of light,
overbearing circumstance, or inherited weakness,
we are not willing to make the same allowance
for others. In our political and social enemies
we can see quite clearly the case of those who
have chosen the wrong path, who have sinned
against the light, who have been disobedient to
the heavenly vision. And if we cannot rise to
the great humility of penitence or face the con
fessional system which the Church recommends,
then we have still to reckon with the psycho
analyst who tells us that the attempt to rationalize
the conflict between our moral condition and our
moral consciousness is a neurosis, which is merely
Evolution and the Fall 45
of the same pathological value as any other attempt
to get rid of it, and is bound to prove equally
ineffectual.
The doctrine which the Christian Church has
constructed is derived primarily from the general
consciousness of mankind. It definitely excludes
God from blame for human sin, and holds to the
paradox that while man inherits sinful tendencies,
he is nevertheless responsible for yielding to them.
No one need deny that these are doctrines difficult
to prove or reconcile, but any alternative is much
more difficult. The endeavour to shield God does
not rise from any mistaken chivalry on the part
of man, but from the instinct that unless there
is some fount of perfect goodness untainted and
supreme then the world is hopeless, for it is rotten
at the core. To preserve the paradox is the only
way to do justice to immediate facts : that sin is
universal and manifests itself very early, and
that the best in us refuses to take this as an
excuse for what we do. Their intellectual recon
ciliation we may still await, but social considera
tions are beginning to lighten the difficulty.
2. It is clear how social salvation comes.
We can understand that no individual sins to
himself, but that his acts taint the whole structure
of humanity, and that the social structure reacts to
influence the individual for evil ; and this involves
us all in such complicity that personal sinlessness
in a sinful society is impossible. The person of
advanced conscience not only feels his respon
sibility for his own sin, but also for the sin of
society. The growing sense of responsibility for
46 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
sin is therefore the inevitable condition for per
sonal and social progress. What is wrong with
modern society is its irresponsibility ; and it is
this which has to be broken down by a sense of
unbearable guilt. The starvation of Europe, the
suppression of Ireland, our industrial strife, are our
concern and guilt ; these things are the inevitable
outcome of the personal selfishness, fear and un
belief which we find swarming within. Social sin
is my sin, and my sin is social sin, and this racial
solidarity extends in time as well as space.
But Christianity does not stop here. It takes
a serious view of humanity ; it holds that it has
taken the wrong road and is incapable by itself
of returning. What it therefore proposes is the
origination of a new type and the formation of a
new society. And for the type it proclaims Jesus
Christ. It sets Him forth as the original type
through, in and for which man was himself created.
But He is to do more than restore man to his
original innocence and dignity ; He is to lift him
to a new life of union with God, and with that
type to create a new race which will be as far
above present man as man is above the anthro
poids. It is a new step in evolution ; the creation
of a race of beings who shall be called sons of
God. But it must be noted how this new type
emerges. Christ, although in His eternal Person
absolutely sinless, on entering human society
feels the burden of its sins, and taking them
upon Himself assumes responsibility for the sin
of the whole world ; and then by the baptism first
of water unto repentance for sins, and then of
Evolution and the Fall 47
blood unto remission of sins, sets up within His
Person and the society that gathers round Him
a fountain of cleansing and a generative force
which shall cleanse the race at its springs and
establish society on a new basis. He is the last
Adam, the Head of a new race, the starting-point
of the final stage in evolution.
But we must be careful to understand how
evolution works. It is not merely an intrusion
into the scheme from above. Christ is no intrusion
into this world or into humanity ; it is His by
creation, His by indwelling. But neither is it a
mere confluence of past factors resulting in some
new thing. Evolution here, as probably always,
demands some response from the creature. Im
plicit in the world from the beginning, so that
the very procession of the heavens and the rise
and fall of vegetation proclaim the story of
redemption, yearned after in all the religions of
the world which in their beliefs and customs all
prophesy of Christ, it is by no mechanical com
bination of existing factors that the new race
comes into existence, though they make it pos
sible, but by a personal spiritual response to
Christ. Bergson has suggested that if we could
unite the factors of instinct and intellect we
should have a new humanity, and Benjamin Kidd
has suggested that if we could gear emotion on
to an ideal, within one generation we could funda
mentally alter the outlook of man. And Chris
tianity proposes just such a synthesis. It gives
a Personal Head to whom men are attached by
loyalty and love ; but it demands also the intel-
48 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
lectual recognition of who Christ is and why He
is fitted to be the last Adam ; and in addition the
creation of a new society in which all humanity
is knit into one body, old divisions healed and
old hostilities reconciled whether of sex, class,
nationality or race. It is the combination of
personal religion and ethical concern, of theological
conviction and social passion, the centring of
humanity on Christ and the radiation of His
Spirit through all, that promises to bring about
this new development, which shall right the wrong
of the past, undo the fall, and placing humanity
on the original line of the Divine intention, make
man afresh in the image of God.
Christ as a School of Culture
"Learn of Me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart."
MATTHEW xi. 29.
IT is out of fashion to make much of the meek
ness of Christ. The first line of the children s
hymn " Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," has been
much criticized, and Mr. Bernard Shaw has
declared that he can find no trace of any such
person in our Gospels. Yet we not only have
the declaration by Jesus Himself that this was
His nature, but we have its echoes in St. Paul,
who has sometimes been accused of caring little
for and knowing less of the historical Jesus, when
he excuses his own shyness in the presence of
one of his critical congregations by appealing to
the " meekness and gentleness of Christ " ; and
this characteristic certainly impressed the hard
pagan world into which Christ came. It is the
only virtue which Christ ever claimed for Him
self ; and the fact that He did so perhaps needs
some explanation ; for it has been objected that
humility is a virtue it is impossible to claim ;
the very fact of claiming it disproves its existence.
But it was not generally recognized as a virtue
in Christ s time, but as a vice, or at least a
weakness ; and therefore it was not boasting
50 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
to claim it. Moreover, it was put forward in
order to justify His offer of Himself as one who
had something to teach. Beautiful as these
famous words are, the delicacy of their beauty
is hardly realized until it is recognized that they
are an adaptation of the closing invitation of
Wisdom in the Book of Ecclesiasticus. Christ
is here definitely contrasting Himself with the
methods of Wisdom, comparing His easy yoke
with the labour of acquiring the knowledge of
the schools, and at the same time making it clear
that He has nothing but meekness and humility
to teach. And despite the accusation that these
are servile virtues, which Nietzsche has revived
and popularized, and the misunderstanding which
estimates them as weak and unworthy, an age
perhaps better skilled in chivalry and politeness
than our own has shown its appreciation of what
Christ meant by making the great test of birth
and breeding that of gentleness, as the word
" gentleman " shows. That word is undergoing
the inevitable degeneration imposed upon it by
a decadent age ; but it is still possible, perhaps,
to quote the eulogy pronounced on Jesus Christ
as the truest gentleman who ever lived with some
comprehension of what was intended.
When one claims that Christ constitutes a school
of culture, one remembers certain unhappy asso
ciations which have come through the German
interpretation of Kultur, as a system of civilization
which has to be forced upon people. I have
Christ as a School of Culture 51
turned up Sabatier s famous lecture delivered
to the Religious Science Congress in Stockholm
in 1897, which is entitled in the English transla
tion "Religion and Culture," and I find that it is
entirely a discussion as to how religion can be
squared with the demands of modern science ;
not a word about culture as we understand it,
as denoting a standard of appreciation and taste ;
something quite different from mere learning,
something which only art can add to science,
a refined sensibility to delicate values, a real
gentility of mind and manner.
I do not know that even in this sense Christ
has ever been much thought of as a standard
and school of culture. We remember that He
was a peasant, a craftsman who had worked at
His trade, a person who, as our Gospels actually
record, had little opportunity of learning. He
belonged to what we call the lower orders ; and
when the proletariat remind us that He was one
of themselves, many are inclined to picture Him,
from the little they know of the proletariat, as
a noisy demagogue, a preacher of sedition and
violence. Even those who understand more of
Christ than the party claims of our time would
make Him out to be would perhaps be diffident
about making any claim concerning His culture.
Jesus, despite His lowly birth and His self-chosen
station, has revealed to us the realities of religion,
but we must look elsewhere for our standards of
culture. Jesus was not interested in art ; He
52 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
stood apart from that whole idea of expressing
beauty which is so strong an impulse with modern
man and which is such a means of joy and educa
tion. But always when I hear it claimed that
Jesus can have nothing to say concerning the
great interests and problems of modern life I
am inclined to question it. When it is said that
He taught nothing which applies to international
politics or social economics, I am amazed ; when
it is said He could have nothing to teach about
artistic taste or questions of good manners, I
am doubtful. If He has not, I do not see how
He could claim to be either Son of God or Son of
Man ; either our Judge or our Saviour. And
when I remember that at any rate He has inspired
more art than any person who has ever lived,
I should not be surprised if inquiry did not over
turn this idea entirely.
THERE is No BETTER SCHOOL OF CULTURE.
1. Christ can show us what is meant by good
taste.
You can see that in the matter of artistic appre
ciation. Jesus once contrasted the common flowers
of the field with Solomon in all his glory, and
declared that he was never arrayed like one of
these. I cannot recall anything said either by
ancient sages or modern critics which reveals
such sure taste as that comparison. Solomon s
robes were doubtless of the most gorgeous and
Christ as a School of Culture 53
brilliant kind, if we can argue from the general
Oriental love of colour and display ; but Jesus
preferred the natural form and colouring of the
lilies. And I imagine that there is no need to
suppose that He selected for the comparison some
flaming flower whose brilliance really would sur
pass anything that the richest dye could imitate ;
but that He meant just the ordinary wild- flowers
of the field or wayside. Now, there is the inde
pendence of the true artistic judgment. It knows
that natural colours have a purity and a harmony
which manufacture can never attain. Solomon s
magnificence was such that people travelled
immense distances to behold it, while no one
ever troubled even to glance at the common
wild-flowers which grew everywhere. The artistic
taste of Jesus was not to be corrupted by the
alien standards of rarity or cost ; there was only
one person ever robed as Solomon, and his garments
indicated his wealth ; there were millions of
these common flowers, and they were not worth
selling ; but Jesus looked at both with an un
spoiled eye and said, These are more beautiful,
in colour, in form, in finish. That is pure artistic
taste, and nothing is more difficult to attain.
His appreciation was so sure. The one great
example of that is His praise of Mary s devotion
when she broke the alabaster box of ointment
and poured it on His head. It might have been
sold, the disciples said, and the proceeds given
to the poor. Nothing could have appealed to
54 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
Jesus so much as that alternative. It was just
what He was always recommending His followers
to do : to sell all that they had and give to the
poor. Here was a deliberate destruction of
value and the waste of precious ointment in an
act of extravagant devotion. Yet He would
not have a word of criticism. He said to the
disciples, Leave her alone ; she has done a
beautiful thing. This is one of those deeds which
have a place all alone, and they cannot be com
pared with anything else whatsoever, however
necessary or right. It is a deed of spontaneous
expression. It is a beautiful act ; that is all
that needs to be said, and nothing can be said
against it. You will see that this story will
always be remembered and appreciated down to
latest time ; it will be woven into the very Gospel
itself ; it is part of the Gospel. The artistic
deed stands above all utilitarian standards. 1
know of nothing said in history that so sanctions
art as that ; it does not matter what it costs ;
it does not matter whether you are starving ;
you must always have a place for dramatic and
artistic expression of inner feeling. I do not
know that we can rise to that even yet. I think
the Russian was near to it who, commenting on
the present situation in his country, said : We
have no bread, but we have plenty of hope."
It is seen in Christ s own self-expression. There
is nowhere where the depravity of one s taste is
so displayed as when one comes to talk of oneself.
Christ as a School of Culture 55
Christ s attitude here has provoked a great problem.
It is confidently claimed for Him that He was
God ; and critics of the Gospels say that this
cannot be supported from His own words. It
does not matter whether you take the more
dogmatic Fourth Gospel, which seeks to bring
out the inner meaning of Christ s words, or the
Synoptists, which give, perhaps, His actual words,
you will find that something like this seems to
be inferred, but is never unambiguously avowed.
It can be shown that what He asked from men,
what He declared He was and could be to them,
involve nothing less than absolute Deity, but if
any one cares to say there is no such explicit
claim, no one can refute him. But then that is
also true about all the titles applied to Him.
He did not like any of them. The confession of
His Messiahship had to be dragged out of Him
on oath at His trial. His self-chosen name of
the Son of Man is always used in the third person,
so that it could be disputed whether He ever
meant us to identify Him with that strange
figure. It never seems to have occurred to the
objectors to our Lord s Deity that God would be
the last person to go about saying He was God.
This reticence governs Christ s dislike of adver
tisement of any kind. He wanted many of His
miracles kept a secret. St. Matthew applies to
Him the words of Isaiah, " He shall not strive, nor
cry, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street."
It has been said that He never founded a Church.
56 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
It could be said with far more truth that He never
gave any instructions that a New Testament
should be written. He made no provision and
took no steps to secure that a single word He
ever said would be committed to writing. And
when He says He is meek and lowly, He is defending
this attitude, and recommending it as a reason
why He could ask men to learn of Him. He
believes that the truth will prevail without our
pushing it, and that good news will run of its
own accord.
2. Christ can even teach us good manners.
He can teach us table manners. That seems
a very small thing, but it is one of the indications
of refinement, of sensibility, of thoughtfulness
being superior to physical need. Jesus was in
the habit of dining out, apparently somewhat
indiscriminately, for He seems to have gone
wherever He was asked. He accepted an invita
tion to St. Matthew s farewell dinner to his old
associates, and one would imagine that it would
hardly be distinguished for good taste ; the
publicans must have been rather vulgar rich
people. Yet Jesus defended Himself for going
in a way which must have put the questioners
in the wrong and set his hosts at their ease. But
when He went to Simon s house, what He had
to accuse him of was the impoliteness of omitting
the usual Oriental courtesies shown to guests,
which I suppose Simon never thought Jesus would
miss. Perhaps Simon had heard that Jesus and
Christ as a School of Culture 57
His disciples often ate their food without first
washing their hands, and treated his guest accord
ingly. It was a most uncomfortable thing for
Simon to be reminded that he was condescending
unnecessarily. It was our Lord who advised His
followers that whenever they went into society
it was better to wait until they were invited to
take a prominent place than to push themselves
forward unasked. And you will remember how
on one occasion one of those tiresome persons
who will introduce intimate religious conversation
at inappropriate times broke into a convivial
meal with a remark of that kind, and how deftly
Jesus turned the conversation by telling a story
which had its point for the tactless diner and
yet made every one comfortable again.
Far more important than this question of mere
manners is His manner in dealing with other
people. For the great test of breeding is not
what manners you can put on when conversing
with superiors, but what manners you display
when conversing with inferiors. Now there is no
doubt that in the time of Jesus women were
considered inferiors. It was thought to be dis
graceful for a Pharisee even to recognize his wife
in public. It is the politeness which Jesus showed
here which is most remarkable. There was the
sinful woman who stole in at Simon s dinner and
made such a trying scene with her emotional
uncontrol ; with what sure taste Jesus put her
at her ease and brought her into the picture.
8 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
There is the matchless story of the woman taken
in adultery. It is not only the moral attitude
Jesus takes up, but His politeness, which is so
striking. His stooping to write on the ground
is sometimes explained as in order to hide His
own shame ; surely it was to enable her to feel
quite at home. He made so little of the scan
dalous story that He just went on writing on the
ground. It is difficult to break through a social
custom without being self-conscious. Yet with
what perfect ease Jesus could talk to that very
unsatisfactory person the woman of Samaria ; to
the amazement of His disciples that He even
dared. He did not start out on the subject of
divorce, but on the spirituality of God. What
a fine approach to treat a depraved woman as
if she were interested in theology. And from His
general behaviour we can be sure that the apparent
rudeness to the Syrophcenician woman was
nothing of the kind ; we have only to put the
words in inverted commas and suppose that
Jesus said them ironically and half humorously,
repeating what a Jew would customarily say,
and with a question in his voice, to see how
familiar He dared to be, and what a tribute He
paid to the woman s intelligence. She at any
rate understood what few commentators have
been able to since.
And there is what might be called His court
manners. Jesus had to go through the degrading
experience of being dragged before at least three
Christ as a School of Culture 59
judicial courts, and before some of them in a most
pitiful condition, after buffoonery and after the
awful torture of scourging. In this case He did
the only possible thing He kept silence ; only
using sometimes, when asked if He was this or
that, the curious colloquialism which can only
mean, That is not for Me to say. But what an
effect it has. All history knows, looking back
upon those scenes, that it was His judges who
were being judged. How much more regal He
looked, though dishevelled and torn, clothed in
mockery and streaming with blood, than Pilate
seated there with all the insignia of power and
authority about him. One suspects that this
Man must have been used to other courts, where
He was the centre and He was the judge : the
courts of heaven. How different if He had argued
and protested and declaimed. It is one of the
great signs of good breeding to know when to
keep silence. Jesus knew.
THIS SCHOOL is OPEN TO ALL.
1. It is the only one that is.
For the great majority of people there is no
way to culture. They are shut out from the
best educational opportunities, which are only
for the wealthy. Opportunities for learning are
certainly open to every one nowadays in larger
measure ; there are books, there are schools,
there are poor men s universities. But these
60 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
things of themselves do not give culture. Indeed,
a man may become very learned and be utterly
devoid of culture. His taste is uneducated because
he has never been able to mix at close quarters
and on equal terms with people who have good
taste ; for good taste comes through a common
fellowship in things of beauty and worth. It is
an atmosphere which has to be breathed, a manner
which has to be caught ; it is a delicate refine
ment of understanding which only comes through
the continual interplay of fine minds upon one
another.
Even if the poor man could get into what is
called society, if he could mix with the people
who had had expensive educations and the leisure
that money brings, it is doubtful whether he
would pick up much real refinement there to-day.
The rich classes have become hopelessly vulgarized
and corrupted, and the humbler classes could
often teach them many things in simple manners.
Aristocracy takes liberties in manners that peasant
folk would never dream of taking ; and perhaps
no one can be quite so thoughtless and rude as
people who are reckoned gentry. The delicate
culture which we associate with the continual
contact with great thoughts and beautiful works
and fine music is a very rare thing. Life is too
clamorous and blatant, feeling has been blunted
not only by material luxury but by the brutal
izing experiences of the last few years. The
supreme mark of culture, that of understanding
Christ as a School of Culture 61
people and knowing how to put them at their
ease and enable them to be their best, is an art
which we have almost lost.
But there is a supreme school of culture still
existing, and it is open for anyone. It is to be
found in the fact that Christ, who is both the
eternal King of glory and the finest flower of
humanity, offers His intimate friendship to all
mankind. There is no one who can really share
that friendship as an actual personal experience
without being profoundly influenced in taste and
manners as well as in conviction and morals.
Christ teaches a man how to be humble about
himself, and kind and solicitous about others.
The man who knows Christ well, who by prayer
is in communion with His character, is both
sharpened and softened in his judgments about
all things. And this friendship is not only offered
to those who are poor and unlearned, but to those
who may know and possess much, but who have
no grace and whose taste has been ruined by
false standards. For Christ sets at work in His
friends a clear and continuous self-criticism ; He
inspires love and hope for all men. If one has
walked with Christ, one is at home in any company,
because one has no fears of anyone, and one has
learned how to behave. It was just because
Christ knew how the weary and labouring were
shut out of these things that He offered them
the compensation of His own school of gentleness
and bade them learn of Him.
62 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
2. The Catholic Church is meant to be a school
of the best culture.
It takes the poorest child of man, the denizen
of a city slum or the savage from prairie, swamp
or forest, and places him in the most select society.
It introduces him to the communion of saints,
the elect society. He is put on familiar terms
with doctors, martyrs and saints ; their examples
are always before him and he may have them
for his patrons and friends. Pie is taken from
the life which has been cut off from the past and
placed in touch with an influence which not only
is the very essence of European history, but which
is the only still living link with the cultures of
Rome and Greece. He has the sense of history
to steady and ennoble him. The very best in
art, architecture, painting and music constantly
interests and forms his mind. He prays in the
choicest language which man can devise. He
will know scraps, at least, of Greek and Hebrew ;
he may know a fair amount of Latin ; at least
he knows of the existence of these things, and if
he has the desire can soon get to know more. In
the supreme rite of his worship he will learn some
thing of table manners how clean and careful he
must be and how courteously he must behave ;
and the reverence which he learns to show would
make him fit for the court of any earthly monarch.
He will be taught in a hundred ways to express
his deepest feeling in outward acts, and yet in
those which are common to the whole society and
Christ as a School of Culture 63
do not obtrude themselves by extravagance or
occasion self-consciousness.
That culture has been largely broken up by
the terrible breach of the Reformation. It has
cut off the old Churches from the best in modern
civilization, and left it clutching in panic its
inheritance from the past instead of using it to
educate the present ; for nowhere now is there
so much dirt, tawdriness and meretricious art,
though the Catholic revival is bringing a great
change. It has cut off some of the most earnest
Churches from the knowledge of the past, from a
sense of responsibility and from great guiding
traditions ; and left them horribly vulgar, cock
sure and vain. The condemnation of private
judgment which is common in the older Churches
is an exaggeration due to fear, and of such a
nature that it would have made the Catholicism
of the past impossible, as it would also make it
impossible for anyone to choose Catholicism now ;
but it would be no harm to other Churches if
their judgments were sometimes tempered by
the remembrance that others had thought deeply
and felt strongly, and our judgment ought at
least to be balanced by a consideration of theirs.
But this is merely to stress the outward obser
vances and the external considerations. Catholi
cism means nothing if it does not invite a man
farther in than that. It has not only great art
to show him, but it bids him seek for the very
inspiration of all art, which Christ most certainly
64 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
has proved to be. It makes him not a con
noisseur of art but an artist himself. The whole
of external ritual and observed practice is only
meant to beget in a man a certain type of char
acter, a quiet and receptive spirit in which he
will set himself before the greatest facts of reality
to learn what they mean for himself. He is
invited to enter for the greatest and most ambitious
task of all, that of becoming a saint, and that is
impossible without culture. The recipe for saint
hood or culture is the same : " Whatsoever things
are true, whatsoever things are to be revered,
whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are
pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever
things are gracious ; contemplate these things."
