Part 5

I do not know at all what forms your labour unrest in takes in this continent, but I claim to have considerable opportunities of knowing what is the root of that unrest in England, at least among the better type of working people; for I am concerned with an organisation which is at work among working folk all over England, having an enormous membership, and which aims at claiming for them, and supplying them with, further facilities for education. Those with whom I thus come in contact are picked men, no doubt, because those who join an educational association are thereby marked off at once as intellectually at least more alert than those who do not join; but as I go about them, I find no room whatever for doubting that the root of the labour unrest in England is a sense that the whole organisation of our life constitutes a standing insult to the personality of the poor man. Why, for example, he feels, should it be possible for a well-to-do man to secure for himself, or for his wife, or for his child, the medical attendance that may be needed, while he in very many parts of our country depends upon institutions maintained by voluntary contributions? It is quite compatible with gratitude to those whose generosity maintains these institutions to feel that for such service he should not be dependent upon anybody's charity at all--whether the solution is to be that the State maintain such institutions or that every man who is doing his fair share of the country's work receive for himself the wage that will enable him to deal with such emergencies as they arise.

Above all, men feel the denial of their personality in the organisation of industry itself. Men have fought and died for political liberty, which means the right to have a voice in making the laws by which you are to be governed. But the laws of the State do not for the most part invade a man's home, whereas the regulations of an industrial firm do. They determine when he shall get up in the morning and when he shall go to bed; they determine whether he shall have any leisure for the pursuit of any interest of his own. In the making of those regulations he has, as a rule, no voice whatever, and no opportunity of making his views understood except by threat, the threat of a strike. The men feel that they are what they are sometimes called, "hands" not persons. They are the tools of other men. You must apply all this to your own country, if and so far as it does apply. But one might easily imagine a village in Lancashire, or any other industrial district where all the inhabitants are dependent upon one industry; there are many such; and the control of that industry may be in the hands of a Board of Directors, settled perhaps in London; it may only meet a few times a year for the transaction of business, and otherwise not exist at all. They never see the people whose lives and destinies they thus control. The shareholders who want their dividends make no enquiries as a rule about the conditions in which the work is done. If that Board of Directors mismanages its business the village in Lancashire goes hungry. If that Board of Directors, when they have already got a full supply of work, takes on another large contract, that village in Lancashire works overtime; and the people have no say in the matter. Whatever else that is, it is not liberty, and in the judgment of the people themselves it is not justice. And indeed it is not either justice or liberty as we have learned in other spheres to understand those terms. The economic organisation of life comes far closer to the individual citizen than the political organisation, and the development of justice remains incomplete until it has secured liberty of an economic as well as a political kind.

If it is true that the method of Christ is to appeal to the free personality of the man, so that he obeys out of love and devotion and not from fear of penalty nor hope of reward, other than the reward of realising the love of the Master, then surely it is in the true line of development towards the perfected Christian civilisation if we demand that these opportunities for the development of free personality shall be afforded. No doubt it must be done with wisdom. Rough and ready methods, however well-meant, might do far more harm than good, and leave us in a situation even worse than that which we know. But the Church has paid scarcely any attention to those things in England. It is very difficult to persuade Church-people that, because they are followers of Christ, and therefore might be assumed to recognise that they are "members one of another" with all these others, they are therefore bound (for example) in investing their money to find out the conditions under which their dividends are going to be earned. In almost every department of life we have left such things alone. Under the stress of war, we have suddenly become acutely conscious of the drink evil. It was there before; and we have been content that the great majority of our fellow citizens should have no opportunity for gratifying those instincts of social life and merriment, which are the birthright of all God's children, except in places where the influence of alcohol was supreme. We have been content with that. We have not thought it was our duty to find a means of supplying them with other places of recreation and amusement; we have saved our money. And then we have the impertinent audacity to claim our own redemption by the blood of Christ.

One can go on with one evil after another in the same way. This is what makes the Church weak. It is no sort of use for us to say that Christ is the Redeemer of the world, and the Revealer of the way of life, if with regard to just those evils which press most heavily on men we have to say that for them He has unfortunately not supplied a remedy.

