Part 13 (1/2)
I should not like to answer this question, and yet I do not like to pa.s.s it by. Antipathetic as I find myself to Dr. Orchard, it would not be just to imply that the power of his personal influence is not a great one, and one of an entirely wholesome nature. It seems to me, then, that the nature of that which attracts the unhappy to seek his counsel is of small moment in comparison with the extent and beneficence of his good counsel. The fact that he does help people, does save many people from very unhappy and dangerous situations, is a fact which gives him a t.i.tle not only to our respect, but to our grat.i.tude.
Perhaps it is his knowledge of all this petty misery and sordid unwholesomeness which makes him disposed at times, in spite of an almost rollicking temperament, to take dismal and despairing views of the religious future.
I have heard him say with some bitterness that people do not know what Christianity is, that it has been so misrepresented to them, and so mixed up with the quarrels of sectarianism, that the heart of it is really non-existent for the mult.i.tude. He speaks with impatience of the nonconformist churches and with contempt of the Anglican church. We are all wrong together. Organised religion, he feels, is hanging over the abyss of destruction, while the nation looks on with an indifference which should complete its self-contempt.
His quarrel, however, is not only with the churches, but with the nation as well. He regards the system under which we live as thoroughly unchristian. It is the system of mammon--a system of frank, brutal, and insolent materialism. Why do we put up with it?
His religious sense is so outraged by this system of economic individualism that he bursts out with irritable impatience against those who speak of infusing into it a more Christian spirit. For him the whole body of our industrialism is rotten with selfishness and covetousness, the high note of service entirely absent from it, the one energy which informs it the energy of aggressive self-seeking. Such a system cannot be patched. It is anti-Christian. It should be smashed.
He plunges into economics with a good deal of vigour, but I do not think he has thought out to its logical conclusion his thesis of guild socialism. Perhaps his tone is here more vehement than his knowledge of a notoriously difficult science altogether justifies.
He opposes himself to the evolutionary philosophy of the nineteenth century, and is ready to defend the idea of a Fall of Man. His contribution to theology is a quibble. The old dogmas are to stand: only the language is to be adjusted to the modern intelligence. You may picture him with drawn sword--a sword tempered in inquisitorial fires--standing guard over his quibble and ready to defend it with his spiritual life.
His opinions are apt to place him among minorities. He was against the War, and during that long-drawn agony attracted to himself the mild attention of the authorities. I believe he likened the great struggle to a battle between Sodom and Gomorrah. However, he was careful not to go so far as Mr. Bertrand Russell. As he himself says, ”I don't mind dying for Jesus Christ, but not for making a silly a.s.s of myself.”
He occasionally writes reviews for _The Nation_, and has published a number of uneventful books. His writing is not distinguished or illuminating. With a pen in his hand he loses all his natural force. He writes, I think, as one who feels that he is wasting time. Like Mr.
Winston Churchill, he diverts his leisure with a paintbrush.
One is disposed to judge that the mind of this very fiery particle is too busy with side-issues to make acquaintance with the deeper mysteries of his religion. When he complains that people do not know what Christianity is, one wonders whether his own definition would satisfy the saints. He is a fighter rather than a teacher, a man of action rather than a seer. I do not think he could be happy in a world which presented him with no opportunities for punching heads.
Matthew Arnold, quoting from _The Times_ a sentence to the effect that the chief Dissenting ministers are becoming quite the intellectual equals of the ablest of the clergy, referred it to the famous Dr. Dale of Birmingham, and remarked: ”I have no fears concerning Mr. Dale's intellectual muscles; what I am a little uneasy about is his religious temper. The essence of religion is grace and peace.”
But Dr. Orchard, we must not fail to see, is quite genuinely exasperated by the deadness of religious life, and is straining every nerve to quicken the soul of Christ's sleeping Church. This discontent of his is an important symptom, even if his prescription, a very old one, gives no hope of a cure. He is popular, influential, a figure of the day, and still young; yet his soul is full of rebellion and his heart is swelling with the pa.s.sion of mutiny. Something is evidently not right. Quite certainly he has not discovered the peace that pa.s.ses understanding.
But perhaps Dr. Orchard will never be satisfied till all men think as he thinks, and until there is only one Church in the world for the expression of spiritual life, with either Bishop Herford or himself for its pope.
In the meantime he is too busy for the profound silence. The event of the day sweeps him before it.
BISHOP TEMPLE
Manchester, Bishop of, since 1921; Temple, Rev. William, M.A.; D. Litt.; President Life and Liberty Movement; Canon Residentiary of Westminister, 1919-21; Editor of _The Challenge_, 1915-18; Hon. Chaplain to the King, 1915; b. The Palace, Exeter, 15 Oct., 1881; s. of Late Archbishop of Canterbury; in. 1916, Frances Gertrude Acland, y.d. of F.H. Anson, 72 St. George's Square, S.W. Educ.: Rugby (Scholar); Balliol College, Oxford (Exhibitioner) First cla.s.s Cla.s.sical Mods., 1902; 1st cla.s.s Lit.
Hum., 1904; President Oxford Union, 1904; Fellow and Lecturer in Philosophy, Queen's College, Oxford, 1904-1910; Deacon, 1908; Priest, 1909; Chaplain to Archbishop of Canterbury, 1910; President of the Workers Educational a.s.sociation; Headmaster, Repton School, 1910-14; Rector of St. James's Piccadilly, 1914-18.
[Ill.u.s.tration: BISHOP TEMPLE]
CHAPTER X
BISHOP TEMPLE
... _faint, pale, embarra.s.sed, exquisite Pater! He reminds me, in the disturbed midnight of our actual literature, of one of those lucent match-boxes which you place, on going to bed, near the candle, to show you, in the darkness, where you can strike a light: he s.h.i.+nes in the uneasy gloom--vaguely, and has a phosph.o.r.escence, not a flame. But I quite agree with you that he is not of the little day--but of the longer time_.--HENRY JAMES.
The future of Bishop Temple is of more importance to the Church than to himself. He is one of those solid and outstanding men whose decisions affect a mult.i.tude, a man to whom many look with a confidence which he himself, perhaps, may never experience.
He cannot, I think, be wholly unaware of this consideration in forming his judgments, and I attribute, rather to a keen and weighty sense of great responsibility than to any lack of vital courage, his increasing tendency towards the Catholic position. One begins to think that he is likely to disappoint many of those who once regarded him as the future statesman of a Christianity somewhat less embarra.s.sed by inst.i.tutionalism.
It is probable, one fears, that he may conclude at Lambeth a career in theology comparable with that of Mr. Winston Churchill in politics. Born in the ecclesiastical purple he may return to it, bringing with him only the sheaves of an already mouldering orthodoxy.
On one ground, however, there is hope that he may yet s.h.i.+ne in our uneasy gloom with something more effective than the glow of phosph.o.r.escence. He is devoted heart and soul to Labour. Events, then, may drive him out of his present course, and urge him towards a future of signal usefulness; for Labour is a force which waits upon contingency, and moves as the wind moves--now softly, then harshly, now gently, then with great violence. Those who go with Labour are not like travellers in the Tory coach or the Liberal tram; they are like pa.s.sengers in a balloon.