Chapter 4

In this conception, God is placed, not alongside of creatures, but behind them, as the light which shines through a crystal and lends it whatever it has of lustre. In recognizing whatever true brilliancy or beauty creatures possess as due to His inbiding presence, the love which they excite in us passes on to Him, through them. As He is the primary Agent and Mover in all our action and movement, the primary Lover in all our pure and well-ordered love; and we, but instruments of His action, movement, and love; so, in whatever we love rightly and divinely for its true merit and divinity, it is He who is ultimately loved. Thus in all pure and well-ordered affection it is, ultimately, God who loves and God who is loved; it is God returning to Himself, the One to the One. According to this imagery, God is viewed as the First Efficient and the ultimate Final Cause in a circular chain of causes and effects of which He is at once the first link and the last--a conception which, in so far as it brings God inside the system of nature as part thereof, is, like the last, only analogously true, and may not be pressed too far in its consequences.

In this view, to love God supremely and exclusively means practically, to love only the best things in the best way, recognizing God both in the affection and in its object. God is not loved apart from creatures, or beside them; but through them and in them. Hence if only the affection be of the right kind as to mode and object, the more the better; nor can there be any question of crowding other affections into a corner in order to make more room for the love of God in our hearts. The love of Him is the "form," the principle of order and harmony; our natural affections are the "matter," harmonized and set in order; it is the soul, they are the body, of that one Divine Love whose adequate object is God in, and not apart from, His creatures.

It would not perhaps be hard to reconcile this view with some utterances in the Gospel of seemingly opposite import; or to find it often implied in the words and actions of Catholic Saints; but to square it with the general ascetic traditions of the faithful at large is exceedingly difficult. Patmore would no doubt have allowed the expediency of celibacy in the case of men and women devoted to the direct ministry of good works, spiritual and corporal: a devotion incompatible with domestic cares; he could and did allow the superiority of voluntary virginity and absolute chastity over the contrary state of lawful use; but he could hardly have justified--hardly not have condemned those who leave father, friend, or spouse, not merely externally in order to be free for good works, but internally in order that their hearts may be free for the contemplation and love of God viewed apart from creatures and not merely in them. He might perhaps say that, as we cannot go to God through all creatures, but only through some (since we are not each in contact with all), we must select according to our circumstances those which will give the greatest expansion and elevation to our natural affections; and that for some, the home is wisely sacrificed for the community or the church. Yet this hardly consists with the pre-eminence he gives to married love as the nearest symbol and sacrament of divine.

Both these modes of imagining the truth, whatever their inconveniences, are helpful as imperfect formulations of Catholic instinct; both mischievous, if viewed as adequate and close-fitting explanations. Patmore was characteristically enthusiastic for his own aspect of the truth; and characteristically impatient of the other. Thus, of à Kempis he says:

There is much that is quite unfit for, and untrue of, people who live in the ordinary relations of life. I don't think I like the book quite so much as I did. There is a hot-house, egotistical air about much of its piety. Other persons are, ordinarily, the appointed means of learning the love of God; and to stifle human affections must be very often to render the love of God impossible.

In other words, the further he pushed the one conception the further he diverged from à Kempis, whose asceticism was built almost purely on the other.

Most probably a reconciliation of these two conceptions will be found in a clear recognition of the two modes in which God is apprehended and consequently loved by the human mind and heart; the one concrete and experimental, accessible to the simplest and least cultured, and of necessity for all; the other, abstract in a sense--a knowledge through the ideas and representations of the mind, demanding a certain degree of intelligence and studious contemplation, and therefore not necessary, at least in any high degree, for all. The difference is like that between the knowledge of salt as tasted in solution and the knowledge of it as seen apart in its crystallized state; or between the knowledge and love of a musical composer as known in his compositions, and as known in himself, from his compositions. The latter needs a not universal power of inference which the most sympathetic musical expert may entirely lack.

Of these two approaches to Divine love and union, the former is certainly compatible with, and conducive to, the unlimited fulness of every well-ordered natural affection; but the latter--a life of more conscious, reflex, and actual attention to God--undoubtedly does require a certain abstraction and concentration of our limited spiritual energies, and can only be trodden at the cost of a certain inward seclusion of which outward seclusion is normally a condition. Instinctively, Catholic tradition has regarded it as a vocation apart--as, like the life of continence, a call to something more than human, and demanding a sacrifice or atrophy of functions proper to another grade of spirituality. Even what is called a "life of thought" makes a similar demand to a great extent; it involves a narrowing of other interests; a departure from the conditions of ordinary practical life. The "contemplative life" is inclusively all this and more; it is a sort of anticipation of the future life of vision. Still, though for a few it may be the surest or the only approach to sanctity, yet there is no degree of Divine love that may not be reached by the commoner and normal path; there have been saints outside the cloister as well as inside. One could hardly offend the first principles of the Gospel more grievously than by making intelligence, culture, and contemplative capacity conditions of a nearer approach to Christ.

