Outspoken Essays Part 12

A catastrophe will end the former and inaugurate the latter. The promised deliverer is now waiting in heaven with G.o.d, until his hour comes; and it will come very soon. All this St. Paul must have learned from Gamaliel. It formed the framework of his theology as a Christian for many years after his conversion, and was only partially thrown off, under the influence of mystical experience and of Greek ideas, during the period covered by the letters. The lore of good and bad spirits (the latter are 'the princes of this world' in I Cor. ii. 6, 8) pervades the Epistles more than modern readers are willing to admit. It is part of the heritage of the Pharisaic school.

It is very unlikely (in spite of Johannes Weiss) that St. Paul ever saw Jesus in the flesh. But he did come in contact with the little Christian community at Jerusalem. These disciples at first attempted to live as strict members of the Jewish Church. They knew that the coming Messiah was their crucified Master, but this belief involved no rupture with Judaism. So at least they thought themselves; the Sanhedrin saw more clearly what the new movement meant. The crisis came when numerous 'h.e.l.lenists' attached themselves to the Church--Jews of the Dispersion, from Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere. A threatened rupture between these and the Palestinian Christians was averted by the appointment of seven deacons or charity commissioners, among whom Stephen soon became prominent by the dangerously 'liberal' character of his teaching. Philo gives important testimony to the existence of a 'liberal' school among the Jews of the Dispersion, who, under pretext of spiritualising the traditional law, left off keeping the Sabbath and the great festivals, and even dispensed with the rite of circ.u.mcision. Thus the admission of Gentiles on very easy terms into the Church was no new idea to the Palestinian Jews; it was known to them as part of the shocking laxity which prevailed among their brethren of the Dispersion. With Stephen, this kind of liberalism seemed to have entered the group of 'disciples.'

He was accused of saying that Jesus was to destroy the temple and change the customs of Moses. In his bold defence he admitted that in his view the Law was valid only for a limited period, which would expire so soon as Jesus returned as Messiah. This was quite enough for the Sanhedrin.

They stoned Stephen, and compelled the 'disciples' to disperse and fly for their lives. Only the Apostles, whose devotion to the Law was well known, were allowed to remain. This last fact, briefly recorded in Acts, is important as an indication that the persecution was directed only against the liberalising Christians, and that these were the great majority. Saul, it seems, had no quarrel with the Twelve; his hatred and fanaticism were aroused against a sect of h.e.l.lenist Jews who openly proclaimed that the Law had been abrogated in advance by their Master, who, as Saul observed with horror, had incurred the curse of the Law by dying on a gibbet. All the Pharisee in him was revolted; and he led the savage heretic-hunt which followed the execution of Stephen.

What caused the sudden change which so astonished the survivors among his victims? To suppose that nothing prepared for the vision near Damascus, that the apparition in the sky was a mere 'bolt from the blue,' is an impossible theory. The best explanation is furnished by a study of the Apostle's character, which we really know very well. The author of the Epistles was certainly not a man who could watch a young saint being battered to death by howling fanatics, and feel no emotion.

Stephen's speech may have made him indignant; his heroic death, the very ideal of a martyrdom, must have awakened very different feelings. An undercurrent of dissatisfaction, almost of disgust, at the arid and unspiritual seminary teaching of the Pharisees now surged up and came very near the surface. His bigotry sustained him as a persecutor for a few weeks more; but how if he could himself see what the dying Stephen said that he saw? Would not that be a welcome liberation? The vision came in the desert, where men see visions and hear voices to this day.

They were very common in the desert of Gobi when Marco Polo traversed it. 'The Spirit of Jesus,' as he came to call it, spoke to his heart, and the form of Jesus flashed before his eyes. Stephen had been right; the Crucified was indeed the Lord from heaven. So Saul became a Christian; and it was to the Christianity of Stephen, not to that of James the Lord's brother, that he was converted. The Pharisee in him was killed.

