D

' '/ give tAefeWsaks . ;
for- tie founding of a, dh&kgt in, tKti Colony

' YALE-^MPfEIBSinnf •

Bought with the income of the
William C. Egleston Fund

1913

THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY

\

THE CHURCH

AND

RELIGIOUS UNITY

BY
HERBERT KELLY
A ->.
OF THE SOCIETY OF THE SACRED MISSION
ASSISTANT TUTOR OF THE THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE OF KELHAM
NEWARK-ON-TRENT

WITH A PREFACE
BY THE RIGHT REV.
THE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
1913
All rights reserved

TO
MOTHER
BEST AND DEAREST,
WHO WAS PASSING FROM US WHILE 1 WROTE ON
UNITY, AND, BEFORE WE HAD REACHED TO
SPEAK OF FAITH IN GOD,
WENT HOME IN PEACE,
MAY IITH, 1912.

Una cum orationibus omnium sanctorum
super altare qui est ante thronum dei,
oremus, nos quoque, fratres mei.

CONTENTS

PAGE
Preface by the Bishop of Winchester ix
Introduction - - - i

PART I
THE RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCE
CHAPTER I. Proposals for Reunion - - 21
II. The Christian Principle - 37
III. The Unity of the Church - 52
IV/.The Church Sacraments - 66
V. The Holy Communion. I. -74
VI. The Holy Communion. II. - 98

PART II
A SYNTHESIS OF PRINCIPLES
VIL Freedom  131
VIII. The Historic Episcopate - 145
IX. The Relation of Principles - - - 166

viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
X. The Two Principles of Ministry - - - 188
XI. Is a Synthesis Possible ? - 210
PART III
DOCTRINE
XII. Creeds and Faith - ... 233
XIII. Creeds and Authority - - - 259
XIV. Anglicanism - - 293

PREFACE
Respect for the author himself, and for the valuable
and originative work which he has done for the Church,
made me promise to consider his suggestion that I
should put some preface to his book. But I do so now
from a genuine sense of the value of what he has
written. It is a book, as seems to me, precisely of the
kind which the time requires : it starts the right
question : it is written to an extraordinary degree in
the right temper : and it contributes suggestions of
great pertinence and value towards the answer or
answers to be given.
We have watched in the last few years a great change
in men's thoughts about Christian Unity. Without
hallucinations as to its practical attainment in our
own or our children's time, we have ceased to regard
it merely as an academical question or pious aspiration.
It is recognised as one upon which thought and prayer
must be focussed. The consideration of it may even
increase our sense of its difficulty, may impress upon
us the depth and range of the religious issues that it
opens, may make us feel that only by some wonderful,
and probably catastrophic, working of God can it ever
really come to pass, and Roman Catholic and Quaker,
the. Holy Orthodox Church and Congregationalists
be gathered with Anglicans into one truly Catholic
unity of faith and life.

x PREFACE
But the very fact of opening up such issues, of
measuring such difficulties, if it be reverently and
keenly done, will be itself rich with gain. It should
give largeness to thought : it should break up and
soften prejudice : it should make temper gentler and
humbler : it should turn much of controversy into
conference. In such conference we of the Church of England shall
be more and more obliged to face the question what
it is for which we stand, what we have to contribute,
what is the trust to which we must be devotedly faith
ful. We must consider it, not merely as it is considered
in controversy when you make your points against
your opponent : nor merely as it is considered in
instruction, when you give to your own people justifying
reasons which they are prepared to accept for what
you profess and do. We must consider it, as it
were, in the open : and with it the question, what
we lack and need, what we have to learn and to
receive, what others may have and may contribute.
It is from the Mission Field that we have received
(as was felt solemnly and deeply at Edinburgh in
1910) the strongest impulse in this direction : and we
hail it as a reward graciously given for faithfulness,
however imperfect, to the Divine command of
Evangelization. It is this which makes me say that such a book as
this is at least exactly of the right sort and goes straight
to the heart of our Christian question. But I should
say more, and a good deal more. The author surely
guides us with true instinct to the centre of the matter.
The reality of Jesus Christ, not in history only, but
in living truth and presence, as He Who is ' made unto
us,' and given unto the world, as * wisdom and

PREFACE xi
righteousness and sanctification and redemption ' ;
that sublime fact, at once central and pervasive, at
once historical and abiding — that is the truth by which
we are all alike judged. Again and again have we felt,
as we heard the Evangelical speak of what Christ is to
him in closeness of personal presence, as we read the
Jesuit motto ' Jesus only,' and thought of the passions
of heroism which had been wrought and suffered under
it, as we watched or shared the solemn reverence which
sacramental worship of and through the Lord of the
Sacrament can perhaps alone inspire — that to each
and all of these one thing, and one only was vital, viz.,
the Divine fact, the gift of God Himself in reality and
presence, not made by us, or fancied by us, but really
given to us through the Christ and the Spirit. That
is the vital thing. We have felt that the white-washed
barn-like house, where nothing could interpose a charm
or a suggestion between the soul and God, and the
gorgeous church with sublime altar and tender music,
are attempts to welcome, and cherish, to receive, and,
not to ' conjure up ' that holy reality.
So far the author must be right ; right as to what
may seem at one time a Christian platitude, but at
another time, and more rightly, a stupendous thing
hardly to be grasped by the utmost boldness and
steadfastness of faith, and not to be retained by any
less power than the combined witness of the whole
Christian community indwelt by the Spirit.
Here it is that the problem of unity and the problem
of faith are seen to be most intimately bound up
together. We are driven back to ask what we believe,
why we believe it, and whose witness suffices for
belief. But, further yet, the author is surely right as to the

xii PREFACE
direction in which we of the English Church are to
look for our own indispensable contribution, I mean
the indispensable contribution of our own Church. It
must have specifically to do with what in a famous
phrase was called ' the extension of the Incarnation '
— and of the method of the Incarnation, that is, the
tabernacling in, and adoption of, human lives and
personality and particular chosen media in order to
give to man that special manifestation, that distinctive
though inclusive gift of Himself to man, which God gave
and gives through Jesus Christ. The framework of
Order, the Ministry given from above and specially
empowered, the truth entrusted to earthen vessels in
the language of Creeds, and the simple elements won
derfully used by consecration in the Sacrament : these
are the things, generally called Catholic, for which our
Church must stand : we cannot conceive that all
which they have meant and mean in Christian experi
ence can go by the board, or be explained as adultera
tion and accretion. But then the discipline through
which God has put us has compelled us to realise how
such truth as this may be and has been abused : that it
carries with it imminent perils of materialising, of false
lordship over God's heritage, of stiffening formalism.
We think we see that the overwhelming answer to
the essentially exclusive Roman claims to be the one
representative of the divinely purposed Catholic order
is that those perils have become realities of ever-
increasing sway in the Roman communions and have
taken shape as some of the most characteristic features
of its later condition and life and teaching.
Is it not then possible, the writer asks, that the Church
of England has had imposed upon her, and has partly
recognised (though half-blindly and often with miserable

PREFACE xiii
ineffectiveness) the duty, which in thought and practice
is so often the hardest, of maintaining an ' antinomy,'
of combining two principles which are indispensable to
one another, and parts of equal right in the One Truth ?
Of the Catholic side the author has spoken first and
more at length because it is his own ; but he recognises
with equal clearness that there are on the side of what
is Protestant indispensable contributions of freedom,
movement, and the unmediated work of the Holy
Ghost in the soul of the beUever and in the conscious
ness of the Church.
I leave to the author the fuller presentation of his
own thoughts and suggestions. But I must add a
word or two about the manner of it. I, at least, have
never met a book in which there was so determined and
steady and genuinely humble an effort to draw the
sting of controversy by recognition of others' merits,
and of one's own and of one's Church's shortcomings
and blots. Almost to a fault, as some will think but
not I, he follows the method of saying stronger things
against his own people than against opponents, and
of leaving them, brothers in separation, to do the like
with equal candour on their own side. This seems to
me almost to set up a new standard as to the temper of
discussion. It may be for this reason in part that he deals much
more largely with his relation to Protestants on the
one side of him, than with his relation to Roman
Catholics on the other. Less can be usefully said
where the quarrel with the opponents is largely
due to the practical elevation of exclusiveness into
a dogma.
For the rest I need hardly explain that I am very
far from committing myself to all the author's expres-

xiv PREFACE
sions or even meanings. His book is evidently one of
a through and through independent and individual
character. It could hardly be written by authority,
but, if I am right, it is eminently one which authority
should welcome and encourage as a free, fearless,
charitable contribution to our most urgent needs.
I could easily make criticisms or ask questions, some
of them upon matters of importance. I am not sure
whether the author has wholly avoided the danger of
those who know too much, or say too much, about such
a mystery as that of the Lord's presence when we meet
Him, and He gives to us Himself, in His Sacrament.
But I am sure he knows the danger and means to avoid
it : and that his firm repudiation of localising definition
and practice on one side, and his appeal against the
practical loss on the other of the characteristic power
and beauty of the Sacrament, are landmarks of true
thinking. I might suggest, too, that he lays too little stress on
the ordination of the Minister to preach the Word of
God, as well as to lead His worship and bless in His
Name. But I see that contrast colours and sharpens
his expressions here : and I should have no fear but
that explanations would remove even the appearance
of difference.
Antinomies must be expressed in antithesis : and
antitheses can hardly escape from crudeness. How
httle the author's treatment is really crude may be
instanced by his treatment (pp. 205, 206) of the
antithesis of reason and emotion.
There is plenty for critics to lay hold of fairly or
unfairly. I do not think that the book will commend
itself to those who are not genuinely men of good will.
But I trust that from these it will receive something

PREFACE xv
more than ordinary welcome : and that they will
confirm my own impression that it marks a step on the
road forward, and something of a new beginning in
what is usually called controversy.

EDW. WINTON.

Farnham Castle,
August 29th, 1912.

INTRODUCTION
It seems scarcely ^necessary at the present day to urge
the need of religious unity. In the Christian faith,
as in all true and living faith, the ideal of unity is
implicit, since no one can hold a truth without desiring
that all should share it. It is always difficult to say
how far the ideal is effectively and consciously realised
by the majority of Christian people, but certainly it is
now becoming a living aspiration with multitudes for
whom it has been little more than a pious dream. The
World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh has pro
vided its classic expression, but a great deal has been
actually done, still more is being attempted, not only to
express but to accomplish the ideal.
The movement in practical and effective form is
modern. Only thirty or forty years ago, although
many might regret disunion, we were all so boxed up
in water-tight compartments that few imagined there
was any way out of them. Not a few were even con
tented to defend the divisions which seemed so inevit
able and to which we were so habituated. Is there not
a real helpfulness in variety of method ? Is not com
petition always a stimulus to energy ?
The change of view which has taken place is not due
to one, but to a whole mass of reasons which appeal to
people in very different ways. We may arrange
them in three main groups. A

2 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
(«) Those which are most felt and make the widest
appeal are naturally the practical reasons. No one can
help seeing the waste both of money and labour through
overlapping agencies. Not less serious are the waste
in competition of the energy needed for progress, the
loss of spiritual force in mere friction, the loss also of
opportunities and of effectiveness through the diffi
culty of getting separate and often alienated bodies to
combine even for purposes in which all are interested.
Greater than any of these is the powerlessness, the open
scandal, of a divided witness before the world.
To the outsider, to those who have little personal
interest in religion, these considerations have always
been obvious. To the religiously minded their signifi
cance has been brought home by the wider experience
and more novel situations of the mission field. The
comparative slowness of apprehension shown by those
most concerned is no mere accident. Christianity is
a gospel. The more earnestly and positively men
realise and hold it, the more they know of its living
power, the less easy it is for them to seek unity with
those who differ on matters so vital. The rigidity of
their water-tight compartments was due not so much
to the narrowness as to the reality of their belief. The
broad-mindedness of the unbeliever was due less to
the far-sightedness of his vision than to his inability
to appreciate and his consequent indifference to the
meaning of what he saw.
(6) In religion, therefore, as in science, philosophy,
politics, or commerce, the casual criticisms of the out
sider, — although in the end they may prove to have
been conect, — have no effective influence in the history
of the subject. The early Greek philosophers had
intuitions curiously suggestive of our theories of atoms,

