Part 7 (2/2)

This is what Augustine aimed at in his City of G.o.d. It was what Ambrose had in mind when he excommunicated the emperor Theodosius for having ordered a cruel ma.s.sacre of some of his rebellious subjects. It was the ideal of the mighty Hildebrand, grim and arrogant though he was, when he compelled princes to bow their haughty necks and do justice to the weak. It was what Bernard of Clairvaux meant to declare when he defied the cruel and sensual king of France to approach the altar of Christ. Savonarola realised it for a brief moment in Florence, Calvin in Geneva, the Covenanters in Scotland, the Puritans in England, the Pilgrim Fathers in America. They all failed because the world can never be saved by the imposition of ideal inst.i.tutions from without and by force; it can only be by the spirit of Christ working from within. But to some extent they all succeeded, too, for the world is a better place to live in because of the gradual and c.u.mulative redemptive effort of the Christian _ecclesia_, the Church of Jesus. On the other side of the ledger we have to set many things that ecclesiasticism has done,--cruel persecutions, infamous tortures, burnings and ma.s.sacres, devastating wars, and fierce religious hatreds.

But these things have never belonged to Jesus; they are the very negation of His spirit. The true church of Christ in any and every age consists of those and those only who are trying like their Master to make the world better and gladder and worthier of G.o.d. The word ”church” has become so hateful to many because of the admixture of other ideals with this that I sometimes wish something could be done either to get rid of it or to change it for another which shall fully and clearly express what Jesus really came to do. I maintain that the church has nothing whatever to do with preparing men for a world to come; the best way to prepare a man for the world beyond is to get him to live well and truly in this one. The church exists to make the world a kingdom of G.o.d, and to fill it with His love. No greater mistake could be made than to estimate the church of Jesus by ecclesiastical squabbles and divisions, or even by Psalm-singing and go-to-meeting talk. Look for the spirit of Jesus at work, and you have found the church too.

+Modern industrialism and the church.+--Judged by this standard where are the churches to-day? We have seen that the only gospel which Jesus had to preach was the gospel of the kingdom of G.o.d; everything He ever said can be included under that head. His Church, or Christian society, or whatever else we like to call it, has no meaning unless it exists for the realisation of the kingdom of G.o.d. We cannot state this too strongly. The whole of the other-worldism of the churches, the elaborate paraphernalia of doctrine and observance, is utterly useless and worse than useless unless it ministers to this end. Unless it can be shown that I am wrong in this supposition--and I think that will be pretty hard to do--a fairly good case could be made out for burning down most of the theological colleges in the land and sending the bright young fellows in them to do some serious work for the common good. For it must be confessed, as I said at the beginning, that the churches are to a large extent a failure. We cannot but recognise, for one thing, that our modern civilisation, with all its boasted advance on the past, is still un-Christian. It puts a premium upon selfishness. Modern industrialism is cruel and unjust and directly incites men to self-seeking. The weak and unfortunate have to go to the wall; little mercy is shown to the man who is not strong enough to fight his way and keep his footing in the struggle for existence. We are all the time making war upon one another,--man against man, business against business, cla.s.s against cla.s.s, nation against nation.

We talk of our freedom, but no man is really free, and the great majority of us are slaves to some corporation, or capitalist, or condition of things, which renders the greater part of life a continuous anxiety lest health or means should fail and we should prove unequal to the demands made upon us. If a man goes under, his acquaintances will pity him for five minutes and then forget all about him. There is no help for it; they cannot do anything else, they have their own living to get. They are like soldiers in the heat of battle; they must not pause to mourn over a fallen comrade or they may soon be stretched beside him. I do not mean, of course, to make the foolish statement that present-day industrialism is unrestrainedly individualistic: thank G.o.d it is not that. But the principle of compet.i.tion still exercises a sway so potent as to stamp modern social organisation as un-Christian. We may just as well recognise that fact and state it plainly. The glaringly unequal owners.h.i.+p of material wealth is anti-social; it is good neither for the rich man nor for the poor, for it is to the interest of every man that the body politic should be healthy and happy. That so large a number of our total population should have to exist upon the very margin of subsistence is a moral wrong. We have no business to have any slums, or sweating dens, or able-bodied unemployed, or paupers. Poverty, dulness of brain, and coa.r.s.eness of habit are often found in close a.s.sociation.

Some amount of material endowment is required even for the development of the intelligence and the training of the moral faculties. Wealth possesses no value in itself; it only possesses value as a means to more abundant life. If there is one thing upon which Christianity insists more than another, it is the duty of caring for the weak and sinful, but at present this duty is only recognised to a very limited extent.

