Part 2

The Lord in His temptation rejected all use of force and substituted for it the appeal of love expressed in sacrifice, so far as the actual and positive building of His Kingdom is concerned. For us there must always be some use of the lower method, because we are incapable of applying the highest. If any man, when he is confronted with evil which he can prevent by the exercise of force, refrains from doing it, we must immediately put to him the question, "But did you so suffer under that act of evil that there is any hope of your suffering proving to be the redemption of the evil-doer? If so, well and good; but, if not, then you are idle and cowardly, not Christian." No one who is not a Christian in spirit can perform the Christian act; and the Sermon on the Mount is not a code of rules to be mechanically followed; it is the description of the life which any man will spontaneously lead when once the Spirit of Christ has taken complete possession of his heart.

And yet there is a perfectly legitimate use of force also, and a use which our Lord Himself makes of it. We may use force in various circumstances in spite of the fact that for the positive work of the building His Kingdom the Lord rejected it. It is legitimate, in the first place, when it is applied to immature characters--characters which are, as all our characters are in early childhood, a chaos of impulses and instincts, as yet unregulated by any governing principle. Here it may be necessary simply to restrain the activity of one set of impulses without converting the heart or will of the person to whom that restraint is applied, merely in order to give the other side of nature its chance of development. So in education it is legitimate to employ force in this restraining way for the sake of the development which is made possible thereby in the other parts of nature.

But our Lord's example also shows us that the use of force is permissible in dealing with those who are so case-hardened that the appeal of love can never reach them until their present state of mind is broken up. It is sometimes said that the Lord never made use of physical force; but whether or not that is true[#]--the question is unimportant, because for all moral purposes there is no difference whatever between physical and non-physical force. The appeal to force always means the appeal to pain or inconvenience, for these are the only things that force can inflict upon one. Physical force may break a man's bones; but one may enforce a certain kind of conduct by the threat, for example, of social ostracism, which might break his heart; and there is no difference whatever between the two, except that the second is a more refined form of cruelty. Now in our Lord's denunciation of the Pharisees, in those words which are thrown, burning and smashing, into the self-complacent contentment of those upholders of tradition, there is every moral quality of force and violence. Their aim is to batter down a state of mind, the state of mind which cannot receive the appeal of love, as it shows when it stands beneath the very Cross and only jeers. But this use of force is only negative and preparatory; it is the effort of love to make ready for the rebuilding which only love's own method can really accomplish. Only with characters quite immature and liable to develop in many different directions, can force be used, except in this wholly preparatory way; and even there its work is preparatory, for at that stage everything that is done is still preparatory.

[#] _e.g._, whether or not He employed the scourge of small cords to drive men from the Temple Courts as He certainly did the animals; the Greek words suggest that He did not.

It is sometimes said that society rests upon force. Of course it does not, and it could not, because force is a dead thing which can only operate as human wills direct it; and, however much force there may be in the maintenance of society, that force itself must be controlled by the consent of human wills. It is true, however, that society, as we know it, rests simultaneously upon two contradictory principles, upon the principle of antagonism and the principle of fellowship. So far as it is represented by the police force, it rests upon antagonism. Men are selfish; in their selfishness they are brought into conflict with one another. In order that anyone may be able to enjoy, however selfishly, any property or comfort in life, it is necessary to restrain to some degree the selfishness of all the rest; and to secure that restraint placed upon others, a man submits to a similar restraint upon himself. And so we arrive at that contract of which Plato speaks: "the contract neither to commit nor to suffer injury."[#] But, at the same time, as Plato immediately afterwards points out, society would arise quite equally if men were wholly altruistic, because men's natures are different, and they need one another for support, for protection, and for the very instinct of fellowship.[#] Now those principles are both present in all actual societies; and progress has consisted of the steady development of the principle of co-operation and fellowship, at the expense of the principle of competition and antagonism.

[#] [Greek: mete adikein mete adikisthai.] _Republic_ ii. 359*a*.

[#] The whole Ideal State. _Republic_ ii, 369*b* to vii end.

That has been what we have meant in the last resort by political progress; but the conclusion inevitably follows that society makes progress precisely in that degree in which it realises more and more a relationship of love between its various members, and becomes the Kingdom which Christ came on earth to found. Thus, at the very outset of our enquiry we find that the principles of secular progress and of the Divine revelation in Christ are identical.

I shall venture in a subsequent lecture to trace out the way in which, as I think, further progress in accordance with this principle will lead us.

