Towards the Great Peace Part 7

VII

THE PROBLEM OF ORGANIC RELIGION

If philosophy is "the science of the totality of things," and "they are called wise who put things in their right order and control them well,"

then it is religion, above all other factors and potencies, that enters in to reveal the right relations.h.i.+ps and standards of value, and to contribute the redemptive and energizing force that makes possible the adequate control which is the second factor in the conduct of the man that is "called wise." Philosophy and religion are not to be confounded; religion is sufficient in itself and develops its own philosophy, but the latter is not sufficient in itself, and when it a.s.sumes the functions and prerogatives of religion, it brings disaster.

Religion is the force that relates action to life. Of course it has other aspects, higher in essence and more impalpable in quality, but it is this first aspect I shall deal with, because I am not now speaking of religion as a purely spiritual power but only of its quality as the great coordinator of human action, the power that establishes a right ratio of values and gives the capacity for right control. Whether we accept the religion of the Middle Ages or not; whether we look on the period as one of high and edifying Christian civilization, or as a time of ignorance and superst.i.tion, we are bound to admit that society in its physical, intellectual and spiritual aspects was highly organized, and coordinated after a most masterly fas.h.i.+on. It was more nearly an unit, functioning lucidly and consistently, than anything the world has known since the Roman Empire. Whatever its defects, lack of coherency was not one of them. Life was not divided into water-tight compartments, but moved on as a consistent whole. Failures were constant, for the world even then was made up of men, but the ideal was perfectly clear-cut, the principles exactly seen and explicitly formulated; life was organic, consistent, highly articulated, and withal as full of the pa.s.sion of aspiration towards an ultimate ideal as was the Gothic cathedral which is its perfect exemplar.

The reason for this coherency and consistency was the universal recognition and acceptance of religion as the one energizing and standardizing force in life, the particular kind of religion that then prevailed, and the organic power which this religion had established; that is to say, the Church as an operative inst.i.tution. So long as this condition obtained, which was, roughly speaking, for three hundred years, from the "Truce of G.o.d" in 1041 to the beginning of the "Babylonian Captivity" of the Papacy at Avignon in 1309, there was substantial unity in life, but as soon as it was shaken, this unity began to break up into a diversity that accomplished a condition of chaos, at and around the opening of the sixteenth century, which only yielded to the absolutism of the Renaissance, destined in its turn to break up into a second condition of chaos under the influence of industrialism, Puritanism and revolution.

Since the accomplishment of the Reformation, this function of religion has never been restored to society in any degree comparable with that which it maintained during the Middle Ages. The Counter-Reformation preserved the inst.i.tution itself in the Mediterranean lands, but it did not restore its old spiritual power in its entirety. Amongst the peoples that accepted the Reformation the new religion a.s.sumed for a time the authority of the old, but the centrifugal force inherent in its nature soon split the reformed churches into myriad fragments, so destroying their power of action, while the abandonment of the sacramental system progressively weakened their dynamic force. As it had from the first compounded, under compulsion, with absolutism and tyranny, so in the end it compromised with the cruelty, selfishness, injustice and avarice of industrialism, and when finally this achieved world supremacy, and physical science, materialistic philosophy and social revolution entered the field as co-combatants, it no longer possessed a sufficient original power either of resistance or of re-creative energy.

Religion is in itself not the reaction of the human mind, under process of evolution, to certain physical stimuli of experience and phenomena, it is supernatural in that its source is outside nature; it is a manifestation of the grace of G.o.d, and as such it cannot be brought into existence by any conscious action of man or by any of his works. On the other hand, it can be fostered and preserved, or debilitated and dispersed, by these human acts and inst.i.tutions, and in the same way man himself may be made more receptive to this divine grace, or turned against it, by the same agencies, the teachings of Dr. John Calvin to the contrary notwithstanding. This is part of the Catholic doctrine of free-will as opposed to the sixteenth-century dogma of predestination which, distorted and degraded from the doctrine of St. Paul and St.

Augustine, played so large a part in that transformation of the Christian religion from which we have suffered ever since. G.o.d offers the free gift of religion and of faith to every child of man, but the recipient must cooperate if the gift is to be accepted. The Church, that is to say, the supernatural organism that is given material form in time and s.p.a.ce and operates through human agencies, is for this reason subject to great vicissitudes, now rising to the highest level of righteousness and power, now sinking into depths of unrighteousness and impotence. Nothing, however, can affect the validity and the potency of its supernatural content and its supernatural channels of grace. These remain unaffected, whether the human organism is exalted or debased. The sacraments and devotions and practices of wors.h.i.+p, are in themselves as potent if a Borgia sits in the chair of St. Peter as they are if a Hildebrand, and Innocent III or a Leo XIII is the occupant; nevertheless every weakening or degradation of the visible organism affects, and inevitably, the att.i.tude of men towards the thing itself, and when this declension sets in and continues unchecked, the result is, first, a falling away and a discrediting of religion that sometimes results in general abandonment, and second--and after a time--a new outpouring of spiritual power that results in complete regeneration. The Church, in its human manifestation, is as subject to the rhythmical rise and fall of the currents of life as is the social organism or man himself, therefore it is not to be expected that it will pursue a course of even exaltation, or maintain a status that is impeccable.