The travelling missionary was as familiar a figure in the Levant as the travelling lecturer on philosophy. The Greek language brought all nationalities together. The h.e.l.lenising of the East had gone on steadily since the conquests of Alexander; and Greek was already as useful as Latin in many parts of the West. A century later, Marcus Aurelius wrote his Confessions in Greek; and even in the middle of the third century, when the tide was beginning to turn in favour of Latin, Plotinus lectured in Greek at Rome. Christianity, within a few years after the Crucifixion, had allied itself definitely with the speech, and therefore inevitably with the spirit, of h.e.l.lenism. At no time since have travel and trade been so free between the West of Europe and the West of Asia. A Phrygian merchant (according to the inscription on his tomb) made seventy-two journeys to Rome in the course of his business-life. The decomposition of nationalities, and the destruction of civic exclusiveness, led naturally to the formation of voluntary a.s.sociations of all kinds, from religious sects to trade unions; sometimes a single a.s.sociation combined these two functions. The Oriental religions appealed strongly to the unprivileged cla.s.ses, among which genuine religious faith was growing, while the official cults of the Roman Empire were unsatisfying in themselves and a.s.sociated with tyranny. The attempt of Augustus to resuscitate the old religion was artificial and unfruitful. The living movement was towards a syncretism of religious ideas and practices, all of which came from the Eastern provinces and beyond them. The prominent features in this new devotion were the removal of the supreme G.o.dhead from the world to a transcendental sphere; contempt for the world and ascetic abnegation of 'the flesh'; a longing for healing and redemption, and a close identification of salvation with individual immortality; and, finally, trust in sacraments ('mysteries,' in Greek) as indispensable means of grace or redemption. This was the Paganism with which Christianity had to reckon, as well as with the official cult and its guardians. The established church it conquered and destroyed; the living syncretistic beliefs it cleansed, simplified, and disciplined, but only absorbed by becoming itself a syncretistic religion. But besides Christians and Pagans, there were the Jews, dispersed over the whole Empire. There were at least a million in Egypt, a country which St. Paul, for reasons unknown to us, left severely alone; there were still more in Syria, and perhaps five millions in the whole Empire. In spite of the fecundity of Jewish women, so much emphasised by Seeck in his history of the Downfall of the Ancient World, it is impossible that the Hebrew stock should have multiplied to this extent. There must have been a very large number of converts, who were admitted, sometimes without circ.u.mcision, on their profession of monotheism and acceptance of the Jewish moral code. The majority of these remained in the cla.s.s technically called 'G.o.d-fearers,' who never took upon themselves the whole yoke of the Law.

These half-Jews were the most promising field for Christian missionaries; and nothing exasperated the Jews more than to see St. Paul fis.h.i.+ng so successfully in their waters. The spirit of propagandism almost disappeared from Judaism after the middle of the second century.

Judaism shrank again into a purely Eastern religion, and renounced the dangerous compromise with Western ideas. The labours of St. Paul made an all-important parting of the ways. Their result was that Christianity became a European religion, while Judaism fell back upon its old traditions.

It is very unfortunate that we have no thoroughly trustworthy records of the Apostle's earlier mission preaching. The Epistles only cover a period of about ten years; and the rapid development of thought which can be traced during this short time prevents us from a.s.suming that his earlier teaching closely resembled that which we find in the Letters.

But if, during the earlier period, he devoted his attention mainly to those who were already under Jewish influence, we may be sure that he spoke much of the Messiahs.h.i.+p of Jesus, and of His approaching return, these being the chief articles of faith in Judaic Christianity. This was, however, only the framework. What attracted converts was really the historical picture of the life of Jesus; his message of love and brotherhood, which they found realised in the little communities of believers; and the abolition of all external barriers between human beings, such as social position, race, and s.e.x, which had undoubtedly been proclaimed by the Founder, and contained implicitly the promise of an universal religion. We can infer what the manner of his preaching was from the style of the letters, which were probably dictated like extempore addresses, without much preparation. He was no trained orator, and he thoroughly disdained the arts of the rhetorician. His Greek, though vigorous and effective, is neither correct nor elegant. His eloquence is of the kind which proceeds from intense conviction, and from a thorough knowledge of Old Testament prophecy and psalmody--no bad preparation for a religious teacher. If at times he argued like a Rabbi, these frigid debates were as acceptable to ancient Jews as they are to modern Scotsmen. And when he takes fire, as he deals with some vital truth which he has lived as well as learned and taught, he establishes his right to be called what he never aimed at being--a writer of genius.

Such pa.s.sages as 1 Cor. xiii., Phil, ii., Rom. viii., rank among the finest compositions in later Greek literature. Regarded merely as a piece of poetical prose, 1 Cor. xiii. is finer than anything that had been written in the Greek language since the great Attic prose-writers.

And if this was dictated impromptu, similar outbursts of splendid eloquence were probably frequent in his mission-preaching. Their effect must have been overwhelming, when reinforced by the flas.h.i.+ng eye of the speaker, and by the absolute sincerity which none could doubt who saw his face and figure, furrowed by toil and scarred by torture.

In addressing the Gentiles, we may a.s.sume that he followed the customary Jewish line of apologetic, denouncing the folly of idolatry--an aid to wors.h.i.+p which is quite innocent and natural in some peoples, but which the Jews never understood; that he spoke much of judgment to come; and especially that he contrasted the pure and affectionate social life of the Christian brotherhood with the licentiousness, cruelty, injustice, oppression, and mutual suspicion of Pagan society. This argument probably struck home in very many 'Gentile' hearts. The old civilisation, with all the brilliant qualities which make many moderns regret its destruction, rested on too narrow a base. The woman and the slave were left out, the woman especially by the Greeks, and the slave by the Romans. Acute social inequalities always create pride, brutality, and widespread s.e.xual immorality. And when the structure which maintained these inequalities is itself tottering, the oppressed cla.s.ses begin to feel that they are unnecessary, and to hope for emanc.i.p.ation.

When St. Paul drew his lurid pictures of Pagan society steeped in unnatural abominations, without hope for the future, 'hateful and hating one another,' and then pointed to the little flock of Christians--among whom no one was allowed to be idle and no one to starve, and where family life was pure and mutual confidence full, frank and seldom abused--the woman and the slave, of whom Aristotle had spoken so contemptuously, flocked into his congregations, and began to organise themselves for that victory which Nietzsche thought so deplorable.

