CHAPTER X.: THE PATH TO UNITY.

A GREAT patristic scholar who, though a lover of theology, is also a lover of his fellow-men, has related how, journeying across the lonely desert of Arabia the Rocky towards the holy monastery of Sinai, he came upon a band of peasant pilgrims; he did not know their language nor they his, but each made the sign of the Cross as they drew near one another, and as they did so they seemed at once to be friends. He was greeted with welcoming smiles, and the way through the wilderness was lightened by the sense of Christian fellowship. It cheered him to feel how that ancient sacred symbol had surmounted the barriers of race and speech, making these strangers feel that they were comrades and fellow pilgrims travelling to a common goal. And yet he could not but recall with a sense of sorrowful irony the thought that, had he made the sign of the Cross not in the Greek, but in the Latin way, he would have been met with sullen indifference and distrust, if not with anger. These simple Russian peasants were the spiritual descendants of the [p.146] brave men who centuries ago went to death at the stake rather than place their fingers and thumb in the new-fangled way, which, to their mind, symbolised some error in the conception of the doctrine of the Trinity, a departure from the one orthodox fashion by which the Church should be guided in making the holy sign.

It is difficult for us to realise that so small a change should make so great a difference to the welcome given to a stranger; and, yet, perhaps some of the differences which separate Western Christians to-day may be almost as foolish in the sight of the angels.

An English parson once sadly told how, when travelling in France in his cassock, he had been delighted by a number of ecclesiastics coming to call upon their foreign confrere, and how, to his dismay, they all incontinently fled, as from contagion of plague, when they realised that he was only an Anglican; he doubtless felt acutely the blindness of the worthy Romans who failed to recognise the apostolic nature of his orders. As acutely, perhaps, some Nonconformist minister at home may have regretted a similar attitude on the part of the good parson to the unhallowed ministrations of the dissenter.

When we look back over the long centuries that separate us from the early Apostolic Church, there are few things which make us sadder than this spirit of distrust and hostility, showing itself between men who alike believe themselves to be Christians. [p.147] It is no new thing; what is new to-day as a wide spread spirit is the desire to transcend our differences, not by despising or ignoring the things which separate us, nor yet by the victory of one church or sect over another, or the absorption of the lesser by the greater community, but by the better understanding of each other and of ourselves, the closer co-operation where co-operation is possible, and, it may be, the gradual realisation of a unity deeper than all that keeps us apart.

We remember how the mocking scorn of Celsus made sport of the divisions between Catholic and heretic Christians of his day, while both alike were a persecuted minority struggling against the edicts of pagan Rome. Montanists and orthodox suffered sometimes side by side, and yet, while awaiting death in the same prisons, they would hold no communion with each other.

This tragic mutual intolerance between Arian and Athanasian, Iconodule and Iconoclast, goes on down the ages; was it not, in part at least, one wonders, due to the fact that each party considered that they alone had the monopoly of truth; that their own doctrine contained the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Free trade in thought, if it be right to use the metaphor of commerce for the life-giving intercourse of mind with mind, is late in coming in the world's history, but it has surely come to stay. As we look back over the great divisions of the past, we feel now that there was some right at least on both sides: in some [p.148] cases we find it hard to understand how men could have fought so bitterly over what seems now so small. The shape of the tonsure of the clergy, the date of the celebration of Easter, and such grounds of difference, caused almost as much bitterness in their day as did profound dissensions on the nature of the Godhead or the meaning of the Incarnation. Even when no theological difference separated men, within the Church itself and within a single religious order, there has been the bitterest disagreement and separation of spirit over things we now hold trifling; such a matter, for instance, as the shape of the hood to be worn by Observant Franciscans, at the time of the rise of the Capuchin Friars.

We have come at length to understand that the human spirit expresses itself in various ways in its upward striving, that the language of worship may vary for different races, for different men within the same race, for the individual himself with his changing needs, and that in differing we need not always condemn each other. So, too, it seems that men are ceasing to feel that uniformity in Church government is possible or even desirable. The work of the Free Church Council with all its limitations has enabled the members of the larger Nonconformist bodies to co-operate together and understand each other better, to feel a common unity of membership while retaining their loyalty to their own denomination. This drawing together has been realised, not by discussion of [p.149] denominational differences, but by common work and common worship, by sharing in the same efforts, listening to the same messages of guidance, following as co-disciples along the same road.

