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RELIGIOUS REALITY

A BOOK FOR MEN

A. E. J. RAWLINSON

Student of Christ Church, Oxford; Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of
Lichfield; Priest-In-Charge of St. John The Evangelist, Wilton Road,
S.W.; Formerly Tutor of Keble College and Late Chaplain to the Forces.

WITH A PREFACE

BY

THE BISHOP OF LICHFIELD

1918

PREFACE

BY

THE BISHOP OF LICHFIELD

This is a book which is wanted. Thoughtful men, in every class, are
not afraid of theology, _i.e._ of a reasoned account of their
religion, but they want a theology which can be stated without
conventions and technicalities; they do not at all care for a religion
which pretends to do away with all mystery, but they are glad to be
assured of the essential reasonableness of the Christian Faith; they
do not expect a ready-made solution of the problem of evil, but they
wish to see it honestly faced; above all, they want to know how
Christian truth bears on the real problems of life; the best of them
are not at all afraid of a religion which makes big demands on them,
but they know well enough the difficulty of responding to those
claims, and their greatest need of all is to find and to use that life
and power, coming from a living Person, without which our best
aspirations must fail and our highest ideals remain unrealized.

These needs seem to me to be satisfactorily and happily met in the
following pages. My friend and chaplain, Mr. Rawlinson, has had good
means of knowing what men are and what they want. He has had to do
with the undergraduate, with officers and men in the Army, and with
the ordinary civilian in parish life. He has been able to see the
nature and needs of our British manhood at different angles, and he is
the sort of man with whom men are not afraid to talk. He has had good
opportunity of diagnosing the situation, and this book shows his skill
in dealing with it.

I do not find myself in agreement with everything in these pages, but
when I am conscious of difference of view, I am no less grateful for
the stimulus to thought. I am specially thankful that the writer has
been so courageous in tackling the most difficult subjects.

I know that the author's one desire is to help men to be more real in
their religion. I share his hope, and I believe that this book will do
much to accomplish it.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

This book has grown out of the writer's experience in preparing men
and officers in military hospitals for Confirmation. It represents, in
a considerably expanded but--as it is hoped--still simple form, the
kind of things which he would have wished to say to them, and to
others with whom he was brought into contact, if he had had more time
and opportunity than was usually afforded him. It seemed necessary to
write the book, because there did not appear to be in existence any
reasonably short book on similar lines which covered the ground of
Christian faith and practice as a whole, and which approached the
subject from the point of view which seems to the writer to be the
most real.

The writer is consciously indebted in the first chapter to the
discussion of our Lord's teaching and character in Dr. T. B. Glover's
fascinating book, _The Jesus of History_. It is possible that there
are other and unconscious obligations which have been overlooked. Here
and there acknowledgment is made in footnotes, and an occasional
phrase, "lifted" from some other writer, has been placed in inverted
commas.

In Chapter VIII. of Part I. the author has echoed the thought, and to
a certain extent the wording, of parts of his own essay on "The
Principle of Authority" in _Foundations_.

For help in the correction of the proofs, and for criticisms and
suggestions which have led to numerous modifications and improvements
in matters of detail, the thanks of the writer are due to various
friends, and more particularly to his brother, Lieutenant A. C.
Rawlinson, of the Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars; to the Rev. Austin
Thompson, Vicar of S. Peter's, Eaton Square; and to the Rev. Leonard
Hodgson, Vice-Principal of S. Edmund Hall, Oxford.

_November_, 1917.

CONTENTS

PREFACE BY THE BISHOP OF LICHFIELD

INTRODUCTION

PART I

THE THEORY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

CHAP.

I.    THE MAN CHRIST JESUS

II.   THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER

III.  THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE SPIRIT

IV.   THE HOLY TRINITY

V.    THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

VI.   SIN AND REDEMPTION

VII.  THE CHURCH AND HER MISSION IN THE WORLD

VIII. PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC

IX.   SACRAMENTS

X.    THE LAST THINGS

XI.   CLERGY AND LAITY

XII.  THE BIBLE

PART II

THE PRACTICE OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

I.    THE CHRISTIAN AIM

II.   THE WAY OF THE WORLD

III.  THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH

IV.   THE WORKS OF THE DEVIL

V.    THE KINGDOM OF GOD

VI.   CHRISTIANITY AND COMMERCE

VII.  CHRISTIANITY AND INDUSTRY

VIII. CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS

IX.   CHRISTIANITY AND WAR

X.    LOVE, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE

PART III

THE MAINTENANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

I.   HOW TO BEGIN

II.  PRAYER

III. SELF-EXAMINATION AND REPENTANCE

IV.  CORPORATE WORSHIP AND COMMUNION

V.   THE DEVOTIONAL USE OF THE BIBLE

VI.  ALMSGIVING AND FASTING

INTRODUCTION

Vital religion begins for a man when lie first discovers the reality
of the living GOD. Most men indeed profess a belief in GOD, a vague
acknowledgment of the existence of "One above": but the belief counts
for little in their lives.

GOD, if He exists at all, must obviously be important: and it is
conceivable that He prefers the dogmatic atheism of a man here and a
man there, or the serious agnosticism of a slightly larger number, to
the practical indifference of the majority. "There are two attitudes,
and only two, which are worthy of a serious man: to serve GOD with his
whole heart, because he knows Him; or to seek GOD with his whole
heart, because he knows Him not."

The ordinary Englishman is in most cases nominally a Christian. As a
rule he has been admitted in infancy by baptism into the Christian
Church. But he is ignorant of the implications of his baptism, and
indifferent to the claims of a religion which he fails to understand.
These pages are written with the object of explaining what, in the
writer's judgment, the faith and practice of the Christian Church
really is.

PART I

THE THEORY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

CHAPTER I

THE MAN CHRIST JESUS

It is best to begin with a study of the teaching and character of
Christ. Scholars for about a hundred years have been studying the
Gospels historically, "like any other books." It is now reasonably
certain that the first three Gospels--those which we know as the
Gospels according to S. Matthew, S. Mark, and S. Luke--though not, of
course, infallible or accurate in their every detail, reflect
nevertheless in a general way a trustworthy portrait of Jesus as He
actually lived. The sayings ascribed to Christ in their pages bear the
marks of originality. The outline of the events which they describe
may be taken as being in rough correspondence with the facts. The
Gospels as a whole represent pretty faithfully the impression made by
the life and character of Jesus upon the minds and memories of those
who knew Him best.

We are very apt to regard the Gospels conventionally. An inherited
orthodoxy which has made peace with the world takes them for granted
as "a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong." An
impatient reaction from orthodoxy sets them aside as incomprehensible
or unimportant. It is worth while making the effort to empty our minds
of prejudice, and to allow the Gospels to tell their own tale. We
shall find that they bring us face to face with a Portrait of
surprising freshness and power.

It is the portrait of One who spent the first thirty years of His life
in an obscure Galilaean village, and who in early manhood worked as a
carpenter in a village shop. He first came forward in public in
connexion with a religious revival initiated by John the Baptist. He
was baptized in the Jordan. What His baptism meant to Him is
symbolized by the account of a vision which He saw, and a Voice which
designated Him as Son of GOD. He became conscious of a religious
mission, and was at first tempted to interpret His mission in an
unworthy way, to seek to promote spiritual ends by temporal
compromises, or to impress men's minds by an appeal to mystery or
miracle. He rejected the temptation, and proclaimed simply GOD and His
Kingdom. He is said to have healed the sick and to have wrought other
"signs and mighty works": but He set no great store by these things,
and did not wish to be known primarily as a wonder-worker. He lived
the life of an itinerating Teacher, declaring to any who cared to
listen the things concerning the Kingdom of GOD. At times He was
popular and attracted crowds: but He cared little for popularity,
wrapped up His teaching in parables, and repelled by His "hard
sayings" all but a minority of earnest souls. He gave offence to the
conventionalists and the religiously orthodox by the freedom with
which He criticized established beliefs and usages, by His
championship of social outcasts, and by His association with persons
of disreputable life. Unlike John the Baptist, He was neither a
teetotaller nor a puritan. He was not a rigid Sabbatarian. He despised
humbug, hypocrisy, and cant: and He hated meanness and cruelty. He
could be stern with a terrible sternness. His gaze pierced through all
disguises, and He understood the things that are in the heart of man.
He saw things naked. He has been called "the great Son of Fact." He
was never under any illusions.

He faced the hostility of public opinion with unflinching courage. He
expected to be crucified, and crucified He was. He warned those who
followed Him to expect a similar fate. He claimed from men an
allegiance that should be absolute: the ties of home and kindred, of
wealth or position in the world, were to be held of no account:
anything which stood in the way of entire discipleship to Himself,
however compelling its immediate claim, was to be sacrificed without
hesitation for His sake. He saw nothing inconsistent between this
concentration of men's allegiance upon His own person, and His
insistence upon GOD as the one great Reality that mattered.

The motive of His whole life was consecration to the will of GOD. He
was rich towards GOD, where other men are poor. The words were true of
Him, as of no one else, "I have set GOD always before me." His mission
among men He fulfilled as a work which His Father had given Him to do.
"Lo, I come to do Thy will, O GOD." He loved men, and went about doing
good, because He knew that GOD loved men, and meant well by them, and
desired good for them, and not evil. He was pitiful, because GOD is
pitiful. He hated evil, because GOD hates it. He loved purity, because
GOD is pure.

He delighted in friendships both with men and women: but you could not
imagine anything unclean in His friendships. He was not married, but
He looked upon marriage as an utterly pure and holy thing, taught that
a man should leave father and mother and cleave unto his wife so that
they twain should be one flesh, and recognized no possibility of
divorce except--and even this is not quite certain--on the ground of
marital unfaithfulness. He had one and the same standard of purity for
men and women.

He loved children, the birds and the flowers, the life of the open
air: but He was equally at home in the life of the town. He went out
to dinner with anybody who asked Him: He rejoiced in the simple
hilarity of a wedding feast. He was a believer in fellowship, and in
human brotherhood. He was everybody's friend, and looked upon no one
as beyond the pale. He loved sinners and welcomed them, without in the
least condoning what was wrong. He looked upon the open and
acknowledged sinner as a more hopeful person from the religious point
of view than the person who was self-satisfied and smug. He said that
He came to seek and to save those who knew themselves to be lost.

He chose twelve men to be in an especial sense His disciples--learners
in His school. To them He sought to reveal something of His deeper
mind. He tried to make them understand that true royalty consists in
service; that if a man would be spiritually great he should choose for
himself the lowest room, and become the servant of all; that the
privilege of sitting on His right hand and on His left in His Kingdom
was reserved for those for whom it was prepared by His Father; the
important thing was whether a man was prepared to drink His cup of
suffering, and be baptized with His baptism of blood. But He did speak
of Himself as King, He accepted the designation of Himself as the
Christ of GOD, and spoke strange words about His coming upon the
clouds of heaven to judgment. He held that by their relation to
Himself and to His ideals the lives of all men should be tested, and
the verdict passed upon their deeds. For making these and similar
claims He was convicted of blasphemy and put to death.

His disciples failed to understand Him. The Gospels are full of the
contrast between their minds and His. Of the chosen Twelve who, as He
said, had continued with Him in His trials and to whom He promised
that they should eat and drink at His table in His Kingdom, and sit on
thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel, one betrayed and one
denied Him when the time of crisis came, and the rest forsook Him and
fled. The fact that their faith and loyalty were subsequently re-
established--that the execution which took place on Calvary was not
the complete and summary ending of the whole Christian movement--that,
in the days that followed, the recreant disciples became the confident
Apostles, requires for its explanation the assertion in some form of
the truth of the Resurrection.

With regard to the precise form which the Resurrection took there may
be room for differences of opinion: the accounts of the risen Jesus in
the various Gospel records cannot be completely harmonized, and the
story may here and there have been modified in the telling. The fact
remains that apart from the assumption as a matter of historical truth
that Jesus was veritably alive from the dead, and that He showed
Himself alive to His disciples by evidences which were adequate to
carry conviction to their incredulous minds, the origins of historical
Christianity cannot really be explained.

In the Gospel according to S. John it is stated that the crowds said
of Jesus, "This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the
world": and so much, at the least, the average Englishman is ready to
admit: for to call Jesus Christ a Prophet--even to call Him the
supreme Prophet--is to claim for Him no more than a good Mohammedan
claims for Mohammed.

The word "prophet" in itself means one who speaks on behalf of
another: and a prophet is defined to be a spokesman on behalf of GOD.
He is essentially a man with a message. In so far as he is a true
prophet he is one who by an imperious inner necessity is constrained
to declare to his fellows a word which has come to him from the Lord.
And the prophet's word is urgent: it brooks no delay. It is impatient
of conventionalisms and shams. It breaks through the established order
of things in matters both social and religious. It is dynamic, vivid,
revolutionary. It goes to the root of things, with a startling
directness, a kind of explosive force. It disturbs and shatters the
customary placidities of men's lives. It forces them to face spiritual
realities, to look the truth in the face.