Now the working out of this law had issue in a great decline that began with the Exile at Avignon and was not terminated until the Council of Trent. In the depth of this catastrophe came the natural and righteous revolt against the manifold and intolerable abuses, but, like all reforming movements that take on a revolutionary character, reform and regeneration were soon forgotten in the unleashed pa.s.sion for destruction and innovation, while the new doctrines of emanc.i.p.ation from authority, and the right of private judgment in religious matters, were seized upon by sovereigns chafing under ecclesiastical control, as a providential means of effecting and establis.h.i.+ng their own independence, and so given an importance, and an ultimate victory that, in and by themselves, they could hardly have achieved. In the end it was the secular and autocratic state that reaped the victory, not the reformed religion, which was first used as a tool and then abandoned to its inevitable break-up into numberless antagonistic sects, some of them retaining a measure of the old faith and polity, others representing all the illiteracy and uncouthness and fanaticism of the new racial and social factors as these emerged at long last from the submergence and the oppression that had been their fate with the dissolution of Mediaevalism.

Meanwhile the Roman Church which stood rigidly for historic Christianity and had been preserved by the Counter-Reformation to the Mediterranean states, continued bound to the autocratic and highly centralized administrative system that had become universal among secular powers during the decadence of Mediaevalism, and from which it had taken its colour, and it kept even pace for the future with the progressive intensification of this absolutism. This was natural, though in many respects deplorable, and it can be safely said that adverse criticism of the Catholic Church today is based only on qualities it acquired during the period of Renaissance autocracy and revived paganism; qualities that do not affect its essential integrity or authority but do misrepresent it before men, and work as a handicap in its adaptability and in its work of winning souls to Christianity and re-establis.h.i.+ng the unity of Christendom. Fortunately this very immobility has saved it from a surrender to the new forces that were developed in secular society during the last two centuries, as it did yield to the compulsion of those that were let loose in the two that preceded them. It has never subjected questions of faith and morals to popular vote nor has it determined discipline by parliamentary practice under a well developed party system, therefore it has preserved its unity, its integrity and its just standard of comparative values. On the other hand, it has held so stubbornly to some of the ill ways of Renaissance centralization, which are in no sense consonant with its character, that it has failed to r.e.t.a.r.d the constant movement of society away from a life wherein religion was the dominating and coordinating force, while at the present crisis it is as yet hardly more able than a divisive Protestantism to offer the regenerative energy that a desperate case demands.

I do not know whether secular society is responsible for the decadence of religion, or the decadence of religion is responsible for the failure of secular society, nor does it particularly matter. What I am concerned with is a condition amounting to almost complete severance between the two, and how we may "knit up this ravelled sleeve" of life so that once more we may have an wholesome unity in place of the present disunity; for until this is accomplished, until once more religion enters into the very marrow of social being, enters with all its powers of judgment and determination and co-ordination and creative energy, just so long shall we seek in vain for our way out into the Great Peace of righteous and consistent living.

Of course there is only one sure way, one method by which this, and all our manifold difficulties, can be resolved, and that is through the achieved enlightenment of the individual. As I have insisted in each of these lectures, salvation is not through machinery but through the individual soul, for it is life itself that is operating, not the instruments that man devises in his ingenuity. Yet the mechanism is of great value for even itself may give aid and stimulus in the personal regenerative process, or, on the contrary, it may deter this by the confusing and misleading influences it creates. Therefore we are bound to regard material reforms, and of these, as they suggest themselves in the field of organized religion, I propose to speak.

No one will deny the progressive alienation of life from religion that has developed since the Reformation and has now reached a point of almost complete severance. Religion, once a public preoccupation, has now withdrawn to the fastnesses of the individual soul, when it has not vanished altogether, as it has in the case of the majority of citizens of this Republic in so far as definite faith, explicit belief, application, practice and action are concerned. In the hermitage that some still make within themselves, religion still lives on as ardent and as potent and as regenerative as before, but in general, if we are to judge from the conduct of recent life, it is held, when it is accepted at all, with a certain formality, and is neither cherished with conviction nor allowed to interfere with the everyday life of the practical man. As a great English statesman remarked in the last century, "No one has a higher regard for religion than I, but when it comes to intruding it into public affairs, well, really--!"

The situation is one not unnaturally to be antic.i.p.ated, for the whole course of religious, secular and sociological development during the last few centuries has been such as to make any other result improbable.

