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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Religious Reality, by A.E.J. Rawlinson
+
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Religious Reality
+
+Author: A.E.J. Rawlinson
+
+Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5954]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on September 29, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RELIGIOUS REALITY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+RELIGIOUS REALITY
+
+A BOOK FOR MEN
+
+A. E. J. RAWLINSON
+
+Student of Christ Church, Oxford; Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of
+Lichfield; Priest-In-Charge of St. John The Evangelist, Wilton Road,
+S.W.; Formerly Tutor of Keble College and Late Chaplain to the Forces.
+
+
+WITH A PREFACE
+
+BY
+
+THE BISHOP OF LICHFIELD
+
+
+1918
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+BY
+
+THE BISHOP OF LICHFIELD
+
+
+This is a book which is wanted. Thoughtful men, in every class, are
+not afraid of theology, _i.e._ of a reasoned account of their
+religion, but they want a theology which can be stated without
+conventions and technicalities; they do not at all care for a religion
+which pretends to do away with all mystery, but they are glad to be
+assured of the essential reasonableness of the Christian Faith; they
+do not expect a ready-made solution of the problem of evil, but they
+wish to see it honestly faced; above all, they want to know how
+Christian truth bears on the real problems of life; the best of them
+are not at all afraid of a religion which makes big demands on them,
+but they know well enough the difficulty of responding to those
+claims, and their greatest need of all is to find and to use that life
+and power, coming from a living Person, without which our best
+aspirations must fail and our highest ideals remain unrealized.
+
+These needs seem to me to be satisfactorily and happily met in the
+following pages. My friend and chaplain, Mr. Rawlinson, has had good
+means of knowing what men are and what they want. He has had to do
+with the undergraduate, with officers and men in the Army, and with
+the ordinary civilian in parish life. He has been able to see the
+nature and needs of our British manhood at different angles, and he is
+the sort of man with whom men are not afraid to talk. He has had good
+opportunity of diagnosing the situation, and this book shows his skill
+in dealing with it.
+
+I do not find myself in agreement with everything in these pages, but
+when I am conscious of difference of view, I am no less grateful for
+the stimulus to thought. I am specially thankful that the writer has
+been so courageous in tackling the most difficult subjects.
+
+I know that the author's one desire is to help men to be more real in
+their religion. I share his hope, and I believe that this book will do
+much to accomplish it.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE
+
+
+This book has grown out of the writer's experience in preparing men
+and officers in military hospitals for Confirmation. It represents, in
+a considerably expanded but--as it is hoped--still simple form, the
+kind of things which he would have wished to say to them, and to
+others with whom he was brought into contact, if he had had more time
+and opportunity than was usually afforded him. It seemed necessary to
+write the book, because there did not appear to be in existence any
+reasonably short book on similar lines which covered the ground of
+Christian faith and practice as a whole, and which approached the
+subject from the point of view which seems to the writer to be the
+most real.
+
+The writer is consciously indebted in the first chapter to the
+discussion of our Lord's teaching and character in Dr. T. B. Glover's
+fascinating book, _The Jesus of History_. It is possible that there
+are other and unconscious obligations which have been overlooked. Here
+and there acknowledgment is made in footnotes, and an occasional
+phrase, "lifted" from some other writer, has been placed in inverted
+commas.
+
+In Chapter VIII. of Part I. the author has echoed the thought, and to
+a certain extent the wording, of parts of his own essay on "The
+Principle of Authority" in _Foundations_.
+
+For help in the correction of the proofs, and for criticisms and
+suggestions which have led to numerous modifications and improvements
+in matters of detail, the thanks of the writer are due to various
+friends, and more particularly to his brother, Lieutenant A. C.
+Rawlinson, of the Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars; to the Rev. Austin
+Thompson, Vicar of S. Peter's, Eaton Square; and to the Rev. Leonard
+Hodgson, Vice-Principal of S. Edmund Hall, Oxford.
+
+_November_, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PREFACE BY THE BISHOP OF LICHFIELD
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+PART I
+
+THE THEORY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
+
+CHAP.
+
+I.    THE MAN CHRIST JESUS
+
+II.   THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER
+
+III.  THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE SPIRIT
+
+IV.   THE HOLY TRINITY
+
+V.    THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
+
+VI.   SIN AND REDEMPTION
+
+VII.  THE CHURCH AND HER MISSION IN THE WORLD
+
+VIII. PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC
+
+IX.   SACRAMENTS
+
+X.    THE LAST THINGS
+
+XI.   CLERGY AND LAITY
+
+XII.  THE BIBLE
+
+
+PART II
+
+THE PRACTICE OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
+
+I.    THE CHRISTIAN AIM
+
+II.   THE WAY OF THE WORLD
+
+III.  THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH
+
+IV.   THE WORKS OF THE DEVIL
+
+V.    THE KINGDOM OF GOD
+
+VI.   CHRISTIANITY AND COMMERCE
+
+VII.  CHRISTIANITY AND INDUSTRY
+
+VIII. CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS
+
+IX.   CHRISTIANITY AND WAR
+
+X.    LOVE, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+THE MAINTENANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE
+
+I.   HOW TO BEGIN
+
+II.  PRAYER
+
+III. SELF-EXAMINATION AND REPENTANCE
+
+IV.  CORPORATE WORSHIP AND COMMUNION
+
+V.   THE DEVOTIONAL USE OF THE BIBLE
+
+VI.  ALMSGIVING AND FASTING
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Vital religion begins for a man when lie first discovers the reality
+of the living GOD. Most men indeed profess a belief in GOD, a vague
+acknowledgment of the existence of "One above": but the belief counts
+for little in their lives.
+
+GOD, if He exists at all, must obviously be important: and it is
+conceivable that He prefers the dogmatic atheism of a man here and a
+man there, or the serious agnosticism of a slightly larger number, to
+the practical indifference of the majority. "There are two attitudes,
+and only two, which are worthy of a serious man: to serve GOD with his
+whole heart, because he knows Him; or to seek GOD with his whole
+heart, because he knows Him not."
+
+The ordinary Englishman is in most cases nominally a Christian. As a
+rule he has been admitted in infancy by baptism into the Christian
+Church. But he is ignorant of the implications of his baptism, and
+indifferent to the claims of a religion which he fails to understand.
+These pages are written with the object of explaining what, in the
+writer's judgment, the faith and practice of the Christian Church
+really is.
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+THE THEORY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE MAN CHRIST JESUS
+
+
+It is best to begin with a study of the teaching and character of
+Christ. Scholars for about a hundred years have been studying the
+Gospels historically, "like any other books." It is now reasonably
+certain that the first three Gospels--those which we know as the
+Gospels according to S. Matthew, S. Mark, and S. Luke--though not, of
+course, infallible or accurate in their every detail, reflect
+nevertheless in a general way a trustworthy portrait of Jesus as He
+actually lived. The sayings ascribed to Christ in their pages bear the
+marks of originality. The outline of the events which they describe
+may be taken as being in rough correspondence with the facts. The
+Gospels as a whole represent pretty faithfully the impression made by
+the life and character of Jesus upon the minds and memories of those
+who knew Him best.
+
+We are very apt to regard the Gospels conventionally. An inherited
+orthodoxy which has made peace with the world takes them for granted
+as "a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong." An
+impatient reaction from orthodoxy sets them aside as incomprehensible
+or unimportant. It is worth while making the effort to empty our minds
+of prejudice, and to allow the Gospels to tell their own tale. We
+shall find that they bring us face to face with a Portrait of
+surprising freshness and power.
+
+It is the portrait of One who spent the first thirty years of His life
+in an obscure Galilaean village, and who in early manhood worked as a
+carpenter in a village shop. He first came forward in public in
+connexion with a religious revival initiated by John the Baptist. He
+was baptized in the Jordan. What His baptism meant to Him is
+symbolized by the account of a vision which He saw, and a Voice which
+designated Him as Son of GOD. He became conscious of a religious
+mission, and was at first tempted to interpret His mission in an
+unworthy way, to seek to promote spiritual ends by temporal
+compromises, or to impress men's minds by an appeal to mystery or
+miracle. He rejected the temptation, and proclaimed simply GOD and His
+Kingdom. He is said to have healed the sick and to have wrought other
+"signs and mighty works": but He set no great store by these things,
+and did not wish to be known primarily as a wonder-worker. He lived
+the life of an itinerating Teacher, declaring to any who cared to
+listen the things concerning the Kingdom of GOD. At times He was
+popular and attracted crowds: but He cared little for popularity,
+wrapped up His teaching in parables, and repelled by His "hard
+sayings" all but a minority of earnest souls. He gave offence to the
+conventionalists and the religiously orthodox by the freedom with
+which He criticized established beliefs and usages, by His
+championship of social outcasts, and by His association with persons
+of disreputable life. Unlike John the Baptist, He was neither a
+teetotaller nor a puritan. He was not a rigid Sabbatarian. He despised
+humbug, hypocrisy, and cant: and He hated meanness and cruelty. He
+could be stern with a terrible sternness. His gaze pierced through all
+disguises, and He understood the things that are in the heart of man.
+He saw things naked. He has been called "the great Son of Fact." He
+was never under any illusions.
+
+He faced the hostility of public opinion with unflinching courage. He
+expected to be crucified, and crucified He was. He warned those who
+followed Him to expect a similar fate. He claimed from men an
+allegiance that should be absolute: the ties of home and kindred, of
+wealth or position in the world, were to be held of no account:
+anything which stood in the way of entire discipleship to Himself,
+however compelling its immediate claim, was to be sacrificed without
+hesitation for His sake. He saw nothing inconsistent between this
+concentration of men's allegiance upon His own person, and His
+insistence upon GOD as the one great Reality that mattered.
+
+The motive of His whole life was consecration to the will of GOD. He
+was rich towards GOD, where other men are poor. The words were true of
+Him, as of no one else, "I have set GOD always before me." His mission
+among men He fulfilled as a work which His Father had given Him to do.
+"Lo, I come to do Thy will, O GOD." He loved men, and went about doing
+good, because He knew that GOD loved men, and meant well by them, and
+desired good for them, and not evil. He was pitiful, because GOD is
+pitiful. He hated evil, because GOD hates it. He loved purity, because
+GOD is pure.
+
+He delighted in friendships both with men and women: but you could not
+imagine anything unclean in His friendships. He was not married, but
+He looked upon marriage as an utterly pure and holy thing, taught that
+a man should leave father and mother and cleave unto his wife so that
+they twain should be one flesh, and recognized no possibility of
+divorce except--and even this is not quite certain--on the ground of
+marital unfaithfulness. He had one and the same standard of purity for
+men and women.
+
+He loved children, the birds and the flowers, the life of the open
+air: but He was equally at home in the life of the town. He went out
+to dinner with anybody who asked Him: He rejoiced in the simple
+hilarity of a wedding feast. He was a believer in fellowship, and in
+human brotherhood. He was everybody's friend, and looked upon no one
+as beyond the pale. He loved sinners and welcomed them, without in the
+least condoning what was wrong. He looked upon the open and
+acknowledged sinner as a more hopeful person from the religious point
+of view than the person who was self-satisfied and smug. He said that
+He came to seek and to save those who knew themselves to be lost.
+
+He chose twelve men to be in an especial sense His disciples--learners
+in His school. To them He sought to reveal something of His deeper
+mind. He tried to make them understand that true royalty consists in
+service; that if a man would be spiritually great he should choose for
+himself the lowest room, and become the servant of all; that the
+privilege of sitting on His right hand and on His left in His Kingdom
+was reserved for those for whom it was prepared by His Father; the
+important thing was whether a man was prepared to drink His cup of
+suffering, and be baptized with His baptism of blood. But He did speak
+of Himself as King, He accepted the designation of Himself as the
+Christ of GOD, and spoke strange words about His coming upon the
+clouds of heaven to judgment. He held that by their relation to
+Himself and to His ideals the lives of all men should be tested, and
+the verdict passed upon their deeds. For making these and similar
+claims He was convicted of blasphemy and put to death.
+
+His disciples failed to understand Him. The Gospels are full of the
+contrast between their minds and His. Of the chosen Twelve who, as He
+said, had continued with Him in His trials and to whom He promised
+that they should eat and drink at His table in His Kingdom, and sit on
+thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel, one betrayed and one
+denied Him when the time of crisis came, and the rest forsook Him and
+fled. The fact that their faith and loyalty were subsequently re-
+established--that the execution which took place on Calvary was not
+the complete and summary ending of the whole Christian movement--that,
+in the days that followed, the recreant disciples became the confident
+Apostles, requires for its explanation the assertion in some form of
+the truth of the Resurrection.
+
+With regard to the precise form which the Resurrection took there may
+be room for differences of opinion: the accounts of the risen Jesus in
+the various Gospel records cannot be completely harmonized, and the
+story may here and there have been modified in the telling. The fact
+remains that apart from the assumption as a matter of historical truth
+that Jesus was veritably alive from the dead, and that He showed
+Himself alive to His disciples by evidences which were adequate to
+carry conviction to their incredulous minds, the origins of historical
+Christianity cannot really be explained.
+
+In the Gospel according to S. John it is stated that the crowds said
+of Jesus, "This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the
+world": and so much, at the least, the average Englishman is ready to
+admit: for to call Jesus Christ a Prophet--even to call Him the
+supreme Prophet--is to claim for Him no more than a good Mohammedan
+claims for Mohammed.
+
+The word "prophet" in itself means one who speaks on behalf of
+another: and a prophet is defined to be a spokesman on behalf of GOD.
+He is essentially a man with a message. In so far as he is a true
+prophet he is one who by an imperious inner necessity is constrained
+to declare to his fellows a word which has come to him from the Lord.
+And the prophet's word is urgent: it brooks no delay. It is impatient
+of conventionalisms and shams. It breaks through the established order
+of things in matters both social and religious. It is dynamic, vivid,
+revolutionary. It goes to the root of things, with a startling
+directness, a kind of explosive force. It disturbs and shatters the
+customary placidities of men's lives. It forces them to face spiritual
+realities, to look the truth in the face.
+
+All this is true in a pre-eminent degree of the words of Christ. There
+is a force and directness, an energy and intensity about His teaching,
+which is without parallel in the history of the world. It might have
+been thought impossible for His utterances, in any age or under any
+circumstances, to become conventionalized: but the miracle has been
+achieved. Christianity is to the average Englishman an established
+convention and nothing more.
+
+"Blessed are the poor in spirit," said Jesus: but _we_ say rather,
+"Blessed are the rich in substance."
+
+"Blessed are they that mourn": but that is not the general opinion.
+
+"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth"--but who
+amongst us really believes it?
+
+"Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they
+shall be filled."
+
+"Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy": but to-day a
+more popular maxim is, "Be not merciful unto them that offend of
+malicious wickedness."
+
+"Blessed are the pure in heart"--and how many of us are that?
+
+"Blessed are the peace-makers": but in a time of war they are not very
+favourably regarded.
+
+"Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness' sake"--is
+that _your_ ambition, or mine?
+
+"Ye are the salt of the earth" and "the light of the world"--then the
+earth, it is to be feared, is a somewhat insipid place, and its light
+comparable to darkness visible. "If any man will come after Me, let
+him take up his Cross, and follow Me": but most of us make it a tacit
+condition of our Christianity that we shall _not_ be crucified.
+
+Is it not true that we habitually refuse to take seriously His
+teaching about man; that we water down His paradoxes and
+conventionalize His sayings; that we blunt the sharpness of His
+precepts, and shirk the tremendous sternness of His demands?
+
+And does His teaching about GOD fare any better? GOD was to Jesus
+Christ the one Reality that mattered; is that in any serious sense
+true of us? GOD, He taught, cares for the sparrows, numbers the hairs
+of our heads, sees in secret, and reads our inmost hearts. GOD knows
+all about us, loves us individually, thinks out our life in all its
+relations, and makes provision accordingly. There is nothing which He
+cannot or will not do for His children.
+
+He is near and not far off: He is also on the throne of all things--
+the Universe is in our Father's hand, and His will directs it. "O ye
+of little faith, wherefore did ye doubt?" Fear, on the ground that
+things are stormy, is a thing Christ simply cannot understand.
+
+GOD, moreover, is loving and generous, royal and bounteous: forgiving
+sinners: sending His rain with Divine impartiality upon the just and
+the unjust alike. "His flowers are just as beautiful in the bad man's
+garden." He loves even His enemies, for He is equally the Father of
+all.
+
+And man is made for GOD, and belongs to GOD. GOD and man need one
+another: all that is requisite is that they should find one another:
+and that is the Good News. The discovery of GOD is the Pearl of great
+price, a Treasure worth the sacrifice of everything else: the
+experience of a life-time, and a life-time's acquisitions, apart from
+GOD, are not worth anything at all.
+
+We who call ourselves Christians, do we seriously believe these
+things? Do we really share Christ's outlook upon GOD, or His hope for
+man? Is our view of life centred in GOD, as was His? Or do His words
+of reproach fit us, as they fitted S. Peter--"You think like a man,
+and not like GOD"?
+
+"The way to faith in GOD, and to love for man," it has been said, "is
+to come nearer to the living Jesus." If we would learn Christ's great
+prophecy about man and GOD, we must read the Gospels over again, with
+awakened eyes. We must take seriously the man Christ Jesus. We must
+hear the words of His prophecy, and face honestly the challenge of His
+sayings. We must confront the central Figure of the Gospels in all its
+tremendous realism, watering down nothing, explaining nothing away;
+"wrestling with Jesus of Nazareth as Jacob wrestled with the angel,
+and refusing to let Him go except He bless us." In the end He does
+bless those who wrestle with Him, and we shall not in the end be able
+to stop short of confessing Him as GOD.
+
+For the message of the Gospel story is ultimately not even the
+teaching of Christ: it is Christ Himself. He, alone among the world's
+teachers, perfectly practised what He preached, and embodied what He
+taught. And therefore the truth of GOD and the ideal for man in Him
+are one. In Him we see man as he ought to be, man as he is meant to
+be. And because we instinctively judge that the highest human nature
+is divine, and because also we feel that GOD Himself would be most
+divine and worshipful if we could conceive of Him as entering in and
+sharing our human experience and revealing Himself as man, those who
+have reflected most deeply about the matter have commonly been led to
+believe that so indeed it is. They have felt that in Jesus Christ man,
+as the mirror and the Son of GOD, reflects the Father's glory. They
+have felt that in Jesus Christ GOD, the Eternal Source of all things,
+has expressed and revealed Himself in a human life: that GOD has
+spoken a Word, a Word which is the expression of Himself: and that the
+Word is Christ. "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou
+not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father." For
+there is, in truth, something in Jesus of Nazareth which compels our
+worship. And if we will take seriously the human Jesus we shall
+discover in the end Deity revealed in manhood, and we shall worship
+Him in whom we have believed.
+
+But that, of course, is dogma: in other words, it is the deliberate
+judgment of Christian faith. It is the expression, as a truth for the
+mind, of the value which a soul which is spiritually awake comes to
+set upon Jesus because it cannot do otherwise. A judgment like that is
+the conclusion--it ought not to be taken as the starting-point--of
+faith. There are many, of course, who are willing to begin by assuming
+provisionally that it is true, upon the authority of others who bear
+witness to it: and that is not an unreasonable thing to do, provided a
+man afterwards verifies it in the experience of his own life. But
+belief in the divinity of Jesus is too tremendous a confession lightly
+to be taken for granted by mere half-believers of a casual creed.
+Convictions worth having must sooner or later be fought for: they must
+be won by the sweat of the brow. And if a man is not content
+permanently to defer to the authority of others, he ought not to begin
+by taking for granted the doctrine that Jesus is GOD. He ought to
+begin as the Apostles began, by taking seriously the _Man_ Christ
+Jesus.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER
+
+
+It was characteristic of the ancient Jews that they had a vital belief
+in the living GOD: and belief in GOD, and that of a far more real and
+definite kind than the modern Englishman's vague admission of the
+existence of a Supreme Being, was a thing which Jesus was able to take
+for granted in those to whom He spoke. GOD to the Jew was the GOD of
+Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, holy and righteous, gracious and merciful:
+active and operative in the world, the Controller of events: having a
+purpose for Israel and for the world, which in the process of the
+world's history was being wrought out, and which would one day find
+complete and adequate fulfilment in the setting up of GOD'S Eternal
+Kingdom.
+
+What Jesus did by His life and teaching was to deepen and intensify
+existing faith in GOD by the revelation of GOD as Father, and to
+revive and quicken the expectation of GOD'S Kingdom by the
+proclamation of its near approach. The application to GOD of the term
+"Father" was not new: but the revelation of what GOD'S Fatherhood
+meant in the personal life and faith of Jesus Himself as Son of God
+was something entirely new: while in Jesus' preaching of the Divine
+Kingdom there was a note of freshness and originality, and a spiritual
+assurance of certainty, which carried conviction of an entirely new
+kind to the minds and hearts of those who listened.
+
+All the more overwhelming must have seemed to the disciples the
+disaster of their Master's crucifixion. It was not merely that the
+hopes which in their minds had gathered about His person were
+shattered: their very faith in GOD Himself, and in the goodness of
+GOD, was for the time being torn up by the roots. Nothing but an event
+as real and as objective as the Crucifixion itself could have reversed
+for them this impression of sheer catastrophe. The resurrection of
+Jesus, which was for them the wonder of wonders, not only restored to
+them their faith in Him as the Christ of GOD, now "declared to be the
+Son of GOD with power by the resurrection from the dead"; it also
+relaid for them the foundations of faith in GOD and in His goodness
+and love upon a basis of certainty henceforth never to be shaken.
+"This is the message which we have heard of Him and declare unto you,
+that GOD is light, and in Him is no darkness at all."
+
+Meanwhile what of Jesus Himself--this Christ, through their
+relationship to whom they had come by this new experience of the
+reality of GOD? In symbolical vision they saw Him ascend up into the
+heavens and vanish from bodily sight: in pictorial language they spoke
+of Him as seated at GOD'S right hand. They were assured nevertheless--
+and multitudes in many generations have echoed their conviction--that
+He was still in their midst unseen, their living Master and Lord.
+Instinctively they prayed to Him. Through Him they made their approach
+to the Father. He had transformed for them their world. He was the
+light of their lives. In Him was truth. He was their way to GOD.
+
+All the great movement of Christian thought in the New Testament is
+concerned in one way or another with the working out of this
+experienced significance of Jesus. The maturest expression of what He
+meant to them is contained in the great reflective Gospel--an
+interpretation rather than a simple portrait of the historical Jesus--
+which is ascribed by tradition to S. John. The Christ of the Fourth
+Gospel is man, with all the attributes of most real and genuine
+manhood: but He is also more than man. He is the self-utterance--the
+Word--of GOD. He came forth from GOD, and went to GOD. He is the
+revelation of the Father, the expression of GOD'S nature and being "in
+the intelligible terms of a human life." To have seen Him is to have
+seen the Father, because He and the Father are one. He is the Way, the
+Truth, and the Life: the Bread that came down from heaven: the
+Fountain of living water: the Lamb of GOD, that taketh away the sin of
+the world.
+
+Later Christian orthodoxy never got farther than this. All that the
+formal doctrine of the Incarnation--as expressed, for example, in such
+a formulary as the Athanasian Creed--can truly be said to amount to is
+just the double insistence that Christ is at once truly and completely
+man, and also truly and completely GOD. The paradox is left
+unreconciled--"yet He is not two, but one Christ." The Godhead is
+expressed in manhood: in the manhood we see GOD.
+
+What does it mean to confess the Deity of Christ? It means just this:
+that we take the character of Christ as our clue to the character of
+GOD: that we interpret the life of Christ as an expression of the life
+of GOD: that we affirm the conviction, based upon deep and unshakable
+personal experience, that "GOD was in Christ reconciling the world
+unto Himself."
+
+What is the real question, the most fundamental of questions, which
+arises when we seek to interpret the world we live in? Is it not just
+the question: What is the nature or character of the ultimate Power or
+Principle or Person upon which or upon whom the world depends? Is not
+every religion, every imagined deity, in one sense an altar to the
+unknown GOD? The venture of Christian faith consists in staking all
+upon the assumption, the hypothesis abundantly verified in the life's
+experience of such as make it, that the character of the unknown GOD
+is revealed in Christ: that the love of Christ is the expression of
+the love of GOD, the sufferings of Christ an expression of the
+suffering of GOD, the triumph of Christ an expression of the eternal
+victory of GOD over all the evil and wickedness which mars the wonder
+of His creation. If we were to look primarily at the life of Nature,
+we might be tempted to say that GOD was cruel. If we considered
+certain of the works of man, we might be tempted to conclude that GOD
+was devilish. Looking at Jesus we gain the assurance that GOD is Love.
+We behold "the light of the knowledge of the glory of GOD in the face
+of Jesus Christ," and we are satisfied.
+
+And so we come to Jesus--the Prophet that is come into the world: and
+what we shall find, if we will suffer Him to work His work in us, is
+this. He will change our world for us, and will transform it. He will
+redeem our souls, so that there shall be in us a new birth, a new
+creation. He will show us the Father, and it shall suffice us. He will
+set our feet on the road to Calvary, and we shall rejoice to be
+crucified with Him. He will convert us--He will turn our lives inside
+out, so that they shall have their centre in GOD, and no longer in
+ourselves. He will bestow on us the Spirit without measure, so that we
+shall be sons and daughters of the Highest. And we shall know that we
+are of GOD, even though the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we
+shall know that the Son of GOD is come, and that He hath given us an
+understanding, that we may know Him that is true, and that we are in
+Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE SPIRIT
+
+
+To know GOD and to find Him revealed in Jesus Christ is not enough. To
+have set before one in the human life of Jesus an ideal of character,
+a pattern of perfect manhood for imitation, if the message of the
+Gospel were regarded as stopping short at that point, could only be
+discouraging to men conscious of moral weakness, of spiritual
+impotence and incapacity. It is probable that one of the reasons why
+the plain man to-day is so very apt to regard Christianity as
+consisting in the profession of a standard of ideal morality to which
+he knows himself to be personally incapable of attaining, and which
+those who do profess it fail conspicuously to practise, is to be found
+in the entire absence from his mind and outlook of any conception of
+the Holy Spirit, or any belief in the availability of the Spirit as a
+source of transforming energy and power in the lives of men.
+
+As a matter of fact, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is of absolutely
+vital importance in the Christian scheme: and like all the great
+Christian doctrines, it has its basis in the realities of living
+experience. The opening chapters of the Acts of the Apostles set
+before us the picture of the earliest disciples, assured and no longer
+doubtful of the reality of the Resurrection, waiting in Jerusalem for
+a promised endowment of "power from on high." And the story of
+Pentecost is the record of the fulfilment of "the promise of the
+Father."
+
+We are making a mistake if we fix our attention primarily upon the
+outward symbols of wind and fire, or confuse our minds with the
+perplexities which are suggested by the references to "speaking with
+tongues." These things--however wonderful to the men of the Apostolic
+generation--are in themselves only examples of the psychological
+abnormalities which not infrequently accompany religious revivals.
+They are, as it were, the foam on the crest of the wave: evidences
+upon the surface of profounder forces astir in the deeper levels of
+personality. The disciples felt themselves taken hold of and
+transformed. Henceforth they were new men. "GOD had sent into their
+hearts through Jesus Christ a Power not of this world: only such a
+power could achieve what history assures us was achieved by those
+early Christians. By its compelling influence they found themselves
+welded together into a religious and social community, a fellowship of
+faith and hope and love, the true Israel, the Church of the living
+GOD. Enabled to become daily more and more like Jesus, they developed
+an ever fuller comprehension of His unique significance: and so they
+went about carrying on the work and teaching which He had begun on
+earth, certain that He was with them and energizing in them. They
+healed the sick in mind and body, they convinced Jewish and Pagan
+consciences of sin and its forgiveness, they created a new morality,
+and established a new hope: life and immortality were brought to
+light. And then, as need arose, they were inspired to write those
+books of the New Testament, in which their wonderful experience of GOD
+at work in them remains enshrined, the norm and standard of Christian
+faith and practice for all time. The Power which enabled them to do
+all this they called the Holy Spirit." [Footnote: _The Holy Spirit,_
+by R. G. Parsons, in _The Meaning of the Creed_. (S.P.C.K., 1917)]
+
+To be "filled with the Spirit," to be "endued with power from on
+high," to be made free by the Spirit, so as to be free indeed--
+released from the tyranny of a dead past, from bondage to law and
+literalism, from the power of sin and of evil habit--and to be brought
+forth into the glorious liberty of the sons of GOD: this was a very
+vital and essential part of what Christianity meant in the experience
+of those first disciples. The new morality of the Gospel, the new
+righteousness which was to exceed the righteousness of Pharisees and
+Scribes, was a thing as widely removed as possible from painful
+conformity to the letter of an external code: it was a fruit--a
+spontaneous outcome--of the Spirit. S. Paul has described for us the
+fruits of the Spirit as he had seen them manifested in the lives of
+men--"love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness,
+faithfulness, meekness, self-control": they are the essential
+lineaments of the character of Christ: they are summed up in the
+thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians in S. Paul's great hymn to Charity
+or Love, which itself reads like yet another portrait of the Christ. A
+Christianity which through the Spirit brought forth such fruits was
+true to type. The Spirit, in short, reproduced in men the life of
+filial relationship towards GOD: He is described as the Spirit of
+adoption, whereby men are enabled to cry Abba, Father.