But Catholic culture owes its power and beauty
to the fact that it introduces the soul to personal
contact with all the company of heaven and to
a communion with Christ of the profoundest
intimacy of worship, friendship and love ; and
that means the steeping of the soul in the nobility,
the gentleness, the courtesy, the graciousness of
Christ, until it gains a character and temper like
His own.
The Necessity for
Re-education
" Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall
in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven." MATTHEW
xviii. 3.
WE only discover how unique Jesus is when
we attempt to classify Him. If it is claimed
that He is only a Teacher, then the moment we
place Him among the world s teachers we see
how different from them all He is. And one
of the unique things about Jesus as a Teacher
is His attitude towards women and children.
He is really the first of the great religious teachers
to pay any attention to them. In modern times
it has been made a reproach against Christianity
in some of its forms that it is only fit for women
and children. If it were true, it were a reproach
that could be lightly borne ; for, racially con
sidered, women and children count for more
than men. It is a pity that in a religion which
has equalized the sexes such a comparison should
ever be made ; but the contempt for women dies
hard ; and so long as it exists it must be coun
tered. For if it is true that women are naturally
more religious than men, this can be traced to
their greater racial consciousness. They continue
instinctively attached to religion long after the
66 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
more individualistic male has abandoned it. But
you can never build religion upon individualism
and irresponsibility ; and these are defects which
men develop sooner than women. But, fortun
ately enough, although our Lord did inaugurate
a new era by His attitude towards women, treating
them in all matters of religious understanding
simply as persons, irrespective of sexual dis
tinction, He never suggested that in order for
men to enter His Kingdom they would have to
become like women ; but He did urge upon all,
men and women alike, that they would have to
become like little children. Men and women He
treated alike, as persons : children He set up
as an example of what was necessary if we were
ever to become members of the Kingdom of God.
It is very questionable, however, if we have
ever understood what our Lord intended by this.
We have tried to adopt His estimate by regard
ing childhood as a period of innocence, to which,
therefore, we must return. This conception has
been wonderfully expressed in Wordsworth s " Ode
on the Intimations of Immortality," in which
childhood is conceived as the time of pure vision,
which w r e lose as we grow older, when the glory
seen by the child passes and the spirit becomes
imprisoned among its own thoughts. It is very
questionable whether Wordsworth is right here,
and whether he himself is not the best refutation
of his own theory. Certainly the praise of child
hood for its innocence is often pure sentimental-
ism ; and it is at least interesting that it is
countered very definitely and even brutally by
Christianity in the Doctrine of Original Sin, which
The Necessity for Re-education 67
teaches that children, instead of being born pure,
inherit the taint of the whole race ; and so far
from allowing that children as such are naturally
fit for the Kingdom of God, the Church has in
sisted on the necessity for infants being baptized
as early as possible. This doctrine has been
widely rejected by the modern mind as untrue
and unjust, but it is certainly reinforced by the
scientific doctrine of heredity and the modern
conception of man s moral solidarity. Ordinary
observation can discern that the young child
soon manifests a spirit which has to be checked
unless it is to develop a character full of selfish
ness, sensuality and cruelty. And the results
obtainable from the practice of psycho-analysis
only further confirm this doctrine. For according
to the teaching of this science, it is precisely in
infant life that there are found the sexual per
versions, the secret animosities and the anti-social
attitude which are the seeds of so much of the
conflict, unrest and breakdown of control that
emerge in later life. And quite apart from the
question of what supernatural grace is imparted
in baptism in answer to the Church s prayer and
act, it is obvious that the child needs to be incor
porated into some new form of society, and a
new social consciousness awakened, if it is to
have a harmonious development and be fitted to
live with its fellows. Therefore, if Jesus had
singled out childhood as something to be returned
to, because of its stainlessness or natural instinct
for goodness, He would have shown Himself
extraordinarily ignorant of child life.
On the other hand, authoritarian religion has
68 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
tried to get near to our Lord s mind as revealed
in this saying, by insisting that everyone must
accept religion as a child accepts things, simply
on unquestioning submission to authority. But
this hardly squares with the easily observable
fact that this is precisely what the child does
not do. The child is the most troublesome of
creatures, because of its habit of putting endless
questions. To answer any child s question is
only to start a train of further questions. It is
true that it will accept its parents authority if
it feels that it can trust them ; but the silence
which is sometimes secured does not imply that
the child is satisfied. There is a place in religion
for authority, though it is the last rather than
the first question which falls to be considered ;
and putting it in the foreground does not help
matters. The child only comes to the question
of authority by a series of questions, not by an
immediate submission, and only accepts in the
end that authority which rests upon love. The
authority of the Church must be of the same
kind ; if it is presented to the inquirer at the
beginning, and immediate submission demanded,
it only breeds suspicion and rebellion. There
must be a final resort to a living Church as the
authority for the truth, but that authority, even
if quite logically demanded, will only commend
itself if it rests upon an obviously disinterested
love for mankind. Authority is an adult problem,
and our generation is only just coming to it.
Therefore the recommendation to be childlike can
hardly be a recommendation to receive truth
merely on authority.
The Necessity for Re-education 69
We get at the mind of Christ much better if
we turn to the translation of this idea which we
find in the Fourth Gospel, where in the interview
with Nicodemus the principle is stated in an even
more extreme form. There Christ lays down the
necessity, not only for going back and becoming
as little children, but for being born again.
What both these sayings emphasize in different
ways is the necessity for starting all over again,
and from the very beginning. Christ does not
assume that the innocence of the child and the
unquestioning mind is the thing to be copied.
The point at issue is that we are wrong from our
birth ; and we need to be reborn, and when that
is done, re-educated. It is the necessity of going
back and starting all over again that our Lord
announces to a world that has gone wrong. That
is the radical proposal of Christianity, and it hits
our proud and confident world a staggering blow.
It does not say that we ought never to grow up,
or use our minds, or seek education ; but that
we have grown up wrongly, misused our minds,
been wrongly educated. It is in the things of
which we are proudest our evolution, our pro
gress, our education that Christ challenges us.
THERE is SOMETHING WRONG WITH OUR
EDUCATION.
1. That can now be seen from its effects.
We can see the general effects of our system
of education on the masses. As one views the
movement of civilized mankind in the mass, one
is forced to the conclusion that something has
gone wrong. We have had now fifty years of
70 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
popular education, and it is not reactionaries
only who have their doubts about it. It has
made it possible for everyone at least to read ;
but it has not given the people any test or taste
for truth ; so that we are at the mercy of what
we read, and masses of people can be hypnotized,
their thinking regimented and drilled, and the
character of a whole nation subtly changed by
experts in printed suggestion. If we were really
educated, our Press could not dictate to us and
impose upon us as it does. Our instinct for truth
would be too sharp for the obvious devices of
modern newspaper propaganda ; our suspicions
would be aroused by the very style in which it is
written, and good taste would prevent us reading it
at all. We have destroyed the natural instincts of
the people which protect and guide the ignorant,
and we have not created a real intellectualism to
take their place, but only a mental pride which
is precluded from understanding anything, and
which provides an easy prey for the tempter and
the charlatan. In addition to this question of
undiscerning reading there is the question of
expression. We seem to have almost killed the
sense of the beautiful and the dramatic. Our
clothes, our buildings and our house decorations
reveal that the once extraordinary sense of beauty
possessed by the peasantry has been destroyed.
We no longer express ourselves in beautiful ways.
We have abandoned processions, festivals and
religious ceremonies ; we have now only mobs,
so easily drawn together by the most trivial
things, our pathetic, dismal processions organized
generally only to protest, and so rarely to affirm ;
The Necessity for Re-education 71
and without power to impress the careless or
strike terror among the hostile ; with no idea of
how to use a symbol or carry a banner. All love
of colour and natural gaiety of manner seem to
have been educated out of the people.
You see it even more in educated people. What
one misses most in persons who have been expen
sively educated is leadership in moral progress.
For many education now means little more than
specialized * knowledge on one particular subject,
which seems to make them constitutionally in
capacitated for forming an opinion on any other
subject, and it is a little questionable whether it
really enables them to understand their own.
It is among people who have had a generous
education that one often finds the most ungenerous
opinions about life and the narrowest of class
judgments. This is a controversial point, and,
of course, it may be that it is from these educated
classes that we get a very proper resistance to
the crude notions that are thrown up from the
lower ranks on such difficult subjects as economics
and social government. But the difficulty hi
believing that is that these so-called crude notions
came originally at least from educated people,
and that what the critics of them propose as
a substitute is often nothing but the mainten
ance of the system under which we live, which
is killing the soul of honour and truth in all
classes. But it is the lack of moral leadership
which is so conspicuous. We have a few intel
lectuals who delight us with their criticisms and
biting, brilliant sayings, but they carry no banner
around which people can rally. They do not
72 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
have the power of action in themselves or the
ability to inspire action in others.
And that we are not indulging in merely captious
or petulant criticism may be seen from the fact
that under the modern system of education the
mind itself is breaking down. The emergence
of these nervous cases which are the despair of
medical science, cases which are really mental,
and not simply diseases of the brain, indicates
that our whole system of mental life is wrong.
These modern mental troubles might be traced
to the overpressure of life, the pushing of the
passion for work, this new slavery, to a point
where we can no longer endure it ; to the sort
of " jazz " existence which comes from the multi
plication of communication without the extension
of time, so that the mind is distracted by calls
in every direction. But from the very cures
which are being tried in these cases it is obvious
that we must look somewhat deeper than to
external pressure. We have to look to the general
decline of faith in a Personal God who cares for
each one of us ; to the stamping out of expres-
sional religion even when inner religion remains ;
and especially to our education, which teaches us
everything save how to use and control our minds.
These pitiful cases of breakdown can be traced to
conscience taking revenge upon us after years of
repression, to the demand for a fundamental and
final religion which we have lost even our sense
of need for, to the inability of our self-contained
and purely psychological methods to defend the
mind from the invasion of phobias of the most
ridiculous and childish types.
The Necessity for Re-education 73
2. What, then, is wrong with our education ?
It is fundamentally irreligious. We have heard
a great deal about secular versus religious educa
tion, and in this country that quarrel is due to
the fact that the Church started what education
there was before the State, and that has left us
quarrels about precedence ; but also, of course,
to our inability to agree to any kind of religious
instruction other than that which is of the same
character as the rest of our education : the mere
cramming of information. But this does not
mean that the solution lies with any of the parties
to our quarrel. The secularist may desire that
education should rest upon some basis which may
have much more of the religious spirit than
that advocated by the ecclesiastics, who may
only want to impart information about dogmas and
rites, often enough quite without any new attitude
to life or expression in character. What we have
to recognize first of all is that we dare not educate
anyone at all until we are sure that it is worth
while, until we are sure that there is a fundamental
truth about life and what it is, and above all
until we approach the whole business with rever
ence because we are dealing with human person
alities who have ultimate rights and with social
alternatives which may emancipate mankind or
bring the race to a miserable end.
In the higher forms of education there is an
extraordinary absence of idealism as a result.
We have become so afraid of the emotions that
we simply leave them to themselves, and even
repress them, not recognizing that emotion is the
first kind of motion and thereby destroying the
74 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
chief motive to action and the ability to exert
power. What is needed is the education of the
emotions by giving them right expression and
gearing them on to a right ideal. The repression
of the great emotions by education in reserve is
one of the causes of the nervous breakdowns
which are threatening us all to-day. The emotions
of sex, and pride, and fear, and patriotism have
to be recognized as present in us all, operating
secretly when we think we have repressed them ;
they have to be harmonized so that the self-regard
ing and the other regarding instincts can be brought
together, while those which are destructive of self
or society must be sublimated by transforming
them into other forms of expression. In addition,
just at present we are suffering from exhausted
idealism. Idealism has been harnessed on to
the emotions of fear and hate, impressed into
the business of slaughtering and maiming our
fellows, with the result that many people will
now have nothing to do with idealism because
they are disillusioned. Neurasthenia, which is
now -so prevalent a disease, is said to be due to
repressed inner conflict between instinct and con
science, and our generation is tired and apathetic
because it has repressed conscience on the subject
of war, which everyone really knows to be hope
lessly unchristian, inhuman and futile.
Our education is one-sided. It aims too much
at imparting information, generally of a salary-
earning value, or, at the best, of satisfying mere
curiosity, forgetting the education of character
and overlooking the necessity for securing that
expression shall keep pace with knowledge. To
The Necessity for Re-education 75
educate the intellect only, without teaching us
the nature of intellect or how to control the mind,
is dangerous both to reverence and to sanity.
The absence from much education of any sufficient
technical or artistic expression, save as mere
play or diversion, tends to make the mind revolve
round itself to no purpose. It would be a great
advance if we were all taught more from the con
crete, if we were encouraged to express ourselves
in some form of art, if we all learned a trade, if
we could all make something and make it
thoroughly. The day will perhaps come when we
must all belong to a trade gild, if we are to
attain the rights of citizenship ; and it would
make not only for fellowship but also for mental
freshness if we had all served apprenticeship to
some handicraft.
THE ONLY CURE FOR WRONG EDUCATION is
RE-EDUCATION.
1. But that entails going very far back.
We have to be educated over again in the
simplest things. It is interesting to observe the
kind of therapeutics prescribed for nervous cases.
They are taken right back to the primitive physical
things, like the use of their limbs and the regis
tration of their sensations. This is partly only
a device for getting the mind away from itself,
breaking its squirrel-cage captivity, dehypnotizing
it of its baseless fears. But it has a deeper value
than that ; it is really a process of re-education.
Patients have to learn afresh how to breathe,
how to see, how to hear, how to walk, and even
76 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
how to rest in bed. The difficulty in controlling
the mind and in directing the will have to be
overcome by what are nothing but kindergarten
methods. This is simply going back to childhood
and learning all over again. Such exercises are
of increased value when they are accompanied by
psychic suggestion : getting at the soul through
the body, which is sometimes the only way to
reach it after long neglect has taken place ; and
they would probably be still more effective if
they were accompanied with religious devotion.
We have to be educated in asking primary ques
tions. The great end of all education is wisdom
or philosophy. This does not mean memorizing
philosophical systems, trying to understand the
solutions philosophers propose, least of all learning
their deplorable phraseology. But it does mean
getting the philosophic type of mind, the mind
which asks root questions, the mind which knows
its limitations, the mind which knows some
questions cannot be answered because they never
ought to be asked. What is always wrong with
scepticism is not that it inquires, but that it
never inquires deeply enough. If only people
would face the ultimate questions, whether or
not there is a God, or the soul is a reality and
there is an immortal destiny for men, we should
have fewer quarrels about things that matter less.
It is the stopping short at all sorts of thoughts
and systems which are accepted without inquiry ;
especially the acceptance of our own preferences
as if they were principles ; the acceptance of
facts without evidence, or the refusal of them
when the evidence is good, because the nature
The Necessity for Re-education 77
of evidence has never been itself investigated ;
the acceptance of some systems on personal
authority and the refusal of others which rest
on a much wider basis, because the nature of
authority has never been analysed ; it is these
things which create our modern confusion. If
people were profoundly instead of superficially
sceptical, they would end up in the Catholic faith
at last. The issues would be clear : Christianity,
and in its entirety, or a negation which the
human mind cannot conceive.
Especially we have to learn to go back and
express ourselves. And here we have to begin
at the beginning. Our generation has had one
very praiseworthy desire in religion. It has
wanted to express the great realities of God and
of the Christian faith in actual life. It has really
determined to bring practice up to the level of
confession. But it has foolishly thought that
the best way to effect this was to strip off any
merely symbolic expression, so that the reli
gious impulse should pour itself directly into
life. But this has not only made it impossible
to speak about religion at all, since even the inner
motives and convictions had to be kept concealed,
but it has led to the loss of religion even in its
inner reality. The only expression of this entirely
immanent religion to which this generation has
been able to point has been in nations rushing
to destroy one another ; that is the one great
symbol we have evolved : slaughter. We shall
have to go back and make the childish discovery
that we need symbolic expression as a preparation
for other expression. People who pour their
78 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
religious enthusiasm into art, or music, or devo
tion will almost certainly, when the great occasion
comes, know how to confess their religion with
beauty, with dramatic appeal, and with effect on
the physical world. We no longer rise to the great
acts and gestures of the saints, because we have
abandoned the sensible expression of religion on
these lower levels. We must go back and begin as
children again.
2. It might be helpful to enumerate some of
these helps to re-education.
In private devotion it is very useful to asso
ciate with one s most intimate prayer-life certain
simple things which sanctify our senses by
giving them their part in worship and serve to
remind the soul of its religious duties. Nearly
all people have the inclination to use some posture
in their religion. We still most of us pray on our
knees : we ought sometimes to want to pray
on our faces. But there are other bodily things
which we can do. We can use the sign of the
cross, we can know when to bow the head and
when to bend the knee, and how to use the physical
act as an expression and reminder of humility.
The use of deep silence combined with something
to look at is a great help ; prayer before the cruci
fix does keep the mind steady upon our great sins
and God s still greater love ; and those who have
prayed much before the Blessed Sacrament will
know what prayer is and what It is. But all
prayer should be begun and ended with stillness
of body and thought. And in order to get quiet
ness as well as silence it is a help to listen for a
moment to some regular sound or to your own
The Necessity for Re-education 79
breathing ; and as soon as this has the effect of
quieting the mind and taking it away from itself,
transferring it quietly and quickly to God. If you
can pray in church, where there is something of
rich association to look at, you can frequently
recall the mind without making a straining effort.
From this you may go on to the training
of the mind in control. There is the habit of
meditation, or what is sometimes called con
templation : visualizing scenes in the Gospels,
painting the pictures even in detail. This is
not only a restful exercise, but it is a real
artistic expression which greatly increases the
powers and the joys of the mind. From this
it is easy to go on to something more difficult :
to recollection, to a continual recalling of the
mind to its deepest inward life that is, to the
life of the Spirit within the soul. The hardest
exercise is perhaps introversion : the process by
which we move back from our own feelings and
thoughts and activities to the reality and source
and ground of our being in God. This makes
the consciousness of God the dominant conscious
ness ; this entails that any thought will bring up
the thought of God, even thoughts of anxiety or
thoughts that must be repelled ; and when the
time of temptation, or trouble, or demand arises,
then one will act truly and rightly by instinct.
It is also an important and healthy practice
to incorporate resolutions in our prayers. It is
best to resolve upon some act which arises
naturally out of one s meditation or other form of
devotion, and which is to be done that same day.
It does not matter how small and slight a thing it
80 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
is. It should be carefully determined upon and
solemnly resolved before God. This, continually
practised, will tend to link together the affective
and the active life, and will be preparing us for
some great action one day, in which the whole of
our inner religious life may express itself and seal
the soul for ever.
But all these outward forms and exercises have
but one object : the re-education of personality
by communion with Christ, the noblest Personality
the world has ever seen, the express image of the
Divine Personality, the Personality in the likeness
of which our own was made, and by restoration
to whose likeness it alone will find harmony,
power and peace. This communion is granted
us through the revelation of His mind in the
Gospels, which are to be studied until they become
the very principle of our lives ; through the Holy
Communion, in which there is to be sought con
tinually the gift of His grace ; through the personal
revelation of Christ to the soul, the crowning
proof of His love, and the heart of the Christian
religion. This is what takes us out of ourselves,
and yet not to nothingness and unconsciousness,
but to the greatest Self and the supreme Per
sonality. This is what restores balance and
strength to the mind, giving to it the calm of
infinity, providing the intellect with the only
solution to existence, moving the will by the greatest
of all affections, the love of and the love for Jesus.
The Necessity of
Confession
44 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive
us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
1 JOHN i. 9.
A CAREFUL observer of the thought of our
times must notice how much both in specula
tion and practice tends to the re-establishment of
Catholicism. The abandonment of materialism
and the discrediting of idealism have made way for
the revival of realism, which has always been the
foundation of Catholic philosophy. In the realm
of physical science conceptions of the universe
are now claiming acceptance which leave room
for freedom and actual creation, so that miracles
are no longer regarded as impossible ; and to take
a most crucial instance, whether or not transub-
stantiation actually takes place and only under
certain specified conditions, it is no longer un
thinkable ; for the further extension of the atomic
theory of matter by the discovery of its electric
constitution shows that there is a difference
between the underlying reality of matter and its
manifestation, and that even the most elemental
things can be transmuted. Even in socialistic
82 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
theory, which has seemed most independent of
mid opposed to Catholic faith, we now have the
emergence of (iuild Socialism, which is largely
the medieval Guild system, which was created,
guided and inspired by Catholic faith. All that
is wanted to complete the collapse of the secular
scheme which threatened to conquer the nine
teenth century is a change in the study of history
and the conclusions to be drawn from it ; and
already a few straws on the stream predict a turn
of the tide : Christianity is seen by Mr. Wells,
even in his purely humanitarian outline, to be the
great turning-point in history and the test-stone
of all succeeding ages. It, will not be long before
we get to the Catholic interpretation of Christianity
as alone adequate, and before we sec that we must
have a Catholic Church.
Hut perhaps one of the most impressive rehabili
tations of Catholic practice has com from the
medical profession in their practice of psychical
diagnosis. \Vhen one remembers that it was
only in 11)04. that Sir Oliver Lodge made the oft-
quoted statement that, " As a matter of fact, the
higher man of to-day is not worrying about his
sins at all, still less about their punishment,"
and considers his reply to criticism in which he
explains that he did not mean that men do not
believe themselves sinners, but that they think
it is better than brooding over their sins and
lamenting them to work hard at something good,
one recognizes how thought can change in a
decade : for that statement looks utterly foolish
in the light of what we are learning through
psycho-analysis.