All this is true in a pre-eminent degree of the words of Christ. There
is a force and directness, an energy and intensity about His teaching,
which is without parallel in the history of the world. It might have
been thought impossible for His utterances, in any age or under any
circumstances, to become conventionalized: but the miracle has been
achieved. Christianity is to the average Englishman an established
convention and nothing more.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit," said Jesus: but _we_ say rather,
"Blessed are the rich in substance."

"Blessed are they that mourn": but that is not the general opinion.

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth"--but who
amongst us really believes it?

"Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they
shall be filled."

"Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy": but to-day a
more popular maxim is, "Be not merciful unto them that offend of
malicious wickedness."

"Blessed are the pure in heart"--and how many of us are that?

"Blessed are the peace-makers": but in a time of war they are not very
favourably regarded.

"Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness' sake"--is
that _your_ ambition, or mine?

"Ye are the salt of the earth" and "the light of the world"--then the
earth, it is to be feared, is a somewhat insipid place, and its light
comparable to darkness visible. "If any man will come after Me, let
him take up his Cross, and follow Me": but most of us make it a tacit
condition of our Christianity that we shall _not_ be crucified.

Is it not true that we habitually refuse to take seriously His
teaching about man; that we water down His paradoxes and
conventionalize His sayings; that we blunt the sharpness of His
precepts, and shirk the tremendous sternness of His demands?

And does His teaching about GOD fare any better? GOD was to Jesus
Christ the one Reality that mattered; is that in any serious sense
true of us? GOD, He taught, cares for the sparrows, numbers the hairs
of our heads, sees in secret, and reads our inmost hearts. GOD knows
all about us, loves us individually, thinks out our life in all its
relations, and makes provision accordingly. There is nothing which He
cannot or will not do for His children.

He is near and not far off: He is also on the throne of all things--
the Universe is in our Father's hand, and His will directs it. "O ye
of little faith, wherefore did ye doubt?" Fear, on the ground that
things are stormy, is a thing Christ simply cannot understand.

GOD, moreover, is loving and generous, royal and bounteous: forgiving
sinners: sending His rain with Divine impartiality upon the just and
the unjust alike. "His flowers are just as beautiful in the bad man's
garden." He loves even His enemies, for He is equally the Father of
all.

And man is made for GOD, and belongs to GOD. GOD and man need one
another: all that is requisite is that they should find one another:
and that is the Good News. The discovery of GOD is the Pearl of great
price, a Treasure worth the sacrifice of everything else: the
experience of a life-time, and a life-time's acquisitions, apart from
GOD, are not worth anything at all.

We who call ourselves Christians, do we seriously believe these
things? Do we really share Christ's outlook upon GOD, or His hope for
man? Is our view of life centred in GOD, as was His? Or do His words
of reproach fit us, as they fitted S. Peter--"You think like a man,
and not like GOD"?

"The way to faith in GOD, and to love for man," it has been said, "is
to come nearer to the living Jesus." If we would learn Christ's great
prophecy about man and GOD, we must read the Gospels over again, with
awakened eyes. We must take seriously the man Christ Jesus. We must
hear the words of His prophecy, and face honestly the challenge of His
sayings. We must confront the central Figure of the Gospels in all its
tremendous realism, watering down nothing, explaining nothing away;
"wrestling with Jesus of Nazareth as Jacob wrestled with the angel,
and refusing to let Him go except He bless us." In the end He does
bless those who wrestle with Him, and we shall not in the end be able
to stop short of confessing Him as GOD.

For the message of the Gospel story is ultimately not even the
teaching of Christ: it is Christ Himself. He, alone among the world's
teachers, perfectly practised what He preached, and embodied what He
taught. And therefore the truth of GOD and the ideal for man in Him
are one. In Him we see man as he ought to be, man as he is meant to
be. And because we instinctively judge that the highest human nature
is divine, and because also we feel that GOD Himself would be most
divine and worshipful if we could conceive of Him as entering in and
sharing our human experience and revealing Himself as man, those who
have reflected most deeply about the matter have commonly been led to
believe that so indeed it is. They have felt that in Jesus Christ man,
as the mirror and the Son of GOD, reflects the Father's glory. They
have felt that in Jesus Christ GOD, the Eternal Source of all things,
has expressed and revealed Himself in a human life: that GOD has
spoken a Word, a Word which is the expression of Himself: and that the
Word is Christ. "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou
not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father." For
there is, in truth, something in Jesus of Nazareth which compels our
worship. And if we will take seriously the human Jesus we shall
discover in the end Deity revealed in manhood, and we shall worship
Him in whom we have believed.

But that, of course, is dogma: in other words, it is the deliberate
judgment of Christian faith. It is the expression, as a truth for the
mind, of the value which a soul which is spiritually awake comes to
set upon Jesus because it cannot do otherwise. A judgment like that is
the conclusion--it ought not to be taken as the starting-point--of
faith. There are many, of course, who are willing to begin by assuming
provisionally that it is true, upon the authority of others who bear
witness to it: and that is not an unreasonable thing to do, provided a
man afterwards verifies it in the experience of his own life. But
belief in the divinity of Jesus is too tremendous a confession lightly
to be taken for granted by mere half-believers of a casual creed.
Convictions worth having must sooner or later be fought for: they must
be won by the sweat of the brow. And if a man is not content
permanently to defer to the authority of others, he ought not to begin
by taking for granted the doctrine that Jesus is GOD. He ought to
begin as the Apostles began, by taking seriously the _Man_ Christ
Jesus.

CHAPTER II

THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER

It was characteristic of the ancient Jews that they had a vital belief
in the living GOD: and belief in GOD, and that of a far more real and
definite kind than the modern Englishman's vague admission of the
existence of a Supreme Being, was a thing which Jesus was able to take
for granted in those to whom He spoke. GOD to the Jew was the GOD of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, holy and righteous, gracious and merciful:
active and operative in the world, the Controller of events: having a
purpose for Israel and for the world, which in the process of the
world's history was being wrought out, and which would one day find
complete and adequate fulfilment in the setting up of GOD'S Eternal
Kingdom.

What Jesus did by His life and teaching was to deepen and intensify
existing faith in GOD by the revelation of GOD as Father, and to
revive and quicken the expectation of GOD'S Kingdom by the
proclamation of its near approach. The application to GOD of the term
"Father" was not new: but the revelation of what GOD'S Fatherhood
meant in the personal life and faith of Jesus Himself as Son of God
was something entirely new: while in Jesus' preaching of the Divine
Kingdom there was a note of freshness and originality, and a spiritual
assurance of certainty, which carried conviction of an entirely new
kind to the minds and hearts of those who listened.

All the more overwhelming must have seemed to the disciples the
disaster of their Master's crucifixion. It was not merely that the
hopes which in their minds had gathered about His person were
shattered: their very faith in GOD Himself, and in the goodness of
GOD, was for the time being torn up by the roots. Nothing but an event
as real and as objective as the Crucifixion itself could have reversed
for them this impression of sheer catastrophe. The resurrection of
Jesus, which was for them the wonder of wonders, not only restored to
them their faith in Him as the Christ of GOD, now "declared to be the
Son of GOD with power by the resurrection from the dead"; it also
relaid for them the foundations of faith in GOD and in His goodness
and love upon a basis of certainty henceforth never to be shaken.
"This is the message which we have heard of Him and declare unto you,
that GOD is light, and in Him is no darkness at all."

Meanwhile what of Jesus Himself--this Christ, through their
relationship to whom they had come by this new experience of the
reality of GOD? In symbolical vision they saw Him ascend up into the
heavens and vanish from bodily sight: in pictorial language they spoke
of Him as seated at GOD'S right hand. They were assured nevertheless--
and multitudes in many generations have echoed their conviction--that
He was still in their midst unseen, their living Master and Lord.
Instinctively they prayed to Him. Through Him they made their approach
to the Father. He had transformed for them their world. He was the
light of their lives. In Him was truth. He was their way to GOD.

All the great movement of Christian thought in the New Testament is
concerned in one way or another with the working out of this
experienced significance of Jesus. The maturest expression of what He
meant to them is contained in the great reflective Gospel--an
interpretation rather than a simple portrait of the historical Jesus--
which is ascribed by tradition to S. John. The Christ of the Fourth
Gospel is man, with all the attributes of most real and genuine
manhood: but He is also more than man. He is the self-utterance--the
Word--of GOD. He came forth from GOD, and went to GOD. He is the
revelation of the Father, the expression of GOD'S nature and being "in
the intelligible terms of a human life." To have seen Him is to have
seen the Father, because He and the Father are one. He is the Way, the
Truth, and the Life: the Bread that came down from heaven: the
Fountain of living water: the Lamb of GOD, that taketh away the sin of
the world.

Later Christian orthodoxy never got farther than this. All that the
formal doctrine of the Incarnation--as expressed, for example, in such
a formulary as the Athanasian Creed--can truly be said to amount to is
just the double insistence that Christ is at once truly and completely
man, and also truly and completely GOD. The paradox is left
unreconciled--"yet He is not two, but one Christ." The Godhead is
expressed in manhood: in the manhood we see GOD.

What does it mean to confess the Deity of Christ? It means just this:
that we take the character of Christ as our clue to the character of
GOD: that we interpret the life of Christ as an expression of the life
of GOD: that we affirm the conviction, based upon deep and unshakable
personal experience, that "GOD was in Christ reconciling the world
unto Himself."

What is the real question, the most fundamental of questions, which
arises when we seek to interpret the world we live in? Is it not just
the question: What is the nature or character of the ultimate Power or
Principle or Person upon which or upon whom the world depends? Is not
every religion, every imagined deity, in one sense an altar to the
unknown GOD? The venture of Christian faith consists in staking all
upon the assumption, the hypothesis abundantly verified in the life's
experience of such as make it, that the character of the unknown GOD
is revealed in Christ: that the love of Christ is the expression of
the love of GOD, the sufferings of Christ an expression of the
suffering of GOD, the triumph of Christ an expression of the eternal
victory of GOD over all the evil and wickedness which mars the wonder
of His creation. If we were to look primarily at the life of Nature,
we might be tempted to say that GOD was cruel. If we considered
certain of the works of man, we might be tempted to conclude that GOD
was devilish. Looking at Jesus we gain the assurance that GOD is Love.
We behold "the light of the knowledge of the glory of GOD in the face
of Jesus Christ," and we are satisfied.

And so we come to Jesus--the Prophet that is come into the world: and
what we shall find, if we will suffer Him to work His work in us, is
this. He will change our world for us, and will transform it. He will
redeem our souls, so that there shall be in us a new birth, a new
creation. He will show us the Father, and it shall suffice us. He will
set our feet on the road to Calvary, and we shall rejoice to be
crucified with Him. He will convert us--He will turn our lives inside
out, so that they shall have their centre in GOD, and no longer in
ourselves. He will bestow on us the Spirit without measure, so that we
shall be sons and daughters of the Highest. And we shall know that we
are of GOD, even though the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we
shall know that the Son of GOD is come, and that He hath given us an
understanding, that we may know Him that is true, and that we are in
Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE SPIRIT

To know GOD and to find Him revealed in Jesus Christ is not enough. To
have set before one in the human life of Jesus an ideal of character,
a pattern of perfect manhood for imitation, if the message of the
Gospel were regarded as stopping short at that point, could only be
discouraging to men conscious of moral weakness, of spiritual
impotence and incapacity. It is probable that one of the reasons why
the plain man to-day is so very apt to regard Christianity as
consisting in the profession of a standard of ideal morality to which
he knows himself to be personally incapable of attaining, and which
those who do profess it fail conspicuously to practise, is to be found
in the entire absence from his mind and outlook of any conception of
the Holy Spirit, or any belief in the availability of the Spirit as a
source of transforming energy and power in the lives of men.

As a matter of fact, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is of absolutely
vital importance in the Christian scheme: and like all the great
Christian doctrines, it has its basis in the realities of living
experience. The opening chapters of the Acts of the Apostles set
before us the picture of the earliest disciples, assured and no longer
doubtful of the reality of the Resurrection, waiting in Jerusalem for
a promised endowment of "power from on high." And the story of
Pentecost is the record of the fulfilment of "the promise of the
Father."