INTRODUCTION 3
and even of electrons, but their speculations were of
no assistance to our physicists. True progress takes
place amongst those who are in earnest, and who are
in a position to follow up their ideas continuously.
The rapid change in the religious attitude towards
the problem of unity owes a great deal of its impulse
to the practical considerations given above, but it has
been made possible, and it has been initiated, by deep-
rooted changes in the theological outlook in a multitude
of directions. Beliefs which were once the centre, and
were felt to be the centre, of Christian life are now
relegated to a secondary place. They have not been
repudiated, they are not even abandoned, and yet they
have somehow slipped away from us. There has been,
so to speak, a change of mental routes, leaving the old
land-marks, ports of call, distributing centres of mental
commerce, far on one side. We do not know why the
change has taken place ; we do not know what has
changed ; we only know that our minds have changed.
' Mental routes ' are not things most of us are given
to thinking about. German philosophy which few of
us read, German religious reconstructions which we
only know at second-hand, lie at the basis of a new
modern mind. The most potent influence of all is the
influence of Biblical criticism which has cut loose the
mooring of centuries. We are adrift without knowing
quite why we are adrift, without any charts or other
material for setting a course, without any clear concep
tion of what we are leaving or where we are going to.
(c) The first group of reasons then were very real,
but somewhat superficial ; the second group are some
what negative, somewhat disconcerting, for they imply
a loss of belief ; there is a third group of reasons for
unity, which are full of hope. In peace, content easily

4 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
becomes self-content, and it is in that atmosphere that
difference does its evil work, not only to others but
first to ourselves, as faith in God turns to faith in our
own theories. From competition and rivalry only too
naturally there follows bitterness and self-justification,
unreadiness to learn, unwillingness to admit that we
have anything to learn, unwillingness to recognise our
own failings or weaknesses lest we should give a handle
to opponents, eagerness to judge lest we should be
judged ourselves.
I am not going to maintain that this new situation
saves us from these temptations. So long as men are
men, so long will self-content, self-satisfaction, self-
assertion, remain the first, the most natural, instinct
for us all. It would be hard to prove that we were in
general less self-confident, less sure of our own wisdom,
more teachable than we used to be, and yet anxiety,
perplexity, doubt, the slipping off of so much which,
if it was a stay, was also a fetter, are helping very many
of us to realise that if we are to meet the new intellectual
situation at all, it must be by a larger and deeper under
standing of Christianity than we have yet attained.
Our ideals of unity are not wholly ideals of organisa
tions and conveniences ; we are gaining also something
of a new spirit, a spirit of readiness to learn. The
movement towards unity, the growing appreciation
of its importance, is a far more complex phenomenon
than I think most of us recognise. It is a movement
mainly among the Protestant or ' Free Church ' bodies.
The Catholic bodies, Roman or Anglican, are in a some
what different position. They have been, of course,
affected by the new theological currents, though to a
much less marked degree. On the other hand, the
unity of the Church has always been a definite part of

INTRODUCTION 5
their theory, and they have always been in consequence
very conscious of what I called the practical con
siderations. I am here writing as a Catholic in the belief that we
as Catholics have a real help to give, yet I am very
well aware of the difficulties in the way. We habitu
ally think of our body as ' the Church ' ; we speak of
it as ' Catholic,' in a belief that to the unity of the
Church every Christian ought to belong. Believing,
therefore, that that unity already exists, we have of
necessity held aloof from the efforts to constitute a
unity. At the same time this exclusive claim, advanced
for what is only one body among many, not only seems
to others presumptuous and self-contradictory, it is in
practice one of the greatest difficulties in the way of
that unity on which we profess to set so high a value.
Nevertheless, let us look for a moment, not at what
is immediately under our eyes or immediately possible,
but at the whole sweep of the question. Here are two
large groups of bodies which we call Catholic and
Protestant. Both groups are divided among them
selves, though in very different ways. The Catholic
differences are very sharp cut, clearly expressed, not
easily to be got over. The Protestant bodies have
also their divisions, some formal, which may be over
come, and others of a doctrinal kind between the old
and new beliefs, which are very difficult either to
express or to deal with, which it may be possible to
escape dealing with.
In face of this situation, it is natural to ask ourselves
what we can do just now, but it is also well to ask to
what we are ultimately looking forward. The present
is very fascinating, but to what does it lead ? The
Protestant differences are by way of being adjusted.

6 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
There is no immediate likelihood of a similar success on
the Catholic side, but supposing there were, supposing
we all drew together into our two camps, plainly
this would not be a reunion of Christendom. Can
we imagine we should be any nearer a reunion ?
There are two ways of approaching a problem of
this kind. We may begin in the easiest and most
practical way with those detailed advances within our
reach. Or, we may grasp at once the great general,
underlying questions which in the end we shall have
to face, and we may ask what light they throw on the
lesser points. Call it science or call it art, strategy or
statesmanship, — which is the sounder procedure ? Oh,
those water-tight compartments ! Are we not like
passengers who, having been flooded out of their state
rooms, cluster in the saloon, congratulating themselves
on the wisdom of their escape from narrowing restric
tions, but without any thought of passengers in the
other classes, of the steerage, of the crew, or even of
the ship itself ?
What after all is the nature of the unity we seek ?
Is it, can it be, merely a unity of organisations ? Are
we asking merely, how can we work together without
the friction of an active opposition ? What place in
that union do our beliefs take ? Surely they cannot
mean so little to us that we must treat them as some
thing which we are forced to maintain, but after all
as rather an encumbrance than a help in the movement
we would fain make. Surely this attitude must be
wrong. What can be the value of our organisations,
our systems, our forms, if they are not the expression,
the embodiment, the forms, of the belief of our hearts ?
If that is so with us now, it must be equally so with
that to which God bids us move forward. If we are

INTRODUCTION 7
to have a true and vital unity, which shall have been
not merely constructed, but which shall grow and hold
together by its own life, surely we must begin from the
other side. We must get down to the real meaning
and power of our convictions, ask, not merely whether
there are not elements in the systems, but whether
there are not elements in the convictions, of others
which we need, which might be and ought to be
co-ordinated with our own.
It is only from this side that I can approach the
question. Of the movements in progress, I know
nothing more than is known by everybody interested,
but I have been asking myself continually what are
the essential, what are the distinctive, principles of
Catholicity and Protestantism respectively, not only
as they have been given in formal statements, but far
more as revealed in the systems they have shaped for
themselves, in the manifold results which they have
been and are bringing forth. These principles have
been tested, developed, modified, worked out and
adapted under the strain of history, under the variety
of the demands which new needs and new ways of
thought made upon them.
If, then, we ask what are the two distinctive prin
ciples, the answer seems simple enough. Every
newspaper writer has at the tip of his pen a whole
assortment of phrases which describe the difference
with sufficient accuracy. We all know them ; we all
accept them ; we all use them. Do we, however, mean
anything by them ? If we do, plainly three questions
must rise up before us. {a) Are we to say that one of
these principles is right and the other wrong ? If so,
it is no use talking of unity, for truth has no fellowship
with falsehood. There is before us only a long vista

8 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
of strife, while we settle which is which, (b) If the
history and vitality of these convictions forbids us to
say that either can be wholly wrong, are we to treat
them as mere alternatives, it being a matter of indiffer
ence which a man takes ? Can we seriously mean that
the gospel is built thus in two halves ? If we are not
prepared to accept such a glaring dualism, (c) must
we not infer that these principles are necessary to one
another, necessary to the wholeness of Christianity,
and therefore to the fulfilment and even maintenance
of Christian life ?
If, then, the very simple and obvious phrases are
right, if ' Catholicism and Protestantism represent
different aspects and sides of Christianity,' if it be true
that ' we have a great deal to learn from one another,'
then our task is plain. In just this way, we must set to
work. We must each find out what we have missed,
and how the essential truth which others realise can
be reconciled with that which we ourselves possess in
order that we may learn to realise and possess ourselves
also of that we have not got. There are few Pro
testants who will not admit in general terms that
Catholicity has after all its strong points, nor will any
Catholic deny that Protestantism has its strong points.
And spiritual strength cannot mean anything other than
truth, cannot be a result of anything but truth.
I have started therefore from the easy and simple
platitude that ' we have each a great deal to learn.' I
have tried to analyse each system in its actual working
form, to trace out the fundamental conviction on which
it rests, to trace out also what it would seem that it
had yet to learn, I have tried also to compare the
distinctive principles with the actual results as they
are commonly recognised in the different religious

INTRODUCTION 9
bodies. I have found the enquiry amazingly difficult,
for, though the general characters were obvious enough
to everybody and admitted by everybody, the moment
one came to definite statements those to whom I
talked disowned them. Hardly anybody would admit
that his own body failed in any single particular, that
there was anything it did not fully possess, or
apparently that it had anything to learn.
Whether this attempt of mine will be of any service,
I cannot say, but I would earnestly press upon the
reader these considerations. These differences do
exist. Their history, the results they produce, the
fruitless controversies which have grown out of them,
show how deep-seated are the mental differences from
which they spring. I have only tried to find the
meaning of the broadest and least disputed facts, and
to set it out in the broadest and simplest way. Whether
I have done my work well or ill is of only the smallest
consequence, but it is of well-nigh infinite consequence
that the thing should be done. There are always five
hundred ways for explaining away facts, and an equal
number for explaining away explanations, but there
the facts are all the same, and until we get some under
standing of their real meaning we are helpless to deal
with them, helpless to escape from their disastrous
consequences. Talking in this vague way of principles is somewhat
tedious, if I do not explain what are the principles I
have in mind. It is the business of the following
chapters to make those clear. I speak here in generali
ties, because I am speaking first of a general aim or
method. And that general method of bringing prin
ciples together is one generally approved. But it may
be helpful, it may be of some interest, if I give some

10 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
account of how I was led personally to the position I
am here taking up. At least it will give me an oppor
tunity of explaining my obligations to others.
I have said I approach the question as a
* Churchman ' or as a Catholic. Up to 1908 I had
never, in fact, seriously approached the question at
all. I was duly in a water-tight compartment. In
that year I was persuaded, or over-persuaded, to attend
the summer camp of the Student Christian Movement
at Baslow. We had been asked to go on a genuinely
Inter-Denominational basis. We were not asked to
waive or conceal our convictions. We were there to
help one another, and were there to learn from one
another. We were also free to criticise. I do not say
that we were all free from the bondage of party and
controversy. Some of us were, and at least there was
nothing but our own selves to keep us in bondage. We
were responsible to God and to our brethren for love
and truth, but we had no other responsibilities. There
were no reporters, weaker brethren, or authorities, on
the look-out for ' remarkable statements,' causes of
stumbling, or questionable views. It is a glorious
thing to be a student. It is not quite the same thing
as being a learner, but at least it offers one a good
start on that most Christian path.
It does not lie with the Student Christian Movement
to provide a solution of the tremendous questions here
at stake, yet it is only right to say that I believe that
body, by its executive and members, has done and is
doing more than any one, or any group of people, in
England to make a solution of this question possible.
It has brought us together under the best possible
circumstances, so that we can learn what we have to
give, what is the real meaning of our own position, what

INTRODUCTION n
also are our weaknesses and our needs, what others
have to give us. Whatever I have been able to learn
of the true value of a ' Free Church ' principle, I owe
to this source.
The absorbing interest of the Camp was that one had
there the best possible representation of what one may
call ' British Religion ' on its best side, but in all its
variety and in all its confusion. Certainly to my mind
there were grave deficiencies in the Camp theology,
which I believed would develop, were developing, into
grave dangers. Had the Church any help to give ?
The belief with which I went was that I have described
above, that which is ordinarily called ' High Church.'
I believed the Church to be that unity which Jesus
Christ had Himself established, so I believe now, but
then on what did it rest, for what was it established ?
By itself this was a theory of organisation, and merely
in that form it was not helpful to these questions.
The Camp was deeply concerned over the very essence
of Christianity ; it was not concerned over ecclesiastical
organisations. There were a good many Churchmen in Camp, and
I do not think any of us saw clearly what message God
wanted us to give. It was about this time I read two
remarkable papers by the Bishop of Lebombo ; one
was written for the Pan-Anglican Conference of 1908,
the other for The East and West (Oct. 1908). The
Bishop pointed out that the whole difference between
us and the Non-Conformists was over the Sacraments.
We could recognise all that they claimed for their
ministry, but they were not willing to admit our
sacramental belief, and the sacramental power we
claimed for our ministry. This change of the centre
of the problem from the mere High Church doctrine

12 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
of Church authority to what I may call the Catholic
doctrine of a sacramental gift and Presence seemed to
me a suggestion of the greatest value. It brought the
whole question out of its merely ecclesiastical aspect
into direct connection with the personal spiritual life
in its relation to God, to man, to the Incarnation of
Jesus Christ. There are few to whom I have talked,
whether Churchmen or Non-Conformists who did not
realise that the question entered here on a new and
more hopeful phase.
So far for the Church's contribution. On the other
side, it was impossible to contemplate so much earnest
enthusiasm without seeing that whatever defects it
might have, its defects were the cause of its weaknesses
and of its dangers ; they could not be the secret of its
power. It was borne up by very positive convictions of
its own. It was by no means easy for an outsider to
discover precisely what these were. I owe whatever
grasp I gained on that side to a most striking pamphlet
containing a paper read by the late Rev. Heriz Smith
at the Salisbury Diocesan Conference, which pointed
out the immense freedom and variety of services
allowed in the mediaeval system. I doubt if the writer
realised, he does not refer to, the way in which this
variety maintained unity by the fact that it went
together with, based itself on, the unity of the sacra
mental presentation in the mass.
These two ideas seemed to me to have a significance
as they corresponded to the two sides of our common
intellectual life, — which we call fact and theory, or
observation and reflection. In our religious life the
somewhat one-sided use we make of each seems to
explain the distinctive characters, the strong points
and the weak points, of Anglicanism and Non-Con-