The Necessity of Confession S;t
It lias been over the confessional that some of
thr greatest opposition to Catholic practice has
arisen, and now we have our medical men forced
to adopt similar methods and insisting that con
fession is necessary, and, indeed, declaring that if
this method liad been known and practised many
of the inmates of our asylums need never have
gone there. What helped the revolt against the
confessional was its alleged concent ration upon
M \ual sins, and the discovery of a few questions
which a priest might ask on this subject was
sullicient to rouse a storm of indignation. Such
questions can be found discussed in all confessors
manuals ; but they have no undue prominence,
and the questions arc only to be asked in cases
where certain information has already been volun
teered. Hut why is there no outcry against the
matter which occupies pages in books of psycho
analysis and the tracing of practically nearly all
our mental disturbances to sexual roots ? Cer
tainly no confessional manual has ever approached
these in their sickening details and in suspicion
of sex as the root of all evils.
All this is not to argue that we simply retreat
from the position taken up by Protestantism
or to claim that medueval Catholicism is being
proved to have been right in all its details. Hut,
leaving aside abuses and false emphasis, what is
being shown on every hand is that the Church
was instinctively right, through and through, and
that it only needs the union of its instinct with
scientific knowledge to make the Catholic faith
the only philosophy of a reasonable creature and
its practices the health and security of the soul.
84 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
It is to this particular point that attention is
now called, and the question needs to be^asked,
WHY is CONFESSION NECESSARY ?
1. It is necessary from psychological con
siderations.
Psycho-analysis has a general theory somewhat
as follows : We are born with certain impulses in
us which, if they were given full play, would make
us terrors to society, without the slightest regard
for decency, the rights of others or the security
of morals. The time comes when the pressure
of society against our animal and savage ethics
begets in us a response, and there arises in us,
somewhere about five years of age, what is
called the " censor, * which is an individual
judgment largely in agreement with social
opinion. In the light of its attitude we become
aware that many things we have done and desired
5 re filthy and shameful, and an endeavour is now
made to repress them. But in a great many
people these efforts take the form of pretending
that we have never had any such inclinations or
practices ; the thing is put out of mind, as we say,
but that is a very inapt description of what
happens ; for the conflict between what we are
and what we feel we ought to be is simply forced
underground, where it starts working out all kinds
of troubles. These emerge into the conscious
life in disguised forms, sometimes as dreams
which have an obvious interpretation, sometimes
in strange obsessions, fears, moods, and in worse
cases in mental derangements and physical
infirmities.
The Necessity of Confession 85
The first thing that has to be done is to get down
to the real source of the trouble, and this is done
by various methods of getting the mind to betray
its concealed material and yield up its buried
troubles. Any idea that the best cure for these
things is to plunge into some obliterating activity
is fatal ; indeed, one of the symptoms which the
psycho-analyst is quick to notice is any unusual
activity, especially where it is spent on rather
stupid and trifling things ; for that is one of the
ways in which we show that we are trying to shut
out of mind some unpleasant consciousness and
to shirk some great battle. I wonder how long
it will be before someone points out that a good
deal of the tremendous activity of civilization,
which is so much praised, is nothing but what
might be called a racial neurosis. If some detached
observer of our world could analyse our ant-like
activities, he would know in a moment that these
people were not working because they liked work,
or because they had a particular purpose in view,
but solely in order to drown their conscience.
Now, the most curious thing is that once you
can get the patient to see what it is that is hidden
in him, all the trouble it has caused will vanish.
The root troubles are, in the judgment of some
great analysts, sexual, and not at all of a healthy
or normal kind, but perversions, so that what is
the matter with a great many of us is that we
have not been able to gratify the most hideous
and bestial desires. We have an impulse to say
that these psycho-analysts are themselves ob
sessed ; and they have certainly given dispro
portionate attention to the sexual factors ; but
86 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
they can bring, unfortunately, only too great
evidence in proof, and they hang over the heads
of many of us the possibility that we shall soon
manifest some of these alarming symptoms, and
find ourselves going through all the misery of the
new confessional.
Some knowledge of all this is very useful to
anyone who desires to keep his hidden life clear
and clean, and to fortify himself against those
strange attacks of nervous decontrol which are
the marks of our age. The origin of worries,
inability to face issues, restless, unsatisfied cravings,
goes down to some such cause. It is a most
humiliating thing to discover that a great many
of these troubles are due to repressed and per
verted sexual emotion, which we are bound to
be ashamed of ; but it is good for us to find that
the filthiness which we so condemn in others,
who have managed to repudiate the inner censor
altogether, may have its seeds in ourselves. It
does not make us foolishly lenient, but it does
make us look round to discover what is the cure
for these things for if we cannot cure them they
will ruin us and in that search we all have a
common interest. It is a disturbing self-disclosure ;
but, like all knowledge, it must be faced, and it
will be found safer than remaining in ignorance.
It helps us also to see where many things are
leading which we do not recognize in their initial
state. To take one instance : a good many of
us feel that modern dress is becoming very im
modest, and although we find use soon blunts
the shock and we cannot see any real reason against
it, a new consideration is necessary when you
The Necessity of Confession 87
discover that little children have a great passion
to display themselves, and that when this is
repressed as they get older it betrays itself in
different ways. The analysts call this " exhibi
tionism." It is a name worth remembering. This
is a somewhat unpleasant example, but it will
stick in the memory, and perhaps discourage us
from yielding to a prevailing tendency.
But the great thing brought out by psycho
analysis is that mere repression is perfectly use
less ; I suppose that is why the harlots go into
the kingdom of heaven before Pharisees. It is
strange, however, in this rebellious age, that
no one has suggested an easy way of getting rid
of all our troubles by simply ignoring the
" censor." Analysts regard that as quite impos
sible. Their cure is neither repression for they
demand confession, the admission to oneself that
things are so nor displacement, the crushing out
this thing by some interest of a quite different
nature, but by its sublimation, the giving of real
expression to this instinct in healthy ways, and
for this they recommend family life, and where
that cannot be, then politics, art and, supremely,
religion : the concern for one s fellows, the ex
pression of beauty, and the love of God. No one
can fail to see how at many points this confirms
the old Catholic faith and method. It shows
that there is a universal need for a cleansing of
our nature, and that for this confession and con
version are necessary.
2. From the spiritual side confession is even
more necessary.
One of the first things religion demands is sin-
88 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
cerity, not only the shaping of external conduct but
the purity of the inner life, of our thoughts and
desires ; and in order to take the first step towards
sincerity we must welcome self-knowledge. It is
an astonishing thing that an age which professed
to be passionately scientific, to welcome facts
though the heavens fell, was very averse to self-
examination and introspection. The discoveries
one made, for instance, if one really questioned
oneself whether one was truthful, brave, unselfish
or loving, were so disconcerting and humiliating
that it was thought best not to probe too deeply ;
it was called morbid, and led only to despair and
the loss of self-respect. Such an attitude could
only be justified if man is an enclosed, unredeem
able entity, if there is no cleansing in religion.
For the concealing of ourselves from ourselves,
because, maybe, of unpleasant consequences, is
surely hardly to be distinguished as brave or
scientific. Our writer deals with this very sternly.
He declares that the person who says he has no
sin deceives himself, and thus obliterates within
himself the standard of truth. Such an attitude
is sin against the Holy Ghost : it is the destruction
within ourselves of the very fountain of light.
But it is not enough to acknowledge that there
is sin in us ; it must be confessed. It should be
noticed that it is sin in the abstract that is acknow
ledged, but it is sins in the concrete that are to
be confessed : " If we say we have no sin " ;
44 if we confess our sins."
It is perhaps necessary to remind ourselves
that the word " confess " means more than
" acknowledge to ourselves " ; it means to make
The Necessity of Confession 89
known to others, and Westcott says that it means
making known to men, Certainly, elsewhere we
have the injunction " Confess your faults one to
another, and pray one for another, that ye may
be healed " ; and that is a counsel which psycho
analysis would certainly acknowledge as thera
peutic. It is a duty to ourselves to acknowledge
our sins ; it is a duty to our fellows to confess our
faults to them. The question is whether this
means that we are to reveal to others the actual
state of our hearts which self-exploration has
revealed, or whether it is only our sins against
them which we are to mention. It would be some
thing to get as far as this. What a tremendously
different world this would be if only we would
acknowledge to others when we had been wrong,
if the habit of apologizing were more frequent and
generous ! Nothing creates such a spirit of trust
and respect as when a man humbles himself to
say " I did wrong." If we could do this, we should
halve our marriage troubles, we should dis
pense with the majority of our legal fights ; there
would be a diminution of industrial strife, and it
is difficult to imagine how nations could ever go
to war again. If the person who thinks himself
superior would only recognize that the great sign
of superiority is to make the first step towards
reconciliation in acknowledging what was wrong
in his attitude ! One word like this and the other
party will often then pour out the frankest avowal
of his part in the quarrel. If, however, we main
tain that we ought not to tell of our secret faults,
which only offend God and no doubt that should
only be done on occasion, because of the scandal
90 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
and the weakening of others faith that might
follow I wonder why we do not carry out
this principle so as also never to boast of our
secret virtues, which have to be advertised, because
otherwise they would never be known. Why
must we let it leak out that we give away so much
money, we work so hard, we spend so much time
in prayer, and yet say nothing about our failures
and deficiencies ? Is that being fair to ourselves
or to others ?
Now, it is expressly stated that when we come
to deal with God there must be open acknowledg
ment of our sin as done against Him. All God
wants is this : this, with sorrow that it should
be so ; and then there is given to us. not in mercy
and pity, but in faithfulness and justice, forgive
ness and cleansing. There are certain difficulties
here which some have felt, but which cannot be
removed without assuming a certain philosophy
of man s exact position of dependence upon
God ; that, I believe, is such as reason would
eventually acknowledge to be the only true philo
sophy, and it demands just what is here demanded
on both sides. But we are here concerned with the
practical issue, and we must therefore be content
with the statement that it is inconceivable how we
should ever be conscious of sin, unless there is
some standard which must ultimately be higher
than our own conscience or the conscience of
society ; and it is therefore against this standard
that we have sinned ; sin against ourselves and
sin against our neighbour is ultimately sin against
God. And if there should be any feeling of
resentment still left, it is surely dissipated by
The Necessity of Confession 91
the very generous way in which confession is here-
met. It needs only confession, and God then
forgives us and cleanses us ; declares His faith
fulness in maintaining Himself as our inner
standard, and cleanses us by shedding His blood
in the strife within us. Without this, all that
God could and would do is useless ; our con
fession opens our eyes to our need and makes a
way for the operation of God s cleansing presence*
But these general principles demand some
direction for their embodiment in practice.
How is CONFESSION TO BE MADE ?
1. There must be definite acknowledgment.
Nothing is more difficult than to train the mind
in the habits of definite devotion, and it shirks
and jibs against anything like prolonged examina
tion and detailed confession. But this much
at least must be attempted : there must be self-
admission. Our nature tries to wriggle out of
responsibility and excuse itself, but persistence
must be made, for the sake of honesty and mental
balance, until we see things for what they are,
give them their name, and accept responsibility
for them.
Self-examination ought to be made, however
swiftly, every night before we go to sleep. It
may be enough to be still for a minute and let
the mind explore itself for any wounding which
remains from the commerce and conversation of
the day. It will be found that the conscience
generally has something to report. But this
will give only the positive acts of transgression ;
it is just as important to discover the negative
92 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
failures, and for this purpose you want a standard
of beauty, strength and sacrifice. For this pur
pose it is very useful to have a list of things both
negative and positive by which to examine oneself,
a list of virtues and graces, especially those praised
or displayed by Christ.
It is hardly necessary to testify what a benefit
all this is. It will often secure you a good night s
rest, and be an antidote against dreams and
disturbances. But what it chiefly does is to dis
sociate the conscience and will from acquiescence
in things we know to be wrong, and to make a
break in the stream of influence which during the
hours of sleep will be operating to fix the character.
To go to sleep on a fault is to let it be absorbed
into the character. How our friends would wel
come the effects upon us, the humility, sympathy
and understanding it would give us ! And if
one only cared to press it to a crisis, what a dis
covery it would make of the majesty and glory
of God ! For it is by the light which He lends us
that we are able to see ourselves ; the more we
are willing to see ourselves as we are, the higher
we must turn up the light. It is the one sure
way to saintliness, to peace of mind, and to fruitful
friendship with men.
2. The difficulty is in the form of public
acknowledgment.
In the early days of the Church, penance was an
open confession and an open reconciliation. But
as the Church grew in numbers and the general
public came in, this was found to be inconvenient
and ineffectual. Gradually there grew up the
practice of private confession to a priest and the
The Necessity of Confession 93
whole institution of the confessional. It is against
this that there has been so much accusation and
such objection from the standpoint of evangelical
religion. The objections from the standpoint of
evangelical religion are not valid, for that does
recommend some form of confession to man ;
what can be questioned is whether it ought to
be made to some person set aside for this purpose.
That is objectionable only if the setting aside ob
scures the fact that the priest is the representative
of the Church, and discharges a corporate function
not only in hearing confession but in giving absolu
tion. But it gives such awful power into the hands
of a man ; it has been proved dangerous to morals ;
and it has produced the unlovely literature of
casuistry ! The answer to this is that man has
awful power in his hands anyway ; God will
not take it away, Christ confirmed it, and the only
thing to do is to secure its right exercise. Con
cerning a great deal that is said against the con
fessional there can be no real knowledge and no
proper reply. Those who know least say most,
and those who know anything say nothing. A
confessional of some sort there will always be.
There will always be some souls who feel they must
tell their story, and there are some people to whom
one naturally turns to tell the story. There can
be few ministers who have not heard confessions
and few genuine Christians who have not been
made the recipient of guilty secrets ; and for
that free confessional and spiritual attraction
there must always be room. But against the
trained, responsible confessor nothing can be
said, any more than against the trained medical
94 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
man. Nothing can be urged against the priestly
confessional that cannot be urged against the
psycho-analyst. The psycho-analyst will some
times confess to his lack of being able to say the
^genuine word of absolution, the authoritative
declaration that the power of the past is broken.
It needs some very strong word which the patient
can rely on to make him believe this ; and that
ultimately must derive from Christ and His Church.
What is wanted is very careful training and very
careful licensing. But there is such a thing as
moral theology, and although it has much to
learn from recent psychology, and especially from
psycho-analysis, it is not immodest to claim that
psycho-analysis has also a good deal to learn from
moral theology some quite simple things which
it would be dangerous to forget. It ought also
to be more widely known that the Sacrament of
Penance is practically self-administered, since
without full confession and true contrition the
absolution is entirely invalid.
Experience shows that there is no adequate
substitute. I conducted what was largely a
confessional column in a religious newspaper for
three and a half years. It had very great advan
tages in that the penitent and the confessor never
met ; if the seal was broken, it was with the
penitent s permission, and the recital of his sins
and the remedy prescribed were doubtless a help
to others. But when I think of the power it gave
to an untried man, I blush for my own temerity
and impudence. But the experience gathered
from about three thousand cases converted me
to the Catholic faith as absolutely essential to any
The Necessity of Confession 95
knowledge, guidance or authority, and led me to
abandon the correspondence method as inferior to
the Catholic practice. When it comes to comparing
the " free " with the regular confessional, experi
ence again confirms the practice of the Church.
In the free confessional one never gets so soon
down to the real causes of the trouble. There is
a different feeling on the part of the penitent, who
tries to be interesting and who can rarely be
brief, and there is absence of the solemnity of two
people together in the acknowledged presence of
God, who is the Judge of both, which makes for
sincerity and the preservation of the seal. In
regular confession one gets over the ground so
much quicker and keeps track of progress and
failure. Many who use the confessional would
testify that hardly anywhere else does one feel
the reality of religion, the awfulness of spiritual
things, and the presence of -God nearer and more
forgiving ; that the general necessity is not for
more probing but for comforting, and not for in
forming the conscience but for quietening it against
scruples ; that sexual matters do not bulk at all
largely, and when they do, they are got over quickly
and naturally, as nowhere else ; while the effect
upon the priest is certainly no more polluting
than reading newspapers ; and all confessions of
sin must remind him of his own sins and the grace
he needs to avoid others.
What is to be recommended to individuals,
ministers or people ? I think it must be left to
individual conscience, and be no more enforced
than any other sacrament ; but the individual
conscience will naturally consider the testimony
96 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
of centuries of practice, and now the confirmation
of modern psychology. The general conclusion
is that it is salutary for most and absolutely
necessary for some ; and just as we all join in the
general confession for the sake of the sinners
who may be present, so this is a case where one
has to do things for the sake of the whole body,
and so that others should not be made to look
peculiar. And if there are still conscientious
objections, or apprehensive fears, or lack of under
standing, then at least there must be some sub
stitute found, and of equal difficulty and efficiency.
One must be hard with oneself. One must have
spiritual medicinal books to stir one up and test
one s state ; one had better make close friends of
candid and critical persons, and one must find
some form of open confessional to a number of
people. Above all, one must keep oneself near
and naked to God, and to that in God which is
searching and stern ; one must know Him as
Judge as well as Father, and worship Him as.
Light as well as Love.
The Revival of Catholicism
** And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up
the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste
cities, the desolations of many generations." ISAIAH Ixi. 4.
AWAY down in the West of England, on the
borders of Dartmoor, the traveller will
come upon a mighty church abuilding ; no un
usual occurrence, save that it is being built in
a neighbourhood w r here there seem very few
people needing such a building. Enquiry will
reveal, however, that the church is part of a
monastic settlement ; that it is being built on
an old and almost forgotten site of what was in
pre-Reformation times one of England s greatest
abbeys. The old foundations have been un
covered and are being used again ; and this
splendid building of pure, powerful architecture
is actually being erected by the monks them
selves and already is sufficiently complete for
its great peal of bells once more to send their
music singing through all the valleys up to the
lonely moor. It is nearly four hundred years
since the monastery was dissolved, the monks
sent away, and the buildings levelled to the
ground. And here is everything back again just
as if the Middle Ages were still alive, the Refor
mation had never happened, and Henry the
Eighth had never existed. Such a restoration
wakens strange reflections ; for it is a symbol
98 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
and a presage. It is an outward and visible sign
of the Catholic Revival which is perhaps the
most remarkable, because the least expected, of
all the movements of this age of ours.
The nineteenth century witnessed the gradual
catholicizing of the Anglican Church, and that
against the general interpretation of its documents
and traditions, in spite of the popular opposition
to ritualism, and the efforts of prelates, secular
authorities and the press to discredit it. It has
been a strange movement, whose direction is even
yet not determined, always struggling against the
compromise of the Elizabethan settlement, some
times degenerating into a narrow sectarianism,
developing a waspish temper and producing a
curious type of character, and anon flaring out
in splendid challenge and producing men worthy
to be classed with the saints and churchmen of
former times ; in one direction obscurantist,
conservative and depending upon the rich, and
in another serving the poor as no other Church
ever has and standing out for their rights even
to the point of proclaiming a revolution.
And now there has commenced a movement in
Nonconformity, hardly more than a number of
tiny rills breaking out here and there in a revived
Church consciousness, a demand for unity, the
revival of sacraments and the employment of
a richer symbolic worship ; not yet united in one
stream, and as likely to get lost in swamps and
bogs as ever to reach the open sea, and yet some
times leaping forward and flowing deep in a
fashion that might promise a more rapid change
than even the Anglo-Catholic movement has
effected. More than one observer has seen in
The Revival of Catholicism 99
the Nonconformist movement a greater signifi
cance than in any other aspect of the Catholic
Revival ; for the freedom that has for so long
been used mainly to get as far as possible from
traditional Catholicism, because it is freedom,
may return with greater ease and speed, and not ,
only so, but may bring to Catholicism something *
which would almost transform its spirit and
character.
Everyone is bound to consider whither all this
is leading. It is superficial to put it down to
antiquarianism, to an endeavour to take refuge
in the Middle Ages in order to escape the problems
of the present, to seek shelter in merely external
authority in order to find peace of mind amidst
the collapse of faith and the chaos of religious
thought. The movement is intensely alive to
the present and is thirsting to do battle in the
open with every kind of unbelief. It is futile to
think that the movement can be checked by
denunciations of betrayal and for illegitimate in
troduction of mediaeval ceremonies ; that can be
countered by the charge of an earlier betrayal
and the illegitimate destruction of what it is
now proposed to reverse and restore. It cannot
even be frightened by alarming references to the
Scarlet Woman ; the modern expositor knows
full well who is the scarlet woman : the atheist
and yet self-deifying State whose rise is all too
likely. Nor is it quite possible to regard the
movement with a generous tolerance as but one
more among the amazing varieties and indivi
dualistic eccentricities of this kaleidoscopic age.
It is building too much on the old foundations,
it is too absolute in its claims, and has a way
100 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
of suddenly attracting the least likely persons,
to be regarded with any such equanimity. It is
all part of a great movement, the most synthetic
and reconciling movement of our times ; and it
is as such that it has to be considered. There is
something in the human heart, some say it is
the old Adam, and some the Spirit of God, which
makes Catholicism a permanent and universal
craving and fascination. On the basis of any
expectation of the future, it is the one religion
that can be trusted to survive and, however it
changes, to remain the same. On the mere fact
of the growth of the population it must beat its
rival : for Catholic families tend to be larger
than those of Protestants.
WHAT HAS AIDED THIS CATHOLIC REVIVAL ?
1. Protestantism is being slowly discredited.
(a) This is so on religious grounds.
The Reformation has had to take up one position
after another in order to resist Catholic claims ;
and no one of them has proved unassailable or
has been able to be long defended. It set up the
Bible against the old Church as a rampart against
its claims and accretions : " the Bible and the
Bible only is the religion of Protestants." But
two questions are at once raised and still wait
for an answer. Where did that Bible come from ?
Who selected the books and who has preserved
them ? For that the Protestant is dependent
upon the old Church. Moreover, the moment
the Bible is left to individual interpretation
nothing but the wildest confusion reigns, and
there is no limit to the fantastic construction that
The Revival of Catholicism 101
the plain man puts upon it. Or when the Pro
testant Churches have drawn up confessions of
faith they prove to be dependent upon the credal
formulations of the old Church ; and when these
are then rejected and the extreme simplification
made of simply believing in Christ, or in following
Jesus, the question is once more started : Who
is He that I should believe in Him, or what
present help can He give to those who want to
follow Him ; and, above all, how is it that I
am able to put this issue save because there has
been a historic body which has kept alive the
name and worship of Jesus ? The final retreat
has been to experience, but this has proved any
thing but a rock of defence ; for while at first it
was a man s personal experience of Christ, it has
now come to be used as the argument for any
and every kind of faith, or even unfaith ; once
the light that lighteth every man ceases to be
identified with the true light which came into the
world in Christ, it may lead anywhere and turn
out to be nothing but a man s often quite un-
sanctified preferences. If it is a veritable and
mystical experience of Jesus, this again is due to
the knowledge of Jesus which the Church has kept
alive, and it is even in the Roman Church that
mystical experience is best understood and is
kept faithful to the Christian type. Everywhere
Protestantism is parasitic on Catholicism, and it
could not exist by itself.