We are making a mistake if we fix our attention primarily upon the
outward symbols of wind and fire, or confuse our minds with the
perplexities which are suggested by the references to "speaking with
tongues." These things--however wonderful to the men of the Apostolic
generation--are in themselves only examples of the psychological
abnormalities which not infrequently accompany religious revivals.
They are, as it were, the foam on the crest of the wave: evidences
upon the surface of profounder forces astir in the deeper levels of
personality. The disciples felt themselves taken hold of and
transformed. Henceforth they were new men. "GOD had sent into their
hearts through Jesus Christ a Power not of this world: only such a
power could achieve what history assures us was achieved by those
early Christians. By its compelling influence they found themselves
welded together into a religious and social community, a fellowship of
faith and hope and love, the true Israel, the Church of the living
GOD. Enabled to become daily more and more like Jesus, they developed
an ever fuller comprehension of His unique significance: and so they
went about carrying on the work and teaching which He had begun on
earth, certain that He was with them and energizing in them. They
healed the sick in mind and body, they convinced Jewish and Pagan
consciences of sin and its forgiveness, they created a new morality,
and established a new hope: life and immortality were brought to
light. And then, as need arose, they were inspired to write those
books of the New Testament, in which their wonderful experience of GOD
at work in them remains enshrined, the norm and standard of Christian
faith and practice for all time. The Power which enabled them to do
all this they called the Holy Spirit." [Footnote: _The Holy Spirit,_
by R. G. Parsons, in _The Meaning of the Creed_. (S.P.C.K., 1917)]

To be "filled with the Spirit," to be "endued with power from on
high," to be made free by the Spirit, so as to be free indeed--
released from the tyranny of a dead past, from bondage to law and
literalism, from the power of sin and of evil habit--and to be brought
forth into the glorious liberty of the sons of GOD: this was a very
vital and essential part of what Christianity meant in the experience
of those first disciples. The new morality of the Gospel, the new
righteousness which was to exceed the righteousness of Pharisees and
Scribes, was a thing as widely removed as possible from painful
conformity to the letter of an external code: it was a fruit--a
spontaneous outcome--of the Spirit. S. Paul has described for us the
fruits of the Spirit as he had seen them manifested in the lives of
men--"love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, meekness, self-control": they are the essential
lineaments of the character of Christ: they are summed up in the
thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians in S. Paul's great hymn to Charity
or Love, which itself reads like yet another portrait of the Christ. A
Christianity which through the Spirit brought forth such fruits was
true to type. The Spirit, in short, reproduced in men the life of
filial relationship towards GOD: He is described as the Spirit of
adoption, whereby men are enabled to cry Abba, Father.

The Holy Spirit, moreover, is a Spirit of insight and interpretation,
quickening men's faculties, enlightening their minds, enabling them to
see, and to understand. He brings to remembrance the things of Christ
and unfolds their significance: under His inspiration Christian
preaching was developed, and a Christian doctrine about Christ and
about GOD. In confident reliance upon His advocacy and His support the
Apostles were made bold to confront in the name of Jesus a hostile
world. Is it any wonder that in the eyes of their contemporaries they
appeared as men possessed, as men made drunk with the new wine of some
strange ecstasy, or mad with the fervour of some inexplicable
exaltation? Yet the Spirit did not normally issue in ecstasy. It is
not the way of GOD to over-ride men's reason, or to place their
individual personalities in abeyance. The operation of the Spirit is
to be seen rather--apart from His work in the gradual purification and
deepening of character and motive, the bringing to birth and
development in men's souls of the "new man" who is "Christ in them,
the hope of glory"--in the intensification of men's normal faculties
and gifts, and the direction of their exercise into channels
profitable to the well-being of the community. For the Holy Spirit is
the Spirit of brotherhood: and His gifts are bestowed "for the fitting
of GOD'S people for the work of mutual service": they are for the
upbuilding of the Body of Christ. The real miracle of the Christian
life is simply the Christian life itself: and that a man should love
his neighbour as himself is at least as wonderful as that he should
speak with tongues.

Reflecting upon the experience which had come to them, Christian men
came to see that the Holy Spirit, who was the Spirit of the Father and
the Son, was Divine, even as Jesus was Divine. In this strange Power
which had transformed their lives they discovered GOD, energizing and
operative in their hearts. Instinctively they worshipped and glorified
the Spirit as the Lord, the Giver of Life. Those who have entered upon
any genuine measure of Christian experience are not prepared to say
that they were wrong.

The Christian life depends upon the Spirit, now as then. Only in the
power of the Holy Spirit is Christianity possible, and no one ever yet
made any real advance in personal religion except in dependence upon
an enabling energy of which the source was not in himself. "It is the
Spirit that maketh alive." "The Spirit helpeth our infirmities." "I
know that in myself, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing."
"If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children,
how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them
that ask Him." It is because of our lack of any living or effectual
belief in the Holy Spirit, and because of our consequent failure to
seek His inspiration and to submit ourselves to His influence, that
the Christianity of men to-day is often so barren and so poor a thing;
and the corporate life of Christendom languishes for the same reason.
The Church is meant to be a fellowship, a brotherhood: the most real
and living brotherhood on earth. Men find to-day the realization of
brotherhood in a regiment: they find it in a school or in a club: in a
Trade Union: or in such an organization as the Workers' Educational
Association. They fail to find it in the Church of Christ.

The Church can never be a brotherhood save in the Holy Spirit: for
Christianity is essentially and before all things a religion of the
Spirit, and the external organization and institutions of the Church,
apart from "His vivifying breath, are a mere empty shell. Where there
is no vision the people perish: and it is only under the inspiration
of the Spirit that men see visions and dream dreams. Come from the
four winds, O Breath, and breathe upon these dry bones of our modern
churchmanship, that we may live: and so at last shall we stand upright
on our feet, an exceeding great army, and go forth conquering and to
conquer in the train of the victorious Christ."

CHAPTER IV

THE HOLY TRINITY

God, as Christianity reveals Him, is no cold or remote Being, no
abstract Principle-of-All-Things, reposing aloof and impersonal in the
stillness of an eternal calm. He is rather the boundless energy of an
eternal Life--"no motionless eternity of perfection, but an
overflowing vitality, an inexhaustible fecundity, the everlasting
well-spring of all existence." He is the eternal Creator of all
things; not indeed in any sense which commits us to a literal
acceptance of the mythology of Genesis, but in the sense that the
created universe has its origin in His holy and righteous will, and
that upon Him all things depend. "In affirming that the world was made
by GOD, we do not affirm that it was ready-made from the beginning."
The work of creation is still going on. GOD is eternally making all
things new.

The nature of GOD, in so far as the mind and affections of man are
capable of knowing Him and entering into relationships with Him, is
revealed in Jesus Christ His Son, and the revelation is completed and
made intelligible by the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. S. Paul
expressed the practical content of GOD'S self-disclosure in his phrase
"the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of GOD, and the
fellowship of the Holy Ghost." Later Christian thinkers worked it out
into the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the conception of GOD as at
once Three in One, and One in Three.

To the plain man the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is something of a
puzzle--on the face of it an arithmetical paradox; suggestive,
moreover, of the abstract subtleties of speculation rather than of the
concrete realities of religious life. But the doctrine did not have
its origin, as a matter of historical fact, in any perverse love of
subtlety or speculation. It certainly arose out of living realities of
spiritual experience. It arose as the result of an attempt, on the
part of the earliest Christian believers, to think out the meaning of
what had happened in their religious lives, and to express it in
speech and thought. What was this thing that had come to them, this
thing which had changed their whole outlook upon the world, which had
transformed their very inmost souls and made them new men, full of a
new vision and a new hope? Something tremendous had happened in their
lives. They were confident that it held the secret of _all_ life, for
them and for others. It was a new, an overwhelming, a conclusive
revelation of GOD. They proclaimed it: they were constrained also to
think about it. They had to find ways of expressing it. They had to
think out what it meant.

There was Jesus Christ. Who was He? What did He mean? What was His
relation to man, and to GOD? Certainly He had shed light upon GOD, and
upon GOD'S nature. Through His teaching, His character, His life and
death, the conception of GOD was filled with a new meaning. In Him GOD
was revealed with a fulness that had never been before. He disclosed
more of GOD'S inmost character, and more of the relation which He
bears to men. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father"--the
disciples felt that this witness was true. By admitting to their
thought of GOD all that the life of Jesus brought, they filled with
fresh glory Christ's favourite word for GOD--"your Father which is in
Heaven."

In Jesus, they felt, GOD was expressed: His relationship to GOD was
unique. They found the Divine in Him as in no other. They knew that
GOD was in that life because He had spoken and acted there. "Through
the eyes of Jesus" GOD looked out upon the world, and in Jesus' love
and purity and yearning for the sinful and the heavy-laden, GOD
Himself became visible. They knew now what GOD was like. GOD was like
Christ. It was His glory that shone in Jesus' face. It was a new
vision of Him when "Jesus of Nazareth passed by." In the grace--that
is, the beauty, the glory and attractiveness--of the Lord Jesus Christ
they saw a revelation of the love of GOD, a love that yearned over the
fallen and the sorrowful, a love that suffered, and through suffering
brought redemption.

But there was something more. It was not simply that in Jesus Christ
GOD had been brought near, so that they felt they knew GOD as never
before. There was in the experience which had come to them more than
simply a Revealer and a Revealed. There was the Spirit which took
possession of them, a transforming inward Power: a Power able to
reproduce in them, by a process of growth from more to more, that
character of Christ in whose lineaments they had discerned the nature
of the eternal GOD Himself. There was a Presence abiding in their
midst, dwelling within them, a Breath of the Divine Life which every
Christian knew: a Presence which brought strength and comfort, power
and love and discipline, and bore fruits of love and joy and peace.
Who or what was it? An influence from on high? Yes: but it seemed more
intimate, more personal than any mere "influence," more indissolubly
one with them, knitting them into a fellowship in which they were
united with the Father and the Son. "Truly our fellowship is with the
Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ." The Spirit which bore such
fruits in them, which brought them into so intimate a fellowship with
GOD in Christ, they recognized as the Spirit of GOD, as the Presence
in them of very GOD Himself. GOD, they felt, was not a Being far off,
an Influence telling upon men from a distance. He was the very secret
of life, "closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet," so that
each soul was meant to be a sacred "temple of GOD," "GOD abiding in
him and he in GOD." GOD came in the Son, GOD had come also and equally
in the Spirit. The Eternal Source of all things, who was known and
worshipped as the Living One even before Christ came, was made more
fully known in Christ, and now He was still more intimately made known
in the inmost spiritual life of every day.

That was Christian experience. That was the experience out of which
the doctrine of the Trinity arose. It arose out of an attempt to think
the thing out. If we to-day find the doctrine difficult, at least the
experience was and is both simple and profound. And we cannot help
thinking about it.

It may be that sometimes we think we would rather be content to say
simply with S. John that "GOD is Love." And that is truly the simplest
of Christian creeds. If we were able fully to understand it, it would
be sufficient. "Holy Trinity, whatever else it may signify, is a mode
of saying 'Holy Love.'" But as a matter of fact it is only through the
revelation of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the fellowship of
the Holy Spirit that we can ever come to understand the love of GOD.
In the Christian Gospel GOD is revealed first as Father, secondly as
Sufferer, thirdly as the Spirit of eternally victorious Life: and it
takes the whole threefold revelation to express with any fulness the
rich wonder of what is meant by saying that GOD is Love. Our minds
cannot help passing from the contemplation of the threefold character
of GOD'S self-revelation to the thought of a certain threefoldness in
GOD Himself. We have to find room and place for such a thought--the
thought that GOD is _eternally_ Love, that He is _eternally_ Father,
Son, and Spirit--and yet at the same time not depart from the
fundamental Christian conviction that GOD is One.

It is to be feared that many Christian people do sometimes come
dangerously near to believing in three separate Gods, and what we call
Unitarianism is a one-sided protest against such a tendency. GOD is
indeed a unity: and so far Unitarianism is right. But Unitarianism is
less than the full Christian faith in GOD, because it fails to do
justice to the full riches of Christian experience, the many-sided
wonder of GOD revealed in Christ, and made real to us here and now by
the operation of the Spirit in our hearts. We are driven to say that
GOD is not only One, but Three in One.

Nevertheless, if any one finds the _theory_ of the Holy Trinity
difficult let him not be overmuch dismayed. Let him learn to know GOD
as Father and Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour: let him learn to know
the Holy Spirit as an energy of eternal life and inspiration in his
heart. He will then be _in effect_ a Trinitarian believer, even though
the theologians seem to him to talk a language which he does not
understand: even though--to tell the truth--he is not greatly
interested by what they say.

At the same time, there is need that people should think out the
meaning of the Christian revelation of GOD: perhaps that they should
think it out afresh. It is possible to be technically orthodox and
correct in doctrine and yet to miss the true reality of what GOD
means. The conception of GOD as Father implies that GOD has eternally
a Son: the life of Jesus Christ as Son of God reveals to us the
quality of that Divine Fatherhood to which His Sonship corresponds.
The Spirit, as the Divine Energy proceeding from the Father and the
Son, is the assurance that the life of GOD can never be self-contained
or aloof, but is for ever going forth from Himself, so as to be
eternally operative and active, alike in the processes of Nature and
in the lives of men. For "the Spirit of the Lord filleth the world,"
and the Divine Wisdom "reacheth from one end to the other mightily,
and sweetly ordereth all things."

