CHAPTER II. THE INNER LIFE OF THE CHURCH

IT is difficult for us, and some may even feel that it is impossible, to make an impartial survey of an institution of which we ourselves form a part; on the other hand, it is equally difficult, unless one can realize something of its life from the inside, to appreciate the real nature of that life. And thus it must ever be peculiarly hard for us to understand the true relationship of the Christian churches to the world in which they work and to the ideal which guides them. And yet as we seek to see the difficulties others feel, and to enter into sympathy alike with the critic without and the workers within, we may come near at least to understanding some portion of the truth. It may remain true that "all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool," but as we endeavour to clear our minds and hearts of prejudice and to use others' eyes as well as our own, the pool grows clearer and the reflection becomes less broken, and more nearly an image of the reality it represents.

To see the failure of the Church does not mean that we ignore its victories: but if we are to carry [p.21] those victories further, it must be by noting our shortcomings, and all that we have not achieved. Looking out upon the life of men to-day, we cannot forget how, bad as it is, society has been again and again in large measure redeemed and kept alive through lives that have been the light and strength of the Church as well as of the world, but this need not prevent us from seeing how far the Church as a whole has failed to act in the same way.

Organised Christianity to-day in England, as represented in the churches, is very largely a middle class institution. Not only the very rich, but the great mass of the poorer workers, stand aloof from it. It has not given its strength to prophesy against the evils that attack our social life; and to remedy above all that utter separation of the lives of rich and poor, employer and employed, which is the terrible characteristic of twentieth-century urban civilisation.

There is much religious "activity," of a limited kind, using old and recognised channels of expression, and an earnestness in defence of particular religious views or in attacking particular errors of doctrine or forms of worship. But if we can for a moment forget our own individual standpoint and endeavour to look from the point of view of an outsider upon such religious enthusiasm as shows itself upon different sides in , let us say the present education controversy. we shall surely feel that if this represents the life of the churches, they [p.22] are far indeed removed from the spirit of their Founder.

"I love to see these Christians fight," was the remark of one able critic as he left a room where a public body had been engaged in discussing some phase of the "religious difficulty" in education. It is true that such a charge is no new one; as far back as the middle of the second century the philosopher Celsus brought a like one against the Christians of his day. [1] But since those early days too, there has been continual protest within the Church against this very spirit, and it has been in that series of protests that some, perhaps, may trace the true apostolic succession of teachers and guides. Age after age these leaders have found new help and inspiration as they turned toward the source from which the strength of the Church first sprang, and it is noteworthy that now, as often in the past many of the men who are estranged from the Church have nothing but respect — nay, often reverence — in their thought of Christ and of these followers of His. They would have very different thoughts of Christianity if all who profess and call themselves Christians had realised that ideal of the meaning of the name by which they are [p.23 ] called which William Penn once expressed in the words, "To be like Christ, then is to be a Christian."

If only we had all more clearly before us that vision, we could not but be filled not merely with burning shame at our own failure, but with longing to be more helpful to our fellows, and to draw nearer to them, as we would grow nearer to our spirit. And this desire within us will surely be strengthened as we turn towards that wonderful reflection of His teaching gathered together for us in the closing chapters of the Gospel of John. In that unique picture of the mind and heart of the Master there are traits over which we some- times pause and wonder; sayings which, when we can free our eyes from the scales with which custom has covered them, seem to shine with a light brighter than we can bear. And in that chapter, in which we listen as silent witnesses to the great charter of futurity, the prayer of the Founder for His Church that is to be, there are words which are so full of lofty purpose that we hesitate to apply them to our lives; unconsciously, perhaps, we have been wont to read them over and treat them as metaphor, meant to inspire but not to be realized; and gradually we have lost hold of their true significance, the inner life of thought beyond them. How truly can we say that we have realized, as individuals or as a Church, this picture which that prayer gives us of the Master's aim and desire for us? [p.24]

"And I am no more in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep them in Thy name which Thou hast given me, /that they may be one, even as we are/. . . . Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on Me through their word; /that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee,/ that they also may be one in us: /that the/ /world may believe that Thou didst send Me/."

So lofty is the thought that one may wonder whether, if these words had not come down to us as they have done, and some later Christian mystic had dared to utter this as his ideal, he would not have been treated as a madman or a heretic. It is hard to think of what it means: a unity of Christians one with another, even as there is unity between the Divine Father and the unique Son.

In the bygone days of scholastic theology men might have gone on to unfold the meaning of this by showing how unity of substance did not remove the difference of person; But these thoughts do not live for us to-day as for our forefathers. We must seek to find the meaning of Christ's union with the Father, not by the road of medieval metaphysics, but by some method which may appeal to our moral consciousness.