Similarly the working out in history of Pro
testant Churchmanship has been disastrous, because
of its disintegrating tendencies. It has grown
only by divisions, and has become the author
of a welter of sects which bid fair to degenerate
102 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
into every man being his own Church, while the
corporate sense of Christianity is almost entirely
dissipated. The scandal of sectarianism has not
only embittered our relations with our fellow
Christians, but it has made an attack upon the
world impossible : the differences and the dis
sensions of the sects is the first and finest excuse
for the worldling refusing to consider Christianity.
Protestantism is incurably fissiparous. And al
though the ridiculousness of the situation, and
the practical exigencies of our condition have
checked the movement and brought about a
desire for reunion, it is exceedingly difficult to
see on what basis union can ever be effected
except on the old Catholic basis ; for anything
else will be but very partial union, while there
is little hope of agreement upon any other basis,
save in some loose and comprehensive federation
which really leaves things exactly as they were
save for a change in name.
And Protestantism is caught between two fires ;
not only the still effective volleys of the Catholic
arguments, but the sniping from the ranks of
unbelief, into which, by the alleged logic of Pro
testantism, men are continually deserting. Once
the fundamental Tightness of the Church is ques
tioned, then everything comes to be questioned,
and slowly but surely the way is opened either
to unabashed atheism, or to pantheism, which
turns out to be the same thing with a politer
name. The plea for freedom from authority, from
creeds, from sacraments, goes on until nothing
whatever is left. Amidst all the strange erratic
crossing and recrossing, from one camp to another,
which is characteristic of our distressed and un-
The Revival of Catholicism 103
guided age, there can be no doubt that Protes
tantism is a middle position between atheism and
Catholicism, and an unstable position at that,
so that the stream of movement runs either way,
but here can never long remain in suspense. It
is interesting to notice that the only religion
agnostics ever speak of respectfully is Catholicism,
and while Catholicism loses many to Protestantism,
and Protestantism to atheism, the way back
generally overleaps Protestantism altogether. The
preference for a vague Christianity of somewhat
remote and unanalysable feelings about Jesus
Christ and about everything in Christianity, which
so largely distinguishes recent Protestantism, is
not a position at all : it is mere residuum of
something that was once there, the atmosphere
and flavour of which remain, but only tempor
arily, for there is nothing to create them afresh.
(b) The political discrediting is more contro
versial, but is making itself clearer.
The outburst of the nationalist spirit, to which
the Reformation gave rise, contained great promise
and inspired wonderful advance ; but it had the
unfortunate effect of breaking up the European
family and introducing a fruitful cause of wars
which have gone on reproducing themselves with
more awful vigour right down to the present
time, and which show no signs of exhausting
themselves until the ancient home and first example
of Christendom shall have disappeared. We are
searching round now for some means of cementing
this sundered body together with a secular League
of Nations pledged against war, but this pious
aspiration has to fight against the effects of the
Peace of Versailles, which has reduced one part
104 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
of Europe to the status of tiny Balkan states,
who must quarrel and strive till they die, shut
out another as inadmissible because of its revolu
tionary government, enslaved another, thereby
producing a condition of perpetual panic and
hate. Nationalism may have been a promising
stripling at the time of the Reformation, but it
has now grown into a giant and an ogre.
And deeper than mere political disruption has
been the opening of the way for the rise of
Industrialism, with its spoliation and enslavement
of the common people. The old ethic of Catholi
cism fostered a deep distrust of riches, actually
condemned usury, and was continually seducing
large numbers of earnest people to the ascetic
life. The release from all this immediately brought
to the world an enormous increase in capital
wealth, and therefore in the power of exploration,
invention, and mass production. Although the
distinction is crossed by curious and illogical
contradictions, in the main Catholicism tends
towards the exaltation of the social unit, while
Protestantism makes for individualism ; and to-day
we are certainly groaning under the extremes of
the latter.
2. On the other hand there has been a rehabili
tation of Catholicism.
(a) This has been helped by the rise of a finer
historical and social consciousness.
There is such a thing as Catholic history ; and
there is also such a thing as Protestant history ;
and often there is no more to choose between
them than to say that while Catholicism may tell
the truth and nothing but the truth, it does not
tell the whole truth, while Protestant history
The Revival of Catholicism 105
does not always tell even the truth. A great
deal of our prejudices imbibed from popular
history are dissipated by more careful research.
The careful study of the forces which led to the
Reformation certainly shows what crying abuses
and burdens there were in the old religion, but
it does even more to show up the evil motives
and the scandalous means by which the Reforma
tion was forced upon people by false promises
and profane arguments. The Reformation period
provides an unpleasant story, and historical
research can only increase disrespect for the
origin of Protestantism, even if it does nothing to
increase respect for Catholicism. But the one
fruitful line which does not leave us cynical of
the whole business is to recognize that the evils
of Catholicism were no necessary part of Catholic
doctrine, and to recognize also that the Reforma
tion was not motived by diabolical inspiration,
but that in indignation against abuses it allowed
itself to be carried away by anger, and so parted
with something which was of value and which
Protestantism can never restore.
Historical studies give one a sense of the value
and meaning of the past which makes impossible
the idea that you can go back to some period
and start all over again with any guarantee that
things will develop any differently, and they
show up the utter superficiality of the modern
idea that we have nothing to learn from the past
save how to escape it. No religion will survive
to-morrow unless it has its roots in the past ;
that religion alone has hope of continuity which
has the most continuous past. Apostolic succes
sion is more than a merely mechanical doctrine :
106 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
it is a symbol of continuity, and even as a symbol
it must be preserved. Our young people studying
more history feel that they cannot belong to any
Church which starts at some arbitrarily chosen
period, because they feel it will end as suddenly
as it began ; neither can they belong to a British
Museum religion, which professes to bring back
some defined era as an example for our imitation ;
that is mere antiquarianism. They are not even
content with a Christianity which began with
the preaching of Jesus interpreted mainly as a
differentiation from the general religious craving
of mankind. They must have a religion which
gathers up all the past, takes contributions from
all sources, cleanses, baptizes, and sanctifies them,
and then moves on, always growing to meet the
developing needs of the future ; and there is
only one religion and only one type of Christianity
that holds out any resemblances to such, and it
is Catholicism.
Moreover, the new social feeling of our time
must, if it is to have a religion at all, either invent
a new one, which will be only a humanitarian
and social pantheism, with all the dangers and
deceptions that involves, or the Catholic religion
which gives a sense of corporate reality, of super
human and yet universally human provision for
the lonely, orphaned soul of man. Even if one
is strong enough individually to stand alone,
there is still the question of one s duty and the
need of pooling one s strength where it will serve
others and transmit itself to the future. And
this new feeling that we are members one of
another, and the recognition that this must have
some visible, however imperfect, expression
The Revival of Catholicism 107
demands a Church that is continuous with the
past, and is actually, or potentially, universal.
Moreover, this social sense gives quite a new mean
ing to many doctrines and a sanction to many
practices that from the standpoint of individual
istic rationalism were difficult, and seemed
unnecessary. We must have a creed which
contains more than any one of us as an individual
may want, and a Church which has more forms
of expression than any one of us needs.
(b) The tendency of critical, philosophical, and
psychological thought is in the same direction.
It was once thought that Catholicism was an
invention and a corruption foisted upon the
Church somewhere in the second century. Every
thing is now forcing the genesis of Catholicism
further back. It is generally agreed now by
advanced critics that Catholicism is already
implied as existing, and has left its marks as
existing within the New Testament. The Christian
religion was in existence before a line of the New
Testament was written ; and it is neither a com
plete prescription nor description of that religion,,
since it leaves unnoticed many customs which
were too familiar to be mentioned ; but even
taken by itself it is not a sanction for the Protes
tant reduction. Catholicism, with its insistence
on the Church and with its sacramental notions,
is already in existence in the writings of St. Paul,
and although by the radical scholars he who
was once supposed to be the champion of Protes
tantism is now regarded by them as the author
of Catholicism, they have yet failed to account
for his power to swing the Church his way
without a word of objection. Back and back
108 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
goes the idea of the Sacraments, the idea of the
Church, until there is no accounting for them
except that they were sanctioned and instituted
by Christ.
Philosophy is moving the same way. The old
Absolute Idealism which was once the great
defence of radical Protestantism is now discredited
by philosophy itself. The idea that whatever is
must be of one kind and equally everywhere at
the same time, which involved a static pantheism,
has given way to personal realism, and therefore
has brought back not only a personal God, but
one who can relate Himself directly with such
persons as we are, with all our need of a - here
and now and of a tangible presence. Into this
new philosophy, with its demand that this world
shall be given a reality alongside of and dependent
upon the ministrations of the invisible world, the
doctrine of the Incarnation and the Sacraments
fit like parts intended for one another.
And now psychology discloses that the things
in the New Testament once dismissed as impos
sible, because they were thought to be contrary
to nature, may be only extensions of what we
ourselves know of the action of mind upon matter,
this time of the Creative Mind itself. Psychology
shows that our religion must not only be mental,
but must be also physical, and able to influence
the mind through the body ; that it must not only
be intellectual, but symbolic of the vaster realm
than the conscious intellect sways ; that the mind
needs the discipline which the practices of Catholic
piety have long ago instinctively discovered and
most sanely preserved ; such as prayer, confession,
self-examination, absolution and resolution.
The Revival of Catholicism 109^
BUT THIS CATHOLIC REVIVAL NEEDS INTELLIGENT
APPRECIATION.
1. The lessons of the past must be learned.
If there is a great deal in the Reformation
which is regrettable, it happened, it can never
be as if it had not happened, and there were
efficient causes for it. Those causes have to be
taken to heart if Catholicism is ever to become
safe for humanity. There was over-centralization,
and insufficient liberty was given to people to
mould their own worship. It is often said that
Rome has tightened since the Reformation, and
that more width was allowed previously ; but it
is just this sort of panic reaction and intransigeant
attitude which is unworthy of a Church. Moreover,
if we allow that Christendom must have a visible
centre and a temporal head, that head must rule,
not as an earthly potentate, but as the Vicar of
Christ that is, as Christ Himself ruled, by love
as well as by principle. There must be more
welcome of new movements of the religious life
so long as they do not deny the unchanging
elements. There must be once and for all a
repudiation of all claim to temporal power, the
dropping of political intrigue, and much more
care that the Spirit and spiritual needs dictate,
regulate and limit external forms. There must
not only be an absence of any recourse to per
secution, but the dropping of anything like
terrorism in the exercise of the Church s discipline
and the repudiation of force of every kind. It
must be clearly understood that while the Church
keeps its historic forms as the core of continuity,,
that God may work outside these ; just as our
110 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
Lord chose His Apostles and yet would not pro
hibit the man who was casting out devils in His
name, though he followed not with them. There
must be a much more generous interpretation
both of what it means to be saved and of what it
means to be lost, and it must be made perfectly
clear that sacraments are aids and guarantees,
but not the limits of salvation ; that they are to
develop our life in the earthly body, but will not
determine our salvation at the judgment, which
will be on strictly ethical lines. There must be
much more careful definition of the distinction
between the Divine and the human in the matter
of prayer, so that the saints do not compete with
or hinder direct access to the Father through
Christ. There is no need to deny for a moment
the supreme place among mortals that the Virgin
has, but her place is on the human side, and that
is so in greater degree of all other saints. There
must be a discouragement of hectic devotions
which lead nowhere, and only induce a hysterical
and sentimental frame of mind. Above all, the
great doctrines of the Church must be brought
out into the open and objection challenged.
People know nothing of the philosophical majesty
of Catholic doctrines and of the Catholic system
as a whole, of its unassailable intellectual position,
and of its tremendous inspiration for the mind.
Rome especially has regarded herself too much
as the mere custodian of doctrine and has given
the impression that it can be accepted only on
authority and without personal conviction. Doc
trine comes to us with authority, that is, it is the
authoritative teaching of the Church, and what
this is needs to be known, so that the faithful
The Revival of Catholicism 111
laity may be delivered from the tyrannies of
preachers of all kinds who are always drawing up
private anathematizations of their own. It must
be shown that there is nothing so liberal, so
generous, so fine as Catholic doctrine rightly
interpreted ; that it is the inspiration and guaran
tee, not only of the evangelical experience, but of
all the great liberties and the hopes of man.
2. There must be a new application of Cath
olicism.
(a) It must be shown as vitally affecting life.
It must show its effect on art. Catholic art
has come to be the most tawdry, meretricious and
sentimental thing on earth. Catholicism must
become again the inspiration and the guide of the
arts by restoring a common worship to which the
common people gladly come, and where the artist
receives his creative ideas. Let faith return, and
show that the Incarnation is the sanction and
the theme of all art, demanding the beautifying
of all life and the end of the foul and filthy regime
under which we live, the uglification of life which
has driven the glory of God from the world.
Catholicism must show that God likes men to
play as well as work, and the whole recreative
side of life must be freed from the false shame
and devil enslavement into which it has fallen.
This will be done, not perhaps so much by the
Church reviving its own sacred drama, though
that is salutary, or by organizing games, but by
giving the people a view of life that will make
them laugh again, and by bringing back the festival
character of Sunday and the holidays in memory
of the saints.
This is the best way to dispel the industrial
112 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
nightmare of our times, and construct in the spirit
of gaiety and fellowship a new order of society,
which will overthrow this present tyranny and
build the home of our liberties, the city of God.
(b) Catholicism must organize the True Inter
national.
The Catholic Church must make up its mind
about war. It is perhaps too much to expect it
to say dogmatically that a man must never defend
himself, even as it will never say that private
property is theft ; but it must extend the area of
the State so that fighting is within the State and
therefore fratricide. This it can do if it will teach
the State true methods, by exhibiting the right
way of judicial procedure, that of Jesus Himself,
the confronting of sinners with the Saviour, and
then the word, " Neither do I condemn thee, go
and sin no more " ; by becoming once again the
centre of inspiration for a free industrialism,
organizing the Trades Gilds and the village com
munes ; and by the re-establishing of the monastic
life in the country on an agricultural and labour
basis, decentralizing these hideous cities and leav
ing them to rot away ; above all, by taking over
the judicature of international quarrels and excom
municating any nation which within the Christian
pact makes war.
The Inconstancy of Human
Goodness
" Your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the
early dew it goeth away." HOSEA vi. 4.
MOST of the Prophets condemn their audience
out and out ; they seem concerned only
with the evils they discern ; they are afraid to
praise lest it should lead to pride ; and some
times their message strikes us as harsh and hope
less. But Hosea is distinguished from the rest
of the goodly fellowship of the Prophets by his
tenderer nature and his more human sympathies ;
and this has given him a profounder insight into
the real condition of human nature. He sees
what a lot of good there is in it ; the weakness
is in its admixture with evil, and especially in
the uncertainty and evanescence of the good,
w r hich is as fickle and misleading as the morning
weather.
Its inconstancy is certainly one of its outstanding
characteristics of human nature. It is so easily
stirred by generous emotions and attracted by
high ideals ; the difficulty is to secure their
effectiveness and permanence. Man has good
inclinations and tendencies within him that might
make for righteousness, but they are so soon
exhausted. He seems able to live only by some
intermittent principle, and most often achieves
114 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
nothing better than a continual rise and fall in
his ethical life.
It is this characteristic which has produced the
doctrines either that man has suffered some injury
in his will-power, or that he has never yet risen
to a position of control and gained a state of per
severance. There are devices on the market by
the score for increasing his will-power ; telling
him how to gain the capacity for carrying out
his resolutions, for realizing his ambitions, for
strengthening the volitional side of his mind ;
and mostly they recommend auto-suggestion, the
continual assuring of oneself that one can do
and be what one desires. This method is supposed
to influence the unconscious mind, where the
fault of weak will is suspected to lie. It is nothing
therefore but a defect in mechanism, which can
be remedied with attention and perseverance.
Doubtless the remedy would succeed were it not
that the remedy itself depends upon this very
defect. No doubt these various methods would
be successful if people would only persevere with
them ; but if they had the virtue of perseverance
they would not need the remedies. There is a
doctrine that the human will has been entirely
corrupted, so that it naturally and continually is
inclined to all evil, and must await the touch of
Divine power and a conversion to the love of
righteousness before it can do anything that can
be accounted good in the eyes of God. Although
this is not Catholic Doctrine, and indeed is regarded
as a Protestant and Calvinistic heresy, it has
often had an effect the reverse of what might be
expected, and, by throwing men in despair upon
The Inconstancy of Human Goodness 115
God, has wrought in them a strength of will which
hardly any other form of religion has ever been
able to attain. The Catholic doctrine of the Fall
affirms that the real trouble is not in any injury
done to any of man s faculties, but to the depriva
tion of supernatural grace, which faith and works
can gain and restore : a doctrine which sometimes
seems to us almost too good to be true. But
Augustine probably got as near as may be to
the psychological truth when he discovered that
it was not weakness of will which was the trouble,
but a divided mind, a mind which did not wholly
will nor wholly nill : a mind not made up.
These discussions are by no means idle and
academic ; they affect us all very vitally, and
most of us have enough personal experience to
enable us to discuss them with considerable
authority. Who is there of us who cannot testify
from our secret knowledge of ourselves to the
extraordinary inconstancy which, whatever be
its cause, continually betrays us ? The futility of
making good resolutions at the New Year has
become a stock joke ; and there are probably few
of us over forty who have not given up the practice
as useless and depressing. Yet the passing of
the year and the change of the calendar still
awake in us some annual concern about ourselves.
The alteration of a figure at the end of the year
suddenly makes us aware of the swift passage
of time, and there often comes with that a desire,
however feeble and passing, to do something to
bring ourselves somewhat nearer to what we
know we ought to be. It is, I suppose, one of
the survivals from the religious practices of self-
116 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
examination and resolution ; but it has proved
so ineffectual that we learn to drop it for the
sake of our own comfort and complacency, and
rarely make any effort to discover whether there
is not some better method of girding up the life
with effective resolution. Though, perhaps, even
those who have made more serious and sustained
efforts than a hasty resolution at the dying year
have made no other discovery than that there
is nothing harder to do than to break bad habits
and create new ones. We are inclined to sink
down to a cynical acceptance of this impotence
as a general condition of human nature ; or to
decline any attempt to regulate our life by accept
ing the prevalent philosophy that the ethical and
religious life flourishes the more the less it is
consciously directed or examined.
YET THE IMPERMANENCE OF HUMAN FIDELITY
is A CONTINUAL ANNOYANCE.
1. It introduces into human life a bewildering
uncertainty.
There is the inconstancy of human leadership.
It is the bane of political life. Men gain a tre
mendous ascendancy over their fellows by giving
expression to their ideals ; they evoke a loyalty
which is akin to worship ; and then the idol
crashes to the ground. The trusted leader passes
over to the ranks of the enemy ; or we watch him
making a gradual surrender, while he tells us that
no real change has taken place, although he
appears to betray everything he once stood for.
This causes more bitterness in our political and
social strife than all the straightforward opposition
The Inconstancy of Human Goodness 117
which has to be encountered. We can respect
our political enemies ; we know where to find
them ; but the betrayal of our leaders is unpardon
able. It is very possible, of course, that the
leader has been compelled to change his convic
tions under further enlightenment ; and although,
this may cause keen disappointment, it ought not
to be the case, as it so often is in our public affairs,
that consistency should be valued above conscience.
But frequently enough in such changes there seem
to be other causes at work, and it is their activity
which makes us so disappointed with human
nature. The man who can be trusted when he
is fighting with his back to the wall often fails us
when he achieves success. Few men can stand the
possession of power and the temptations of office
without their character suffering. Others, again,
display a gradual deterioration of their resolution
simply owing to their desire to retain power and
because they have to please a variety of people
if they are to maintain their position. But
what is more embittering is the case of those
who seem to have used the loyalty of enthu
siasts for certain causes only to gain a place
for themselves, when they immediately turn round
and deny the influences which won them their
advancement. But these are only public examples
of what may be observed all too frequently in
human nature generally ; and the issues that
depend upon them only serve to point the serious
hindrance to the world s progress which this
weakness in human nature constitutes.
It is more private, but none the less tragic, for
individuals to experience the fickleness of human
118 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
love. This creates a situation of extraordinary
complicity in the institution of marriage on the
basis of irrevocable vows. We all know how
strangely love may come and go before marriage.
An unbearable desire for some creature of the
opposite sex may dominate our minds until we
think and dream of nothing else, and cannot be
anything but miserable unless we are with them ;
and then time seems blotted out, and hours of
silence or of platitude, of nonsense or of reitera
tion of the same assurances, seem like the very
bliss of eternity, an everlasting now which never
palls and which we never want to end. And we
know how we can pass through such experiences
with a succession of people at a certain youthful
stage, and straightway forget all about them when
some new charmer awakens the same feelings ;
only sometimes the forget fulness and further
unconcern is not mutual, and some pursue their
experiments towards fixity of love over a succession
of wrecked lives and broken hearts. But then
there comes a day when we take vows to remain
faithful unto death, and seem able to expect that
there will be no more of these fluctuations and
transfers of feeling ; only to find, perhaps, that
we have a nature which demands an endless
variety of such experiences, if it is to remain
satisfied, and to discover that we cannot live
with the creature we once thought we could not
live without, and what was once affection turns
to dislike and even hate. To meet this situation
there is recommended the legalizing of definitely
terminable marriage by consent on either side ;
and we shall probably come to that, so far as civil
The Inconstancy of Human Goodness 119
marriage is concerned ; though whether it will
not mean the utter disruption of the family, the
destruction of society, and the abolition of morality
is another question ; perhaps only not of vital
importance, because society seems determined to
destroy itself anyhow, and by many other ways, if
this one is not allowed. Meanwhile the sacramental
marriage which religion demands must rest on
some other basis than the fickle infatuation which
is so often mistaken for love, in fact, upon nothing
less than the impartation of supernatural grace,
if we are to keep faithful for other reasons than
our own personal comfort or enjoyment. Such a
marriage is a quite different thing ; it is a vocation,
it is undertaken in obedience to a Divine purpose,
and since there is promised with it a special grace
in order that it may be maintained, it can
reasonably and desirably take permanent vows.