+
+The Holy Spirit, moreover, is a Spirit of insight and interpretation,
+quickening men's faculties, enlightening their minds, enabling them to
+see, and to understand. He brings to remembrance the things of Christ
+and unfolds their significance: under His inspiration Christian
+preaching was developed, and a Christian doctrine about Christ and
+about GOD. In confident reliance upon His advocacy and His support the
+Apostles were made bold to confront in the name of Jesus a hostile
+world. Is it any wonder that in the eyes of their contemporaries they
+appeared as men possessed, as men made drunk with the new wine of some
+strange ecstasy, or mad with the fervour of some inexplicable
+exaltation? Yet the Spirit did not normally issue in ecstasy. It is
+not the way of GOD to over-ride men's reason, or to place their
+individual personalities in abeyance. The operation of the Spirit is
+to be seen rather--apart from His work in the gradual purification and
+deepening of character and motive, the bringing to birth and
+development in men's souls of the "new man" who is "Christ in them,
+the hope of glory"--in the intensification of men's normal faculties
+and gifts, and the direction of their exercise into channels
+profitable to the well-being of the community. For the Holy Spirit is
+the Spirit of brotherhood: and His gifts are bestowed "for the fitting
+of GOD'S people for the work of mutual service": they are for the
+upbuilding of the Body of Christ. The real miracle of the Christian
+life is simply the Christian life itself: and that a man should love
+his neighbour as himself is at least as wonderful as that he should
+speak with tongues.
+
+Reflecting upon the experience which had come to them, Christian men
+came to see that the Holy Spirit, who was the Spirit of the Father and
+the Son, was Divine, even as Jesus was Divine. In this strange Power
+which had transformed their lives they discovered GOD, energizing and
+operative in their hearts. Instinctively they worshipped and glorified
+the Spirit as the Lord, the Giver of Life. Those who have entered upon
+any genuine measure of Christian experience are not prepared to say
+that they were wrong.
+
+The Christian life depends upon the Spirit, now as then. Only in the
+power of the Holy Spirit is Christianity possible, and no one ever yet
+made any real advance in personal religion except in dependence upon
+an enabling energy of which the source was not in himself. "It is the
+Spirit that maketh alive." "The Spirit helpeth our infirmities." "I
+know that in myself, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing."
+"If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children,
+how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them
+that ask Him." It is because of our lack of any living or effectual
+belief in the Holy Spirit, and because of our consequent failure to
+seek His inspiration and to submit ourselves to His influence, that
+the Christianity of men to-day is often so barren and so poor a thing;
+and the corporate life of Christendom languishes for the same reason.
+The Church is meant to be a fellowship, a brotherhood: the most real
+and living brotherhood on earth. Men find to-day the realization of
+brotherhood in a regiment: they find it in a school or in a club: in a
+Trade Union: or in such an organization as the Workers' Educational
+Association. They fail to find it in the Church of Christ.
+
+The Church can never be a brotherhood save in the Holy Spirit: for
+Christianity is essentially and before all things a religion of the
+Spirit, and the external organization and institutions of the Church,
+apart from "His vivifying breath, are a mere empty shell. Where there
+is no vision the people perish: and it is only under the inspiration
+of the Spirit that men see visions and dream dreams. Come from the
+four winds, O Breath, and breathe upon these dry bones of our modern
+churchmanship, that we may live: and so at last shall we stand upright
+on our feet, an exceeding great army, and go forth conquering and to
+conquer in the train of the victorious Christ."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE HOLY TRINITY
+
+
+God, as Christianity reveals Him, is no cold or remote Being, no
+abstract Principle-of-All-Things, reposing aloof and impersonal in the
+stillness of an eternal calm. He is rather the boundless energy of an
+eternal Life--"no motionless eternity of perfection, but an
+overflowing vitality, an inexhaustible fecundity, the everlasting
+well-spring of all existence." He is the eternal Creator of all
+things; not indeed in any sense which commits us to a literal
+acceptance of the mythology of Genesis, but in the sense that the
+created universe has its origin in His holy and righteous will, and
+that upon Him all things depend. "In affirming that the world was made
+by GOD, we do not affirm that it was ready-made from the beginning."
+The work of creation is still going on. GOD is eternally making all
+things new.
+
+The nature of GOD, in so far as the mind and affections of man are
+capable of knowing Him and entering into relationships with Him, is
+revealed in Jesus Christ His Son, and the revelation is completed and
+made intelligible by the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. S. Paul
+expressed the practical content of GOD'S self-disclosure in his phrase
+"the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of GOD, and the
+fellowship of the Holy Ghost." Later Christian thinkers worked it out
+into the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the conception of GOD as at
+once Three in One, and One in Three.
+
+To the plain man the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is something of a
+puzzle--on the face of it an arithmetical paradox; suggestive,
+moreover, of the abstract subtleties of speculation rather than of the
+concrete realities of religious life. But the doctrine did not have
+its origin, as a matter of historical fact, in any perverse love of
+subtlety or speculation. It certainly arose out of living realities of
+spiritual experience. It arose as the result of an attempt, on the
+part of the earliest Christian believers, to think out the meaning of
+what had happened in their religious lives, and to express it in
+speech and thought. What was this thing that had come to them, this
+thing which had changed their whole outlook upon the world, which had
+transformed their very inmost souls and made them new men, full of a
+new vision and a new hope? Something tremendous had happened in their
+lives. They were confident that it held the secret of _all_ life, for
+them and for others. It was a new, an overwhelming, a conclusive
+revelation of GOD. They proclaimed it: they were constrained also to
+think about it. They had to find ways of expressing it. They had to
+think out what it meant.
+
+There was Jesus Christ. Who was He? What did He mean? What was His
+relation to man, and to GOD? Certainly He had shed light upon GOD, and
+upon GOD'S nature. Through His teaching, His character, His life and
+death, the conception of GOD was filled with a new meaning. In Him GOD
+was revealed with a fulness that had never been before. He disclosed
+more of GOD'S inmost character, and more of the relation which He
+bears to men. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father"--the
+disciples felt that this witness was true. By admitting to their
+thought of GOD all that the life of Jesus brought, they filled with
+fresh glory Christ's favourite word for GOD--"your Father which is in
+Heaven."
+
+In Jesus, they felt, GOD was expressed: His relationship to GOD was
+unique. They found the Divine in Him as in no other. They knew that
+GOD was in that life because He had spoken and acted there. "Through
+the eyes of Jesus" GOD looked out upon the world, and in Jesus' love
+and purity and yearning for the sinful and the heavy-laden, GOD
+Himself became visible. They knew now what GOD was like. GOD was like
+Christ. It was His glory that shone in Jesus' face. It was a new
+vision of Him when "Jesus of Nazareth passed by." In the grace--that
+is, the beauty, the glory and attractiveness--of the Lord Jesus Christ
+they saw a revelation of the love of GOD, a love that yearned over the
+fallen and the sorrowful, a love that suffered, and through suffering
+brought redemption.
+
+But there was something more. It was not simply that in Jesus Christ
+GOD had been brought near, so that they felt they knew GOD as never
+before. There was in the experience which had come to them more than
+simply a Revealer and a Revealed. There was the Spirit which took
+possession of them, a transforming inward Power: a Power able to
+reproduce in them, by a process of growth from more to more, that
+character of Christ in whose lineaments they had discerned the nature
+of the eternal GOD Himself. There was a Presence abiding in their
+midst, dwelling within them, a Breath of the Divine Life which every
+Christian knew: a Presence which brought strength and comfort, power
+and love and discipline, and bore fruits of love and joy and peace.
+Who or what was it? An influence from on high? Yes: but it seemed more
+intimate, more personal than any mere "influence," more indissolubly
+one with them, knitting them into a fellowship in which they were
+united with the Father and the Son. "Truly our fellowship is with the
+Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ." The Spirit which bore such
+fruits in them, which brought them into so intimate a fellowship with
+GOD in Christ, they recognized as the Spirit of GOD, as the Presence
+in them of very GOD Himself. GOD, they felt, was not a Being far off,
+an Influence telling upon men from a distance. He was the very secret
+of life, "closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet," so that
+each soul was meant to be a sacred "temple of GOD," "GOD abiding in
+him and he in GOD." GOD came in the Son, GOD had come also and equally
+in the Spirit. The Eternal Source of all things, who was known and
+worshipped as the Living One even before Christ came, was made more
+fully known in Christ, and now He was still more intimately made known
+in the inmost spiritual life of every day.
+
+That was Christian experience. That was the experience out of which
+the doctrine of the Trinity arose. It arose out of an attempt to think
+the thing out. If we to-day find the doctrine difficult, at least the
+experience was and is both simple and profound. And we cannot help
+thinking about it.
+
+It may be that sometimes we think we would rather be content to say
+simply with S. John that "GOD is Love." And that is truly the simplest
+of Christian creeds. If we were able fully to understand it, it would
+be sufficient. "Holy Trinity, whatever else it may signify, is a mode
+of saying 'Holy Love.'" But as a matter of fact it is only through the
+revelation of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the fellowship of
+the Holy Spirit that we can ever come to understand the love of GOD.
+In the Christian Gospel GOD is revealed first as Father, secondly as
+Sufferer, thirdly as the Spirit of eternally victorious Life: and it
+takes the whole threefold revelation to express with any fulness the
+rich wonder of what is meant by saying that GOD is Love. Our minds
+cannot help passing from the contemplation of the threefold character
+of GOD'S self-revelation to the thought of a certain threefoldness in
+GOD Himself. We have to find room and place for such a thought--the
+thought that GOD is _eternally_ Love, that He is _eternally_ Father,
+Son, and Spirit--and yet at the same time not depart from the
+fundamental Christian conviction that GOD is One.
+
+It is to be feared that many Christian people do sometimes come
+dangerously near to believing in three separate Gods, and what we call
+Unitarianism is a one-sided protest against such a tendency. GOD is
+indeed a unity: and so far Unitarianism is right. But Unitarianism is
+less than the full Christian faith in GOD, because it fails to do
+justice to the full riches of Christian experience, the many-sided
+wonder of GOD revealed in Christ, and made real to us here and now by
+the operation of the Spirit in our hearts. We are driven to say that
+GOD is not only One, but Three in One.
+
+Nevertheless, if any one finds the _theory_ of the Holy Trinity
+difficult let him not be overmuch dismayed. Let him learn to know GOD
+as Father and Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour: let him learn to know
+the Holy Spirit as an energy of eternal life and inspiration in his
+heart. He will then be _in effect_ a Trinitarian believer, even though
+the theologians seem to him to talk a language which he does not
+understand: even though--to tell the truth--he is not greatly
+interested by what they say.
+
+At the same time, there is need that people should think out the
+meaning of the Christian revelation of GOD: perhaps that they should
+think it out afresh. It is possible to be technically orthodox and
+correct in doctrine and yet to miss the true reality of what GOD
+means. The conception of GOD as Father implies that GOD has eternally
+a Son: the life of Jesus Christ as Son of God reveals to us the
+quality of that Divine Fatherhood to which His Sonship corresponds.
+The Spirit, as the Divine Energy proceeding from the Father and the
+Son, is the assurance that the life of GOD can never be self-contained
+or aloof, but is for ever going forth from Himself, so as to be
+eternally operative and active, alike in the processes of Nature and
+in the lives of men. For "the Spirit of the Lord filleth the world,"
+and the Divine Wisdom "reacheth from one end to the other mightily,
+and sweetly ordereth all things."
+
+It follows that Christianity, the religion of the Spirit, can never
+stand still. Not stagnation, but life, is its characteristic note,
+even "that Eternal Life which was with the Father, and hath been
+manifested unto us." The Church which is truly alive unto GOD, and
+aflame with the spirit of allegiance to Him who for the joy that was
+set before Him endured the Cross, the Church which is truly quickened
+and inspired by the Spirit of Truth and Love and Power, will always be
+ready to "live dangerously" in the world, not shrinking timorously
+from needed change or experiment, not holding aloof from conflict and
+adventure and movement, but facing courageously all new situations and
+new phases whether of life or of thought as they arise, shirking no
+issues, welcoming all new-found truth, bringing things both new and
+old out of her treasure-house, so that she may both "prove all things"
+and also "hold fast that which is good."
+
+There are conceptions of GOD proclaimed from Christian pulpits which
+are less than the full Christian conception of GOD. The GOD who is
+eternal Energy and Life and Love, the GOD who is revealed in Christ,
+and whose Spirit is the Spirit of Freedom and Brotherhood and Truth,
+is neither the tyrant God of the Calvinist, nor the dead-alive God of
+the traditionalist, nor the obscurantist God of those who would decry
+knowledge and quench the Spirit. Neither, again, is GOD the God of
+militarists, a God who delights in carnage--even though it should be
+the carnage of Germans; or the God who is thought of by His
+worshippers as being mainly the God of the sacristy, a kind of
+"supreme Guardian of the clerical interest in Europe." Least of all is
+GOD the commonplace deity of commonplace people, a sort of placid
+personification of respectability, the GOD whose religion is the
+religion of "the Conservative Party at prayer."
+
+He is a consuming Energy of Life and Fire. His eyes are "eyes of
+Flame," and His inmost essence a white-hot passion of sacrifice and of
+self-giving. At the heart of His self-revelation there is a Cross, the
+eternal symbol of the almightiness of Love: the Cross which is the
+source and the secret of all true victory, and newness of life, and
+peace.
+
+This, and none other, is the GOD whom truly to know is everlasting
+life, and whom to serve is liberty. For He it is who has made us unto
+Himself, with hearts that are restless until they rest in Him. To do
+His will is to realize the object of our existence as human beings:
+for it is to fulfil the purpose for which we have our being, the end
+for which we were created; even to glorify GOD, and to enjoy Him for
+ever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
+
+
+But are not the evil and misery of the world, is not all that which we
+know as "sin" and pain, in manifest contradiction to this Christian
+conception of a GOD of Love? Most certainly they are: and it has been
+the strength of Christianity from the beginning that--unlike many
+rival systems and philosophies, including the "Christian Science"
+movement of modern times--it has always faced facts, and in particular
+has never regarded pain and sin, disease and sorrow and death, as
+anything but the stubborn realities which in point of fact they are.
+If we ask, indeed, how and why it was that evil, whether physical or
+moral, originally came into the world, the Gospel returns no answer,
+or an answer which, at best, merely echoes the ancient mythology of
+Jewish traditional belief--"By the envy of the Devil sin entered into
+the world, and death by sin": an answer which indeed denies
+emphatically that evil had its origin in GOD, and declares its
+essential root to lie in opposition to His will, but without
+attempting any explanation of the difficulty of conceiving how
+opposition to the will of GOD is possible.
+
+The Gospel is concerned with issues that are practical rather than
+strictly theoretical: and the really practical problem with regard to
+evil is not how it is to be explained but how it is to be overcome. If
+we ask how evil first arose, the only honest answer is that we do not
+know: though we can see how the possibility, at least, of moral evil
+(as distinct from mere physical pain) is implicit of necessity in the
+existence of moral freedom. The question is sometimes asked, "If GOD
+is omnipotent, why does He permit evil?" But the doctrine of Divine
+omnipotence is misconceived when it is interpreted to mean that GOD is
+able to accomplish things inherently self-contradictory. GOD is
+omnipotent only in the sense that He is supreme over all things, and
+able to do all possible things. He is not able to do impossible
+things: and to make man free, and yet to prevent him from doing evil
+if he so chooses, is a thing impossible even to GOD. Man is left free
+to crucify his Maker, and he has availed himself of his freedom by
+crucifying both his Maker and his fellow-man.
+
+If we ask, "Why does not GOD prevent war? Why does He permit murder
+and cruelty and rapine?" the answer is that He could only prevent
+these things by dint of over-riding the will of man by force: and
+moreover that it is not the method of GOD to do for man what man is
+perfectly well able to do for himself. For wars would cease if men
+universally desired not to fight.
+
+We are really raising a much more difficult question if we ask, "Why
+does GOD allow cancer?" And to this, it may be, there is no completely
+satisfactory answer to be given: though it is possible to see that
+cancer and other diseases have a biological function, and also to
+recognize that the endurance of pain in some cases (though not in all)
+ennobles and deepens character. The writer of the Epistle to the
+Hebrews does not hesitate to say of Christ Himself that He "learned
+obedience by the things which He suffered."
+
+In general it must be said that Christianity does not afford any
+complete theoretical solution of the problem of evil: what it does is
+to provide a point of view which sets evil in a new light, and which
+is adequate for the purposes of practical life. It teaches us that
+physical suffering, so far as it is inevitable, is to be endured and
+turned to spiritual profit, as a thing which is capable of bearing
+fruit in the deepening and discipline of character: and that moral
+evil is to be overcome, by the power of the grace of GOD in Christ.
+
+If we ask, "Why should the innocent suffer?" the Christian answer is
+contained in the Cross. "Christ also suffered, being guiltless": and
+although, if Christ were regarded simply as a man and nothing more,
+this fact would merely intensify the problem, the matter assumes a
+different complexion if Christ be regarded as the revelation of GOD.
+For if so, then suffering enters into the experience of GOD Himself,
+and so far from GOD being indifferent to the sorrow and misery of the
+world, He shares it, and is victorious through it. "In all their
+affliction, He was afflicted." GOD is Himself a Sufferer, the supreme
+Sufferer of all, and finds through suffering the instrument of His
+triumph. But if this be true, then all suffering everywhere is set in
+a new and a transfiguring light, for it assumes the character of a
+challenge to become partaker in the sufferings and triumph of the
+Christ. "Can ye drink of the Cup that I drink of?"
+
+So interpreted, suffering ceases to be a ground of petulance or of
+complaint. It is discovered to have a value. It is judged to be worth
+while. And it is possible to find in such a faith the grounds of a
+conviction that behind and beneath all suffering is the love which
+redeems it and the purpose which shall one day justify it, and that in
+very truth no sparrow falls to the ground without the Heavenly
+Father's knowledge and care.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SIN AND REDEMPTION
+
+
+The Gospel affirms that men are called to be sons of GOD; to be
+perfect, as the heavenly Father is perfect. The correlative of this
+ideal view of man as he is meant to be is a sombre view of man as he
+actually is. "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and
+the truth is not in us." "All have sinned, and come short of the glory
+of GOD."
+
+Sin is essentially a falling short, a missing of the mark, a failure
+to correspond with the purpose and the will of GOD. It need not
+necessarily involve--though of course it does in many instances
+involve--the deliberate transgression of a moral law which the
+conscience of the individual sinner recognizes as such. There are sins
+of omission as well as of commission, sins of ignorance as well as of
+deliberate intent. The fact that the conscience of a given individual
+does not accuse him, that he is not aware of himself as a sinner
+before GOD, is no evidence of his moral perfection, but rather the
+reverse. Jesus Christ, who possessed the surest as well as the sanest
+moral judgment the world has ever known, held deliberately that the
+open and acknowledged sinner, just because he was aware of his
+condition, was in a more hopeful spiritual state than the man who
+through ignorance of his own shortcomings believed himself to be
+righteous. The Pharisee, who compared himself with others to his own
+advantage, was condemned in the sight of GOD. The Publican, who would
+not so much as lift up his eyes unto heaven, but judging himself and
+his deeds by the standard of GOD'S holiness acknowledged himself a
+sinner, went away justified rather than the other. It is probably true
+that the ordinary man to-day is not worrying about his sins: but if
+so, the fact proves nothing except the secularity of his ideals and
+the shallowness of his sense of spiritual issues. It means, in short,
+that he has not taken seriously the standard of Christ. For the
+measure of a man's sin is simply the measure of the contrast between
+his character and the character of Christ.
+
+It is likely enough that many of us will never discover that we are
+sinners until we have deliberately tried and failed to follow Christ.
+The moment we do try seriously to follow Him, we become conscious of
+the presence within ourselves of "that horrid impediment which the
+Churches call sin." We discover that we are spiritually impotent: that
+there is that in us which is both selfish and self-complacent: that
+there is a "law of sin in our members" which is in conflict with the
+"law of the Spirit of life": and that "we have no power of ourselves
+to help ourselves." We are at the mercy of our own character, which
+has been wrongly moulded and formed amiss by the sins and follies, the
+self-indulgences and the moral slackness of our own past behaviour. We
+are, indeed, "tied and bound by the chain of our sins."
+
+To have realized so much is to have reached the necessary starting-
+point of any fruitful consideration of the Christian Gospel of
+redemption. The appeal of the Cross of Christ is to the human
+consciousness of sin; and the first effect of a true appreciation of
+the meaning of the Cross is to deepen in us the realization of what
+sin really is. The crucifixion of Christ was not the result of any
+peculiarly unexampled wickedness on the part of individuals. It was
+simply the natural and inevitable result of the moral collision
+between His ideals and those of society at large. The chief actors in
+the drama were men of like passions with ourselves, who were actuated
+by very ordinary human motives. It is indeed easy for men to say, "If
+we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been
+partakers with them in the blood of the prophets": but in so saying
+they are merely being witnesses unto themselves that they are the
+children of them which killed the prophets. Are we indeed so far
+removed beyond the reach of the moral weakness which yields against
+its own better judgment to the clamorous demands of public opinion, as
+to be in a position to cast stones at Pilate? Are we so exempt from
+the temptation to turn a dishonest penny, or to throw over a friend
+who has disappointed us, as to recognize no echo of ourselves in
+Judas? Have we never with the Sanhedrin allowed vested interests to
+warp our judgment, or resented a too searching criticism of our own
+character and proceedings, or sophisticated our consciences into a
+belief that we were offering GOD service when as a matter of fact we
+were merely giving expression to the religious and social prejudices
+of our class? Have we never, like the crowds who joined in the hue-
+and-cry, followed a multitude to do evil? There appears in the midst
+of a society of ordinary, average men--men such as ourselves--a Man
+ideally good: and He is put to death as a blasphemer. That is the
+awful tragedy of the Crucifixion. What does it mean? It means that a
+new and lurid light is thrown upon the ordinary impulses of our mind.
+It means that we see sin to be exceeding sinful. That is the first
+salutary fruit of a resolute contemplation of the Cross.
+
+The Cross shows us, in a word, what we are doing when we sin:
+consciously or unconsciously, we are crucifying that which is good. If
+we are able to go further, and by faith to discover in the character
+and bearing of the Son, crucified upon the Cross, the revelation of
+the heart of the Eternal Father, there dawns upon our minds a still
+more startling truth: consciously or unconsciously, we are crucifying
+GOD. Assuming, that is to say, that GOD is such as Christianity
+declares Him to be, holy, righteous, ideal and perfect Love, caring
+intensely for every one of His creatures and having a plan and a
+purpose for each one, then every failure of ours to correspond with
+the purpose of His love, every falling short of His ideal for us,
+every acknowledged slackness and moral failure in our lives, much more
+every wilful and deliberate transgression of the moral law, is simply
+the addition of yet a further stab to the wounds wherewith Love is
+wounded in the house of His friends. "Father, forgive them; they know
+not what they do"--the words of the Crucified are the revelation of
+what is in fact the eternal attitude of GOD: they are the expression
+of a love that is wounded, cut to the heart and crucified, by the
+lovelessness, the ingratitude, the tragedy of human sin, but which
+nevertheless, in spite of the pain, is willing to forgive.
+
+But the Cross is no mere passivity. It is more than simply a
+revelation of Divine suffering, of the eternal patience of the love of
+GOD. It is the expression of GOD in action: a deed of Divine self-
+sacrifice: a voluntary taking upon Himself by man's Eternal Lover of
+the burden of man's misery and sin. There is a profound truth in the
+saying of S. Paul, that the Son of GOD "loved me, and gave Himself for
+me": as also in S. Peter's words about the Christ "who His own self
+bare our sins in His own body on the Tree, that we, being dead to
+sins, should live unto righteousness." There is no need to import into
+the phrases of the New Testament writers the crude transactional
+notions of later theology, no need to drag in ideas about penalties
+and punishments. The sole and sufficient penalty of sin is simply the
+state of being a sinner [Footnote: Sin, of course, may involve
+consequences, and the consequences may be both irrevocable and bitter;
+nor is it denied that fear of consequences may operate as a deterrent
+from certain kinds of sin. What is denied is that such consequences
+are rightly to be described as "punishment."]: and the conception of
+_vicarious_ "punishment" is not merely immoral, but unintelligible.
+Vicarious _suffering_, indeed, there is: an enormous proportion of the
+sufferings of mankind--and the sufferings of Christ are a conspicuous
+case in point--arise directly as the result of others' sin and may be
+willingly borne for others' sake. And Christ died because of His love
+for men, and as the expression of the love of GOD for men. He who
+"wholly like to us was made" sounded the ultimate depths of the
+bitterest experience to which sin can lead, even the experience of
+being forsaken of GOD. "So GOD loved the world."
+
+Regarded thus, the Cross is at once a potent instrument for bringing
+men to repentance, and also the proclamation of the free and royal
+forgiveness of men's sins by the heavenly Father. "What the law could
+not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, GOD sending His own
+Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in
+the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us,
+who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."
+
+Forgiveness must be received on the basis of repentance and confession
+as the free and unmerited gift of GOD in Christ: but the redemption
+which Christ came to bring to men does not stop short at the bare gift
+of initial forgiveness. The Cross cannot rightly be separated from the
+Resurrection, nor the Resurrection from the bestowal of the Spirit.
+The forgiveness of past transgressions carries with it also the gift
+of a new life in Christ and the power of the indwelling Spirit to
+transform and purify the heart. And this is a life-long process--a
+process, indeed, which extends beyond the limits of this present life.
+The old Adam dies hard, and the victory of the spirit over the flesh
+is not lightly won. In the life-story of every Christian there are
+repeated falls: there is need of a fresh gift of forgiveness ever
+renewed. It is only over stepping-stones of their dead selves that men
+are enabled to rise to higher things. But already in principle the
+victory is won. "In all these things we are more than conquerors
+through Him that loved us." We see in Christ the first-fruits of
+redeemed humanity, the one perfect response on the side of man to the
+love of GOD. And through Christ, our Representative, self-offered to
+the Father on our behalf, we are bold to have access with confidence
+unto the throne of GOD and in Him to offer ourselves, that so we may
+obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE CHURCH AND HER MISSION IN THE WORLD
+
+
+The GOD and Father of Jesus Christ loves every human being
+individually, cares for each and has a specific vocation for each one
+to fulfil. This doctrine of the equal preciousness in the sight of GOD
+of all human souls is for Christianity fundamental. But the
+correlative of Divine fatherhood is human brotherhood: just because
+GOD is love, and fellowship is life and heaven, and the lack of it is
+hell, GOD does not redeem men individually, but as members of a
+brotherhood, a Church.
+
+The Church is simply the people of GOD. It is the fellowship of
+redeemed mankind, the community of all faithful people throughout this
+present world and in the sphere of the world beyond--one, holy,
+apostolic (i.e. missionary), and catholic, that is, universal. Death
+is no interruption in that Society, race is no barrier, and rank
+conveys no privilege. "There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision
+nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is
+all, and in all": over the Church the gates of Death prevail not: and
+"ye are all one Man in Christ Jesus."