I already have tried to show what seem to me the destructive factors, secularly and sociologically. As for the factors in religious development that have worked towards the same end, they are, first, the shattering of the unity of Christendom, with the denial by those of the reformed religions of the existence of a Church, one, visible and Catholic and infallible in matters of faith and morals; second, the denial of sacramental philosophy and abandonment of the sacraments (or all but one, or at most two of them) as instruments of Divine Grace; third, the surrender of the various religious organisms to the compulsion of the materialistic, worldly and opportunist factors in the secular life of modernism. The truths corresponding to these three errors are, Unity, Sacramentalism and Unworldliness. Until these three things are won back, Christianity will fail of its full mission, society will continue aimless, uncoordinate and on the verge of disaster, life itself will lack the meaning and the reality that give both joy in the living and victory in achievement, while the individual man will be gravely handicapped in the process of personal regeneration.

It is not my purpose to frame a general indictment against persons and movements, but rather to suggest certain ways and means of possible recovery, and in general I shall try to confine myself to that form of organized religion to which I personally adhere, that is to say, the Anglican or Episcopal Church, partly because of my better knowledge of its conditions, and partly because whatever is said may in most cases be equally well applied to the Protestant denominations.

_The unity of the Church._ It is no longer necessary to demonstrate this fundamental necessity. The old days of the nineteenth century are gone, those days when honest men vociferously acclaimed as honourable and glorious "the dissidence of dissent and the protestantism of the Protestant religion." Everyone knows now, everyone, that is, that accepts Christianity, that disunion is disgrace if not a very palpable sin. The desire for a restored unity is almost universal, but every effort in this direction, whatever its source, meets with failure, and the reason would appear to be that the approach is made from the wrong direction. In every case the individual is left alone, his personal beliefs and practices are, he is a.s.sured, jealously guarded; all that is asked is that some mechanical amalgamation, some official approximation shall be effected.

Free interchange of pulpits, a system of reciprocal re-ordination, a "merger" of church property and parsons, an "irreducible minimum" of credal insistencies these, and others even more ingeniously compromising, are the well-meaning schemes that are put forward, and in the process one point after another is surrendered, as a _quid pro quo_ for the formal and technical capitulation of some other religious group.

It is demonstrable that even if these well-meaning approximations were received with favour--and thus far nothing of the kind has appeared--the result, so far as essential unity is concerned, would be _nil._ There is a perfectly definite line of division between the Catholic and the Protestant, and until this line is erased there is no possible unity, even if this were only official and administrative. The Catholic (and in respect to this one particular point I include under this t.i.tle members of the Roman, Anglican and Eastern Communions) maintains and practices the sacramental system; the Protestant does not. There is no reason, there is indeed grave danger of sacrilege, in a joint reception of the Holy Communion by those who look on it as a mere symbol and those who accept it as the very Body and Blood of Christ. Protestant clergy are urged to accept ordination at the hands of Anglican bishops, but the plea is made on the ground of order, expediency, and the preservation of tradition; whereas the Apostolical succession was established and enforced not for these reasons but in order that the grace of G.o.d, originally imparted by Christ Himself, may be continued through the lines He ordained, for the making and commissioning of priests who have power to serve as the channels for the accomplis.h.i.+ng of the divine miracle of the Holy Eucharist, to offer the eternal Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ for the quick and the dead, and to remit the penalty of sins through confession and absolution. If the laying on of hands by the bishop were solely a matter of tradition and discipline, neither Rome nor the Anglican Communion would be justified in holding to it as a condition of unity; if it is for the transmission of the Holy Ghost for the making of a Catholic priest, with all that implies and has always implied, then it is wrong, even in the interests of a formal unity, to offer it to those who believe neither in the priesthood nor in the sacraments in the Catholic and historic sense.

The conversion of the individual must take precedence of corporate action of any sort. When the secularist comes to believe in the G.o.dhead of Christ he will unite himself with the rest of the faithful in a Church polity, but he will not do this, he has too much self-respect, simply because he is told by some ardent but minimizing parson that he does not have to believe in the Divinity of Christ in order to "join the church." When a Protestant comes to accept the sacramental system, to desire to partic.i.p.ate in the Holy Sacrifice of the altar, to make confession of his sins and receive absolution, and to nourish and develop his spiritual nature by the use of the devotions that have grown up during nineteen hundred years, he will renounce his Protestantism, when his self-respect would not permit him to do this just because he had been a.s.sured that he need not really change any of his previous beliefs in order to ally himself with a Church that had better architecture and a more artistic ceremonial, and locally a higher social standing. When Anglicans or the Eastern Orthodox come to believe that a vernacular liturgy and a married priesthood and provincial autonomy are of less importance than Catholic unity, and when Roman Catholics can see that the same is of greater moment than a rigid preservation of Renaissance centralization and a cold _"non possumus"_ in the matter of Orders, then the way will be open for the reunion of the West, where this operation cannot be affected by formal negotiations looking towards some form of legalistic concordat.