But there is the added complication that religious
fidelity itself is often subject to a like fluctuation.
There is no type of religion which can guarantee
to keep a man faithful ; there seem no human
convictions, however deep and firmly based, which
are not liable to change. A man may pass from
Roman Catholicism to complete agnosticism, and
vice versa ; when it would be difficult in either
case to prove that the change had anything to
do with purely rational causes. If people were
sincere in recording the history of their religious
changes they would often have to give quite other
reasons for making them than those they proffer ;
and it has become a favourite exercise to try
to discover from the various classical apologias
what it was that actually determined the change.
120 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
Newman provides such an inexhaustible interest
because every critic has a different theory of the
actual motive of his change. But the feature of
modern-day religion is more like the perpetual and
kaleidoscopic movement of a circus. There is a
continual procession round the inner and outer
circles of faith. There are some people who have
even been in and out of Rome more than once.
And every one who has had much experience in
dealing with enquirers or with souls in difficulty
must sometimes be saddened as he recollects
those who once ran well, those who at one time
showed promise of great attainment, but who
soon dropped out of the race and turned aside to
some quite ordinary life, content and satisfied.
There comes to almost every one, somewhere
about adolescence, aspirations which reach out
vaguely after some great thing ; but how many
settle down to the most commonplace existence,
or even lose interest in religion altogether.
2. We know the dangers only too well from our
own fluctuating feelings.
We have had our high moments, when we saw
the light, discerned the truth and vowed eternal
fidelity and absolute devotion. But those moments
are often superseded by a reaction, by a chill
detachment, or even by disgust. At the best,
such moments often remain, not as permanent
impulses, but only as memories, to which we
return only in fancy or to mourn over. We had
a great emotion in which it was possible to vow
almost everything ; but we have lived to drift
back again to a undirected and undedicated life,
determined by outward events, swayed by the
The Inconstancy of Human Goodness 121
opinions of others, coerced by the constant com
promises of life. Or we may still cling to the
vision as something we mean to obey some day
when circumstances are more propitious, when
we can work ourselves up to take the final step ;
but we must be getting rather alarmed at the
poor prospect of realization ; for all that is how
long ago, and every day is taking us farther away
from the possibility of making any change now.
What disconcerts us most is the impossibility
of keeping our resolutions. We do have sudden
awakenings. We discover that we are losing
ground, that some bad habit is gaining upon us.
We become aware of something which is spoiling
our lives, and we determine to change it. It may
be a quite small thing : procrastination of decisions
or conflicts until things are decided for us ; battles
which are never lost only because they are never
fought ; a growing irritability which makes it
difficult for people to live or work with us ; care
lessness about appointments, which is under
mining our reputation for trustworthiness ; sloth-
fulness, which is stealing away our days, gradually
destroying our efficiency and reducing everything
to chaos around us ; a constant speaking about
ourselves which is making us a bore to every one.
But the discovery of these things, and even a
serious view of them is one thing ; the mending
of them is another. It is most distressing how
we can come back to our work after holidays
with a determination to take up or finish some
piece of work, or come out of a retreat with
resolutions that certain bad habits shall end, and
certain good habits shall be formed; and looking
122 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
back find that almost nothing has been realized
of all our good intentions. We discover that to
will is easy, to carry out is astonishingly difficult.
To determine that we will get up five minutes
earlier each morning, or that we will not refer
to ourselves in conversation for a whole week, or
that we will drop certain items from our food or
drink, will often suffice to reveal to us that there
are some things which look perfectly simple but
which are extraordinarily hard to do. And it may
be something much more serious ; some horrid
habit, or disgusting vice, or mortal sin, and yet
a hundred times we resolve with penitence and
sincere intention, only to fall with the same
awful regularity.
There is a general lack of sustained vitality.
Even if we have secured a certain amount of
emancipation and attained a certain standard of
control there is a curious absence of ever-developing
life about us. There is not something in us which
is always urging us on and bearing us up ; an
insatiable appetite for more holiness, more dis
cipline, more power. We are easily content and
glad to be let alone. The infinity of development
promised in our religion tires us to think of. " Does
the road wind uphill all the way ? " Must we be
always labouring at the oars, toiling all night
and mostly catching nothing, watching and striving
to so little purpose, praying, but never getting
away from ourselves, gazing at heights but getting"
no nearer to them, always reading about great
experiences, but having to be content with second
hand reports and mere dreams of greatness ? If
we could only feel the breezes of the Spirit carrying
The Inconstancy of Human Goodness 123
our bark to the desired haven ; if we could only
see some result from our exercises ; if we could
only find our appetite growing after prolonged
taking of tonics ! It is spiritual lassitude which is
so difficult to overcome ; our fundamental defect
is that we do not care sufficiently, and cannot
work up concern even about the things that we
are persuaded matter most in life. The highest
position some of us have attained is to have
awakened from the unconcern in which so many
others live, and yet only sufficiently to make us
worried and despairing, not sufficiently to make
progress. Some people have gone to sleep and
are letting their boat drift down towards the
rapids ; we may be awake and pulling hard, but
we seem to drift just the same.
WE MUST LEARN HOW TO CONSERVE AND AUG
MENT OUR RELIGIOUS LIFE.
1. We shall have to take the matter of resolu
tion more seriously.
After all, it is no wonder that most resolutions
are never kept. They are made hurriedly, little
thought is given to them ; sometimes so little-
that we not only forget to carry them out, we
even forget that we have made them, or what
they were about. We make no preparations for
fulfilling them ; a passing thought is deemed
sufficient, a mere wish, and that perhaps not at
all whole-hearted. It would not only be a miracle
if such resolutions ever effected anything, it would
be very bad for us, for they would really form
no part of our self-determined character. We
have made no survey of the ground we mean to>
124 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
conquer, we have not really made up our mind
that we regard this project as supremely worth
doing, we do not know whether we are willing
to pay the price.
Resolutions need to be undertaken only after
careful consideration. We ought to bring carefully
before our mind what it is we wish to do, and to
find out how much we wish to do it. We must
come to a clearly thought-out determination
before we make any resolution ; for it is not only
sacrilegious to break religious vows, it is very
weakening to our character. We need to bring
before us the actual condition we wish to attain,
to give some thought to cultivating delight in it,
or if it be an evil thing to be dropped, then work
ing up a detestation of it and a real contrition
about it. If we are going to gain any good we
must have a high valuation of its desirability ;
if we are going to cease from any sin we must
have a real estimate of its heinousness. Then we
need to consider what alterations this will demand
in our life, and we have to decide whether they
are possible and we are likely ever to observe
them. We ought to enlist all practical aids to
that end, if necessary destroy all means of retreat,
write down what we propose, make open promise
to some one, and only then resolve that it shall be.
The resolution ought to be embodied in prayer.
It should be made as part of an act of special
dedication, and the thing promised and vowed
before God, and grace sought that the vow may
be kept. If this does not take effect all at once,
we should not be too discouraged, but repent, and
try again ; keep a daily diary, and at least try
The Inconstancy of Human Goodness 125
to reduce the number of times we fail over a
course of weeks ; give up time and thought and
strength to this one thing. Probably we need to
increase our general powers of resolution. We are
trying to operate with a faculty which has never
been much used ; and therefore we should exercise
the faculty apart from the particular thing to be
attempted. Resolution should always form part
of our devotions. It comes best after meditation,
and if geared on to the subject of meditation
will tend to link together the affective and the
active life. There might always be a resolution
made after each communion. It does not matter
how small a thing it is, so long as it is something
definite, and preferably something that can be
done that very day. If one s will has reached a
pathological condition, it should be exercised in
perfectly meaningless operations, done just because
we have resolved to do them ; like standing on
a chair for ten minutes, or with your hands over
your head, or slowly counting matches out of a
box and putting them as slowly back again ;
anything which has no value but which you do
simply because you have made up your mind
to do it.
2. We must try to win the grace of perseverance-
Somewhere in this world there is a force which
never grows tired. It is the miracle of the uni
verse. It cannot be accounted for by mathematics.
Think of Newton s law that a force tends to
persist in a straight line. Why should it ? All
we know from observation shows that there can
be no such force unless in the living energy of
mind and spirit. There is such a force in nature,,
126 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
and that is why the earth goes round, the universe
exists. There must be such a force in grace, or
religion would have passed from this world long
ago, the Church would have gone out of existence,
and man would have forgotten God. That power
is meant to be ours. Our Lord promised to the
very fickle woman of Samaria, water which would
not only quench her thirst but which would be
a well of water within her springing up unto ever
lasting life. . Eternal life is not mere duration ;
it is an indestructible and inexhaustible principle.
There is here a continuous stimulation, a continual
renewal, a life capable of endless growth and
development. This is what is promised by the
religion which dares to declare itself absolute and
final, simply because there is nothing final about
it. There is this real, objective, supernatural
grace to fall back upon. It is the grace of final
perseverance, and its fount is the infinite, inex
haustible and never-tiring God.
In order to win that grace, which was once
ours, we must show ourselves, not worthy of it,
but sufficiently responsible so that it shall not
be wrongly used : we must show ourselves in
earnest in seeking it ; we must be willing to pay
the price it is worth ; we must make the gaining
of it the chief end of our life. But once we have
been touched by it, although we can fall away
from grace, even after reaching any point short
of what is called union with God, we can rest
assured that if we keep ourselves in the ways of
grace, grace itself will never fail. We have only
to establish continual contact. This entails three
very simple things ; the practice of our devotions
The Inconstancy of Human Goodness 127
as a dutiful habit, never to be intermitted or
dropped below a certain stage ; perform them as
you have learned to do your eating, as a duty.
Then it entails the cultivation of religious fellow
ship ; you cannot live this life alone, and you
were not intended to ; you must have your faith
sharpened and your emulation stimulated by
others who have the same aim ; you must cultivate
the communion of saints on earth and in glory ;
and that means more than having your name
registered as a member of a Church. It means
seeking genuine religious fellowship, which alone
really constitutes membership of the Church.
All some Church membership does, is to expose
us to greater condemnation, because we have
slighted our opportunity, and made superficial
and nominal what was meant to be vital and real.
And, finally, there must be regular communion.
The Sacrament of Holy Communion is a guaran
teed impartation of grace designed by our Lord
to feed the life of the soul, in which for us He
renews His sacrifice on Calvary in order to break
a way into our hearts. That is a dreadfully
necessary work ; it costs Him much, and us little,
save devout intention to receive what He will
give. Nothing stimulates the inner life like fre
quent communions, properly prepared for and
devoutly made.
There is a value in repeated dedication. Our
wills are so unused that we can hardly tell when
they move at all. Sometimes when we make an
act of dedication, it seems to be unreal and the
immediate results often only confirm our fears.
But there is more takes place in an act of will
128 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
than we know. It need not be accompanied by
either emotion or knowledge ; we may feel no
thrill of joy, and we may have no idea what it
is that we are dedicating ; but the act repeated
as devotion may one day have effect in some
great act in which our whole life is offered up
as a sacrifice ; or more and more of our life may
be seen to demand dedication, and thus more and
more of the acreage of our personality will be
brought under religious cultivation. Never fear,
brave heart ; it needs only the tiniest movement
of the will to gear you on to the will that moves
the stars and made the world so beautiful. The
hand that made all these things can make you,
by the co-operation of your will, what He intended
you to be, the very crown of His creation. There
was grace enough to make the saints and martyrs
of olden times ; there is grace enough to make
you a saint, if that is what you really want to
be. The only thing that is not possible, is to be
half a saint and half a worldling ; half dedicated
and half self-concerned ; nothing will happen if
you half will, half nill. Only make up your
mind, and God will do the rest.
The Quest for God
" Oh that I knew where I might find Him ! " JOB
xxiii. 3.
MANY people like Job who do not like the
rest of the Bible; this because of its
literary quality, its dramatic detachment, or its
supposed scepticism. Yet if the author has a
fine style, it is because he is passionately protesting
against a false solution to the problems that per
plex him ; he preserves the dramatic attitude in
presenting the case of his adversaries in the best
possible fashion, though there can be no doubt
that it is in a cry like this that his own feelings
find expression ; but there is nothing of scepti
cism in the cry. Job does not for a moment
doubt that God exists : he only voices the tre
mendous desire that he knew where He could
be found. He is not seeking a confirmation of
God s existence so much as an assurance of His
justice, reasonableness, and goodness ; not that
he really doubts that : he is confident that if
he could only meet God face to face He would
let him argue his case as one man with another.
It is this careful discrimination of the poet s
meaning which enables us to give the Book of
Job its right place in Old Testament revelation.
It is, of course, not an early book, as was once
130 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
supposed : it belongs to one of the very latest
strata of Hebrew thought, and represents a
development which must have been going on
alongside the growth of ritual and the ever more
rigid adherence to the Law, and together with
them sanctions a third attitude towards God
besides that of worship and obedience, namely,
that of intellectual enquiry. Nor does the
emergence of this book really indicate that the
chill of scepticism was descending upon Hebrew
religion. It rather indicates that the Hebrew
revelation was itself generating the desire for
something more : the revelation of God in some
more realizable form. It was the accepted belief
that God could not render Himself visible because
no man could see God and live : it was the proper
attitude that man should not question the ways
of God. But here Job boldly advances beyond
that position, and states his conviction that man
could bear the vision of God, and that God would
permit man to argue with Him on a basis of com
mon reason. This book is therefore beginning to
voice the cry for a revelation of God which should
be not merely a theophany, a manifestation of
God in some visible and overwhelming glory,
even though this is all the drama itself presents
as its closing scene ; there is a cry for something
more, which, if it is not a conscious demand
for an incarnation, nothing less than the Incar
nation could satisfy.
This interpretation of Job s bitter cry may
seem to remove him from all sympathy with
modern scepticism, for the modern man has come
to doubt not whether God is revealable, or whether,
The Quest for God 131
if revealed, He would prove to be a person with
whom one could discuss as with an equal, but
whether God really exists at all. And modern
man has come to this position through the consider
ation of three sets of difficulties : whether the
idea of God is not contradictory and therefore
irrational ; whether the idea of God is not now
unnecessary to explain the existence of the world ;
and whether the actual condition of the world
does not preclude the existence of God, who by
definition must be both perfect in character and
supreme in power. These three sets of difficulties
are those which have been raised by philosophy,
by science, and by ethics respectively. In the
opinion of many on both sides of the debate the
question has never been finally settled on rational,
scientific, and ethical lines, and even on the
religious side many think it never can be. But,
meanwhile, for our generation the issue has shifted
its ground, and now the whole question is looked
at from the psychological point of view. The
existence of God is a question which the modern
man postpones or regards as beyond our powers
of discussion; what he is primarily concerned
with is that the idea of God is an integral constituent
of the human mind, bred there by centuries of
thought, perhaps even instinctive, and, even
when repressed out of consciousness, still so
operative that it can go on continually creating
disturbance, manifesting itself in intractable
bodily and mental symptoms whose cause has
hitherto been unsuspected, and a factor which
no one must attempt to cut out unless he dares
to precipitate an inner conflict beyond his powers
132 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
to resolve. This attitude, whatever it contributes
of a more serious estimate of religion, conceals
a superficiality which the earnest religious person
finds himself at one with the earnest sceptic in
deploring ; for both demand that the problem
of the reality underlying the idea of God must
be faced, and it can be urged that the proposal
to retain an idea alongside a conscious doubt
as to its reality is nothing less than giving an
invitation to insanity.
Therefore it would be a gain if we could get
back to the sincerity of this book, cut beneath
the merely psychological question to the question
of reality, when I believe that it would be found
that we were then well on the way to the only
possible solution, which is to be found in the
Incarnation, the consummation towards which all
revelation looks, the confirmation every awakened
soul demands, and the only final answer to the
doubts raised by the mind of man. Therefore
our religion faces fundamental doubt much more
calmly than any other type of thought ; because
it recognizes that the raising of doubt must make
men satisfied in the end with nothing less than
full Christianity. But let us get back and examine
the position of this questing soul, and see what
it is he is demanding.
THERE ARE QUESTIONS WHICH MIGHT BE PUT
TO SUCH A SEEKER.
1. Do you not start out with the very thing
you want to find ?
While you profess yourself to be seeking God,
you must in some sense already possess Him ;
The Quest for God 133
for you assume that when you find Him you will
know Him, which means that in some degree
you know Him already. This is not only true
about God ; it is true about all knowledge. If
man sets out to solve any question, he must
admit that he is assuming that the question is
soluble by him, which means that he will know
when he has reached the right solution. If the
mind is going to come to any conclusion as the
result of its search, it must be either that it has
found a reality which corresponds to its own
pre-existing conception, or that, although it could
form no clear conception of what it wanted, there
was a conception sufficiently definite to reject
anything which did not satisfy it, or that what
was found fitted in with or more perfectly recon
ciled everything else the mind already contained.
That is to say that the mind which is setting out
to find God either knows perfectly well what
it is looking for, and therefore mentally already
possesses it, or possesses it unconsciously, or
possesses it by way of feeling a blank which God
alone can fill. This is the one thing that all
earnest seekers ought to consider : I know what
I am looking for, and therefore something even
more wonderful than my already possessing it
must be admitted, namely, that in some mysterious
way what I am seeding has already found me.
There is only one way of escape from the logic
of this position : it is that it is possible for the
mind of man to conceive something that need
not exist. Indeed, it will seem at first thought
as if this is not only not impossible, but is what
the mind of man is constantly doing, especially
134 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
since it is by first thinking of something which
does not exist that we make any progress at all.
But if the matter is looked at more carefully it
will be seen that the answer cannot be decided
quite so simply and dogmatically. It is evident
that a man often thinks that certain things exist
which do not ; he does this when he has dreams
or hallucinations ; and surely also when he invents
something or creates some work of art which is
no mere imitation of nature, but a real origination.
But closer analysis will show that there is no
real creation of anything purely original. A man
can imagine that he sees snakes when there are
no snakes there : but there are such things as
snakes. Some travellers, apparently in the same
condition, have seen unicorns or sea-serpents ;
but a unicorn, although an entirely fabulous
beast, is simply a combination of a horse and
a narwhal s horn ; and the only thing that is
wrong with the sea-serpent is that the creature
has somehow got into its wrong element. All
man s imagination, even in its wildest form, is
really nothing more than a new combination of
things which already exist. An artist might
invent a new shade which had never been matched
before either in nature or in art, but it would
still be obtained by mixing well-known colours
in different proportions. Therefore the idea of
God must be derived from existing things, and
even if it could be proved to be only a combination
of incongruous notions, it would be immensely
difficult to maintain that man could create an
idea, not only higher than anything which existed,
but even superior to his own mind. Here Catholic
The Quest for God 135
theology is less afraid of natural science than
philosophical idealism, since it teaches that all
our ideas of God have been derived from the
natural universe and those sense perceptions to
which science appeals as the only basis of fact.
And it is no longer an objection to point out that
the idea of God has gone through a process of
evolution. First of all, so have all man s great
ideas ; secondly, not all thought of God has
evolved, some is just where it was thousands of
years ago : it is only along one line that it has
developed consistently and in an ever higher
direction ; and the fact of its evolution into
greater purity only confirms that there is some
thing real behind it, and something purer than
it as yet is pure.
Therefore the first search must be within the
mind of man. If the idea of God contains some
things which at present cannot be reconciled, the
very fact that they have been classed together
in the one mind as essential shows that there
is some deeper sense that they are reconcilable ;
and deeper than the idea there must be that
which corresponds to it and has created it. To
be sure of that you must dwell for long upon the
thought of God, bring it out into the conscious
mind, examine it, pay attention to it, question
it ; and enquire not only if it is a consistent idea,
but if it is necessary to your love and life as well
as to your thought. The initial trouble about
religion is not about facts, but about noticing
them ; not about the ideas already present in
the mind and inevitably assumed in thought,
but about giving them sufficient weight and
136 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
attention. If you will only think profoundly
and start from the beginning, you will see that
your search ends before it begins, that you
set out with what you hope to find, and that
what you set out with is not your own, but was
imparted to you by its only sufficient cause.
But a second question can be put which is
really speculative.
2. Are you not asking for something incom
patible with the nature of God ?
You are crying, " Oh that I knew where I might
find Him." Is not the question manifestly wrong ?
Is there any where in connection with the nature
of God ? If you find Him here, will you be
able to believe that this is God, for is it not
of the very nature of God to be everywhere ?
Are you not asking for a localization ? This
is a very chilling suggestion to the earnest seeker,
and it is one that is often made to-day in the
interests of religion itself. For God to be re
vealed at any one point is surely to contract His
very essence, which is omnipresent. Then, again,
are you not expecting some sort of visible mani
festation, which is surely a derogation from the
pure spirituality of God ? If God were to render
Himself visible, it would have to be in some form
which was a condescension and therefore a diminu
tion of Himself, something temporary and there
fore a denial of His eternal nature, something
merely an appearance and therefore something
quite different from what He really is. All this
is continually urged against Christianity in the
interest of a higher and more spiritual religion.
Further, it might be urged that our seeker was
The Quest for God 137
asking for an individual manifestation suited just
to himself and to himself alone ; for since we are
all constituted so differently, we each need some
different form of confirmation and consolation.
Yet there is no doubt that man does cry out for
something like this. It may be objected that it
is the cry for the impossible, that it is this cry
which has introduced into religion all its corrup
tions and confusions, and is the source of all its
idolatries, its limitations to tribes and nations
and individual souls ; but man still cries out for
it. And he can justify this cry ; for the denial
of its possibility takes with it more than is often
conceded. If God can only communicate with
man by thought, then it is obvious that the
existence of a creature who is something beside
thought constitutes a great problem for creation.