INTRODUCTION 13
formity. Can we disentangle these principles, and,
having once got them clear, can we show their necessary
relations to one another ? That is my main business.
If we can reconcile the principles, can we look for
a reconciliation of Anglicans and Non-Conformists ?
That is my ultimate hope.
I ought not, of course, to make either of the writers
I have referred to responsible for the use or develop
ment of the ideas with which they supplied me. One
last obligation I must confess. AU that I have ever
learnt of theological method, of the analysing of ideas,
their meaning and significance, of their reference to
experience and the facts of life, of the possibUity and
the way of co-ordinating ideas and experience, all
that I may possess that is worth possessing, I owe to
Frederick Denison Maurice. I never knew him in
hfe ; except once I have hardly looked at a book of
his for twenty-five years, but I owe him everything.
I am told people do not read him now. From what
I can see of our present theological position I should
think that is very probable. I am told he is difficult
to foUow, and I am afraid that is true. But I believe
none the less that his is the help and guidance we
need more than any other.
Before I go on to describe the general plan I have
followed in this book, I should Uke to say one word of
apology and explanation to my friends in America,
and to any readers I may have in that country.
I know enough of America to know that this problem
is far more pressing and far more difficult there than it
is here. I know enough, and I believe enough in
America, to be inclined to think that it is possible, and
not at aU unUkely, that the solution may come from
America rather than from England. Yet, if any in

14 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
America do read this book, they wiU find that it is
written — apparently — from a purely English view. I
hope I may trust their intelligence to see that my very
British way of treating things is only on the surface.
I am thinking of America very much.
If I dare, therefore, I should like to address this book
to America very specially. But then I am only an
Englishman. We have in this country a very con
venient terminology, with distinctive words like ' Non-
Conformist ' and ' Free Church,' to include aU non-
episcopalian bodies. If I tried to adapt my language
and illustrations to conditions with which I am not
reaUy familiar, I am afraid I should only cause amuse
ment and perhaps irritation without being in the least
better understood. A man living in one country may
be able to say much that will be useful in another. If
it is to be useful, he had better leave the application to
those who know how to apply it. I have more trust in
American inteUigence than in my British ignorance.
I have divided this book into three parts. The first I
have caUed the Religious Difference. If we can for the
moment assume the old-fashioned Evangelical faith in
Christ as constituting the central ground of Christianity
in which we are agreed, our obvious differences are
over the religious practices by which that faith is being
realised and set forth. I must try, then, first, to show
why we Churchmen cannot accept the most obvious
forms of reunion as satisfactory, and, secondly, what
is the spiritual meaning and force of that essential
Church principle of sacraments, and why we feel it so
necessary. So far I deal only with the Church or Catholic side.
The second part I have caUed a Synthesis of Principles.
The Church Principle is a somewhat angular and rigid

INTRODUCTION 15
claim, difficult to make room for. The Non-Con
formist Principle I take to be the individual principle
of freedom, which is, of course, not at aU angular or
rigid, but I do not think that our friends realise that it
is still harder to get in. The rigid things of life are un
compromising, but after all they ask nothing more than
their own place. Freedom is rather apt to be tyran
nous. Just because it objects to the confinement of a
limited space, it becomes a claim to the whole area.
Nevertheless in life we always have to use both, and we
do in religion. It is vitaUy necessary, therefore, that
we should consider what is the proper ground of each,
how they are related, how they can be used together
consistently and harmoniously.
The difficulty of a sacramental presentation in
reUgious practice repeats itself in the doctrinal use of
Creeds. We have here really two questions, (a) Are
the Creeds to be regarded as purely inteUectual state
ments of beUefs or opinions, and what part has the
intellectual recognition of ' facts ' to play in the
spiritual life ? (6) At the present day it is no longer
possible simply to take the old Evangelical faith for
granted. We are bound to face the question whether
there is a foundation of fact at aU.
If I were writing purely for instruction, it would be
much simpler if I could have begun from the doctrinal
ground, and then worked out the logical consequences
in our practical system. But this is not the actual
course of thought along which men's minds travel.
When we come to an age of reflection, we find ourselves
already members of a system. It is the difficulties we
find in it, and in our practical life, the contrasts
presented by other systems, which force us to consider
what lies beneath them. Most of us only realise the

16 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
value of principles as they are shown to us in applica
tion. I have therefore followed this path of experience,
working first from the most obvious and surface differ
ences, because for most people it is the easiest path to
foUow, though it necessarUy involves a good deal of
repetition. In each fresh situation we may be re
applying the same principle, and yet, except to the
scientificaUy minded, the principle seems different, caUs
for a re-vindication, because the application is different.
I am not therefore engaged with some problem of
abstract theological science. I have dared to write
about a question that touches us all most nearly, that
has called forth among religious people more excitement
and bitterness, among irreligious people more superior
and contemptuous criticism, than any other. It
would be useless for me to ask that what I say should
be considered cooUy and with impartial detachment.
No one is in the least likely to read these chapters who
has not the most real and living interest in the subject,
and no one is in the least likely to have such an interest
unless he has already a stand-point of his own.
Certainly I have never been impartial myself, and I
have no desire that anyone else should be.
I am here concerned ultimately with that faith which
alone makes life worth living, which found life a sordid
round of aimless labour, flecked with meaningless
pleasures, and has turned it aU — pleasures, labours,
faUures, achievements, together — into a mystery of joy
inexplicable and hope undefinable. I am concerned
immediately with what has been infinitely precious to
me, with what has made that faith to me real and
living, with what, if it be not true, would leave me
altogether puzzled and distraught as to the very mean
ing and possibility of that faith. How can I profess

INTRODUCTION 17
myself impartial when I am in fact eagerly longing that
others also should have like feUowship with us ? But
then I cannot faU to recognise that this is the exact
expression of the position others also hold. Have they
not also something to give, something equally real,
equaUy necessary ? Why should I ask them for
impartiahty ?
If we look back at aU this long strife, can we really
beheve in God, and yet beUeve that the passionate
earnestness of our forefathers was left to go astray
whUe the contempt of the idly indifferent and worldly
was the road of truth ? But then, I would press the
question further. If we will not for a moment accept
this on one side, that is, on our own side, can we accept it
as a true estimate on the opposed side ? Can we really
beUeve that aU this blood and tears and prayers and
patience were ever offered for nothing, out of an iUusion
begotten of mere obstinacy ? And veil it as you wUl,
these sacrifices were offered on both sides. But if we
shrink from any such view, must it not follow that
there were vital truths on both sides, which God allowed
to develop in separation, but which, — if both are true,
— must in His wiU be brought together ? Is it not the
whole weakness of Christianity that we are holding in
separation what God means, in His own time, to show
as one ? Impartiality is such a bloodless thing to ask
for. I do appeal to men earnestly to seek how this
unity can be made a unity and a reconcUing in con
victions. My own effort at it, my own analysis, may
be poor enough, but is it not something on this line
which needs trying, something which shaU begin by
finding what these convictions are, and what is implied
in their whole nature and consequence ?

PART I.
THE RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCE.

CHAPTER I.
PROPOSALS FOR REUNION.
I am afraid this book must begin somewhat awkwardly.
My immediate aim is to explain certain Church prin
ciples, in an entirely positive and constructive spirit to
show their necessity and helpfulness. I have no desire
at all to defend Church people, and I am very anxious
not to be merely critical or negative. Yet I must
spend one chapter at least in defence of ourselves and
criticism of others. After all, I am writing a whole
book on a question which seems to many so simple
that a few sensible people could settle it aU with a little
good temper in five minutes. For the sake of what
comes after I must therefore make it clear why we
Churchmen cannot accept these attractive solutions,
why I think any real solution must go so much deeper,
must caU for far more earnest thought, patience,
teachableness, why it wiU be so much more difficult
to reach.
If we listen to popular talk and to popular opinion
we shall learn that there are many easy and popular
remedies for our divisions, though each speaker is
convinced that his own is just the plain common-sense
treatment which religious people are only kept from
recognising by their fanatical narrow-mindedness. In
speaking seriously to serious and earnest men one feels

22 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
somewhat ashamed of taking any notice of these self-
confident pronouncements, the superficial echo of the
daUy paper and the smoking-room, yet they have their
value. Rough common-sense indicates to us those
broad aspects of the question which most want thinking
over. Its clumsiness warns us how easily our merely
practical scheme may miss the real heart of the diffi
culty. ' The immediate root of our disunion lies obviously
enough in difference of character or temperament,
which produces differences in our way of thinking, in
our opinions and preferences. Religious differences
among religious people must be inevitable, since all
differences are drawn out the more sharply just in
proportion to the interest we have in the subject and
the strength of the influence it has on our life.' Let
this stand for the obvious popular view ; we shaU all
admit that there is a great deal of truth in it. There
is not, however, only one obvious conclusion to be
drawn from it ; there are two.
Certainly we may infer that inteUectual unity, a
unity in thought, is impossible, for even if there is a
fixed truth, it is impossible for us to know what it is.
The promise of the Gospel — ' ye shall know the truth
and the truth shall make you free ' — must be regarded
as a vain iUusion.
Yes, we may infer this, but there are many who infer
the exact opposite. ' Truth there must be, and truth
is one. Since individual thinking can only lead to
endless diversities, the unity of truth must lie with
some authority from whom we should be content fo
receive it.' And this conclusion is as valid as the
other. ' But the second conclusion is altogether a contra-

PROPOSALS FOR REUNION 23
diction.' In this shape I fuUy admit it is. If a man is
to learn and understand, it is he who must learn ; no
authority can understand for him. Authority may be
a guide and a help in thinking ; it is not a substitute
for it. But then the fact is that both conclusions are
contradictions. If the one offers us a unity in thought
on condition we give up thinking, the other saves for
us the right to think by proclaiming that thinking is
an entirely useless occupation.
Few Christians, few for whom I write, wiU be at all
indined to accept and stUl less to advance either of
these conclusions in the naked form in which I state
them. I gave them as ' obvious ' results, asserted so
to be by the rough and unconsidered judgment of those
who love the obvious. And yet these conclusions are
not entirely confined to those whom I described as men
of the world. Most of us who are concerned with
reUgion have been brought up in traditional observances
and beUefs. We got free from them because we were
forced out of them to face a new situation, but it still
remains that on this question of unity we are being
driven forward rather by the pressure of the practical,
than by the consciousness of theoretical or inteUectual
necessity. There is so much crying out to be done.
We are convinced that the faith of Christ has in itself
an answer to aU the perplexities of men, yet we cannot
help reahsing that whUe Christianity is a personal faith,
its power for good in the world is as a faith shared.
What we are striving to effect only can be effected by
common action, and common action must always
proceed from what there is of common belief, however
far back we go to find it.
At the same time most of us have been content to
hold our beliefs practicaUy, as something to live by.