It seems to us then that Patmore failed to get at the root of the neglected truth after which he was groping, and thereby fell into a one-sidedness just as real as that against which his chief work was a revolt and protest.

As a convert, Patmore is most uninteresting to the controversialist. His mind was altogether concrete, affirmative, and synthetic, with a profound distrust of abstract and analytical reasoning. As we have said, Christianity and, later, Catholicism appealed profoundly to his intellectual imagination in virtue of some of their deeper tenets, for whose sake he took over all the rest _per modum unius_.

The idea [of the Incarnation] no sooner flashed upon me as a possible reality than it became, what it has ever since remained, ... the only reality worth seriously caring for; a reality so clearly seen and possessed that the most irrefragable logic of disproof has always affected me as something trifling and irrelevant.

Again: "Christianity is not an 'historical religion,' but a revelation which is renewed in every receiver of it." "My heart loves that of whose existence my intellect allows the probability, and my will puts the seal to the blessed compact which produces faith"--an ingenious application of his favourite category.

Of the efforts of Manning and de Vere to proselytize him, he says:

Their position seemed to me to be so logically perfect that I was long repelled by its perfection. I felt, half unconsciously, that a living thing ought not to be so spick and span in its external evidence for itself, and that what I wanted for conviction was not the sight of a faultless intellectual superficies, but the touch and pressure of a moral solid.

Whatever some may think or have thought of his theology, none who knew him could have any doubt as to the robust and uncompromising character of his faith. It was because he felt so sure of his footing that he allowed himself a liberty of movement perplexing to those whose position was one of more delicate balance. He had a ruthlessness in tossing aside what might be called "non-essentials," that was dictated not so much by an under-estimate of their due importance, as by an impatience with those who over-estimated them, confounding the vessel with its contained treasure.

When he says: "I believe in Christianity as it will be ten thousand years hence," it would be a grave misinterpretation to suppose that he implied any lack of belief in the Christianity of to-day. It is but another assertion of his claim to be in sympathy with the esoteric rather than the exoteric teaching of the present; to be on the mount with the few and not on the plain with the many. For as the glacier formed on the mountain slips slowly down to the plain, so, he held, the esoteric teaching of to-day will be the popular teaching of future ages. However little we may relish this distinction between "aristocratic" and vulgar belief; however strongly we may hold that best knowledge of God--that, namely, which is experimental and tactual rather than intellectual or imaginative--is equally accessible to all; yet just so far as there is question of the intellectual and imaginative forms in which the faith is apprehended, the distinction does and must exist, not only in religion but in every department of belief, as long as there are different levels of culture in the same body of believers. It is, after all, a much more superficial difference than it sounds--a difference of language and symbolism for the same realities. Where language fits close, as it does to things measurable by our senses, divergency makes the difference between truth and error; but where it is question of the substitution of one analogy or symbol for another, the more elegant is not necessarily the more truthful; nor when we consider the infinite inadequacy of even the noblest conceivable finite symbolism to bring God down to our level, need we pride ourselves much for being on a mountain whose height is perceptible from the plain but imperceptible from the heavens.

Hence to say that the distinction between esoteric and exoteric teaching means that the Church has two creeds, one for the simple, another for the educated, is a thoughtless criticism which overlooks the necessarily symbolic nature of all language concerning the "eternities," and confounds a different mode of expression with a difference of the facts and realities expressed.

Matthew Arnold, too, believed in the Catholicism of the future; but in how different a sense! What he hoped for was, roughly speaking, the preservation of the ancient and beautiful husk after the kernel had been withered up and discarded; what Patmore looked forward to was the expansion of the kernel bursting one involucre after another, and ever clamouring for fairer and more adequate covering. With one, the language of religion was all too wide; with the other, all too narrow, for its real signification. Arnold belongs to the first, Patmore to the last of those three stages of religious thought of which Mr. Champneys writes:

The first is represented by those whose creed is so simple as to afford little or no ground for contention; the second by such as in their search for greater precision enlarge the domain of dogma, but fail to pass beyond its mere technical aspect; the third consists of those who rise from the technical to the spiritual, and without repudiating or disparaging dogma, use it mainly as a guide and support to thought which transcends mere definition.