You have denied that God could have made
the world or man s body. But the objection
is just as forceful against thought itself, which
is a translation of reality, a diminution of
God ; and moreover, it is derived from sensible
things. It must be that sensible things awaken
thoughts beyond themselves, because God i&
behind all things, and created them for this
very purpose. If we are not allowed to have
a revelation that can be true here and now, but
is also true always and everywhere, is not
the everywhereness of God a blank and empty
idea, a statement which has no meaning, since
we cannot know what He is like who is every
where? If God cannot reveal Himself to the
individual, then the individual is a false creation,
and the only thing to do is to cease from being
138 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
individuals at all. Therefore the idea of a local
ized, incarnate, and individual revelation is not
inconceivable from the nature of God.
These objections do, however, set forth condi
tions which will still have to be observed if
these demands are to be satisfied. The local
manifestation will have to be one that can
be made anywhere. It must not be a piece
of God which something else contradicts : it
must be a revelation of that which is every
where. If it has a visible form, there will still
have to be spiritual perception of something
which the mere external form does not reveal, but
awakens in the perceiver. If there is a visitation
vouchsafed specially to one person, it must still be
something which is for all men, and only given
at this point to make the universal recognition
speedier. No personal manifestation allows me to
appropriate God for myself, nor must localization
mean limitation. There is no form of incarnation
which will dispense me from bringing spiritual
vision to bear on the Incarnate. Indeed, there
may be a sense in which an incarnation, while
answering my desire to see God in my flesh, makes
a greater demand for spiritual discernment than
the Unincarnate ; there may be something un
expected about the external appearance, some
thing lowly, undistinguished, sorrowful, poor. If
there is anything given specially to me, it must be
only that I may pass it on to others and thus
become of service to them : not in making them
satisfied with receiving something second-hand
from me, but in preparing for a similar revelation
to them by awakening their desire for it.
The Quest for God 139
WHAT DOES THE SATISFACTION OF THE
QUEST DEMAND ?
1. There must be something on the subjective
side.
It is inconceivable that this quest will ever reach
its goal unless there is very great earnestness
in its pursuit. Nothing in this world is rewarded
without effort ; and here no less ; but that for no
arbitrary or merely analogical reason, but simply
because for a soul to win its way here with ease
would be fatal to the enjoyment of its success.
There was something in the old idea that man
could not see God and live : there had to be some
special preparation for the vision if it was not to
prove destructive. The way in which pharisaism
dogs religion, pride corrupts spirituality, what
was meant for all is hoarded for oneself ; these
things suffice to show that only after a discipline
and a novitiate can the vision be vouchsafed.
It is not so much that we cannot stand the over
powering majesty, as that we may be unready
to appreciate the amazing humility. The tragedy
about Christ s coming to us was that, out of love
for us, He ventured all too soon, perhaps two
thousand years too soon. And a revelation may
condemn as well as save, may bind as well
as release. Therefore personal revelation is only
granted when the spirit has been purged of all
other desires and ambitions and this one thing is
wanted more than all ; and, if needs be, in exchange
for all. Only at the end of a long desperate
search and in response to some despairing cry
does God appear to the soul of man.
Therefore it is not surprising that man often has
140 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
to pass through certain experiences before he can
even feel the need of God. This is not to say
that any one of these experiences is necessary
in the nature of things ; but they are necessary
when we are already in a false condition. It
ought to be enough for any one of us to have the
passion for truth to lead us straight to God; the
road of our own ideals ought to bring us at once
to His presence ; one moment of pure thought
and we should be face to face ; the very necessities
of our social life and the conditions of our existence
all press us to Him ; but if we live far from one
or out of true relationship with another, these
things may fail of their effect. And then other
forces have to work. Sometimes it is the fall
into sin ; that is, into some open and generally
reprobated sin. It was never necessary for any
man to fall into sin in order to know his need of
God; for the one sin into which all have fallen is
pride, which effectually hides God from us because
it hides us from ourselves. But when we have
fallen into pride God has to allow us to fall into
some sin which wounds pride. It is the man who
has forfeited the respect of his fellows or of himself
who often learns to cry out to God ; which is the
sole reason why the harlots and publicans go into
the Kingdom of God before the merely respectable.
Sometimes we have to know what loneliness means.
When we are surrounded by a continual stream
of people, we can interpose a perpetual distraction
which keeps us from ever thinking of ourselves or
discovering what our fundamental personal needs
are ; and half of life often consists in trying to
find human substitutes for God, preferably in
The Quest for God 141
crowds, lest we should find through the failure
of one on whom love is altogether set our most
awful need of One who cannot fail or misunder
stand. Sometimes we have to know our ambitions
cruelly broken before we can turn to seek God ;
the disappointments and difficulties of life have
forced more people to look for God than anything
else. We are set in a world which cannot perfectly
satisfy, lest we should linger on a lower stage of
life for ever, mere parasites upon a changing
show of things.
What is to be done with those who have had no
such incentive to seek God ; with the thousands
who are willing to live on a second-hand religion
and never experiment for themselves ; to whom
this cry of Job is disturbing, not because they are
afraid it has no answer, but because they have
never felt like that themselves ? There is one
thing which can wake them, and it is the invasion
of doubt. If men would only face themselves
with the possibility that there is no God, and
would work through all the shoddy substitutes
of immanent reason, life-force, evolution, inherent
necessity, social progress, and see that they are
nothing but attempts to conceal the emptiness
which is really there, they would wake up to deter
mine that this question must be solved beyond
further doubt. Often when I have pressed
this dilemma I find I have been misunderstood ;
as if I had urged this in order to frighten men into
accepting the idea of God on authority ; on the
contrary, it is to waken them to see that nothing
but the most convincing revelation made to one
self as well as to others will suffice to banish the
142 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
nightmare, darkness and chaos which such an
alternative as the non-existence of God implies.
We should all be startled into the one real quest,
if we only saw what the alternative involved.
2. But it demands something objective.
We admit we have an idea of God in our minds.
That idea did not originate with us ; it was im
parted. How it was imparted, may be a matter
of dispute ; whether by secret and special intuition,
or by the pressure on us of the world of nature ;
whether originally at creation or by gradual
dawning of man s mind. There is good reason
to think that the idea of God is in the minds of
all, but merely general, unnoticed or buried; and
often only denial, opposition, or rebellion suffice
to reveal its presence and activity. Savages have
a pure but unused idea of God; religious folk of
all but the front rank live on what they never
propose to test to the uttermost. Most people are
not serious about religion just because they believe
God is there all the time and can be turned to if
He should be wanted.
But God has done more than give us an idea :
He has incarnated the very Idea of Himself. The
desire for the Incarnation comes not only from
love or worship ; it springs from profound thought
upon the things of God which recognizes that the
Incarnation is implied in and demanded by thought.
It was not given at once ; man had to be worked
up to see the necessity for it ; and it was the
religion which dreamed of it that progressed
towards it, received it and carried the line of reve
lation along its true development. Once you face
the awful suggestion that the whole idea of God
The Quest for God 143
may be in our minds without any corresponding-
reality and yet, as modern psychology declares, is
there immovably, a confirmation of the idea is
demanded, and that can be nowhere save in an
incarnation. Notice that both idea and answer
are needed. It would be useless for Christ to have
come into a world which was not prepared with the
idea of God which He was to confirm. He did
not really teach anything absolutely new about
God : He confirmed what the prophets had known,
about God from the beginning by showing it forth
in His own person. When you have found the
idea of God in your mind, then look at Christ.
Remember they ought to agree ; but do not
conclude that if at first comparison they differ,,
this or that side is alone right ; let them play
upon one another until they fit in as the key to
a lock and a glove to the hand.
But there is still something more needed ; it
is whether Christ, thus living our life long ago,,
can come to me now as a spirit, yet clothed with
humanity. That is the great experience which
confirms everything. Some have the experience
of an indwelling presence, some the conviction of
an overruling providence, but nothing brings
the confirmation, which sets you for ever at rest,
like the personal coming of Christ to the soul. It
takes many forms, occurs under different condi
tions : comes to some in lonely walks, to others in
dreams, to others at the Sacrament ; comes some-
times long sought, sometimes apparently unsought ;
but it is always the same Christ. If you long for
this, and long for this most of all, and above all
long for it, not for your own enjoyment, but for
144 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
the saving of your soul for God, the perfecting of
your character for man, making your service
more useful for others, it shall be given you.
Be assured if you already feel the need of it, it
is a sign that He is drawing near. If your heart
burns as this promise, it is because He has already
been near unrecognized. Soon He will answer
you by the declaration of Himself to your awakened
spirit. And this end of the quest is not the end
of life, but its beginning ; not the goal where you
lie down to rest, but the point where you are set
free for still greater adventure. It sets you free
from the paralysis of the one great problem to
tackle the practical problems of life : it gives you
a light which reveals your own character as needing
to be remade in His likeness ; it gives you the
capacity, the demand, the hunger for eternal life as
the only sphere which gives space for the working
out of all that God means for you and for
humanity. God set your feet upon the one search
worth beginning, the one search which never dis
appoints, the one search which sets you for ever
free.
The Final Hope for
Every Man
" Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out."
JOHN vi. 37.
THIS most welcome assurance to all sorts and
conditions of men is embedded in one of
the profoundest mystical and sacramental chapters
of the Fourth Gospel. It sets forth Christ as the
true bread from heaven, the food on which the
soul of man must feed if he would live. No doubt
Christ is here conceived not only as the historical
Jesus, but as the eternal Logos, the Thought and
Wisdom of God, through whom this world took
its rise and who imparts something of His light
to every man who is born into the world. But
there is no doubt either that the Logos is com
pletely identified with Jesus, and that the coming
of the Logos in human flesh is purposely and
solely designed to make it easier for men to
come to Him and to believe on Him ; the eternal
and universal and the historical and personal are
here indissolubly united. I am the true Bread,
says Jesus, which came down from heaven. But
it is also maintained that this manifestation of
146 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
the true food of man having been made in this
historical way, he who now comes to Jesus and
believes on Him not only feeds, but finds that
which takes away all hunger and thirst. The
absolute finality of Jesus for the human soul is in
this: that when he comes to Christ his desire is
satisfied ; to believe in Him means an end of
that awful thirst of the mind for certainty and
of the heart for companionship. It cannot be
decided on philosophical grounds, nor can we
wait for history to vindicate, whether Christ is
all that man needs ; but it is the evidence of
experience that he who comes to Christ finds
what all men are really seeking, and he who
believes on Him reaches the end of all desire :
the finality of Christ rests upon His endless
capacity to satisfy the whole awakened nature
of man.
And then the discourse goes on to disclose the
inner meaning of sacramental communion, by
which it is made possible for men in all ages to
come to Christ, because He has made a visible
and tangible channel by which He can still come
to them : this not apart from, nor exclusive of,
invisible and universal spiritual communion. The
high sacramental teaching of this chapter is now
acknowledged by most scholars, they even admit-
ing that it justifies the doctrine of transubstanti-
ation ; only saving themselves by doubting whether
such teaching could in any wise be conceived as
coming from Christ. But it is impossible to dis
cover any other source which could have given
rise to teaching of this nature ; and it needs to
The Final Hope for Every Man 147
be remembered that the sacramental channel
neither limits nor exhausts the power of Jesus
Christ to come to any soul of man, any more than
the Incarnation destroyed the universal mission
of the Logos ; both are designed to make believing
and coming easier.
There are many other things in this chapter so
profound as to be difficult to understand and so
unique as to be difficult to receive ; and it is
therefore welcome that in the very midst of all
this ultimate revelation, which, because it is to
satisfy all men to the end of time, must contain
many things which just at present you or I may
not see the need for, which combines in one whole
the mystical, the evangelical and the sacramental
in a way very few are able to comprehend I say
it is very welcome that Jesus should here glance
round to the furthest fringes of human condition
and solemnly declare that whosoever comes, in
whatever condition he may be, will not be cast
out by Him. He has just spoken, what we should
call in our sectarian manner, words that look
predestinarian : "all that the Father gives me
shall come to me " ; as if only some actually
arrive at Christ, and these by the Father s special
gift. But lest this should be misunderstood, as
it very easily might be, He says, nevertheless,
any one who is coming the present tense is to
be contrasted with the perfect arrival which the
future tense indicates shall not be thrown
back or cast out ; and this with the reiterated
negative which we can only translate by "in
no wise."
148 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
THIS is AN UNCONDITIONAL ASSURANCE
ABOUT ANY ONE.
1. We can appreciate its application to pictur
esque sinners.
Our Lord s attitude to the fallen and outcast
has gradually made some difference to the judg
ment of the world. It has given us at least pity
for those poor souls who have stumbled and lost
not only the respect of the world, but what is far
more serious, their own self-respect. Our pity for
the drunkard and the harlot, the thief and the
murderer, has been tremendously increased under
the moral teaching and the sublime example of
the Redeemer. We all recognize to-day how
much social conditions, how much the fatal com
bination of opportunity and passion, may explain
why one man falls and another remains up
right. Looking into our own hearts, whether by
the aid of the moral teaching of the Gospel, or
by the diagnosis known as psycho-analysis, we
know that all the fatal weaknesses and unholy
desires which doom others are in ourselves ; and
that we have no absolute guarantee that given
the same circumstances we should not have acted
in the same way.
But such pity, unless sublimated, leads either
to a hopeless determinism in our judgments, to
the idea that no man could have ever done other
than he did do, when instead of the evangelical
conclusion that all men are sinners, we arrive at
the opposite extreme that no man is a sinner ;
or we come to the equally hopeless sentimentalism
which mourns over a man s condition without being
The Final Hope for Every Man 149
at all able to help him. It is when we understand
the real inner condition of the outcast that we
touch a deeper passion than merely sentimental
pity. We see in some cases the awful bondage
into which a soul can fall. Who does not know
of some man of intellect and genius who has fallen
under the pitiful slavery of drink, which gradually
undermines his will, and at length his ability, until
he wakes up to find himself bound hand and foot,
and as far as this world is concerned, absolutely
useless ? Who has not met some person of
amiable character and of fine aspirations who
is unable to resist the seductions of fleshly lust,
and who at last ruins his character and sets him
self on flame with desire that can never be satisfied,
bringing himself literally to hell before this life
ends ? Such cases want more than pity, they
want power to rescue them from their slavery
and torment.
And there is no hope we can cling to save that
here or elsewhere they may be able to come to
Christ. We rejoice to know that if at the very
last they turn in their despair to Him, there is
one who will not only sympathize and admit them
to His friendship, but one who can by that friend
ship set them free. They may be undesirable
characters ; their own friends may long ago have
given them up, their own mother ceased to hope
for them, but there is always Christ, and there is
surely no one who is not glad of that. When
earth has spurned them there is still the Friend
of Sinners ; when this world can do no more than
pronounce judgment, there is another assize at
150 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
which they will have every allowance made fo*
them. The pity of Christ is infinite, and will
have room for those whom man has even ceased
to pity ; the power of Christ will take up those
who have been discharged by all human agency
as incurable. It does not matter how degraded,
how enslaved ; it does not matter how long they
have put off their repentance, that they have only
come to Him when the pleasures of the flesh have
ceased to attract and the worn out emotions can
no longer enjoy the soft seductions of sensuality ;
though they come without a rag of moral integrity
left, smelling of the swine trough and only driven
home by desperate hunger, the Heart of the
Universe is as open to them as to the saint, the
Holiest of All will gather them to His breast and
kiss away the leprosy from the tainted lips. We
want always some one to preach this ; this glorious
unconditional promise of Christ: for this is the
heart of the Gospel.
2. But we must try to understand the appli
cation of this to contemptible sinners.
There are the careful sensualists. We all know
men who have drunk enough to land some men
in the gutter, but they have never been in the
condition which brings public disgust, and never
enslaved themselves so thoroughly that they have
passed beyond recovery. A tough constitution*
which seems able to stand what would kill
others, a power of will which enables them
always to balance themselves on the edge of
the abyss, has saved them from the fate that
overtakes others.
The Final Hope for Every Man 151
There are sensualists who manage to keep them
selves out of the divorce courts, who can find
delicate refinements of gratification which do not
make them outwardly swinish, who have succeeded
in ruining others without ever ruining themselves.
It is not so easy to think that if these suddenly
face death or disgrace, and turn with a cry to
Christ, that He will receive them ; but this we
have to believe.
There are worse cases still. There are those
who manage to avoid all these easy pitfalls, who
are never tempted in this direction, or if they are,
resist only because they know perfectly well that
these sins do not pay. But they have higher
means of self-gratification. They set out to
gain nothing but their own ends. They make
people fall in love with them, but they never
fall in love with any one, so that their career is
a record of friends shown to the door and trust
betrayed. They climb to great position in public
life, not because they want to serve the public,
but because they desire power and know how to
win public applause. Such men are utterly lack
ing in principle, either public or private. Their
word is never to be trusted ; they use their brains
simply to outwit their conspirators, and rejoice
in doing it. They debauch public life ; in a few
years they will undo what it has taken generations
to construct. They can destroy a nation s soul
by offering it military victories or material pros
perity. All honest men hate and despise them ;
they are held in contempt even by those who
swarm around them for the favours they can
152 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
dispense. But one has to remember that when
such characters turn to Christ they will be
received.
Imagine the most contemptible character you
can. The man who is fundamentally a coward,
who betrays his friends to save himself, who
deserts his cause in the hour of battle. Think
of the man who is utterly mean, who has never
helped a soul and does not want to, who is always
scheming for his own ends, who is incapable of
self-sacrifice, who stands aside from life with
cynical and calculating prudence, whose sole
ambition is to secure for himself either physical
or mental comfort, and who looks on callously
at the pain of humanity and the misfortunes of
other men. And then remember that Christ
has a welcome for such even as He has for those
who have stood alone for the sake of others,
who have worn themselves out in the service
of their fellows. This is getting more difficult
to believe, or to understand. There have to
be considered, moreover, just such cases as
those who have some concern for the possible
suffering of their souls, who are afraid of God
or of hell, who have some of the old instincts
sufficiently alive in them to try to keep on
the right side of God and to keep open a way
to Christ at the last ; whose religion has been
all along a calculation on the limits to which
the mercy of God can be stretched, who have
always subsisted upon a minimum which they
thought would secure them some consolation
and safety at the last. We have to remember
The Final Hope for Every Man 153
that Christ s declaration guarantees them a re
ception at the last. Yes, it really means every
one : all the skunks and shirks, all the cowards
and contemptibles, all the miserable creepers
and mercenary calculators, all the frightful bullies
and those callous of others and careful of them
selves ; not only those who get to the bottom
in this world, but those who get to the top, and
those who carefully keep a middle course. Jesus
Christ solemnly declares that He will reject no
one who comes to Him.
WHAT MAKES SUCH AN ASSURANCE OF MORAL
VALUE ?
1. It is not the persons who may come ; but
the Person to whom they come.
The guarantee is of value not because of the
universal nature of the welcome, but because
of the universal nature of Him who welcomes
them. It would be quite useless simply to invite
the fallen and enslaved to Christ unless He had
a friendship to offer which could remedy what
-had betrayed them. What has been the cause
of the fall of so many has been the lack of feeling
that any one really cared what they did. Some
did not understand ; some had no patience ; few
cared right to the end ; and because of this they
fell, and accepted offers of friendship and cheer
which were shams and deceits. Jesus works such
miracles with sinners because He offers to be
unreservedly their friend, because He is supremely
interested in them as they are, interested enough
154 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
to die for them. Such souls often find their way
more easily to Him just because their case is
so sore. They only need to have Him clearly
presented to them ; either now or at that last
hour when they shall see Him. They will fly
to His arms at one look from His eyes. But
what of those sinners who worm their way to
the top in a corrupt world and fatten on its
corruption ? Suppose that one of them is suddenly
nauseated by it all and turns to Christ. We
want to know something more than that Christ
will receive him ; we want to know what Christ
is who will receive him. For such there will be
the sudden and blinding exposure of themselves.
The scorching holiness, the intrepid courage,
the glorious purity of Christ must at once strike
them, shame them and encircle them. Men are
going to get a vision the moment they get near
Christ which will strip them bare and make them
see in one flash all that they are. He will fold
them to His heart right enough, but it will be
a heart that blazes like the light and flame of a
furnace fire. It is His capacity to bear the vision
of truth down beneath all man s subterfuges
that makes Him the real hope of every man.
He is not only hope for all who fly to Him
for pity, but hope for all who need from Him
cleansing.
And what for those careful villains, who hope
to find in Him some pardon at the last, those
sneaking hypocrites who blubber on death-beds,
those whose religion is of a piece with their whole
lives, a careful keeping on the right side of any
The Final Hope for Every Man 155
one who they think can be of any service to
them ? Christ has the capacity for making them
ashamed, of plunging them into floods of remorse,
of touching their hearts with that blood which
cleanses because it brings new life. He pours
into their thin blood the blood of a consuming
love, He gives to their tainted blood the blood
of innocence, He imparts to their degraded
strain the blood of the nobility of God. From
within He sets pulsing a new force, and they are
like sick men who feel strength tingling again
in them, to whom vitality brings purified life to
palsied limbs, whose purified blood forces out
all impurities to the surface.
Can we be sure that Christ will have this effect
on every one who comes ? Does not religion
provide us with only too many examples of self-
deceit, of weakness merely buttressed up and not
built over again, of hypocrites sheltering under
its friendship, of those who delight in its emo
tionalism, or its ritualism, or its external intel-
lectualism and sestheticism ; who make the whole
of Christianity a mere romance, something thril
ling to read about, which they never mean to be ?
People can do that, they may try it ; but once
Christ gets hold of a man at all, at last He gets
hold of him altogether. Christ attracts different
persons by the things they admire in His char
acter, by the things that appeal to them, but they
are never allowed to remain in this eclectic condi
tion ; for the sake of what they want they have
to take all. No one can really for long choose
something in Christ and be careless of the rest.
156 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
You may come through emotion, through thought,
through external things that only Christ could
create ; but the things which draw you to Him
will at last drag you to the whole. Any one who
knows the inner history of souls knows this.
They do come choosing, qualifying, drawn by
this or that, excepting this thing or the other ;
but once He has really attracted them, there is
no assurance that they will not waken up to
their need of the whole of Him, or He will not
demand the whole of them. There is the safety
of it all.