No doubt if these evils are to be dealt with on a large scale, the work must be done by the State, for nothing else is adequate; and the Church here has two main tasks. It is no part of the Church's task to advocate general principles or particular maxims of economic science, though its members, in their capacity of citizenship ought to be active in these ways. The first task of the Church is to inspire the State, which after all very largely consists of the same persons as itself, with the desire to combat the evil; and the second is to counteract the one great difficulty which the State experiences. When the State takes up such work as this, there is one thing which we all fear: "Officialism." What is "Officialism"? Simply lack of love; nothing else in the world. It consists in treating people as "cases," according to rules and red tape, instead of treating them as individuals; and the Church which must inspire the State to want to deal with these things, must then supply the agents through whom it may deal with them effectively, inspiring them with the love of men which is the fruit and test of a true love of God.

But beyond all this, the Church must be making demands far greater than it has ever made upon man's spiritual nature and spiritual capacity, and must then point to the organisation of our social life and say--"That organisation, because and in so far as it deprives men of the full growth of their spiritual nature, because and in so far as it prevents them from taking the share which belongs to God's children in His worship and the enjoyment of his gifts of nature and Grace, is proved to be of the devil."

In our worship we find for the most part what we expect to find. There may be gifts offered us, gifts from God, that we never receive because we have not looked for them. It is in our intercourse with Christ that we shall find the means of solving the horror of our social problem, if we are expecting to find it; but we have not expected it. We have not really believed that He is the Redeemer of the World; we have not looked to Him for the redemption of Society. The State by itself, until the Church comes to its help, can do something indeed, but something which by itself is almost worthless.[#] It supplies the indispensable foundation without which a spiritual structure cannot be built up; but, if that building never comes, the foundation by itself is little more than useless. To those whom the social order favours it offers real liberty and life, but no inspiration; a perfect social order would offer liberty to all, but still no inspiration. The State alone can never be the house of many mansions wherein every soul is truly at home.

[#] It is to be observed that the State is by its very nature largely limited to the regulation of those human relationships where men oppose each other with rival claims; as soon as men rise to the reciprocity of friendship the method of the State is inappropriate. People do not go to law to determine whether either loves the other adequately.

*LECTURE IV*

*HOLINESS AND CATHOLICITY IN THE CHURCH*

"This is the law of the house: upon the top of the mountain the whole limit thereof round about shall be most holy. Behold, this is the law of the house."--Ezekiel xliii, 12.

"And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty, and the Lamb, are the temple thereof."--Revelation xxi, 22.

The Bible gives us two elaborately conceived pictures of the perfected life of man. The first is that which occupies the closing chapters of Ezekiel's prophecy; its leading feature is the immense separation which is insisted upon between the Temple and the secular City. The Hill of Zion has become a very high mountain; upon the top of it the Temple is set, and there is a wide space, at least two miles, between it and the City of Jerusalem, which has been moved away by that distance to the south.

Indeed, if we take the description as intended to be complete, the City seems to exist chiefly to provide a congregation for the Temple's services, and the Prince only to offer representative worship on behalf of His people. All attention is concentrated upon the place of the worship of God, and the holiness which is to be characteristic of that place. By thus keeping the Temple holy, through separating it from the body of the City and its secular life, the Prophet attains no doubt the end he has in view, but he also, of necessity, though probably unintentionally, leaves the suggestion that the secular life itself cannot be wholly consecrated.

In sharp contrast with this is St. John's picture in the Book of Revelation; here there is no specific place of worship at all, for the whole City is the Temple of God; more than that, the whole City is the very Holy of Holies, for it is described as being a perfect cube, and the Holy of Holies in Solomon's Temple was a perfect cube.

"And the city lieth four square, and the length thereof is as great as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs; the length and the breadth and the height thereof are equal. And he measured the wall thereof, and it was one hundred and forty and four cubits."[#]

[#] Rev. xxi, 16, 17.

The City thus corresponds in symbolic form with the Holy of Holies. It is become the dwelling place of God. No special shrine is needed, no place to which men draw apart, because their whole life is an act of worship, and God dwells among them in their daily activities.