The evil heritage of the sixteenth century is still heavy upon us, and this heritage is one of jealousy and hate, not of charity and toleration. It is an heritage of legalism and technicalities, of self-will and individualism, of s.h.i.+bboleths that have become a dead letter, of prejudices that are fostered on distorted history and the propaganda of the self-seeking and the vain. The spirit of Christ is not in it, but the malice of Satan working upon the better natures of men and justifying in the name of conscience and principle what are frequently the workings of self-will and pride and intellectual obsession. This is the tragedy of it all; that Protestants and Anglicans and Roman Catholics are, so far as the majority are concerned, honestly convinced that they are right in maintaining their own divisiveness; in perpetuating an hundred Protestant sects on the basis of some variation in the form of baptism or church government or the method of conversion; in splitting up the Catholic Church because of a thousand year old disagreement as to a clause in the Creed which has a technical and theological significance only, or because one sector is alleged to have added unjustifiably to the Faith while the other is alleged to have unjustifiably taken away. Self-will and lack of charity, not love and the common will as these are revealed to the world through the Divine Will of Christ, are working here. The momentary triumph of evil over good, the pa.s.sing victory that yet means the banishment of religion from the world, and the a.s.surance of disaster still greater than that which is now upon us unless every man bends all his energies to the task of making the will of G.o.d prevail, first in himself, and so in the secular and ecclesiastical societies in and through which he plays his part in the life of the world--these are the fruits of a divided Christendom.

I honestly believe that the first real step towards reunion would be a prompt cessation of the whole process of criticism, vilification and abuse, one of the other, that now marks the att.i.tude of what are known as "church periodicals." Roman, Anglican, Protestant, are all alike, for all maintain a consistent slanging of each other. I have in mind in particular weekly religious papers in the United States which maintain departments almost wholly made up of attacks on Roman Catholicism and the derision of incidents of bad taste or illiteracy in the Protestant denominations, and others which lose no opportunity to discredit or abuse the Episcopal Church and the Protestant denominations, and finally a curiously malevolent newspaper representing the worst type of Protestant ignorance and prejudice, which exists on its libelous and indecent and dishonest a.s.saults on Catholicism wherever it may be found.

These are not alone, for the condition of ascerbity and nagging is practically universal. It merely echoes the pulpit and a portion of the general public. We all know of the so called "church" in Boston that is the forum of "escaped nuns" and "unfrocked priests," but in many places of better repute the sermon that bitterly attacks Christian Science, or "High Church Episcopalianism," or the errors of Protestantism generally, or the "usurpations of Rome" is by no means unknown, while elsewhere than in Ireland, the public as a whole finds much pleasure in bating any religion that happens to differ from its own,--or offends its sense of the uselessness of all religion. Let us have a new "Truce of G.o.d," and for the s.p.a.ce of a year let all clergy, lecturers, newspapers, religious journals, and private individuals, totally abstain from sneering and ill-natured attacks on other religions and their followers. Could this be accomplished a greater step would be taken towards the reunion of Christendom than could be achieved by any number of conferences, commissions, councils and conventions.

It was the will and the intent of Christ "that they all may be one, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me," and in disunity we deny Christ. There is no consideration of inheritance, of personal taste, of interests, of intellectual persuasion that can stand in the way of an affirmative answer to this prayer. Every man who calls himself a Christian and yet is not praying and working to break down the self-will and the self-conceit that, so often under the masquerade of conscience, hold him back from a return, even if it is only step by step, to the original unity of the Catholic Faith, is guilty of sin, while it is sin of an even graver degree that stands to the account of those who consciously work to perpetuate the division that now exists.

_Sacramentalism._ The stumbling block, the apparently impa.s.sable barrier, is that which was erected when belief was subst.i.tuted for faith; it is the intellectualizing of religion that has brought about the present failure of Christianity as a vital and controlling force in man and in society. The danger revealed itself even in the Middle Ages, and through perhaps the greatest Christian philosopher, and certainly one of the most commanding intellects, the world has known: St. Thomas Aquinas. In his case, and that of the others of his time, the intellect was still directed by spiritual forces, the chiefest of which was faith, therefore the inherent danger in the intellectualizing process did not clearly reveal itself or come into actual operation, but with the Renaissance and the Reformation it stood boldly forth, and since then as mind increased in its dominion faith declined. The Reformation, in all its later phases, that is to say, after it ceased to be a protest against moral defects and administrative abuses and became a revolutionary invention of new dogmas and practices, was the result of clever, stupid or perverse minds working overtime on religious problems which could not be solved or even apprehended by the intellect, whether it was that of an acute and highly trained master such as Calvin, or that of any one of the hundred founders of less savage but more curious and uncouth types of "reformed religion."

What we need now for the recovery and re-establishment of Christianity is not so much increased belief as it is a renewed faith; faith in Christ, faith in His doctrine, faith in His Church. We lost this faith when we abandoned the sacraments and sacramentalism as superst.i.tions, or retained some of them in form and as symbols while denying to them all supernatural power. If we would aid the individual soul to regain this lost faith we could do no better than to restore the seven sacraments of the historic Christian faith, and Christian Church to the place they once held for all Christians, and still hold in the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches and (with limitations) in the Anglican Church. Faith begets faith; faith in Christ brings faith in the sacraments, and faith in the sacraments brings faith in Christ.