+Christianity and Collectivism.+--In what I am now saying I am well aware that I have come to a phase of my subject which thousands of my countrymen are stating so clearly and forcibly as to compel attention; but what I want to show is that the present unideal condition of the civilised world is an indictment of the churches and their conventional doctrines. We seem to have forgotten our origin. I have long felt, as I suppose every Christian minister must feel, the antagonism between the Christian standard of conduct and that required in ordinary business life. There is no blinking the fact that the standard of Christ and the standard of the commercial world are not the same. Our work is to make them the same, and to that end we must destroy the social system which makes selfishness the rule and compels a man to act upon his lower motives, and we must put a better in its place. We must establish a social order wherein a man can be free to be his best, and to give his best to the community without crus.h.i.+ng or destroying anyone else. In a word we want Collectivism in the place of compet.i.tion; we want the kingdom of G.o.d. Charity is no remedy for our social ills and their moral outcome; the only remedy is a new social organisation on a Christian basis. I do not believe that any form of Collectivism, as a mere system superposed from without, can ever really make the world happy; it must be the expression of the spirit of brotherhood working from within. Neither do I feel much faith in any sudden and cataclysmic reformation of society. The history of Christendom proves that no inst.i.tution can be much in advance of human nature and survive.

Covenanters and Puritans found that out when they tried to make men G.o.dly by Act of Parliament; Savonarola found it out when the wild pa.s.sions of the Florentines, restrained for a brief hour, broke their chains and destroyed him; the Christians of New Testament times found it out when their beautiful experiment of social brotherhood came to an end in the horror and darkness of the break-up of Jewish national life.

But at least we can recognise the presence of the guiding Spirit of G.o.d in all our social concerns and work along with it for the realisation of the ideal of universal brotherhood. We can show men what Jesus really came to do, and, as His servants, we can help Him to do it. We can definitely recognise that the movement toward social regeneration is really and truly a spiritual movement, and that it must never be captured by materialism. I deplore the fact that, for the moment, the main current of the great Labour movement which, perhaps more than any other, represents the social application of the Christian ideal, should appear to be out of touch with organised religion. This cannot continue, for I observe that the men who lead it are men of moral pa.s.sion, and often men of simple religious faith. It could hardly be otherwise. It seems to me in the nature of things impossible to sustain a belief in the moral ideal without some kind of belief in G.o.d, and a.s.suredly G.o.d is with these men in the work they are doing and have yet to do. In fact, the Labour Party is itself a Church, in the sense in which that word was originally used, for it represents the getting-together of those who want to bring about the kingdom of G.o.d.

+The New Theology and Collectivism.+--The New Theology, as I understand it, is the theology of this movement, whether the movement knows it or not, for it is essentially the gospel of the kingdom of G.o.d. No lesser theology can consistently claim to be this; systems of belief which are weighted by dogmatic considerations have not and cannot have the same power of appeal. This higher, wider truth, which sweeps away the mischievous accretions which have made religion distasteful to the ma.s.ses, is religious articulation of the movement toward an ideal social order. This fact ought to be realised and brought home to the consciousness of the earnest men who are labouring to redeem England and the world from the power of all that tortures and degrades humanity and stifles or destroys its best life.

This, then, is the mission of the New Theology. It is to brighten and keep burning the flame of the spiritual ideal in the midst of the mighty social movement which is now in progress. It is ours to see G.o.d in it and help mankind to see Him too. It is ours to show what the gospel really is and has been from the first. We shall not suffer the world any longer to believe that Christianity and dogma mean the same thing. Our business is to show that the religion of Jesus is primarily a gospel for this life and only secondarily for the life to come. We have to demonstrate that material things have spiritual meanings, and that wealth has value only as it ministers to soul power. We have to make clear to the world that the reason why we want to lift any man up and give him a chance of a better and happier life here is because he has an immortal destiny and must make a beginning somewhere if he is to reach the stature of the perfect man at last. We believe that faith is the one indispensable qualification for this work, as for any work that is worth the doing, or ever has been worth the doing, in the history of mankind. It is the victory that overcometh the world.

CHAPTER XIV

CONCLUSION

+A personal word.+--The task which has occupied the greater part of my winter resting time has now been accomplished, as far as opportunity affords. What has been said in these pages is no more than an outline statement of the teaching which has been given from the City Temple pulpit ever since I came into it. There is not a single thought in this book with which my own people are not already quite familiar, and chapter and verse for it can be produced from my published sermons which have been appearing week by week for years past in the _Christian Commonwealth_ and other periodicals. If s.p.a.ce had permitted, I should like to have said much more, for necessarily many phases of the subject have had to be left untouched; it has only been possible to deal with those of fundamental importance. For example, I should like to have included some examination of the great question of Miracles, the place of Prayer in Christian experience, and the value and significance of Biblical Criticism. But as it has not been possible to do this I must add a word or two to indicate my position in regard to these matters.