24 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
Very few have made any effort to examine closely into
their meaning or to connect them into a thought-out
system. We may be vaguely conscious, we may be
most uncomfortably conscious, of difficulties, but we
are hardly in a position to judge of the sufficiency or
insufficiency of our beliefs, and we are therefore still
less in a position to realise the meaning or estimate the
value of the beliefs of others.
This seems to me a very dangerous position to be in.
Practical necessity is driving us in directions which our
minds have not justified, forcing us into courses which
we do not reaUy understand. Thus we turn half
naturaUy into devising or constructing unities of a kind
which may serve our need, but which involve conse
quences we have not considered and never meant to
accept. The two commonest of these forms must
receive careful study.
Undenominational Unity. Personally I should feel
inclined to say Undenominationalism was a theory
proper to pohticians and men of the world rather than
to the religiously minded. I believe I am justified in
saying that it is the politicians who originated and have
pressed the theory. I have to admit that many
religious people have accepted it, and I suppose that
they would not altogether agree with my views, but it
wiU not I think be denied that Undenominationalism
foUows most naturaUy from the practical, non-theo
retical, perhaps outsider's, view of Christianity. Here,
anyhow, shaU be its statement :
' Is not the essential basis of Christianity broad
enough and solid enough for aU practical requirements ?
If so, surely we may content ourselves with the essen
tials and cease to trouble over denominational differ
ences of merely secondary importance. If we cannot

PROPOSALS FOR REUNION 25
give them up altogether, at least we can leave them free
for those who find profit in them.'
1 challenge this theory as being (1) in its wording a
useless truism ; (2) in its reasoning question-begging ;
(3) in its whole intention disastrous to all belief. It
satisfies the politicians easUy enough because they are
concerned only with the outside of Christianity, never
theless it has brought endless confusion into their
politics ; it has utterly misled them as to the nature of
the problems with which they are dealing. The actual
wording I have given is my own, but the fact is that the
theory of Undenominationalism cannot be expressed
without involving itself in all these criticisms.
(1) The statement is a truism; and it has the peculiar
danger of so many truisms that it veils an unconsidered
answer to a difficult question under cover of a useless
obviousness which has really said nothing at aU. Who
in the world is expected to deny, and who in the world
is any better for being reminded, that he ought not to
give too much importance to what is unimportant ?
(2) This valuable piece of advice gives no help in
determining what is essential, what is important, and
what is ' too much.' Having got thus far it jumps the
whole question in the unprepared remark, to which
nothing leads up, that denominational differences are
secondary. But what is the meaning of ' secondary ' ? In
popular use that word is often apphed, in the sense of
accidental, to what has no necessary connection with
a principle, and therefore is of no importance so far as
the principle itself is concerned. But secondary in its
true sense has nothing to do with importance ; it sig
nifies only that that to which it is applied is derivative.
To say that aU denominational differences are

26 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
secondary is to make a very large assumption indeed.
PersonaUy I have maintained that aU religious forms
are secondary in the true sense, since they are the out
come or expression of the relation between God and
man, but it does not foUow that they are unimportant.
There are very many Church practices which we use
and find helpful, but upon which we have no desire
to insist. There are others which — although we could
not caU them the essence of Christianity — seem to us
a necessary consequence, embodiment, presentation of
that essence.
Our reasons for this view I must give presently, but
whether it be right or wrong cannot be settled in the
off-hand sweep of an adjective. We have a right to
ask for serious consideration, and we base our claim on
grounds which are equally precious to all, — Non-
Conformists as well as Churchmen. The obscure by
ways of history are fuU of foolish theories and trivial
controversies which have long since proved their
emptiness. But to apply this contemptuous judgment
to convictions for which we find earnest and capable
men contending, living, dying, during long centuries,
only demonstrates the ignorance and short-sightedness
of the judge.
Let it be granted that our religious differences are
secondary. Are they not therefore worth considering ?
Whenever among those holding the same principles,
some will not accept the conclusions others draw,
either there must be some latent and unperceived
difference in the meaning put upon those principles,
or else there must be some inconsistency in following
them out. But the principles that are our common
starting point are nothing less than the principles of
Christianity itself. WiU any Christian maintain that

PROPOSALS FOR REUNION 27
the meaning of Christianity and the consistency of
Christian practice are not worth troubling over ?
(3) So far I have dealt with the proposal of an
undenominational unity from the outsider's point of
view. It is natural that those who know little or
nothing of the meaning of religion should assume that
its minor distinctions are meaningless, but this rough
common-sense is not very far from rough ignorance,
which is a somewhat unsatisfactory standard for the
judgment of what should be reckoned minor. Un
denominationalism, so far as it has any definite pro
gramme to put forward, urges the abandonment, or
relative abandonment, of points of difference. I am
appeaUng now to religious people, and to them I urge
that a policy of abandonments must be disastrous to
Christian faith.
We are told that in religious matters our best hope
is to go back to something simpler, to give up what we
thought we had learnt, yet in everything else except
reUgion God is bidding us go forward and learn more
as He unfolds to us more of the ways and purposes of
His wiU. It is a law of life that men may only reach
to good by progress and to knowledge by learning, for
life and nature are great things and very complex, full
of the infinite wisdom of God, not to be grasped off
hand by a single effort. Christianity, which is the
interpretation and key of both, is greater than either
and yet more wonderful. Reverence for what is worth
knowing implies a readiness to learn, a longing for a
knowledge fuller, richer, more consistent than we have
yet attained, and in God's purpose our longing is a
sign of our need for that knowledge. We strive to
work out the fullest consequences of our belief, not in
order to justify them, but that we may understand them

28 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
better, and that facing whatever is defective in them
we may seek what is needed for their completeness.
Surely when this is true of aU other sciences, we
cannot mean that Christianity alone is a thing so scanty
that he understands it best who believes least. And
if true unity does lie in the uniformity of poverty, how
far back along the road shall we go ? We are urged
to drop our denominational differences to unite in a
common Christianity. But if this means what is called
' orthodox ' Christianity, it is only a half measure. We
cannot be unconscious that just a little beyond there is
stiU a chorus of voices clamouring insistently that we
should drop our dogmatic presuppositions about Christ,
' Let us aU join — orthodox Christians, undogmatic
Christians, and heathen — in one whole unity on the
basis of our common religion.' But why should we
draw the line only at Theists ? 'Are not aU lovers of
the good at heart one ? There is one common moral
ideal for aU.' Whether that one common moral ideal
wUl stand fast, they know best who know most. Those
who know little of what is going on imagine easUy
that the line can be drawn at this or that point, but
up this road there are in truth no lines. Each stage
only opens up another. Each gains a wider unity at
the expense of meaning, power and life. By eUminat-
ing differences we cease to differ, but when they are
all gone, in what are we united ?
To the modern mind undenominationalism has an
attraction which it finds irresistible in spite of aU
disappointments. To men of the world it offers an
easy method for getting rid of troublesome questions.
The only annoying part is that, of course, they are not
got rid of. To the more religious it offers the comfort
ing sensation of broad-mindedness, which if it is not the

PROPOSALS FOR REUNION 29
same as love, at least provides a passable substitute.
It is really curious that people should not recognise
how narrow and limited its breath is. Undenomina
tionalism is tolerant enough of half-beliefs and un
beliefs, but it not merely is, by its very nature it must
be, extremely intolerant of positive convictions, — much
more so than any other ' ism ' need be. If I believe in
the Mutation theory of the origin of species, or if I
believe in Protection, and my friend believes in the
Natural Selection of species, or in Free Trade, we may
quarrel, but after aU we can respect one another, and
we may begin asking whether the opposed theories
might not be co-ordinated. We can also respect the
astronomer who knows nothing of biology or politics
and thinks our questions narrow and trivial. It is not
his fault that he is too ignorant to give us any help, but
it is pure narrow-mindedness that he is too ' superior '
to give us any respect.
Loyalty to honest conviction is a first inteUectual
duty. If a man holds a belief to be very vital, or if he
holds it to be siUy, either way he ought not to aUow
himself to be frightened out of his opinion for fear he
should be thought " narrow.' Yet between these two,
the man who affirms and the man who denies, the
beUever and the unbeUever, the prima facie probabUity
is with the former. The man with a conviction declares
that he sees this thing to be true and important, and
he pretty certainly must have seen something. The
critic cannot easily be sure of more than his own
faUure to see. If the critic is also a scoffer and
' superior/ by aU Gospel teaching he stands self-
condemned. He may happen to be in the right, but
his evidence is valueless. He was not in a mental
condition to see anything.

30 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
I maintain, therefore, that whatever a man's beliefs
may be, right or wrong, broad or narrow, he ought by
aU means to foUow them out. He has no right, and
he ought not to be asked, to abandon what he sincerely
holds. I do not, of course, mean that if a man holds
evU beliefs, he ought to do evil things, for that would
imply that he ought to go on holding a thing to be
right when he finds it wrong. We rejoice that men are
so often ' better than their creed,' but a false or an
evU creed is an evil aU the same, and it is an evil which
might be got rid of if men would honestly face its
consequences and ask themselves whether they meant
them. The evU is perpetuated by easy-going incon
sistency and lack of seriousness.
We are told that there was a business man who was
positive the world would come to an end the next year,
and went on financing companies to come into existence
the year after. When expostulated with, he replied,
' Sir, business is one thing, and unfulfiUed prophecy is
another.' Certainly he was right to go on with his
business, but certainly he was wrong to persuade
himself or to pretend that he was holding beliefs which
he did not seriously mean.
Inter-denominahonalism. To the man-in-the-street,
to the daUy paper which thinks for him and the poli
tician who acts for him, undenominationalism remains
as popular as ever ; among sincerely religious men
there is a growing sense of its inadequacy. The only
alternative immediately obvious is inter-denomina-
tionaUsm. Can we not at least ask different bodies
to come together as they are without any abandonment
of their distinctive convictions, beliefs, organisations,
or practices ?
The significance of the proposal depends upon how

PROPOSALS FOR REUNION 31
much is intended by the words ' coming together.'
There are three different applications of the idea which
may be expressed as Conference, Co-operation and
Federation. (1) To reunion of any kind conference is an indis
pensable step. Before we can do anything, we must
get to know one another, what we are each seeking,
what each believes himself to possess. If such con
ferences are to be of any use, they must be frankly
inter-denominational in the fuU sense given above.
Those who come to them cannot be expected to com
promise, modify or abandon the principles on which
they are to confer. On the contrary, they must be
asked and expected to state and explain them as fuUy,
as definitely, and as fearlessly as possible, since it is
the very object of such conferences to get a clear con
ception of the exact nature of the differences as weU as
of agreements. Each in turn must also be ready to
give fuU attention and sympathetic consideration to
the statements and explanations of others.
(2) Even as things stand with us, there are certain
matters of practical convenience and limited scope in
which co-operation between religious bodies may be
possible and of some service until a truer unity is
possible. (3) In conference inter-denominationalism finds its
true sphere : in co-operation it ought not to be regarded
as more than at best a temporary expedient. There is,
however, a distinct proposal on the part of many to
find the final solution of our difficulties by organising
co-operation as a permanent system under the name
of Federation. If that is carried out completely, it
must imply a mutual recognition by the different bodies
of one another's status.

32 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
I quite reahse the attractiveness of this proposal, but
it is no use making up schemes which would fit circum
stances if they were different to what they are. We
are dealing with certain convictions, and I think I can
show that this scheme on its own principles cannot be
applied consistently to any convictions, — and certainly
it cannot be applied to those of the Church.
Let us be quite clear exactly what are the principles
of this proposed federation. Certain differences exist
— differences of conviction, belief and system. There
is to be no abandoning, modifying or compromising of
these, and all bodies are to join in one unity. Then I
reply that either (a) the differences, or (b) the unity,
must become increasingly unreal, and that both results
wUl be equaUy disastrous.
[a) A man's convictions and beliefs are the inspira
tion and guide of his work. If he is to be a teacher,
these are what he teaches. Plainly there can be no
co-operation in matters wherein men differ, but only
on those matters wherein they agree. Just so far as
co-operation is systematicaUy applied, just in pro
portion as it becomes an important factor in our
religious work, just so far must aU differences be held
in abeyance. And this is a very serious matter.
Every action a man performs strengthens and
develops the principles which it realises and on which
it is based. Conversely, it weakens his interest in, and
his sense of the importance of, those which are reserved
or excluded. It is ever so easy to say that we are to
maintain and not to compromise our convictions, but
we are not maintaining and we are compromising that
which we may not use. AU of us who have had ex
perience in religious work know only too weU that men
more often let their faith die through neglect and want

PROPOSALS FOR REUNION 33
of use than kUl it by a definite and thought-out
repudiation. Again, any systematic and complete co-operation
must involve mutual recognition. But, our whole
Church contention is that certain things are necessary
and essential consequences of Christianity. On the
inter-denominational basis we shall not be asked to
compromise that contention, yet we are asked to
' recognise ' systems which do not admit those things
we hold to be necessary.
Inter-denominational federation in the form of
co-operation is then only another name for undenomi
nationalism. It cannot be applied to those convictions
or beUefs which a man holds to be necessary, those
which constitute the inspiration and power of his life,
but only to those which are to him mere inteUectual
opinions or personal preferences.
(b) Next, let us suppose that the inter-denomina
tional principle is fuUy and reaUy carried out, and that
each body is to be aUowed to maintain and act upon
its own belief, the results of federation wiU be quite
obvious, but are they the results we are seeking ? We
must face that question.
Our differences are due to the variety — and the
variety imphes limitation and imperfection — in our
apprehension and foUowing out of the greatness and
many-sidedness of Christian truth. But why has God
made us so imperfect ? Why has He dealt to us the
knowledge of Himself in so fragmentary a fashion ?
If we ask in impatience, we ask in sin. If we ask
humbly, in order that we may know God's wUl, surely
God has answered us. He has made us in weakness
and in need because He has made us for love and for
help. Difference, which is the result of weakness, was