It follows that Christianity, the religion of the Spirit, can never
stand still. Not stagnation, but life, is its characteristic note,
even "that Eternal Life which was with the Father, and hath been
manifested unto us." The Church which is truly alive unto GOD, and
aflame with the spirit of allegiance to Him who for the joy that was
set before Him endured the Cross, the Church which is truly quickened
and inspired by the Spirit of Truth and Love and Power, will always be
ready to "live dangerously" in the world, not shrinking timorously
from needed change or experiment, not holding aloof from conflict and
adventure and movement, but facing courageously all new situations and
new phases whether of life or of thought as they arise, shirking no
issues, welcoming all new-found truth, bringing things both new and
old out of her treasure-house, so that she may both "prove all things"
and also "hold fast that which is good."

There are conceptions of GOD proclaimed from Christian pulpits which
are less than the full Christian conception of GOD. The GOD who is
eternal Energy and Life and Love, the GOD who is revealed in Christ,
and whose Spirit is the Spirit of Freedom and Brotherhood and Truth,
is neither the tyrant God of the Calvinist, nor the dead-alive God of
the traditionalist, nor the obscurantist God of those who would decry
knowledge and quench the Spirit. Neither, again, is GOD the God of
militarists, a God who delights in carnage--even though it should be
the carnage of Germans; or the God who is thought of by His
worshippers as being mainly the God of the sacristy, a kind of
"supreme Guardian of the clerical interest in Europe." Least of all is
GOD the commonplace deity of commonplace people, a sort of placid
personification of respectability, the GOD whose religion is the
religion of "the Conservative Party at prayer."

He is a consuming Energy of Life and Fire. His eyes are "eyes of
Flame," and His inmost essence a white-hot passion of sacrifice and of
self-giving. At the heart of His self-revelation there is a Cross, the
eternal symbol of the almightiness of Love: the Cross which is the
source and the secret of all true victory, and newness of life, and
peace.

This, and none other, is the GOD whom truly to know is everlasting
life, and whom to serve is liberty. For He it is who has made us unto
Himself, with hearts that are restless until they rest in Him. To do
His will is to realize the object of our existence as human beings:
for it is to fulfil the purpose for which we have our being, the end
for which we were created; even to glorify GOD, and to enjoy Him for
ever.

CHAPTER V

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

But are not the evil and misery of the world, is not all that which we
know as "sin" and pain, in manifest contradiction to this Christian
conception of a GOD of Love? Most certainly they are: and it has been
the strength of Christianity from the beginning that--unlike many
rival systems and philosophies, including the "Christian Science"
movement of modern times--it has always faced facts, and in particular
has never regarded pain and sin, disease and sorrow and death, as
anything but the stubborn realities which in point of fact they are.
If we ask, indeed, how and why it was that evil, whether physical or
moral, originally came into the world, the Gospel returns no answer,
or an answer which, at best, merely echoes the ancient mythology of
Jewish traditional belief--"By the envy of the Devil sin entered into
the world, and death by sin": an answer which indeed denies
emphatically that evil had its origin in GOD, and declares its
essential root to lie in opposition to His will, but without
attempting any explanation of the difficulty of conceiving how
opposition to the will of GOD is possible.

The Gospel is concerned with issues that are practical rather than
strictly theoretical: and the really practical problem with regard to
evil is not how it is to be explained but how it is to be overcome. If
we ask how evil first arose, the only honest answer is that we do not
know: though we can see how the possibility, at least, of moral evil
(as distinct from mere physical pain) is implicit of necessity in the
existence of moral freedom. The question is sometimes asked, "If GOD
is omnipotent, why does He permit evil?" But the doctrine of Divine
omnipotence is misconceived when it is interpreted to mean that GOD is
able to accomplish things inherently self-contradictory. GOD is
omnipotent only in the sense that He is supreme over all things, and
able to do all possible things. He is not able to do impossible
things: and to make man free, and yet to prevent him from doing evil
if he so chooses, is a thing impossible even to GOD. Man is left free
to crucify his Maker, and he has availed himself of his freedom by
crucifying both his Maker and his fellow-man.

If we ask, "Why does not GOD prevent war? Why does He permit murder
and cruelty and rapine?" the answer is that He could only prevent
these things by dint of over-riding the will of man by force: and
moreover that it is not the method of GOD to do for man what man is
perfectly well able to do for himself. For wars would cease if men
universally desired not to fight.

We are really raising a much more difficult question if we ask, "Why
does GOD allow cancer?" And to this, it may be, there is no completely
satisfactory answer to be given: though it is possible to see that
cancer and other diseases have a biological function, and also to
recognize that the endurance of pain in some cases (though not in all)
ennobles and deepens character. The writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews does not hesitate to say of Christ Himself that He "learned
obedience by the things which He suffered."

In general it must be said that Christianity does not afford any
complete theoretical solution of the problem of evil: what it does is
to provide a point of view which sets evil in a new light, and which
is adequate for the purposes of practical life. It teaches us that
physical suffering, so far as it is inevitable, is to be endured and
turned to spiritual profit, as a thing which is capable of bearing
fruit in the deepening and discipline of character: and that moral
evil is to be overcome, by the power of the grace of GOD in Christ.

If we ask, "Why should the innocent suffer?" the Christian answer is
contained in the Cross. "Christ also suffered, being guiltless": and
although, if Christ were regarded simply as a man and nothing more,
this fact would merely intensify the problem, the matter assumes a
different complexion if Christ be regarded as the revelation of GOD.
For if so, then suffering enters into the experience of GOD Himself,
and so far from GOD being indifferent to the sorrow and misery of the
world, He shares it, and is victorious through it. "In all their
affliction, He was afflicted." GOD is Himself a Sufferer, the supreme
Sufferer of all, and finds through suffering the instrument of His
triumph. But if this be true, then all suffering everywhere is set in
a new and a transfiguring light, for it assumes the character of a
challenge to become partaker in the sufferings and triumph of the
Christ. "Can ye drink of the Cup that I drink of?"

So interpreted, suffering ceases to be a ground of petulance or of
complaint. It is discovered to have a value. It is judged to be worth
while. And it is possible to find in such a faith the grounds of a
conviction that behind and beneath all suffering is the love which
redeems it and the purpose which shall one day justify it, and that in
very truth no sparrow falls to the ground without the Heavenly
Father's knowledge and care.

CHAPTER VI

SIN AND REDEMPTION

The Gospel affirms that men are called to be sons of GOD; to be
perfect, as the heavenly Father is perfect. The correlative of this
ideal view of man as he is meant to be is a sombre view of man as he
actually is. "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and
the truth is not in us." "All have sinned, and come short of the glory
of GOD."

Sin is essentially a falling short, a missing of the mark, a failure
to correspond with the purpose and the will of GOD. It need not
necessarily involve--though of course it does in many instances
involve--the deliberate transgression of a moral law which the
conscience of the individual sinner recognizes as such. There are sins
of omission as well as of commission, sins of ignorance as well as of
deliberate intent. The fact that the conscience of a given individual
does not accuse him, that he is not aware of himself as a sinner
before GOD, is no evidence of his moral perfection, but rather the
reverse. Jesus Christ, who possessed the surest as well as the sanest
moral judgment the world has ever known, held deliberately that the
open and acknowledged sinner, just because he was aware of his
condition, was in a more hopeful spiritual state than the man who
through ignorance of his own shortcomings believed himself to be
righteous. The Pharisee, who compared himself with others to his own
advantage, was condemned in the sight of GOD. The Publican, who would
not so much as lift up his eyes unto heaven, but judging himself and
his deeds by the standard of GOD'S holiness acknowledged himself a
sinner, went away justified rather than the other. It is probably true
that the ordinary man to-day is not worrying about his sins: but if
so, the fact proves nothing except the secularity of his ideals and
the shallowness of his sense of spiritual issues. It means, in short,
that he has not taken seriously the standard of Christ. For the
measure of a man's sin is simply the measure of the contrast between
his character and the character of Christ.

It is likely enough that many of us will never discover that we are
sinners until we have deliberately tried and failed to follow Christ.
The moment we do try seriously to follow Him, we become conscious of
the presence within ourselves of "that horrid impediment which the
Churches call sin." We discover that we are spiritually impotent: that
there is that in us which is both selfish and self-complacent: that
there is a "law of sin in our members" which is in conflict with the
"law of the Spirit of life": and that "we have no power of ourselves
to help ourselves." We are at the mercy of our own character, which
has been wrongly moulded and formed amiss by the sins and follies, the
self-indulgences and the moral slackness of our own past behaviour. We
are, indeed, "tied and bound by the chain of our sins."

To have realized so much is to have reached the necessary starting-
point of any fruitful consideration of the Christian Gospel of
redemption. The appeal of the Cross of Christ is to the human
consciousness of sin; and the first effect of a true appreciation of
the meaning of the Cross is to deepen in us the realization of what
sin really is. The crucifixion of Christ was not the result of any
peculiarly unexampled wickedness on the part of individuals. It was
simply the natural and inevitable result of the moral collision
between His ideals and those of society at large. The chief actors in
the drama were men of like passions with ourselves, who were actuated
by very ordinary human motives. It is indeed easy for men to say, "If
we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been
partakers with them in the blood of the prophets": but in so saying
they are merely being witnesses unto themselves that they are the
children of them which killed the prophets. Are we indeed so far
removed beyond the reach of the moral weakness which yields against
its own better judgment to the clamorous demands of public opinion, as
to be in a position to cast stones at Pilate? Are we so exempt from
the temptation to turn a dishonest penny, or to throw over a friend
who has disappointed us, as to recognize no echo of ourselves in
Judas? Have we never with the Sanhedrin allowed vested interests to
warp our judgment, or resented a too searching criticism of our own
character and proceedings, or sophisticated our consciences into a
belief that we were offering GOD service when as a matter of fact we
were merely giving expression to the religious and social prejudices
of our class? Have we never, like the crowds who joined in the hue-
and-cry, followed a multitude to do evil? There appears in the midst
of a society of ordinary, average men--men such as ourselves--a Man
ideally good: and He is put to death as a blasphemer. That is the
awful tragedy of the Crucifixion. What does it mean? It means that a
new and lurid light is thrown upon the ordinary impulses of our mind.
It means that we see sin to be exceeding sinful. That is the first
salutary fruit of a resolute contemplation of the Cross.

The Cross shows us, in a word, what we are doing when we sin:
consciously or unconsciously, we are crucifying that which is good. If
we are able to go further, and by faith to discover in the character
and bearing of the Son, crucified upon the Cross, the revelation of
the heart of the Eternal Father, there dawns upon our minds a still
more startling truth: consciously or unconsciously, we are crucifying
GOD. Assuming, that is to say, that GOD is such as Christianity
declares Him to be, holy, righteous, ideal and perfect Love, caring
intensely for every one of His creatures and having a plan and a
purpose for each one, then every failure of ours to correspond with
the purpose of His love, every falling short of His ideal for us,
every acknowledged slackness and moral failure in our lives, much more
every wilful and deliberate transgression of the moral law, is simply
the addition of yet a further stab to the wounds wherewith Love is
wounded in the house of His friends. "Father, forgive them; they know
not what they do"--the words of the Crucified are the revelation of
what is in fact the eternal attitude of GOD: they are the expression
of a love that is wounded, cut to the heart and crucified, by the
lovelessness, the ingratitude, the tragedy of human sin, but which
nevertheless, in spite of the pain, is willing to forgive.

But the Cross is no mere passivity. It is more than simply a
revelation of Divine suffering, of the eternal patience of the love of
GOD. It is the expression of GOD in action: a deed of Divine self-
sacrifice: a voluntary taking upon Himself by man's Eternal Lover of
the burden of man's misery and sin. There is a profound truth in the
saying of S. Paul, that the Son of GOD "loved me, and gave Himself for
me": as also in S. Peter's words about the Christ "who His own self
bare our sins in His own body on the Tree, that we, being dead to
sins, should live unto righteousness." There is no need to import into
the phrases of the New Testament writers the crude transactional
notions of later theology, no need to drag in ideas about penalties
and punishments. The sole and sufficient penalty of sin is simply the
state of being a sinner [Footnote: Sin, of course, may involve
consequences, and the consequences may be both irrevocable and bitter;
nor is it denied that fear of consequences may operate as a deterrent
from certain kinds of sin. What is denied is that such consequences
are rightly to be described as "punishment."]: and the conception of
_vicarious_ "punishment" is not merely immoral, but unintelligible.
Vicarious _suffering_, indeed, there is: an enormous proportion of the
sufferings of mankind--and the sufferings of Christ are a conspicuous
case in point--arise directly as the result of others' sin and may be
willingly borne for others' sake. And Christ died because of His love
for men, and as the expression of the love of GOD for men. He who
"wholly like to us was made" sounded the ultimate depths of the
bitterest experience to which sin can lead, even the experience of
being forsaken of GOD. "So GOD loved the world."