But let me close this lecture by recalling our thoughts to that ideal method for men, which is the actual method of God, setting this in the words of a fable which I take from the masterpiece of the most Russian of the Russian novelists--Dostoievsky--merely throwing it into my own language.

In the days of the Inquisition, this fable runs, our Lord returned to earth, and visited a city where it was at work. As He moved about, men forgot their cares and sorrows. He healed the sick folk as of old, and meeting with a funeral procession where a mother was mourning the loss of her only son, He stopped the procession, and restored the dead boy to life.

That was in the Cathedral Square, and at that moment there came out from the Cathedral doors the Grand Inquisitor, an old man over ninety years of age, clad now, not in the Cardinal's robe in which only the day before he had condemned a score of heretics to the stake, but in a simple cassock, with only two guards in attendance. Seeing what was done he turned to the guards and said, "Arrest Him." They moved forward to obey; and he sent the Prisoner to a cell in the dungeon.

That night the Grand Inquisitor visited his Prisoner, and to all that he said the Prisoner made no reply. "I know why Thou art come," said the Inquisitor; "Thou art come to spoil our work, to repeat Thy great mistake in the wilderness, and to give men again Thy fatal gift of freedom. What did the great wise spirit offer Thee there? Just the three things by which men may be controlled--bread and authority and mystery. He bade Thee take bread as the instrument of Thy work; men will follow one who gives them bread. But Thou wouldest not; men were to follow Thee out of love and devotion or not at all. We have had to correct Thy work, or there would be few to follow Thee. He bade Thee assume authority; men will obey one who gives commands, and punishes the disobedient. But Thou wouldest not; men were to obey out of love and devotion or not at all. We have had to correct Thy work, or there would be few to obey Thee. He bade Thee show some marvel that men might be persuaded and believe. But Thou wouldest not; men were to believe from perception of Thy grace and truth or not at all. We have had to correct Thy work and hedge Thee about with mystery, or there would be few to believe. And which of us has served mankind the better? Thy appeal was to the few strong souls. We have cared for the weak. Many who would be disorderly and miserable have been made orderly and happy. And now Thou art come to spoil our work and repeat Thy great mistake in the wilderness by giving to men again Thy fatal gift of freedom, through trust in the power of love. But it shall not be; for to-morrow I shall burn Thee."

The Grand Inquisitor ceased; and still the Prisoner made no reply; but He rose from where He sat, and crossed the cell, and kissed the old man on his bloodless lips. Then the Inquisitor too, rose, and opened the door; "Go," he said. The Prisoner passed out into the night and was not seen again.

And the old man? That kiss burns in his heart. But he has not altered his opinion or his practice.

*LECTURE II*

*CHURCH AND STATE*

"He put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fulness of him that, all in all, is being fulfilled."--Ephesians i, 22, 23.

If one of the great saints of the early Church had been told that in the year 1915 the world would still be waiting for the final consummation, and had tried to conceive the life of men and nations as it would be after that long period of Christian influence, what would his conception have been? Surely he would have expected that all nations would be linked together in the Holy Communion, the Fellowship of Saints. Roman, Spaniard, African, Syrian, those strange Germans, and the barbarous Britons who lived in the remotest corner of the earth, might have maintained their own varieties of culture, but each would find his joy and pride in offering his contribution to the life of the whole family of nations. Rooted in knowledge of the love of God, their life would grow luxuriantly and bear fruit in love of one another and service of the common cause. Inspiring each and knitting all together, the Holy Catholic Church, fulfilling itself in service of the world, would gather up all this exuberance of life and love into itself, and present it to the God and Father of mankind in unceasing adoration.

But the world in 1915 is not in the least like that. The old man of our selfish nature, selfish himself and therefore supposing that others must be selfish too, so that he relies upon the methods of cajolery and coercion, has indeed received the kiss of Christ; and while that kiss burns in his heart, so that sometimes he is roused to an aspiration after an order of things altogether different, his opinions and his conduct remain fundamentally unchanged. And the contrast between what is and what might have been is due in part, at least, to the failure of the Church to be true to its own commission. It is also because of this that no practical man dreams of turning to the Church to find the way out from the intolerable situation into which the nations have drifted.

An eminent politician is reported to have defined the Church on a recent occasion in the following terms: "The Church is, I suppose, a voluntary organisation for the maintenance of public worship in the interest of those who desire to join in it." And it is to be feared that many people regard it in some such way as that. But of course the Church is nothing of the kind; the Church is the Body of Christ.