There is one feature about this Heavenly City, which is obscured through the use of the old terms of measurement, for this cube is described as being 1,500 _miles_ high, 1,500 _miles_ broad, and 1,500 _miles_ long; but the wall which stands for defence against foes without and for the containment and order of the life within, and indeed represents in general the principle of organisation--the wall is only 216 _feet_ high; so small a thing is order in comparison with the life which it safeguards.

It is between those two poles, which are set for us as the extreme terms in a process, that the Church must live its life. There is truth in both of them.

We were considering in the last lecture justice and liberty, which are the supreme achievements of the National State. Let us to-day consider the Holiness and Catholicity, which are the supreme treasures of the Church.

Holiness must come first, Holiness which means absolute conformity to the will of God. Whatever obstacles there may be to overcome, whatever seductions to avoid, the Church is to remain absolutely devoted to the Divine Will. Only so can it be catholic or universal. It might for a moment achieve an all-embracing unity by giving up everything that is offensive to men, and gathering all within it under the glow of a comfortable sentiment; but then its life would be gone, and after a little while the men who had all become members of it would be just as though they had not. Only a Church which is perfectly loyal to the Will of God, can possibly be the home for all mankind.

But Holiness has always had two meanings--an outward and an inward, a ceremonial and a moral. We shall agree, I suppose, in saying that the outward and ceremonial is in itself of no consequence, and exists only in order to preserve and make possible the inward and spiritual conformity to God's Will; but for that purpose, as all human experience has always shown, it is quite indispensable. We are made of bodies as well as souls, and if our whole being is to be permeated, there must be bodily expression of that which our souls enjoy or need. We must worship with our bodies as well as with our souls. So St. Paul, after all his emphasis upon the spirit as against dead works, begins his practical exhortation with the words, "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice."[#] The physical and bodily expression is always necessary, in this human life of ours, to the full efficacy and to the survival through the ages of the spiritual, though this no doubt is alone of ultimate consequence.

[#] Rom. xii, 1.

If the Church is to maintain its Holiness, it must of necessity be to some extent separated from the world; it cannot mix as a Church in all worldly activities. It cannot simply set itself out to permeate the general life of men, maintaining nothing that is separate and apart for itself. If it does that, it will simply be lost in the general life of the world.

In the last resort our characters depend almost entirely upon the influences that play upon them in our environment; the one place where we have effective choice is in determining the influences to which we will submit ourselves. If there is no place in our society, or in the world, where men may count upon finding the power of God in purity, then men will inevitably fail to rise above that sort of character, which their worldly environment happens to be forming in them.

The Church then, precisely in order to do this work in the world, must keep itself in some sense separate from the world; but the vast majority of its members are people in the daily life of the world, pursuing their avocations there; and it would plainly be wholly disastrous to require that all Christian people, in virtue of their Christianity, should withdraw themselves from the ordinary concerns of men.

There is, therefore, no means by which this separateness of the Church can be achieved unless there are certain persons set apart to be representatives of the Church, and of the Church only; and who, because they are official representatives of the Church are thereby deprived of the right to take part in many worldly activities, though these in themselves are right enough.

It is not because they are more truly members of the Church than others, nor because there is a different moral standard for clergy and laity, but because in the whole life of the Church there are certain functions which are incompatible with others, just as in the State a man cannot be at the same time an advocate and a judge, or commander-in-chief and ambassador.

Thus, for example, as it seems to me, one who is called to be a priest of the Church, inevitably forfeits the right to take part in the hurly-burly of party politics; partly because, in a world which consists of many parties, he is responsible for bringing before men the claim of God to which all the parties ought to bow; partly also because a man's activities inevitably affect the quality of his own mind, and if we are to be as it were repositories of the Eternal truths, if we are to have ready for dispensation all the treasures which God commits to His Church, we need a type of mind which cannot, at least by most men, be maintained, if we are engaged in heated controversy and frequent debate.