34 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
ordained as the ground of union. But when we look
for help, a federation of differences, — if it does not
mean undenominationalism, the abandonment of every
thing in which we differ and therefore of everything
in which we might help, — means nothing more than
a distant toleration. Where we ask for unity, it
organises the permanence of separation.
Inter-denominationalism is, in short, essentially the
system of toleration. Toleration has the outward charm
and attraction of broad-mindedness, but although
it has a reaUy useful and necessary place in our life,
it also involves all the weaknesses of broad-minded
ness, and it is very important that we should not aUow
the attractiveness of such words to prevent our being
critical of their use. Toleration is not an essential part
of Christianity, but love is, and toleration must be
tried by love.
Towards difference there are three possible attitudes.
We may believe that those differences are concerned
with important distinctions of right and wrong, truth
and falsehood. If we cannot do anything, love and
wisdom preach patience, and patience is a form of
tolerance. But if we can do anything, love bids us be
intolerant, for right and truth are our stewardship.
This is the ground of aU missionary effort. But again,
the differences may be of preference and relative ability.
Here toleration is a duty, for love envieth not the pos
sessions and capacities of others. Lastly, we may be in
uncertainty as to what is true and right and what
otherwise. Here also love counseUeth patience and
toleration as conditions of learning.
The Hope of Unity. So far I am afraid our attitude
on this question wUl seem whoUy captious and negative.
I am almost more afraid that others wiU be content to

PROPOSALS FOR REUNION 35
accept it as such. The Church wiU make no com
promise, perhaps cannot make one consistently ; there
fore it must be left out of count. The only practical
unity is that among Protestants, and yet this, — for
reasons already given, — is a conclusion of despair. It
is a proclamation that the unity of Christendom is
impossible. If I thought my conclusions must be finaUy negative,
I should not have had the heart to put them forward,
but in truth it is the unity offered which seems to us so
negative. We want a larger faith, and we are told how
much better we should get on if we had less. We long
for brotherhood and unity, and we are offered the bars
of an organised isolation which shaU keep us from
quarreUing. It seems to us that this negative result
is inevitable, for our proposals start from the wrong
side. All plans to construct a human unity, based
upon human apprehensions, must involve themselves
in confusion and contradiction just because the human
side is the side not of unity, but of difference. Life
cannot be made ; it can only be found. A living unity
cannot be constructed, but it already exists in the
Christianity we are trying to apprehend. So long as
we set our own theories, schemes, opinions before us
as the main element to be considered, the more we
think and reason and argue, the more acute our differ
ences wiU grow and must grow. Once we realise that
truth is primary and our apprehensions secondary,
once we reahse that our faith stands in the truth and
not in our opinions about it, differences may still
continue, but we shall draw nearer to one another as
we learn more, and as we apprehend better.
This distinction between the truth and the appre
hension seems to us the key of all hope. It is the

36 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
greatest weakness of our Christianity that in spite of
all the warning of our differences, in spite of the hosts
of new theories which every day brings forth, discordant
with one another, as weU as with our old beliefs, we
seem to assume that we know aU about Christianity,
although we have hardly given any serious thought to
it. We take new ideas up because they strike us, or we
let ideas drop when some objection suggests itself, and
it never occurs to us that the infinite riches of the
meaning and power of Christianity have to be learnt
and understood. It comes more naturaUy to make up
our own notions without troubling to ask whether they
are consistent, or whether we are not missing the whole
value and life of our faith.
I have used terms above which I have yet to justify,
but when anyone speaks of the truth of Christ as ' the
Catholic faith,' by caUing it ' Catholic,' something which
is- for aU men, do we not imply that it is something
greater than any one man or group of men or any one
age can possibly reach or ' possess ' ? When we caU
it a ' faith ' are we not implying that it has yet come
down to us, is seeking to possess us ? So at least I
should take it, and for that reason I am not putting
forth some opinions of my own or of those who think
with me as the necessarily correct opinions which others
ought to accept. So far from ' possessing ' this faith,
I confess that we on our side have learnt and understood
it, yielded ourselves up to it, very imperfectly. I only
put forward this as the hope of unity — that there is a
faith which does ask for patient learning, understand
ing, submission on our side. We look to our brethren
in hope that by their help we may together be able to
enter into it more fully.

CHAPTER II.
THE CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE.
Certain proposals then have been put forward for
reunion. I have ventured to criticise them because
it seemed to me that merely practical measures were
insufficient and might be disastrous. We want first a
clearer conception of what we are dealing with, and
what it is which wants reconcUing. I have suggested
a different procedure which seems to me to have in it
the seed of a higher hope, of a greater success. Chris
tianity rests upon certain principles. Our unity must
lie rather in the Christianity itself than in our appre
hension. If we understood its principles better,
should we not understand one another better ? If we
begin by studying them together, might we not be
already drawing nearer to one another ? As we enter
into the Christian life more fuUy, should we not by
that communion, reach a far higher ideal of unity than
mere co-operation ?
I wiU try to explain in this chapter what I mean by
Christian principle in a way which wiU, I hope for the
most part, be accepted by aU, both Churchmen and Non-
Conformists. Christianity may be regarded in several
ways which it is weU to classify. So many contro
versies have ended in mere confusion because men have
been in too much hurry and too excited to think

38 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
of explaining in which sense they were using the
term. (i) If we consider Christianity first in regard to its
Spirit, it is (i) a life, which has grown out of (2) a
faith. (ii) But we may consider it also as a Religion,
that is a practice, including (1) personal acts and
feelings, but including also (2) certain common acts
such as the forms of worship and the ministrations on
which such common acts rest. Let us consider these
separately. I. The Christian Spirit.
(1) The Christian Life. In itself the Christian life is
nothing more than the life of faith in God, and of the
love which springs from faith. Its character is laid
down for us in the Gospels, emphasised in S. Paul's
writings, realised in our own experience, — the para
doxical richness of its simplicity ; the positive clear-
cut force which rises out of the apparent negatives of
humUity, self-suppression, self-forgetfulness ; the fear
less strength and courage of its self-distrust ; the
effortless attainment of difficult virtues merely from the
consciousness of God's nearness. We know the work
ings, and we can in some degree justify the law of love,
since man is made for God, yet by this very reason no
pyschology, no science of the human soul considered
in itself, wiU offer an adequate formula by which the
occurrence of such things can be predicted or explained.
' The Spirit breathes where He will, and thou hearest
the voice thereof, but cannot teU whence it cometh or
whither it goeth.' We cannot even assert that the
Christian life is peculiar to Christians. Mohammedan
ism seems a very hard master, yet there are men under

THE CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE 39
it who stand out above it with a wondrous gentleness.
Buddhism may be a sterile negation, and yet we may
find in Buddhism men fuU of considerate service.
(2) The Christian Faith. In judging therefore of
individuals we can only say that God knows His own,
that His ways are past our finding out, and that we
rejoice it should be so. Although, therefore, we cannot
limit God even by ways of His own appointment, it
yet remains that God sent His Only Begotten Son into
the world to be the one true Way, open to all men, not
merely to those of exceptional character or attainment,
through Whom we might come to faith in God through
knowledge, and to God Himself in power.
First, we come through Christ to the knowledge of
God. AU nations have had their ideas about God, the
maker of the universe as we know it, the Ruler of men
as we Uve among them, and those ideas of necessity
differed according to aU the differences of inteUectual
history and temperament. We may admit that many
heathen ideas have been fuU of truth and deep sugges
tion, though many are exceedingly foolish and puerUe,
not a few are evil and horrible. It could not weU be
otherwise, for the natural universe from which men
have drawn their ideas, and the human mind with
which they draw them, contain much apparently evU
as weU as good.
The claim of Christianity is unique ; it is a claim to
finality, not however because Christ revealed to us some
ideas which were better and truer than other ideas, for,
since all human ideas are finite and imperfect, in ideas
as such there can be no finality. Christianity is final
because the incarnation of Christ is the manifestation
of God Himself, concerning Whom our ideas are formed,
so that it is said ' I and the Father are One,' and ' He

40 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.' The Apostles
in Uke manner are not merely thinkers with a teaching
of their own to declare ; they are first of aU witnesses
of that which they saw and heard and their hands
handled concerning the Word of Life (i S. John
i. i). It is this manifestation which has lifted us out of the
darkness of our own abstractions, out of making God
according to the devices and desires, the reasonings
and inclinations, of our own hearts, into the clear light
and true knowledge of God. Differences of appre
hension stUl remain in regard to this manifestation, but
just so far as we look away from ourselves and our
apprehension to Christ Who is apprehended, so growing
in the knowledge of Him we grow in feUowship one with
another. WhUe the seed of division is in us, our feUow
ship is with the Father and with the Son.
Secondly, therefore, through Christ we are brought
not only to the knowledge of God, but into union with
Him. The incarnation is much more than a manifesta
tion of God to the human mind ; it is the coming of
God in power. The Logos of God has done more than
veil Himself in flesh that He might be seen and heard
of men. He has taken the human nature into the
unity of His Person, that men might be in Him joined
to God. As we are no longer left dependent on the
wisdom of human thought, so we are no longer left
dependent on the strength and righteousness of our
own action. Our faith rests not on what we think but
on what Christ is ; our hope, not subjectively on what
we are, but objectively on what He has done. It is
of the Son of God that our ignorance comes to leain,
and our weakness comes to participate.
It is this which makes Christianity missionary, in-

THE CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE 41
tolerant with the intolerance of a Gospel, of a ' good
news ' of assured knowledge and positive truth, aggres
sive because driven forward by a love which is intolerant
of barriers. Is reUgion meant to be ultimately the
means of union among men, or the central expression
of their hopeless division ? If it is so effective in
dividing, must it not be equaUy effective in uniting ?
Certainly, Christianity as one reUgion among many is
one more division. But if Christianity be true at all
in the sense in which Christians have ever held it, then
by it we are not separating ourselves from the heathen,
we are holding for them the hope of a unity, not only
with us but with one another. We want to make a
feUowship, not only between India and Europe, but
between India and China, the Bengali and the African.
Nor are we asserting some superiority of our own, as
though by our own power or godliness we had made
men walk. Our apprehension is very imperfect ; we
have nothing of our own but imperfection to offer. We
ask other nations to learn of Christ, that we may learn
of them, and to receive of Him that we may be enriched
by their grace. II. The Christian Religion.
The ideal of Christianity we have put forward is that
commonly called Evangelicalism. The salvation it
offers us is a salvation from self, — from trust in our own
notions, in our own goodness and merits whether of
character or of acts. The means of that salvation is
the efficiency of the atoning death of Christ, through
which, and not through anything that we do or are, we
are reconcUed and ' made at one ' with God. This is
the history of mankind, — to have sought for God and
to have found ourselves, to have struggled to make

42 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
ourselves righteous and at peace with God, and to have
found ourselves alienated from Him in our own self-
seeking. To the faUure and despair of men this Gospel
is preached, — that God has found us and has given to
us the righteousness which is in His Son.
This statement has its own difficulties and wiU not
be accepted by everyone, but die controversies to which
it gives rise are quite different to those with which we
are now concerned. Churchmen and Non-Conformists
alike must face the chaUenge raised by modern criticism
in a multitude of ways. If we are forced to aban
don what we have always believed as the evangelical
faith in Christ, there will be no very important difference
left between us. So far as we both continue to maintain
that faith, our difference lies in regard to the religion or
practice which belongs to it. For our own part, as
Churchmen, our only justification for maintaining and
even urging our own view, is that we believe it to be
necessary to the consistent maintenance of Evan
gelicalism. By ' religion ' we mean aU those activities which
result from our consciousness of God and are addressed
to Him. The word may therefore be applied in a very
wide sense. Under activities we must include not only
actions, things done or said, but also the feelings which
accompany them. Again, all we do, our common work,
study, play, rest as well as labour, fun not less than
seriousness, may by the direction of intention become
a religious act. It is indeed our ideal that everything
should thus be an act of worship, and our religion
be identical with the whole Christian life.
In the special sense of the word, we mean by
' reUgion ' those acts, notably of prayer, praise, and
meditation, which are necessarUy, exclusively, directly,

