Part 10 (1/2)
Ward; two s. Educ.: King Edward's School, Birmingham; Trinity College, Cambridge (Scholar). Bracketed 2d Wrangler, 1896; President of the Union, 1897; First Cla.s.s First Division of the Mathematical Tripos, Part ii., 1897; first Smith's Prizeman, 1898; Fellow of Trinity College, 1898-1916; M.A., 1900; Ordained, 1902; a.s.sistant Lecturer Trinity Coll., 1902; Junior Dean, 1906-8; Tutor, 1908-15; Master of the Temple, 1915-19; Examining Chaplain to Bishop of Llandaff, 1906-20: a Governor of King Edward's School, Birmingham, 1907; F.R.S., 1909; Select Preacher, Cambridge, 1906, etc., and Oxford, 1914-16; Fellow of King's College, London, 1919.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CANON E.W. BARNES]
CHAPTER VII
CANON E.W. BARNES
_True religion takes up that place in the mind which superst.i.tion would usurp, and so leaves little room for it; and likewise lays us under the strongest obligations to oppose it.--BISHOP BUTLER.
Socrates looked up at him, and replied, Farewell: I will do as you say. Then he turned to us and said, How courteous the man is!--PLATO._
In this able and courageous Doctor of Science, who came to theology from mathematics, a great virtue and a small fault combine to check his intellectual usefulness. His heart is as full of modesty as his mind of tentatives.
He is possessed by a gracious nature, and could no more think of raising his voice to shout down a Boanerges than he could dream of lifting an elbow to push his way through a press of people bound for the limelight.
It is only a deep moral earnestness which brings him into public life at all, and he endeavours to treat that public life not as it is but as it ought to be.
In ”the calmness and moderation of his sentiments,” in his dislike of everything that is sensational, and of all ”undue emphasis,” he resembles Joubert, who wanted ”to infuse exquisite sense into common sense, or to render exquisite sense common.”
Modesty might not so hamper the usefulness of Canon Barnes if he knew a little less than he does know, and was also conveniently blind to the vastness of scientific territory. But he knows much; much too much for vociferation; and his eyes are so wide open to the enormous sweep of scientific inquiry that he can nowhere discern at present the ground for a single thesis which effectually accounts for everything--a great lack in a popular preacher.
I am disposed to deplore the degree both of his modesty and his scholars.h.i.+p, for he possesses one of the rarest and most precious of gifts in a very learned man, particularly a mathematician and a theologian, namely, the gift of lucid exposition. Few men of our day, in my judgment, are better qualified to state the whole case for Christianity than this distinguished Canon of Westminster Abbey, this evangelical Fellow of the Royal Society, who is nevertheless prevented from attracting the attention of the mult.i.tude by the gracious humility of his nature and the intellectual nervousness which is apt to inhibit his free utterance when he approaches an audience in the region of science.
What a pity that a clergyman so charming and attractive, and yet so modern, who understands the relativity of Einstein and who is admirably grounded in the physical sciences, should lack that fighting instinct, that ”confidence of reason,” which in Father Waggett, an equally charming person, caught the attention of the religious world thirty or forty years ago.
His mind is not unlike the mind of Lord Robert Cecil, and it is curious that even physically he should at certain moments resemble Lord Robert, particularly in his walk and the almost set expression of his eyes. He is tall and thin, and has the same stoop in the shoulders, moving forward as if an invisible hand were pressed against the back of his neck, shoving him forward by a series of jerks; and he seems to throw, like Lord Robert, a particular sense of enjoyment into the motion of his legs, as though he would get rid of all perilous swagger at that, the less harmful end of his two extremities--the antipodes of his reason.
Like Lord Robert, too, he has a most pleasant voice, and a slow deliberate way of speaking, and a warm kindly smile which fades at the first movement of serious thought, leaving the whole pale face, even the dark eyes under their heavy brows, almost deathlike in immobility. One seems to see in such moments the spirit withdraw from the surface of things to take up its duty at the citadel of the intellect.