Regarded thus, the Cross is at once a potent instrument for bringing
men to repentance, and also the proclamation of the free and royal
forgiveness of men's sins by the heavenly Father. "What the law could
not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, GOD sending His own
Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in
the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us,
who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."

Forgiveness must be received on the basis of repentance and confession
as the free and unmerited gift of GOD in Christ: but the redemption
which Christ came to bring to men does not stop short at the bare gift
of initial forgiveness. The Cross cannot rightly be separated from the
Resurrection, nor the Resurrection from the bestowal of the Spirit.
The forgiveness of past transgressions carries with it also the gift
of a new life in Christ and the power of the indwelling Spirit to
transform and purify the heart. And this is a life-long process--a
process, indeed, which extends beyond the limits of this present life.
The old Adam dies hard, and the victory of the spirit over the flesh
is not lightly won. In the life-story of every Christian there are
repeated falls: there is need of a fresh gift of forgiveness ever
renewed. It is only over stepping-stones of their dead selves that men
are enabled to rise to higher things. But already in principle the
victory is won. "In all these things we are more than conquerors
through Him that loved us." We see in Christ the first-fruits of
redeemed humanity, the one perfect response on the side of man to the
love of GOD. And through Christ, our Representative, self-offered to
the Father on our behalf, we are bold to have access with confidence
unto the throne of GOD and in Him to offer ourselves, that so we may
obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

CHAPTER VII

THE CHURCH AND HER MISSION IN THE WORLD

The GOD and Father of Jesus Christ loves every human being
individually, cares for each and has a specific vocation for each one
to fulfil. This doctrine of the equal preciousness in the sight of GOD
of all human souls is for Christianity fundamental. But the
correlative of Divine fatherhood is human brotherhood: just because
GOD is love, and fellowship is life and heaven, and the lack of it is
hell, GOD does not redeem men individually, but as members of a
brotherhood, a Church.

The Church is simply the people of GOD. It is the fellowship of
redeemed mankind, the community of all faithful people throughout this
present world and in the sphere of the world beyond--one, holy,
apostolic (i.e. missionary), and catholic, that is, universal. Death
is no interruption in that Society, race is no barrier, and rank
conveys no privilege. "There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision
nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is
all, and in all": over the Church the gates of Death prevail not: and
"ye are all one Man in Christ Jesus."

Furthermore, the Church is described as the Body, that is, the
embodiment, of Christ: the instrument or organ whereby the Spirit of
Christ works in the world. Her several members are individually limbs
or members in that Body, and their individual gifts and capacities,
whatever they may be, are to be dedicated and directed to the service
of the Body as a whole, and not to any sectional or selfish ends or
purposes. In practical churchmanship, rightly understood, is to be
discovered the clue to the meaning and purpose of human life.

Again, the Church is by definition international. The several races
and nationalities of mankind have each their specific and individual
contribution to make to the Church's common life, in accordance with
their specific national temperaments and genius. All of them together
are needed to give adequate expression in human life to the many-sided
riches of GOD in Christ. The Church is incomplete so long as a single
one remains outside. The idea, therefore, of a so-called "National"
Church, as a thing isolated and self-contained, is intrinsically
absurd.

Therefore also the Church is missionary. She exists in order to
proclaim to all the world the Good News of the love of GOD. She exists
to bring all men everywhere under the scope of Christ's redemption,
and to claim for the Spirit of Christ the effectual lordship over all
human thought and life and activity. It is her threefold task at once
to develop and make real within her own borders the life of
brotherhood in Christ, to evangelize the heathen by declaring to them
the satisfaction of their instinctive search for GOD in the answering
search of GOD for them, and to labour for the discovery and
application of Christian solutions to the problems of industry and
commerce, of politics and social life and international affairs.

In so far as the Church has been true to the Spirit of Christ she has
succeeded; in so far as she has made compromises with the world, and
in every generation has in greater or less degree been disloyal to the
standards of her Master, she has failed. In every generation there has
been partial and obvious failure, side by side with real, if partial
and in some ways less immediately obvious, success. But the Church can
never wholly fail and must one day wholly succeed, for the reason that
behind her is the omnipotence of the love of GOD.

CHAPTER VIII

PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC

The last chapter sketched the ideal of the Church and her essential
mission. The realization of that ideal in the existing Church, visibly
embodied here in earth is extremely fragmentary and imperfect. The
Church that is one, and holy, and apostolic, and catholic, the
brotherhood in Christ of all mankind, knit into unity by the
fellowship of the Holy Spirit, remains a vision of the future, though
a vision which, once seen, mankind will never relinquish until it be
accomplished. "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," it has been
said, "but I regret that she does not as yet exist."

What does exist is a bewildering multiplicity of competing
"denominations," whose points of difference are to the plain man
obscure, but whose mutual separation is in his eyes an obvious scandal
and an offence both against charity and against common sense. Why
cannot they agree to sink their differences, and to unite upon the
broad basis of a common loyalty to Christ? To what purpose is this
overlapping and conflict? The reluctant tribute of the ancient
sceptic--"See how these Christians love one another"--has become the
modern worldling's cynical and familiar jibe; and when to the
spectacle of Christian disunion is added the observation that
professing Christians of all denominations appear to differ from other
men, for the most part, "solely in their opinions" and not in their
lives, the impulse to cry "A plague upon all your Churches" may seem
all but irresistible.

Yet the problem is not susceptible of any cheap or hasty solution.
Unity is the Church's goal; but the Church cannot arrive at unity by
mere elimination of differences. Agreement to differ is not unity: an
agreement to pretend that the differences were not there would not
even be honest. What is needed is a sympathetic study of the divergent
traditions and principles which lie behind existing differences, with
a view to discovering which are really differences of principle, and
which rest merely upon prejudice. Unity, when it comes, can only be
based upon mutual understanding and synthesis. The task will not be
easy, and the time is not yet.

Meanwhile the individual's first duty is to be loyal in the first
instance [Footnote: Of course in the last resort no loyalty is due to
any lesser authority than that of truth, wheresoever it is found and
whatsoever it turns out to be.] to the spiritual tradition and
discipline of the "denomination" to which he in fact belongs, unless
and until he is led to conclude that some other embodies a fuller and
more synthetic presentation of religious truth. It is a mistake for a
man to be content either to remain in ignorance of his own immediate
spiritual heritage or to refuse to try to understand what is
distinctive and vital in the religious heritage of others. Most fatal
of all is the attempt to combine personal loyalty to Christ with the
repudiation of organized Christianity as a whole. True loyalty to
Christ most certainly involves common religious fellowship upon the
basis of common membership in the people of GOD.

As a matter of fact, so soon as the various sects and denominations
into which modern Western Christianity is divided are seriously
examined, they are seen to fall into three main types or groups.
Standing by herself is the Church of Rome, venerable, august,
impressive in virtue of her unanimity, her coherence, her ordered
discipline, and her international position, representing exclusively
the ancient Catholic tradition, and making for herself exclusive
claims. At the opposite end of the scale there are the multitudinous
sects of Protestantism, differing mutually among themselves but
tending (as some observers think) to set less and less store by their
divergences and to develop towards some kind of loosely-knit
federation--a more or less united Evangelical Church upon an
exclusively Protestant basis. Between the two stands the Church of
England, reaching out a hand in both directions, presenting to the
superficial observer the appearance of a house divided against itself;
representing nevertheless, according to her true ideal, a real attempt
to synthesize the essentials of Catholicism with what is both true and
positive in the Protestant tradition.

Protestantism stands for the liberty of the individual, for freedom of
thought and of inquiry, for emphasis upon the importance of vital
personal religion, for the warning that "forms and ceremonies" are of
no value in themselves, but only in so far as they are the expression
and vehicle of the spirit. Protestantism proclaims the liberty of
Christian prophesying, the free and unimpeded access of every human
soul to the heavenly Father, the spiritual equality of all men in the
sight of GOD. The Protestant tradition is jealous for the evangelical
simplicity of the Gospel, and in general may be said to represent the
principle of democracy in religion.

Catholicism, on the other hand, bears witness to the glory of
Churchmanship, to the importance of corporate loyalty to the Christian
Society, to the value of sacramentalism, and the rich heritage of
ancient devotional traditions, of liturgical worship and ordered
ecclesiastical life. For Catholicism rites and sacraments are not
anomalies, strange "material" excrescences upon a religion otherwise
"spiritual." They are themselves channels and media of the Spirit's
operation, vehicles of life and power.

Catholicism is more inclusive than Protestantism, including, indeed,
some things which Protestants are apt to insist should be excluded.
The future would seem to lie neither with the negations of pure
Protestantism nor with a Catholicism wholly unreformed; but rather
with a liberalized Catholicism which shall do justice to the truth of
the Protestant witness. For the present the best opportunity for the
working out of such a liberalized Catholicism is to be found within
the Church of England: and it is from the point of view of an English
Churchman that the remainder of this book will be written.

CHAPTER IX

SACRAMENTS

It is sometimes asked whether the sacraments of the Christian Church
are two or more than two in number. The answer depends in part upon
how the term "sacrament" is defined. But the wisest teaching is that
which recognizes in particular sacraments--such as Baptism and the
Supper of the Lord--the operation of a general principle which runs
throughout all human experience, in things both sacred and profane. "I
have no soul," remarked a well-known preacher on a famous occasion, "I
have no soul, because I _am_ a soul: I _have_ a body." It would be
difficult to express more aptly the principle of sacraments, or--what
comes to the same thing--the true relationship of the material to the
spiritual order.

We are accustomed, in the world as we know it, to distinguish "spirit"
from "matter": and we are tempted, by the mere fact that we draw a
distinction between them, to think and speak at times as though spirit
and matter were necessarily opposed. This is a great mistake. Matter,
so far from being the opposite or the contradiction of spirit, is the
medium of its expression, the vehicle of its manifestation. Spirit and
matter are correlatives, but the ultimate reality of the world is
spiritual. It is the whole purpose and function of matter to express,
to embody, to incarnate, the Spirit. The preacher, therefore, was
quite right. "I _am_ a soul": that is, I am a personality, a spirit:
and to say that is to give expression to the fundamental truth of my
existence: I _am_ a soul, and I am _not_ a body. But "I _have_ a
body": that is, my personality is embodied or incarnate: I have a body
which serves as the vehicle or instrument of my life as a man here
upon earth: a body which is the organ of my spirit's self-expression
and the medium both of my life's experience and of my intercourse with
other men. I think, and my thoughts are mediated by movements of the
brain. I speak, and the movements of my vocal chords set up vibrations
and sound-waves which, impinging upon the nerves of another's ear,
affect in turn another's brain: and the process, regarded from the
point of view of the physiologist or the scientific observer, is a
physical process through and through: yet it mediates from my _mind_
to the mind of him who hears me a meaning which is wholly spiritual.

This principle of the mediation of the spiritual by the material is
the principle of sacramentalism. It is the principle of incarnation,
which runs throughout the world. The body is in this sense the
sacrament of the spirit, sound is the sacrament of speech, and
language the sacrament of thought. So in like manner water is the
sacrament of cleansing, hands laid upon a man's head are the sacrament
of authority or of benediction, food and drink are the sacrament of
life. All life and all experience are in a true sense sacramental, the
inward ever seeking to reveal itself in and through the outward, the
outward deriving its whole significance from the fact that it
expresses and mediates the spirit: so it is that a gesture--a bow or a
salute--may be a sacrament of politeness, a handshake the sacrament of
greeting and of friendship, the beauty of nature a sacrament of the
celestial beauty, the world a sacrament of GOD.

It is in the light of this general principle of sacraments that the
specific sacraments of Christianity are to be understood. In Baptism
the water of an outward washing is the sacrament both of initiation
into a spiritual society, and also of the cleansing and regenerating
power of GOD. In Confirmation the Church's outward benediction, of
which the Bishop is the minister, is the sacrament of an inward gift
of spiritual strength. In Absolution words outwardly pronounced by
human lips are a sacrament of Divine forgiveness and a pledge to
assure us thereof. In the Eucharist the outward elements of food and
drink are the sacramental embodiment of Christ and the vehicles of His
outpoured life. Other sacraments, or rites commonly reckoned
sacramental, we need not here particularly consider. [Footnote:
Matrimony and Holy Orders are discussed in different connexions
elsewhere in this book. The sacrament of Unction, by which is meant
the Anointing of the Sick with oil in the name of the Lord with a view
to their recovery (to be distinguished from the mediaeval and modern
Roman use of "Extreme Unction" as a preparation for death), has been
revived sporadically within the Church of England in recent times, but
is not usually for the plain man of more than academic importance or
interest.]