It is not a "voluntary organisation" any more than my body is a voluntary organisation either of limbs or of cells. No one could "voluntarily" join the Church, if by that were meant that the act originated in his own will. "No man can say Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit."[#] A man cannot make himself a Christian. The Apostles were made Christian by Christ Himself--"Ye did not choose Me, but I chose you"[#]; others were made Christian by the Apostles, or (as they always said) by Christ working in and through them; and so successive generations have been made Christian by the Spirit of Christ operative in the fellowship of His disciples--that is to say, in the Church. This is the aspect of truth expressed and preserved in the practice of infant baptism. We are Christians, if at all, not through any act initiated by our own will, but through our being received into the Christian fellowship and subjected to its influence. Just as we are born members of our family, so by our reception into the fellowship of the disciples we are "made members of Christ." In the one case as in the other, we may repudiate our membership or we may disgrace it; we can never abolish it. Let me hasten in parenthesis to add, that this is only one aspect of the truth, and the protest of those who object to infant baptism will be a valuable force in the Church, until we are finally secure against the temptation to regard a sacrament as a piece of magic. For of course it is true that, while no man can make himself a Christian by his own will, no man can be made a Christian against or without his will. It is precisely his will that the Spirit must lay hold of and convert, and the will can refuse conversion.

[#] 1 Cor. xii, 3

[#] S. John xv, 16.

The Church, then, is not a "voluntary organisation," but the creation of God in Christ. In fact it is the one immediate result of our Lord's earthly ministry. When His physical presence was withdrawn, there remained in the world, as fruit of His sojourn here, no volume of writings, no elaborated organisation with codified aims and methods, but a group of people who were united to one another because His Spirit lived and worked in each. And the great marvel lay in this: whereas all men realise that fellowship is better than rivalry, and yet fail to pass from one to the other because they are radically selfish both individually and corporately, in Christ men found themselves to be a real community in spite of their as yet unpurged selfishness. By the invasion of the Divine Life in Christ, the ideal itself, the life of fellowship, is given, and is made into the means of destroying just those qualities which had hitherto prevented its own realisation. The ecclesiastical organisations of to-day are not fellowships of this sort, but if the members of the Church lose their hold on this central principle of fellowship, as they have largely done, we are thrown back upon the futile effort to build up fellowship on the foundation of unredeemed selfishness.

As it is not true to say that the Church is a "voluntary" organisation, so also it is not true to say that it exists "for the maintenance of public worship," at least in the sense that most Englishmen would give to the words. Certainly the Church, consisting of men and women whom God of His sheer goodness has delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of His dear Son, will find its first duty, as also its first impulse, in an abandonment of adoration. But if the God who is worshipped is not only some Jewish Jehovah or Mohammedan Allah, but the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, this love and adoration of God will immediately express itself in the love and service of men, and especially in the passionate desire to share with others the supreme treasure of the knowledge of God. The Church, like its Master, will be chiefly concerned to seek and to save that which is lost, calling men everywhere to repent because the Kingdom of God is at hand. Worship is indeed the very breath of its life, but service of the world is the business of its life. It is the Body of Christ, that is to say, the instrument of His will, and His will is to save the world.

The spiritual life of men is not limited to this planet, and the fulfilment of the Church's task can never be here alone. The Church must call men from temporal to eternal hopes. But in this way it will do more than is possible in any other way to purify the temporal life itself. For most temporal goods are such that the more one person has the less there is for others, so that absorption in them leads inevitably to strife and war. But the eternal goods--love, joy, peace, loyalty, beauty, knowledge--are such that the fuller fruition of them by one leads of itself to fuller fruition by others also, and absorption in them leads without fail to brotherhood and fellowship.

It is not of worship, the breath of the church's life, but of service, the business of its life, that I wish to speak. But this can only be misleading if the other has not first been given prominence. The Church serves because it first worships. Only because it has in itself a foretaste of eternal life, the realised Kingdom of God, can it prepare the way of the Lord, so that His Kingdom may come on earth as it is in heaven.

One question which demands attention concerns the nature of the Church which is to perform this function. Is it enough that there should be vast numbers of Christian individuals gathering together in whatever way is proved by experience to be the most effective for edification, pursuing their profession as Christians, and so gradually leavening life? Or is there need for a quite definite society, with a coherent constitution and a known basis of membership? The former has much to recommend it; it avoids the deadening influence of a rigid machinery; it ensures freedom of spiritual and intellectual development; it may seem to correspond with that loosely constituted group of disciples, which was, as we have seen, the actual fruit of the earthly ministry of Christ. Yet it is condemned by all analogies, and is inadequate to the essential nature of religion.