It is disbelief in the efficacy of the sacraments and in the sacramental principle in life that is the essential barrier between Protestantism and Catholicism, and until this barrier is dissolved there can be neither formal unity nor unity by compromise. This is already widely recognized, and as well the actual loss that comes with the denial and abandonment of the sacraments. There is in the Presbyterian church of Scotland a strong tendency towards a rea.s.sertion of the full sacramental doctrine; the "Free Catholic" movement throughout Great Britain is made up of Congregationalists, Methodists, Baptists, and other representatives of Evangelical Protestantism, and it is working unreservedly for the recovery and application of all the Catholic sacraments, with the devotions and ritual that go with them. Dr.

Orchard, the head, and a Congregational minister, maintains in London a church where, as a Methodist member of the "Free Catholic" organization wrote me the other day, "the Blessed Sacrament is perpetually reserved and 'High Ma.s.s' is celebrated on Sundays with the full Catholic ceremonial." In my own practice of architecture I am constantly providing Presbyterian, Congregational, and even Unitarian churches, by request, with chancels containing altars properly vested and ornamented with crosses and candles, while the almost universal demand is for church edifices that shall approach as nearly as possible in appearance to the typical Catholic church of the Middle Ages. Of course some of this is due to a revived instinct for beauty, that almost sacramental quality in life which was ruthlessly destroyed by Protestantism, and also to a renewed sense of the value of symbol and ritual; but back of it all is the growing consciousness that, as Dr. Newman Smythe says, Protestantism has definitely failed, or at least become superannuated; that the essence of religion is spiritual not intellectual, affirmative not negative, and that the only measure of safety lies in a return towards, if not actually to, the Catholic faith and practice from which the old revolt was affected. It is a movement both significant and full of profound encouragement.

Here then are two tendencies that surely show the way and demand encouragement and furtherance; recovery of the sense of Christian unity in Christ and through an united Catholic Church, and the re-acceptance of sacramentalism as the expression of that faith and as the method of that Church. I feel very strongly that wherever these tendencies show themselves they must be acclaimed and cherished. The Protestant denominations must be aided in every way in their process of recovery of the good things once thrown away; Episcopalians must be persuaded that nothing can be wrong that leads souls to Christ, and that therefore they must cease their opposition to Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament explicitly for adoration, to such devotions as Benediction and the Rosary simply because they have not explicit Apostolic sanction, or to vestments, incense and holy water because certain prescriptive laws pa.s.sed four hundred years ago in England have never been repealed. Above all is it necessary that the Episcopal Church should declare itself formally for the reinst.i.tution of the seven Catholic sacraments, with the Ma.s.s as the one supreme act of wors.h.i.+p, obligatory as the chief service on Sundays and Holy Days, and both as communion and as sacrifice. In this connection there is one reform that would I think be more effective than any other, (except the exaltation of the Holy Eucharist itself) and that is the complete cessation of the practice of commissioning lay readers and using them for mission work and clerical a.s.sistance. A mission can be established and made fruitful only on the basis of the sacraments, and chiefly on those of the Holy Eucharist and Penance. It is not enough to send a zealous and well intentioned layman to "a promising mission field" in order that he may read Morning and Evening Prayer and some sermon already published. What is needed is a priest to say Ma.s.s and hear confessions, and nothing else will serve as a subst.i.tute. How this is to be accomplished, now when the candidates for Holy Orders are constantly falling off in number, with no immediate prospect of recovery, is a question. Perhaps we may learn something from the old custom of ordaining "Ma.s.s priests," without cure of souls and with a commission to celebrate the Holy Mysteries even while they continue their own secular work in the world. For my own part I am persuaded that the best solution lies in the establis.h.i.+ng of diocesan monasteries where men may take vows for short terms, and, during the period of these vows, remain at the orders of the bishop to go out at any time and anywhere in the diocese and to do such temporary or periodical mission work as he may direct.