_Baptism and Confirmation_

Baptism is the sacrament of Christian initiation, whereby a man is
made visibly a member of the Christian fellowship. Converts were
originally baptized in adult life, as they are to-day in the mission
field. The candidate publicly renounced his heathen past and made a
profession of his faith in Christ and his desire to be loyal to His
Church. As a sinner in need of redemption he went down into the water,
and was three times immersed in the Name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost. The rite conveyed an assurance of the
forgiveness of sins. The going down into the water symbolized the
burial of the dead past. The coming up out of the water expressed the
idea of resurrection to newness of life in Christ. The new-made
Christian was said to be born again of water and of the Spirit: the
"old Adam" was slain, the "new man" raised up. The candidate was
henceforward a "member of Christ," a "child of GOD," an "inheritor of
the Kingdom of Heaven." He was admitted both to the privileges and to
the responsibilities of Church membership. It remained only that he
should walk worthily of his Christian profession, and to this end
hands were laid upon his head in benediction, with prayer that he
might be made strong by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.
Confirmation was thus the complement of Baptism, and the two things
normally went together. The same order is still commonly observed to-
day in the case of persons baptized in adult life, and has the
advantage of making the significance of both rites, and their mutual
relation, at once more vivid and more intelligible.

But the question arose, in the second Christian generation, of the
status of children in relation to the Church. Might children be
admitted to membership in infancy, or must they wait until they were
adult? The Church decided that they were admissible, provided there
were reasonable assurance that they would be Christianly brought up.
Why should a child grow up in heathenism? Had not the Lord said,
"Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not"?
There seemed no reason why children should not be brought at once
within the sphere of Christian regeneration.

But if children were baptized in infancy, it was plainly essential
that they should at a later stage receive systematic instruction in
Christian faith and practice; and the Western Church (though not the
Eastern) adopted the practice of separating Confirmation from Baptism,
and deferring the former until such instruction had been received. The
plan has obvious advantages, though it tends to obscure in some
respects the essential meaning of Confirmation and its original close
relation to the sacrament of Baptism.

In modern usage Baptism is normally administered by a priest,
Confirmation always by a Bishop. Candidates are received by the latter
upon the assurance of one of his subordinate clergy that they are
adequately instructed and rightly disposed by faith and penitence to
receive the gifts of the Holy Ghost--"the spirit of wisdom and
understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of
knowledge and of the fear of the Lord." As an immediate preliminary to
the actual rite the candidate solemnly and deliberately declares his
acceptance of the obligations and implications of his baptism. The
laying on of hands which follows is in one aspect the recognition by
the Bishop, as chief pastor of the flock of Christ in his own diocese,
that the candidate is henceforward of communicant status. In another
aspect it is the bestowal through prayer of a fuller gift of the Holy
Ghost, whereby the candidate is "confirmed" (_i.e._ made strong). It
should be noted that the Bishop's prayer for each candidate is not
that he may be made magically perfect there and then, but that he may
"daily increase" in GOD'S Holy Spirit "more and more," until he come
to GOD'S "everlasting Kingdom."

_The Sacrament of Repentance_

It must be admitted that very large numbers of those who are confirmed
lapse at an early stage in their lives from the communion of the
Church and never return. The causes of this are various, and there is
no one sovereign or universal remedy. Sometimes it is to be feared
that there has been either lack of intelligence or lack of
thoroughness in the candidates' preparation. In not a few cases what
has really happened is that the young communicant has been led into
the commission of some sin of a kind which his own conscience
recognizes as grave, so that he feels that he has spoilt his record
and failed to "live up to" his profession. To go back to communion, he
thinks, would in these circumstances be a kind of mockery.
Unfortunately he does not know--since too often he has not been
taught--any effectual method of spiritual recovery and renewal.

What is needed in such cases is a real doctrine and practice of
Christian repentance. It is the universal teaching of the Christian
Church that forgiveness is freely available for all those who truly
repent. A man who, laying aside self-justification, will freely
acknowledge his offences and shortcomings before GOD, and that in a
spirit not of self-pity, self-loathing or self-contempt, but of sorrow
at having brought discredit upon the Christian name and done what in
him lies to crucify the Son of GOD afresh, may freely claim and find
in Christ forgiveness and inward peace.

This Gospel or message of the forgiveness of sins it is part of the
mission of the Christian Church to set forth. It is her mission to set
it forth not merely as a piece of good news proclaimed in general
terms to the world at large, but as a healing assurance brought home
in detail, as need may require, to the individual consciences of
sinners. "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and
whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." The words may have
been uttered by the historical Jesus of Nazareth, or they may not--
they are ascribed to the risen Christ in the Fourth Gospel. In any
event they represent the Church's conviction of her authority to
exercise a reconciling ministry, to remit sins and to retain them.

In early times such grave offenders as by their deeds had brought
scandal upon the Christian name were excluded from Christian
fellowship until reconciled by penance; and many whose sins, being
secret, might otherwise have escaped detection, preferred to make open
confession of them in the Christian assembly. "Confess your faults one
to another," writes S. James, "and pray one for another, that ye may
be healed." The ancient system of public "penance" (_i.e._ penitence)
was for a time at least revived in a modern form by Wesley.[Footnote:
The "class-meeting" of strict Wesleyanism is said to have originally
involved mutual confession of sins among the members of the "class."]
Its application to notorious offenders is described in the English
Prayer-book as a "godly discipline," the restoration of which is "much
to be wished." But it is hardly practicable under the conditions of
modern Church life, and it has disadvantages as well as advantages.
Its working in the early days of the Church was not found to be wholly
for good.

Burdened consciences nevertheless require relief: and sin is not
merely a private affair between the soul and GOD; it is also an
offence against the Brotherhood. A system grew up under which the need
was met by the substitution, in the majority of cases, of private for
public penance. Confession was made, no longer before the whole
assembly, but privately before the Bishop, whose office it was, both
as pastor of the flock and as representative of the Church, to declare
forgiveness or "absolution," and to restore penitents to communion. At
a later date presbyters or priests were also authorized, as delegates
of the Bishop for this and other purposes, to receive confessions and
to absolve penitents.

In this way arose in the Church what came to be known as the sacrament
of Penance, or the practice of sacramental confession. It was ranked
as a sacrament for the reason that the inward assurance of GOD'S
pardon is in this connexion outwardly mediated by words of Absolution
audibly pronounced. In medieval times there grew up a regular system
of the confessional and an elaborate science of the guidance and
direction of souls. Recourse to sacramental confession was made
obligatory for all Christians at least once in the year. [Footnote:
This is still the formal rule of the Church of Rome.] The system came
to be attended by many superstitions and abuses, frequently it was
exploited in the interests of a corrupt sacerdotalism, sometimes it
was associated with a degrading casuistry.

But the confessional met and meets a real human need; and while
Protestantism, as a whole, broke away at the time of the Reformation
in a violent reaction from the whole theory and practice of
sacramental confession, the Church of England quite deliberately
retained it. It was abolished as a compulsory obligation. It was made
less prominent in the Church's system. But as a means of spiritual
reconciliation and spiritual guidance, freely open to such as for any
reason desire to make use of it, it was retained; and in the case of
persons who for reasons of conscience hesitate to present themselves
for Holy Communion it is specifically urged in the Book of Common
Prayer as the needed remedy. [Footnote: See the closing paragraph of
the first of the three lengthy exhortations to Holy Communion, printed
immediately after the "Prayer for the Church Militant" in the Prayer-
book.]The words of S. John xx. 23 are quoted in the Anglican formula
of ordination to the priesthood; and a form of words to be used by the
priest in the private absolution of penitents is prescribed in the
Office for the Visitation of the Sick.

As regards the theory of the confessional it is important to bear
certain things in mind. The confession is made primarily to GOD,
secondarily to His Church. The priest is the Church's accredited
delegate and representative. He acts not in virtue of any magical
powers inherent in himself, either as an individual or as a member of
any so-called sacerdotal caste. If he declares the penitent absolved
it is as pastor of the flock, and as one officially authorized by the
Church to be her mouthpiece for these purposes. The ultimate absolving
authority, under GOD, is the Christian Society as a whole. It is a
confessor's duty to assure himself of the reality of the penitent's
contrition, and to enjoin that restitution or amends shall be made for
any wrong which has been done, in all cases in which amends or
restitution is possible. He may also give advice and counsel for the
guidance of the spiritual life; and it is customary to enjoin the
performance of a "penance," which in modern practice usually takes the
form of some minor spiritual exercise of a more or less remedial kind.
The acceptance of the penance is regarded as an enacted symbol of
submission to the Church's judgment. (The mediaeval theory that the
penance is of the nature of a punishment or penalty imposed by the
Church upon her erring members ought, I think, to be repudiated. It is
perhaps permissible to differ from the moral theology of Borne in
holding that it is not essential to impose a penance at all, while
recognizing the value in most cases of suggesting some definite act of
self-discipline or observance, of a kind adapted to the penitent's
circumstances and needs). The confessor is, of course, bound in the
strictest way not to reveal anything said to him in confession, or to
broach the subject again to the penitent without the latter's express
permission, or to allow his subsequent manner or behaviour to be
influenced in any the least degree by what has been confessed.

It is highly unfortunate that the practice of sacramental confession
should have been made the subject of controversy, and as a consequence
of this that the Church's teaching with regard to it should have been
either unhealthily suppressed or obtruded out of season. There are
without doubt numerous cases in which such a spiritual remedy is badly
needed. There are burdened souls needing absolution and there are
perplexed souls needing guidance. What is desirable is that the actual
teaching of the Church of England on this subject should be plainly
and frankly set before her members, and that opportunities should be
afforded them of making their confessions if they desire or need to do
so. It is the plain duty of a parish priest to provide such
opportunities for his people. He is as plainly going beyond his duty
if he tries to enforce the practice of sacramental confession as a
necessary obligation. There are differences of opinion as to how
widespread is the spiritual need to which confession ministers. There
are reasons for thinking that it is more widespread than is commonly
recognized. But it is of vital importance that no one should be
pressed or brow-beaten into going to confession, or should do so, in
any circumstances, otherwise than by his own voluntary act.

_The Sacrament of Holy Communion_

Throughout Christian history and in all parts of Christendom the
central and highest focus of Christian worship and devotion, and the
great normal vivifying channel of spiritual renewal and power, has
been the sacrament of Holy Communion. It has been celebrated amid
great diversities of liturgy and ritual and circumstance, and has been
known by many different names and titles--mass, eucharist, communion,
sacrifice: essentially it is one thing--the sacrament of the Body and
Blood of Christ.

The Gospels record that at the Last Supper on the night of His
betrayal the Lord Jesus took bread and blessed and broke it, saying,
"Take, eat: this is My Body, which is for you: do this in remembrance
of Me": and that in like manner He took a Cup of mingled wine and
water, and when He had given thanks He gave it to them, saying, "This
Cup is the New Covenant in My Blood, which is shed for you and for
many for the remission of sins: do this, as often as ye shall drink
it, in remembrance of Me."

With the exceptions of the Society of Friends and the Salvation Army,
every existing "denomination" of Christians has continued in one form
or another the observance of this Mystical Meal. In the Roman Church,
and in many parishes of the Church of England, it is celebrated daily;
and it is evident from the provisions of her Prayer-book that the
Church of England intends that there shall be a celebration of the
Communion in all normal parishes at least on all Sundays and Holy
Days.

Historically the institution of the weekly Eucharist is deeply rooted
in the tradition of the Church, and is the origin of the Christian
Sunday, The Christians met together week by week to keep on the day of
the Lord's rising that memorial of the crucified yet risen Christ
which is also Christ's gift of Himself to men. It would have seemed
unthinkable in the early days of Christianity for any baptized
Christian, who was not prevented by unavoidable circumstances from
being present, to be absent on the Lord's Day from the Lord's Table.
It ought to be equally unthinkable to-day.

With regard to the significance of the Sacrament, a man's view is
necessarily coloured partly by his own experience as a communicant,
and partly by the extent to which he is disposed to attach weight to
the devotional traditions of Christendom as a whole; and it is worth
remembering that forms of teaching about Holy Communion which are
intellectually crude may represent a real, though an infelicitous,
attempt to express in thought certain elements in eucharistic
experience which are deep and real, and to which more attenuated types
of doctrine fail to do justice.

The celebration of the Eucharist is from one point of view an enacted
drama, a doing over again in the name and in the person of Christ of
that which Christ did in His own person on the night of the Last
Supper. Bread is taken and blessed and broken and offered to GOD in
thanksgiving: Wine in like manner is poured out and blessed and
offered together with the Bread. And the Bread and the Wine symbolize
the Body and the Blood of Christ--the Body that was broken and the
Blood that was shed--the life that was freely given for the life of
the world.