But does not " coming " involve all this ?
Surely it means that a man must repent of his
sins, that he must surrender all that he has, that
he must yield himself altogether. Are not these
the very conditions involved in coming ? It
implies motion : a man must come, and that means
changing his position. Are there not some who
only purpose to come a little way, to get near
enough to Christ to be sure He is there, near
enough perhaps to see Him, but not so near that
they will be swept off their feet, remade in Him ?
Yes, maybe. Nevertheless, it says that it is him
who is coming that Christ will not cast out. He
will not turn a man back because he has not
yet come all the way. Let a man move ever
so little, so little perhaps that none but Christ
would notice it ; he shall not be thrown back
because of that, but only lured the farther on.
It hardly matters what the motive may be : fear,
longing for happiness ; He can afford to accept
that because of something else that will be certain
The Final Hope for Every Man 157
to develop. The Father has put in every man s
heart the longing for Christ, and that is the thing
that ever moves us at all. That does not perhaps
mean anything like dogmatic universalism ; but
it does mean everything short of that. The
souls that the Father has given to Christ will
come to Him, because He and they spring from
the same source, and they are made in His image.
And however far a man has drifted, he cannot
alter the fact of the original impulse which gave
him being, nor can he ever get beyond needing
Christ, and, therefore, one day wanting Him.
It may be that he will want other things too,
and these will for ever hold him back ; but that
will only cause suffering. If a man can bear to
suffer for ever, he may be able to keep away
from Christ for ever. I do not know. It may be
so. The only way in which a man can keep
away from Christ is to get into hell, and I should
think that was difficult, because it means to
plunge oneself ever deeper into a suffering which
one is willing to make eternal. The dilemma is
between Christ, and therefore hungering and
thirsting no more, and an eternal suffering which
itself can be nothing but the hunger and thirst
after Christ eternally denied.
2. But our concern in all this ought to be
personal.
We have been rejoicing in the universality of
Christ s promise because we can think of so many
whom we wish to include within it. But should
we not understand much more of what it really
means, if we rejoiced in the universality of Christ s
158 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
promise because we ourselves were included ?
We know enough of ourselves to know that out
of the heart of man come all unclean things,
and that we have all these inside us only waiting
for a chance to come out. The old evangelical
idea that all need the same salvation, because all
are equally bad, is being shown to be scientifically
true. There is nothing man has done which we
are not capable of. Until a man comes to that
state of self-knowledge he does not come to all
that he is ; and it is only when he comes to himself
that he comes rightly to Christ. But it is by
no means through this self-knowledge that a man
always comes to Christ at the first. He may come
to be His servant, cheerfully professing himself
able to follow Christ, gaily protesting that he
is anxious to fight under His leadership. But
there will come a day when he will have to come
to Christ on an altogether different basis : as a
hopeless sinner who has found himself a mass of
unpleasant, soul-destroying sins. He will find
himself full of those very things that he has most
vehemently condemned in others. It is by no
means the worst discovery we have to make when
we find in ourselves the lusts that make the
drunkard and sensualist ; that is made when we
find that we are calculating persons who have
never really loved any one, but only loved other
people s love of us. A good deal of what passes
for love between people is merely a compact of
selfishness; which is soon found out when the
one asks more than the other is prepared to give.
Few who have come to know themselves are able
The Final Hope for Every Man 169
to be sure that there is an atom of unselfishness
in them. Many have to make the discovery
that they are utterly cowardly, and can see no
way of ever altering their condition. Soon or
late we all have to go the same way home ; and it
is the prodigal s way, the way of the Magdalen
and the penitent thief.
Therefore most of us need this universal assurance
even more because of what Christ is. It is not
only that I want some one on whose breast I can
lean and be at rest ; but some one to lean on whose
breast will set me aflame with a new secret of love,
some one who at last will teach me how to love
not only Him, but all mankind, and as He loves
them. I want to know not only that He will
receive me, although He can see that I am a coward,
but also that He will be able to drive cowardice
out of me at last. Some of us may come to Christ
at the beginning because we want to escape the
consequences of our sins, but at the last it is
rather because we are in terror lest we should
try. Many seek Him at first in order to hide
from the truth, but at last it is to hide in Him
because He is the truth. That is why we want
to know that this promise is universal, so that
each one of us, with all our worthlessness, shall
find in Him the complete reformation of ourselves,
in fact the remaking of us in His image, till we are
like Him as He is. And that is why we must
feed on Him, on His flesh and blood, on His
humanity and His sacrifice, for that is the only
food that makes us hunger no more and that the
only draught that can bring our insatiable thirst
160 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
to an end. And all this is for whosoever comes ;
however he comes ; whenever he comes ; when he
only begins to come. For to come to Christ is
to come to the Eternal Life, to touch the Fount
of all cleansing, to set out upon the Infinite Way
of Life.
The Psychology of Hate
" Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer."
1 JOHN iii. 15.
THE love which the New Testament is con
stantly praising is apt to be dismissed by the
person who boasts of being moved only by reali
ties as mere sentiment, and therefore as both
dangerous and impotent. St. Paul s hymn in praise
of love is acknowledged to be very beautiful,
but love is there denned in such a way that we
are compelled to admit that it is the rarest thing
in the world ; and this author seems to be under
the delusion that love can be commanded. Surely
these writers are living in a realm of clouds, and
have failed to recognize that even the most beauti
ful love that we can see in this world, that exist
ing between man and woman, or parent and child,
is after all a very changeable thing, an emotion
that cannot be bidden at will. We fall in love with
a person in a most inexplicable way, and we are
as likely to fall out of it again, as suddenly and
irrationally. We conceive a tremendous craving
for a person of the opposite sex, which is not en
tirely sexual, or it would never centre upon one
person as it does to the temporary exclusion of
all others ; but why this suddenly comes and
fastens upon one person no one knows ; for it
can be bidden neither to come, nor, what is more
tragic, to stay. The love for one s own child is
a natural emotion that has little reason in it, for
it may be that the child is neither beautiful nor
interesting ; and this, too, has the habit of passing
into the most violent hatred if it is disappointed
162 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
in any way ; the hatreds which arise between
children and parents is one of the commonest
facts of modern life.
But these writers are not speaking of either
of these kinds of love. The poverty of our own
language does not enable us to distinguish what
was clearly distinguished by them ; the love they
speak of is neither sexual nor natural affection,
but is a love of the mind and of the will, and is
particularly a relationship which exists between
the brethren ; that is, those who have the same
faith and have pledged themselves to fellowship.
For brother, in the New Testament, means a
member of the fellowship, and has not a universal
meaning. And yet that is not a limitation. It
escapes the sentimentality of a mere universal
feeling which cannot be real until there has taken
place a change in men and their relationships ;
and yet it is potential for all, because they may
become members of the fellowship, and indeed
will have to be loved into it.
There is a deeper reason for its universality
than the possible extension of the fellowship feel
ing. It is a supernatural love : it is the love
which God has and which constitutes His very
essence, a love which has been manifested in the
redeeming work of Jesus Christ ; and that means
a love which consists in an uncaused goodwill of
such intensity that it goes out to seek the good
of objects who have no natural attraction, who
indeed resist all advances, and, in the case of
Christ, actually murder the one who comes to offer
them this love. But because this love is God s
unchangeable nature, it persists in spite of, through,
and beyond all these manifestations. This love is
The Psychology of Hate 163
the very groundwork of the universe. We have
said it is supernatural ; that word has to be used
not in distinction to the natural, but to the un-
natural, which has now become second nature,
in that the love of God which is the cause of all
things has been perverted. Remnants of it are
found in sexual and family love, but there shorn of
an abiding will, becoming extraordinarily fickle and
uncertain ; and because of its repression coming
out again in hate, making man a murderer in
intention and in fact.
Therefore it will be seen that this writer is both
a philosopher and a psychologist, and of a very
high order. For he is both a scientific realist and
a theological idealist. He is under no delusion
that there is much love in the world ; he knows
that hate and fear, lying and murder are every
where. At the same time, he is no pessimist,
for he believes there is a power to overcome the
hate in the world, and that power is the original
cause of things. And although he knows that
hate rules so many hearts, and often supersedes
natural love and resists supernatural love, he
knows too that hate is a cause of darkness in the
heart and ends in murder, and, therefore, that
it is doomed if man reflects and considers the con
sequences of hate ; not that reflection will give
him love instead, but it will show him the dangers
of hate and will open his mind to receive the gift
of God s love.
WE HAVE SUFFICIENT MATERIAL FOR STUDYING
THE SUBJECT.
1. We have lived under a deluge of collective
hatred.
164 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
(a) That provides the best material for its
scientific study.
Modern psychology tends to turn more and more
to the movements of vast crowds in order to get
light upon individual mentality ; for it is held
that in the crowd man becomes more primitive :
his unconscious mind becomes dominant through
the operation of mass suggestion ; and then we
may discover what influences him whenever he
allows his judgment to be submerged. This
psychology is by no means absolute, especially
when it declares that the type revealed in the
crowd is the most primitive in point of time. For
whatever evolution may teach, man s mind must
originally go back to the very highest that his
own mind reveals, and indeed to something far
higher. Moreover, man will have to move again
from his individual to a higher mass mind before
he can get any farther in social evolution. But
in the crowd, easily swayed by violent passions,
we can readily discern the operation of the emotions
which occasionally take charge of the individual
mind ; there is the same openness to suggestion,
the same manifestation of animal passions, the
same overthrow of all rational judgment and kindly
feeling.
All during the war we saw the operation of this
mass feeling against our enemies ; it was not only
a natural indignation against a people who
precipitated war, whether by deliberate plot or
through unforeseen results of a certain policy ;
not only motived very largely by fear of what
would happen to us if our enemies won, but also
deliberately worked up for war purposes by govern
ments and newspapers. It submerged every one
The Psychology of Hate 165
to the level of the lowest. Poet, bishop, scientist,
immediately began to talk like the most irre
sponsible and ignorant persons ; there was no
distinction between the opinions of the pulpit
and the public-house. For the purposes of this
hate, all qualifications had to be ruled out. All
Germans were the same German : once a German
always a German. Everything evil that the
Germans did was used as propaganda ; anything
good that any German did was carefully concealed.
In addition, many things were invented which
never happened at all ; like the cutting off of
women s breasts and babies hands, and the employ
ment of the " cadaver " factory where the bodies
of dead soldiers were melted down for fat. Any
suggestion that we should still love our enemies
was swept aside as dangerous nonsense, and any
one who refused to join in the general hate was
looked upon as suspect, and indeed classed with
the Germans as an object of hate. Conscientious
objectors were regarded as worse than Huns.
It is not surprising that this tornado of hate
has left gusts drifting about still, waiting to
spend themselves on some new object. When one
of our brave allies forsook the cause our opinion
of the whole nation altered at once : the Russians
had been such splendid people before, simple-
hearted, profoundly religious, brave and loyal,
but when they determined to overthrow their
government and have one of another type they
immediately became the worst enemies of man
kind, and fear and hatred of Bolshevik Russia
has almost outstripped the hatred once felt for
Germany ; indeed, one of our foremost politicians
has been seeking to get us to contemplate the
166 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
possibility that we shall have to use German help
against them, and has been telling us what good
qualities the Germans have for resisting this sort
of barbaric savagery in which these erstwhile
mystics now indulge. This hate has begun to
fasten upon our own people. The bitterness with
which the Irish are now regarded is an evidence
of this transference ; and it is interesting to notice
that whereas their rebellious disposition was once
said to be due to German gold, it is now traced to
Bolshevik gold ; so does this type of mind try
to rationalize its new and shifting hates. It comes
nearer home than that. When the workers of
this country were fighting our battles and standing
in between us and danger, there was nothing too
good for them ; they were heroes every man,
they were to have a new voice in affairs when
they returned home, they were invited to become
audacious in demanding a share in the country s
wealth. And now there are many who have only
one cure for the miners* unrest : it is that they
should all be shot. The general industrial unrest
is traced not to wages at all, but to Bolshevism,
and ultimately to German influence. Trade
Unionism gets called Prussianism, and some of
its leaders Huns.
b. Can there be anything rational in these
mass hatreds ?
The hatred which was aroused by the thing
Germany was supposed to stand for, and by the
things which Germany certainly did, is explicable
enough. Was there not enough to raise any
one s hate in the monstrous idea of its Absolutist
State determining to subject others to its will
and threatening to master the whole world ?
The Psychology of Hate 167
The modern world could not tolerate the foolery
of this jackboot and goose-step philosophy in
the heart of Europe. Everyone suddenly saw
that the thing was an anachronism, that there
would be no peace for the world until it was
crushed out of existence, and there must be no
rest until this thing had been defeated by the
only methods that it could appreciate, and
itself cried out that it was worsted. There is
nothing irrational about that. And the means
by which Belgium was invaded, war was made
from the air, passenger and even hospital ships
were torpedoed, revealed a capacity for crime
that made men furious with indignation. It is
held that without hatred of such things this
world would never progress and evil would go
unchallenged and unafraid.
But there was a strange element of irra
tionality in all this. For it was precisely those
who seemed to hold a similar sort of philosophy
who seemed to be most angry with the Germans
for professing it. Persons immediately began to
clamour for the rights of small states who had
never thought of them before ; people began to
murmur against militarism who had hitherto
praised it ; those who grew red at the thought
of an Absolutist State grew even redder when
anyone challenged the absoluteness of our own
State over his conscience and religious alle
giances. All this could be set down to fear
which, if it is not rational, is perfectly natural.
People were so afraid of the consequences of
defeat or of invasion that they clutched at any
thing which explained it in terms of higher
unselfishness and political concern. But the
168 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
moment the danger had passed it was clear
that it was not these things in themselves, but
the iniquity of the Germans professing them
that roused the hate. For there followed a
great rise of Imperial ambition all over Europe,
and treaties were drawn up and eventually
arrangements sanctioned under the Peace Treaty
itself which committed millions of people to
domination by their hereditary enemies ; and
more money is now being spent on armies and
navies by the Allies than before the war. In
our own Empire things like Amritsar and the
repression of the Irish Rebellion have been justi
fied by the arguments which the Germans used.
The objects for which the war was supported
are not only forgotten and forsaken, they are
openly derided ; and the country is now busy
erecting monuments to its gallant dead, consisting
of everything save the effort to secure the things
for which they died.
It is no wonder that a great wave of cynicism
has spread over the world, that idealism of
every kind has received a deadly blow, that
religion can hardly stagger to its feet, and a
dreadful apathy has settled down upon all classes
of the community. It would be easy not only
to despise and despair of a nature which
could so cheat itself, and be so misled, but to
work up a hatred of the human race as such,
as a desperate and wicked species which had
better be destroyed. But it is precisely this
shifting of the object of hate which we have to
watch. Modern psychology tells us that this is
what always happens with a repressed emotion ;
it will disengage itself from the original cause
The Psychology of Hate
and even attach itself to any other object what
soever, so long as it provides an outlet.
2. We must get to know this thing in ourselves..
a. Who does not know something of the growth
of personal hostility ?
We know how it takes the most puerile fornu
Some one does us a wrong, often of a very
slight kind, sometimes falsely suspected, and
that starts to colour all our judgments of that
person. It is enough for any one to disagree
with some of our ideas, and we picture his
whole mentality as bordering upon imbecility ;
enough for some person to differ from us
on a point of policy, and we believe that
he is spending his strength in thwarting our
plans. We suspect such persons of hating us,.
and we find ourselves, first in our thoughts, and
then openly, indulging a hatred which slanders*
their character and imputes evil motives. We
cannot think of them without a hot feeling
coming over us. If we are not careful we find
ourselves wishing them ill, perhaps contemplating
the fact with satisfaction that they cannot live
for ever, then wishing that they were dead. The
steps which lead more active natures straight on
to murder are quite obvious in ourselves.
This is all a very dreadful discovery. It some
times expresses itself symbolically in damning
people, the commonest form of ill wish. If
questioned we should deny that we meant it, and
offer as proof the fact that we did not believe
in damnation ; but it may well be that our un
conscious mind still believes in it ; and if so,
it means that we wish for people inescapable
suffering, without the possibility of repentance*
170 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
But it is objected that a mere wish is surely not
so bad as carrying the thing out. Are we sure
that it has no influence ? It would be difficult
to prove that with our modern belief in tele
pathy and suggestion. It is pointed out that
soldiers do not cherish hate towards those they
are fighting against. That is perfectly true,
because they discharge their feeling, whereas
those who do not fight have no such
.satisfaction.
The mere repression of evil feelings, that is the
refusal to admit that we have them, may have
very curious results. We come to hate some
person who has done us no wrong, in the place
of the person who has. There was a distinguished
theologian who had always detested the Ger
mans for their theories, which he thought under
mined the Christian faith. He learned German,
read everything on the subject, and subjected
these theories to an unsparing attack. When the
war broke out he enlisted so that he might help
to kill this thing. He was sent to Gallipoli, and
died fighting against the Turks ! This trans
ference of hate is not only possible in international
conflicts, where it may be argued that it is ines
capable that the innocent should suffer for the
guilty, but it manifests itself in strange per
versions of love. It is a common thing to find
intense hatred of parents among modern children,
.and it will often be found to have no rational
basis whatever ; it is due to some quite acci
dental circumstance. Sometimes a person will
alternately love and hate some one very near to
him and yet be unable to give the slightest reason
for the hatred ; and this almost certainly means
The Psychology of Hate 171
that hatred, unable to find an outlet, discharges
itself on the first object it meets.
b. Hatred is an emotion clamouring for ex
pression.
It often has nothing really ethical in it. It
is not denied that we ought to reprobate all evil,
and that sometimes it is very difficult to see
how you can love the sinner and hate the sin
when they are so welded together ; but very
frequently it is obvious that it is not the sin that
we hate, but the sinner, because we do not really
desire the sinner s repentance. It is no uncommon
thing to detect an attitude in political, national,
or religious resentment, where it is perfectly clear
that the last thing the person who is criticizing
would like is that the object of his animosity
should change. It was the idea that the Ger
mans were incapable of repentance that most
people insisted upon so desperately ; they would
have been sorrier than Jonah if they had shown
any signs of it. All this shows that it is not
ethical passion, but the relief of wounded feel
ings that we are seeking when we give way to
hate.
We have therefore to decide what this feeling
is. It is very difficult. Some trace it back to
more fundamental things, to disappointed sex, to
the lust for domination which cannot brook con
tradiction, but which tries to find an apology for
its existence by getting some ethical justification.
It is quite likely that it is revenge for unacknow
ledged sins in ourselves, for it will be noticed
that people are often most down upon the sins
in others which they themselves are addicted to.
Some would suggest that it is nothing but a dis-
172 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
charge of psychic energy, in itself neutral, which,
because it does not get worked off by plenty of
exercise, or companionship, or self-expression,
takes this form of sullen hate. That is to say
it is not something evil in itself, but it is capable
of becoming good. This is partly supported by
the fact that the only reason why some people
do not hate is because they do not love either ;
they are too phlegmatic and do not care.
But the religious account is probably nearer
the truth, and is the only one that sanctions
hope for the permanent sublimation of hate ;
and it is that the original psychic energy in us
all is love, and God s love at that. We have
perverted this by withdrawing love from God and
from our neighbour because of the sacrifices it
demanded, and in trying to love ourselves instead.
That love is bound to turn to hate before long,
because we have changed its direction and
turned it on to an unworthy object. This may
seem a gloomy doctrine, but it is really hopeful ;
for it carries this corollary, not only that this
energy could be discharged as love, but that
there will be no satisfaction until it is ; for that
is its original nature.
THE SERIOUSNESS OF THIS CONDITION
OF HATE
1. It is tantamount to murder.
a. That is a very strong statement.
It is not mere picturesque hyperbole. It is
supported in principle by what our Lord Him
self taught in the Sermon on the Mount, where,
recalling that the ancient command was not to
The Psychology of Hate 173
kill, He exhorted us never to give way to anger
because this was sufficient to bring us in danger
of the eternal fire. But we must find the justi
fication of that statement in psychology, and we
must clear away all objection to it. It would
be argued that surely it is not so bad to wish a
man ill as actually to carry it out ; that it is
possible to hate people in only a slight way
without wishing to carry it so far as murder.
But murder is the only real satisfaction of the
feeling ; that is what has to be recognized.
We can see this actually working out in history.
It is very incomprehensible to some how it is
that most gentle-mannered and meek-minded
people can be so bloody-minded in time of war ;
but there is nothing really inexplicable in that, if
it is an outburst of all the accumulated hate that
has been cherished but never expressed. There
is no feeling we have within which can be dissi
pated until it has found expression in one form
or another ; and there is little doubt that these
periodic outbreaks of blood mania are due to
long-repressed hates. We see the most awful
example of the real effect of hate in the murder
of the world s Redeemer. That was not an
accidental end ; it was inevitable that in a world
like ours Christ should be put to death, because
Christ presents a satisfying object to our hate,
because He is Love struggling with its deadly
perversion. There has never been a single hateful
thought we have had which has not gone to
swell the reservoir which must one day break
down its banks and sweep all before it ; and this
hate never finds its satisfaction until it nails
Christ in derision to the cross.
174 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
&. It is not only homicide ; it is suicide.
People little know how bad hate is for their
bodies. Those who are accustomed to analyse
their feelings will know how under the influence
of hate the physical organs are disturbed, how
they burn with a hot pain which can last for a
long time. Few people know what a bad effect
hate has on the heart or the digestion ; many
of our physical ills may be due ultimately, not
only to mental, but to moral states.
But it has a worse effect in the darkening of
the soul. When a man hates we know how
blindly he will act, how no consequences are
considered, how his reason is withdrawn, how he
can see nothing but his black feelings. But the
man who allows himself to hate has put out the
light within him ; all understanding of himself
and of the world is hidden from him ; he does not
perceive the way in which he is walking or the
inevitable end of his course.
He has not eternal life in him ; that is, he destroys
in himself the very principle of existence, which
is the love of God. If hell is anything it is the
land of hate, where hate is at last confined from
any possibility of doing any one any further injury,
and therefore where the feeling can never be satis
fied, and so becomes a roaring furnace of im
placable hostility, with nothing on which to feed :
a condition which by all psychology is perfectly
natural, entirely inevitable, and only too con
ceivable.