+
+Furthermore, the Church is described as the Body, that is, the
+embodiment, of Christ: the instrument or organ whereby the Spirit of
+Christ works in the world. Her several members are individually limbs
+or members in that Body, and their individual gifts and capacities,
+whatever they may be, are to be dedicated and directed to the service
+of the Body as a whole, and not to any sectional or selfish ends or
+purposes. In practical churchmanship, rightly understood, is to be
+discovered the clue to the meaning and purpose of human life.
+
+Again, the Church is by definition international. The several races
+and nationalities of mankind have each their specific and individual
+contribution to make to the Church's common life, in accordance with
+their specific national temperaments and genius. All of them together
+are needed to give adequate expression in human life to the many-sided
+riches of GOD in Christ. The Church is incomplete so long as a single
+one remains outside. The idea, therefore, of a so-called "National"
+Church, as a thing isolated and self-contained, is intrinsically
+absurd.
+
+Therefore also the Church is missionary. She exists in order to
+proclaim to all the world the Good News of the love of GOD. She exists
+to bring all men everywhere under the scope of Christ's redemption,
+and to claim for the Spirit of Christ the effectual lordship over all
+human thought and life and activity. It is her threefold task at once
+to develop and make real within her own borders the life of
+brotherhood in Christ, to evangelize the heathen by declaring to them
+the satisfaction of their instinctive search for GOD in the answering
+search of GOD for them, and to labour for the discovery and
+application of Christian solutions to the problems of industry and
+commerce, of politics and social life and international affairs.
+
+In so far as the Church has been true to the Spirit of Christ she has
+succeeded; in so far as she has made compromises with the world, and
+in every generation has in greater or less degree been disloyal to the
+standards of her Master, she has failed. In every generation there has
+been partial and obvious failure, side by side with real, if partial
+and in some ways less immediately obvious, success. But the Church can
+never wholly fail and must one day wholly succeed, for the reason that
+behind her is the omnipotence of the love of GOD.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC
+
+
+The last chapter sketched the ideal of the Church and her essential
+mission. The realization of that ideal in the existing Church, visibly
+embodied here in earth is extremely fragmentary and imperfect. The
+Church that is one, and holy, and apostolic, and catholic, the
+brotherhood in Christ of all mankind, knit into unity by the
+fellowship of the Holy Spirit, remains a vision of the future, though
+a vision which, once seen, mankind will never relinquish until it be
+accomplished. "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," it has been
+said, "but I regret that she does not as yet exist."
+
+What does exist is a bewildering multiplicity of competing
+"denominations," whose points of difference are to the plain man
+obscure, but whose mutual separation is in his eyes an obvious scandal
+and an offence both against charity and against common sense. Why
+cannot they agree to sink their differences, and to unite upon the
+broad basis of a common loyalty to Christ? To what purpose is this
+overlapping and conflict? The reluctant tribute of the ancient
+sceptic--"See how these Christians love one another"--has become the
+modern worldling's cynical and familiar jibe; and when to the
+spectacle of Christian disunion is added the observation that
+professing Christians of all denominations appear to differ from other
+men, for the most part, "solely in their opinions" and not in their
+lives, the impulse to cry "A plague upon all your Churches" may seem
+all but irresistible.
+
+Yet the problem is not susceptible of any cheap or hasty solution.
+Unity is the Church's goal; but the Church cannot arrive at unity by
+mere elimination of differences. Agreement to differ is not unity: an
+agreement to pretend that the differences were not there would not
+even be honest. What is needed is a sympathetic study of the divergent
+traditions and principles which lie behind existing differences, with
+a view to discovering which are really differences of principle, and
+which rest merely upon prejudice. Unity, when it comes, can only be
+based upon mutual understanding and synthesis. The task will not be
+easy, and the time is not yet.
+
+Meanwhile the individual's first duty is to be loyal in the first
+instance [Footnote: Of course in the last resort no loyalty is due to
+any lesser authority than that of truth, wheresoever it is found and
+whatsoever it turns out to be.] to the spiritual tradition and
+discipline of the "denomination" to which he in fact belongs, unless
+and until he is led to conclude that some other embodies a fuller and
+more synthetic presentation of religious truth. It is a mistake for a
+man to be content either to remain in ignorance of his own immediate
+spiritual heritage or to refuse to try to understand what is
+distinctive and vital in the religious heritage of others. Most fatal
+of all is the attempt to combine personal loyalty to Christ with the
+repudiation of organized Christianity as a whole. True loyalty to
+Christ most certainly involves common religious fellowship upon the
+basis of common membership in the people of GOD.
+
+As a matter of fact, so soon as the various sects and denominations
+into which modern Western Christianity is divided are seriously
+examined, they are seen to fall into three main types or groups.
+Standing by herself is the Church of Rome, venerable, august,
+impressive in virtue of her unanimity, her coherence, her ordered
+discipline, and her international position, representing exclusively
+the ancient Catholic tradition, and making for herself exclusive
+claims. At the opposite end of the scale there are the multitudinous
+sects of Protestantism, differing mutually among themselves but
+tending (as some observers think) to set less and less store by their
+divergences and to develop towards some kind of loosely-knit
+federation--a more or less united Evangelical Church upon an
+exclusively Protestant basis. Between the two stands the Church of
+England, reaching out a hand in both directions, presenting to the
+superficial observer the appearance of a house divided against itself;
+representing nevertheless, according to her true ideal, a real attempt
+to synthesize the essentials of Catholicism with what is both true and
+positive in the Protestant tradition.
+
+Protestantism stands for the liberty of the individual, for freedom of
+thought and of inquiry, for emphasis upon the importance of vital
+personal religion, for the warning that "forms and ceremonies" are of
+no value in themselves, but only in so far as they are the expression
+and vehicle of the spirit. Protestantism proclaims the liberty of
+Christian prophesying, the free and unimpeded access of every human
+soul to the heavenly Father, the spiritual equality of all men in the
+sight of GOD. The Protestant tradition is jealous for the evangelical
+simplicity of the Gospel, and in general may be said to represent the
+principle of democracy in religion.
+
+Catholicism, on the other hand, bears witness to the glory of
+Churchmanship, to the importance of corporate loyalty to the Christian
+Society, to the value of sacramentalism, and the rich heritage of
+ancient devotional traditions, of liturgical worship and ordered
+ecclesiastical life. For Catholicism rites and sacraments are not
+anomalies, strange "material" excrescences upon a religion otherwise
+"spiritual." They are themselves channels and media of the Spirit's
+operation, vehicles of life and power.
+
+Catholicism is more inclusive than Protestantism, including, indeed,
+some things which Protestants are apt to insist should be excluded.
+The future would seem to lie neither with the negations of pure
+Protestantism nor with a Catholicism wholly unreformed; but rather
+with a liberalized Catholicism which shall do justice to the truth of
+the Protestant witness. For the present the best opportunity for the
+working out of such a liberalized Catholicism is to be found within
+the Church of England: and it is from the point of view of an English
+Churchman that the remainder of this book will be written.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+SACRAMENTS
+
+
+It is sometimes asked whether the sacraments of the Christian Church
+are two or more than two in number. The answer depends in part upon
+how the term "sacrament" is defined. But the wisest teaching is that
+which recognizes in particular sacraments--such as Baptism and the
+Supper of the Lord--the operation of a general principle which runs
+throughout all human experience, in things both sacred and profane. "I
+have no soul," remarked a well-known preacher on a famous occasion, "I
+have no soul, because I _am_ a soul: I _have_ a body." It would be
+difficult to express more aptly the principle of sacraments, or--what
+comes to the same thing--the true relationship of the material to the
+spiritual order.
+
+We are accustomed, in the world as we know it, to distinguish "spirit"
+from "matter": and we are tempted, by the mere fact that we draw a
+distinction between them, to think and speak at times as though spirit
+and matter were necessarily opposed. This is a great mistake. Matter,
+so far from being the opposite or the contradiction of spirit, is the
+medium of its expression, the vehicle of its manifestation. Spirit and
+matter are correlatives, but the ultimate reality of the world is
+spiritual. It is the whole purpose and function of matter to express,
+to embody, to incarnate, the Spirit. The preacher, therefore, was
+quite right. "I _am_ a soul": that is, I am a personality, a spirit:
+and to say that is to give expression to the fundamental truth of my
+existence: I _am_ a soul, and I am _not_ a body. But "I _have_ a
+body": that is, my personality is embodied or incarnate: I have a body
+which serves as the vehicle or instrument of my life as a man here
+upon earth: a body which is the organ of my spirit's self-expression
+and the medium both of my life's experience and of my intercourse with
+other men. I think, and my thoughts are mediated by movements of the
+brain. I speak, and the movements of my vocal chords set up vibrations
+and sound-waves which, impinging upon the nerves of another's ear,
+affect in turn another's brain: and the process, regarded from the
+point of view of the physiologist or the scientific observer, is a
+physical process through and through: yet it mediates from my _mind_
+to the mind of him who hears me a meaning which is wholly spiritual.
+
+This principle of the mediation of the spiritual by the material is
+the principle of sacramentalism. It is the principle of incarnation,
+which runs throughout the world. The body is in this sense the
+sacrament of the spirit, sound is the sacrament of speech, and
+language the sacrament of thought. So in like manner water is the
+sacrament of cleansing, hands laid upon a man's head are the sacrament
+of authority or of benediction, food and drink are the sacrament of
+life. All life and all experience are in a true sense sacramental, the
+inward ever seeking to reveal itself in and through the outward, the
+outward deriving its whole significance from the fact that it
+expresses and mediates the spirit: so it is that a gesture--a bow or a
+salute--may be a sacrament of politeness, a handshake the sacrament of
+greeting and of friendship, the beauty of nature a sacrament of the
+celestial beauty, the world a sacrament of GOD.
+
+It is in the light of this general principle of sacraments that the
+specific sacraments of Christianity are to be understood. In Baptism
+the water of an outward washing is the sacrament both of initiation
+into a spiritual society, and also of the cleansing and regenerating
+power of GOD. In Confirmation the Church's outward benediction, of
+which the Bishop is the minister, is the sacrament of an inward gift
+of spiritual strength. In Absolution words outwardly pronounced by
+human lips are a sacrament of Divine forgiveness and a pledge to
+assure us thereof. In the Eucharist the outward elements of food and
+drink are the sacramental embodiment of Christ and the vehicles of His
+outpoured life. Other sacraments, or rites commonly reckoned
+sacramental, we need not here particularly consider. [Footnote:
+Matrimony and Holy Orders are discussed in different connexions
+elsewhere in this book. The sacrament of Unction, by which is meant
+the Anointing of the Sick with oil in the name of the Lord with a view
+to their recovery (to be distinguished from the mediaeval and modern
+Roman use of "Extreme Unction" as a preparation for death), has been
+revived sporadically within the Church of England in recent times, but
+is not usually for the plain man of more than academic importance or
+interest.]
+
+_Baptism and Confirmation_
+
+Baptism is the sacrament of Christian initiation, whereby a man is
+made visibly a member of the Christian fellowship. Converts were
+originally baptized in adult life, as they are to-day in the mission
+field. The candidate publicly renounced his heathen past and made a
+profession of his faith in Christ and his desire to be loyal to His
+Church. As a sinner in need of redemption he went down into the water,
+and was three times immersed in the Name of the Father, and of the
+Son, and of the Holy Ghost. The rite conveyed an assurance of the
+forgiveness of sins. The going down into the water symbolized the
+burial of the dead past. The coming up out of the water expressed the
+idea of resurrection to newness of life in Christ. The new-made
+Christian was said to be born again of water and of the Spirit: the
+"old Adam" was slain, the "new man" raised up. The candidate was
+henceforward a "member of Christ," a "child of GOD," an "inheritor of
+the Kingdom of Heaven." He was admitted both to the privileges and to
+the responsibilities of Church membership. It remained only that he
+should walk worthily of his Christian profession, and to this end
+hands were laid upon his head in benediction, with prayer that he
+might be made strong by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.
+Confirmation was thus the complement of Baptism, and the two things
+normally went together. The same order is still commonly observed to-
+day in the case of persons baptized in adult life, and has the
+advantage of making the significance of both rites, and their mutual
+relation, at once more vivid and more intelligible.
+
+But the question arose, in the second Christian generation, of the
+status of children in relation to the Church. Might children be
+admitted to membership in infancy, or must they wait until they were
+adult? The Church decided that they were admissible, provided there
+were reasonable assurance that they would be Christianly brought up.
+Why should a child grow up in heathenism? Had not the Lord said,
+"Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not"?
+There seemed no reason why children should not be brought at once
+within the sphere of Christian regeneration.
+
+But if children were baptized in infancy, it was plainly essential
+that they should at a later stage receive systematic instruction in
+Christian faith and practice; and the Western Church (though not the
+Eastern) adopted the practice of separating Confirmation from Baptism,
+and deferring the former until such instruction had been received. The
+plan has obvious advantages, though it tends to obscure in some
+respects the essential meaning of Confirmation and its original close
+relation to the sacrament of Baptism.
+
+In modern usage Baptism is normally administered by a priest,
+Confirmation always by a Bishop. Candidates are received by the latter
+upon the assurance of one of his subordinate clergy that they are
+adequately instructed and rightly disposed by faith and penitence to
+receive the gifts of the Holy Ghost--"the spirit of wisdom and
+understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of
+knowledge and of the fear of the Lord." As an immediate preliminary to
+the actual rite the candidate solemnly and deliberately declares his
+acceptance of the obligations and implications of his baptism. The
+laying on of hands which follows is in one aspect the recognition by
+the Bishop, as chief pastor of the flock of Christ in his own diocese,
+that the candidate is henceforward of communicant status. In another
+aspect it is the bestowal through prayer of a fuller gift of the Holy
+Ghost, whereby the candidate is "confirmed" (_i.e._ made strong). It
+should be noted that the Bishop's prayer for each candidate is not
+that he may be made magically perfect there and then, but that he may
+"daily increase" in GOD'S Holy Spirit "more and more," until he come
+to GOD'S "everlasting Kingdom."
+
+_The Sacrament of Repentance_
+
+It must be admitted that very large numbers of those who are confirmed
+lapse at an early stage in their lives from the communion of the
+Church and never return. The causes of this are various, and there is
+no one sovereign or universal remedy. Sometimes it is to be feared
+that there has been either lack of intelligence or lack of
+thoroughness in the candidates' preparation. In not a few cases what
+has really happened is that the young communicant has been led into
+the commission of some sin of a kind which his own conscience
+recognizes as grave, so that he feels that he has spoilt his record
+and failed to "live up to" his profession. To go back to communion, he
+thinks, would in these circumstances be a kind of mockery.
+Unfortunately he does not know--since too often he has not been
+taught--any effectual method of spiritual recovery and renewal.
+
+What is needed in such cases is a real doctrine and practice of
+Christian repentance. It is the universal teaching of the Christian
+Church that forgiveness is freely available for all those who truly
+repent. A man who, laying aside self-justification, will freely
+acknowledge his offences and shortcomings before GOD, and that in a
+spirit not of self-pity, self-loathing or self-contempt, but of sorrow
+at having brought discredit upon the Christian name and done what in
+him lies to crucify the Son of GOD afresh, may freely claim and find
+in Christ forgiveness and inward peace.
+
+This Gospel or message of the forgiveness of sins it is part of the
+mission of the Christian Church to set forth. It is her mission to set
+it forth not merely as a piece of good news proclaimed in general
+terms to the world at large, but as a healing assurance brought home
+in detail, as need may require, to the individual consciences of
+sinners. "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and
+whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." The words may have
+been uttered by the historical Jesus of Nazareth, or they may not--
+they are ascribed to the risen Christ in the Fourth Gospel. In any
+event they represent the Church's conviction of her authority to
+exercise a reconciling ministry, to remit sins and to retain them.
+
+In early times such grave offenders as by their deeds had brought
+scandal upon the Christian name were excluded from Christian
+fellowship until reconciled by penance; and many whose sins, being
+secret, might otherwise have escaped detection, preferred to make open
+confession of them in the Christian assembly. "Confess your faults one
+to another," writes S. James, "and pray one for another, that ye may
+be healed." The ancient system of public "penance" (_i.e._ penitence)
+was for a time at least revived in a modern form by Wesley.[Footnote:
+The "class-meeting" of strict Wesleyanism is said to have originally
+involved mutual confession of sins among the members of the "class."]
+Its application to notorious offenders is described in the English
+Prayer-book as a "godly discipline," the restoration of which is "much
+to be wished." But it is hardly practicable under the conditions of
+modern Church life, and it has disadvantages as well as advantages.
+Its working in the early days of the Church was not found to be wholly
+for good.
+
+Burdened consciences nevertheless require relief: and sin is not
+merely a private affair between the soul and GOD; it is also an
+offence against the Brotherhood. A system grew up under which the need
+was met by the substitution, in the majority of cases, of private for
+public penance. Confession was made, no longer before the whole
+assembly, but privately before the Bishop, whose office it was, both
+as pastor of the flock and as representative of the Church, to declare
+forgiveness or "absolution," and to restore penitents to communion. At
+a later date presbyters or priests were also authorized, as delegates
+of the Bishop for this and other purposes, to receive confessions and
+to absolve penitents.
+
+In this way arose in the Church what came to be known as the sacrament
+of Penance, or the practice of sacramental confession. It was ranked
+as a sacrament for the reason that the inward assurance of GOD'S
+pardon is in this connexion outwardly mediated by words of Absolution
+audibly pronounced. In medieval times there grew up a regular system
+of the confessional and an elaborate science of the guidance and
+direction of souls. Recourse to sacramental confession was made
+obligatory for all Christians at least once in the year. [Footnote:
+This is still the formal rule of the Church of Rome.] The system came
+to be attended by many superstitions and abuses, frequently it was
+exploited in the interests of a corrupt sacerdotalism, sometimes it
+was associated with a degrading casuistry.
+
+But the confessional met and meets a real human need; and while
+Protestantism, as a whole, broke away at the time of the Reformation
+in a violent reaction from the whole theory and practice of
+sacramental confession, the Church of England quite deliberately
+retained it. It was abolished as a compulsory obligation. It was made
+less prominent in the Church's system. But as a means of spiritual
+reconciliation and spiritual guidance, freely open to such as for any
+reason desire to make use of it, it was retained; and in the case of
+persons who for reasons of conscience hesitate to present themselves
+for Holy Communion it is specifically urged in the Book of Common
+Prayer as the needed remedy. [Footnote: See the closing paragraph of
+the first of the three lengthy exhortations to Holy Communion, printed
+immediately after the "Prayer for the Church Militant" in the Prayer-
+book.]The words of S. John xx. 23 are quoted in the Anglican formula
+of ordination to the priesthood; and a form of words to be used by the
+priest in the private absolution of penitents is prescribed in the
+Office for the Visitation of the Sick.
+
+As regards the theory of the confessional it is important to bear
+certain things in mind. The confession is made primarily to GOD,
+secondarily to His Church. The priest is the Church's accredited
+delegate and representative. He acts not in virtue of any magical
+powers inherent in himself, either as an individual or as a member of
+any so-called sacerdotal caste. If he declares the penitent absolved
+it is as pastor of the flock, and as one officially authorized by the
+Church to be her mouthpiece for these purposes. The ultimate absolving
+authority, under GOD, is the Christian Society as a whole. It is a
+confessor's duty to assure himself of the reality of the penitent's
+contrition, and to enjoin that restitution or amends shall be made for
+any wrong which has been done, in all cases in which amends or
+restitution is possible. He may also give advice and counsel for the
+guidance of the spiritual life; and it is customary to enjoin the
+performance of a "penance," which in modern practice usually takes the
+form of some minor spiritual exercise of a more or less remedial kind.
+The acceptance of the penance is regarded as an enacted symbol of
+submission to the Church's judgment. (The mediaeval theory that the
+penance is of the nature of a punishment or penalty imposed by the
+Church upon her erring members ought, I think, to be repudiated. It is
+perhaps permissible to differ from the moral theology of Borne in
+holding that it is not essential to impose a penance at all, while
+recognizing the value in most cases of suggesting some definite act of
+self-discipline or observance, of a kind adapted to the penitent's
+circumstances and needs). The confessor is, of course, bound in the
+strictest way not to reveal anything said to him in confession, or to
+broach the subject again to the penitent without the latter's express
+permission, or to allow his subsequent manner or behaviour to be
+influenced in any the least degree by what has been confessed.
+
+It is highly unfortunate that the practice of sacramental confession
+should have been made the subject of controversy, and as a consequence
+of this that the Church's teaching with regard to it should have been
+either unhealthily suppressed or obtruded out of season. There are
+without doubt numerous cases in which such a spiritual remedy is badly
+needed. There are burdened souls needing absolution and there are
+perplexed souls needing guidance. What is desirable is that the actual
+teaching of the Church of England on this subject should be plainly
+and frankly set before her members, and that opportunities should be
+afforded them of making their confessions if they desire or need to do
+so. It is the plain duty of a parish priest to provide such
+opportunities for his people. He is as plainly going beyond his duty
+if he tries to enforce the practice of sacramental confession as a
+necessary obligation. There are differences of opinion as to how
+widespread is the spiritual need to which confession ministers. There
+are reasons for thinking that it is more widespread than is commonly
+recognized. But it is of vital importance that no one should be
+pressed or brow-beaten into going to confession, or should do so, in
+any circumstances, otherwise than by his own voluntary act.
+
+_The Sacrament of Holy Communion_
+
+Throughout Christian history and in all parts of Christendom the
+central and highest focus of Christian worship and devotion, and the
+great normal vivifying channel of spiritual renewal and power, has
+been the sacrament of Holy Communion. It has been celebrated amid
+great diversities of liturgy and ritual and circumstance, and has been
+known by many different names and titles--mass, eucharist, communion,
+sacrifice: essentially it is one thing--the sacrament of the Body and
+Blood of Christ.
+
+The Gospels record that at the Last Supper on the night of His
+betrayal the Lord Jesus took bread and blessed and broke it, saying,
+"Take, eat: this is My Body, which is for you: do this in remembrance
+of Me": and that in like manner He took a Cup of mingled wine and
+water, and when He had given thanks He gave it to them, saying, "This
+Cup is the New Covenant in My Blood, which is shed for you and for
+many for the remission of sins: do this, as often as ye shall drink
+it, in remembrance of Me."
+
+With the exceptions of the Society of Friends and the Salvation Army,
+every existing "denomination" of Christians has continued in one form
+or another the observance of this Mystical Meal. In the Roman Church,
+and in many parishes of the Church of England, it is celebrated daily;
+and it is evident from the provisions of her Prayer-book that the
+Church of England intends that there shall be a celebration of the
+Communion in all normal parishes at least on all Sundays and Holy
+Days.
+
+Historically the institution of the weekly Eucharist is deeply rooted
+in the tradition of the Church, and is the origin of the Christian
+Sunday, The Christians met together week by week to keep on the day of
+the Lord's rising that memorial of the crucified yet risen Christ
+which is also Christ's gift of Himself to men. It would have seemed
+unthinkable in the early days of Christianity for any baptized
+Christian, who was not prevented by unavoidable circumstances from
+being present, to be absent on the Lord's Day from the Lord's Table.
+It ought to be equally unthinkable to-day.
+
+With regard to the significance of the Sacrament, a man's view is
+necessarily coloured partly by his own experience as a communicant,
+and partly by the extent to which he is disposed to attach weight to
+the devotional traditions of Christendom as a whole; and it is worth
+remembering that forms of teaching about Holy Communion which are
+intellectually crude may represent a real, though an infelicitous,
+attempt to express in thought certain elements in eucharistic
+experience which are deep and real, and to which more attenuated types
+of doctrine fail to do justice.
+
+The celebration of the Eucharist is from one point of view an enacted
+drama, a doing over again in the name and in the person of Christ of
+that which Christ did in His own person on the night of the Last
+Supper. Bread is taken and blessed and broken and offered to GOD in
+thanksgiving: Wine in like manner is poured out and blessed and
+offered together with the Bread. And the Bread and the Wine symbolize
+the Body and the Blood of Christ--the Body that was broken and the
+Blood that was shed--the life that was freely given for the life of
+the world.
+
+The whole drama of the Eucharist is thus deeply symbolical; but the
+Bread and the Wine are more than _mere_ symbols in the modern sense of
+that word. They are a sacrament of Christ Himself, who by means of
+them manifests His presence in the midst of His worshipping disciples
+to be the Bread of life and the Food of souls. "This is My Body"--that
+is, "This embodies Me: where this is, I am: receiving this, you
+receive Me." "This is My Blood"--that is, "This is My life: My life
+which is given for you: My life which in death I laid down and in
+rising again from the dead I resumed: My life which is to be the
+principle of spiritual life in you." "Except ye eat the flesh of the
+Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth
+My flesh and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life.... He that eateth
+My flesh and drinketh My blood, dwelleth in Me and I in him."
+
+There is, then, in the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ a
+manifestation of Christ's Real Presence, a spiritual Presence indeed,
+which is discerned by the spiritual vision of Christian faith, but a
+Presence of which the reality is independent of individual
+faithlessness, though not independent of the faith of the Christian
+Church as a whole.
+
+This doctrine of the Real Presence (as it is called) of course does
+not imply that Christ is absent from His Church at other times or in
+other connexions. We believe that all times and places are present to
+the mind of Christ, and that therefore at all times and in all places
+we are in His presence. We believe, further, that Christ through the
+Spirit is embodied, however inadequately, in His Church, and that He
+dwells spiritually in the hearts of Christian men. There is nothing,
+however, in these truths to exclude the further truth that His
+presence is specially manifested through the Bread which embodies Him
+and the Wine which is His Blood. Bread and wine, solemnly set apart
+for the purpose of communion and hallowed by the Spirit in response to
+the prayer of the Church, possess henceforward a significance which
+did not belong to them before. They are now vehicles or sacraments of
+the Body and Blood of Christ.
+
+The purpose of the manifestation of Christ's Presence in Holy
+Communion is that we should receive Him, and a participation in the
+service which stops short of actual communion is so far incomplete.
+But it is gratuitous to assume that the reality of the sacramental
+Presence is limited to the moment of actual or individual reception,
+and it is untrue to say that attendance at the service, apart from
+individual reception, is unmeaning. The habitual attendance of persons
+who are not regular communicants--unless it be in the case of those
+who for any reason are as yet unconfirmed--falls short of full
+discipleship and is intrinsically undesirable. But this objection does
+not apply to attendance at the service on the part of communicant
+Churchmen who yet on a particular occasion do not communicate: and to
+attend throughout the service without personally communicating is a
+procedure infinitely preferable to the irreverent modern custom, still
+prevalent in too many parishes, of leaving the Church in the course of
+a celebration of the Communion, and before the consecration has taken
+place. It is unfair to those who are preparing to receive Communion
+that their devotions should be disturbed by the noisy egress of a
+large body of worshippers. It is also quite unintelligible that any
+Churchman who considers seriously the meaning of the Eucharist should
+be content to depart before the liturgical drama has reached its
+climax.
+
+As regards actual reception of Holy Communion, it is a partaking of
+Christ, who gives Himself therein to His disciples to be in them a
+spiritual principle of life and power. S. Paul discovers in the
+Eucharist a spiritual food and drink which is the reality to which the
+Manna and the Water from the Rock of Hebrew story correspond as types
+and shadows, and he declares that the Bread which we break is a
+sharing of the Body of Christ, and that the Cup of Blessing which we
+bless is a sharing of His Blood. At the same time the Communion is not
+to be interpreted in any gross or carnal manner, or in such a way as
+to give colour to the ancient taunt of Celsus, the heathen critic,
+that Christians were self-confessed cannibals. The Fourth Gospel,
+which, in a context that is in a general sense eucharistic, ascribes
+to our Lord strong phrases about the necessity of eating His flesh and
+drinking His blood, proceeds in the same context to explain that "it
+is the Spirit that giveth life," that "the flesh," in itself,
+"profiteth nothing." "The sayings which I have spoken unto you are
+spirit and are life." In other words, we are to understand that when
+our Lord uses the terms "flesh" and "blood" He means the Spirit of
+which His life in the flesh was the expression, and the Life of which
+His outpoured Blood was the principle: that the inward reality of the
+Eucharist is to be discovered, not in any quasi-material fleshly
+embodiment which the Bread conceals, or in any quasi-literal Blood,
+but rather in the Spirit and the Life of Christ Himself. The Bread is
+His Body in the sense that it is an embodiment of His Spirit: the Wine
+is His Blood in the sense that it mediates His Life. The sacrament is
+to be understood as a "point of personal contact with Jesus Christ."