Still more remarkable as an expression of the vital forces at work in English society is the growth of inter-denominational fellowship shown in the Student Christian movement, and the conferences which it has promoted, characterised by joint study of social and missionary problems, and by union in worship, in which denominational barriers have not indeed disappeared, but have sunk on to a lower level, for many at least of those who have been thus drawn together to behold the vision of the vast work still unaccomplished at home and abroad, with the knowledge that all alike are coming for strength to one source, striving to serve one Master.

While a friendlier understanding has been helping men to cross by sympathy the ancient chasms which have separated church from church for so long, there has been visible too in recent years a marked tendency towards greater organic unity between religious communities closely allied to each other. Locally this has occasionally found expression in the springing up of "union churches," whose members originally belonged to different Nonconformist denominations, but such union sometimes has come about for convenience rather than from conviction, and has not always been permanent in character. It is different with the [p.150] union of the three Methodist Societies now combined in the United Methodist Church, or with the great movement which brought about the United Free Church of Scotland. We may look forward in the near future to still further developments of this spirit, and already a leader of Free Church thought, Dr. J. H. Shakespeare, the Secretary of the Baptist Union, has outlined proposals for the incorporation of the great Nonconformist denominations in one national communion, a Free Church of England, which would retain within its compass the different rites and systems of Church government of its various constituent churches. This would still leave unsolved the greater problem of the separation between the Free Churches and the Church of England, but it would be in itself an immense step forward as a practical recognition of common discipleship, and as such would be welcomed warmly by many of us who, almost certainly, would be left outside the ecclesiastical membership of this great Free Church. The Free Church Council has already done something to make such a union possible; and even if no formal connection between various churches whose members are associated with its work should be achieved, yet, in point of fact, a common member ship is being realised by them. The great leaders of Free Church thought and action are recognised not merely as belonging to one denomination, but as prophets and teachers for all. The worth of their ministry is felt even by those who cannot [p.151] recognise the validity of their orders, because of its non-episcopal origin.[32] <#_edn32>

And yet all such plans for the promotion of visible ecclesiastical reunion do not touch the heart of things. In earlier ages men have sought reunion through ecclesiastical organisation and through fuller realisation of doctrinal unity, and [p.152] have failed repeatedly in the attempt. Can we hope to achieve union now by some ingenious scheme of comprehensive Church Government or by the formulation of a new creed where all the old creeds have failed to unite men?

Would not even the widest Church leave outside its membership multitudes now drawing together in Adult Schools and Brotherhoods and kindred Societies, under the inspiration of Christian influence, but without any formal connection with the Church, and beyond them an unknown number of men and women whose lives turn for their inspiration to the Master whose name they reverence, but do not venture to take?

Yet such men, whose life-creed is better than their thought-creed, are a proof that discipleship is a vital relationship, involving more than a mere emotional surrender or intellectual submission. It will surely be in the more faithful working out of this conception of discipleship, that Christian folk will be able to achieve that spirit of unity which is of more value than external Reunion.

Wherever wrong ideals of life exist, we are coming to feel there is a loss, not merely to the individuals immediately concerned, but to an ever widening circle about them. We cannot acquiesce in moral failure or divest ourselves of responsibility for it, because we ourselves adopt a different standpoint. Much less can we consent to make a truce with what we see is wrong in the Church to which we belong. [p.153]

A sixteenth century Cardinal who was engaged in controversy with his Protestant colleague, Odet de Coligny, found a curious consolation for the practical failure of the Church of his day by his exposition of a text in the Song of Solomon: "I am black but comely," was, he held, a prophetic saying applied to the Church, black in point of morals, comely in point of doctrine.

To-day, however much we may differ in doctrine, we are coming to feel that in every failure to realise the Christian ideal of character, the loss of each religious community is the loss of all; wherever a Church rises to higher levels of sacrifice, or raises the standard of its members' lives, the benefit is felt far beyond its own borders.