It is not necessary in this essay to traverse again the familiar field of St. Paul's missionary journeys. The first epoch, which embraces about fourteen years, had its scene in Syria and Cilicia, with the short tour in Cyprus and other parts of Asia Minor. The second period, which ends with the imprisonment in A.D. 58 or 59, is far more important. St. Paul crosses into Europe; he works in Macedonia and Greece. Churches are founded in two of the great towns of the ancient world, Corinth and Ephesus. According to his letters, we must a.s.sume that he only once returned to Jerusalem from the great tour in the West, undertaken after the controversy with Peter; and that the object of this visit was to deliver the money which he had promised to collect for the poor 'saints'

at Jerusalem. He intended after this to go to Rome, and thence to Spain--a scheme worthy of the restless genius of an Alexander. He saw Rome indeed, but as a prisoner. The rest of his life is lost in obscurity. The writer of the Acts does not say that the two years'

imprisonment ended in his execution; and if it was so, it is difficult to see why such a fact should be suppressed. If the charge against him was at last dismissed, because the accusers did not think it worth while to come to Rome to prosecute it, St. Luke's silence is more explicable.

In any case, we may regard it as almost certain that St. Paul ended his life under a Roman axe during the reign of Nero.

'There is hardly any fact' (says Harnack) 'which deserves to be turned over and pondered so much as this, that the religion of Jesus has never been able to root itself in Jewish or even upon Semitic soil.' This extraordinary result is the judgment of history upon the life and work of St. Paul. Jewish Christianity rapidly withered and died. According to Justin, who must have known the facts, Jesus was rejected by the whole Jewish nation 'with a few exceptions.' In Galilee especially, few, if any, Christian Churches existed. There are other examples, of which Buddhism is the most notable, of a religion gaining its widest acceptance outside the borders of the country which gave it birth. But history oilers no parallel to the complete vindication of St. Paul's policy in carrying Christianity over into the Graeco-Roman world, where alone, as the event proved, it could live. This is a complete answer to those who maintain that Christ made no break with Judaism. Such a statement is only tenable if it is made in the sense of Harnack's words, that 'what Gentile Christianity did was to carry out a process which had in fact commenced long before in Judaism itself, viz. the process by which the Jewish religion was inwardly emanc.i.p.ated and turned into a religion for the world.' But the true account would be that Judaism, like other great ideas, had to 'die to live,' It died in its old form, in giving birth to the religion of civilised humanity, as the Greek nation perished in giving birth to h.e.l.lenism, and the Roman in creating the Mediterranean empire of the Caesars and the Catholic Church of the Popes. The Jewish people were unable to make so great a sacrifice of their national hopes. With the matchless tenacity which characterises their race they clung to their tribal G.o.d and their temporal and local millennium. The disasters of A.D. 70 and of the revolt under Hadrian destroyed a great part of the race, and at last uprooted it from the soil of Palestine. But conservatism, as usual, has had its partial justification. Judaism has refused to acknowledge the religion of the civilised world as her legitimate child; but the nation has refused also to surrender its life. There are no more Greeks and Romans; but the Jews we have always with us.

St. Paul saw that the Gospel was a far greater and more revolutionary scheme than the Galilean apostles had dreamed of. In principle he committed himself from the first to the complete emanc.i.p.ation of Christianity from Judaism. But it was inevitable that he did not at first realise all that he had undertaken. And, fortunately for us, the most rapid evolution in his thought took place daring the ten years to which his extant letters belong. It is exceedingly interesting to trace his gradual progress away from Apocalyptic Messianism to a position very near that of the fourth Gospel. The evangelist whom we call St. John is the best commentator on Paulinism. This is one of the most important discoveries of recent New Testament criticism.

In the earliest Epistles--those to the Thessalonians--we have the nave picture of Messiah coming on the clouds, which, as we now know, was part of the Pharisaic tradition. In the central group the Christology is far more complex. Besides the Pharisaic Messiah, and the records of the historical Jesus of Nazareth, we have now to reckon with the Jewish-Alexandrian idea of the generic, archetypal man, which is unintelligible without reference to the Platonic philosophy. Philo is here a great help towards understanding one of the most difficult parts of the Apostle's teaching. We have also, fully developed, the mystical doctrine of the Spirit of Christ immanent in the soul of the believer, a conception which was the core of St. Paul's personal religion, and more than anything else emanc.i.p.ated him from apocalyptic dreams of the future. We have also a fourth conception, quite distinct from the three which have been mentioned--that of Christ as a cosmic principle, the instrument in creation and the sustainer of all his in the universe. We must again have recourse to Philo and his doctrine of the Logos, to understand the genesis of this idea, and to the Fourth Gospel to find it stated in clear philosophical form. In this second period, these theories about the Person of Christ are held concurrently, without any attempt to reconcile or systematise them. The eschatology is being seriously modified by the conception of a 'spiritual body,' which is prepared for us so soon as our 'outward man' decays in death. The resurrection of the flesh is explicitly denied (1 Cor. xv. 50); but a new and incorruptible 'clothing' will be given to the soul in the future state. Already the fundamental Pharisaic doctrine of the two ages--the present age and that which is to come--is in danger. St. Paul can now, like a true Greek, contrast the things that are seen, which are temporal, with the things that are not seen, which are eternal. The doctrine of the Spirit as a present possession of Christians brings down heaven to earth and exalts earth to heaven; the 'Parousia' is now only the end of the existing world-order, and has but little significance for the individual. These ideas have not displaced the earlier apocalyptic language; but it is easy to see that the one or the other must recede into the background, and that the Pharisaic tradition will be the one to fade.