_Unworldliness:_ I have referred to the great falling off in the number of candidates for the priesthood in the Episcopal Church; the same phenomenon is apparent in all the Protestant denominations, so far as I know, but it has not shown itself in the Roman Catholic Church. This defection parallels the falling-off of members.h.i.+p in the various churches (except again the Roman Catholic) in proportion to the increase in population. We are told that the diminution of the ministry is due to the starvation wages that are paid in the vast majority of cases, and of course it is true that where a married clergy is allowed, men who believe they have a calling both to ministerial and to domestic life will think twice before they follow the call of the first when the pecuniary returns are such as to make the second impossible, which is, generally speaking, the situation today. To obviate this difficulty many religious bodies have recently established pension funds, but even this form of clerical insurance, together with the increase that has been effected in clerical stipends, has shown no results in an increase of students in theological seminaries and in candidates for Orders. The man who has enough of faith in G.o.d and a strong enough call to the ministry of Christ, will answer the call even if he does think twice before doing so. The trouble lies, I believe, in the very lack of faith and in a failure of confidence in organized religion largely brought about by organized religion itself through the methods it has pursued during the last two or three generations. There is a widespread belief that it is compromising with the world; that it is playing fast and loose with faith and discipline in a vain opportunism that voids it of spiritual power. Even where distrust does not reach this disastrous conclusion, there is a growing feeling of repugnance to the methods now being adopted in high quarters to "sell religion" to the public, as is the phrase which is sufficient in itself to explain the falling away that now seems to be in process. The attempt to win unwilling support by the methods of the "inst.i.tutional church," the rampant advertising, so frequently under the management of paid "publicity agents"; the setting apart of half the Sundays in the year for some one or other special purpose, usually the raising of money for a specific and frequently worthy object; the "drives" for millions, the huge and impressive organizations, "scientifically" conducted, for rounding up lapsed communicants, or doubtful converts, or cash and pledges for missions, or pensions, or the raising of clergy stipends; the "Nation-wide Campaign,"

the "Inter-Church World Movement"; these--not to speak of the growing policy of "making it easy" for the hesitant to "come into the church" by minimizing unpopular clauses in the Creeds or loosening-up on discipline, and of attracting "advanced" elements by the advocacy and exploiting of each new social or industrial or political fad as it arises--are strong deterrents to those who honestly and ardently hunger for religion that _is_ religion and neither social service nor "big business."

Christ said "you _cannot_ serve both G.o.d and mammon," and this is one of the few cases where He stated a moral condition as a fact instead of indicating the right or the wrong possibility in action. Organized Christianity has for some time been trying to render this dual service, and the penalty thereof is now on the world. This consideration seems to me so important and so near the root of our troubles, and not in the field of organized religion alone, that I am going to quote at length from the Rev. Fr. Duffy of the American "Society of the Divine Compa.s.sion." What he has said came to me while I was preparing this lecture, and it is so much better than anything I could say that for my present purpose I make it my own.

"To the thoughtful person, and the need of reformation will appeal only to the thoughtful person, it must on reflection become abundantly evident that the chief necessity of our times in the religious world is the recovery of Faith. Probably lack of the true measure of Faith has been the story of every generation, with few exceptions, in the long history of Christianity, but there possibly never has been a time when men talked more of it and possessed less than in our own day. * * * *"

"Christianity is a new thing of splendid vision for each and every generation of men, unique in its promise and unapproached in its attraction. And yet how small a factor we have made it in the world's moulding compared with what it might be. We have not achieved a tiny part of what we might have achieved, because we lack the essentials of achievement; Faith and Faith's vision. Obsessed, after centuries of discussion and persecution, with the notion that faith is made up of mere belief, we have lost the secret of that victorious power that overcomes the world, and are weakly dependent upon the world's means for what spiritual operation we undertake. And so content have we grown with things as they are, that what they might be comes only as a dream that pa.s.ses away quickly with the night; blind to our appalling money-dependency in modern religion, satisfied that the Kingdom of Heaven is as nigh to us as is possible under present conditions of society, we practically have subst.i.tuted for the theological virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity, the ascending degrees of belief, resignation, money. This is partly due to our religious inheritance and partly to mental and spiritual sloth which dislikes the effort of thinking, preferring easy acquiescence in conditions that are the resultants of blinded vision. For dependency upon money is not something merely of the present, but a condition in the spiritual sphere that is largely a product of a long past. The really inexcusable thing is our willingness, in a day of greater light and knowledge, to close our eyes to the true nature of the unattractive, anaemic thing we _call_ faith, which would be seen as powerless to achieve at all, if taken out of the soil of material means in which it has been planted."

He then gives various instances of methods actually put in practice amongst the churches and denominations which indicate the renunciation of faith and an exclusive reliance on worldy agencies and he then continues:

"The Joint Commission on Clergy Pensions, appointed by the General Convention of 1913, made as the basis for apportionment, not the services of self-denial of, but the amount of stipend received by, the clergy eligible for pension, thus penalizing the priest who, for the love of G.o.d, sacrificed a larger income to accept work in the most needed places where toil is abundant and money scarce. It must be evident, of course, that the motive of the Commission is not an endors.e.m.e.nt of the blasphemous gospel of Success, by adding penalty to the self-denying clergy; what is painfully obvious is their apparent unbounded confidence that there are no clergy sufficiently foolish to sacrifice stipend at the call of faith's venture! And since the Armistice, the only real activity in organized religion has been a series of "drives" for vast sums of money, in most cases professionally directed.