Is it not a fact that Christ is most truly revealed to us as in unity with the Father in his identification of himself with suffering and degraded humanity, as most truly Divine when he eats with publicans and sinners, pours out his strength [p.25] for the sick and suffering, and his life for those who have rejected him and at best have misunderstood him?

The Church, then, is most likely to attain to that inward unity for which her Founder prayed by following the guidance of his life. She will be most like him in laying upon herself and claiming as her own the sufferings and evils that befall or should befall, men in the world without; least like him and least likely to attain this Divine unity when she claims rights and privileges for herself, when she insists on her superiority, when she turns from her the publican and sinner, or leaves them to meet the punishment which is their due.

The union of Christians with each other is to be witness to the world of the Divine mission of Jesus. Men are to believe on him because they see how his life and spirit hold together communities with differing organisations and men of widely varying personality. The union is not to destroy personality or variety of character, but to underlie all difference. It is no external machinery to unite us in a single visible organisation by which individuality would be stamped out or fettered in growth. There is little trace of any such machinery in the earliest history of the Church, and the ages and places where it has been most perfect have not been those which we think of as nearest in spirit to Christ, nor those men most like Him whose lives have been spent merely in the development of such organisation. [p.26 ]

Perhaps the only one of the first group of disciples who possessed powers of organisation was Judas Iscariot; and some critics may say that he at least has had an apostolic succession of followers throughout the history of the Church. One remembers the terrible saying of Renan [2] <#_edn2>: L'histoire de l'Eglise sera le plus souvent désormais l'histoire des trahisons que subira l'idée de Jesus; and though no churches have been dedicated to SS. Ananias and Sapphira, they have become in practice the patrons of too many Christian lives. But if we cannot wish for an external unity such as that for which many good men plead, we have, nevertheless, constantly to strive after a deeper union of spirit in the service of our fellows, in the search after truth, in love to our Lord.

First let us take our need of sincerity. Perhaps nothing so holds many men of to-day from Christ as the sense of the insincerity of those who call themselves Christians. Our worship, our hymns and prayers, are full of unreality; we persuade ourselves, perhaps, that we still believe in dogmas which have ceased to have any influence upon our lives. We shut our eyes to new truths because we are really afraid to be free, and what was the chalice of a new truth to our fathers becomes a poison-cup to us and our children. If the Church is to regain and to retain the respect of honest thinkers we must welcome fair-minded inquiry wherever it be directed, and not fear to open our eyes to the sun. [p.27]

And it is not only intellectual sincerity in accepting new truths that is needed; if the old truths are to be made real to our day, we must be prepared to translate them into language which people can understand. It is worse than useless often to attempt to hand them on in the garments of old words by which they were clothed in former days, for as truth is a living thing, and words fade and lose their meaning, the form in which it is rightly expressed must change from age to age. It is not enough, then, to repeat some passage of Scripture, some familiar verse of religious poetry, or some words of a man of God of former days, to bring help to men to-day, even though the words are full of meaning to us because we have entered into the inward experience which they represent. Some have heard the words so often that they are now almost meaningless; others cannot be touched by a mode of thought which was the outcome of another time. They need the truths that lie behind the old words and the outworn methods of thinking, but they must be re-expressed if they are to reach them.

The eternal realities of which the New Testament writers had hold, which filled their souls and made them struggle with words and metaphors to express some glimpse of what they felt, could never be completely represented by any language. Yet we have taken the words of the Scripture and treated them as though they were so many phials of truth in solution. The exquisite flowers of love and [p.28] faith have been crushed and bruised in the mortar of the theologians to produce the infallible dogmas of our orthodoxy. But the inward life does not live upon the abstractions of the theologian any more than our outward life upon the compressed drugs of the chemist, however perfect the process of their making may have been. Cannot we, then, honestly confess that our dogmas are but imperfect human attempts to fathom the deep things of God, symbols that stand for something which transcends them as much as the mother's face surpasses the poor drawing which her child may make of it? Such a drawing can only be understood by the eyes of love, and we need the same spirit to make our dogmas full of meaning.

It is not only in intellectual matters that the Church has been insincere. Many who are no thinkers feel that she has not honestly attempted to carry out her own teachings. "Blessed are the gentle," "Blessed are the poor in spirit," are explained in many a commentary, but illustrated by too few lives. Yet the only adequate commentary on the beatitudes is the life of a real follower of Christ.