The third group of Epistles--Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians--are steeped in ideas which belong to Greek philosophy and the Greek mystery-religions. It would be impossible to translate them into any Eastern language. The Rabbinical disputes with the Jews about justification and election have disappeared; the danger ahead is now from theosophy and the barbarised Platonism which was afterwards matured in Gnosticism. The teaching is even more Christocentric than before; and the Catholic doctrine of the Church as the body of Christ is more prominent than individualistic mysticism. The cosmology is thoroughly Johannine, and only awaits the name of the Logos.

This receptiveness to new ideas is one of the most remarkable features in St. Paul's mind. Few indeed are the religious prophets and preachers whose convictions are still malleable after they have begun to govern the minds of others. St. Paul had already proved that he was a man who would 'follow the gleam,' even when it called him to a complete breach with his past. And the further development of his thought was made much easier by the fact that he was no systematic philosopher, but a great missionary who was willing to be all things to all men, while his own faith was unified by his strength of purpose, and by the steady glow of the light within.

It is difficult for us to realise the life of his little communities without importing into the picture features which belong to a later time. The organisation, such as it was, was democratic. The congregation as a whole exercised a censors.h.i.+p over the morals of its members, and penalties were inflicted 'by vote of the majority' (2 Cor. ii. 6). The family formed a group for religious purposes, and remained the recognised unit till the second century. In Ignatius and Hermas we find the campaign against family churches in full swing. The meetings were like those of modern revivalists, and sometimes became disorderly. But of the moral beauty which pervaded the whole life of the brotherhoods there can be no doubt. Many of the converts had formerly led disreputable lives; but these were the most likely to appreciate the gain of being no longer outlaws, but members of a true family. The heathen were amazed at the kind of people whom the Christians admitted and treated like brethren; but in the first century scandals do not seem to have been frequent. Women, who were probably always the majority, enjoyed a consideration unknown by them before. The extreme importance attached by the early Church to s.e.xual purity made it possible for them to mix freely with Christian men; indeed, the strange and perilous practice of a 'brother' and a virgin sharing the same house seems to have already begun, if this is the meaning of the obscure pa.s.sage in I Cor. vii. 36.

Chast.i.ty and indifference to death were the two qualities in Christians which made the greatest impression on their neighbours. Galen is especially interesting on the former topic. But we must add a third characteristic--the cheerfulness and happiness which marked the early Christian communities. 'Joy' as a moral quality is a Christian invention, as a study of the usage of charha in Greek will show. Even in Augustine's time the temper of the Christians, 'serena et non dissolute hilaris' was one of the things which attracted him to the Church. The secret of this happy social life was an intense realisation of corporate unity among the members of the confraternity, which they represented to themselves as a 'mystery'--a mystical union between the Head and members of a 'body.' It is in this conception, and not in ritual details, that we are justified in finding a real and deep influence of the mystery-cults upon Christianity. The Catholic conception of sacraments as bonds uniting religious communities, and as channels of grace flowing from a corporate treasury, was as certainly part of the Greek mystery-religion as it was foreign to Judaism. The mysteries had their bad side, as might be expected in private and half-secret societies; but their influence as a whole was certainly good. The three chief characteristics of mystery-religion were, first, rites of purification, both moral and ceremonial; second, the promise of spiritual communion with some deity, who through them enters into his wors.h.i.+ppers; third, the hope of immortality, which the Greeks often called 'deification,' and which was secured to those who were initiated.

It is useless to deny that St. Paul regarded Christianity as, at least on one side, a mystery-religion. Why else should he have used a number of technical terms which his readers would recognise at once as belonging to the mysteries? Why else should he repeatedly use the word 'mystery' itself, applying it to doctrines distinctive of Christianity, such as the resurrection with a 'spiritual body,' the relation of the Jewish people to G.o.d, and, above all, the mystical union between Christ and Christians? The great' mystery' is 'Christ in you, the hope of glory' (Col i. 27). It was as a mystery-religion that Europe accepted Christianity. Just as the Jewish Christians took with them the whole framework of apocalyptic Messianism, and set the figure of Jesus within it, so the Greeks took with them the whole scheme of the mysteries, with their sacraments, their purifications and fasts, their idea of a mystical brotherhood, and their doctrine of 'salvation' (soterhia is essentially a mystery word) through members.h.i.+p in a divine society, wors.h.i.+pping Christ as the patronal deity of their mysteries.

Historically, this type of Christianity was the origin of Catholicism, both Western and Eastern; though it is only recently that this character of the Pauline churches has been recognised. And students of the New Testament have not yet realised the importance of the fact that St.