The same conflict between temperament and purpose which has prevented Lord Robert Cecil from taking his place at the head of a Government prevents Canon Barnes from advancing at the head of modern Churchmen to the rich future of a depaganised and wholly rational Christianity. His heart says ”Fight,” but his reason says ”Watch.” Fighting is distasteful; watching is congenial. Besides, while one is watching one can review all the hypotheses. A man who is not careful in destroying a fallacy may damage a truth.
But let us be grateful for his public utterances, which show a high spirit, a n.o.ble devotion, an enviable range of culture, and, for the discerning at least, tell the true time of day. It is one of the encouraging signs of the period that such distinguished preaching should have made a mark. Moreover, he is yet three years from fifty, with a mind so hospitable to growth that it has no room for one of those prejudices which are the dry-nurses of old age. Those who love truth die young, whatever their age. Canon Barnes may yet give the Church a proof of his power to lead--a Church at present aware only of his power to suggest.
He considers that we are living in a time of revolution, and, judging by historic precedents, particularly the Renaissance, he thinks we are now in the second stage of our revolution, which is the most difficult of all. First, comes the destruction of false ideas--a bracing time for the born fighter; second, comes the tentative search for new ideas--an anxious time for the responsible philosopher; third, comes the preaching of these new ideas with pa.s.sion--the opportunity of the enthusiast.
Happy were the divines of the seventeenth century!
We, however, are in the second stage.
This is not a period for new ideas: it is a period of searching for the best idea. He who rushes forward with an untried new idea may be more dangerous than he who still clings, in the Name of Christ, to an old idea which is false. We must be quite certain of our ground before we advance with boldness, and our boldness must be spiritual, not muscular.
Modernism has fought and won the battle of verbal inspiration. No man whose opinion counts in the least degree now holds that the Bible was verbally inspired by G.o.d. It is respected, honoured, loved; but it is no longer a fetish. In ceasing to be a superst.i.tion, and in coming to be a number of genuine books full of light for the student of history, the Bible is exercising at the present time an extraordinary influence in the world, a greater influence perhaps on thoughtful minds than it ever before exercised.
The battle which modernism is now fighting over this collection of books concerns the Person of Jesus and the relative value of the gospels which narrate His life, and in the case of the Fourth, endeavour to expound His teaching. This great battle is not over, but it looks as if victory will lie with the more moderate school of modernists. Outside very extreme circles, the old rigid notions concerning the Person of Jesus are no longer held with the pa.s.sion which gave them a certain n.o.ble force in the days before Darwin. There is now a notable tell-tale petulance about orthodoxy which is sometimes insolent but never effective.
Ahead of this battle, which the present generation may live to see fought out to a conclusion, lies a third struggle likely to be of a more desperate character than its two forerunners--the battle over Sacramental Christianity. Already in France and Germany the question is asked, Did Jesus inst.i.tute any sacraments at all? But even in these two countries the battle has not yet begun in real earnest, while over here only readers of Lake and Kennedy are dimly aware of a coming storm. That storm will concern rites which few orthodox Christians have ever regarded as heathen in their spirit, though some have come to know they are pagan in origin.
It is not wise to ignore this future struggle, but our main responsibility is to bear a manful part in the struggle which is now upon us.
There are three types of modernists. There is, first of all, the Liberal, who regards Christianity as a form of Platonism resting on the idea of absolute values. This is dangerous ground: something more is required. Then there is the evangelical modernist, who accepts almost everything in the Higher Criticism, but holds to Christ as an incarnation of the Divine purpose, an incarnation, if you will, of G.o.d, all we can know of G.o.d limited by His human body, as G.o.d we must suppose is not limited, but still G.o.d. And, finally, there is the Catholic modernist, who believes in a Church, who makes the sacraments his centre of religion, and exalts Christianity to the head of all the mystery religions which have played a part in the evolution of the human race.