_Dec._ 1900.

Footnotes:

[Footnote 1: _Coventry Patmore_. By Basil Champneys. Geo. Bell and Sons, 1900.]

XV.

TWO ESTIMATES OF CATHOLIC LIFE.

Dealing as both do so largely with the inner life of English Catholic society, it is hardly possible to avoid comparing and contrasting _One Poor Scruple_ [1] with _Helbeck of Bannisdale_,--one the work of a Catholic who knows the matter she is handling, almost experimentally; the other the work of a gifted outsider whose singular talent, careful observation, and studious endeavour to be fair-minded, fail to save her altogether from that unreality and _à priori_ extravagance which experience alone can correct. To the non-Catholic, Mrs. Humphrey Ward's book will appear a marvel of insight and acute analysis; for it will fit in with, and explain his outside observation of those Catholics with whom he has actually come in contact, far better than the preposterous notions that were in vogue fifty years ago. It represents them not as monstrously wicked and childishly idolatrous; but as narrow, extravagant, out-of-date, albeit, well-meaning folk--more pitiable than dangerous.

Formerly when they lived secret and unknown, anything might safely be asserted about them; nothing was too wild or improbable. In those days "Father Clement" was the issue of a superhuman effort at charity and fairness; and the author almost seemed to think an apology was needed for such temerarious liberalism. But when Catholics began to breathe a little more freely and to creep out of their burrows somewhat less nervously; when, in fact, they were seen to be, at least in outward semblance, much as other men; some regard had to be paid to statements that could be checked by observation; and the Papist's disappointing ordinariness had to be attributed to dissimulation or to be otherwise interpreted into accord with the preposterous principles by which their lives were thought to be governed.

Mrs. Humphrey Ward represents the furthest advance of this reform. She at least has spared no pains to acquaint herself with facts, to gather information, to verify statements. She is never guilty of the grotesque blunders that other high-class novelists fall into about Catholic beliefs, practices, and habits, simply because they are dealing with what is to their readers a _terra incognita,_ and can, therefore, afford to be loose and inaccurate. An artistic conscientiousness which values truth and honesty in every detail, saves her from this too common snare. But it does not and cannot save her in the work of selection, synthesis, and interpretation of instances, which has to be guided, not by objective facts, but by subjective opinions and impressions. History written in a purely positivist spirit, _ad narrandum_, and in no sense _ad docendum_, is a chimerical notion by which Renan beguiled himself into thinking that his _Vie de Jesus_ was a bundle of facts and nothing more. And Mrs. Humphrey Ward is no less beguiled, if she is unaware that in threading together, classifying and explaining the results of her conscientious observation and inquiry, she is governed by an _a priori_ conception of Catholicism hardly different from that which inspired the author of "Father Clement." Hence, to us Catholics, though her evident desire to be critical and impartial is gratifying, yet her failure is none the less conspicuous. Dr. Johnson once observed, that what might be wonderful dancing for a dog would be a very poor performance for a Christian; and so, to us, "Helbeck" as a presentment of Catholic life is wonderful as coming from an outsider, and, perhaps, especially from Mrs. Humphrey Ward, but in itself it is grotesque enough--not through any culpable infidelity to facts, but through lack of the visual power, the guiding idea, whereby to read them aright.

In _One Poor Scruple_, Mrs. Wilfrid Ward brings to bear upon a somewhat similar task, an equal fidelity of observation supplemented by a first-hand, far wider, and more intimate experience of Catholics and their ways, and, above all, by that key which a share in their faith and beliefs alone furnishes to the right understanding of their conduct. Here too, no doubt, a contrary bias is to be suspected, nor is a purely, "positive" treatment of the subject conceivable or desirable. The view of an insider is as partial as the view of an outsider, though less viciously so; nor can we get at truth by the simple expedient of fitting the two together. The best witness is the rare individual who to an inside and experimental knowledge, adds the faculty of going outside and taking an objective and disinterested view. In truth this needs an amount of intellectual self-denial seldom realized to any great degree; but we venture to say that Mrs. Wilfrid Ward proves herself very worthy of confidence in this respect. There is certainly no artistic idealizing of Catholics, such as we are accustomed to in books written for the edification of the faithful. There is the same almost merciless realism which we find in "Helbeck" in dealing with certain trivialities and narrownesses of piety--defects common to all whom circumstances confine to a little world, but more incongruous and conspicuous as contrasted with the dignity of Catholic ideals. Without conscious departure from truth, Mrs. Humphrey Ward is evidently influenced in her selection and manipulation of facts by the impression of Catholicism she already possesses and wants to illustrate and convey; but Mrs. Wilfrid Ward has, we think, risen above this weakness very notably, and should accordingly merit greater attention.