Paul, who was ready to fight to the death against the Judaising of Christianity, was willing to take the first step, and a long one, towards the Paganising of it. It does not appear that his personal religion was of this type. He speaks with contempt of some doctrines and practices of the Pagan mysteries, and will allow no _rapprochement_ with what he regards as devil-wors.h.i.+p. In this he remains a pure Hebrew. But he does not appear to see any danger in allowing his h.e.l.lenistic churches to a.s.similate the wors.h.i.+p of Christ to the honours paid to the G.o.ds of the mysteries, and to set their whole religion in this framework, provided only that they have no part nor lot with those who sit at 'the table of demons'--the sacramental love-feasts of the heathen mysteries. The dangers which he does see, and against which he issues warnings, are, besides Judaism, antinomianism and disorder on the one hand, and dualistic asceticism on the other. He dislikes or mistrusts 'the speaking with tongues' (glossolalhia), which was the favourite exhibition of religious enthusiasm at Corinth. (On this subject Prof.

Lake's excursus is the most instructive discussion that has yet appeared. The 'Testament of Job' and the magical papyri show that gibberish uttered in a state of spiritual excitement was supposed to be the language of angels and spirits, understood by them and acting upon them as a charm.) He urges his converts to do all things 'decently and in order.' He is alarmed at signs of moral laxity on the part of self-styled 'spiritual persons'--a great danger in all times of ecstatic enthusiasm. He is also alive to the dangers connected with that kind of asceticism which is based on theories of the impurity of the body--the typical Oriental form of world-renunciation. But he does not appear to have foreseen the unethical and polytheistic developments of sacramental inst.i.tutionalism. In this particular his Judaising opponents had a little more justification than he is willing to allow them.

ST. PAUL

There is something transitional about all St. Paul's teaching. We cannot take him out of his historical setting, as so many of his commentators in the nineteenth century tried to do. This is only another way of saying that he was, to use his own expression, a wise master-builder, not a detached thinker, an arm-chair philosopher. To the historian, there must always be something astounding in the magnitude of the task which he set himself, and in his enormous success. The future history of the civilised world for two thousand years, perhaps for all time, was determined by his missionary journeys and hurried writings. It is impossible to guess what would have become of Christianity if he had never lived; we cannot even be sure that the religion of Europe would be called by the name of Christ. This stupendous achievement seems to have been due to an almost unique practical insight into the essential factors of a very difficult and complex situation. We watch him, with breathless interest, steering the vessel which carried the Christian Church and its fortunes through a narrow channel full of sunken rocks and shoals. With unerring instinct he avoids them all, and brings the s.h.i.+p, not into smooth water, but into the open sea, out of that perilous strait. And so far was his masterly policy from mere opportunism, that his correspondence has been 'Holy Scripture' for fifty generations of Christians, and there has been no religious revival within Christianity that has not been, on one side at least, a return to St. Paul.

Protestants have always felt their affinity with this inst.i.tutionalist, mystics with this disciplinarian. The reason, put shortly, is that St.

Paul understood what most Christians never realise, namely, that the Gospel of Christ is not _a_ religion, but religion itself, in its most universal and deepest significance.

INSt.i.tUTIONALISM AND MYSTICISM

(1914)

It happens sometimes that two opposite tendencies flourish together, deriving strength from a sense of the danger with which each is threatened by the popularity of the other. Where the antagonism is not absolute, each may gain by being compelled to recognise the strong points in the rival position. In a serious controversy the right is seldom or never all on one side; and in the normal course of events both theories undergo some modification through the influence of their opponents, until a compromise, not always logically defensible, brings to an end the acute stage of the controversy. Such a tension of rival movements is very apparent in the religious thought of our day. The quickening of spiritual life in our generation has taken two forms, which appear to be, and to a large extent are, sharply opposed to each other. On the one side, there has been a great revival of mysticism.

Mysticism means an immediate communion, real or supposed, between the human soul and the Soul of the World or the Divine Spirit. The hypothesis on which it rests is that there is a real affinity between the individual soul and the great immanent Spirit, who in Christian theology is identified with the Logos-Christ. He was the instrument in creation, and through the Incarnation and the gift of the Holy Spirit, in which the Incarnation is continued, has entered into the most intimate relation with the inner life of the believer. This revived belief in the inspiration of the individual has immensely strengthened the position of Christian apologists, who find their old fortifications no longer tenable against the a.s.saults of natural science and historical criticism. It has given to faith a new independence, and has vindicated for the spiritual life the right to stand on its own feet and rest on its own evidence. Spiritual things, we now realise, are spiritually discerned. The enlightened soul can see the invisible, and live its true life in the suprasensible sphere. The primary evidence for the truth of religion is religious experience, which in persons of religious genius--those whom the Church calls saints and prophets--includes a clear perception of an eternal world of truth, beauty, and goodness, surrounding us and penetrating us at every point.