"A consideration of a few facts such as the forgoing must readily convince even the most unimaginative person that whatever power faith might have had in the past, it counts for little today; that its secrets, its very meaning have been forgotten. Otherwise there could not be this extraordinary exaggeration of the place of money in spiritual operation, and the unblus.h.i.+ng, tacit admission that mammon, which Christ so warned against, had been recognized as the master of spiritual situation, instead of the willing servant and useful adjunct of faith it was designed to be in the Christian vision. Indeed they all speak of that, largely unconscious, atmosphere of distrust of G.o.d which is so all-prevailing among Christian people today. If the great, positive vice of the age is covetousness, the great negative one is distrust of G.o.d; the two invariably go together as parts of a whole--one is the reverse side of the other--for, it is not that we _must_ not, or _ought_ not, but that we "_cannot_ serve G.o.d and mammon." And this atmosphere is one in which faith cannot exist, it is stifled, crushed, killed, except it breathe the pure, sweet air of G.o.d, with which it can alone surround itself when human hearts will.

"It is not surprising that out of such conditions should grow false values, and that spirituality should be measured by the world's standard. Thus we have fallen into the vicious habit of adjudging qualifications for spiritual leaders.h.i.+p among the clergy by the amount of their stipends, and measuring their potentialities for usefulness in the Kingdom of G.o.d by the amount of their yearly incomes; among the laity, the men of power are ever the men of material means, whom we permit to play the part of Providence in feeding and sustaining the Church from large purses, the filling of which will not always bear close investigation, and the really successful parish is always the one that, no matter what its spiritual condition, rejoices in abundant material means. So evident is it that the means of spiritual life have been so confused with the purely material, that it occasions no surprise when a neighbourhood having changed from the residence district of the comparatively well-to-do to the very poor, the vestry feels bound to consider the moving of the church to a more 'desirable' quarter.

"These, of course, are hard facts to face, and it is not strange that we should seek to evade them by a false optimism that thinks evil is eliminated by merely contemplating good. The point is, _they must be faced,_ and at a time when there is some evidence of a little awakening, it must more and more force itself into the consciousness of the thoughtful that the dead spiritual conditions of today are due to the s.h.i.+fting of faith from G.o.d to material things as the means of achieving.

The only hope lies in the apparent unconsciousness of the error. This is invariably the atmosphere that prevails when ecclesiastical history repeats itself in corruption; it had been true of more than two or three generations, though obviously unseen save by a few of those contemporary with the times, that in Jerusalem, 'the heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money; yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say: Is not the Lord among us? None evil can come upon us.' Corporate unconsciousness, in greater or less measure, of these conditions, may influence the degree of guilt, but never can acquit of the sin. And the cold, naked truth is that today we stand almost helpless before a world of peculiar problems.

"What is there here to reflect the _power_ and _might_ of Christianity, such as the early Church, especially, possessed, and subsequent generations, in times of great faith, really knew so much of--the power to heal the sick, to cast out devils, to achieve wonders out of Christ's poverty, to experience the thrilling joy of religion in the ever-abiding Divine Presence, and witness the marvels of faith in the conquering of the world? How is it we are no longer able to communicate the secrets to the suffering world which are able to trans.m.u.te the people's want into G.o.d's plenty, and attract and hold the hearts of men with the joys of the Vision Splendid? Why is it that hope has given way to resignation, that the preaching of forgiveness has been dwarfed by the insistence upon penalty, that distinct evils in the physical sphere are attributed to G.o.d and, because of that, held up to religious estimation as good; the day of miracles is regarded as belonging to a far distant past, the answering of prayer looked upon as the exception instead of the rule, and the old melody of joy in religion exchanged for the wail of despair in an interpretation of 'Thy will be done' that is only a.s.sociated with human calamity? The reply is as simple as, to the thoughtful person, it is obvious: we have lost knowledge of a living, vital, conquering faith that is rooted in G.o.d Himself, and have satisfied the hunger of human sense by placing trust in the things of the earth which we see and touch, and in so doing lost the power spiritually to achieve.

"Now we can only approach, in the hope of a day of better things, the great practical and intellectual problems of our times from the standpoint of faith's recovery, for it is only in their relations.h.i.+p to faith they can be viewed intelligently by the Christian. And it will be found that at the root of all our difficulties and all our negligences--so many of them unconscious--and as the cause of our vain expediencies and attempts to justify the corporate spiritual situation, is the absence of vital faith and a _whole_ obedience to which G.o.d alone has conditioned results. We need sorely to reconsider what faith really is, and when we have recovered in some measure that knowledge of it in experience, which declared its unspeakable worth in the early Church and in later periods of ecclesiastical history which stand out before all others, we shall look back upon our past distrust of G.o.d and His promises with shame and wonderment, and proceed to revise our cataloguing of spiritual values and degrees of sin. For the really destructive thing, _before all others,_ is a weakened faith that compromises in a half obedience to Christ and a search for earthly props. The work of Satan has even been the prompting of distrust of G.o.d in the human family, just as the work of redemption means so largely the re-establis.h.i.+ng of it in the Person of Jesus Christ. From the first temptation of man to the present moment, all the forces of evil have concentrated upon breaking man's trust in G.o.d and His promises; every sin has had that as its ultimate end, and every disaster, ill and trial, in the world and individual life, is subtly presented by the enemy of G.o.d and man (knowing our haziness of vision), so as to place the appearances against the Creator in a blind disregard for the created; just as in the life of the Incarnate Son all the great power of the forces of darkness were brought to bear unsuccessfully upon the snapping of His faith in His Father--from the time He was tempted to believe Himself forgotten, when hungering and physically reduced in the wilderness after His long fast, until the dreadful cry of dereliction from the Cross at the very end.