The saints, whether canonised or uncanonised by authority, are the common heritage of all who are striving to find their lives dominated by the same purpose; they are a constant unifying influence throughout the world, even though their messages differ as greatly as they often have done in the past.

As the different Christian communities frankly face the unconquered evils in the world about them, as their individual members set themselves to wrestle against the selfish instincts in their own lives, and to become more effective agents of peace and goodwill amongst their neighbours and worthier citizens of the state, they will find themselves working side by side with allies they had not hitherto known; in extending the bounds of [p.154] knowledge and the rule of a kindlier law, sharing the same spirit of sacrifice, facing the same difficulties, they will be united by more than a common hope, they will feel within them the inspiration of the same spirit.

If then the new spirit making for co-operation and truer understanding of each other which is already at work amongst the different churches is to have fuller influence, do we not need to set out with a new enthusiasm upon the common task which awaits us at home and abroad, and to work out together new applications of the social teaching of the Christian Church? For many, this will come along the lines of political and municipal action, in using what powers and duties the law already gives us, as well as in making better laws or claiming extended facilities for communal action.

But however much the powers and functions of the state may be altered and extended, there are vast regions which must for ever lie outside its domain: evils which laws and bye-laws cannot control, where the mysterious forces of personality have play, and the healing spiritual influences may work, which come with the direct contact of goodness and unselfishness, upon the broken and bruised failures of humanity. The state may punish wrong-doing, it may prevent particular acts of crime, it may confine its hardened criminals within the walls of a prison. It cannot convert them from themselves, it cannot redeem them. The state may give pensions to old age, and make [p.155] provision for the sick, the blind and the maimed, the epileptic, the lunatic, the idiot and the feeble-minded. It cannot bring to these darkened lives what most they need, the sunlight of human love and comradeship, the healing influence of an atmosphere of prayer and of unselfish service in which they may come themselves into touch with the Centre and Source of this pure and cleansing stream of good.

This must be once again the task of the Church, as it was in the best days of the monasteries, the guilds and confraternities of the middle ages. We need to have a fresh Crusade, not to conquer any far-off enemy, but against our apathy towards the social evils in our midst. Can we not hope to see a network of new guilds and brotherhoods, settlements, houses of peace and healing, covering the length and breadth of the land, where men and women will sacrifice some portion at least of their lives, giving of their work and leisure to this task? Some will afford a shelter to the outcasts of society, who are driven now from prison to casual ward, and from workhouse to jail, for whom the commercial world has no use, to whom the law offers nothing but threats and penalties: others will provide training for boys or girls who have been committed to industrial schools, or will offer a fresh start to those who have fallen into serious crime: there will be some which will try to provide a home and work for the weaklings, or those who are prevented by mental or physical defect from [p.156] holding their own in the ordinary streams of life. Others again will offer an asylum to sickness, helplessness and old age. Centres of prayer, as well as centres of work, they will be the schools of saints, where men in serving the needy in many different ways, will all the while be brought nearer to the ultimate reunion of Christendom and of humanity.

[1] The words of Celsus ring strangely in our ears after these seventeen centuries and more: "You may hear all those who differ so widely, and who assail each other in their disputes with the most shameless language, uttering the words, 'The world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world'" (Origen, "Contra Celsum," v. § 64; and cf. iii § 12).

[2] "Les Apotres," p. 56.

[3] i Cor. xiv. 24, 25

[4] xlii. 4, 5.

[5] [Greek: I will appoint their bishops in righteousness and their deacons in faith]

[6] ad Smyrn. viii. i, 2.

[7] The earliest Latin versions of the Bible seem often to have used the word sacramentum to translate the Greek μυστήριον, thus in St. Matthew xiii. 11, in reply to the disciples' query "Why speakest thou unto them in parables?" is given the response "To you is given to know the sacraments of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it is not given" (Cod. Bobbiensis). Even the Vulgate retains this rendering in a number of passages (Eph. i. 9; iii. 3; v. 32; Revelation i. 20), and one cannot help wishing that our English version might have retained so beautiful a rendering as "the sacrament of His will," or the reference to the mystical union of Christ and His church as "the great sacrament." Similarly, it is interesting to hear the Vulgate speak of "the sacrament of the seven stars," in the Apocalypse, and to read in i Tim. iii. 16, "great is the sacrament of godliness."