It is the unanimous testimony of these favoured spirits that the obstacles in the way of realising this transcendental world are purely subjective and to a large extent removable by the appropriate training and discipline. Nor is there any serious discrepancy among them either as to the nature of the vision which is the highest reward of human effort, or as to the course of preparation which makes us able to receive it. The Christian mystic must begin with the punctual and conscientious discharge of his duties to society; he must next purify his desires from all worldly and carnal l.u.s.ts, for only the pure in heart can see G.o.d; and he may thus fit himself for 'illumination'--the stage in which the glory and beauty of the spiritual life, now clearly discerned, are themselves the motive of action and the incentive to contemplation; while the possibility of a yet more immediate and ineffable vision of the G.o.dhead is not denied, even in this life. There is reason to think that this conception of religion appeals more and more strongly to the younger generation to-day. It brings an intense feeling of relief to many who have been distressed by being told that religion is bound up with certain events in antiquity, the historicity of which it is in some cases difficult to establish; with a cosmology which has been definitely disproved; and with a philosophy which they cannot make their own. It allows us what George Meredith calls 'the rapture of the forward view.' It brings home to us the meaning of the promise made by the Johannine Christ that there are many things as yet hid from humanity which will in the future be revealed by the Spirit of Truth. It encourages us to hope that for each individual who is trying to live the right life the venture of faith will be progressively justified in experience. It breaks down the denominational barriers which divide men and women who wors.h.i.+p the Father in spirit and in truth--barriers which become more senseless in each generation, since they no longer correspond even approximately with real differences of belief or of religious temperament. It makes the whole world kin by offering a pure religion which is substantially the same in all climates and in all ages--a religion too divine to be fettered by any man-made formulas, too n.o.bly human to be readily acceptable to men in whom the ape and tiger are still alive, but which finds a congenial home in the purified spirit which is the 'throne of the G.o.dhead.' Such is the type of faith which is astir among us. It makes no imposing show in Church conferences; it does not fill our churches and chapels; it has no organisation, no propaganda; it is for the most part pa.s.sively loyal, without much enthusiasm, to the inst.i.tutions among which it finds itself. But in reality it has overleapt all barriers; it knows its true spiritual kin; and amid the strifes and perplexities of a sad and troublous time it can always recover its hope and confidence by ascending in heart and mind to the heaven which is closer to it than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

But on the other side we see a tendency, even more manifest if we look for external signs, to emphasise the inst.i.tutional side of religion, that which prompts men and women to combine in sacred societies, to cherish enthusiastic loyalties for the Church of their early education or of their later choice, to find their chief satisfaction in acts of corporate wors.h.i.+p, and to subordinate their individual tastes and beliefs to the common tradition and discipline of a historical body. It is now about eighty years since this tendency began to manifest itself as a new phenomenon in the Anglican Church. Since then, it has spread to other organisations. It has prompted a new degree of denominational loyalty in several Protestant bodies on the Continent, in America, and in our own country; and it has arrested the decline of the Roman Catholic Church in countries where the outlook seemed least hopeful from the ecclesiastical point of view. Such a movement, so widespread and so powerful in its results, is clearly a thing to be reckoned with by all who desire to estimate rightly the signs of the times. It is a current running in the opposite direction to the mystical tendency, which regards unity as a spiritual, not a political ideal. Fortunately, the theory of inst.i.tutionalism has lately been defended and expounded by several able writers belonging to different denominations; so that we may hope, by comparing their utterances, to understand the attractions of the theory and its meaning for those who so highly value it.

Aubrey Moore, writing in 1889, connected the Catholic revival with the abandonment of atomism in natural philosophy and of Baconian metaphysics. These were, he thought, the counterpart of individualism in politics and Calvinism in religion. The adherents of mid-Victorian science and philosophy were bewildered by the phenomenon of 'men in the nineteenth century actually expressing a belief in a divine society and a supernatural presence in our midst, a brotherhood in which men become members of an organic whole by sharing in a common life, a service of man which is the natural and spontaneous outcome of the service of G.o.d.'[90] In the view of this learned and acute thinker, Catholicism, or inst.i.tutionalism, is destined to supplant Protestantism, as the organic theory is destined to displace the atomic.

More recently Troeltsch, writing as a Protestant, has emphasised the inst.i.tutional side of religion in the most uncompromising way.

'One of the clearest results of all religious history and religious psychology is that the essence of all religion is not dogma and idea, but cultus and communion, the living intercourse with the Deity--an intercourse of the entire community, having its vital roots in religion and deriving its ultimate power of thus uniting individuals, from its faith in G.o.d.... Whatever the future may bring us, we cannot expect a certainty and force of the knowledge of G.o.d and of His redemptive power to subsist without communion and cultus. And so long as a Christianity of any kind shall subsist at all, it will be united with a cultus, and with Christ holding a central position in the cultus.'[91]

From America, the last refuge of individualism, there has come a p.r.o.nouncement not less drastic. Professor Royce, the author of the admirable metaphysical treatise ent.i.tled 'The World and the Individual,'

has recently published a double series of Hibbert Lectures on 'The Problem of Christianity,' in which he affirms the inst.i.tutionalist theory with a surprising absence of qualification. The whole book is dominated by one idea, advocated with a _navete_ which would hardly have been possible to a theologian--the idea that churchmans.h.i.+p is the essential part of the Christian religion.