"The call for reformation today, then, is to the doing of things left undone, the search for and recovery of almost lost spiritual powers that alone lastingly can achieve for G.o.d and hasten man's salvation. And this requires the venture and daring that breaks from the world, withdraws from compromise, and that, rightly estimating the character and att.i.tude of G.o.d, refuses longer to believe Him the author of evils we resignedly accept today by calling them good; and instead, claims the powers of the Divine promises for the utter destruction of the world's ills by a strict dependence upon spiritual forces and weapons for the accomplishment of results. Above all, this means a change and reform in corporate conduct as the end of repentance, for the present almost total disregard of the laws and principles of Christian living as given in the Sermon on the Mount."

These are hard sayings and strong doctrine, but will any one say they are not true? The weakening of religion, with the consequent decline of civilization, is ultimately to be traced back to _organized_ religion, not to religion itself, and still less to any inherent defects in Christianity. Where organized religion has failed it deserved to fail, because it countenanced disunion, forsook the saving sacraments, and finally compromised with worldliness and materialism. With each one of these false ventures faith began to weaken amongst the ma.s.s of people until at last this, which can always save, and alone can save, ceased to have either the power or the will to force the organism to conform to the spirit. If we have indeed accomplished the depth of our fall, then the time is at hand when we may hope and pray for a new outpouring of divine grace that will bring recovery.

There are wide evidences that men earnestly desire this. I have already spoken of the great corporate movements towards unity, and these mean much even though they may at present take on something of the quality of mechanism instead of depending on the individual and the grace of G.o.d working in him. The "World Conference on Faith and Order," the just effected federation of the Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists in Canada, above all the eirenic manifesto of the Bishops at the last Lambeth Conference, all indicate a new spirit working potently in the souls of men. Concrete results are not as yet conspicuous, but the spirit is there and a beginning has been made. Even more significant is the wide testimony to the need for definite, concrete and pervasive religion that is daily given by men whose names have hitherto been quite dissociated from matters of this kind; scientists, educators, men of business and men of public life. It may be testimony in favour of some new invention, some synthetic product of curious and abnormal ingredients; as a matter of fact it frequently is, and we confront such remarkable products as Mr. Wells has given us, for example. The significant thing, however, is the fact of the desire and the avowal; if we have this I think we may leave it to G.o.d to see that the desire is satisfied in the end by heavenly food and not by the nostrums of ingenuity. For the same reason we may look without dismay on certain novel phenomena of the moment. In their divergence from "the Faith once delivered to the Saints" and left in the keeping of the Church Christ founded as a living and eternal organism through which His Spirit would work forever, they are wrong and therefore they cannot endure, but each testifies to the pa.s.sionate desire in man for religion as a reality, and no one of them comes into existence except as the result of desperate action by men to recover something that had been taken from them and that their souls needed, and would have at any cost.

Each one of these strange manifestations is a reaction from some old error that had become established belief or custom. No one who holds to historic Christianity is interested in them, but those who have found religion intellectualized beyond endurance and transformed either by materialism or rationalism, seek for the mysticism they know to be a reality (to employ a paradox) in the ultra mysticism of Oriental cults; those who revolt against the exaggeration of evil and its exaltation to eminence that rivals that of G.o.d Himself, which is the legacy of one powerful movement in the Reformation, rush to the other extreme and deny the existence of evil and even the reality of matter, while spiritism, the most insidious, perilous and fatal of all the spiritual temptations that beset the world at this time, gains as its adherents those who have been deprived of the Catholic belief in the Communion of Saints and have been forbidden to pray for the dead or to ask for their prayers and intercessions.

However strange and erroneous the actual manifestation, there is no question as to the reality and prevalence of the desire for the recovery of spiritual power through the channels of religion. It shows itself, as it should, first of all in the individual, and it is only recently that organized religion, Catholic or Protestant, has begun to show a sympathetic consciousness and to take the first hesitant steps towards meeting the demand. Because of this the seekers for reality have been left unshepherded and have wandered off into strange wildernesses. The call is now to the churches, to organized religion, and if the call is heeded our troubles are well on the road to an end. If the old way of jealousy, hatred and fear is maintained, then humanly speaking, our case is hopeless. If the older way of brotherhood, charity and loving-kindness is followed the future is secure in the Great Peace.

Nothing is wrong that leads men to Christ, and this is true from the Salvation Army at one end of the scale to the Seven Sacraments of Catholicity at the other. The world demands now not denial but affirmation, not protest and division but the ringing "Credo" of Catholic unity.

VIII