It may well be that this judicial impartiality may meet with its usual reward of pleasing neither side altogether. Some will complain that she brings no idealizing love to her subject, and does little to bring out the greatness and glory of her religion. Yet this would be a hasty and ill-judging criticism; for our faith is no less to be commended for the restraint it exercises over the multitude of ordinary men and women, than for the effect it produces in souls of a naturally heroic type. That it should bring a certain largeness into the smallest life, that it should impart a strange stability to a naturally unstable and frivolous character; that it should check the worldly-minded with a sense of the superior claims of the other world--all this impresses us, if not with the sublimity or mystic beauty, at least with the solid reality and penetrating power of the Catholic faith.

The most loyal and deep-seated love needs not to shut its eyes to all defects and limitations, but can face them unchilled; and similarly there is often more faith and reverence and quiet enthusiasm in this seemingly cold and critical attitude towards the cause or party we love, than in the extravagant idealism that depends for its maintenance on an ignoring of things as they are.

Nothing perhaps is more unintelligible to the Protestant critic of Catholicism, nothing more needs to be brought out prominently, than the firm hold our religion can exercise over souls that are naturally irreligious.

This very phrase "naturally irreligious" will fall with a shock on sensitive Protestant ears; yet we use it advisedly. While all men are capable of faith and of substantial fidelity to the law of God, it is undeniable that but few are by natural inclination "religious" in the common acceptation of the term. As there is a poetic or mystical temperament, so also there is a religious temperament--not quite so rare, but still something exceptional.

We find it so in all ages, ancient and modern; in all religions, Christian and non-Christian--nay, even amid agnostics and unbelievers we often detect the now aimless, unused faculty. But most men have, naturally, no ardent spiritual sympathy with holiness, or mysticism, or heroism; their interests are elsewhere; and even where there are latent capacities of that kind, they are not usually developed until life's severest lessons have been learnt. Thus the young, who have just left the negative faith and innocence of the nursery behind them and stand inexperienced on the threshold of life, are not normally religious; whereas we naturally expect those who have passed through the ordeal, and been disillusioned, to begin to think about their souls, since there is nothing else left to think about.

Now, the Catholic religion clearly recognizes these facts of human nature, and accommodates herself to them. However frankly it may be acknowledged that a religious temperament--a certain complexus of mental, moral, and even physical dispositions--is a condition favourable to heroic sanctity, it must be emphatically denied that to be "religious," in the Protestant sense of the word, is requisite for salvation. And this denial the Church enforces by her recognition of the "religious state" [2] as an extraordinary vocation. The purpose of "orders" and "congregations" is to provide a suitable environment for people of a religious temperament whose circumstances permit them to attend to its development in a more exclusive and, as it were, professional way. Not, indeed, that all religious-minded persons do, or ought to, enter into that external state of life; nor that all who so enter are by temperament and sympathy fitted for it, but that the institution points to the Church's recognition of what is technically called the "way of perfection" as something exceptional and super-normal.

But the Church has a wider vocation than to provide hot-houses for the forcing of these rare exotics, whom the rough climate of a worldly life would either stunt or kill. Her first thought is for the multitudes of average humanity, who are not, and cannot be, in intelligent sympathy with many of the commands she lays upon them. They are but as children in religious matters--however cultivated they may chance to be in other concerns. From such souls God requires faith, and obedience to the commandments--a due, which, in certain rare crises, may mean heroism and martyrdom; but He does not expect of them that refinement of sanctity, that sustained attention to divine things, which depends so largely on one's natural cast of mind and disposition; and may even be found where the martyr's temper is altogether wanting. We recognize that there is certain serviceable, fustian, every-day piety, where, together with a great deal of spiritual coarseness, insensibility to venial sin and imperfection, there exists a firm faith that would go cheerfully to the stake rather than deny God, or offend Him in any grave point that might be considered a _casus belli_. And on the other hand a certain nicety of ethical discernment and delicacy of devotion, an anxiety about points of perfection, is a guarantee rather of the quality of one's piety than of its depth or strength. The saint is usually one whose piety excels both in quality and strength; the martyr is often enough a man of many imperfections and sins, veiling an unsuspected, deep-reaching faith. The day of persecution has ever been a day of revelation in this respect--a day when the seemingly perfect have been scattered like chaff before the wind, while the once thoughtless and careless have stood stubborn before the blast.