All relevant analogy suggests that a spirit must take definite and concrete form before it can be effective in the world, even as God Himself must become incarnate in order to establish His Kingdom upon earth. No doubt the form has often fettered the spirit and sometimes even perverted it; the history of the Franciscan movement is an instance of this; but the influence of St. Francis would never have done for Europe what it actually accomplished if the Order had not been founded.

One of the clearest illustrations of the principle is before our eyes in our experience to-day. When the spirit of national patriotism makes its appeal, no one has to make any effort to understand its claim; our nation is a definite and concrete society in which we easily realise our membership to the full. We know that there is no escaping from it, and that, when it appeals for our service or our lives, we must either respond or refuse. But the Christian Church, as we know it, is powerless to bring home its appeal in the same way. Largely because of its divisions and endless controversy about the points, secondary though important, which separate the various sections, it has become curiously impotent in the face of any great occasion such as the present, and curiously unsuccessful in persuading either its own members or the world outside of the nature of its mission. We are not conscious, for example, that we are permanently either responding to, or else refusing, the appeal to "preach the Gospel to every creature." That appeal does not hit us personally as does the appeal, "every fit man wanted." Our membership in the Church does not in fact make us feel a personal obligation to assist the cause of the Church. We are content to "belong to it" without admitting that it has any power to dispose of its "belongings"; we think that we "support" it by "going to church" and contributing to "church expenses." But we feel no link with our fellow-Christians in Germany at all comparable to that which binds us to an agnostic but patriotic Englishman, or at all capable of bridging spontaneously the gulf fixed by national antagonism. By a deliberate effort we can realise that we and they are equally precious in the sight of God, and that they are our fellow-members in Christ. But there is no realised bond of corporate unity that binds us to each other, and we rely upon the very feeble resources of our personal good-will and personal faith for any sense of unity with them that we may attain. The Church is less powerful than the nation as an influence in our lives, partly at least because it is in fact less actual. The Church universal, whether as an organisation or as spirit of life, is an ideal, not a reality.

Such an argument, however, simply invites refutation. It is pointed out that when the whole of one section of Christendom was organised as a single religious community under the Pope, men did, as a mere matter of historical fact, fight and hate even more bitterly than now. A common membership in one Catholic Church did not prevent Edward III. and Henry V. from making war upon their neighbours across the English Channel. And at this moment Roman Catholic Frenchmen appear to be fighting against Roman Catholic Bavarians with no more signs of fellowship between the opponents than appear in other parts of the field of war. So far as the Church is organised as a unity, this does not, in fact, create unity of spirit in its members sufficient to mitigate national antagonisms.

And this, it will be urged, is only to be expected. "The wind bloweth where it listeth," and machinery cannot control the spirit. It is only a personal faith in Christ that will lift men above natural divisions so that they spontaneously recognise as brothers those who have similar faith. To build up again a great ecclesiastical organisation which shall include all Europe, or even all the world, will not of itself create friendship between the members who compose it if otherwise they are antagonistic. Individual conversion, not ecclesiastical statesmanship, is the one thing needful; nothing can take its place.

No; of course nothing can take its place. And of course an all-comprehensive lukewarm Church will share the fate of its smaller counterpart at Laodicea. When it is said that the Universal Church is not a reality, it is not only the absence of a world-wide organisation that is deplored; still worse is the total absence of any typical manner of life by which members of the Church may be known from others. Men die for Great Britain, not because Britain is a united kingdom, but because there is a definite British character which is ours and which we love. But there is no specifically Christian type of character actually distinguishing members of the Church from others which may make men ready to die for Christendom. Christians differ from others, as Spinoza bitterly remarked, not in faith or charity or any of the fruits of the Spirit, but only in opinion. Assuredly individual conversion is the primary requisite.

But half our troubles come from these absurd dilemmas. Do you believe in faith or in organisation? Well; do I believe in my eyes or my ears? Why not in both? Of course organisation cannot take the place of faith; of course faith without order is better than order without faith. But why cannot we have in the Church what we have got in the nation faith operative through order as loyalty is operative through the State and in service to it?

The earlier objection, however, is equally serious. Catholicism has failed in the past and is failing now. One main ground of its failure is to be found, I believe, in its inadequate recognition of nationality, which has avenged itself by almost ousting Catholicism, and with it Christianity itself, where national interests are concerned.[#]

[#] I am speaking throughout of the Western Church: the Eastern Church has perhaps been, if anything, too national.