+Rightly to receive Communion is to hold spiritual converse with the
+risen Lord and to find in Him the Bread of Life, the food and
+sustenance of the soul. So it is that the Eucharist, at once supremely
+natural and wholly supernatural, is the meeting-place of earth and
+heaven. From one point of view our worship is in the heavenly places
+in Christ Jesus. It is "with angels and archangels and with all the
+company of heaven," that we laud and magnify GOD'S Holy Name. We join
+in an eternal act of worship, which is that of the whole Church, the
+departed with the living, whose adoration ascends continually before
+the throne of GOD.
+
+If we like to express it so, we are pleading the eternal sacrifice: we
+are uniting ourselves, in desire and in intention, with Christ's
+eternal self-devotion and oblation of Himself. Calvary itself was in a
+sense but the enacted symbol, the supreme outward expression, of our
+Lord's sacrifice, of which the inward essence is eternal. It is the
+self-offering of a Will that was wholly dedicated to GOD on others'
+behalf, obedient even unto death, and through death triumphant: the
+Will of One "who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without
+spot to GOD," and who now, being ascended into the heavens, for ever
+liveth to make intercession for us. Looking at the Eucharist from this
+point of view we are bold to approach the Throne of GOD and to offer
+Christ on our behalf--"Behold the Lamb of GOD that taketh away the sin
+of the world": but we proceed also to offer ourselves in Christ--"Here
+we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and
+bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and lively sacrifice unto Thee."
+
+And so doing we are made one with Christ and one in Him with each
+other. The Eucharist has a social aspect which is too little regarded.
+It is the sacrament of Holy Fellowship. "We that are many are one
+Bread, one Body," wrote S. Paul, "for we all partake of the one
+Bread." The Holy Communion is the sacrament of the unity of all
+Christians in Christ. The scandal of a divided Christendom shows
+itself perhaps most of all in the fact that it prevents inter-
+communion. For that very reason it appears to many persons unreal, and
+therefore wrong, to practise isolated acts of inter-communion while
+ecclesiastical differences remain unresolved: it is to conceal the
+fact of actual disunion beneath the cloak of immediate sentiment. Yet
+there is a true sense in which, through the Spirit, we _are_, in the
+act of communion, made one with the fellowship of all faithful people
+whether in the sphere of this earthly life or in the world that is
+beyond death and tears: with all those, of whatever race or rank or
+age or country, who amid whatever diversity of language and liturgy
+and denominational loyalty, have named the name of Christ and received
+the life of Christ in obedience to His command as they understood it.
+There is no bond comparable to this bond, and no equality like the
+equality of those who, high and low, rich and poor, one with another,
+kneel side by side as brothers and sisters at the common Table of the
+Lord.
+
+And lastly there is a further point. The Body of Christ is a broken
+Body and the Blood is Blood that is shed. "This is My Body which is
+for you"--for you, and never for Myself. The Bread is the Bread of
+Sacrifice and the Cup is the Stirrup-cup of Service: and part, surely,
+and a great part, of the meaning of the words, "Do this in remembrance
+of Me," is "Break your bodies in union with My Body broken: give your
+lives in sacrifice for others, as I have given Mine." The Eucharist,
+rightly regarded, is the mainspring and motive-power of service, the
+principle of a life that is crucified. And all those who in their day
+and generation have spent their lives unselfishly and used themselves
+up in promoting causes not their own are partakers in that Holy
+Fellowship.
+
+At this present time of war and tumult, when all the powers of Hell
+are abroad and leagued together for the onset, we think of that which
+alone can be the redemption of war, even the self-devotion of those
+who, hating the whole devilish business and going into it only because
+they saw no alternative to Duty's clear and imperative call, have been
+counted worthy to show forth the love than which no man hath greater,
+even to lay down their lives for their friends. There is no one so
+unfortunate as not to have known some such men. And at the Communion
+Service "in the act of conscious incorporation into the fellowship of
+the love of Jesus," it may be given to us in some measure to
+understand these things, and to know that we are become partakers in
+the power of a world-wide crucifixion, a fellowship of broken bodies
+and lives poured out in Christ: and to know also--with a knowledge
+that is not of this world--that somehow, in it and through it, the
+Spirit of GOD in Christ will bring redemption.
+
+So wonderful, so many-sided, and so full of meaning is this Sacrament:
+so great is the measure of their loss who, professing and calling
+themselves Christians, are content to ignore the last injunction of
+the Christ to His disciples on the night before He died that we might
+live.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE LAST THINGS
+
+
+"It is appointed unto men once to die, and after death the judgment."
+
+"He shall come again in glory to judge both the quick and the dead,
+whose Kingdom shall have no end."
+
+"I believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting."
+
+Jesus Christ spoke in symbolical language of His coming in the clouds
+of heaven as Son of Man with power and great glory, and declared that
+the Divine verdict upon the lives and deeds of men should be
+determined by their relationship to Him and to His ideals. Both in the
+days of the Apostles, and for the most part among succeeding
+generations of Christian people down to the present time, it would
+seem that a more literal signification was attached to His words than
+they will really bear. The truth of the Divine Judgment upon men's
+lives nevertheless stands. "GOD is a great Judge, strong and patient:
+and GOD is provoked every day." We must, however, be careful, in
+thinking of the reality of Divine Judgment, to interpret the justice
+of GOD in the light of the Christian revelation of His Love. The
+attitude of GOD towards sinners is never anything but love, though a
+love that is holy and righteous, and never merely sentimental. GOD as
+Christ reveals Him can never impose or inflict a merely external
+penalty upon a sinner, other than the supreme penalty of being simply
+what he is, viz. a soul who by his own deliberate actions has
+separated himself from goodness and from GOD. It is important in
+thinking of the Judgment to remember that the essence of judgment is
+neither the sentence nor the penalty: it is simply the verdict,
+whereby moral and spiritual realities are revealed, shams and
+disguises are stripped off, and evil is separated from good.
+[Footnote: The associations of an English law-court, in which the
+verdict is the work of the jury, are here misleading.] If our Lord,
+speaking in parables, declared, of such as had neglected to do good,
+that "these shall go away into eternal punishment," a considerable
+body of orthodox opinion in the Christian Church has always held that
+the punishment in question consists essentially in the "penalty of
+loss"--the loss of goodness and of GOD, the loss of capacity for the
+life which is life indeed--rather than in any imagined "penalty of
+sense," or purposeless prolongation of pain. The imagery which our
+Lord employed to describe the spiritual condition known as "hell" is
+taken from the Valley of Hinnom, a ravine just outside the walls of
+Jerusalem, in which fires were continually maintained for the
+destruction of refuse, and maggots preyed on offal. The imagery is
+sufficiently terrible; but it suggests the destruction of waste
+products in GOD'S creation, rather than the prolonged torture of
+living beings. It may well be that a soul, which by persistent and
+deliberate rejection of every appeal of the Divine Love even to the
+very end--in this life or beyond--has become so wholly self-identified
+with evil as to be finally incapable of life in GOD, passes, of
+necessity, out of sentient existence altogether. We do not know. What
+we do know is, in the first place, that wickedness is of its very
+nature instinct with the eternal quality of "hell"; and, in the second
+place, that GOD is Love, and that GOD "desireth not the death of a
+sinner, but rather that he may turn from his wickedness, and live."
+
+Just as the term "hell" expresses the condition of a soul which by its
+own act and deed and deliberate choice has become wholly self-
+identified with evil, so the term "heaven" expresses the spiritual
+state of the pure in heart, to whom it is given to see GOD. So
+regarded, heaven is simply the ideal consummation of progressive
+spiritual advance, the perfect fruition of that "beatific vision"
+which the saints of GOD desired. It has ever been the conviction of
+the Christian Church that her members are already, even in this
+present life, made partakers in the life of heaven, just in proportion
+as their affections are set upon things above and not upon things in
+the earth. What is begun here is continued more perfectly hereafter;
+but it is unreasonable to assume that at the moment of death the
+ultimate fulness of "heaven" is immediately attained.
+
+The Church, therefore, has believed in an intermediate state,
+sometimes called "Purgatory," a condition of progressive purification
+and spiritual growth, characterized at once by a deepening penitence
+for the sins and failures of the past, and by a deepening joy in GOD'S
+more perfect service.
+
+Moreover, since the Christian salvation is a social salvation, those
+who have departed this life in GOD'S faith and fear shall not without
+us be made perfect. None can enter fully into the joy of the Lord
+until the whole of GOD'S great World-purpose is accomplished, and all
+are gathered in. This brings us to the consideration of the Christian
+belief in the Second Advent and the final Kingdom of GOD. It has
+already been remarked that the terms in which this belief is expressed
+are symbolical and should not be taken literally. Just because we
+ourselves, under the conditions of life here upon earth, are immersed
+in the stream of time, the idea of an ending of the World-process, a
+final passing over of time into eternity, is to us, in the strict and
+literal sense of the words, unthinkable. Only under the form of
+imagery and symbol is it in the nature of things possible for the idea
+of the last great Drama to be expressed, or rather, suggested: it is
+impossible for our minds to grasp, in any more exact or effectual
+manner, the Reality which the imagery is meant to symbolize. It may be
+that the event expressed by the dramatic picture of the Second Advent
+of the Christ is simply the revelation of the fact of His Eternal
+Presence at once as Saviour and as Judge; however this may be, the
+picture stands for the assurance of His final triumph, and the
+vindication of His Kingdom in its fulness: and as such it is the
+object of Christian hope--"Hallowed be Thy Name; Thy Kingdom come; Thy
+will be done; in earth, as it is in Heaven."
+
+If we ask what is the positive nature of the Christian hope and what
+the final character of the life of heaven, the answer is that we
+cannot fully say, that we know only in part, "we see obscurely, as in
+a mirror." In hymn and ecstasy and vision men have sought to find
+expression for the substance of things hoped for, and they have
+failed. "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into
+the heart of man to conceive, the things that GOD hath prepared for
+them that love Him." The Book of the Revelation essays to paint a
+picture of the heavenly state, and for the most part succeeds in
+setting before our minds a noble imagery; but in the end its language
+is most convincing when it tells us what heaven is _not_. "They shall
+hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light
+on them, nor any heat. And GOD shall wipe away all tears from their
+eyes." Negatives and contrasts--the picture of a state of things
+contrasted with all that in the world as we know it is amiss; we
+cannot _positively_ envisage heaven. Only we believe that "there
+remaineth a rest for the people of GOD," where nevertheless they rest
+not day or night from His perfect service. "Beloved, now are we sons
+of GOD, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that
+when He shall appear we shall be like Him: for we shall see Him as He
+is."
+
+Here this chapter might end: but with regard to the nature of the
+Christian conception of the life of the world to come there is
+something more to be said: for the Church's creed contains the
+assertion of a belief in the Resurrection of the Body, or even, in the
+Latin form of the Apostles' Creed, and in the translation which
+appears in the Prayer-book Service for Baptism, in the Resurrection of
+the Flesh. The plain man may be tempted, brushing aside such a
+doctrine in its plain and literal acceptation as a manifest
+impossibility, either to hold aloof from a Church which retains such
+an affirmation in her creed, or else to conclude hastily that the
+words are meant only as a picturesque way of expressing a belief in
+the immortality of the soul. Either attitude would be a mistake. It is
+true that a literal resuscitation of Christian corpses on some future
+Day of Resurrection would be neither possible nor desirable.
+Nevertheless the Christian doctrine of the life to come involves more
+than a bare assertion of the immortality of the soul.
+
+The body is the embodiment or vehicle of the spirit; the spirit
+disembodied would be a mere wraith, a phantasm of the living man. The
+life of the world to come is not unreal or shadowy as compared with
+the concrete reality of the life of earth: it is a life richer and
+fuller, more concrete and more glorious than the life of earth. The
+Church by her doctrine of the Resurrection means to affirm that the
+full reality of that which made the living man what he was is carried
+over into the life beyond. The buried corpse is not "the body that
+shall be." "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body."
+As to the nature of the future embodiment of the spirit in the life
+beyond the grave we are ignorant. "GOD giveth it a body as it hath
+pleased Him, and to each seed a body of its own." But we believe that
+"the deeds done in the body" here upon earth while we are yet
+tabernacling in the flesh necessarily affect and determine the
+character of the spiritual embodiment which shall be ours hereafter.
+For this reason we hold our bodies sacred, as being temples of the
+Holy Ghost. "The body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and
+the Lord for the body." Christianity can have nothing to do with the
+notion that the defilement of the body is without effect in the
+pollution of the soul.
+
+[NOTE.-For a fuller treatment of the subjects of the Second Advent and
+the Resurrection of the Body the writer may be allowed to refer to
+Chapters III. and IV. in his book, _Dogma, fact and Experience_
+(Macmillan & Co., 1915).]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+CLERGY AND LAITY
+
+
+The clergy are not the Church. They are a specialized class within it.
+They are men who believe themselves to be called by GOD to give
+themselves for life to the particular work of caring directly for the
+spiritual interests of their fellows. To this end they are set apart
+by ordination. They hold the commission and authorization of the
+Church to minister the Word and Sacraments of the Gospel in the name
+of Christ and of the Brotherhood. Their task is high and difficult. It
+is not wonderful if they fail. But solemn prayer is offered for them
+at their ordination: and the answer to the Church's prayers is
+according to the measure of the Church's faith.
+
+The historical or Catholic system of ministry in the Church consists
+of a hierarchy in three orders or gradations. To the order of Bishops
+belongs oversight or pastorate-in-chief. It is not the business of a
+Bishop to be prelatical, or to lord it over GOD'S heritage, but to be
+the servant of the servants of GOD. A Bishop is consecrated to his
+office by not less than three of those who are already Bishops. He
+exercises all the functions of the Christian ministry, including those
+of confirmation and ordination and the right to take part in episcopal
+consecrations.
+
+Priests and deacons are a Bishop's delegates for certain purposes. A
+priest may have charge of a "parish" or subdivision of a diocese, and
+is competent to celebrate the Eucharist, to bless, to baptize, and to
+absolve. He is also authorized to preach, and to give instruction in
+Christian doctrine. He may not confirm or ordain apart from the
+Bishop, though he may co-operate with the latter in ordinations to the
+priesthood. He is ordained to his ministry by the Bishop acting in
+conjunction with certain representatives of the priesthood who take
+part with him in the laying on of hands.
+
+Deacons are subordinate ministers appointed to assist parish priests
+in the work of parochial visiting and also, within certain limits, in
+the conduct of Divine worship and the administration of the
+sacraments. They may read parts of the service, but have no authority
+to bless or to absolve. They may preach by express and specific
+license from the Bishop. They may not celebrate the Eucharist, but may
+assist the priest who does so by reading the Gospel and administering
+the chalice. They are ordained to their office by the Bishop, and in
+most cases, though not invariably, proceed subsequently to the
+priesthood. [Footnote: In the absence of a Bishop or priest, a deacon
+is competent to baptize. In the absence of any of the clergy Baptism
+may also, in cases of urgency, be administered by a layman, and in the
+absence of a man, by a woman.]
+
+The principles which underlie this system of Catholic order in the
+Church are important. The devolution of authority to minister through
+the episcopate safeguards the continuity of the Church's corporate
+life and tradition, and secures that ministerial functions shall be
+exercised in the name and by the authority of the Christian Society as
+a whole. Moreover through the ordered succession of the Bishops the
+tradition of ministerial authority is carried back certainly to sub-
+apostolic, and perhaps also actually to apostolic, times: it
+represents in principle Christ's commission to His Apostles--"As the
+Father hath sent Me, even so send I you."
+
+At the same time it is important that the doctrine of the ministry
+should not be allowed to become "sacerdotalist" in a wrong sense. The
+Christian priesthood is not in possession of any magical or exclusive
+powers. The essence of priesthood is the dedication of life as a whole
+to the service of GOD on behalf of others: and in this sense every
+Christian man is meant in his ordinary daily life and business to be a
+priest of GOD and a servant of his brethren. What the Church to-day
+needs most chiefly is a body of laymen who will take seriously their
+vocation. A layman is not a Christian of inferior type, on whose
+behalf the clergy are expected to display a vicarious spirituality: he
+is simply an unordained member of the people of GOD. The hope of the
+future is that laymen should do their part, not merely by supporting
+the efforts of the clergy, but by exercising their own proper
+functions as living members of Christ. The Church--and especially the
+Church of England--is in vital need of reform. The recently launched
+"Life and Liberty" Movement is a hopeful sign of the determination of
+a certain number of clergy and laity that reform shall be secured. In
+particular it is essential that the Church should recover freedom of
+self-government in spiritual things, and liberty to adapt her
+machinery and organization to changing needs, by the readjustment of
+her relation towards the State. This may or may not involve
+disestablishment, and disestablishment in turn, if it should take
+place, need not necessarily involve, but in practice would probably
+involve, some measure of partial disendowment. The Church must be
+prepared for all eventualities, and must be ready, should necessity
+arise, to take cheerfully the spoiling of her goods. For liberty is
+essential at all costs.
+
+In the movement for Life and Liberty, as in every other department of
+her work, the Church needs the co-operation of her laity. It is their
+duty both to be informed in ecclesiastical affairs, and to make their
+voices heard. It is part of the programme of Church reformers to give
+the laity, through elected representatives, a more effective voice in
+Church affairs. The administration of finance and the raising of funds
+for work both at home and abroad is more particularly their province,
+but there is no single department of Church affairs in which the
+layman ought not to have his share, though no doubt the Bishops in
+virtue of their office have a special responsibility in matters of
+doctrine. Certainly there is need of a much greater extension of lay
+preaching, and a freer recognition of the capacity of many laymen to
+lead the worship and intercessions of their brethren. The
+administration of the sacraments, with the partial exception of
+baptism, is reserved for those to whom it is committed: but this need
+not and does not apply to the ministries of preaching and of prayer.
+
+Clerical autocracy, where it exists, ought resolutely and firmly to be
+broken down. It has to be admitted that between clergy and laity at
+present there is a regrettable and widespread cleavage. The clergy are
+widely criticized, and it is certain that they have many faults. One
+who belongs to their number cannot help being conscious of some at
+least of the failings both of himself and of his class. But the faults
+are not all upon one side. It may be suspected that those who
+criticize the clergy with the greatest freedom are not always those
+who pray for them most earnestly. To affirm that the laity get, upon
+the whole, the clergy they deserve would be too hard a saying: but it
+is sometimes forgotten that the clergy are recruited from the ranks of
+the laity, and that, when not dehumanized by an undue professionalism
+of outlook, they are human. Many of them would be frankly grateful for
+friendly co-operation and criticism on the part of the lay members of
+their flocks. One of the difficulties about preaching is that the
+clergy in many instances do not really know what is in the layman's
+mind. The life of the Church in England will not proceed along healthy
+lines until there is greater mutual candour between laymen and clergy.
+At present laymen will not talk freely about matters of religion in
+the presence of the clergy because they imagine (often quite wrongly)
+that the latter would be shocked. It sometimes happens conversely that
+the clergy hesitate to express their real minds for fear that laymen
+would be shocked. This attitude of mutual reserve is hopeless. No
+Christian, lay or clerical, has any business to be shocked at any
+expression of opinion whatever, orthodox or unorthodox, whether in
+faith or in morals. Either side may disagree with the other; but
+either ought to be prepared to listen to what the other has to say.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE BIBLE
+
+
+The Bible is the "sacred Book" of Christianity, as the Koran is the
+sacred Book of Mohammedanism; with this difference, however, that
+Christianity, as the religion of the Spirit, can never be, like
+Mohammedanism, a "religion of the Book," any more than it can be, like
+ancient Judaism, a religion of the Law. The Biblical writings include
+two main collections of books, known as the Old Testament and the New
+Testament respectively, of which the latter alone is distinctively
+Christian. Intermediate between the two "Testaments" in point of date
+are the writings known as the "Apocrypha," which though inferior, for
+the most part, in spiritual value to the fully canonical books, and
+frequently omitted from printed editions of the Bible, are regarded by
+the Church as canonical in a secondary sense.
+
+The various books of the Bible originally became canonical, that is,
+were included in the "canon" or collection of sacred writings, on the
+ground that they were read aloud or recited in the course of Divine
+worship. The Old Testament canon comprises the books customarily read
+aloud in the Jewish synagogue, together with certain other writings
+associated with them. The books of the New Testament are a similar
+collection of early Christian writings which were read side by side
+with the Old Testament in Christian worship. The selection of these
+particular writings for the purpose was determined in part by the
+Church's recognition of their spiritual value and in part by the
+regard which was paid by the Christian community to the religious
+authority of those by whom they were believed to have been written.
+
+Speaking generally, we may say that the Old Testament is the religious
+literature of Judaism. It is the literary deposit of the spiritual
+life of a nation, the written record and monument of a progressive
+process of religious development. It begins at the level of folklore
+and primitive tribal cults, such as are portrayed or reflected, for
+example, in parts of the Pentateuch and in the Books of Judges and
+Samuel. It culminates, in the utterances of the greatest of the
+prophets and in many of the Psalms, at the highest levels of religious
+attainment which are discoverable anywhere in history prior to the
+coming of our Lord.
+
+The Old Testament will always have a value for Christianity: in part
+because many of the religious lessons which it conveys can never be
+superseded even by Christianity itself: in part because the study of
+it provides the general knowledge of Judaism, and of Jewish
+institutions and modes of thought, which is necessary for the proper
+understanding of the religious background of the Gospels, and of much
+else in the New Testament as well: in part also because the two
+revelations--the Jewish and the Christian--hang together, interlocking
+with one another as anticipation and fulfilment, in a manner which is
+singularly impressive.
+
+The various books of the Old Testament, nevertheless, require to be
+read by Christians with discrimination, and with a clear realization
+of their Jewish character. There is much in the Old Testament as it
+stands which is liable to mislead the simple and cause needless
+difficulty. There are, moreover, numerous passages, and not a few
+entire books, which except in the light of historical criticism and
+scholarly guidance are not really intelligible. But the study of the
+Old Testament as reinterpreted in our own generation by research and
+scholarship is a fascinating subject. It requires little in the way of
+technical equipment, and there is no reason in the world why it should
+be monopolized by specialists. To have even the most general
+acquaintance with the methods and results of critical study brings
+with it a great transformation of outlook. The Old Testament writers
+come to life again wonderfully when they are set in their proper
+historical context, and the result is a clear gain in spiritual
+values. The best general introduction to the whole subject is Dr. W.
+B. Selbie's book, _The Nature and Message of the Bible_ (Student
+Christian Movement, 3s. 6d.). Canon Nairne's volume, _The Faith of
+the Old Testament_ (Layman's Library, Longmans, 2s. 6d.) is an
+illuminating survey designed specially to bring out the religious
+value of the Old Testament, [Footnote: Those who may desire a more
+detailed and comprehensive treatment of the literary problems of the
+Old Testament should consult G. B. Gray, _A Critical Introduction to
+the Literature of the Old Testament_ (Duckworth, 2s. 6d.).] and for
+commentaries upon individual books _The Century Bible_ (T. C. and
+E. C. Jack, 3s. each volume) is to be recommended.
+
+The books of the New Testament are the classical literature of
+Christianity in a much fuller and more obvious sense. Here, again,
+there is much that apart from the use of a good commentary will be
+found hardly intelligible: but the greater part of the New Testament,
+and especially the Gospels, can be read with profit by the ordinary
+man apart from any extraneous aids. It is well to remember that S.
+Paul's Epistles were written at an earlier date than any of the
+Gospels, and that they represent the occasional correspondence of a
+hard-worked missionary. Of the Gospels the first three have much in
+common, and the Gospels of S. Matthew and S. Luke are based partly
+upon that of S. Mark. S. Mark is said to have been the companion of S.
+Peter, and is probably the author of the Gospel which bears his name.
+It may be taken to represent his reminiscences of S. Peter's
+preaching. The Gospel now known as that according to S. Matthew
+appears to be the work of a compiler who fitted into the framework of
+S. Mark's story a considerable amount of additional matter, drawn
+chiefly from a collection of "sayings of Jesus" which an early
+Christian writer declares to have been made by S. Matthew in Aramaic.
+S. Matthew's name, it is thought, was subsequently attached to the
+resulting document, since it contained a large preponderance of
+material derived from his book on our Lord's sayings. The name of the
+actual compiler of the first Gospel has not survived.
+
+S. Luke's Gospel is a compilation made upon somewhat similar lines,
+and is based, in large measure, upon the same two sources: but the
+author's researches extended also more widely, and his Gospel contains
+a large proportion of matter peculiar to itself, which critics
+commonly regard as being of high historical value. The author of the
+book was a Greek doctor who attended upon S. Paul, accompanying the
+latter in his travels, and writing the Acts of the Apostles as a
+second volume in continuation of his Gospel. The Acts is partly based
+upon a kind of diary which S. Luke kept of his experiences as S.
+Paul's companion and physician.
+
+It is probable that both the first and the third of our four Gospels
+were in existence shortly before, or at the latest very shortly after,
+the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 A.D. The
+second Gospel, since they both drew upon it, must be even earlier.
+
+The Gospel according to S. John is of a somewhat later date, and bears
+a different character. It is reflective and meditative, and is
+penetrated throughout by a mystical symbolism. In many ways it
+suggests rather a spiritual interpretation of the significance of
+Jesus than a literal portrait of Him. Again, it is the product of a
+Greek rather than of a Jewish atmosphere, though its narrative
+presents so many touches of extraordinary vividness, and the author
+shows so exact a knowledge of Jewish institutions and conditions of
+life in Palestine, that it is difficult not to think that the book
+must have been written by a Jew who knew Judaism before its downfall.
+It is supposed that the writing dates from the closing years of the
+first century, and tradition declares that the author was S. John in
+old age at Ephesus. This statement is, however, in dispute, and the
+authorship of the Gospel is uncertain. In point of fact, it does not
+matter who the writer was. There is no one of the interpreters of
+Jesus who had drunk more deeply of His Spirit than had he: nor is
+there any of the books of the New Testament which brings Jesus closer
+to us than the Gospel according to S. John, or speaks home with
+greater power to the heart and affections of the simplest Christian.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+THE PRACTICE OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE CHRISTIAN AIM
+
+
+Christianity in practice means the dedication of life to the unselfish
+service of GOD and man, in the light of the ideals of Jesus Christ,
+and in the power of an inward spiritual life which is hid with Christ
+in GOD. The Christian, renouncing such merely worldly ideals as self-
+advancement, personal or family ambition, the accumulation of money,
+or the enjoyment, for their own sake, of the things which money can
+buy, is called to seek first and in all things GOD'S Kingdom and His
+righteousness, in the assurance that whatever may be really necessary
+for the advancement of this aim will in due course be added unto him.
+
+He is not to expect to find the practice of his religion to be, in a
+worldly sense, profitable; and the practice of his religion is to
+cover the whole of life. The desperate attempt to combine the service
+of GOD with that of Mammon is therefore to be abandoned. If riches
+increase, he is not to set his heart upon them. If poverty be his lot,
+he is to embrace poverty as a bride. The aim and object of his life is
+not to be to get his own will done, but to discover what for him is
+the will of GOD, and to do it. He is to be the slave of GOD in Christ,
+a living instrument in the hands of Another, called to co-operate in a
+purpose not his own, though a purpose which he is to embrace, and to
+_make_ his own, in a spirit of loyal sonship.
+
+This means, among other things, that life is to be interpreted in
+terms of vocation. It means that for every man there is a "calling," a
+particular line of life which GOD intends him to follow, a specific
+piece of service to GOD and to his neighbour which he is called upon
+to render. The motto of a Christian's life is to be the motto of his
+Master--"My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to
+accomplish His work." Gifts and capacities, aptitudes for any special
+work, are therefore "talents," to be used in accordance with the will
+and purpose of the Giver. Opportunities and endowments, whatsoever
+they may be, are opportunities and endowments for service.