The whole drama of the Eucharist is thus deeply symbolical; but the
Bread and the Wine are more than _mere_ symbols in the modern sense of
that word. They are a sacrament of Christ Himself, who by means of
them manifests His presence in the midst of His worshipping disciples
to be the Bread of life and the Food of souls. "This is My Body"--that
is, "This embodies Me: where this is, I am: receiving this, you
receive Me." "This is My Blood"--that is, "This is My life: My life
which is given for you: My life which in death I laid down and in
rising again from the dead I resumed: My life which is to be the
principle of spiritual life in you." "Except ye eat the flesh of the
Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth
My flesh and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life.... He that eateth
My flesh and drinketh My blood, dwelleth in Me and I in him."

There is, then, in the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ a
manifestation of Christ's Real Presence, a spiritual Presence indeed,
which is discerned by the spiritual vision of Christian faith, but a
Presence of which the reality is independent of individual
faithlessness, though not independent of the faith of the Christian
Church as a whole.

This doctrine of the Real Presence (as it is called) of course does
not imply that Christ is absent from His Church at other times or in
other connexions. We believe that all times and places are present to
the mind of Christ, and that therefore at all times and in all places
we are in His presence. We believe, further, that Christ through the
Spirit is embodied, however inadequately, in His Church, and that He
dwells spiritually in the hearts of Christian men. There is nothing,
however, in these truths to exclude the further truth that His
presence is specially manifested through the Bread which embodies Him
and the Wine which is His Blood. Bread and wine, solemnly set apart
for the purpose of communion and hallowed by the Spirit in response to
the prayer of the Church, possess henceforward a significance which
did not belong to them before. They are now vehicles or sacraments of
the Body and Blood of Christ.

The purpose of the manifestation of Christ's Presence in Holy
Communion is that we should receive Him, and a participation in the
service which stops short of actual communion is so far incomplete.
But it is gratuitous to assume that the reality of the sacramental
Presence is limited to the moment of actual or individual reception,
and it is untrue to say that attendance at the service, apart from
individual reception, is unmeaning. The habitual attendance of persons
who are not regular communicants--unless it be in the case of those
who for any reason are as yet unconfirmed--falls short of full
discipleship and is intrinsically undesirable. But this objection does
not apply to attendance at the service on the part of communicant
Churchmen who yet on a particular occasion do not communicate: and to
attend throughout the service without personally communicating is a
procedure infinitely preferable to the irreverent modern custom, still
prevalent in too many parishes, of leaving the Church in the course of
a celebration of the Communion, and before the consecration has taken
place. It is unfair to those who are preparing to receive Communion
that their devotions should be disturbed by the noisy egress of a
large body of worshippers. It is also quite unintelligible that any
Churchman who considers seriously the meaning of the Eucharist should
be content to depart before the liturgical drama has reached its
climax.

As regards actual reception of Holy Communion, it is a partaking of
Christ, who gives Himself therein to His disciples to be in them a
spiritual principle of life and power. S. Paul discovers in the
Eucharist a spiritual food and drink which is the reality to which the
Manna and the Water from the Rock of Hebrew story correspond as types
and shadows, and he declares that the Bread which we break is a
sharing of the Body of Christ, and that the Cup of Blessing which we
bless is a sharing of His Blood. At the same time the Communion is not
to be interpreted in any gross or carnal manner, or in such a way as
to give colour to the ancient taunt of Celsus, the heathen critic,
that Christians were self-confessed cannibals. The Fourth Gospel,
which, in a context that is in a general sense eucharistic, ascribes
to our Lord strong phrases about the necessity of eating His flesh and
drinking His blood, proceeds in the same context to explain that "it
is the Spirit that giveth life," that "the flesh," in itself,
"profiteth nothing." "The sayings which I have spoken unto you are
spirit and are life." In other words, we are to understand that when
our Lord uses the terms "flesh" and "blood" He means the Spirit of
which His life in the flesh was the expression, and the Life of which
His outpoured Blood was the principle: that the inward reality of the
Eucharist is to be discovered, not in any quasi-material fleshly
embodiment which the Bread conceals, or in any quasi-literal Blood,
but rather in the Spirit and the Life of Christ Himself. The Bread is
His Body in the sense that it is an embodiment of His Spirit: the Wine
is His Blood in the sense that it mediates His Life. The sacrament is
to be understood as a "point of personal contact with Jesus Christ."
Rightly to receive Communion is to hold spiritual converse with the
risen Lord and to find in Him the Bread of Life, the food and
sustenance of the soul. So it is that the Eucharist, at once supremely
natural and wholly supernatural, is the meeting-place of earth and
heaven. From one point of view our worship is in the heavenly places
in Christ Jesus. It is "with angels and archangels and with all the
company of heaven," that we laud and magnify GOD'S Holy Name. We join
in an eternal act of worship, which is that of the whole Church, the
departed with the living, whose adoration ascends continually before
the throne of GOD.

If we like to express it so, we are pleading the eternal sacrifice: we
are uniting ourselves, in desire and in intention, with Christ's
eternal self-devotion and oblation of Himself. Calvary itself was in a
sense but the enacted symbol, the supreme outward expression, of our
Lord's sacrifice, of which the inward essence is eternal. It is the
self-offering of a Will that was wholly dedicated to GOD on others'
behalf, obedient even unto death, and through death triumphant: the
Will of One "who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without
spot to GOD," and who now, being ascended into the heavens, for ever
liveth to make intercession for us. Looking at the Eucharist from this
point of view we are bold to approach the Throne of GOD and to offer
Christ on our behalf--"Behold the Lamb of GOD that taketh away the sin
of the world": but we proceed also to offer ourselves in Christ--"Here
we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and
bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and lively sacrifice unto Thee."

And so doing we are made one with Christ and one in Him with each
other. The Eucharist has a social aspect which is too little regarded.
It is the sacrament of Holy Fellowship. "We that are many are one
Bread, one Body," wrote S. Paul, "for we all partake of the one
Bread." The Holy Communion is the sacrament of the unity of all
Christians in Christ. The scandal of a divided Christendom shows
itself perhaps most of all in the fact that it prevents inter-
communion. For that very reason it appears to many persons unreal, and
therefore wrong, to practise isolated acts of inter-communion while
ecclesiastical differences remain unresolved: it is to conceal the
fact of actual disunion beneath the cloak of immediate sentiment. Yet
there is a true sense in which, through the Spirit, we _are_, in the
act of communion, made one with the fellowship of all faithful people
whether in the sphere of this earthly life or in the world that is
beyond death and tears: with all those, of whatever race or rank or
age or country, who amid whatever diversity of language and liturgy
and denominational loyalty, have named the name of Christ and received
the life of Christ in obedience to His command as they understood it.
There is no bond comparable to this bond, and no equality like the
equality of those who, high and low, rich and poor, one with another,
kneel side by side as brothers and sisters at the common Table of the
Lord.

And lastly there is a further point. The Body of Christ is a broken
Body and the Blood is Blood that is shed. "This is My Body which is
for you"--for you, and never for Myself. The Bread is the Bread of
Sacrifice and the Cup is the Stirrup-cup of Service: and part, surely,
and a great part, of the meaning of the words, "Do this in remembrance
of Me," is "Break your bodies in union with My Body broken: give your
lives in sacrifice for others, as I have given Mine." The Eucharist,
rightly regarded, is the mainspring and motive-power of service, the
principle of a life that is crucified. And all those who in their day
and generation have spent their lives unselfishly and used themselves
up in promoting causes not their own are partakers in that Holy
Fellowship.

At this present time of war and tumult, when all the powers of Hell
are abroad and leagued together for the onset, we think of that which
alone can be the redemption of war, even the self-devotion of those
who, hating the whole devilish business and going into it only because
they saw no alternative to Duty's clear and imperative call, have been
counted worthy to show forth the love than which no man hath greater,
even to lay down their lives for their friends. There is no one so
unfortunate as not to have known some such men. And at the Communion
Service "in the act of conscious incorporation into the fellowship of
the love of Jesus," it may be given to us in some measure to
understand these things, and to know that we are become partakers in
the power of a world-wide crucifixion, a fellowship of broken bodies
and lives poured out in Christ: and to know also--with a knowledge
that is not of this world--that somehow, in it and through it, the
Spirit of GOD in Christ will bring redemption.

So wonderful, so many-sided, and so full of meaning is this Sacrament:
so great is the measure of their loss who, professing and calling
themselves Christians, are content to ignore the last injunction of
the Christ to His disciples on the night before He died that we might
live.

CHAPTER X

THE LAST THINGS

"It is appointed unto men once to die, and after death the judgment."

"He shall come again in glory to judge both the quick and the dead,
whose Kingdom shall have no end."

"I believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting."

Jesus Christ spoke in symbolical language of His coming in the clouds
of heaven as Son of Man with power and great glory, and declared that
the Divine verdict upon the lives and deeds of men should be
determined by their relationship to Him and to His ideals. Both in the
days of the Apostles, and for the most part among succeeding
generations of Christian people down to the present time, it would
seem that a more literal signification was attached to His words than
they will really bear. The truth of the Divine Judgment upon men's
lives nevertheless stands. "GOD is a great Judge, strong and patient:
and GOD is provoked every day." We must, however, be careful, in
thinking of the reality of Divine Judgment, to interpret the justice
of GOD in the light of the Christian revelation of His Love. The
attitude of GOD towards sinners is never anything but love, though a
love that is holy and righteous, and never merely sentimental. GOD as
Christ reveals Him can never impose or inflict a merely external
penalty upon a sinner, other than the supreme penalty of being simply
what he is, viz. a soul who by his own deliberate actions has
separated himself from goodness and from GOD. It is important in
thinking of the Judgment to remember that the essence of judgment is
neither the sentence nor the penalty: it is simply the verdict,
whereby moral and spiritual realities are revealed, shams and
disguises are stripped off, and evil is separated from good.
[Footnote: The associations of an English law-court, in which the
verdict is the work of the jury, are here misleading.] If our Lord,
speaking in parables, declared, of such as had neglected to do good,
that "these shall go away into eternal punishment," a considerable
body of orthodox opinion in the Christian Church has always held that
the punishment in question consists essentially in the "penalty of
loss"--the loss of goodness and of GOD, the loss of capacity for the
life which is life indeed--rather than in any imagined "penalty of
sense," or purposeless prolongation of pain. The imagery which our
Lord employed to describe the spiritual condition known as "hell" is
taken from the Valley of Hinnom, a ravine just outside the walls of
Jerusalem, in which fires were continually maintained for the
destruction of refuse, and maggots preyed on offal. The imagery is
sufficiently terrible; but it suggests the destruction of waste
products in GOD'S creation, rather than the prolonged torture of
living beings. It may well be that a soul, which by persistent and
deliberate rejection of every appeal of the Divine Love even to the
very end--in this life or beyond--has become so wholly self-identified
with evil as to be finally incapable of life in GOD, passes, of
necessity, out of sentient existence altogether. We do not know. What
we do know is, in the first place, that wickedness is of its very
nature instinct with the eternal quality of "hell"; and, in the second
place, that GOD is Love, and that GOD "desireth not the death of a
sinner, but rather that he may turn from his wickedness, and live."

Just as the term "hell" expresses the condition of a soul which by its
own act and deed and deliberate choice has become wholly self-
identified with evil, so the term "heaven" expresses the spiritual
state of the pure in heart, to whom it is given to see GOD. So
regarded, heaven is simply the ideal consummation of progressive
spiritual advance, the perfect fruition of that "beatific vision"
which the saints of GOD desired. It has ever been the conviction of
the Christian Church that her members are already, even in this
present life, made partakers in the life of heaven, just in proportion
as their affections are set upon things above and not upon things in
the earth. What is begun here is continued more perfectly hereafter;
but it is unreasonable to assume that at the moment of death the
ultimate fulness of "heaven" is immediately attained.

The Church, therefore, has believed in an intermediate state,
sometimes called "Purgatory," a condition of progressive purification
and spiritual growth, characterized at once by a deepening penitence
for the sins and failures of the past, and by a deepening joy in GOD'S
more perfect service.

Moreover, since the Christian salvation is a social salvation, those
who have departed this life in GOD'S faith and fear shall not without
us be made perfect. None can enter fully into the joy of the Lord
until the whole of GOD'S great World-purpose is accomplished, and all
are gathered in. This brings us to the consideration of the Christian
belief in the Second Advent and the final Kingdom of GOD. It has
already been remarked that the terms in which this belief is expressed
are symbolical and should not be taken literally. Just because we
ourselves, under the conditions of life here upon earth, are immersed
in the stream of time, the idea of an ending of the World-process, a
final passing over of time into eternity, is to us, in the strict and
literal sense of the words, unthinkable. Only under the form of
imagery and symbol is it in the nature of things possible for the idea
of the last great Drama to be expressed, or rather, suggested: it is
impossible for our minds to grasp, in any more exact or effectual
manner, the Reality which the imagery is meant to symbolize. It may be
that the event expressed by the dramatic picture of the Second Advent
of the Christ is simply the revelation of the fact of His Eternal
Presence at once as Saviour and as Judge; however this may be, the
picture stands for the assurance of His final triumph, and the
vindication of His Kingdom in its fulness: and as such it is the
object of Christian hope--"Hallowed be Thy Name; Thy Kingdom come; Thy
will be done; in earth, as it is in Heaven."