'The salvation of the individual man is determined by some sort of members.h.i.+p in a certain spiritual community--a religious community, and in its inmost nature a divine community, in whose life the Christian virtues are to reach their highest expression and the spirit of the Master is to obtain its earthly fulfilment. In other words, there is a certain universal and divine spiritual community. Members.h.i.+p in that community is necessary to the salvation of man....

Such a community exists, is needed, and is an indispensable means of salvation for the individual man, and is the fitting realm wherein alone the kingdom of heaven which the Master preached can find its expression, and wherein alone the Christian virtues can be effectively preached.'[92]

These statements, which in vigour and rigour would satisfy the most extreme curialist in the Society of Jesus, are not a little startling in an American philosopher, who, as far as the present writer knows, does not belong to any 'Catholic' Church. The thesis thus enunciated is the argument of the whole book, in which 'loyalty to the beloved community'

is declared to be the characteristic Christian virtue. It is true that the satisfaction of Professor Royce's Catholic readers is destined to be damped in the second volume, where he forbids us to look for the ideal divine community in any existing Church, and expresses his conviction that great changes must come over the dogmatic teaching of Christianity.

But for our purpose the significant fact is that throughout the book he insists that Christianity is essentially an inst.i.tutional religion, the most completely inst.i.tutional of all religions. For Professor Royce to be a Christian is to be a Churchman.

Our last witness shall be the learned Roman Catholic layman, Baron Friedrich von Hugel, the deepest thinker, perhaps, of all living theologians in this country. 'It is now ever increasingly clear to all deep impartial students that religion has ever primarily expressed and formed itself in cultus, in social organisation, social wors.h.i.+p, intercourse between soul and soul and between soul and G.o.d; and in symbols and sacraments, in contacts between spirit and matter.' He proceeds to discuss the strength and weakness of inst.i.tutionalism in a perfectly candid spirit, but with too particular reference to the present conditions within the Roman Church to help us much in our more general survey. He mentions the drawbacks of an official philosophy, prescribed by authority; 'only in 1835 did the Congregation of the Index withdraw heliocentric books from its list.' He emphasises the necessity of historical dogmas, but admits that orthodoxy cherishes, along with them, 'fact-like historical pictures' which 'cannot be taken as directly, simply factual.' He vindicates the orthodoxy of religious toleration, and refuses to consign all non-Catholics to perdition, lamenting the tendency to identify absolutely the visible and invisible Church, which prevails among 'some of the (now dominant) Italian and German Jesuit Canonists.' Lastly, he boldly recommends the frank abandonment of the Papal claim to exercise temporal power in Italy. This is not so much a critique of inst.i.tutionalism as the plea of a Liberal Catholic that the logic of inst.i.tutionalism should not be allowed to override all other considerations. The Baron is, indeed, himself a mystic, though also a strong believer in the necessity of inst.i.tutional religion.

We have then a considerable body of very competent opinion, that a man cannot be a Christian unless he is a Churchman. To the mystic pure and simple, such a statement seems monstrous. Did not even Augustine say, 'I want to know G.o.d and my own soul; these two things, and no third whatever'? What intermediary can there be, he will ask, between the soul and G.o.d? What sacredness is there in an organisation? Is it not a matter of common experience that the morality of an inst.i.tution, a society, a state, is inferior to that of the individuals who compose it? And is organised Catholicism an exception to this rule? And yet we must admit the glamour of the idea of a divine society. It arouses that _esprit de corps_ which is the strongest appeal that can be made to some n.o.ble minds. It calls for self-sacrifice and devoted labour in a cause which is higher than private interest. It demands discipline and co-operation, through which alone great things can be done on the field of history. It holds out a prospect of really influencing the course of events. And if there has been a historical Incarnation, it follows that G.o.d has actually intervened on the stage of history, and that it is His will to carry out some great and divine purpose in and by means of the course of history. With this object, as the Catholic believes, He established an inst.i.tutional Church, pledged to the highest of all causes; and what greater privilege can there be than to take part in this work, as a soldier in the army of G.o.d in His long campaign against the spiritual powers of evil? The Christian inst.i.tutionalist is the servant of a grand idea.

There are, however, a few questions which we are bound to ask him.