+
+It does not necessarily follow from this that a realization of the
+truth of Christianity, and an awakening to the claims of religion,
+will lead to any outward change or radical alteration in the general
+conception of a man's life-work. It may or it may not do so. There are
+indubitably cases in which a man is called upon to abandon his
+previous career--to forsake prospects, however promising, or to
+renounce wealth and possessions, however entangling--in order to
+become (for example) a minister of the Church or a missionary of the
+Gospel, or to enter a religious order. Our Lord's command to the rich
+young ruler, that he should give up all that he had, in order to
+follow Christ along the paths of homelessness and poverty, is a call
+which sounds still with a literal force in the ears of a certain
+number of His disciples. The inner spirit, moreover, of detachment
+from the world and from the things of the world, the readiness to
+abandon wealth and worldly position if need so require, and the
+refusal to be ensnared by them, are in any case demanded of all. The
+vocation, however, of the majority of men is already determined by
+their circumstances, or by their training and general aptitudes. It is
+only the few, comparatively speaking, who are called to become monks
+or missionaries, or priests devoid of "prospects." The majority will
+best serve GOD and their neighbour by "carrying on" in their existing
+occupations: and in most cases they are incidentally called also,
+sooner or later, to matrimony.
+
+But GOD calls no man to idleness. It is the duty of every Christian,
+rich as well as poor, unless he be incapacitated by bodily sickness or
+infirmity, to be engaged in some work of general service to the
+community: and a man who proposes seriously to practise the Christian
+religion needs to ask himself, with regard to the work or occupation
+in which he is engaged, or by which he earns his bread, whether he can
+say truly that he believes it to be the work which his Father has
+given him to do: whether it can be interpreted, not simply as a means
+of livelihood, but as a service rendered in Christ's name to society
+at large. If it cannot so be interpreted, then plainly it is no work
+which a Christian should be doing. There are ways of making a living
+which, are definitely unchristian. The work of a shoe-black or of a
+tradesman or of an actor may be as true a piece of Christian service
+as that of a doctor or a bishop. The work of a burglar or of a
+bookmaker could not be so regarded.
+
+Christianity--it cannot be too strongly insisted--means the
+Christianization of life as a whole. It is in the daily round and the
+common task that Christ is most chiefly to be served. "Whatsoever ye
+do in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving
+thanks to GOD and the Father by Him." Religion is a wider thing than
+piety, and it is a false pietism which would regard it as consisting
+mainly of pious practices. The cultivation of the inner spiritual life
+by means of the practices of Christian devotion is indeed essential in
+its place and its degree. The life of the spirit languishes if it is
+not fed. But except these things issue in the practical service of
+Christ in daily life they are worse than futile. They degenerate
+either into formalism and hypocrisy, or into spiritual self-
+indulgence. "Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit."
+"By their fruits ye shall know them." And the "fruits" of Christian
+living are to be discovered, not in the hours spent in devotion, but
+in the manifestation amid the activities of the market-place of that
+temper of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, and that
+spirit of unselfish service, which should be their normal product.
+
+What is needed is a wider conception of Churchmanship and a truer
+doctrine of vocation. All honest work in which a Christian can
+lawfully engage should be regarded as an expression of his
+Churchmanship--as truly work done for the Church of GOD in obedience
+to a vocation from on high as is the work of a priest or a teacher of
+religion. It is at least partly because the majority of laymen do not
+so interpret their work in life that in so many cases they are
+discovered to be in effect living for the sake of their leisure and
+regarding their daily work as uninteresting drudgery, with the result
+that life as a whole comes to be for them dreary and profitless and
+stale. A Christian man's life-work ought not to have the character of
+drudgery, but of sheer delight in GOD'S service.
+
+But is such an ideal really practicable? It is literally practicable
+to a greater extent than most men think. It ought to be practicable
+universally. At the same time there is no disguising the fact that
+large numbers of men to-day find themselves in circumstances to which
+such a doctrine cannot without palpable unreality be applied. The
+structure of existing society under modern industrial conditions
+forces multitudes, by an evil economic pressure, into mechanical,
+uncongenial, and soul-destroying occupations: and the conditions of
+some men's labour in the world as it is are such that it would be
+sheer blasphemy to regard them as a product of the will of GOD. The
+problem of the Christianization of the social order is one of the
+greatest of the tasks confronting the Christian Church. Its solution
+has hardly yet begun to be attempted. In the meantime the mass of
+Christian people, in virtue of their acquiescence, are accomplices in
+the denial to the disinherited classes of the conditions and
+opportunities which make life worth living for themselves. So long as
+it continues to be possible for a man who genuinely desires to learn
+and labour truly to get his own living to starve in the midst of
+plenty: so long as multitudes are constrained to work under conditions
+which rob their labour of all interest, of all idealism, and of all
+hope: so long as sweating, and destitution, and such conditions of
+life as obtain in the more densely crowded areas of our great towns
+continue to exist: so long will it be the duty of every Christian to
+be a social reformer, and to have a conscience permanently troubled
+with regard to wealth and social advantage. [Footnote: Mr. George
+Lansbury's _Your Part in Poverty_ (George Alien and Unwin, Ltd., Is.)
+is a book worth reading in this particular connexion.]
+
+Meanwhile the Christian ideal of life stands. It is the ideal of
+consecration to service. It means discipleship in Christ's school of
+unselfishness, both individual and corporate: for there is a
+selfishness of the family, of the class, or of the nation, which bears
+as bitter fruit in the world as does the selfishness of the
+individual. Christianity, in a word, means the carrying out into daily
+practice of the ideal of the _Imitatio Christi_, the imitation of
+Jesus Christ, in the spirit if not in the letter. It means that as He
+was, so are we to be in the world. It means that all things,
+whatsoever we do, are to be done in His Spirit and to His glory: that
+our every thought is to be led captive under the obedience of Christ.
+It means that we are to love GOD because GOD first loved us, and to
+love men because they are our brothers in the family of GOD: because
+love is of GOD, and every one that loveth is born of GOD and knoweth
+GOD. It means that we are to consecrate all comradeship and loyalty
+and friendship, all sorrow and all joy, by looking upon them as
+friendship and loyalty and comradeship in Christ, as sorrow and joy in
+Him. It means that we are to live glad, strong, free, clean lives as
+sons of GOD in our Father's House.
+
+It means also struggle and hardship. It means truceless war against
+the spirit of selfishness, against everything that tends to drag us
+down, against the law of sin in our own members. It means a truceless
+war against low ideals and tolerated evils in the world about us. It
+means soldiership in the eternal crusade of Christ against whatsoever
+things are false and dishonest and unjust and foul and ugly and of
+evil report.
+
+It is an ideal which, considered in isolation from the Christian
+Gospel of redemption and the power of the Holy Spirit, could only
+terrify and daunt a man who had a spark of honesty in his composition:
+and for this reason the mass of men refuses to take it seriously. It
+is an ideal which, in the case of all who do take it seriously,
+convinces them of sin.
+
+Nevertheless to lower the ideal, to abate one jot of its severity, to
+compromise, on the score of human weakness, though it were but in a
+single particular, the flawless perfection of its standard, were to
+prove false to all that is highest within us, and traitor to the cause
+of Christ.
+
+"Never, O Christ--so stay me from relenting--Shall there be truce
+betwixt my flesh and soul."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE WAY OF THE WORLD
+
+
+The three traditional enemies of the Christian life are symbolized
+under the headings of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, and the
+classification has a certain convenience. The "World" stands in this
+connexion for human society in so far as it is organized apart from
+Christ. It is obvious that "the way of the world," as represented by
+the general outlook of conventional society, is in many respects in
+manifest conflict with the principles of the Gospel. The existing
+social order is the product of a compromise between inherited
+influences and standards which are in a certain sense broadly
+Christian, and the natural man's instinctive selfishness in matters
+both individual and social. The conflict against the spirit of
+worldliness which should be one of the marks of a genuine Christian
+life is beset by peculiar difficulties, precisely because in a society
+which is in some respects partially Christian the issues are confused.
+Public opinion indubitably tolerates many things which should not be
+tolerated, and condones others which should not be condoned. But
+public opinion approves much that is good, and does lip-service to a
+variety of Christian ideals, even while reserving the reality of its
+devotion for the worship of success and material comfort.
+
+Perhaps it may be said that the most fundamental characteristic of
+essentially "worldly" opinion is absence of idealism. Worldliness is
+the principle of contentment with things as they are. Against
+worldliness, so defined, the Christian is committed to a conflict all
+along the line, since even in those regions of life and conduct in
+which the standards recognized by the world are right and good so far
+as they go, "the good is the enemy of the best." To rest content at
+any point with what has already been attained is fatal to all
+spiritual advance. It is, in effect, the death of the soul.
+
+Mr. William Temple has remarked that in the conflict of Christians
+against the Devil and the Flesh the public opinion of the Church, as
+visibly organized, is on their side, but that in their conflict with
+the World it is decidedly against them. That is an over-statement, but
+it conveys a truth. Undoubtedly the Church has made compromises with
+the World, a fact which arises partly as the result of the inclusion
+within her fold of a large proportion of merely nominal members whose
+Christianity is no more than an inherited or conventional tradition. A
+further point of importance is this. Two thousand years is not a long
+period in relation to the scale of the world's history as a whole, and
+Christianity is still a comparatively young religion. The problem of
+worldliness is mainly a problem of the relation of the Church to the
+social order; and there are reasons why it was natural that the
+working out of the Christian ideal of conduct should first have been
+developed in relation to the affairs of private and domestic life.
+
+Christians in the early days were a "little flock," surrounded by a
+society whose standards and conventions and beliefs were frankly pagan
+and hostile. So long as these conditions obtained the issues were
+plain: the contrast in ideals between Church and World stood out sharp
+and clear. The world, it was held, was ready to perish, and destined
+at no distant date to do so. "The whole world," writes S. John, "lieth
+in wickedness." The Church stood apart as the spiritual brotherhood of
+GOD'S elect who were called to assist at the obsequies of a world
+which was in process of passing away. "The world passeth away, and the
+lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of GOD abideth for ever."
+
+The words contain an eternal truth: but in their literal sense they
+expressed a mistaken judgment. The world--that is, secular society--
+did not pass away. It is with us still. For a period of some three
+hundred years it persecuted the Church. At the end of that period it
+accepted baptism, but not its implications. The Church has been
+engaged ever since in the task of attempting to Christianize the
+heathen within her own borders.
+
+The Church was outwardly secularized: and the minority who could not
+tolerate the secularization of her ideals took refuge in the hermit's
+cell or in the cloister. In these retreats was developed the practice
+of Christianity as an art or science of individual sanctity, but at
+the cost of a certain aloofness from the rough and tumble of workaday
+life. The Christianity of the Middle Ages was fertilized from the
+cloister, with the result that the spiritual ideals even of those
+Christians who remained "in the world" tended to be coloured by the
+monastic tradition. The Christian man of the world who took seriously
+the practice of his religion aimed at reproducing at second hand the
+Christianity of the monk. The salvation of the individual soul tended
+to be regarded as the supreme end of Christian endeavour, rather than
+the service of the brethren.
+
+The Reformation, when it came, did nothing to diminish this
+individualism of the religious outlook, but rather accentuated it. The
+whole emphasis of Protestantism was thrown upon the life of the
+individual soul in relation to GOD, to the comparative neglect of the
+importance of the conception of membership in the Church. To the
+ordinary worldling the advent of Protestantism meant simply that he
+need no longer trouble to go to Mass or to Confession. The Protestant
+who took his religion seriously became a Puritan, a type resembling
+the monk of Catholicism in his attempted isolation from the world, yet
+lacking the peculiar otherworldly mysticism of the monkish character
+at its best, and having a peculiar knack of making religion appear
+repellent to the ordinary man.
+
+The emergence of the ideal of a genuinely social Christianity, aiming
+not at escape from the world by way of flight, but at the deliberate
+conquest of the world for Christ by the resolute application of
+Christian standards to the ordinary life of men in society, is of
+comparatively recent date. It began in this country with the writings
+of Kingsley and Maurice, and various living teachers both in England
+and in America have carried on their work. It is one of the
+misfortunes of Germany that she has had no corresponding movement. As
+a consequence we are confronted at the present time with the spectacle
+of various leaders of religious thought in Germany, too honest not to
+perceive the glaring contrasts between the way of the world and the
+precepts of the Gospel, deliberately maintaining the position that
+Christianity is solely adapted to be a religion of private life, and
+that Christian standards and ideals have no application as between
+class and class, or as between nation and nation. To adopt such an
+attitude is to abandon all hope of the redemption of society. It is to
+condemn the world in perpetuity to a fate of which the present war is
+the appropriate symbol.
+
+The war is, in effect, a kind of sacrament of the power of Antichrist.
+It is the outward and visible sign of the inward character and essence
+of a civilisation founded upon principles which are the opposite of
+those of the Gospel. Neither men nor nations, in the world as we have
+known it, have been wont to love their neighbours as themselves. The
+way of the world is, and has been, the way of selfishness.
+
+This is not any the less true because the world's selfishness has been
+to a considerable extent unconscious, and has arisen rather from
+absence of thought than from deliberate badness of heart. The world
+does not always realize how cruel are its ways towards the weak and
+the socially unfortunate, or towards those who, for whatever reason,
+transgress its code. For the world _has_ a code of its own, both in
+manners and in morals, though the basis of its code is convention, and
+its standard respectability rather than virtue. The world is very apt
+to show itself implacable towards those whom it regards as being
+beyond its pale, and to exhibit, in effect, the spirit and temper
+which, when manifested in the religious sphere, we know and loathe as
+Pharisaism. Pharisaism, like worldliness, has penetrated to an
+alarming extent into the Church of England.
+
+Parallel and proportionate to the world's selfishness is its cynicism.
+This also is largely unconscious. Lacking any true insight into
+spiritual realities, the world lacks vision and lacks hope. It
+presumes always that "the thing which has been, it is that which shall
+be." It beholds the evil that is done under the sun, and pronounces it
+inevitable. It fails to understand that to pronounce any evil
+inevitable is to be guilty of blasphemy against the GOD of heaven.
+
+Against the spirit of the worldly world, its selfishness and cynicism,
+its conventional judgments and shallowness of mind, the Christian is
+called deliberately to make war. The Church exists to be to the world
+and its ways a permanent challenge: to be the champion in all
+circumstances and times of righteousness and truth; to insist upon
+bringing to bear on human life in all its relationships, both
+corporate and individual, the spirit of brotherhood, which is the
+Spirit of Christ. It was a true instinct which led S. Ignatius Loyola
+to pray on behalf of the Order which he founded that it might be hated
+by the world. "Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.... If
+ye were of the world, the world would love his own." If the world does
+not hate the Church it is not because the world has become Christian,
+but because worldliness has taken possession of the Church. The world
+to-day regards the Church as not worth hating, as a negligible
+quantity. When the Church is once more ready to be crucified, then the
+opposition of the world will be revived, and the Church will suffer
+martyrdom afresh.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH
+
+
+Sins of the flesh include all forms of slackness and bodily self-
+indulgence. A Christian is called to assert the supremacy of the
+spirit over the flesh by controlling his bodily impulses and
+disciplining his desires. There is, therefore, a true Christian
+asceticism. But asceticism, in so far as it is genuinely Christian, is
+never an end in itself. It is a discipline which promotes efficiency.
+It is to be compared to an athlete's training, not to the self-
+mutilation of a fakir. There is in Christianity no doctrine of the
+unlawfulness of bodily pleasures in themselves. "The Son of Man came
+eating and drinking." For Christianity every creature of GOD in itself
+is good, and a man's bodily impulses are God-given endowments of his
+nature. What is essential is that their exercise should be controlled
+and subordinated to the higher purposes of the spirit, that they
+should be directed to their proper ends, and that they should not be
+allowed to get out of hand. Christians are not meant to be Puritans,
+but they are meant to be pure. The battle against fleshliness in all
+its forms is a battle which has to be fought and won in every
+Christian's life.
+
+Apart from the question of certain unmentionable forms of perverted
+sexual vice, the sinfulness of what are commonly classified as "sins
+of the flesh" consists in wrongful indulgence or lack of self-control
+in respect of that which in itself is legitimate and good. The
+Christian ideal is not abstinence, but temperance. A Christian will be
+temperate, for example, in sleep, food, alcohol, and tobacco.
+Intemperance means slavery to a habit, the loss of spiritual self-
+mastery, whereby the whole character is enervated, and efficiency,
+both physical and moral, is impaired. "All things are lawful," as S.
+Paul says, but a Christian is not to allow himself to be brought
+"under the _power_ of any." He is meant to live hard and to live
+clean.
+
+The practice of fasting, that is, of deliberate temporary self-
+discipline in these matters, even below the standard of what would
+normally be a reasonable indulgence, is a valuable means of asserting
+and retaining the self-mastery which is essential to Christian
+freedom. But fasting should not be allowed to become a mechanical
+observance, or erected into an unduly rigid law. The fish-dinner upon
+Fridays and other fast-days of the Church is, as a modern dignitary
+has remarked, innocuous; and it has the value which belongs to
+conformity to a rule or recommendation of the Christian brotherhood;
+but whether or not it is observed in practice, it is hardly adequate
+by itself to the purposes of Christian self-discipline.
+
+It appears to be a fairly widespread delusion in some sections of
+society that a Christian must necessarily be a teetotaller. The ideal
+Christian policy, here as elsewhere, if we may judge from the example
+of our Lord, would seem to be that of a temperate use of the gifts of
+GOD. It is unfortunate that in this country most of the societies
+which exist for the purpose of promoting temperance have virtually
+committed themselves to the confusion of temperance with total
+abstinence, and their fanaticism is, in the judgment of many persons,
+a hindrance to genuine reform. But it cannot reasonably be denied that
+drunkenness, and the still wider prevalence of an excessive drinking
+which falls short of actual drunkenness, is a frightful evil in the
+national life; and what is commonly known as the "Liquor Interest"
+plays a sinister part as an organized obstructive force standing in
+the way of needed reforms. The number of public-houses and drinking-
+bars in English towns and villages is monstrously out of proportion to
+any reasonable needs of the population: and it must be more than
+ordinarily difficult for brewers and publicans, under existing
+conditions, to resist the temptation to exploit for the sake of gain
+the weaknesses of others. A Christian need not be a teetotaller in
+order to have this problem upon his conscience, and to be ready to
+support, by his vote and influence, some considered and constructive
+policy of reform. A man who by experience finds that alcohol is to him
+personally a temptation will be wise if he becomes a teetotaller. "If
+thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut it off." In certain social
+environments it may also be wise for a man to become a total
+abstainer, not in his own interests, but for the sake of others with
+whom he is brought into immediate contact. There can be no question
+but that drunkenness, which is a vice both degrading and repulsive in
+itself, is in many strata of English social life still far too lightly
+regarded.
+
+It is, moreover, worth remarking that even a degree of indulgence in
+alcohol which would commonly be regarded as falling well within the
+limit of temperance is regarded by some authorities as having the
+effect--which actual drunkenness certainly has--of stimulating
+sexuality: and when all is said, probably the most insistent of
+fleshly temptations, at least in the earlier years of manhood, are
+those which are connected with the life of sex. Many make shipwreck
+upon these rocks through lack of knowledge or want of thought; but
+neither thought nor knowledge will avail to safeguard a man's purity
+apart from sound moral principle: nor are even moral principles
+effectual in the hour of strong temptation apart from the grace of
+GOD.
+
+Christianity teaches that to every man there is entrusted, in virtue
+of his manhood, the seed of life as a divine treasure. It is meant not
+to be turned into a means of self-indulgence, or suffered to run riot
+in a blaze of passion, but to be restrained and safeguarded in purity
+against the day--if the day arrives--upon which a man is called to use
+it for the purpose for which it was given him, namely, that of
+bringing new lives into the world through union with a woman in pure
+marriage.
+
+Most men are sorely tempted to lack of self-control, and to the misuse
+of their sexual endowment in a variety of ways: and the maintenance of
+chastity--never an easy ideal--is made doubly difficult by the fact
+that in the existing social system marriage, except among the poorer
+classes, is commonly deferred until an age much later than that at
+which a man becomes physically mature, and also by the widespread
+prevalence, in masculine society, of a corrupt public opinion which
+regards sexual indulgence as morally tolerable, or even as essential
+to physical health. This latter doctrine, even were it as true as it
+is in fact false, would not in any case justify a man in taking
+advantage of a woman's ruin: but experience shows that there is no
+form of sin or indulgence which so effectually degrades a man's moral
+outlook, blunts his finer perceptions, and destroys the instinct of
+chivalry within him, as does the sin of fornication. The majority of
+those who practise promiscuous sexual intercourse are found to greet
+with frank and obviously genuine incredulity the assertion that there
+exists a not inconsiderable proportion of men whose lives are clean;
+while at the other end of the scale men of pure lives and clean ideals
+often find it difficult to believe that more than a small minority of
+peculiarly degraded individuals are clients of the women of the
+streets.
+
+The publication of the Report of the Royal Commission on Venereal
+Diseases, taken in conjunction with what is known or suspected with
+regard to the state of morals in the Army, has had the effect of
+drawing public attention to certain aspects of these problems. The
+Victorian convention of prudery has to a great extent been discarded.
+The subject is freely discussed, and it is generally acknowledged that
+something must be done. There is danger, however, lest public opinion,
+rightly concerned to promote measures for the eradication of disease,
+should ignore the essentially moral aspect of the matter. A Christian
+man is here concerned, not simply with the personal struggle against
+the temptations of sex in his own life, but with a further conflict on
+behalf of Christian ideals against the public opinion of the world.
+
+For if ecclesiastical opinion in the past has been both prudish and
+Pharisaic, the public opinion of the world is frankly cynical. Roughly
+speaking, the world expects the majority of women to be pure,
+acquiesces in the prostitution of the remainder, and treats masculine
+immorality as a venial offence. Numbers of would-be reformers--of the
+male sex--are not ashamed to advocate, in private if not in public,
+the establishment of licensed brothels on the continental model. It
+ought not to be necessary to say that no Christian man can possibly
+tolerate a proposal to give deliberate public sanction to the
+prostitution of a certain proportion of the nation's womanhood to the
+lusts of men, or acquiesce in the complacent sex-selfishness which is
+concerned only for the physical health of sinners of the male sex.
+
+The point of view of the Christian Church is determined by that of our
+Lord, who on the one hand numbered a reclaimed prostitute among His
+intimate friends, and on the other taught that whoso looketh on a
+woman to lust after her hath committed adultery already in his heart.
+The Church, therefore, differs from the world, first in holding that
+what is wrong for women is equally wrong for men, that there is one
+and the same standard in these matters for both sexes, namely,
+absolute sexual purity; and secondly, in extending equally to the
+fallen of both sexes the promise of Divine forgiveness upon identical
+terms, namely, genuine repentance, unreserved confession, desire and
+purpose of amendment, and faith in GOD. The world, which condones the
+iniquity of the man who falls, is apt to be uncommonly hard upon the
+fallen woman, forgetting that she also is a sister for whom Christ
+died, and that the woman who to-day plays the part of a temptress of
+men was originally, in the majority of cases, more sinned against than
+sinning. Very few of those who ply the trade of shame will be found to
+have adopted such a mode of life, in the first instance, of their own
+unfettered choice. We are members one of another, and society as a
+whole, which both creates the demand and provides the supply, must
+share the guilt of their downfall.
+
+This book is written primarily for men: and there are therefore other
+aspects of the life of sex upon which it is necessary to touch, though
+they are difficult matters to handle. It is well known that large
+numbers of men in boyhood, either through untutored ignorance of the
+physiology of their own bodies, or as a result of the corrupt example
+and teaching of others, become addicted to habits of solitary vice, in
+which the seed of life within them is deliberately excited, stirred up
+and wasted, to the sapping of their physical well-being and the
+defilement of their minds. Habits of self-abuse, when once they are
+established, are apt to be extremely difficult to break. The minds of
+their victims are liable to be morbidly obsessed by the physical facts
+of sex, and their thoughts continually directed into turbid channels.
+But it is possible by the grace of GOD to conquer, though there may be
+relapses before the final victory is won. It is important neither on
+the one hand to belittle the gravity of the evil, nor on the other to
+grow hopeless and despondent, but to have faith in GOD. It is also a
+counsel of common sense to distract the mind, so far as possible, in
+other directions, and to avoid deliberately whatever is likely to
+prove an occasion or stimulus to this particular form of sin. The
+battle of purity can only be successfully fought in the region of
+outward act if the victory is at the same time won in the region of
+thought and desire. Books and pictures, or trains of thought and
+imagination, which are either unclean in themselves, or are discovered
+by experience to be sexually exciting to particular individuals, ought
+obviously to be avoided by those concerned, and the mind directed
+towards the contemplation of whatsoever things are true and honest and
+just and pure and lovely and of good report. In the hour of strong
+temptation it is often best, instead of trying to meet the assault
+directly, to change the immediate environment, or in some other way to
+concentrate the mind: for example, to sit down and read a clean novel
+until the stress of the obsession is past. Physical cleanliness,
+plenty of healthy exercise in the open air (it is unfortunate that the
+circumstances of many men's lives do not give adequate opportunity for
+this), temperance in food, and especially--in the light of what has
+been said above--temperance in drink, are all incidentally of value as
+aids to the maintenance of purity. So also is the avoidance of the
+habit of lying in bed in a semi-somnolent condition after true sleep
+has finally departed. A Christian's body is meant to be a temple of
+the Holy Ghost, and no other spirit, whether of impurity or of sloth,
+should be allowed to have domination over him.
+
+Other sins there are which should not be so much as named among
+Christian men-those, namely, in which men with men work that which is
+unseemly, and burn with lust one towards another. It is necessary to
+refer to these, because their prevalence is said to be increasing. A
+considerable proportion of men are temperamentally liable to be
+sexually attracted by members of their own sex; and passionate
+friendships, in which there is an element which is in the last
+analysis sexual, are not uncommon both between boys and youths at the
+age of early manhood, and between men of mature age and adolescents.
+The true character of these relationships is not always in their
+initial stages obvious, even to those concerned. As a guiding
+principle it may be laid down that a friendship between members of the
+same sex begins to enter upon dangerous ground whenever an element of
+jealousy betrays itself, when there is a desire habitually to
+monopolize the other's company to the exclusion of third persons, or
+when the life and interests of the one appear to be disproportionately
+wrapped up in the concerns and doings of the other. Friendships of
+this character are always selfish and may all too easily become
+impure. It is the business of a Christian man to be on his guard and
+to love his male friends not as a woman is loved and not in a spirit
+of selfish monopoly, but with the pure and clean and essentially
+unselfish affection of Christian manhood.
+
+A word may be said, lastly, with regard to prurient and polluted talk
+and unclean stories. Against these a Christian man will do well firmly
+and resolutely to set his face. Such things defile the mind. They are
+injurious both to him that hears and to him that speaks, in that they
+tend to engender a mental atmosphere in which the suggestions of
+actual vice are likely to meet with an enfeebled power of resistance.
+Of course it is possible to be too tragical on the subject of
+"language," and to exaggerate the harm done by "smoking-room" stories.
+But whatever is definitely unclean is definitely evil, and should be
+both avoided and discouraged. To assume, however, a pious demeanour
+and to appear to be shocked is a fatal method of protest. Christians
+have no business to be shocked, nor are they meant to be prigs. There
+are other forms of social pressure which are more effective. It is,
+moreover, sometimes possible to combine moral reprobation with a sense
+of humour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE WORKS OF THE DEVIL
+
+
+The devil is from one point of view a figure of Jewish and Christian
+mythology. The Jews, like other early peoples, believed in the
+existence of evil spirits or demons, to whose malignant agency they
+ascribed various diseases, both functional and organic, and in
+particular those unhappy cases of obsession, fixed idea, and multiple
+personality, which we should now class under the general head of
+insanity, and treat in asylums for the mentally deranged. The New
+Testament writings are full of this point of view, which is of course
+largely foreign to our minds to-day. The ordinary Englishman is not a
+great believer in devils or spirits of evil: though he does in some
+instances believe in ghosts, and is inclined to the practice of what
+in former ages was called necromancy--the attempt to establish an
+illicit connexion with the spirits of the departed--under the modern
+name of psychical research. There are, no doubt, some forms of
+psychical research which are genuinely scientific and legitimate. It
+is probable enough that there exists a considerable area of what may
+be called borderland phenomena to which scientific methods of inquiry
+may be found applicable, and which it is theoretically the business of
+science to investigate. But it is a region in which the way lies
+readily open to all kinds of superstition and self-deceit. The pursuit
+of truth for its own sake is essentially a religious thing: but the
+motives of many amateur dabblers in psychical research are far from
+being truly religious or spiritual. Much popular spiritualism, whether
+it assumes the form of table-turnings, of spirit-rappings, or of
+mediumistic seances, is thoroughly morbid and undesirable, and the
+Christian Church has rightly discouraged it.