Another example may be found in the question whether a priest should serve as a combatant in his country's army. He is called to represent the Church; and the Church is essentially, not accidentally, international; it is not international merely as a scientific society may be, in that it is not concerned with political frontiers and men of all nations are welcome within it; but it is international in the sense that it exists to bind the nations of the earth in one. The officer of such a society may be as patriotic in his feeling as anyone else, but, just because he is an official, for him to take positive action on one side of the other weakens the Church's international position, and is, therefore, a more serious act than it is in the case of the layman. Here again there are not two standards, but there are diverse circumstances. If the Church called on all its members to refuse to serve, the result would be to interfere with the freedom of the State to act in its own sphere; if it allows everyone to serve, it is deprived of its Catholic witness just when that is most vitally needed. The only way of doing justice to the legitimate claims of both nationalism and Catholicity, is to differentiate between persons; and there is no practicable or even sensible way of doing this except to make the Church's officers responsible for the Catholic witness and its lay, or unofficial, members for the national.

But does this not involve the danger of a priestly caste? Yes, no doubt it does; but there are two ways in which we may avoid falling into that danger. The first is perpetually to remember that men are called by God to the different kinds of work which He has for them to do; and we shall avoid unctuousness, which is no doubt what men most dread about a priestly caste, if we keep it perpetually in our mind that we are not personally holy because our calling is. We are entrusted with this great charge. We have to fulfil it. It is our work for Him. But there are those whom He calls to serve Him as politicians and as soldiers; if they do their work as in His sight, and to His glory, they are serving Him every bit as much as we are. All the work of all the kinds of men is needed in the world, and it is only if we suppose that we are made more holy because our calling is concerned with the specifically holy things that we shall fall before that danger.

And the other safeguard, paradoxical as it may sound, is a very complete specialised training. One of the reasons, I am quite sure, why lay people often find us rather stilted and uncongenial is because we have not secured a sufficient grasp upon what is our own special subject to feel full liberty in conversation and to speak naturally. We are perpetually wondering at what point we shall be suddenly compromising that for which we are responsible. We tend to utter (and even to hold) merely conventional opinions and to express ourselves only in the stereotyped phrases, because we have not sufficient grasp of spiritual and moral truth to trust ourselves in forming individual opinions, or in finding our own language for expressing the opinions which we form. Precisely in the degree in which we know our own work and have full possession of what is entrusted to us, shall we obtain liberty and ease of manner, and be in general behaviour just like other people, which is what we ought most to desire.

Still it is in the person of its priests that the Church must maintain that outward holiness, that separation from the world, which alone makes possible a concentration upon things divine; and without this concentration it can never become a catholic or universal body. "Universal," here does not, of course, mean all-inclusive. There are those who definitely and deliberately reject the claim of Christ, and those have never been submitted in any way to His influence. The unbaptized heathen are not members of the Catholic Church; and if they refuse the Gospel when it comes, they remain outside. Moreover, as we have seen, there is possible a vicious as well as a holy catholicity. There is nothing so seductive as the temptation to suppose that doctrine which evokes a response is on that account true, or particularly to be emphasised. Sometimes people dislike the truth. There are people who are alienated by it; and the attractiveness of our gospel to people, irrespective of their frame of mind, is no evidence of its divinity. There is a picture in the Old Testament where Moses the Prophet is apart upon the mountain top, communing with God, while at the foot of the mountain, Aaron, the official priest, is ministering to the people the kind of religion they like. He was encouraging them, as the Psalmist satirically says, to worship: "the similitude of the calf that eateth hay." There was nothing very dignified about it. But it was what the people liked; and the response to his ministrations was immediate and immense. Our task is to lay hold, so far as we may in our infinite feebleness, of the truth that was given to the world in Christ in all its sternness as well as its love--or rather in that sternness which is an essential part of its love; and this is what we must present to men.

Again, it is not in proportion to their virtue in the ordinary moral sense that men are drawn to the Church; it is in proportion to their conscious need of God. It is perhaps worth while just now especially to emphasise the peril of a faithless virtue, and the depth of error involved in any attempt to take for the basis of a Church "the religion of all good men." What will happen to a man who sets his effort upon the building up of his whole character according to an ethical ideal? One of two things. Either he may in part succeed, perhaps as much as he himself desires to succeed, and then he may become self-satisfied and a Pharisee; or else he will find himself either failing altogether, or, having succeeded in part, incapable of carrying the success to its full completion, and not knowing where to find the power that will take him further; and so he ends in despair.

No, the appeal of the Church, as universal, is simply that it has within it that which answers the real and deepest need of every human being. There everyone will find his home, when once he has found his need of God, if indeed the Church is holy.