The fact is that many Christians think that by bowing down in worship before Christ they are His followers, forgetting His own test for such: "Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?" We write of Him, it may be, as Our Lord with capital letters, when He is not our lord at all, nor the master and controller of our lives. [p.29] There is a great deal of false reverence about this lip-worship of phrase and form that actually keeps us from getting as near as we might to the true spirit of followers of Christ.

If we are lovers and followers of the truth as Jesus bids us be, we must recognise our kinship and comradeship with all others who sincerely seek the truth, even though they may attack us and fail for the moment to see all the light which may shine in our eyes so clearly: in the mere search after truth their souls are turned towards the light and unconsciously fed and aided by the Source of all truth! Nor must we think of them our blind brothers merely, for they may be fighting a far greater army of foes than we, placed as out-posts of the hosts of God, surrounded by the enemy and overborne themselves for a while, that afterwards the victorious ranks of their comrades may press on over their bodies to conquests of which we have not even dreamed.

And how far have we failed in unity with our Master and each other through our not having learnt His lesson of the way of service, of our true relationship to our fellows?

Yet here and there across the pages of history shines the light of a good life pointing us the true way, and how by losing ourselves we find ourselves.

The bearing of the Cross which Jesus enjoined upon His followers is far other than that asceticism which monk and nun and Puritan have wasted many a precious life to attain. We have not to give [p.30] up the pleasant thing because it is pleasant, or because it gives only a mundane and transitory joy. Joy is good, and not to be avoided, but welcomed. We have to give up the pleasant thing ourselves, others may take it in our stead; or give up a large measure of it that they may share it with us. We do not lose the joy, or pretend that it is unreal and transitory as the monk may. It is very real, and we feel it in a sense we could not do before, because our fellows share it or have it in place of us, and our life is their life. Gladness which they feel we must feel too.

This is the difference between the monk of the desert and Francis of Assisi, the apostle of the joy of Christ . The monk battles with himself to maintain his vow of poverty; he is constantly giving up in not possessing things for himself, or in renouncing pleasures which attract him. St. Francis in possessing nothing has all things, for all are God's and his fellows', and he is theirs. The wide world is his cloister, and everything which he can do to gladden his brother gives joy to himself. True Christianity like his is full of an infectious sense of the joy of life. Whenever such men go there comes to others some touch of their spirit, as crumbs drop from a full table.

This faith that joy in itself is good does not mean that there may not be needful for us all some form of true asceticism, training in withholding from things good in themselves and from pleasures we desire, quite apart from the surrendering [p.31] of them to others. But needful as this is, it is good only as training for an end beyond itself, and not for the mere sake of abstinence. We refrain that we may be masters of our wills, that we may keep control of habit, that our bodies may be the instrument of our spirits; such fasting as this only fits us more fully for the joy of service.

Deeper even than the sacrament of joy is that of sorrow, and we may learn something of it from John Woolman, the Quaker apostle of Christ's sufferings. Where men suffered he suffered too in spirit with them. When he came on his last journey to England he could not travel in the comfortable cabin because of the needless toil of the workmen that had gone to adorn it, but must share with the poor sailors the foul air and discomfort of the steerage. And when on the stormy passage across the Atlantic he lay there sick and in pain, his heart went up in thankfulness that he was permitted to share the experience which so many of his fellow-men had to go through, and be united thus to suffering humanity. "I was now desirous," he tells us, "to embrace every opportunity of being inwardly acquainted with the hardships and difficulties of my fellow-creatures, and to labour in His love for the spreading of pure righteousness on the earth." Then we shall remember, too, that beautiful passage near the close of his journal, where he recalls the vision that came to him in time of sickness of that mass of dull, gloomy colour, made up of [p.32] human beings in as great misery as they could be and live, and how he was told that he was mixed with them and henceforth might not consider himself a separate being. The angel's song, "John Woolman is dead," sounded to him more pure and lovely than any he had ever heard before, for in truth his old will was dead, and in him the spirit of Christ was alive.

Is it not here that the Church will find the way to reconcile the world of toilers and sufferers estranged from her to-day? — in that unity between her members which goes deeper even than membership, in a love to Christ which shows itself, as He calls for it, towards all who have need of Him, which identifies the Christian with his brothers, the doers and bearers of wrong?

As we look out upon a Christendom divided by sects and creeds into a score of different bodies, we may be saddened by the lament which many a devout lip has uttered over the schisms which rend the mystic robe of the Master. But it was only His outer garments which the soldiers rent asunder: the seamless robe is unsevered still. External separation does not touch the spirit of love and true communion which beneath countless outer differences unites together the lives of all who follow Him in deed and in truth. And as we each draw nearer to Him, and His life flows into our lives, we must draw nearer to each other and to all our fellow-men.