+
+It is not, however, necessary to believe literally in the devil, or in
+devils--concerning whose existence many persons will prefer to remain
+agnostic--in order to find in the figure of the devil, as he appears
+in Biblical and other literature, a convenient personification of
+certain forms of evil. There is an atmosphere of evil about us, a
+Kingdom of Evil, over against the Kingdom of Good: and there are
+suggestions and impulses of evil which from time to time arise in our
+minds, which--whatever may be the literal truth about them--not
+infrequently present the appearance of having been prompted by some
+mysterious external Tempter. Certainly deeds have been done in the
+present war which can only be described as devilish. The war has
+revealed on a large scale and in unmistakable terms the evil of which
+the heart of man is capable, and how thin in many cases is the veneer
+which separates the outwardly civilized European from the primitive
+savage. "For this purpose was the Son of GOD manifested, that He might
+destroy the works of the devil." And by the works of the devil we may
+understand especially cruelty, malice, envy, hatred and all
+uncharitableness, the spirit of selfishness which wars against love,
+and the spirit of pride which ignores GOD. We see these things
+exhibited upon the large scale in the conspicuous criminals among
+mankind, whom we are sometimes tempted to regard as devils incarnate.
+We need to be on our guard against the beginnings of them, and indeed
+in many cases their actual presence in an undetected but fairly
+developed form, in ourselves.
+
+Christian men are to be kindly affectioned one towards another in
+brotherly love: in honour preferring one another--which is easier to
+say than to do. They are to refrain from rendering evil for evil, and
+to learn under provocation to be self-controlled. They are to be in
+charity with all men, and so far as it lies within their own power
+(for it takes two to make peace, as it takes two to make a quarrel)
+they are to live peaceably with all men. Wrath and clamour, lying and
+evil-speaking, back-biting and slandering, are all of the devil,
+devilish. Contrary to the works of the devil, which may be summed up
+under the three headings of lying, hatred, and pride, are the
+Christian ideals of truthfulness, love, and humility, with regard to
+each of which a few words may usefully be said.
+
+(i) The devil is described in the New Testament as "a liar and the
+father thereof." A Christian is to be true and just in all his
+dealings, abhorring crookedness: for the essence of lying is not
+inexactitude in speech, but deceitfulness of intention. Christian
+veracity means honesty, straightforwardness, and sincerity in deed as
+well as in word. A writer of fiction is not a liar: to improve in the
+telling an anecdote or a story is not necessarily to deceive others in
+any culpable sense; and moralists have from time to time discussed the
+question whether there may not be circumstances in which to tell a
+verbal lie is even a moral duty--_e.g._ in order to prevent a murderer
+or a madman from discovering the whereabouts of his intended victim.
+But casuistical problems of this kind do not very frequently arise,
+and in all ordinary circumstances strict literal veracity is the right
+course to pursue. [Footnote: Of course such social conventions as "Not
+at home," "No trouble at all," or "Glad to see you," "No, you are not
+interrupting me," etc., are hardly to be classed as "lies," since they
+do not as a rule seriously mislead others, but are merely an
+expression of the will to be civil.]
+
+Christian truthfulness, however, is in any case a much wider thing
+than merely verbal truth-telling: it implies inward spiritual reality,
+a genuine desire to see things as they are, a thirst of the soul for
+truth, and a hatred of shams. The worst form of lying is that in which
+a man is not merely a deceiver of others but is self-deceived, and
+suffers from "the lie in the soul." The religion of Christ is always
+remorselessly opposed to every form or kind of humbug or of sham.
+Jesus Christ is the supreme spiritual realist of history. In His view
+the "publican" or acknowledged sinner is preferable to the Pharisee or
+hypocrite for the precise reason that the former is a more genuine
+kind of person than the latter. And to tell the truth in this deeper
+sense, that is, genuinely to face realities and to refuse to be put
+off with shams, to see through the plausibilities and to detect the
+hollowness of moral and social pretences and conventionalities, to
+have, in short, the spiritual and moral instinct for reality, is a
+much harder thing than to be verbally veracious. The true veracity can
+come only from Him who is the Truth: it is a gift of the Spirit, and
+proceeds from GOD who knows the counsels of men's hearts, and discerns
+the motives and imaginations of their minds.
+
+It follows that just as every lie is of the devil, so all truth, of
+whatever kind, is of GOD. The Lord is a God of Knowledge, and every
+form of intellectual timidity and obscurantism is contrary to
+godliness. There can never be any opposition between scientific and
+religious truth, since both equally proceed from GOD. The Christian
+Church is ideally a society of free-thinkers, that is, of men who
+freely think, and the genuine Christian tradition has always been to
+promote learning and freedom of inquiry. It is worth remembering that
+the oldest and most justly venerable of the Universities of Europe are
+without exception in their origin ecclesiastical foundations. If the
+love of truth and the spirit of freedom which inspired their inception
+has at particular epochs in their history been temporarily obscured,
+if there is much in the ecclesiasticism both of the past and of the
+present which is reactionary in tendency and spirit, at least there
+have never been lacking protesting voices, and the authentic spirit of
+the Gospel tells always upon the other side. "Ye shall know the
+truth," says a New Testament writer, "and the truth shall make you
+free." [Footnote: The manifestations of the persecuting spirit and
+temper are not confined to the sphere of religion; the intolerance of
+the platform or of the press can be as bigoted as that of the pulpit:
+and secular governments also can persecute--not only in France or in
+Prussia. That it is part of the mission of Christianity to cast out
+the evil spirit of persecution, to destroy intolerance as it has
+destroyed slavery, is none the less true, in spite of the fact that
+both slavery and persecution have in the past found Christian
+defenders.]
+
+(ii) In the second place, hatred is of the devil, and love is of
+Christ: the Christian is to love even his enemies. In a time of war,
+that is to say, whenever actual enemies exist, the natural man
+discovers in such an ideal only an immoral sentimentalism, and the
+doctrinaire pacificist occasionally uses language which gives colour
+to the charge. But Christianity has nothing in common with
+sentimentalism, and Christian is no merely sentimental affection which
+ignores the reality of evil or explains away the wrongfulness of
+wrong. In order to love his enemies it is not necessary for a
+Christian to pretend that they are not really hostile, to make excuses
+for things that are inexcusable, or to be blind to the moral issues
+which may be at stake. It has rightly been pointed out that "Love your
+enemies" means "Want them to be your friends: want them to alter, so
+that friendship between you and them may become possible." More
+generally what is meant is that the Christian man is by the grace of
+GOD, to conquer the instinct of hatred and the spirit of revenge
+within his own heart, to be willing to serve others (his enemies
+included) at cost to himself in accordance with the will of GOD, to
+desire on behalf of all men (his enemies included) the realization of
+their true good. For wrongdoers chastisement may be the truest
+kindness. To allow a man, or a nation, to pursue an evil purpose
+unchecked would be no real act of love even towards the nation or the
+individual concerned. To offer opposition, if necessary by force, may
+in certain circumstances be a plain duty. That which we are to love,
+in those whose immediate aspect and character is both unlovely and
+unlovable, is not what they are, but what they are capable of
+becoming. We are to love that element in them which is capable of
+redemption, the true spiritual image of GOD in man, which can never be
+totally effaced. We are to remember that for them also the Son of GOD
+was crucified, that we also have need of forgiveness, and that "GOD
+commendeth His own love towards us, in that, while we were yet
+sinners, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."
+
+(iii) The third great manifestation of the spirit and temper which is
+of the devil, devilish, is pride, which by Christian writers upon
+these subjects is commonly regarded as the deadliest of the so-called
+"deadly sins," on the ground that it logically involves the assertion
+of a false claim to be independent of GOD, and is therefore fatal in
+principle to the religious life. Pagan systems of morality distinguish
+between false pride, the foolish conceit of the man who claims for
+himself virtues and capacities which he does not in fact possess, and
+proper pride, the entirely just appreciation by a man of his own
+merits and accomplishments at neither more nor less than their true
+value. The Christian ideal of humility is apt from this point of view
+to appear either slavish or insincere. The issue between Christian and
+pagan morals here depends upon the truth or falsehood of the Christian
+doctrine of GOD and of His relation to man. Once let a man take
+seriously the avowal that "It is He that hath made us, and not we
+ourselves," once let him grant the position that his life belongs to
+GOD and not to himself, and concur in the judgment of spiritual
+experience that whatever is good in him is the result not of his own
+efforts in independence of his Maker, but of the Divine Spirit
+operative within him, and it becomes obvious that "boasting"--as S.
+Paul expresses it--"is excluded."
+
+At the same time Christian humility is not self-depreciation. It has
+nothing in common either with the spirit of Uriah Heep, or with the
+false diffidence which refuses on the ground of personal insufficiency
+a task or vocation to which a man is genuinely called. These are both
+equally forms of self-consciousness. Humility is forgetfulness of
+self. The true pattern and exemplar of humility is the Christ, who
+claimed for Himself the greatest role in the whole history of the
+world, simply on the ground that it was the work which His Father had
+given Him to do. "I seek not Mine own glory: there is One that seeketh
+and judgeth." The secret of humility is devotion to the will of GOD.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE KINGDOM OF GOD
+
+
+Christianity in the last three chapters has been considered on its
+negative side as involving a conflict against temptation. But the
+Christian ideal is positive rather than negative. We have only to
+think for a moment of the character and life of Christ in order to
+realize how ludicrously impoverished a conception of the Gospel
+righteousness is that which regards it as exhausted by the meticulous
+avoidance of sin. "Christian purity," it has been said, "is not a
+snowy abstinence but a white-hot passion of life towards GOD." The
+same might be said of other Christian virtues. Positively regarded,
+the Christian ideal of life means sonship towards GOD and citizenship
+in His Kingdom.
+
+The precise signification of the phrase, "Kingdom of GOD," or "Kingdom
+of Heaven," in the language of the New Testament has been the theme of
+controversy and discussion among scholars. It is impossible to enter
+here into the technicalities of the dispute. Broadly speaking, it may
+be laid down without much fear of contradiction that the Kingdom of
+GOD means the effectual realization, in every department of human life
+and upon a universal scale, of the sovereignty of GOD as Christ
+reveals Him. It is the vision of the goal of human history. It is
+meant to be a leading motive and inspiration of Christian life.
+
+    "I will not cease from mental strife,
+     Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
+     Till we have built Jerusalem
+     In England's green and pleasant land."
+
+It is quite true that, according to the thought of the New Testament
+writers, the mystic Jerusalem is not a city built by mortal men upon
+this earth, but something which is wholly the gift of GOD, a city not
+made with hands, descending from GOD out of heaven. The Kingdom of GOD
+in its fulness is no product of human striving. It is the achievement
+of a Divine purpose, the manifestation in the end of the days of the
+completed mystery of the Divine Will.
+
+Nevertheless it is the mission of the Church to prepare the way of the
+Kingdom, and it is for Christian men to live as sons of the Divine
+Kingdom even now, that is, as men in whose hearts and lives GOD and
+none other is enthroned as King and Lord. This means that everything
+that is good in human life is to be redeemed by being offered to GOD,
+and that everything that is vile and evil is to be eliminated and cast
+out. "The Son of Man shall send forth His messengers, and they shall
+gather out of His Kingdom all things that offend." "There shall in no
+wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh
+abomination, or maketh a lie." "The Kingdom of GOD is righteousness
+and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost."
+
+The ideal of the Christian life, therefore, is something infinitely
+richer and more positive than the merely negative morality of the Ten
+Commandments. It is the ideal of the Divine Kingdom. It is a positive
+devotion to the will of GOD. It means co-operation with the Divine
+will and purpose, a will and a purpose which, by the patient operation
+of the Divine Spirit, is in the course of world-history slowly but
+surely being worked out, amid all the immediate chaos and welter of
+events, to its goal in the revelation of the Jerusalem which is from
+above. That is why the Christian is bidden to pray continually, "Thy
+Kingdom come, Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven."
+
+If a man does not want the Divine Kingdom, or does not believe in it,
+he ought not to pray for it. If he does want it and pray for it, he
+ought also to work for it. And though no man may fully understand it,
+yet if a man is to pray for it and work for it at all, he needs to
+have at least some partial understanding of what it means. It is worth
+while, therefore, instead of dismissing the idea as a vague dream or
+an empty phrase, to try and fill it with some measure of positive
+meaning for us men here and now. What is the will of GOD for humanity?
+And what is meant by preparing the way of the Lord? Some things at
+least we may say are certainly included in the will of GOD, and some
+things are as certainly excluded.
+
+"It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of
+these little ones should perish." A Christian Church which took
+seriously its vocation to go before the Lord and to prepare His ways
+would be effectively and vigorously concerned with problems so prosaic
+as the rate of infantile mortality and the allied questions of housing
+and sanitation, with the insistence that the conditions of life among
+the poorer classes of the community shall be such as make decent
+living possible, and with the provision of a minimum of leisure and of
+genuine opportunities of liberal education for all who have the will
+and the capacity to profit by them. The combined ignorance and apathy
+of the people of England with regard to questions of education, which
+has made possible the shelving of Mr. Fisher's Education Bill in
+deference to the opposition of vested interests, is little to the
+credit of the Christian Church in these islands, and grievously
+disappointing to those who had hoped at last for a real instalment of
+constructive reform. [Footnote: It is now stated that the Bill is to
+be reintroduced and passed, with certain modifications. It is to be
+hoped that the modifications will not be such as to destroy its
+effectiveness as an instrument of real reform. It remains true that
+the Bill was imperilled by the apathy and ignorance of the rank and
+file of Churchmen and Christians generally, though it is fair to say
+that the Bishops demonstrated unanimously in its favour.]
+
+A system of education, moreover, which was truly Christian, would
+provide not merely for the training of mind and body, and for
+instruction--on the basis of some inter-denominational modus vivendi
+yet to be achieved--in morality and religion. It would secure equally
+for the children of all classes opportunities for the training of the
+aesthetic faculties, for the cultivation of art and imagination, for
+the filling of life with colour and variety and movement. The
+intolerable ugliness of the domestic architecture of our cities and
+towns is a totally unnecessary offence to GOD and man; and the
+drabness and monotony of the life of huge masses of the population,
+who find in the rival attractions of the gin-palace and the cinema the
+only means of distraction at present open to them--this also is
+something which cannot possibly be regarded as being in accordance
+with the will of GOD. The redemption of society from all that at
+present makes human life sordid or hideous is a real part of what the
+ideal of the Kingdom means. It is a part of the task laid upon the
+Christian Church in preparing the way of the Lord and making straight
+His paths.
+
+Included also in the will of GOD for humanity is the evangelization of
+the world, the perfecting of the Church, the bringing of all nations
+and races into a spiritual unity in Christ Jesus. Christianity claims
+by its very nature to be the absolute religion: the climax and
+fulfilment of the whole process of man's religious quest: the
+synthetic and unifying truth, in which whatever is true and positive
+and permanently valuable in the religious systems of the non-Christian
+world is gathered up and made complete. Of Christ it has been written
+that "How many soever be the promises of GOD, in Him is the yea." In
+Christ is the fulfilment of the unconscious prophecies of the
+religions of the heathen world, nor is there any true solution of the
+problems of comparative religion except this. The Christian Church is
+in principle and of necessity missionary, and apart from the
+vitalizing breath of the missionary spirit the life of the Church
+languishes and dies.
+
+But the true spirit and method of Christian missions is not a narrow
+proselytism. There are indeed things in many of the lower religions of
+the world which are dark and evil. There are regions of the earth
+which are full of base and cruel and degrading superstitions, immoral
+rites and practices against which the Church of Christ can only set
+its face, and with which it can make no terms. These are works of the
+devil which the Son of GOD was manifested to destroy. But there is
+much in the higher religious thought of paganism which Christ comes
+not to destroy but to fulfil, and Christianity can fulfil and
+interpret to the higher religions of paganism just that which is
+truest and most positive in their own spiritual message. Conversely,
+it is probable that there are in Christianity itself elements which
+will only be fully interpreted and understood when the spiritual
+genius of nations at present pagan has made its proper contribution to
+Christian thought. For our own sake as well as for theirs it is
+important that the nations should be evangelized and brought to a
+knowledge of the truth. When we say the Lord's Prayer we are praying,
+among other things, for the success of Christian Missions.
+
+And if Christianity contains within itself the true solution of the
+problem of comparative religion, it contains also, in germ and
+potentiality, the solution of the problems of race and caste, and of
+the international problem also. Not until men have learnt the secret
+of brotherhood in Christ will the white and the coloured races treat
+one another as brothers. Not until the nations, as nations, are
+genuinely Christian and have learnt, in their dealings one with
+another, to manifest the spirit of unselfishness and love, will the
+day be in sight when they shall beat their swords into ploughshares
+and be content to learn war no more. This too, if the Gospel means
+anything at all, is part of the will of GOD for the human race. It is
+part of what is involved in the prayer, "Thy will be done in earth, as
+it is in heaven." It is an integral and vitally important element in
+the Christian hope of the Kingdom.
+
+The redemption of society, the evangelization of the world, the
+bringing together into the corporate wholeness of a world-wide
+Catholic Church of the fragmentary Christianity of the existing
+multitude of sects, the elimination of war from the earth, and the
+breaking down, as the result of a conscious realization of human unity
+in Christ, of the dividing barriers of colour and race and caste-all
+these are essential elements in the Christian vision. The man of the
+world may, and probably will, pronounce each and all of them to be
+chimerical, the baseless fabric of a dream. He will find no thoughtful
+man who is genuinely Christian to agree with him.
+
+For these things are, quite certainly, part of the will of GOD for
+humanity. They are involved of necessity in any effectual realization
+in human life of the sovereignty of the Father who is revealed in
+Christ. And because GOD is GOD, the goal, for the Christian man, is
+within the horizon-"The Kingdom of heaven is at hand." In any case, be
+the goal near or be it far off, it is as a citizen of that Kingdom,
+and of none other, that the Christian man will set himself to live. He
+will enthrone GOD in his own heart as King and Lord, and will hold
+fast the heavenly vision which it has been given to him to see.
+
+"As we look out into the future," says a modern writer,[Footnote: The
+Rev. W. Temple, in an address delivered at Liverpool on "Problems of
+Society" in 1912, and published by the Student Christian Movement in
+_Christ and, Human Need._] "we seem to see a great army drawn from
+every nation under heaven, from every social class, from every section
+of Christ's Church, pledged to one thing and to one thing only-the
+establishment of Christ's Kingdom upon earth by His method of
+sacrifice and the application of His principle of brotherhood to every
+phase of human life. And as they labour there takes shape a world much
+like our own, and yet how different! Still individuals and
+communities, but the individual always serving the community and the
+community protecting the individual: still city and country life, with
+all their manifold pursuits, but no leading into captivity and no
+complaining in our streets: still Eastern and Western, but no grasping
+worldliness in the West, no deadening pessimism in the East: still
+richer and poorer, but no thoughtless luxury, no grinding destitution:
+still sorrow, but no bitterness: still failure, but no oppression:
+still priest and people, yet both alike unitedly presenting before the
+Eternal Father the one unceasing sacrifice for human life in body
+broken and blood shed: still Church and World, yet both together
+celebrating unintermittently the one Divine Service, which is the
+service of mankind. And in that climax of a vision, which, if we are
+faithful, shall be prophecy, what is it that has happened?
+
+"'The kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of our GOD and of
+His Christ.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+CHRISTIANITY AND COMMERCE
+
+
+This chapter ought properly to be written by a layman who is also a
+Christian man of business. It is inserted here mainly to challenge
+inquiry and to provoke thought. The writer has no first-hand
+acquaintance either with business life or with business methods. He
+desires simply to chronicle an impression that the level of morality
+in the business world has been declining in recent years, and that the
+more thoughtful and candid of Christian laymen in business are
+beginning to be deeply disquieted. It is not uncommon to be confronted
+by the statement that it is impossible in modern business life to
+regulate conduct by Christian standards. The impression exists that if
+large numbers of business men abstain from the outward observances of
+religion, it is in many cases because they are conscious of a lack of
+correspondence between Sunday professions and weekday practice, and
+have no desire to add hypocrisy to existing burdens upon conscience.
+The clergy are by the circumstances of their calling sheltered from
+the particular difficulties and temptations which beset laymen in the
+business world. Their exhortations are apt to sound in the ears of
+laymen abstract and remote from life.
+
+If the situation has been diagnosed correctly the matter is serious.
+What is suggested is not that men to-day are deliberately more
+unprincipled than were their fathers, but that modern conditions have
+made the way of righteousness more difficult. Things have been speeded
+up. The competitive struggle has been intensified. Men are beset, it
+has been said, by a "moral powerlessness." They are "as good as they
+dare be." Absorbed in money-making, and pressed hard by unscrupulous
+rivals, they cannot afford to scrutinize too narrowly the social
+consequences of what they do, or the strict morality of the methods
+which they employ. Honesty, as experience demonstrates, is by no means
+always the best policy from a worldly point of view. "The children of
+this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light."
+This being so, it is to be feared that men are apt to prefer the
+wisdom of the serpent to the harmlessness of the dove.
+
+Moreover the man of business in the majority of cases does not stand
+alone. He is a breadwinner on behalf of others. Very commonly he
+regards it as a point of honour to refrain from disclosing to those at
+home his business perplexities and trials. It is assumed that they
+would not be understood, or that in any case it is unfair to burden
+wife and children with financial troubles. In the result it sometimes
+happens that a man's foes are found to be they of his own household,
+and that for the sake of wife and child he stoops to procedures which
+his own conscience condemns, and which those for whose sake he embarks
+upon them would be the first to disapprove. A wife, it may be
+suggested, ought to share the knowledge of her husband's difficulties,
+and to be willing, if need so require, to suffer loss and diminution
+of income as the price of her husband's honour. A wife takes her
+husband in matrimony "for poorer" as well as "for richer," for
+sickness and poverty as well as for health and wealth. It is a tragedy
+that in modern marriages too often only the more pleasurable
+alternative is seriously meant.
+
+Enough has been said to make it evident that in the world of modern
+business there is a battle to be fought on behalf of Christ. Precisely
+for the reason that the vocation of a Christian in this sphere is in
+some ways the most difficult it is also the most necessary. There is a
+call for courage and consecration, for hard thinking and readiness for
+sacrifice, and from the nature of the case it must be mainly a
+laymen's battle. There may have to be financial martyrdoms for the
+sake of Christ before the victory is won. But the prize and the goal
+is worth striving for, for it is nothing less than the redemption of a
+large element in human life from the tyranny of selfishness and greed.
+[Footnote: It may, of course, be argued that so long as the
+competitive system prevails in the business world, a Christian man in
+business must compete, just as in the existing state; though in an
+ideally Christian world competition would be replaced by co-operative
+and war would be unknown. This is perfectively true. But it should be
+possible, nevertheless, to hold fast the Christian ideal as a
+regulative principle even under present conditions. Only in proportion
+as this is done is the redemption of business life a possibility.]
+
+In principle the issues are clear enough. The interchange of
+commodities is a service rendered to the community. It ought to be so
+regarded, and the service rendered, rather than the gain secured,
+should be its inspiration and motive. The service of man is a form of
+the service of GOD, and the operations of financiers and business men
+ought to be capable of interpretation as forms of social service. It
+is only as this spirit is infused into the lives and practice of men
+in business that the world of business can be saved from degenerating
+into a soulless mechanism, dominated by the idea of purely selfish
+profit, or a tissue of dishonest speculation and sordid gambling. The
+business man, like any other servant of the community, is entitled to
+a living wage. He is not entitled either by chicanery and trickery, or
+by taking advantage of the needs of others and his own control of
+markets, to become a "profiteer." Profiteering in time of war is
+condemned by the common conscience. It is equally to be condemned in
+time of peace. The Christian man in business will stand for integrity
+and just dealing, for human sympathy and the spirit of service, for
+the renunciation of profits which are unreasonable and unfair. His
+function is not to exploit the community in his own personal or
+sectional interests, but to be a servant of the Christian
+commonwealth. Some procedures and some methods of making money the
+Christian man will feel himself debarred from employing. For the rest
+what is needed is mainly a change of heart, a shifting of emphasis, a
+modification of the inward spirit and motive of business life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CHRISTIANITY AND INDUSTRY
+
+
+Labour problems have always existed, but the development of
+industrialism as we know it to-day is comparatively modern. It dates
+from the introduction of machinery and mechanical transport, and
+coincided in its beginnings with the vogue of the so-called
+"Manchester School" in political and economic theory. The modern world
+of industry has been built up by the enterprise of capitalists working
+upon the basis of unrestricted competition. Joint-stock companies and
+"trusts" are simply capitalistic combinations for the exploitation of
+industrial opportunities upon a larger scale.
+
+The economic theorists of the Manchester School regarded wages as
+necessarily governed by the working of the "iron law" of supply and
+demand. It was the "interest" of the employer to buy such labour as
+was required at as cheap a rate as possible. It was assumed that in
+this, as in other matters of "business," his procedure must be
+determined wholly by self-interest, to the exclusion of "sentimental"
+considerations. Individual employers might be better than their creed,
+and in the smaller "concerns" the relations between employer and
+employed were often humanized by personal knowledge and intercourse.
+With the advent of the joint-stock company this no longer held good.
+"A corporation has no bowels." Directors were not personally in
+contact with their workpeople, and their main consideration was for
+their shareholders. The whole tendency of the industrial order of
+society as it developed was in the direction of the exploitation of
+the workman in the interests of "capital."
+
+It was not that members of the employing class were consciously
+inhuman. It was simply that they were blinded to the human problems
+which were involved. They had become accustomed to regard as natural
+and inevitable a wage-slavery of the many to the few. Labour was a
+commodity in the market. The workman was a unit of labour. Regarded
+from the point of view of Capital he represented simply the
+potentiality of so many foot-pounds of more or less intelligently-
+directed energy _per diem_. His life as a human being, apart from the
+economic value of his labour, was from the "business" point of view
+irrelevant.
+
+The system was based upon a lie. "Treat human beings as machines as
+much as you will, the fact remains that they are incurably personal."
+The wage-slaves of the modern world asserted their personality, and
+the modern Socialist-Labour Movement is the result. The forces of
+organized labour have won some notable victories. They are a
+recognized power in the land. There are those who hope, and those who
+fear, that they will in the end become socially and politically
+omnipotent. It is now generally recognized that society prior to the
+war was on the brink of a struggle between the classes of great
+bitterness, and that the social condition of the country after the war
+is likely to be fraught with formidable possibilities. There are many
+observers who regard a social revolution, in one form or another, as
+inevitable.
+
+Much, no doubt, will depend upon the temper of the returning troops,
+both officers and men. That men and officers have learnt to know and
+to respect one another upon the battlefield is acknowledged, but those
+who imagine that herein is contained a solution of social and labour
+problems are likely to prove grievously disappointed. A great deal of
+nonsense is being talked about the effects of "discipline" upon the
+men. Military discipline has its admirers: but men of mature years and
+civilian traditions who in the present conflict have served _in the
+ranks_ of His Majesty's Army are not included among their number. They
+have submitted to discipline for the period of their military service.
+They are quite able to recognize that it is essential to the
+efficiency of the army as a fighting machine. But they conceive
+themselves to have been fighting for freedom: and their own freedom
+and that of their children and of their class is included in their
+eyes among the objects for which they fight. They will be more than
+ever jealous, after the war, of their recovered liberties, and
+determined to assert them. It is probable that one result of
+demobilization will be an enormous accession of strength to the ranks
+of the Socialist and Labour parties. The "class war" with which
+society was threatened before the European War broke out is not likely
+to be a less present danger when "that which now restraineth" is
+removed by the conclusion of peace.
+
+What in relation to these problems is the message of the Christian
+Church? The distinctively Christian ethic is based not upon self-
+assertion but upon self-sacrifice, not upon class distinctions but
+upon brotherhood. "Let no man seek his own, but each his neighbour's
+good." The principle is of corporate as well as of individual
+application. In an ideally Christian society, the interests of
+"Labour" would be the sole concern of "Capital," the interests of
+"Capital" the sole concern of "Labour": and the message of the Church
+to the contending parties should be, now as always, "Sirs, ye are
+brethren."