2. This disease demands a drastic cure.
a. Because of its nature.
Think of what it is doing for the world ! The
expenditure of hate upon any human being is
The Psychology of Hate 175
bound to beget a reaction ; the expenditure of hate
upon any corporate body of men is almost certain
to get a return in compound interest. Every
conquest leaves behind the seeds of rebellion, and
the rebellion will go farther than the evil of the
conquest. Political assassinations inflict punish*
ment upon people beyond their desert, and then
wholesale reprisals are adopted as a policy, to
which there are intensified replies, and so the
system mounts to madness. On the world scale
it has a more awful significance. The continent
of Europe has more hate concentrated to the
square mile than ever before. We may be certain
that the material for a still more awful revenge
is preparing, not only in facts of bad distribution
of nationalities and states, in the confiscations
of wealth, but in the temper which is being every
where manufactured. Revenge will, however, only
bring another in its place. Wars do not get
worse only because of the numbers involved and
the terrible nature of the destructive weapons,
but because hatred grows by compound interest*
until something arises which can turn it back
to its original form of love.
b. But it is provided in the love of God.
The Cross is the cure of Hate, because it allows
the hate of man to mount up against itself and
refuses to return hate again, but loves instead.
When we really see in a moment of faith what
the Cross means we see that it is this that our hate
has done. No ill thing we have ever wished or
done has ceased to work out its evil until it has
spent itself upon the heart of Christ. There the
hate of man has been able to gather itself together
and perpetrate the worst deed imaginable : slay
176 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
the innocent Lamb of God. And God was willing
for this, because He knew that nothing else would
ever cure man s hate ; there was no hope unless
it could find a perfect expression which then
would have exhausted itself ; and it must be
secured that this dreadful act should generate
no returning hate, but be swallowed up in love.
At that the soul of man awakes to itself; the
sting of hate is drawn, and there is now room for
the inpouring of love.
Now can come repentance, as there so often
does when hate has done its worst. If some of
us could be allowed to see our evil wishes realized,
we should never wish any one evil again ; it is
because w T e so rarely see that, that we do not
see the real meaning of our evil desires, and there
fore miss the incentive to repentance. But in
this deed, the sum of all ill deeds done in the
world, and their logical consequence, the attempted
murder of God, we get every inducement to repent,
because we are faced not only with the awful
stillness of the death w r e have compassed, but
the eyes open to look upon us again with even
greater love. Then come cleansing tears of sorrow,
the breaking of every evil desire, for it has not
succeeded and it never can succeed ; we have done
our worst and it has utterly failed. Then we see
how futile all hate is ; it is not only revealed for
what it is, but it is shown to be useless. And
when we find we are still loved by the One we
tried to destroy, we are utterly humbled ; our
pride which turned love to hate is for ever broken,
and love comes to life within us : love to Him
who first loved us ; love to all men for His sake.
The Finality of Christ
" Art Thou he that cometh, or look we for another ? "
ST. MATTHEW xi. 2.
npHERE has always been something of a
I mystery about the mission of enquiry which
John the Baptist sent to Christ. It is remark
able, after being among the first to recognize
Jesus as the Christ, that he should have come to
entertain doubts whether after all He was any
thing more than a forerunner like himself. Some
have seen in the emergence of these doubts nothing
but the outcome of depression consequent upon
his imprisonment ; but that is surely too slight
an explanation for such a character as that of
the Baptist s. The suggestion has been put
forward by radical critics that the works which
Jesus enumerated in His reply may have been
entirely spiritual, and therefore not impressive
to an observer expecting great things ; and they
support this hypothesis by the consideration that
at the very end of the list comes the preaching
of the gospel to the poor, which after the healing
of lepers and the raising of the dead would be
in the nature of an anti-climax if these had been
actual physical miracles. But it may well be
that Jesus did perform these cures and yet valued
the preaching of the gospel to the poor as much
more wonderful and important. How then are
178 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
we to explain the Baptist s doubts, presuming
that he already knew these things were taking
place ? We are driven to suppose that John was
expecting something from Christ more in line
with his own prediction of the Coming One s
career for whom he outlined a mighty mission
of national repentance inaugurated by a process
of fiery judgment and purgation. Beside that
expectation, the way in which Jesus was inter
preting His mission seemed to be a falling short ;
He was spending His strength on a lot of sick
and demented folk, and instead of arraigning the
rulers and delivering His message to the author
ities, He was preaching to the " poor," the people
who did not count in national affairs. Jesus refers
John to the prophetic predictions of His career
and shows that He is following this out in every
detail ; and He adds a blessing for those who find
nothing in His method to offend them.
A similar question is being raised by our own
age. Christianity has failed to turn nations to
repentance or to guide the peoples into the way
of peace. It has spent its time in looking after
more or less worthless individuals while the great
forces of the world have been left to go their
own way. And the result has been that Christi
anity has done nothing to save the world from
the ever-increasing catastrophe of war, and seems
to have no solution for the new and worse menace
of industrial strife. Unless something happens to
change the thoughts of men and the direction
mankind is taking, it looks as if our race were
doomed ; it seems travelling swiftly to perdition
by what was thought to be the path of progress.
The Finality of Christ 179
In a world situation in which the very existence
of humanity trembles in the balance, Christianity
seems to have no clear and arresting message,
neither does it seem able to exercise any com
pelling power over the minds of men.
It is not surprising, therefore, that many earnest
thinkers are looking round for the emergence of
some new religion. It looks as if the faith which
could once attract the masses and impress their
leaders had lost its power. Like many other
systems the world has seen, it seems to have had
its day and ceased to be, and we are left waiting
for some common wave of thought and life to lift
mankind again.
CAN WE CONTEMPLATE CHRISTIANITY
AS TEMPORARY ?
1. There are conceptions of Christianity which
accept this estimate.
(a) To a great deal of modern thought Christianity
is simply one of the great historical religions. It
differs from the others neither in its nature nor
in the laws which govern its rise and fall. It is
a purely natural phenomenon, a synthesis of
ideas which suited the needs of the western peoples,
and was favoured by the conditions of thought
and organization existing at the time. By the
inevitable process of evolution it is bound to be
superseded by some other system as thought
changes and the needs of men grow wider. It
cannot be expected that with the tremendous
changes produced by education and industry
a system which took its rise in a simpler age can
suit the modern world. And it is now manifestly
180 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
failing to meet the needs of the times. It is
widely assumed that intellectually Christianity
is an impossible faith ; it rests upon views of
the universe and human history which have been
discredited by science, and its dogmatic system
can no longer hold the thought of the age. Its
na ive and austere morality is being everywhere
rebelled against by the freer and more adven
turous spirits, and is regarded as no longer able
to be observed ; indeed it would be prejudicial
to the future of the race to do so. And it has
nothing of a practical remedy to suggest to a
world which is falling to pieces and must now be
reconstructed on different principles.
It is interesting to note that this somewhat
airy dismissal of Christianity is generally under
taken with considerable ignorance of what Christi
anity teaches, and of what it has already accom
plished in the reform of society. It accepts the
disputable dogma of an inevitable progress. It
overlooks the fact that many of the arts reached
their zenith centuries ago ; that the religions
which have really influenced human thought and
conduct came from the now stagnant East ; so
that there is nothing inconceivable in Christianity
being the most perfect religion we are ever likely
to see. Those who speak most confidently of the
crumbling of the dogmatic system of Christianity
and who are continually girding at outworn
creeds would often be puzzled to name the funda
mental dogmas of Christianity or to recite one
of its historic creeds ; while in their place they
often can put nothing but vague generalities
which, as a matter of fact, are simply the watered
The Finality of Christ 181
down principles which dogma affirms and the
creeds support.
Moreover, the modern movements to find a new
religion are of a pathetic and pitiful order. It is
recognized that any new movement must have the
fervour and hope which religion alone inspires ;
but they fail to provide us with any worthy object
or sufficient basis. It is understood that the new
religion must be international, but these attempts
possess simply nothing of the clearness or convic
tion which would set any world movement afoot.
All are aware that the truth the new religion
announces must be psychologically demonstrable,
but they meantime cut out that which has the
greatest psychological necessity, namely, something
greater than the mind which -is to be moved by
it. These modern movements, when they are not
freakish and frankly ridiculous, are eclectic or
esoteric. It was not from such material that
any religion was ever yet born, nor by such a
message that masses will ever be moved.
(b) Others expect a reincarnation of Christ.
This type of thought at least recognizes the
necessity of more than ideas to set a religion
going ; they must be enunciated and embodied
in a great personality and a heroic life ; and this
expectation seeks to exploit the magic there is
in the very name of Christ. But by " Christ " is
meant something quite different from what the
name means in the Christian religion. By " Christ "
they mean not Jesus, but a spirit, who is not
divine, though of a higher than human rank, who
for the redemption of this world has undertaken
a succession of incarnations in history. The idea,
182 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
therefore, rests first of all upon the highly doubtful
theory of reincarnation, a doctrine which seems
to have blighted the eastern world, and one which
called forth one of the greatest religions, Budd
hism, solely as a means of escaping from it. And
when it attempts to identify the persons who are
to be recognized as the successive incarnations
of " Christ," the list reveals the utter confusion
involved in the idea. In such a succession there
is not only no sure revelation of God, for their
characters are too different, and sometimes doubtful
or unworthy to serve any such purpose, but there
can be no reliance on any system of truth built
of such material, since they teach contradictory
principles and methods. Indeed, the list is only
made the more impossible by the condescending
inclusion in it of Jesus Himself ; for as a Person
who has had many previous incarnations Jesus
evidently is totally ignorant about Himself, His
past and His future. He is the one Person who can
never be fitted into such a system without, by
comparison of character, making the others seem
unworthy to be there at all, or, in the matter of
truth, without condemning most of what He
Himself said as sheer arrogance and egotism.
(c) The expectation which approximates most
closely to anything that can be identified as
Christian is that which looks for Christianity
itself to produce something as its lineal successor,
much as Judaism produced Christianity. It is not
in itself inconceivable that the New Testament
should have a fulfilment in the same way as the
New Testament fulfilled the Old. It could never
have been really gathered from the obscure and
The Finality of Christ 183
diverse prophecies of the Old Testament just
what the new covenant and the expected Messiah
would be like ; only when they came can we look
back and see that they are the fulfilment. The
New Testament is full of prophecies of Christ s
return, but these are too obscure and varied for
us to forecast even what is meant by them ; but
nevertheless His coming again may be a perfect
fulfilment of all the prophecies when these are
looked at in the light of their fulfilment. But
that is definitely the return of Christ in glory,
although readily identifiable as the historic Jesus
as well as the Eternal Son of God.
It has been suggested that we really know
very little about the Holy Spirit ; and that there
is room here for a still greater revelation : just
as the dispensation of the Father succeeded to
that of the Son, so the dispensation of the Son
will succeed to that of the Spirit. It is unfor
tunate that this theory should have already have
had exponents like Montanus in the second century
and the Abbot Joachim in the twelfth ; for their
respective courses are not such as to invite further
advance along that line. Moreover, it may be
that we can never know more of the Spirit as a
Person than we know now, for it is His mission
to do nothing but point to Christ ; just as we
know nothing of the Personality of the Father
save through the Son. And it is involved in the
doctrine of the Trinity that this should be so ;
difference in personality does not mean difference
in character or purpose : He who knows the Son
knows the Father, and knows the Spirit also.
Indeed, there is room for learning more of the
184 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
Spirit s illumination and power, but it may well
be that the realm for that progress is in the fellow
ship of the Church : the Spirit has His incarnation
in the Church, which is the Body of Christ ; and
apart from unity of faith and loving fellowship,
His power and glory cannot be fully revealed.
In these days the hope of a more spiritual Chris
tianity is unfortunately often taken to involve
an abandonment of historic Christianity with its
creed and worship, on the plea that it is the spirit
of Christianity we need, not intellectual agree
ment or outward expression. But this is to use
the term Spirit in a sense of which the New Testa
ment knows nothing, and to make a false opposi
tion between the One Spirit and the One Faith and
One Body which are the marks of His presence
and creative power.
2. All such expectations rest on an unexamined
basis.
(a) That Christianity has failed.
The declaration that Christianity has failed is
not sufficiently met by the brilliant retort that
it has never been tried. For at present there is
no agreement as to what trying Christianity
would involve to-day. And behind this widely-
spread, if somewhat superficial belief that Chris
tianity has failed there waits a stronger position
to which men soon retreat, namely, that Chris
tianity is an impossible religion. In face of such
a wide divergence of opinion as Catholic and
Protestant within the one religion, which effectually
keeps Christianity at war within itself instead of
at war with the world ; in face of the amazing
opposition of opinion between Christians as to
The Finality of Christ 185
whether Christianity condemns war or capitalistic
industrialism, or whether it is indifferent to them
or even sanctions them ; or whether Christianity
preaches the coming of the Kingdom of God on
earth or its postponement to another life, it is
possible to maintain that Christianity is fatally
ambiguous and, therefore, gives us no guide for
earthly conduct at all. If we take a metaphorical
view of much of Christ s teaching, it would leave
the world much the same, only it would give us
a different attitude towards it ; while it has been
declared that if Christ s teaching were taken
literally it would bring the world to an end by
international catastrophe, racial suicide or indus
trial starvation. Others hold that Christianity
expects the impossible ; it demands more than
human nature can attain.
Over against this there has to be put the con
viction that Christianity has not failed in any
way that was not hypothetically anticipated.
It has certainly failed to win the world, but so
much the worse for the world ; and the result of
its rejection by the world is only proving
Christianity true, even if proving it too late.
Christianity is not a compulsory method ; if men
will not have it, then it will not have them ;
there is no unexpected issue. There are some
who hold dogmatically that it will always fail to
win the world as a whole : it will only save some
individuals from utter spiritual ruin. It is curious
that Plymouth Brethren and Roman Catholics
seem to hold much the same opinion as to the
destiny of Christianity, and it would be hasty
to dismiss their outlook as unthinkable or with-
186 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
out sanction in the New Testament. But it is
possible to hold that the Kingdom of God was
intended to come in this world ; but if it does
not, that does not decide the truth of Christianity
or the practicability of its principles. There are
other worlds, and God has not yet spoken His
last word. Before we can agree that Chris
tianity has failed we have got to agree as to
what it was expected to do.
(b) Many of these ideas involve the falsity of
Christianity. They may sometimes take the
milder and widely accepted form that there is
nothing wrong with Christianity ; it is the
Church that has failed, in that it has been cor
rupted, has taken a wrong development, and
has betrayed the faith which founded it. Before
we could admit this we should want to know
just where it is held that the Church has gone
wrong, because the apprehensions, warnings and
prayers of the New Testament seem to allow
for a certain measure of failure. But if it is
once admitted that the Church has gone so far
wrong as to have utterly mistaken its Master,
and become so corrupt that He has forsaken
it, then this carries far-reaching consequences
which are rarely considered. If Christ has been
unable to preserve His Church from fundamental
error or final apostasy, what hope is there for
any other organization of men ? The human
problem is plainly insoluble. And this idea
often leads on to the conception that the
apostolic interpretation of Christ was wrong.
It is not the historic Church only that has con
fused things ; the confusion started within the
The Finality of Christ 187
New Testament, and with St. Paul in particular,
whose ideas of a pre-existent Messiah and the
redemptive purpose of His death threw Chris
tianity on a false track. But when we get that
far we are certainly involved in the belief that
Christ Himself was wrong. He accepted Mes-
siahship in some form, and that carries with it
great historic and doctrinal entanglements. If
He had meant to propagate an entirely inward
religion, He made a great mistake in allowing
anointings, organizing processions, and attempting
to purge the Temple ; in admitting a rite like
baptism and arranging another like the Last
Supper, and speaking of it in a way that invited
misunderstanding ; and in selecting an inner circle
of apostles and constituting them His plenipoten
tiaries. No reduction of His words by any method
of criticism can eliminate the fact that, even if
He was not what the Church has held Him to
be, He still had a most exaggerated notion of
the uniqueness of His own personality and the
part He was meant to play in the history of the
world and the destiny of souls.
(c) There are those who will accept all this,
who indeed make it the starting-point of their
search for a new religion. But have they thought
out where it leads them ? The admittedly highest
religion has gone hopelessly wrong ; and the
unquestionably greatest Personality in history
has betrayed His own mission and confused
His cause. Is it any use attempting anything
further along this line ? If the Christian reli
gion is wrong, other religions must be even
more so, and what truth can be recovered from
188 The King . Weigh House Pulpit
their general untruth, or who is to be reckoned
capable of making the selection ? There can be
no higher claim made for any religion or by
any person than Christianity has made ; there
can be no possible repetition of a claim that
has been previously discredited. And to lower
the claim and simply invite men to sift out a
few grains of doubtful truth from the rubbish
heaps of human speculation, or, while rejecting
the past, yet hope for something true to be found
in the future, is to hope from humanity what
it obviously cannot produce. Nor, religion
having been proved wrong, can we fall back
upon reason or science. If nine-tenths of the
thought of mankind has been a delusion, and its
supreme source of inspiration false, it is little
use building on the rest. With the failure of
Christianity goes inevitably the discrediting of
Christ, the rejection of all religion, the assurance
of attainable truth, and the failure of hope for
mankind.
WE MUST RECONSIDER THE CLAIM TO FINALITY.
1. We must distinguish some things, however,
it does not involve.
It does not mean that the Christian revelation
is exhausted. Christ is final ; no one who has
ever understood what is meant by the Incarnation
can conceive of it ever being repeated in an indi
vidual : that would involve confusion in personality
and end all assurance of a real revelation of God
through such means. But the meaning of Christ
is inexhaustible. It is a pity if faithless fears
for orthodoxy have given the impression that one
The Finality of Christ 189
must not think any further about Christian Theo
logy. The most rigid of all Churches holds that,
although nothing decided upon as dogmatically
true must be contradicted, there is nothing to
hinder but everything to demand a continuous
dogmatic development, the future building always
on the foundations of the past, but building to
the very skies. Dogma may not be denied, but
it can be elucidated and explained. All natural
growth is open to the future, and it is illimitable.
There are vast realms of thought to be explored
with the great principles of Christianity as our
guide. We want more thought, and it is only
the superficiality of our times, both in Church and
world, which is afraid of it or feels there is no
more to be done.
There is a new incarnation of Christ in the build
ing up of His body the Church, and the confines
of that are as wide as the human race. It is in
the fellowship of the Church that we are to explore
what is meant by the communion of the Holy
Ghost. Indeed, the whole experimental side of
Christianity has as yet only been touched. The
intense personal realization of Christ on which
evangelical preaching is based, is, as a matter of
fact, comparatively modern, at least in so far as
it is proclaimed as an experience open to all. The
mystical exploration of prayer is as yet only in
its infancy, despite the immense but almost
unknown work that has been already done by
the saints.
The question of the social application of Chris
tianity is only a few decades old. The recent
war has raised a new issue for Christianity which
190 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
means not inventing, so much as recovering, its
international character, and we have yet to dis
cover how it is to be realized and how nation
ality can be developed, and yet made subser
vient to a higher loyalty in the Kingdom of God,
The industrial problem is opening our eyes to dis
cover that instead of the Gospels being without
guidance on matters economic, they are crowded
with economic principles. The idea that Chris
tianity is indifferent to the social system in which
it lives arises from a confusion between the social
system it is able to endure and the social system
it is able to sanction.
2. Christianity is final because there is nothing
final about it.
Its main ethical contribution is in the replacing
of law by principle, and that principle not the
denying or the defying of law, but going beyond
what is commanded, beyond justice to mercy and
love ; surprising men by exceeding what is ex
pected, breaking down tyrannies by untiring
submission. In its ascetical life it is not content
with perfection : it advocates holiness, that is the
infinite and inexhaustible goodness of God.
The dogmatic fixation on the fundamentals,
which it would be difficult to go back upon without
surrendering all fixed points in Christianity, may
prove to be no hindrance, but only a hindrance
to our tying ourselves into hopeless knots, losing our
way, getting into an impasse. The great dogmas
of the Church are not shackles, but axioms of
freedom ; they are not doors into a prison, but
ways of escape into liberty ; they are like buoys
which mark the channel to the open sea.
The Finality of Christ 191
Even if Christianity were to fail on this planet ,
there may be an infinity of resources in the love
that planned the Incarnation and endured Calvary ;
we only need to know that God was personally
revealed and involved in Christ, and then Christ
is able to hold endless hope for man.
3. The re -discoveries of our own times are
promising.
It was left to the nineteenth century to re
discover the historic Jesus in such a fashion that
He stands before our own age more vividly than
in any age save that in which He lived. When
this discovery of the faniliar, human, loving
figure is identified with the great declarations of the
Creeds, then there will be inaugurated that revolu
tion in our conception of God which is one of the
greatest needs of our age. We have been thinking
of God as if Jesus Christ were no revelation of
Him at all. To hold with intellectual and moral
conviction that Jesus of Nazareth had precisely
the same character as the Eternal Father is a belief
not easy to come at ; and we have not yet under
stood all it implies. If it is true, then we have to
unlearn a great deal, and many things that have
passed for truth must be rejected as lies.
We are daily discovering the possibilities locked
up both within matter and the human mind, which,
if they could be geared on to saintly character
and the pursuit of social justice, would result in
vast changes in the nature of man and the signi
ficance of earthly life.
There is a gradual drawing together of conserva
tive religion and revolutionary thought. If these
things should ever coalesce, as in principle they
192 The King s Weigh House Pulpit
ought, it would unite forces that have been hither
to opposed and would make an enormous differ
ence both to religion and to social reform. Once
again the Gospel call would gain point and touch
the imagination of men, the ranks of social re
formers would be recruited from those who believed,
while those who believed most firmly would
labour to lay the foundations of a true social order.
Everything indicates that we are at the beginning
of Christianity, not at the end. Our Lord is the
Alpha and the Omega, and we have as yet hardly
learned the alphabet of the Gospel. Christ
may exhaust this world : this world will never
exhaust Him.
Printed in Great Britain by
TJNWIN BBOTHEES, LIMITED, THE OBESHAM PBESS, WOKING AND LONDON