THE CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE 43
concerned with the relation of the soul to God, in that
they have no other meaning or value.
We have then two ways in which the soul expresses
that which is within her of God. The first is often
called ' religion in the daUy life,' but I do not like the
phrase. I should prefer to call it ' the religion of daily
life,' for, as I have said, we do not want to treat religion
as one thing influencing our daUy life which is another.
We want to make that life itself a religion and act of
worship. I might call the second " the religion of
prayer,' but then it includes a great deal which is not
' prayer,' at least in the narrower sense. If I may
without offence borrow a scholastic method, merely for
the sake of clearness, I will call the religion of daUy-life,
' effective religion,' and religion in the special sense,
' formal reUgion.'
This ' effective religion ' is what S. James speaks of
as ' true religion and undefiled before God and the
Father ' (S. James i. 27) : it is the final fruit to which
everything leads up. Yet in spite of our own dislike
to the phrase we cannot afford to neglect the vital
importance of ' formal ' religion. I chose the word
formal somewhat deliberately, because the natural
irritation we feel at ' forms ' is a danger to us. No
doubt formalism is an evU, and bondage to forms is a
weakness. On the other hand, we aU know people who
take a pride in being rough and blunt in their manners.
Many of them are reaUy good people, yet their contempt
for forms is also a Weakness, the mark of a self-wiU and
self-assertion which is the opposite of love.
We must learn to use forms without abusing them.
We abuse forms whenever we exalt them into some
thing good of themselves, whenever we give them an
exclusive sphere of their own. We use them rightly

44 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
when we use them as an education, a necessary dis
cipline, as the means and as the stay of what is higher.
The forms of language are given us for the expression
of true and right thought. It is an all too common
abuse of language to allow ourselves to be captivated
by mere style, yet a careless indifference to style is only
pride. This is as true in religion as in everything else. We
are not Christians because, like the Pharisees, we say
many prayers, but we shaU be ver}' poor Christians if
we don't, and we shall be very bad Christians if we
think ourselves above such things. We may make the
hohness of our religion an excuse for treating the rest
of life as profane, but if we say that all things are
equally holy, that Sunday is as all days, and the Bible
as aU books, and Jesus Christ like other men, we shall
find that we have not gained a deeper consciousness of
the sanctity of our time, our literature, our fellow-men.
We shall have lost aU sense of sanctity and reverence
for anything. Religion is not the one holy thing in
life, but it is that which God has given us as the means
and witness of the sanctification of aU.
How it operates in this way is sufficiently clear.
I said that it was the peculiarity of the special or
formal religion that it had no value except in relation
to God. In all our misceUaneous activity, social or
individual, in aU we seek to do for others or for our
selves, it is easy enough to say that we are seeking God's
glory and that we labour in dependence on His grace,
but whUe actuaUy engaged upon it, the work stands
before us immediately through our own choice and is
in process of achievement through our own energy. It
is for the most part only when, laying it aside, we bring
before God in prayer and confession the emptiness of

THE CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE 45
our perplexity and weakness, that the religious phrase
ology recovers a reality which the self-absorbing
strenuousness of necessary activity wiU not easUy
again take from us. By the recurrence of its acts our
formal religion disciplines the mind into the recoUection
of habit.
Religion and Faith. We have considered the two
sides of religion ; we had better now give a moment's
thought to the relation between them and faith. I
called ' effective ' religion the fruit of Christianity ; I
think we might caU faith its source or root. ' Formal '
religion would then be the sap which nourishes and
develops the fruit from the root power.
An analogy is not an argument, but it may serve to
express the result of the position I have given before.
Christianity is primarily a faith, for it bids us look first
to God and what He does. The religion is secondary,
in the sense of derivative, for it is the response we make
to the guidance and grace God gives us. This is
especiaUy and peculiarly true of formal religion, which
constitutes always, both for Christians and heathens,
the expression of belief.
Probably some wUl contend that my analogy exagger
ates the importance of the formal practices of reUgion
which are not the only means by which the root-faith
can reach outwards to our life. I have already will
ingly admitted as much, but I do not think anyone wiU
deny that religious practices do exert a very powerful
influence of the kind described, and that it is pro
portionately important that they should express our
faith rightly to us. It is possible to maintain a true
faith with a very defective expression. There are
people who for a long time combine a sincere love for
God with great moral weakness. This is quite common

46 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
among chUdren. It is also possible to lead a true life
in spite of confused theories and false belief, and this
is quite common among people of a special spiritual
capacity, but such want of consistency is at best a
precarious and unstable condition. It always involves
loss of power and very often results in complete
disaster. There are certain psychological reasons always at
work blinding us to the dangers of our own incon
sistency. Our conscious ideals are so vividly before
us that we hardly realise the steady moulding force
which a practice has upon our subconsciousness. We
never think of the difference between the meaning of
our actions and the meaning we mean them to have.
It irritates us even to be reminded that there can be
a difference between the actual motive from which an
act springs and to which it belongs, and the ideal
motive by which we explain it to ourselves. Of course
we can see this weU enough in other people. We know
how hard it is for them to get past the ingenious un
reality of their asseverations, or to face the incon
sistencies which are so harmful to character. They
know so weU that bad temper and self-pleasing are
wrong, therefore they cannot imagine that they them
selves are cross and selfish. When they are so keenly
alive to the ideal of self-sacrifice, they think it unjust
and insulting to suggest that they are mainly busy in
making themselves comfortable.
This confusion reaches its climax in religion. We all
know quite weU what we ought to believe, therefore
we entirely refuse to consider even the possibflity that
our accustomed practices are entirely out of accord with
those beliefs. The pagan makes offerings to his idol,
decorates it, iU-treats it if things go wrong with him,

THE CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE 47
but emphaticaUy denies that he ever supposed the
stone was god. Apparently there never was such a
thing as idolatry. The polytheist prays now to this
god, now to that, by different names and with different
forms, and positively asserts that of course God is one.
We can see it all so weU in those for whose doings we
are not responsible ; we cannot see it in ourselves just
where we are responsible. 'Are we not Christians, and
do we not know that idolatry is an evil ? How then
can it be suggested that any part of our practice is in
principle idolatrous ? Are we not well aware of the
dangers of emotionalism ? No one therefore should
say that our religion is emotional. Christianity is a
faith in Christ. We do believe in Him and in His
power. Therefore it is impossible that we should be
trusting in ourselves and in our own states.'
If we value sincerity, we must be prepared to be
critical with ourselves, as men who know how easUy
false principles can creep in amongst the highest
purposes, doing aU the more damage because of the
specious disguise which prevents our recognising them.
If truth-acting is no less important than truth-telling,
we must learn to recognise the danger of these easy
going assumptions.
It is not merely the vividness of the conscious per
ception of our principles, nor merely the meanness of
our self-complacency, which makes it so much easier to
see inconsistencies of practice in other people. Our
minds are always being led astray by the fallacy of
particular instances. It may very well happen that a
man's own faith or that of his immediate friends reaUy
is being very little affected by its one-sided expression,
and the more clear-sighted and earnest a man is, the
harder it may be for him to see that anything has gone

48 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
wrong. Nevertheless the logic of a system works out
its own consequences visibly enough, if we look for them
over a broad enough area and for a sufficient space of
time ; and this we are aU the more bound to do, since
it is the general effect on common men, rather than the
possibiUties of the spiritually exceptional, with which
we are concerned.
Before we try to apply this to our Christian religion,
let us consider by contrast what expression is implied
in heathen custom. Wherever, as commonly among
the heathen, the idea of God is too vague and abstract
to bear the weight of personal religion, men take refuge
in the comparative definiteness of a traditional observ
ance, which then becomes meaningless, formal in the
worst sense. Its formality is the perfectly correct
expression of their belief that there is a God and that
He must stand in some relation to men. Its meaning-
lessness is the no less correct expression of their
recognition that no one can so reach to Him as to declare
what He is or what the relation is.
In the Christian order personal religion can develop
without fear of losing itself in mere dreams or individual
imaginings just so long as it is based upon the assured
revelation of God in Christ Jesus, set forth visibly and
in power to aU mankind. This personal development
based upon the revelation and act of Christ shows us
the safe and harmonious co-operation of those two
distinct principles which, towards the close of the last
chapter, I called the ' key of hope.'
If then our Christian religion is on its ' formal ' side
to be of one piece with its own faith, it must also find
room for the co-operation not of one, but of two con
current principles, {a) It must present to us the work
of Christ ; and it must contain (£) our own response to

THE CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE 49
that work. These, though different, are necessary to
one another, and they must be set before us in their
proper relation, — the human activity being recognised
in its dependence upon divine gift. Each side caUs for
a little consideration.
(a) Let us ask first what is meant by a presentation
of Christ's work. That work was the redemption of
mankind. It is of its very essence that it was com
pleted by the one, fuU, perfect and sufficient sacrifice,
which man can neither add to nor repeat. What is
there then which caUs for a presentation or a re
presentation ?
Do we not however see that for multitudes of men in
heathen lands the sacrifice of Christ is as though it had
never been ? Our belated and half-hearted conscious
ness is just beginning to awake to the duty laid on us
of helping to bring men out of their isolating darkness
into the redeemed humanity, and what is our mission
work but a presenting to them of the Cross of Christ ?
Nor are things at all different with ourselves. The
sacrifice of Christ as perfect is eternal, but we are born
in time. We were saved by Christ's death on Calvary ;
we have been brought into that salvation by conversion
and obedience, by repentance and baptism. But we
are not only born in time, we are not only re-born or
regenerated in time, we change with time. Day by
day we wake up as with a new mind in a new world to
new deeds which caU for fresh help. We do not want
a new sacrifice, we do need that it should be renewed
in us.
If then the sacrifice of Christ is stUl to mean anything,
it must be more than a past event, it must be and is a
living force through its capacity of being individualised
to individual men, and daily renewed in application
D

50 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
to each man. This is the law by which the eternal
manifests itself and is realised in time. Nothing adds
to the perfect, but thus the perfect fulfils itself in the
imperfect. It is the special sphere of Christian religion to pro
vide this renewal and fulfilment in human life, and each
such fulfilment is an anamnesis or memorial, just as it
re-presents the historic fact of Christ's death. Yet it is
not a mere reminiscence of something bye-gone, now
only capable of being mentaUy realised in imagination.
That which is stUl living and effective for all is presented
in its continuous power.
This presentation therefore would be the essentially
' common ' side of worship. Whatever is of our own,
whatever is subjective, our thoughts, memories, feelings,
are different in each person ; they change even in the
same person in some degree with the changes in his life.
It is always by the objective fact itself that we are
brought out of individualism into fellowship. It is just
the fact which remains the same, fixed and unchange
able, whether we ' discern ' it or not, however differ
ently we realise it. It did not happen because we
admit it, nor does it cease to be true if we choose to
deny it.
(b) The second side of our religious practice is the
response we make to Christ's work, and this is the
personal side, proceeding from the gift of the Spirit,
manifesting the diversity of His operation among men,
Who moves each to his own appreciation, and therefore
to his own response, the diversity of the Spirit's
operation being manifested according to aU the variety
of character and temperament.
Both sides of the idea are represented to us in the
Vision of the Heavenly City, which lying four-square is

THE CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE 51
straitly marked out with the great apostolic waU of
twelve foundations, yet three gates, though guarded,
stand open on each side. Into its unity all nations
bring each their own diverse glory and honour.
I have ventured to emphasise these two aspects, for
whUe the evangehcal faith requires and implies both,
it is just the unity of their necessary inter-dependence
which our religious practice has torn asunder. If I may
apply this to the question before us, anticipating what
I must show more fuUy hereafter, has not the Church
been strong so far as she has held fast to the sacra
mental forms which witness and belong to the gifts of
Christ ? Has it not been the strength of Non-Con
formity that it has maintained and developed the
witness of the personal gifts of the Holy Spirit ?
The unity we long for is a unity which shall combine
both sides. We shrink from a union which acquiesces
in their separation. Must we for that reason lose the
sympathy of our brethren ? Even if we Churchmen
had only ourselves to think of we could not be content.
We are not half as conscious as we ought to be, and yet
we are conscious, how much we are losing by disunion,
how inadequate is our grasp of the richness of faith,
how much our Church life needs to be kindled by a new
fervour. But, little as we like to mingle criticism of
others with confession of our own weakness, it seems to
us no less clear that others, — indeed that aU, — are in
need of the gifts which God has given to us. However
feeble and half-hearted our own use of them may be,
we cannot admit that these gifts are merely things
serviceable to us with which others can well dispense.