+
+Neither party, however, is likely at present to pay much heed to such
+a message, which is apt to sound like an abstract and theoretical
+truism remote from the actualities of life. In point of fact, the
+large sections of the population who live permanently near or below
+the poverty line are largely precluded by lack of leisure from
+entering into the Christian heritage of the spiritual life, and are
+too much obsessed by the daily struggle for material existence to have
+patience with exhortations to regard with sympathy either the
+temptations or the good intentions of the well-to-do. The latter in
+turn are apt to resent any attempt to stir in them a social conscience
+with regard to the problems of poverty or the fundamental causes of
+labour "unrest," to regard the security of dividends as conveniently
+guaranteed by the laws of GOD, and to hold, in a general way, that
+everything has hitherto been ordered for the best in the best of all
+possible worlds. The Church--and more particularly the Church of
+England--is commonly regarded both by "Labour" and by "Capital" as
+traditionally identified with the Conservative Party in politics. The
+Church-going classes love to have it so, and the world of Labour not
+unnaturally holds aloof.
+
+It is nevertheless sufficiently obvious that the future of
+civilization after the war will be largely in the hands (or at the
+mercy) of organized Labour. And it is worth remembering that our
+Saviour died not for the rich only, but for the poor, having moreover
+Himself lived and worked as a labouring Man. There are those who
+regard the spirit of idealism and world-wide brotherhood by which the
+Labour Movement is inspired as the most profoundly Christian element
+in the life of the modern world, and the existing cleavage between
+Labour and the Church as a tragedy comparable only to the tragedy of
+the war. It is the plain duty of a Christian man to do what in him
+lies to remedy this cleavage, to think hard and honestly about social
+problems from a Christian point of view, and to make it his business
+to have an adequate understanding and sympathy with the real character
+and motives of Labour aspirations and ideals.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS
+
+
+Politics at their worst are a discreditable struggle between parties
+and groups for selfish, and sectional ends, full of dishonesty and
+chicanery and corruption. It is often recognized at the present time
+as desirable that none should be for party, but all for the state. The
+Christian ideal goes further than this: it is that none should be for
+party, but all for the Kingdom of GOD, and for the state only in so
+far as the state is capable of being made the instrument of that
+higher ideal. The Christian man is not to hold aloof from political
+life, but to seek, so far as his personal effort and influence can be
+made to tell, to Christianize the political struggle. In every
+contested election he is bound to think out in the light of Christian
+ideals the issues which are at stake, without either prejudice or
+heat, and to register his vote in accordance with his conscience under
+the most solemn sense of responsibility before GOD. He is bound, of
+course, to be a reformer, standing for cleanness of methods, probity
+of motives, honest thinking, class unselfishness, and the elimination
+of abuses and malpractices. He will tend in most cases to be a cross-
+bencher, in the sense of being independent of party caucuses and
+concerned only for social and political righteousness.
+
+A Christian man who has leisure and opportunity can render enormous
+service by going into politics, more especially into municipal
+politics, which are too often surrendered to the tender mercies of
+corrupt, narrow-minded, or interested local wire-pullers. There is an
+enormous field of unselfish social service and opportunity lying open
+to Christian laymen in this connexion. There can be no truer form of
+work for the Church of GOD than the work of a municipal councillor who
+seeks not popularity but righteousness.
+
+The carrying over of Christian ideals into national and international
+politics is equally indispensable. In the sphere of international
+affairs in particular, while other nations have, for the most part,
+rendered official lip-service from time to time to ideals of
+international morality, it has been reserved for Germany to declare
+openly for the repudiation of "sentiment," and for a policy of
+undisguised cynicism and _real-politik_. The doctrine that the state
+as such is exempt from moral obligation towards its neighbours, and
+that the whole political duty of man is exhausted in the service of
+his country and the promotion of her purely selfish interests and
+"will to power," has been exhibited in action by the Prussian
+Government in such a fashion as to incur the moral reprobation of the
+world. The cynical doctrines of _real-politik_, the belief that the
+"interests" of the state are in politics and diplomacy paramount, and
+that "the foreigner" is a natural enemy, the belief that in all
+international relationships selfish and self-interested considerations
+must really determine policy, are unfortunately by no means
+unrepresented, though they are not unchallenged, in the political life
+of other countries besides Germany. There are influential publicists
+in England to-day the _principles_ of whose political thinking are
+really Prussian. It remains to be seen whether, when the time comes
+for peace to be made between the nations, the forces of international
+idealism will prove strong enough to carry the day, or whether we
+shall have a merely vindictive and "realist" peace which will contain
+within itself the seeds of future wars. There can be no question but
+that a Christian man is bound to stand both for the freedom of
+oppressed nationalities and for the right of all peoples freely to
+determine their own affairs, and also for the duty of nations as of
+individuals to love their neighbours as themselves, and to seek
+primarily not their own but each other's good. If these professions
+are to be more than nominal they must mean a readiness for national
+sacrifices and for national unselfishness in time of peace as in time
+of war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CHRISTIANITY AND WAR
+
+
+Christianity is opposed to war, in the sense that if men and nations
+universally behaved as Christians, wars would cease. The ideal of the
+Kingdom of GOD involves the reign upon earth of universal peace. War
+is, therefore, in itself, an unchristian thing. It is, moreover, a
+barbarous and irrational method of determining disputes, since the
+factors which humanly speaking are decisive for success in war, viz.
+the organized and unflinching use of superior physical force, are in
+principle irrelevant to the rights or wrongs of the cause which may be
+at stake. The victories of might and right do not invariably coincide.
+
+It is not surprising, therefore, that a certain proportion of
+Christians--the Quakers, for example, and many individuals who have
+either been influenced by the teaching of Tolstoy, or else, thinking
+the matter out for themselves, have arrived at similar conclusions to
+those of Tolstoy and the Quakers--should hold that in the event of war
+a man's loyalty to his earthly city must give way to his loyalty to
+his heavenly King in this matter. Experience shows that there are men
+who are prepared to suffer persecution, imprisonment, or death itself
+rather than violate their principles by service in the armed forces of
+the Crown.
+
+There are obviously circumstances conceivable in which it would be the
+duty of all Christians to become "Conscientious Objectors." Such
+circumstances would arise in any case in which the state endeavoured
+to compel men's services in a war which their conscience disapproved.
+In the present European War it so happens that there are probably no
+Englishmen who regard the German cause as righteous and the Allies'
+cause as wrong. The problem of Conscientious Objection has, therefore,
+only arisen in the case of those Christians who hold the abstract
+doctrine of the absolute wrongness, in whatever circumstances, of all
+war as such.
+
+There are those who, though personally rejecting this doctrine,
+consider that those who hold it are wrong only in that they are
+spiritually in advance of their time. The majority, however, of
+Christians have felt that the Pacifist or Quaker doctrine is not
+merely impracticable under present conditions, but that it rests upon
+a fallacious principle. For it appears to deny that physical force can
+ever be rightfully employed as the instrument of a moral purpose. In
+the last resort it is akin to the anti-sacramental doctrine which
+regards what is material as essentially opposed to what is spiritual.
+
+The questions at issue are not really to be solved by the quotation of
+isolated texts or sayings of our Lord from the Gospels. What is really
+in dispute is the question of the form which, in the context of a
+given set of national and political circumstances, may rightfully be
+given to the application of the Christian principle of universal,
+righteous, and self-sacrificing Love. No one can dispute the fact that
+in certain circumstances Christianity may demand the readiness to die
+for others. Are there any circumstances in which Christianity may
+demand the readiness to _slay_ for others, either personally, or
+mediately through service in a military machine which as a whole is
+the instrument of a national purpose only to be achieved through the
+slaughter of those in the ranks of the opposing armies?
+
+The majority of Christians have answered this question in the
+affirmative. They have held that there are circumstances in which the
+claims of Love are more genuinely and adequately acknowledged by
+taking part in warfare than by abstaining from it. They have insisted
+that there are circumstances in which it is no true act of love, even
+towards the aggressor, or perhaps towards the aggressor least of all,
+to permit him to achieve an evil purpose unchecked: that resistance,
+even by force of arms, may be in the truest interests of the enemy
+himself. They have maintained that it is possible to fight in a
+Christian temper and spirit, without either personal malice or hatred
+of the foe: that not all killing is murder, and that to rob a man of
+physical life, as an incident in the assertion of the claims of
+righteousness, is not, from the point of view of those who believe in
+human immortality, to do him that ultimate and essential injury which
+it might otherwise be held to be.
+
+No one, however, who has had anything to do with modern war can doubt
+that it is intrinsically beastly and devilish, or that it is apt to
+arouse passions, in all but the saintliest of men, which are of an
+extremely ugly kind. To affirm that it is possible, as a matter of
+theory, to fight in a wholly Christian spirit and temper, is not to
+assert that in actual practice more than a small minority of soldiers
+succeed in doing so. It is possible to be devoutly thankful that when
+the issue was posed by the conduct of the Germanic powers in the
+August of 1914 the British Empire replied by entering upon war, to
+hold that it was emphatically the right thing to do, and that it
+represented a course of conduct more intrinsically Christian than
+neutrality would have been. But it is not possible to maintain with
+truth that the British nation as a whole has been fighting either in a
+Christian temper or from Christian motives. It is undeniable that
+uglier motives and passions have crept in. Sermons in Christian
+pulpits upon such themes as the duty of forgiveness or the Christian
+ideal of love towards the enemy have been neither frequent nor
+popular. Undoubtedly the German Government in its general policy, and
+particular units of the German Army and Navy upon many occasions, have
+acted in such a way as to give provocation of the very strongest kind
+to the unregenerate human impulses of hatred and of revenge. It is not
+surprising, though it is regrettable, that under the influence of this
+provocation many persons, otherwise Christian, have either frankly
+abandoned the Christian doctrine of human brotherhood, or else have
+denied that the Germans are to be regarded as human beings. On the
+whole, and speaking very broadly, it may be said that the troops have
+shown themselves more Christian in these respects than have the civil
+population, though there are many exceptions upon both sides. It is to
+be feared that the Church, in so far as she has been represented by
+her clergy (though here, again, there are many exceptions), has been
+too anxious to be identified with a merely Jingo patriotism to
+exercise any very appreciable influence in restraint of unchristian
+passions. It is to be hoped and anticipated that there will be a
+strong reaction after the war both against militarism and the less
+desirable aspects of the military mind, and also against the
+belligerent temper and spirit--especially, perhaps, on the part of the
+men who have themselves served and suffered in the field.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+LOVE, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE
+
+
+No element in Christian practice has been more widely challenged in
+modern times than the Christian ideal of marriage. Our Lord's standard
+in these matters was simple and austere. "Whoso looketh on a woman to
+lust after her hath committed adultery already in his heart."
+"Whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of
+fornication" (the exceptive clause is of disputed authenticity)
+"causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is
+divorced committeth adultery."
+
+The _State_ in certain cases gives legal sanction to "adultery" in
+this latter sense, and there is a vocal and probably increasing demand
+that legal facilities for divorce upon various pretexts, with liberty
+of remarriage, shall be further extended. The Divorce Law Reform Union
+has announced its intention to promote in Parliament a Bill which, if
+carried, would have the effect of reducing legal marriage to a
+contract terminable after three years' voluntary separation by the
+will of either party. Doubtless a robust opposition will be offered by
+Christian people to the adoption of so lax a conception of marriage
+even by the State. Experience in other countries seems to show that
+unlimited facilities for divorce do not tend to the promotion either
+of happiness or of morals. But it needs to be recognized that the
+State, as such, is concerned only with the legal aspect of marriage as
+a civil contract, and that it has to legislate for citizens not all of
+whom profess Christian standards even in theory. The law of the State
+may well diverge from that of the Church with regard to this matter,
+though it does not follow that so lax a standard as that which is now
+proposed would be in the best interests even of the State.
+
+The Church regards Christian marriage as indissoluble. In cases of
+adultery she counsels reconciliation, wherever possible, upon the
+basis of repentance on the part of the guilty and forgiveness on the
+part of the injured partner. If this is not possible the Church
+sanctions, if need so require, separation, but not remarriage. There
+are also unfortunately other cases in which the married relationship
+proves so intolerable as to render a temporary or permanent separation
+admissible as a last resort. The remarriage of either party during the
+lifetime of the other is nevertheless held to be unchristian. With the
+practical difficulties which beset the Church in the attempt to
+maintain within the circle of her own membership a stricter standard
+than that which is recognized by the Civil Law and by society at large
+we are not here concerned. Our concern is with the Christian standard
+as a positive ideal, on the effective maintenance of which, as
+Christians believe, depends the stability of the home and the
+Christian family, and the redemption of sex-relations from mere
+animalism and grossness.
+
+A Christian husband takes his wife in matrimony "for better for worse,
+for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to
+cherish, till death them do part, according to GOD'S holy ordinance."
+The step is irrevocable. The union is intended to be life-long. It
+has, moreover, in view not only "the mutual society, help, and comfort
+that the one ought to have of the other," but also "the procreation of
+children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to
+the praise of His holy Name." A few words may usefully be said under
+these heads.
+
+(i) Marriage ought to be based upon love; and love, though naturally
+and normally involving the element of sexual attraction, ought to
+include also other and deeper elements. A Christian man who has lived
+a clean and disciplined life ought to be sufficiently master of his
+passions to avoid mistaking a merely temporary infatuation for such a
+genuine spiritual affinity as will survive the satisfaction of
+immediate desires and prove the stable basis of a life-companionship.
+Hasty marriages are a common and avoidable cause of subsequent
+unhappiness. It is obviously undesirable that couples should enter
+upon matrimony until there has been a sufficiently prolonged and
+intimate acquaintance to enable them to become reasonably sure both of
+themselves and of one another. In many cases there is much to be said
+for regarding betrothals in the first instance as provisional. It is
+better to break them off at the last moment than to marry the wrong
+person.
+
+The Victorian conventions with regard to all these matters were
+thoroughly bad. Girls were brought up in carefully-guarded ignorance
+of the implications of matrimony and shielded by perpetual chaperonage
+from anything approaching comradeship with the opposite sex.
+Eventually they were in many cases stampeded into a marriage which had
+its origin either in a clandestine flirtation or in the designing
+operations of some match-making relative, who made it her business
+first to "throw the young people together" and then to suggest that
+they were virtually committed to one another by the mere fact of
+having met.
+
+The reaction which has taken place against all this is upon the whole
+salutary. The new social tradition which is growing up makes it
+possible for the unmarried of both sexes to meet one another with
+comparative freedom, and to establish relations of friendship, which
+may subsequently ripen into love, unhampered by any such morbidly
+exciting atmosphere of intrigue and suggestion on the part of
+relatives and friends. But the new freedom of social intercourse, if
+it is not in its turn to prove disastrous, demands on the part of the
+young of both sexes a higher standard both of responsibility and self-
+control, and of knowledge of what is implied in the fact of sex. The
+experience of married life is, moreover, not likely to prove a
+success, save in rare instances, unless there is between the parties a
+real community of interests and tastes, unanimity, so far as may be,
+of ideals and of religious convictions, and at least no very great
+disparity of educational and intellectual equipment.
+
+(ii) A Christian marriage includes among its purposes the procreation
+of children. It is here most of all that unanimity of ideal and of
+conviction between husband and wife is essential. A man and a woman
+ought not to take one another in marriage without first being assured
+of each other's mind upon this subject. "If marriage is to be a
+success each must learn respect for the other's personality, real give
+and take, and the horror of treating the other just as a means to his
+own pleasure, whether spiritual, intellectual, or physical: and both
+must think seriously of the responsibilities of parenthood. Husband
+and wife must work out their ideals together, in perfect frankness and
+sincerity, and it is impossible to have true and sacred ideals of
+their joint physical life unless there is the same openness and
+understanding and sympathy on this point as on all others." [Footnote:
+_Ideals of Home_, by Gemma Bailey (National Mission Paper, No. 43).]
+There must be mutual consideration and self-control: the need for
+self-restraint and continence does not disappear with the entry upon
+marital relations: it is if anything intensified.
+
+There is a real problem here which needs to be thought out. To the
+practice of "race-suicide," by which is meant the artificial
+restriction of parentage by the use of mechanical or other
+"preventives," Christian morality is violently opposed. On the other
+hand, it may reasonably be held that people ought not to bring
+children into the world in numbers which are wholly out of relation to
+their capacity to feed, clothe, educate, and train them. "The enormous
+families of which we hear in early Victorian times were not quite
+ideal for the mother or the children, nor for the father if he were
+not well off." [Footnote: _Ibid_] It may be found necessary in
+practice to limit the size of the family either upon economic grounds
+or (in particular instances) in the interest of the mother's health.
+
+It is to be feared, however, that the modern tendency in both respects
+is to shirk the responsibilities of parenthood on grounds which are
+thoroughly selfish. The Victorian doctrine that "when GOD sends mouths
+He sends food to fill them" may have been unduly happy-go-lucky. The
+recent remark of an officer in a certain British regiment, that since
+he and his wife had only L8000 a year between them, he felt that he
+could not afford to have more than one child, was entirely shameless.
+It would seem, moreover, that the comparative childlessness of modern
+marriages is sometimes due not to the husband's reluctance, upon
+economic grounds, to beget children, but to the wife's reluctance to
+bear them, a reluctance which in some cases arises either from such
+shrinking from the physical pain and sacrifice of motherhood as goes
+beyond what is really justified, or from mere self-indulgent
+absorption in social pursuits and pleasures. There ought to be in a
+Christian marriage more of the true spirit of adventure and romance, a
+greater readiness for sacrifice, a more willing acceptance of parental
+responsibilities, and of the obligation of self-denial for the
+children's sake. There can be no question but that modern families--
+with the paradoxical exception of the families of the very poor--have
+been tending to be smaller than they either need be or ought to be.
+
+At the same time it is generally conceded that _some_ measure of
+limitation is in most cases reasonable and necessary. The vitally
+important thing is that such necessary and reasonable limitation
+should be secured not by artificial evasion of the consequences of
+intercourse, but by self-control and deliberate temporary abstinence
+at certain periods from the intercourse of sex. [Footnote: It may be
+suggested that in cases of genuine perplexity it is advisable to
+consult, as occasion may require, either a medical man who is also a
+Christian, or a wise--and preferably a married--spiritual guide.]
+
+For the union of the sexes in marriage is according to the mind of the
+Christian Church an essentially pure and holy thing. It is a sacrament
+of the fusion of two personalities, whereby they are at once
+individually and mutually enriched, and at the same time mystically
+and spiritually knit together in such a way as to become in the sight
+of GOD indissolubly one: the unity of husband and wife being
+comparable, according to a famous saying of S. Paul, to the unity
+which exists between Christ and His Church. Now, although, from this
+point of view, the significance of married life is to a great extent
+impoverished and frustrated, if intercourse is so regulated as to
+render the marriage childless not in fact merely, but in intention,
+yet it does not follow that procreation must be directly in view on
+every individual occasion, since the mystical value of intercourse as
+a spiritual sacrament of love may still exist in independence of such
+intention. It is nevertheless, surely, clear that a Christian man and
+his wife are morally precluded from coming together except with a deep
+sense of the sacredness of what they do and of its intimate connexion
+with the mysteries of life and birth, and a corresponding readiness,
+in the event of conception taking place, to accept the ensuing
+responsibility for the child as a sacred trust from GOD, "the Father
+from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named." With the
+use of "preventives" and other devices, which degrade into a mere
+means of carnal satisfaction an act which is meant to bear a deeply
+spiritual and religious meaning, the Christian interpretation of
+marriage seems plainly and obviously incompatible.
+
+A few words may be added with regard to the upbringing and education
+of children. Here, again, there has been a reaction--which upon the
+whole is good--from the unduly rigorous disciplinary methods of the
+past. It may be doubted, however, whether the reaction has not in some
+cases been carried too far. Children ought to be controlled and
+disciplined by their parents, and no expenditure of care and thought
+and tact is too great to devote to the rightful training of their
+characters. But experience seems to show that parents sometimes fail
+to recognize that their children grow up. It is important that in
+proportion as they grow towards maturity of character and independence
+of personality the strictness of parental discipline should be
+gradually relaxed. At a certain stage the real influence of parents
+upon their children will depend upon their refusal to assert direct
+authority. Not a few of the minor tragedies of home life arise from
+the ill-judged action of parents who treat as children sons and
+daughters who are virtually grown up.
+
+The problem of the religious education of children cannot here be
+discussed in detail, but three or four leading principles may be
+suggested.
+
+(1) It ought not to be necessary to say that children should not be
+taught to regard as true statements or doctrines which their parents
+believe to be in fact false. This applies in particular to certain
+views of the Bible. The ideal should be so to teach the child that in
+later life he may have nothing to unlearn.
+
+(2) When children are old enough to read they should be encouraged to
+read the Gospels. They ought not, however, to read the Old Testament,
+with the exception of certain Psalms and other specially selected
+passages, until they are of an age to distinguish what is Christian
+from what is Jewish, and to recognize the principle of religious
+development.
+
+(3) Children should be taught in the first instance the practice
+rather than the theory of religion: devotions in which doctrine is
+implicit, rather than doctrine as such. As their minds expand they
+will ask the reasons for what they do and the meaning of the worship
+in which they engage, and they will need to have suggested to them an
+elementary, but not a stereotyped, theology. They should from the
+beginning be encouraged to think and question freely on religious
+subjects.
+
+(4) They should occasionally accompany their parents to Church, and in
+particular should from time to time be present when the latter receive
+Holy Communion. They should have the service explained to them in a
+simple fashion, and should be encouraged to look forward to the time
+when they will be confirmed, and become communicants themselves.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+THE MAINTENANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HOW TO BEGIN
+
+
+The practice of Christianity depends for its possibility upon the
+existence and maintenance within the soul of an inward principle of
+spiritual life towards GOD. The reason why so many nominal Christians
+fail conspicuously to manifest the fruits of Christianity in their
+lives is simply that they have no vital personal experience of the
+power and efficacy of the life in Christ. They have never been
+effectually gripped by the religion which they nominally profess. They
+are not transformed, or in process of being transformed, by the Holy
+Spirit's power.
+
+The plain man, confronted by the Christian ideal, if he does not at
+once dismiss it as impracticable, is apt to ask, or at least to
+wonder, how he is to begin. It is a question to which no cut-and-dried
+answer can be given. But at least no beginning is likely to lead to
+very much in the way of fulfilment which does not sooner or later
+involve something like personal "conversion" of heart. Conversions may
+be sudden, or they may be gradual: but religion, if it is to be a
+reality, means in the end the establishment of vital personal
+relations with the living Christ. It means the acceptance of His
+challenge, self-surrender to His appeal, the combination of an
+acknowledged desire to serve Him with acknowledged impotence and
+bankruptcy before GOD.
+
+Sooner or later the Spirit convinces men of sin. Either a man,
+essaying light-heartedly to follow Christ, discovers in the very
+attempt his inability to do so, and is found traitor to his Master's
+cause in the first encounter: or else, it may be, at the very outset,
+the consciousness of what has been wrong in conduct and character and
+motive in the past stands as a damning record between his soul and
+GOD, and forbids him without repentance to take service in the
+campaign of Christ at all. The consciousness of sin as a "horrid
+impediment" in the soul is not, of course, true penitence until a man
+has been brought to realize in the light of the Cross that the
+difference between what he is and what he might have been is treachery
+to Him whose man (in virtue of his baptism) he was meant to be, and
+that by being what he is, and acting as he has acted, he has
+consciously or unconsciously contributed to the wounds wherewith
+Eternal Love is wounded in the house of His friends.
+
+The measure of a man's penitence, whether early or late developed in
+him, is very apt to be the measure of his spiritual insight and of his
+spiritual sincerity. The familiar words of the hymn--
+
+    "They who fain would serve Thee best
+     Are conscious most of wrong within,"
+
+are profoundly true to Christian experience. But repentance--which is
+sorrow for sin in the light of the Cross--is abortive and merely
+results in spiritual paralysis unless it issues in confession--that
+is, frank and open acknowledgment before GOD, and if need be also
+before His Church--and the seeking and finding of reconciliation and
+forgiveness as the unmerited gift of GOD in Christ.
+
+There are those in whose case the inward conviction of sin and the
+realization of the need for pardon are the first impulses of awakening
+spiritual life. There are others with whom it is not so. They are
+conscious of the attractiveness of the Man Christ Jesus. They would
+desire to be on His side and to be of the number of His disciples.
+They are dimly aware, or at least they more than half suspect, that in
+Him is to be found the satisfaction of a need for which their soul
+cries out. With S. Peter they find themselves saying to Christ, "Lord,
+to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life," But they
+cannot as yet with any inward reality profess themselves conscience-
+stricken with regard to the past. They are not aware of themselves as
+conspicuous sinners, or indeed, it may be, as sinners at all. The
+experience of penitence and of Divine forgiveness must come to them,
+if it is to come at all, at a later stage. It is not by that postern
+that they enter upon the Way of the Spirit.
+
+But the Way is in either case the way of fellowship, and the Spirit is
+the spirit of discipline. The newly found spiritual life, however
+awakened, needs to be maintained and fostered by fellowship in the
+Church, by regular habits of Christian devotion, by faithful communion
+in the Sacrament of Life. Plainly, if a man is not already confirmed,
+his first step must be to be prepared for confirmation: if he has been
+confirmed, but has lapsed from communion, he must resume the
+communicant life. He needs to claim the status and privilege of
+effective membership in the Body of Christ, and to form for himself a
+rule of inward life and discipline. Rules of devotional life must
+necessarily vary in accordance with a man's surroundings and
+opportunities, and perhaps in some of their details in accordance with
+a man's temperament. But at least there ought to be a rule of regular
+private prayer, a rule of regular communion, a rule of Bible-reading
+or "meditation," and a rule of self-denial and orderliness in daily
+personal life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+PRAYER
+
+
+Prayer is a difficult matter, both in theory and in practice. But it
+is essential to learn to pray.
+
+It is important to recognize that the scope of Christian prayer is
+much wider than mere intercession or petition. It is the communion of
+the soul with GOD, and its purpose is union with the life of GOD in
+identity of purpose with His will. The beginning of prayer is a
+_sursum corda_, a lifting up of the heart to GOD. It is well to
+remember that true prayer is never a solitary act, even when a man
+prays in solitude. We pray not as individuals but as members of a
+Family, and our prayer is spiritually united and knit together with
+the common prayer-life of the universal Church, of which it forms a
+part. We pray, moreover, not to wrest to our private ends the purposes
+of GOD, not to induce Him, so to speak, to do our wills instead of
+His, but to unite our wills with His will, as children who have
+confidence in their Father. True prayer is offered in the Name of
+Christ--that is, it is prayed in His Spirit, according to His mind and
+will. It can never, therefore, be selfish or self-centred. The Lord's
+Prayer is its model and its type. A few words may be said in
+explanation of this prayer.
+
+It begins with a recognition of the common Fatherhood of GOD. It is
+only as members of His Family that we can approach Him: He is in no
+sense our personal or private GOD, but the common Father of us all.
+
+And our Father is "in heaven"--that is, supreme, eternal, the Lord and
+Ruler of all things. His Name is holy, and to be hallowed: it is in
+reverence and deepest worship that we bow before Him. He is King, and
+we pray that His Kingship may be realized, in earth as it is in
+heaven: and that His will may be done--that is the supreme desire of
+our hearts, and the highest object of our petitions.
+
+And therefore we are vowed to His service: and because we are sure
+that He will supply whatever we really need to that end, we pray in
+confidence for daily needs both spiritual and bodily--"Give us this
+day our daily bread." And remembering that we are unprofitable and
+faithless and disloyal servants we ask forgiveness for our sins, well
+knowing that we can only be forgiven as we ourselves are ready to
+forgive. And so looking to the future and mindful of our frailty we
+pray that GOD will not lead us into "temptation" or trial, without at
+the same time providing a way of deliverance from the assaults of
+evil. The prayer customarily ends with an ascription of praise and
+glory to GOD.
+
+That is the type and model of Christian prayer: and prayer is truly
+Christian just in so far as the spirit and temper of the Lord's Prayer
+inspires it. We can only pray rightly in the Holy Spirit. "We know not
+what to pray for as we ought: but the Spirit helpeth our infirmities."