[8] De Anima, ix.

[9] Adv. Marcion, v. 4.

[10] Adv. Marcion, v. i.

[11] "/Hoc enim lignum tunc in sacramento erat/" (Adv. Judaeos, xii.).

[12] "/Nolite verba, cum sacramentum meum erit canendum,providenter quaerere/ ."

[13] "/Quid enim sunt aliud quaeque corporalia sacramenta nisi quaedam quasi verba visibilia sacrosancta quidem, veruntamen mutabilia at temporalia/ ?" (Contra Faustum Manichaeum., Lib. xix. Cap. 16.).

[14] ("De Praescriptione Haereticorum" xl.) At his best, however, Tertullian, at least in one of his works, did seem to go farther than this, and to recognise in the instinctive strivings of natural religion the witness of the soul to the truths revealed in Christ ("De Testimonio Animae").

[15] The "Guide des ceremonies civiles" (Par Lux, Paris, 1902).

[16] See i Cor. i. 14-15. "For Christ sent me not to baptize but to preach the Gospel."

[17] i Cor. xv.

[18] Aug. de Baptismo Lib. iv. Cyprian had instanced this as a case of baptism of blood, but Augustine pointed out that the penitent thief suffered not as a Christian, but in punishment for a crime.

[19] De Poen, C. vi.; cf. xii. and xiii.

[20] It is more generally held at present by scholars that the Didache was written in Egypt; but would not this prayer rather befit the hilly country of Phrygia, where afterwards Montanus taught?

[21] Rev. W. Tuckwell: "Reminiscences of Oxford."

[22] "Mundi imago divinae sapientise et potentiae praeconium."

[23] Exodus xix. 6.; Isaiah Ixi. 6.

[24] I Peter ii. 5, 9.

[25] Rev. v. 10; xx. 6.

[26] Romans xii. i.

[27] Tim. iv. 6. Cf. Phil. iii. 17: "If I be poured forth as a libation upon the sacrifice and service (Liturgy) of your faith;"

[28] Irenaeus is apparently the first to use the term ιερεύς (sacrificing priest) instead of the earlier title of πρεσβύτερος (elder).

[29] This suggestion, and several of the preceding ones, are set forth with much greater fulness and clearness by Mr. St. George Stock in the Hibbert Journal for January, 1906.

[30] Ѐστι [Ѐστιν]δὲ πίστις ἐλπιζομένων ὑπόστασις πραγμάτων ἔλεγχοςou οὐ βλεπομένων Heb 11:1.

[31] Ecclesiastes iii. 11.

[32] It is possible that some day this difficulty might be surmounted by the willingness of a small group of such Free Church leaders to receive conditional episcopal consecration at the hands of some friendly Gregorian or Nestorian Bishops. They could then preach from the pulpit in Church or Cathedral at the invitation of the authorities of the Church of England, and, by receiving their episcopal orders conditionally, they would place no stigma on their Nonconformist colleagues. The Free Churches would then be somewhat in the position of the old Celtic Churches before the conquest of Britain by Latin Christianity, when Bishops did not rule by monarchial methods over fixed dioceses, but exercised a more personal influence from their monastic homes, where sometimes several Bishops resided together at once. We should thus have a Free Church College of Bishops exercising authority by reason of their personal and spiritual qualifications and seeking no other sanction than the weight which such an influence would give.

There may be difficulties in the way of such a proposal, but many Nonconformists who could not agree to accept the diocesan method of Church government would have little or no objection to such overseers of the Free Churches, who, holding an unpaid office, carrying no legal privileges, would have no right to rule, but rather be recognised as teaching, advising or pleading, with the authority of an elder brother in the spiritual family of which they would be members. Such a simple apostolic episcopate, strengthened from time to time by the addition of new members called to accept their office by the voice of their Church, might afford for those who have need of it a sign of visible communion between the Protestant Churches and the older episcopal churches of East and West.