CHAPTER III.
THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH.
Of what I have tried to say this is perhaps the sum.
Our life is buUt out of the inter-operation of two prin
ciples, which I may call truth and apprehension. The
truth is the common factor which is the same for aU ;
apprehensions of the truth are personal, and being
partial are endlessly varied. If we apply this to the
Christian life, the incarnation and redemption repre
sent the common factor on which a very varied develop
ment foUows. It is in the completeness and adequacy
of its double aspect that Christianity differs from
heathenism. Among the heathen to whom the revela
tion of Christ has not come, the whole universe lies
open as a basis for religious selection, and apprehension
becomes an unchecked movement. There can be no
true development or progress, because there is no
certain conception of a religious truth to be apprehended
or developed. To Christianity the distinction of the
two parts is vital, but it is a distinction and not a
separation, for the two are brought into unity. Rooted
in Christ, the life grows freely outwards.
This is the whole text of aU I am trying to say. In
applying it first to the question of the Church, we come
within the controversial area, and this part of our sub
ject in particular is involved in many difficulties. We

THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH 53
who caU ourselves ' the Church ' have by so doing un
churched all other bodies. At the same time, if we are
to admit that all other reUgious bodies are equaUy
churches, we must give up our contention of the essen
tial unity of the Church. We shall have opened the
door to those ideals of co-operation and federation
which seem to us as ideals so unsatisfactory and in
adequate. Here then we are apparently confronted with an
irreconcilable contradiction at the very start. Person
aUy I do not believe that the difference is at all irrecon-
cUable, but I am quite sure that if we begin by discuss
ing that question — ' Which is the Church ? ' — we shall
find ourselves lost in an interminable confusion.
Certainly we have been engaged on a very long con
troversy over just this point, if after it all the question
has made no progress whatever, is not that sufficient
to prove that we have not reached the central diffi
culty ? We are arguing what is the proper organisa
tion or system for doing something, or authorised to do
it, and we argue in circles without ever touching one
another, because we have never made up our minds
what is the thing the organisation is to do, what is its
significance, what is implied in it, why it requires an
authorisation. For some reasons I should prefer to leave the question
of the Church to my Second Part, where I hope to deal
with it more fuUy, and to show why I think our differ
ence is not so irreconcUable, and the question — ' Which
is the Church ? ' is not so important as they appear to
be, for the real difference lies in a quite other direction.
Since, however, we are concerned altogether with a
question of unity, I must explain what we Churchmen
mean by it. I do not suppose that Non-Conformists

54 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
will altogether agree with what I liave to say, but as I
am dealing rather with the principles which should be
kept in mind than with the forms in which they must
be realised, I do not think they wUl greatly differ.
I want to emphasise that we are seeking a unity
rather than a union, and the difference is of great
importance. By a ' unity ' we mean a single body,
having different organs, and yet filled and controUed
with one life. By a ' union ' we mean a mutual
relation established between different bodies, each of
which retains its own independence. Thus, the states
of Europe form by treaties and international law a
union, capable of common action for certain definite
purposes. The ' States ' of North America on the
other hand, whUe for certain purposes distinct, yet are
' united,' have a unity, much deeper, more ' spiritual,'
than their difference. They form one country. w..j
The instances I have used may be of a somewhat
rough type, and I have no interest in pressing them too
far, but they have their own lesson. We are talking of
spiritual things, and of spiritual ideas and spiritual
principles in a common spiritual life. The material
organisation of administrative and legislative govern
ment has grown from the spiritual life, and grown with
it, constitutes a part of its expression.
In considering the Church system, the unity of its
organisation, the necessity of its system, the form that
it should take, are the points most present to our con
sciousness. We may grant that we have come, or
many of us have come, to recognise that some kind of
unity is required, but beyond that point we are hope
lessly at variance. The true centre of Christianity,
however, is not organisation, but worship. The Church,
therefore, is primarUy an organisation for worship, and

THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH 55
it is the nature of this supreme act which must deter
mine our ideas of organisation.
My main business in the First Part is then to explain
the Church conception of worship. I do not say that
the Church conception is the only right one ; I do urge
that it is one of great spiritual importance for which
a place must be found in the true Christian life. We
wiU consider afterwards what room is left, or ought to
be left, for the organisation of other principles or con
ceptions of worship. I must first speak, however, of
the necessity, value, importance, place of system and
organisation. Does worship belong to the ' we ' or
to the ' I,' to the organisation, that is, the community,
or to the individuals ? What is the relation between
the two ?
If in our ethical study we try to construct a con
sistent theory of human conduct, we find ourselves
confronted by this difficulty — to ourselves we seem to
be individuals, living our own lives, thinking our
thoughts, masters of our own acts, and the ' Com
munity ' is merely a name for an aggregate of other
individuals simUarly situated. Nevertheless, nothing
is more certain than that to the community we owe
both the fact and the possibility of maintaining our
individual existence. This is not only true of our
material existence. To the intercourse which the
community provides we owe that very inteUectual
development, the growth of inteUigence, which is
creating and intensifying the sense of individualism.
Further, it should be noted, that we owe the greater
part of aU this growth to the community as such. No
doubt we owe a great deal also to particular members
of the community, but what we receive from indi
viduals is incidental and occasional. For that reason

56 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
it impresses itself upon our imagination and is not
readUy forgotten. What we owe to the community as
a whole order of relations forms the constant and
permanent substance of our life, therefore we take it
for granted and hardly think anything about it. We
know how much some stirring sermon or serious talk
has meant in our lives ; it seldom occurs to us how
much the mere fact of a Church with its fixed hours of
service is moulding and forming our minds.
This unconsciousness of the real influence and import
ance of the community intensifies, but it does not
create, the dissonance between the advantage and
perfecting of the community and those of the indi
vidual, which cannot be identified merely by putting
stress on the true and real advantage of the individual.
Is it possible to maintain that self-sacrifice is always
really and in the highest sense for the good of him who
sacrifices himself ? If it is, can the act really and
in the highest sense be a self-sacrifice ?
In plain fact, the moment I set the community before
me as an object for whose good I wiU work, I have
separated myself from it. I have so far ceased to
regard myself as a member sharing in its good. I have
made myself the judge of what its good shall be, and
asserted my individuality as the prior factor on which
it is dependent. Here we may see something of the
significance of the difference between union and unity.
To our self-conscious judgments we are individuals who
make union with one another as we co-operate in
common plans and efforts for mutual assistance. The
true community, however, is the primary unity from
which we receive, and this primary unity cannot be of
our making ; it is of God.
We can perhaps foUow this better in an instance I

THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH 57
have already used, which is easier to understand just
because it goes less deep into the vital truth of life.
As a nation we are held together by a common system,
having a common history, a common life, common
ideals. We do not belong to it by a choice of our own,
nor can we quite easUy cease to belong to it by choice.
It is easy enough, no doubt, to be a bad Enghshman or
a traitor, but not so easy to cease to be an Englishman.
We belong to England because we have been born to
a share in a common Divine purpose. However far
back we look we shaU never find such a choice being
made. In the very earliest stages the national idea or
the national consciousness is at its feeblest, in a later
stage it has grown stronger ; but when at its feeblest it
is a consciousness, it is a faith, at its strongest, it is only
a strong consciousness, and a more over-mastering
faith, in something which already exists.
Our faith in our country is therefore a faith in its
vocation. It is in this respect altogether different from
our faith in the Primrose League, the Liberal Five
Hundred, or the Midland Railway Company, which
are our own, and which represent just the sum of such
combined effort and power as we put into them. A
nation is a different thing. Our material self-seeking
and inteUectual seh-assertion, our greed and envy,
contempt and recrimination, weaken it and may bring
about its destruction. Our patriotism, agreement and
sympathy with one another, willingness to understand,
efficient work and ready service, will be for its strength
and development. But all these activities for good or
evU are the results of our faith or lack of faith. They
also strengthen or weaken the faith, but they are not
the causes of faith and stiU less the causes of the nation.
Our faith simUarly pre-supposes the country. It is in

58 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
the nature of things impossible that faith should create
its own object.
The nation is then a trinity : first, that which God
does ; next, faith by which man accepts ; lastly, works
by which man fulfils. We must not divide these ele
ments, for aU are necessary to the very substance,
reality, being of a nation ; mutuaUy re-acting, they are
all involved in everything we do. Yet we must not
confuse them, nor lose sight of the order of their
priority. Possibly some may think that I am not justi
fied in making God the author of a national political
existence. I do not altogether agree with them. We
cannot put political growth outside the sphere of God's
operation and providence ; and so long as we aUow
that, my immediate point remains — wherever we have
to consider God's action, there we must keep before
our minds this trinity of elements in their right order.
The objection made has, however, a certain import
ance. I admit that in political matters there is so
much which is human that the non-religious student
has a certain excuse for treating them by purely
scientific method as the outcome of political forces.
We are concerned with the Church as a Christian
reUgious society, and it is the very essence of the
Christian religion that we can see at once in Christ that
which is of God, in order that what is there made plain
to our learning may be afterwards applied in fields
where God's action is only ' immanent,' can only be
seen in the general working of things. We believe God
to be the author of the nation, because we know He is
the author of the Church.
We look to Christ, then, as the manifestation of God
made Man in order that we may see the Divine ideal of
manhood : so also we look to God's Church to see

THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH 59
the Divine ideal of a human society. If Christianity
has any light to throw on this strange and perplexing
dissonance between the individual and the community,
between that essential unity from which we come and
those unions which are after all our own, if Christianity
can show us any way of reconcUing or harmonising a
difference which penetrates our life so deeply, it is in
the Church that it must be found.
What I am urging is therefore that according to the
law of human life the God-made unity is the prior
ground out of which the individual grows ; from the
individual come unions of individuals, for the further
ance of special purposes or ideas apprehended by
individuals. This individuality, however, and these
unions of individuals are not substitutes for that prior
unity. They must be recognised as activities within
it. It is to the prior and more general unity that they,
as particulars, must be referred, just as all our doings,
whether of persons, of parties, of societies for the further
ance of some ideal, are parts of a whole national life.
I must then treat of the Church as the standard
religious type of what I am caUing a Prior Unity, to
which aU other individuals and unions are related.
When our Lord Jesus Christ first preached to men,
it^was that the Kingdom of God was at hand — it was
of a Kingdom He Himself would establish, which His
hearers would recognise, might enter or refuse to enter,
but which was certainly not to be made by them. To
PUate He asserted His claim to be a King ; that was the
end for which He had come. He died with the title
of a King above His head.
What sort of a Kingdom would He establish ? It
was a Kingdom not of this world. It was ' a Kingdom
within you.' Nevertheless, like all things spiritual, it

60 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
would have its actualisation, its embodiment or presen
tation among men, as all things eternal must have
which we can count as real.
S. Luke, writing his history of the Acts of the
Apostles, reminds his readers of his former account of
aU that Jesus began both to do and to teach. The
doings of which he has to tell them now are aUvery
actual indeed. Are they not the fulfilment of Christ's
promise, ' Lo, I am with you always ' ? The Churches
to which S. Paul writes are very real societies of very
real — it would appear of very commonplace — people,
though he takes them to be the sign of the operation of
God's Spirit.
The law of the relation between this presentation or
actual embodiment and the eternal principle which
it sets forth, we shall find in our Lord's great prayer
for unity given in S. John's Gospel. ' That they may
be one as we are one. ... As Thou, Father, art in
Me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us '
(xvii. 11-12). The mystery that lies under the unity
of the Church is nothing else than the unity of the God
head, the unity of the Trinity. It is not primarily a
unity of opinions, for this is but the unity of a party ;
nor merely of co-operation, for this is only the unity
of a commercial partnership. It is a unity of life, of
organic relation, of vital function.
There are here two main points on which I want to
insist : (1) the distinction between the unity which is
God-made and that which is man-made ; (2) the neces
sity of actuality, reality, materiality, in the nature of
this Church unity. Both of these are points on which
I know many wiU differ. I put them as crudely, even
as offensively, as possible, much more crudely than I
mean them, in order that we may get the whole force

THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH 61
of whatever difference there may be. I want now to
explain them more carefuUy. I do not suppose I shall,
nor do I want to, explain the difference away, but I do
hope that when others realise exactly what we are
contending for, they wiU appreciate its importance.
(i) That there are certain societies which are dis
tinctively God-made and others which are distinctively
man-made, I think we shall aU admit. No one would
put a commercial firm quite on the level of a family or
a Church. What exactly is the distinction ? Should
we not say that whatever we make is a partnership ;
it has just so much of skiU and wisdom as we put into
it. For that reason, however useful, it cannot be an
object of faith or of worship. If we devote ourselves
and bow down to that which our fingers have made
and our brains devised, as though it were something
greater than ourselves, capable of bringing us help, we
are committing idolatry.
But the question is very complex. As Christians we
must believe that all good whatever is of God. Person
aUy, I hold to the Augustinian principle that ' man has
nothing of his own— unless perchance sin.' If we could
not feel that God was leading us to a business partner
ship, we have no right to join it. But if so, what
becomes of our distinction ? Must we not conclude
that there is no real distinction, but only a difference
of degree ?
If so, then our question becomes not only complex,
but confused, for nothing is so confusing as mere
questions of less and more. And there are people who
deny our distinction, maintaining that, since the Holy
Spirit dwells in us and guides us, therefore what we do
is done by God. From every point of view this is a
question of supreme importance with which we must