+
+As for the technique of prayer, a man, on kneeling or standing to
+pray, will do well to spend a short time first in silence and
+recollection, waiting in stillness upon GOD, remembering His presence,
+His holiness, His love, and His responsiveness to His children's cry.
+Let him next make an act of adoration, spoken or unspoken, and invoke
+GOD the Holy Spirit to enable him to pray aright. Then let him pour
+out before GOD all that is in his heart, his troubles, his anxieties,
+his perplexities, his sins: let him ask for forgiveness: let him give
+thanks: let him pray for the coming of GOD'S Kingdom, in its various
+aspects: commending to GOD'S guidance and protection all right causes
+and aspirations in the world, in things both social and political and
+international, in things ecclesiastical, in things moral and religious
+and missionary: let him add personal and private intercessions for
+those near and dear to him and for those whom he meets in the daily
+intercourse of life: and let him end as he began, in a few moments of
+quiet waiting upon GOD.
+
+That is the general scheme of a Christian's private prayers. They
+should include in due proportion the several elements of adoration,
+thanksgiving, penitence, petition, and intercession. They need not be
+lengthy. "Use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think
+that they shall be heard for their much speaking." It is quality and
+not quantity of prayer that counts. And the prayers of a busy man must
+necessarily be short.
+
+But it is worth while taking time and trouble over the ordering of
+one's prayers. A man's intercessions, in particular, are not likely in
+practice to have the width, the range, and the variety which are
+desirable, unless they are planned and ordered in accordance with a
+coherent scheme which is thought out in advance. It is the part of
+wisdom to keep a note-book, in which names and subjects for
+intercessory prayer may be jotted down and distributed over the days
+of the week for use in due rotation. Such schemes, however, if drawn
+up and used, should be revised from time to time, and not suffered to
+become a mechanical burden or a legal bondage. There should be freedom
+and spontaneity in a Christian's prayers. It is well to have rules,
+and to try not to be prevented by mere slackness from keeping them.
+But it is important to see to it that the self-imposed rule is so
+framed as to prove genuinely conducive to reality in prayer, and
+suitably adapted to opportunity and circumstance: and it is very often
+a good thing from time to time, in the interests of freedom, quite
+deliberately to break one's rules.
+
+With regard to forms and methods of prayer, it is desirable that men
+should learn to pray freely in their own words, or even in no words at
+all. Provided a man remembers reverence, he need not stand on ceremony
+with GOD. But it is advisable also to use books and manuals of prayer
+--at any rate in the first instance: to use them, but not to be tied to
+them. Many such manuals have been compiled and published within recent
+years: the majority of them are unsatisfactory in varying degrees. A
+few, however, can confidently be recommended: especially _Prayers
+for the City of God_, compiled by G. C. Binyon (Longmans); _Prayers
+for Common Use_ (Universities Mission to Central Africa, Dartmouth
+St., Westminster); and _Sursum Corda, a Handbook of Intercession and
+Thanksgiving _, arranged by W. H. Frere and A. L. Illingworth (A. E.
+Mowbray and Co., Ltd.).
+
+Prayer need not be confined to stated hours and times. Interpreting
+prayer at its widest, the ideal should be to "pray without ceasing."
+It was said of an early Christian writer that his life was "one
+continuous prayer": and it is well to form the habit of inwardly
+lifting up the heart to GOD from time to time in the midst of daily
+cares and business. Where Churches are kept open it is often possible
+in passing to spare time to enter and kneel for two or three minutes
+in quiet and recollection before GOD: but it is perfectly possible to
+pray inwardly at any time and in any environment. Fixed times of
+prayer, nevertheless, there must also be: and a man should at least
+pray in the morning upon rising and in the evening before going to
+bed. If a time can also be secured for midday prayer, so much the
+better: but this is more difficult. To have formed a really fixed and
+stable habit of daily prayer is an enormous step forwards in Christian
+life. Much depends upon learning to rise regularly at a fixed hour
+before breakfast: and this in turn depends upon a regularity in going
+to bed, which under modern conditions of life it is not always easy to
+achieve. If a man is obliged to be up so late at night that it is
+morally certain that he will be too tired to pray with much reality
+before turning in, he should endeavour, if it is at all possible, to
+secure some time for prayer at an earlier stage in the evening.
+
+Difficulties in the life of prayer beset everybody. Thoughts have a
+way of wandering, the "saying" of prayers tends to become mechanical,
+moods vary, and there are times in most men's lives when they feel it
+almost impossible to pray with any sense of reality. A man should not
+lightly be discouraged. He may be recommended to remind himself that
+GOD knows all about it, and that the resolute offering of his will to
+GOD at such times, in defiance of distraction and difficulty, has
+special value. It is well to take God into one's confidence. "If GOD
+bores you, tell Him that He does." He is no exacting tyrant, but a
+Father caring for His sons. Those who care to do so may find _Prayer
+and some of its Difficulties_, by the Rev. W. J. Carey (Mowbray &
+Co.), a helpful book to read in this connexion.
+
+A final word may be said with regard to a theoretical difficulty which
+many people feel in connexion with the intercessory and petitionary
+sides of prayer. Since GOD'S will, it may be argued, is presumably
+going to be done in any case, and since He knows the real needs both
+of ourselves and of our friends better than we do, what is the point
+of praying for them? To many people it may be a sufficient practical
+answer to refer to the example and precept of Christ, who both taught
+and practised intercessory prayer. But it is possible to go a little
+further, and to point out that it appears to be GOD'S will, not merely
+that such and such a thing should be done, but that it should be done
+in response to our human prayers. True it is that "your Father knoweth
+what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him": but our Lord
+emphasized this truth, not as a round for regarding prayer as futile
+or unnecessary, but as a reason for praying. For prayer is an
+expression of the filial spirit towards our Father, and the more
+simply and naturally we approach GOD as children, making our petitions
+before Him with childlike hearts, the more truly will our prayers be
+in accordance with that spirit of sonship which is the mind of Christ.
+At the same time, the knowledge that our Father is wiser as well as
+greater than we will forbid us to clamour for what in wisdom is denied
+us, and will in general govern the spirit and scope of our petitions.
+Just as our Lord points out that an earthly father, if asked for
+bread, will not give his child a stone, so conversely in the
+experience of every Christian it often happens that in his blindness
+he asks a stone, and is given bread. But no Christian will ask
+deliberately and knowingly for stones.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SELF-EXAMINATION AND REPENTANCE
+
+
+"The unexamined life," said Plato, "is not worth living." Similar
+advice was given by Marcus Aurelius. The practice of self-examination,
+therefore, is not distinctive of Christianity: it is an obvious
+dictate of wisdom, wherever life and conduct are regarded seriously,
+that a man should from time to time take stock of himself in the light
+of his ideals and learn to know and recognize in detail where and how
+he has fallen short, and what are the besetting sins and weaknesses
+against which he must contend.
+
+The Christian man will judge and try his life by the standards of
+Christ, with growing sensitiveness of conscience as spiritual
+experience deepens: not shrinking from the confession of sin and
+failure, desiring not to be self-deceived, but to know and to
+acknowledge the truth. There is nothing in this of priggishness or
+unreality. It is a necessary discipline. The Christian life is meant
+to bear the fruit of a character developing in growing likeness to the
+character of Christ: but none is suddenly made perfect: the old Adam
+dies hard: and the Christian by confession of repeated failure may at
+least learn the lesson of humility and self-distrust.
+
+The rightful complement of self-distrust is trust in GOD: the rightful
+issue of self-examination and confession is the realization of divine
+forgiveness, fresh courage, and a new start. The very core of the
+Gospel is here. He who has bidden men forgive those who trespass
+against them "unto seventy times seven" is not to be outdone in
+generosity by man. But in order that sin may be forgiven it must be
+acknowledged as sin against GOD and treachery to Christ, and repented
+of with true sorrow of heart. Repentance is not mere self-contempt,
+self-pity, or remorse. It is sorrow for sin, which has for its motive
+the love of GOD and the realization that human sin meant and means in
+the experience of GOD the Cross.
+
+Nothing so deepens the religious life as true repentance, nor is there
+anything so fatal to true religion as self-righteousness. "If we say
+that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in
+us." "To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little." But the
+first prerequisite of repentance is self-knowledge--a difficult
+matter. Gross carnal offences, strong and flagrant sins, if such there
+be, are obvious and upon the surface. The subtler sins of the spirit--
+thoughtlessness, for example, or snobbishness or priggishness and
+pride--though we are quick to remark upon them in others, are apt in
+our own case to pass undetected. It is the Spirit who convinces men of
+sin. Only as we are resolute to enter into "the mind of the Spirit"
+can we hope to know ourselves as in the sight of GOD we really are.
+
+The matter is complicated by the fact that those who, as things are,
+most systematically practise self-examination and confession of sin
+too often view the matter in a somewhat narrowly ecclesiastical
+spirit, and make use of forms of self-examination which mix up real
+and serious moral offences with "sins" which are merely ceremonial,
+trivial, or imaginary, as though the two stood precisely upon the same
+level. "One must abstain from sexual sin _and_ not go to dissenting
+places of worship; one must not steal _and_ must be sure to abstain
+from meat on Fridays." A man's own sense of reality should enable him
+to guard against this sort of thing, and if fixed forms of self-
+examination are used, to use them with discretion.
+
+The forms most commonly suggested in manuals of devotion are based
+upon the Ten Commandments. This is in accordance with the teaching of
+the compilers of the English Prayer-book, who, after bidding intending
+communicants to "search and examine" their "own consciences (and that
+not lightly, and after the manner of dissemblers with GOD)," proceed
+to lay down that "the way and means thereto is: First, to examine your
+lives and conversations by the rule of God's commandments: and
+whereinsoever ye shall perceive yourselves to have offended, either by
+will, word or deed, there to bewail your own sinfulness, and to
+confess yourselves to Almighty GOD, with full purpose of amendment of
+life."
+
+The Commandments are, however, as they stand, both negative in form
+and Judaistic in character, and if used in this way as a "rule" of
+Christian conduct must be spiritualized and reinterpreted in the light
+of the Gospel. The second and fourth Commandments, in particular, are
+in their literal significance obsolete for Christians: it is a false
+Puritanism which would forbid sculpture and religious symbolism in the
+adornment of a Christian church, nor is any one in the modern world
+likely to confuse the symbol with the thing symbolized: while the
+observance of the Sabbath is part of that older ceremonial "law" from
+which S. Paul insisted that Christian converts should be free (Coloss.
+ii. 16). There is, however, a spiritual idolatry which consists in
+allowing any other object than the glory of GOD and the doing of His
+will to have the primary place in the determination of conduct--there
+are men who worship money, or comfort, or ambition, or their own
+domestic happiness, or even themselves. And the Commandment about the
+Sabbath, though it has no literal value to-day (and certainly no
+direct bearing upon the sanction or significance of Sunday) may serve
+to suggest the important principle that a man is responsible before
+GOD for the use he makes of his time, and that it is a religious duty
+(not confined to any particular day of the week) to distribute it in
+due proportion, according to circumstance and opportunity, with proper
+regard to the rightful claims of work, of worship, and of recreation
+and rest. The remaining Commandments are capable of being similarly
+interpreted as suggesting broad positive principles rather than as
+merely prohibiting wrong actions of a particular and definite kind:
+and so treated they form as convenient a framework as any other for a
+scheme of questions for self-examination.
+
+It is possible, however, that some men may prefer to use as their
+basis some standard more distinctively Christian than the ancient law
+of Judaism--for example, the Beatitudes (Matt. v. 1-12) or the "fruits
+of the Spirit" (Gal. v. 22). A man will in any case do well either to
+frame or to adapt his own scheme for self-examination, with special
+regard paid to whatever he may discover by experience to be a
+besetting sin or weakness, or a temptation to which he is particularly
+exposed. It should be remembered that the measure of what is wrong in
+a man's life is the measure of the contrast between his character and
+that of Christ, and that the chief flaws in Christian character and
+achievement (which are also those most likely to pass undetected) are
+not uncommonly such as fall under the head of "sins of omission"
+rather than of commission--the leaving undone of what ought to have
+been done, the failure to exhibit positively in relation to GOD and
+man the qualities of faith and hope and love. A man should ask himself
+wherein he has chiefly failed, and come short of the glory of GOD:
+whether he is loyally observing any self-imposed rule of life and
+discipline, and fulfilling any resolutions which may have been made,
+or any obligations which have been undertaken. Having made in this
+manner an honest attempt to discover his own shortcomings and failures
+before GOD, let him with equal honesty confess them, seek forgiveness,
+and in the spirit of repentance and restored sonship start again.
+
+The late Lieutenant Donald Hankey, better known as "A Student in
+Arms," criticizes Churchmen of a certain type as being unwholesomely
+preoccupied with the thought of their sins, and allowing their
+consciences to become a burden to them. They should, he says, 'think
+less of themselves, and trust the Holy Spirit more. The advice is
+excellent: but morbid scrupulosity is not a common fault of English
+laymen. The habit, as Mr. Chesterton expresses it, of "chopping up
+life into small sins with a hatchet" is, of course, to be avoided: but
+the purpose of self-examination and self-knowledge is not to encourage
+morbid introspection, but by frank acknowledgment and repentance to
+get rid of the past and with recovered hope and serenity to reach
+forward towards the future. A man cannot "walk in the Spirit" unless
+he is inwardly "right with GOD."
+
+With regard to sacramental confession, the rule of the Church of
+England is sane and clear. It may be expressed by saying that "none
+_must_, but all _may_, and some _should_" make use of it. In the case
+of a conscience seriously burdened in such a way that a man hesitates
+to present himself for Holy Communion unabsolved, to go to confession
+is obviously the right remedy. There are other cases in which men find
+by experience that it helps them to be more honest and candid with
+themselves, with GOD, and with the Church, if they go to confession
+from time to time as a piece of self-discipline and a needed spiritual
+tonic. Yet others discover that they flounder less in spiritual
+things, and that their religious life is deepened and made stronger,
+if they place themselves for a time under wise direction. Systematic
+direction, of course, has obvious dangers. It may tend to destroy
+independence of character. It may cause a man to become "priest-
+ridden." But the dangers are not inevitable, and there are without
+doubt cases in which it is of value. Much obviously depends upon the
+wisdom and common sense of the director. The Prayer-book refers
+penitents to a "discreet and learned" minister of GOD'S Word. If a man
+proposes to practise habitual confession he will do well to assure
+himself of the discretion and learning of the priest whose help he
+seeks.
+
+The method of making a sacramental confession is simple. Self-
+examination is made beforehand, the results being, if need be, written
+down, either in full, or in the form of notes to assist the memory. A
+first confession should cover the whole life so far as remembered,
+from childhood upwards: subsequent confessions the period since the
+last was made. The confession should aim at completeness, an effort
+being made to remember not only specific acts of wrongdoing, but
+slight failings and weaknesses of character and the general lines and
+tendencies of faulty spiritual development. Symptoms should, if
+possible, be distinguished from causes, habits and tendencies and
+besetting sins from isolated acts. Cases in which a sin has been
+deliberate should be noted as such: but there should be no dwelling
+upon extenuating circumstances or intermingling of claims to virtues
+or graces of character with the admission of defects. No names may be
+mentioned, nor may third persons be incriminated by any form of words
+which would enable the confessor to recognize their identity. The
+priest hears the confession sitting in a chair. The penitent kneels
+beside him and confesses as follows:--"I confess to GOD Almighty, the
+Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, before the whole company of
+heaven, and before you, that I have sinned in thought, word, and deed,
+by my own fault. Especially I accuse myself that (since my last
+confession, which was...ago) I have committed the following sins....
+[Here follows the confession in detail: after which]. ... For these
+and all my other sins which I cannot now remember, I humbly ask pardon
+of GOD, and of you, father, penance, counsel and absolution. Wherefore
+I ask GOD to have mercy upon me, and you to pray for me to the Lord
+our GOD. Amen."
+
+The confessor then gives advice and counsel according to his wisdom,
+commonly imposes a penance, and if assured of the sincerity of the
+penitent, pronounces absolution according to the form prescribed in
+the Prayer-book Office for the Visitation of the Sick.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+CORPORATE WORSHIP AND COMMUNION
+
+
+The really essential thing is the Communion. There may be minor
+outward differences as to the manner of its celebration: you shall
+find in one parish a tradition of Puritan bareness, in another a full
+and rich ceremonial symbolism, with lights and vestments. A man may
+have his personal preferences, but it is a mistake to attach undue
+importance either to the presence or to the absence of the external
+adjuncts of worship. What matters is the Body and Blood of Christ.
+
+A man must have his own regular rule with regard to Communion. To
+communicate spasmodically or upon impulse at irregular intervals is
+not the way to build up a stable Christian character. Where
+circumstances make possible the leading of a fairly regular life and
+give adequate opportunity for preparation beforehand, weekly communion
+is the best rule. Where this is not possible, a fortnightly or even a
+monthly rule may in particular cases be the best.
+
+Preparation for Communion should be real, but need not be elaborate.
+It should be made overnight, and should include a review of the period
+since the last Communion was made, prayers for pardon and new
+resolves, if possible a short meditation on the essential meaning of
+the Sacrament, and the selection of some particular theme to be the
+focus of intercession at the service itself.
+
+At the actual service it is well to arrive early, with a few moments
+to spare for quiet and recollected prayer before the Liturgy begins.
+The first part of the service is preparatory. Any pauses or intervals
+should be filled up by private prayers.[Footnote: Forms and
+suggestions which, may be used by those who find them helpful are
+provided for this purpose in any manual of devotion.] From the moment
+of consecration until the end of the service the mind should be
+concentrated as far as possible upon the thought of Christ's realized
+Presence. A man should go up to the altar to receive Communion as one
+desiring to meet his Lord and to be renewed in Him, returning
+subsequently to his place to render thanks for so great a Gift. When
+the service is over it is best not to hurry out of church, but to
+linger for further thanksgiving and prayer as occasion serves.
+
+It is an ancient rule or custom of the Church to receive Holy
+Communion fasting, giving precedence to the food of the soul over that
+of the body. To insist rigidly upon such a rule in any and every set
+of circumstances is a piece of unintelligent and unchristian legalism:
+but many persons are of opinion that to observe it wherever it is
+reasonably possible to do so makes for reality. There is a real value
+in the element of asceticism and self-discipline involved in the
+effort to rise early and come fasting to church: and the fast may be
+interpreted as a kind of outward sacrament of the inward reality of
+spiritual preparation--a preparation of the body corresponding to the
+preparation of the soul, It is, moreover, an advantage of the early
+morning hour that the mind is undistracted by the occupations and
+diversions of the day. For all these reasons the early morning
+Communion is to be preferred to Communion at a later hour.
+
+Whether a man is a weekly communicant or not, he should _in any case
+be present as a worshipper_ at Holy Communion Sunday by Sunday, and
+should regard attendance at the weekly Eucharist as the most essential
+part of church-going. No one who makes it a rule of his life to be
+present on Sundays and other festivals of the Church at Holy Communion
+ever has cause to regret having done so.
+
+A man who for any reason (_e.g._ by the nature of his employment) is
+debarred from attending regularly on Sundays should, if possible,
+secure an opportunity of regular attendance at Holy Communion on a
+week-day. There are usually churches to be found, at least in the
+towns, which have an early morning Eucharist daily throughout the
+week: and advantage can also be taken of this if on any particular
+occasion the regular Sunday Communion has been missed. If neither
+Sunday nor week-day opportunities are available, the need should be
+met by what is known as "spiritual communion": that is to say, a man
+should read over the Liturgy in private, unite himself in spirit with
+the Eucharist as celebrated in the particular church with which he
+happens to be most familiar (as representing for him the worship of
+the Church Universal), and pray that he may receive the spiritual
+benefits of Communion though deprived for the time being of the actual
+Sacrament. Apart from the "early service," which is now almost
+universal, schemes of worship upon Sunday mornings vary in different
+parishes. In some churches Matins and Litany are sung and a sermon
+preached, a late Eucharist without music being commonly celebrated
+about noon: in other parishes Matins is said quietly without music at
+a comparatively early hour, and the Eucharist is solemnly sung, with a
+sermon, as the principal service of the forenoon, usually without more
+than a very limited number of communicants, partly because if the bulk
+of the congregation communicate at a sung Eucharist the service
+becomes intolerably long, and partly because the majority of those
+desiring to receive Communion have done so fasting at an earlier hour.
+
+In large towns a man can usually find churches of either type
+according to his preference. In "single-church areas" he ought for the
+sake of fellowship and good example to conform, as a rule, to what is
+customary. It is desirable, in a general way, to be identified with
+the corporate worship of the parish: but it is worth remarking that,
+apart from the weight due to this general consideration, there is no
+particular sacredness about the hour of eleven o'clock, and a man who
+has communicated before breakfast, and perhaps contemplates
+attendance, later on, at Evensong, may not unreasonably feel justified
+in devoting the forenoon of Sunday (which is usually his solitary
+morning's leisure in the week) to other purposes than those of
+worship. If the preacher is worth listening to (which is not
+invariably the case) it is a good thing to go and hear him: and it is
+well, therefore, to attend one or other of the services (morning or
+evening) at which a sermon is preached. But it is not essential to
+attend both: and the question may be raised whether one sermon a
+Sunday is not as much as most men can profitably digest. A sermon is
+in any case (except at the Eucharist) a detachable appendix to a
+Church service; and it is both possible and legitimate either to
+attend the service and leave the church before the sermon, or to avoid
+the service and come in time to hear the sermon, according to
+preference or opportunity.
+
+As regards external details of observance, kneeling, and not
+squatting, should be the attitude adopted for prayer. It is customary
+to turn eastwards for the Creed, and in some churches, though not in
+others, to kneel at the reference to the Incarnation in the course of
+the Nicene Creed. It is also a common practice in some churches to
+genuflect (_i.e._ to drop for a moment upon one knee) on rising from
+one's place to go up to the altar to communicate, in reverence for the
+Blessed Sacrament. A man should adapt his personal usage in these
+minor details to whatever appears to be customary in the particular
+church in which he is worshipping.
+
+It is often extremely difficult for the clergy to know personally the
+men of their congregations, since it is rare in most neighbourhoods
+for the men to be at home during the hours when it is possible for the
+clergy to visit. In these circumstances a man ought to be willing to
+take the initiative in making himself known to the clergy of his
+parish, and to co-operate as far as possible in any effort which may
+be made, through parochial Church Councils or otherwise, to develop
+the spirit of fellowship in a congregation. There is very often about
+Anglican Church worship a stiffness and frigidity which badly needs to
+be broken down. Appropriated seats, where they exist, are a particular
+curse, and anything which can be done in the way of abandoning chosen
+seats, even if "bought and paid for," to strangers in the interests of
+charity is a real piece of Christian service. A stranger ought not to
+be made to feel uncomfortable, but to be welcomed in every possible
+way. The ideal is that every church, in every part of it, should be
+free and open at all times to all comers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE DEVOTIONAL USE OF THE BIBLE
+
+
+It is to be feared that the habit of reading the Bible in private for
+purposes of devotion has largely dropped out of modern usage, partly
+by reason of the general stress and urgency of modern life, and partly
+because men do not quite know what to make of the Bible when they read
+it. They are aware of the existence of what are called "critical
+questions," but they do not know precisely the kind of differences
+which criticism has made. It is a pity to acquiesce in an attitude of
+this kind, and it is greatly to be desired that the habit of reading
+the Bible regularly and becoming familiar with its contents should be
+revived.
+
+There are two distinct methods of reading the Bible which are of
+value. One is to take a particular book and to read it straight
+through like a novel, in order to get the impression of the writer's
+message as a whole. Advantage may be taken of occasional opportunities
+of Sunday or week-day leisure for this purpose. If the book is studied
+with the help of a good commentary, so much the better. A man who
+would be ashamed to be wholly unfamiliar with modern or classical
+literature ought to be equally ashamed to be wholly unfamiliar with
+the literature of the Hebrews.
+
+The second method of reading the Bible consists in the devotional
+study of particular passages, sometimes called by the formidable name
+of "meditation." The parts of the Bible best adapted for this purpose
+are the Gospels, certain portions of the Epistles, many of the Psalms,
+and portions of the greater Prophets. The essence of the method is to
+read over a short passage quietly after prayer for spiritual guidance,
+to browse over it for a few minutes and follow out any train of
+thought which may be suggested by it, to apply its message in whatever
+way may seem most real and practical to the spiritual problems of
+immediate daily life, and to conclude with prayer and resolution for
+the future. It is not practicable for the majority of men to make such
+a "meditation" a matter of daily habit, though this may easily be
+possible for people of leisure. But it may be suggested that it is
+both practicable and abundantly worth while for ordinary people to
+allot at least half an hour a week for such a purpose. Our fathers
+unquestionably fed and nurtured their souls to an extraordinary degree
+by spiritual reading. It ought to be possible for modern people, in
+spite of modern distractions, to acquire and maintain the capacity to
+do the same.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+ALMSGIVING AND FASTING
+
+
+The two things were originally closely connected. Men fasted in order
+to give to others the savings which resulted from a reduced
+expenditure on personal needs. "Lent savings" represent a modern
+revival of this idea. The essence of Christian almsgiving is that it
+should be the expression of Christian charity or love: and love means
+the willingness to serve others, at cost to self. Gifts and
+subscriptions which represent merely the largess of a man's
+superfluity and cost nothing in the way of personal self-denial are
+not really in this sense almsgiving. The Gospel prefers the widow's
+mite to the rich man's large but not really generous contribution, in
+cases where the larger sum represents the lesser personal cost.
+
+It was the rule of the ancient Jewish Law that a man should give away
+a tenth part of what he possessed, but this ought not to be adopted
+under modern conditions as a literal precept. The poor cannot afford
+to spare so large a fraction of their incomes. The wealthy can in many
+cases give away a much larger proportion without feeling particularly
+stinted. It is the duty of every man whose income is above the line of
+actual poverty (_i.e._ exceeds what is necessary for the literal
+subsistence in food, shelter, and clothing of himself and those
+dependent upon him for support) to consider with his own conscience
+before GOD what proportion should be set aside for educational and
+other purposes, and what proportion should be directly given away in
+charity. Anonymous subscriptions are the best, and the amount
+available for distribution should be carefully allocated as between
+rival claims. Details, of course, must vary: but a certain proportion
+should in any case be given for the purposes of directly religious
+work at home and abroad. A man who really believes in the universality
+of the Gospel will in particular subscribe to the full extent of his
+capacity to foreign missions.
+
+With regard to fasting it has been suggested in an earlier chapter of
+this book that there should be some personal rule of self-denial in a
+man's life. A table of fasts and days of abstinence is printed in the
+Prayer-book, though the Church of England does not normally prescribe
+in detail how such days are to be observed. It is worth remarking that
+the spirit is not necessarily in contradiction to the letter; but
+meticulous outward observances are not of the essence of Christianity,
+nor is it desirable to obtrude such observances in an ostentatious
+manner in mixed society. The rule of the Gospel with regard both to
+almsgiving and to fasting is that such things should be done in
+secret. It is usual, however, for Church people, at least in normal
+circumstances, to pay some special regard to the observance of Lent,
+and particularly of Holy Week, as a season of fasting and self-denial,
+and also (with a less degree of strictness) to the four weeks of
+Advent as leading up to Christmas. It is a good thing to enter into
+the observance of these and other seasons of the Christian year so far
+as circumstances permit: and at the least to make a point, if it is at
+all possible, of reading during Lent and Advent a more or less serious
+book of a religious or theological kind, or in other ways endeavouring
+to deepen, by some special practice or observance, the inward
+devotional life. The Sunday Collects, Epistles, and Gospels are of
+course appointed with special reference to the significance of the
+various seasons in the Church's year, and provide suitable passages
+for private meditation at such times. Advantage may also be taken of
+the special courses of sermons and additional services provided in
+almost every parish during the seasons of Lent and Advent. Loyalty to
+the Brotherhood in matters even of minor observance is a great
+principle to be borne in mind in this connexion. There is usually a
+method in the Church's madness, and her prescriptions and counsels are
+the product of a very considerable empirical acquaintance with the
+workings of the human soul.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Religious Reality, by A.E.J. Rawlinson
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RELIGIOUS REALITY ***
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