+Miracle.+--It seems probable that before long we shall see a rehabilitation of belief in the credibility of certain kinds of miracle, and that this rehabilitation will proceed from the side of psychical science. Already there are signs that this rehabilitation is on the way. The power of mind over matter is being recognised for therapeutic purposes, for instance, in a way hitherto undreamed of, and is receiving a large and increasing measure of attention from the medical profession. This appears to me to throw a considerable amount of light upon the healing ministry of Jesus, which, as the late Professor A. B. Bruce has pointed out, rests upon as good historical ground as the best-accredited parts of the teaching. Given a time and a mental atmosphere in which men expected miracles of this sort, and given a personality of such wonderful magnetic force as that of Jesus, such miracles would be sure to happen. That they did not happen apart from such conditions is evident from such hints as the statement that, ”He could do no mighty works there because of their unbelief.” There are other kinds of miracle recorded in scripture which are not so easily credible, but I am not always prepared to brush them aside as mere childish fancies. As a rule it will be found that they belong to the poetry of religious experience, and that some valuable truth is contained in this particular form of statement. To this order belong the accounts about the horses and chariots of fire on the hillside round about Elisha, the whirlwind in which Elijah ascended to heaven, and Jesus walking on the sea. These accounts are forms in which the oriental imagination is, even to-day, wont to clothe truths too great for prosaic statement; they are poetry, not history, and the western mind ought to make allowance for the fact. Sometimes we can discern in scripture records of an event, which to the stolid western imagination seems utterly incredible, a genuine historical truth. Such, for instance, are the pa.s.sage of the Red Sea--a stirring and dramatic incident, thoroughly well told--and Joshua commanding the sun and moon to stand still. In the latter case we have two lines of poetry from a book which has been lost, and a comparison with similar poetry in almost any literature gives us a clew to its meaning. The poet represents the old warrior as declaring in magnificent style that the sun of Israel shall not go down, and that day and night shall be alike to him until her enemies are discomfited. Any reader with a shred of sympathetic imagination ought to be able to feel the force of the sentiment which provoked this utterance without either accepting or rejecting it as a literal statement of fact; the best things which have been written in the books of the world are seldom literal and exact statements of fact. It has been well pointed out that myth and legend are truer than history, for they take us to the inside of things, whereas history only shows us the outside.

+Prayer.+--Prayer is a vital necessity to religious experience, and without it no religious experience has ever existed or ever can. It is not primarily pet.i.tion but communion with G.o.d. Our intercourse with our friends does not chiefly consist in asking them for things! But when communion does become pet.i.tion, there is a real place for it as well as for the answer to such prayer. It is not too much to say that no true prayer has ever gone without its answer. This is quite consistent with the a.s.sertion that prayer does not change G.o.d; it only affords Him opportunity. It is impossible to improve on what G.o.d already desires for us before we pray, but upon our prayer depends the realisation of that desire. Everything that the soul can possibly need is present beforehand in the eternal reality, and the prayer of faith is like going into a treasure-house and bringing forth from what is contained therein all that the soul needs day by day. Prayer, therefore, cannot be too definite, but it should be as unselfish as the wors.h.i.+pper can make it in order that the highest can operate in response. The same law holds good in this as in all other activities of the soul; selfishness draws away from the source of life, whereas love is instantly at one with infinity. I question whether many people realise the enormous value of definite and systematic prayer; it is the secret of all spiritual power. Everything that we can possibly want is waiting for us in the bounty of G.o.d, and what we have to do is to go and take it. ”Believe that ye have received them and ye shall have them.”

+The Bible and the young.+--One thing that urgently needs to be done for the young people in our Sunday-schools and various Christian societies all over the world is to issue a series of well-written popular manuals presenting in succinct form the best results of Biblical Criticism. The way the Bible is taught to young people at present is most regrettable, for in after years it leads them to doubt and distrust the very foundations of Christianity. If the teachers only had a little more intelligent acquaintance with the sources of the scriptures, this danger would be avoided and the Bible would become a far more interesting and helpful book both to young and old. At present it is interpreted by many people in a way which is an insult to the intelligence and harmful to the moral sense. Will anyone seriously maintain that the trickeries of Jacob and the butcheries following the Israelitish invasion of Canaan, not to speak of the obscenities which are to be found in so many parts of the Old Testament, are healthy reading for children or a mark of divine inspiration? Is it not time we adopted the more excellent way of facing the truth about the Bible records and presenting what is valuable in such a way as to help and not to hinder the growth of a true knowledge of the relations of G.o.d and man?

In conclusion, let me say emphatically that no one but myself is responsible for a single word in this book. Among the many wild and unjust criticisms which have been published concerning my views, none is wider of the mark than that I have borrowed from this man or that in my statement of them. I am not conscious of owing a scintilla of my theology to any living man. In so far as it coincides with anyone else's views I am thankful, for it shows that the same eternal Spirit of Truth is speaking to others than myself. But I hope I may be permitted to say with due humility that in thinking out my position, ”I conferred not with flesh and blood.” Perhaps some people will maintain that this makes my teaching all the worse, but if so I cannot help it.

It can hardly be denied that in its main bearing, to say no more, it is seen to be rising spontaneously in every part of the civilised world.

Again, no thinker can ever succeed in completely closing the circle of his system of thought, and I cannot claim to be an exception. But I trust it will be seen that what is contained in this book is at least a self-consistent whole: every arc of the circle implies every other. It only remains to reiterate my conviction that the movement represented by the New Theology is only incidentally theological at all; it is primarily a moral and spiritual movement. It is one symptom of a great religious awakening which in the end will re-inspire civilisation with a living faith in G.o.d and the spiritual meaning of life. If what I am trying to do can contribute in any way toward this grand result, I shall be humbly thankful to the Giver of all good.

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