If we ask what is the positive nature of the Christian hope and what
the final character of the life of heaven, the answer is that we
cannot fully say, that we know only in part, "we see obscurely, as in
a mirror." In hymn and ecstasy and vision men have sought to find
expression for the substance of things hoped for, and they have
failed. "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into
the heart of man to conceive, the things that GOD hath prepared for
them that love Him." The Book of the Revelation essays to paint a
picture of the heavenly state, and for the most part succeeds in
setting before our minds a noble imagery; but in the end its language
is most convincing when it tells us what heaven is _not_. "They shall
hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light
on them, nor any heat. And GOD shall wipe away all tears from their
eyes." Negatives and contrasts--the picture of a state of things
contrasted with all that in the world as we know it is amiss; we
cannot _positively_ envisage heaven. Only we believe that "there
remaineth a rest for the people of GOD," where nevertheless they rest
not day or night from His perfect service. "Beloved, now are we sons
of GOD, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that
when He shall appear we shall be like Him: for we shall see Him as He
is."

Here this chapter might end: but with regard to the nature of the
Christian conception of the life of the world to come there is
something more to be said: for the Church's creed contains the
assertion of a belief in the Resurrection of the Body, or even, in the
Latin form of the Apostles' Creed, and in the translation which
appears in the Prayer-book Service for Baptism, in the Resurrection of
the Flesh. The plain man may be tempted, brushing aside such a
doctrine in its plain and literal acceptation as a manifest
impossibility, either to hold aloof from a Church which retains such
an affirmation in her creed, or else to conclude hastily that the
words are meant only as a picturesque way of expressing a belief in
the immortality of the soul. Either attitude would be a mistake. It is
true that a literal resuscitation of Christian corpses on some future
Day of Resurrection would be neither possible nor desirable.
Nevertheless the Christian doctrine of the life to come involves more
than a bare assertion of the immortality of the soul.

The body is the embodiment or vehicle of the spirit; the spirit
disembodied would be a mere wraith, a phantasm of the living man. The
life of the world to come is not unreal or shadowy as compared with
the concrete reality of the life of earth: it is a life richer and
fuller, more concrete and more glorious than the life of earth. The
Church by her doctrine of the Resurrection means to affirm that the
full reality of that which made the living man what he was is carried
over into the life beyond. The buried corpse is not "the body that
shall be." "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body."
As to the nature of the future embodiment of the spirit in the life
beyond the grave we are ignorant. "GOD giveth it a body as it hath
pleased Him, and to each seed a body of its own." But we believe that
"the deeds done in the body" here upon earth while we are yet
tabernacling in the flesh necessarily affect and determine the
character of the spiritual embodiment which shall be ours hereafter.
For this reason we hold our bodies sacred, as being temples of the
Holy Ghost. "The body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and
the Lord for the body." Christianity can have nothing to do with the
notion that the defilement of the body is without effect in the
pollution of the soul.

[NOTE.-For a fuller treatment of the subjects of the Second Advent and
the Resurrection of the Body the writer may be allowed to refer to
Chapters III. and IV. in his book, _Dogma, fact and Experience_
(Macmillan & Co., 1915).]

CHAPTER XI

CLERGY AND LAITY

The clergy are not the Church. They are a specialized class within it.
They are men who believe themselves to be called by GOD to give
themselves for life to the particular work of caring directly for the
spiritual interests of their fellows. To this end they are set apart
by ordination. They hold the commission and authorization of the
Church to minister the Word and Sacraments of the Gospel in the name
of Christ and of the Brotherhood. Their task is high and difficult. It
is not wonderful if they fail. But solemn prayer is offered for them
at their ordination: and the answer to the Church's prayers is
according to the measure of the Church's faith.

The historical or Catholic system of ministry in the Church consists
of a hierarchy in three orders or gradations. To the order of Bishops
belongs oversight or pastorate-in-chief. It is not the business of a
Bishop to be prelatical, or to lord it over GOD'S heritage, but to be
the servant of the servants of GOD. A Bishop is consecrated to his
office by not less than three of those who are already Bishops. He
exercises all the functions of the Christian ministry, including those
of confirmation and ordination and the right to take part in episcopal
consecrations.

Priests and deacons are a Bishop's delegates for certain purposes. A
priest may have charge of a "parish" or subdivision of a diocese, and
is competent to celebrate the Eucharist, to bless, to baptize, and to
absolve. He is also authorized to preach, and to give instruction in
Christian doctrine. He may not confirm or ordain apart from the
Bishop, though he may co-operate with the latter in ordinations to the
priesthood. He is ordained to his ministry by the Bishop acting in
conjunction with certain representatives of the priesthood who take
part with him in the laying on of hands.

Deacons are subordinate ministers appointed to assist parish priests
in the work of parochial visiting and also, within certain limits, in
the conduct of Divine worship and the administration of the
sacraments. They may read parts of the service, but have no authority
to bless or to absolve. They may preach by express and specific
license from the Bishop. They may not celebrate the Eucharist, but may
assist the priest who does so by reading the Gospel and administering
the chalice. They are ordained to their office by the Bishop, and in
most cases, though not invariably, proceed subsequently to the
priesthood. [Footnote: In the absence of a Bishop or priest, a deacon
is competent to baptize. In the absence of any of the clergy Baptism
may also, in cases of urgency, be administered by a layman, and in the
absence of a man, by a woman.]

The principles which underlie this system of Catholic order in the
Church are important. The devolution of authority to minister through
the episcopate safeguards the continuity of the Church's corporate
life and tradition, and secures that ministerial functions shall be
exercised in the name and by the authority of the Christian Society as
a whole. Moreover through the ordered succession of the Bishops the
tradition of ministerial authority is carried back certainly to sub-
apostolic, and perhaps also actually to apostolic, times: it
represents in principle Christ's commission to His Apostles--"As the
Father hath sent Me, even so send I you."

At the same time it is important that the doctrine of the ministry
should not be allowed to become "sacerdotalist" in a wrong sense. The
Christian priesthood is not in possession of any magical or exclusive
powers. The essence of priesthood is the dedication of life as a whole
to the service of GOD on behalf of others: and in this sense every
Christian man is meant in his ordinary daily life and business to be a
priest of GOD and a servant of his brethren. What the Church to-day
needs most chiefly is a body of laymen who will take seriously their
vocation. A layman is not a Christian of inferior type, on whose
behalf the clergy are expected to display a vicarious spirituality: he
is simply an unordained member of the people of GOD. The hope of the
future is that laymen should do their part, not merely by supporting
the efforts of the clergy, but by exercising their own proper
functions as living members of Christ. The Church--and especially the
Church of England--is in vital need of reform. The recently launched
"Life and Liberty" Movement is a hopeful sign of the determination of
a certain number of clergy and laity that reform shall be secured. In
particular it is essential that the Church should recover freedom of
self-government in spiritual things, and liberty to adapt her
machinery and organization to changing needs, by the readjustment of
her relation towards the State. This may or may not involve
disestablishment, and disestablishment in turn, if it should take
place, need not necessarily involve, but in practice would probably
involve, some measure of partial disendowment. The Church must be
prepared for all eventualities, and must be ready, should necessity
arise, to take cheerfully the spoiling of her goods. For liberty is
essential at all costs.

In the movement for Life and Liberty, as in every other department of
her work, the Church needs the co-operation of her laity. It is their
duty both to be informed in ecclesiastical affairs, and to make their
voices heard. It is part of the programme of Church reformers to give
the laity, through elected representatives, a more effective voice in
Church affairs. The administration of finance and the raising of funds
for work both at home and abroad is more particularly their province,
but there is no single department of Church affairs in which the
layman ought not to have his share, though no doubt the Bishops in
virtue of their office have a special responsibility in matters of
doctrine. Certainly there is need of a much greater extension of lay
preaching, and a freer recognition of the capacity of many laymen to
lead the worship and intercessions of their brethren. The
administration of the sacraments, with the partial exception of
baptism, is reserved for those to whom it is committed: but this need
not and does not apply to the ministries of preaching and of prayer.

Clerical autocracy, where it exists, ought resolutely and firmly to be
broken down. It has to be admitted that between clergy and laity at
present there is a regrettable and widespread cleavage. The clergy are
widely criticized, and it is certain that they have many faults. One
who belongs to their number cannot help being conscious of some at
least of the failings both of himself and of his class. But the faults
are not all upon one side. It may be suspected that those who
criticize the clergy with the greatest freedom are not always those
who pray for them most earnestly. To affirm that the laity get, upon
the whole, the clergy they deserve would be too hard a saying: but it
is sometimes forgotten that the clergy are recruited from the ranks of
the laity, and that, when not dehumanized by an undue professionalism
of outlook, they are human. Many of them would be frankly grateful for
friendly co-operation and criticism on the part of the lay members of
their flocks. One of the difficulties about preaching is that the
clergy in many instances do not really know what is in the layman's
mind. The life of the Church in England will not proceed along healthy
lines until there is greater mutual candour between laymen and clergy.
At present laymen will not talk freely about matters of religion in
the presence of the clergy because they imagine (often quite wrongly)
that the latter would be shocked. It sometimes happens conversely that
the clergy hesitate to express their real minds for fear that laymen
would be shocked. This attitude of mutual reserve is hopeless. No
Christian, lay or clerical, has any business to be shocked at any
expression of opinion whatever, orthodox or unorthodox, whether in
faith or in morals. Either side may disagree with the other; but
either ought to be prepared to listen to what the other has to say.

CHAPTER XII

THE BIBLE

The Bible is the "sacred Book" of Christianity, as the Koran is the
sacred Book of Mohammedanism; with this difference, however, that
Christianity, as the religion of the Spirit, can never be, like
Mohammedanism, a "religion of the Book," any more than it can be, like
ancient Judaism, a religion of the Law. The Biblical writings include
two main collections of books, known as the Old Testament and the New
Testament respectively, of which the latter alone is distinctively
Christian. Intermediate between the two "Testaments" in point of date
are the writings known as the "Apocrypha," which though inferior, for
the most part, in spiritual value to the fully canonical books, and
frequently omitted from printed editions of the Bible, are regarded by
the Church as canonical in a secondary sense.

The various books of the Bible originally became canonical, that is,
were included in the "canon" or collection of sacred writings, on the
ground that they were read aloud or recited in the course of Divine
worship. The Old Testament canon comprises the books customarily read
aloud in the Jewish synagogue, together with certain other writings
associated with them. The books of the New Testament are a similar
collection of early Christian writings which were read side by side
with the Old Testament in Christian worship. The selection of these
particular writings for the purpose was determined in part by the
Church's recognition of their spiritual value and in part by the
regard which was paid by the Christian community to the religious
authority of those by whom they were believed to have been written.

Speaking generally, we may say that the Old Testament is the religious
literature of Judaism. It is the literary deposit of the spiritual
life of a nation, the written record and monument of a progressive
process of religious development. It begins at the level of folklore
and primitive tribal cults, such as are portrayed or reflected, for
example, in parts of the Pentateuch and in the Books of Judges and
Samuel. It culminates, in the utterances of the greatest of the
prophets and in many of the Psalms, at the highest levels of religious
attainment which are discoverable anywhere in history prior to the
coming of our Lord.

The Old Testament will always have a value for Christianity: in part
because many of the religious lessons which it conveys can never be
superseded even by Christianity itself: in part because the study of
it provides the general knowledge of Judaism, and of Jewish
institutions and modes of thought, which is necessary for the proper
understanding of the religious background of the Gospels, and of much
else in the New Testament as well: in part also because the two
revelations--the Jewish and the Christian--hang together, interlocking
with one another as anticipation and fulfilment, in a manner which is
singularly impressive.

The various books of the Old Testament, nevertheless, require to be
read by Christians with discrimination, and with a clear realization
of their Jewish character. There is much in the Old Testament as it
stands which is liable to mislead the simple and cause needless
difficulty. There are, moreover, numerous passages, and not a few
entire books, which except in the light of historical criticism and
scholarly guidance are not really intelligible. But the study of the
Old Testament as reinterpreted in our own generation by research and
scholarship is a fascinating subject. It requires little in the way of
technical equipment, and there is no reason in the world why it should
be monopolized by specialists. To have even the most general
acquaintance with the methods and results of critical study brings
with it a great transformation of outlook. The Old Testament writers
come to life again wonderfully when they are set in their proper