First, is his idea of the Church Christian? Did the Founder of Christianity contemplate or even implicitly sanction the establishment of a semi-political international society, such as the Catholic Church has actually been? Orthodox Catholicism maintains that He did. Modernism admits that He did not, but adds that if He had known that the Messianic expectation was illusory, and that the existing world-order was to continue for thousands of years, He would certainly have wished that a Catholic Church should exist. And, argues the Modernist, if it is a good thing that a Catholic Church should exist, it is useless to quarrel with the conditions under which alone it can maintain its existence. The philosophical historian must admit that all the changes which the Catholic Church has undergone--its concessions to Pagan superst.i.tion, its secular power, its ruthless extirpation of rebels against its authority, its steadily growing centralisation and autocracy--were forced upon it in the struggle for existence. Those who wish that Church history had been different are wis.h.i.+ng the impossible, or wis.h.i.+ng that the Church had perished. But this argument is not valid as a defence of a divine inst.i.tution. It is rather a merciless exposure of what happens, and must happen, to a great idea when it is enslaved by an inst.i.tution of its own creation. The political organisation which has grown up round the idea ends by strangling it, and continues to fight for its own preservation by the methods which govern the policy of all other political organisations--force, fraud, and accommodation. There is nothing in the political history of Catholicism which suggests in the slightest degree that the spirit of Christ has been the guiding principle in its councils. Its methods have, on the contrary, been more cruel, more fraudulent, more unscrupulous, than those of most secular powers. If the Founder of Christianity had appeared again on earth during the so-called ages of faith, it is hardly possible to doubt that He would, have been burnt alive or crucified again. What the Latin Church preserved was not the religion of Christ, which lived on by its inherent indestructibility, but parts of the Aristotelian and Platonic philosophies, distorted and petrified by scholasticism, a vast quant.i.ty of purely Pagan superst.i.tions, and the _arcana imperii_ of Roman Caesarism. The normal end of Scholasticism is a mummified philosophy of authority, in which there are no problems to solve, but a great many dead pundits to consult. The normal end of a policy which exploits the superst.i.tions of the peasant is a desperate warfare against education.

The normal end of Roman Imperialism is a sultanate like that of Diocletian. It is difficult to find a proof of infallible and supernatural wisdom in the evolution of which these are the last terms.

We read with the utmost sympathy and admiration Baron von Hugel's loyal and reverent appeals to the authorities of his Church, that they may draw out the strong and beneficent powers of inst.i.tutionalism, and avoid its insidious dangers. But it may be doubted whether such a policy is possible. The future of Roman Catholicism is, I fear, with the Ultramontanes. They, and not the Modernists, are in the line of development which Catholicism as an inst.i.tution has consistently followed, and must continue to follow to the end. I can see no other fate in store for the _soma_ of Catholicism; the germ-cells of true Christianity live their own life within it, and are transmitted without taint to those who are born of the Spirit.

We must further ask the inst.i.tutionalist what are his grounds for identifying the Church of G.o.d with the particular inst.i.tution to which he belongs. On the inst.i.tutionalist hypothesis, it might have been expected either that there would have been no divisions in Christendom, or that all seceding bodies would have shown such manifest inferiority in wisdom, morality, and sanct.i.ty, that the exclusive claims of the Great Church would have been ratified at the bar of history. This is, in fact, the claim which Roman Catholics make. But it can only be upheld by writing history in the spirit of an advocate, or by giving a preference, not in accordance with modern ethical views, to certain types of character which are produced by the monastic life of the Catholic 'religious,' It is increasingly difficult to find, in the lives of those who belong to any one denomination, proofs of marked superiority over other Christians. Of course, we know little of the real character of our neighbours as they appear in the eyes of G.o.d; but in considering a theory which lays so much stress on history as Catholic inst.i.tutionalism does, we are bound to make use of such evidence as we have. And the evidence does not support the theory that we cannot be Christians unless we are Catholics. Nor does it even countenance the view that we cannot be Christians unless we are enthusiastic members of _some_ religious corporation. Professor Royce seems to have been carried away by the idea which prompted him to write his book; but a little thought about the characters of his acquaintances might have given him pause.

The mechanical theory of devolution which a.s.sumes so much importance in some fas.h.i.+onable Anglican teaching about the Church need not detain us long. The logical choice must ultimately be between the great international Catholic Church and what Auguste Sabatier called the religion of the Spirit. The religion of all Protestants, when it is not secularised, as it too often is, belongs to this latter type, even when they lay most stress on the idea of brotherhood and corporate action.

For with them inst.i.tutions are never much more than a.s.sociations for mutual help and edification. The Protestant always hopes to be saved _qua_ Christian, not _qua_ Churchman.

A third question which must be asked is whether inst.i.tutionalism in practice makes for unity among Christians, or for division. Too often the chief visible sign of the 'corporate idea' of which so much is said, is the rigidity of the spikes which it erects round its own particular fold. The obstacles to acts of reunion (which in no way carry with them the necessity of formal amalgamation) are raised almost exclusively by stiff inst.i.tutionalists. The much-discussed Kikuyu case has brought this home to everybody. But for these uncompromising Churchmen, Christians of all denominations would be glad enough to meet together at the Lord's table on special occasions like the service which gave rise to this controversy. Anglicans are well aware that the differences of opinion within their body are far greater than those which separate some of them from Protestant Nonconformity, and others of them from Home. Allegiance to this or that denomination is generally an accident of early surroundings. To make these external cla.s.sifications into barriers which cannot be crossed is either an absurdity or a confession that a Church is a political aggregate. A Roman Monsignor explained, _a propos_ of the Kikuyu service, that no Roman Catholic could ever communicate in a Protestant church, because in so doing he would be guilty of an act of apostasy, and would be no longer a Roman Catholic. The att.i.tude is consistent with the Roman claim to universal jurisdiction; for any other body it would be absurd. The stiff inst.i.tutionalist is debarred by his theory from fraternising with many who should be his friends, while he is bound to others with whom he has no sympathy. His theory is once more found to conflict with the facts.