62 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
grapple. It wiU meet us in this enquiry again and
again, but its importance is by no means limited to our
immediate subjects.
I quite admit the force, and even to a certain point
the correctness, of the argument. There is nothing
good which can be purely human ; the phrase ' man-
made ' cannot therefore be used strictly. But can it
be used distinctively ? If there is no real distinction
— except in degree — between what God does and what
man does, then I say that aU real religion is at an end.
The name of God becomes a phrase for certain ' degrees '
of man's actions and it has no distinct meaning at all.
We must begin therefore by admitting that in all man
does there is an element of divine guidance. But we
have learnt to realise that we cannot confine this
Divine guidance to Christian people. God gave of
His Spirit to heathen philosophers, poets, sculptors.
To Him they also owe whatever was right and true in
their thoughts of God, and all that was best in the
beauty of its expression. Yet the primary distinction
remains just the same. However good, noble or
beautiful, however God-given, these thoughts, carvings,
ideas were not God Himself ; they were only individual
expressions. The distinction reveals itself under the
test of worship. The moment the heathen bowed
before that which was contained within himself, or
proceeded from himself — even if it were that which he
had received of God, even if it were so much of God's
grace — it was an act of idolatry.
That, as a matter of plain fact, I do not see how we
can help admitting, and the ground of it lies here. It
is as true of Christians as heathens, of the greatest
saints as weU as of the most ordinary men and women,
that that which is within us, whencesoever it may come,

THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH 63
is limited by our limitation, qualified by our imperfec
tion. The true object of our worship, and therefore of
our faith, must be something altogether greater than
ourselves. It must be God Himself, and something
that is of God's own doing, of His purpose, power,
working, as these are in Himself, not according to the
degree in which we have received them. If we believe
in England, it is not in just what Englishmen are, not
even in that grace which Englishmen have already
received, but in what God means for England. With
the Church, as with our country, our faith is in what
God has made for it, not in what men have made of it.
We believe in it, because we believe that what God has
thus made wUl overcome what man has done.
I urge, therefore, first, that if the unity we seek is
to be a Gospel, or any part of a Gospel, it must come to
us as ' news,' as something which is not of ourselves,
but which lifts us above ourselves. It must not be
the reflection or expression of ideas we already have ;
it must in some way effectively present, witness,
provide the means of realising the revelation of God,
the operation of His power.
(2) From this it foUows, secondly, that it must be
a visible unity, an organised body, a Church or institu
tion of some kind. I know that very many will dissent
strongly from this conclusion, but I ask them to face
the question seriously. 'An invisible Church composed
of all good people, of aU who love Jesus Christ in
sincerity.' Is this reaUy more than an empty phrase ?
I fuUy admit that there are many good people who do
not belong to any religious body, nor do I suggest that
their goodness is inoperative. I only ask, if they are
not a body — -but only a number — and if they do not
form part of a body, why should we talk of them as

64 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
if they did ? We can speak of ' the great unity of
London bricklayers,' because the London bricklayers
have a Union. But what would be meant by speaking
of ' the great unity of London sempstresses ' ? It is
one of the difficulties of social reform that London
sempstresses have no such unity. No one knows even
who they are, who should be counted as a sempstress
and who not. ' There are many good people known
and unknown.' That I fully grant, but what is gained,
what valid meaning is added, by calling them ' an
invisible Church ' ? The phrase does suggest that
actual union among them is a quite unimportant
matter. I am quite willing to admit that their good
ness is more important, but that experience of religious
life which leads us to look for reunion is of itself
proclaiming that disunion is a weakness. By using
language implying that the disunion does not exist, we
suggest that it does not matter whether they are
united or not.
The principle of a visible Church stands in harmony
with the visible Incarnation concerning which it is
written ' we beheld His glory.' If a unity of mere
agreement is parallel only to a Tritheistic Godhead, an
invisible unity corresponds to the meaningless rhetoric
of Pantheism.
The greatest difficulty felt in a hearty acceptance of
the Church on earth as a visible organisation lies in our
dread of losing what is spiritual under the dead-weight
of a merely material system. No careful student of
history and no observer of our own times can doubt
that that is a very real and pressing danger. The
readiness to be content with formal membership and
the correct performance of formal duties, the habit of
taking lists of membership and classes, the weight of

THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH 65
subscriptions and the magnificence of buUdings, as
signs of spiritual vitality, or perhaps, worst of aU, the
craving to exercise poUtical power as an equivalent, a
proof or a means of spiritual influence, are exactly
paraUel to the tendency to measure the greatness of
England by the mileage of its Empire, the census of its
population or the estimates of its capital.
We must not forget, however, that the spiritual is
no less endangered by our readiness to identify it with
the unreal, to suppose that it can remain, or even
consist, in a vague sentiment, indifferent to aU practical
manifestations. The spiritual is not the opposite of the
material, but its proper Ufe. ' There is nothing material
which is not also spiritual, nor anything spiritual which
is not realised in the material.'

CHAPTER IV.
THE CHURCH SACRAMENTS.
I have spoken now in a general way of what underlies
our view of ' the Church,' that is, of the idea of a unity
or whole to which the individual is related. I promised
that I would speak next of the Church view of Sacra
ments, which I wiU also treat in this chapter somewhat
generaUy. These two questions of Church Order and
Church Sacraments have a close connection with the
two Christian principles of Revelation and Atonement.
The two principles which I gave as the essence of our
Christian faith are that first it has turned our thoughts
away from merely self-formed ideas to contemplate the
Revelation of God in Christ ; secondly, in relation to
our life it bids us put our trust, not in the virtues,
righteousness, actions, which we possess or perform, but
in what Christ has done for us. At Bethlehem God
took aU humanity to Himself ; on Calvary He gave
Himself for all mankind, thus drawing the whole race
of man into oneness with the Father and the Son. But
that which Christ did for us is that which He now does
in us. As in the Church we see how there is for the
individual a true sphere in a common caUing or purpose
of God ; so in the sacraments Christ draws the indi
viduals one by one, making them in baptism by His
act to be His members, and then feeding them day by

THE CHURCH SACRAMENTS 67
day with that one gift of God which is the communion
of Himself, of His own body and His own blood.
I want to show how throughout this statement,
which I have put very shortly, even if some think
it complex, there is but one consistent idea running.
We may distinguish between the Incarnation and
the Atonement, Revelation and Redemption, but the
Gospel is not divided. God redeemed Humanity be
cause He had taken it, and He took it that He might
redeem it. To the redeemed God is made known, and
He is made known because He redeemed. So also
Order and Sacraments are one, for it is One WiU of
God working outwards to men and human society,
which works by drawing men in to God. It is thus
that Christianity reconciles the dissonance of life, the
antagonism between the individual and the whole, for
though in ourselves we are separated personalities, in
God the two are one.
The unity made in the Gospel between the two ideas
of knowledge and power is then repeated in the sacra
mental presentation. What is the relation between the
Gospel and the sacraments ?
The sacraments were anciently called symbols, but,
as Professor Harnack teUs us, the word has somewhat
changed its meaning. It stood at first for that out
ward form by which an act was validly performed, the
legal ' deed ' by which ownership, authority or dignity
is conferred. In the modern sense it is used for the
outward trappings which merely proclaim what is
already and by other means possessed, as the crown is
the symbol of the king, though he is no less the king if
no coronation has taken place.
To take the sacraments purely as symbols in the
modern sense, that is, to regard them only as material

68 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
signs proclaiming a subjective or spiritual state which
already exists independently of them, and to which
they contribute nothing, seems to us to invert the
Christian order of priority. ' That is not first which is
spiritual but that which is natural.' The outward is
always the ground of the inward. In common life it
is from what is seen, heard, felt, that we come to thought
and reflection ; in the Christian life, the physical,
objective presentation in GalUee, Capernaum, on
Calvary, in the Upper Room, on Olivet, comes before
the gift of the Spirit. By what suffered in the flesh,
we live in the Spirit.
The difficulty of the sacraments is the offence of the
cross, which to the Jew was a stumbling-block, for he
sought acts of his own which might have merit. To
the Greek it was foolishness, for virtue was the wisdom
of the individual. All our human pride is in revolt
against the idea that an external act, of which we are
not the doers, can affect us. Yet the sacraments were
instituted as the Passion was endured just for this
reason, that we should learn to trust, as in what Christ
did, so in what Christ gives. The subjective or personal
part, by which we enter into or appreciate, foUows what
is done or given.
Baptism. These then are the principles of which I
want, not merely to find iUustrations, but to show the
spiritual importance. That I may not seem to omit
anything, I had better say a few words on the subject
of Baptism.
The Christian life is that life in which we dweU in
Christ and Christ in us, are one with Christ and Christ
with us. This state is so far natural, since it is that
for which our nature cries out. Yet in another sense
it is not natural, but of grace, that is of gift The

THE CHURCH SACRAMENTS 69
merely natural mind, the mind of the flesh, ' is not
subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be ' (Rom.
viu. 7). The natural mind is that which is self -regard
ing, for ' that which is born of the flesh is flesh,' so that
' except a man be born again — of water and spirit —
he cannot enter the kingdom of God.'
By birth we mean the beginning of individual life ;
by life we very commonly mean the sum and course
of all those activities — sights, hearing, knowledge,
thought, movement — which go to make up the fact of
living. Strictly speaking, however, life is rather the
power which makes those activities possible. Without
the activities Ufe perishes, but life's uses and the power
of life are nevertheless distinct. The uses presuppose
the power.
When therefore our Lord commanded His Apostles
to baptise, He gave baptism to be the sacrament of a
birth, the symbol, the outward means, the effective
presentment of the gift of life ; of life, that is, taken
strictly, a power, not the fulfilment to which it leads.
'As many as received Him, to them gave He power to
become the sons of God.' The same order of priority
holds in the spiritual as in the physical. We do not
acquire sonship by love ; we learn to love because we
have been made sons.
Holy Communion. It has been a frequent subject of
regret, it has been not seldom referred to as an instance
of human perversity, that the mystery of this sacra
ment, ordained to be the means and symbol of unity
among men, should have become the greatest cause of
reUgious difference. But the complaint thus stated
involves a very serious misunderstanding of the problem
before us. Men differ, not because they are trying to
know too much, but because they have not learnt

70 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
enough. God Himself is using difference to rouse us to
the sense of how much more there is yet to come, to
prevent us settling down to the easy sleep of in
difference. If the differences become quarrels it is not
because we hold truth with too firm a conviction, but
because we resent the idea that there is anything more
to be learnt. We do weU to deplore difference and stiU
more to deplore bitterness. But after all these are
only symptoms.
If there is any truth in this view of the significance
of difference — and I think few will deny that there is
at least some — the more essential any question is, the
greater the hold it takes on life, if men differ about
anything the more they wiU differ about that and the
more inevitably.
I have already pointed out how this applies to
religion in general. We need not go to theologians and
phUosophers ; our best witnesses are the practical
politicians who are least interested in the subj ect. From
at least the days of the Seleucidae and the Maccabsean
revolt, they have shown their consciousness that
reUgion was the most effective element in uniting and
in dividing the people under them. The two effects
were mutuaUy involved.
What applies to religion in general applies equally
to religious doctrines taken separately. The Doctrine
of the Atonement is fuU of difficulties. Endless theories
have been made about it. Even those who have made
the theories would not pretend that any of them were
adequate. In the Atonement is the answer of God to
aU the mysteries, the perplexities, the contradictions in
human life. To understand it completely would be to
have a complete understanding of everything. And
the mystery of the Holy Communion is nothing more

THE CHURCH SACRAMENTS 71
than a showing forth of Christ's death in a relation to
all men.
It seems a paradox to say that these things contain
the answer to all the perplexities and yet that they are
not inteUigible. If we meant a verbal answer, certainly
it would be a very stupid paradox, but I am speaking
of a hving answer. I might say that the answer to all
our sociological problems lay in the famUy, but no one
would understand me to mean that the family was a
lucid scientific treatise. I should mean that those
elements and principles which in our national life are
so fragmentary, so disjointed, so incongruous, so hard
to foUow, are in the famUy harmonious, possible,
reconcUed in practice. The famUy at least is the
solution, though we may be a long way off knowing
either how to explain its answer in inteUectual terms
or how to use it practically to straighten out our
difficulties. Let us see what these ' problems of Ufe ' are, and if
they sound somewhat abstract, I give them in the
behef that they he at the root of aU our most real
troubles. Is there such a thing as a divine gift, or a
' divine grace,' or can everything in our moral and
inteUectual Ufe be accounted for on the combined basis
of environment, psychological development and free
wiU ? What precisely is the meaning and office of
faith, submission, humility, self-surrender, by which
that gift or grace is accepted ? What is the value,
place, effect, of human activity ? What is the right
order, sequence, or relation of these three factors —
gift, faith, works ? How do they act on one another,
and how much reaction must we aUow for ?
Again, how is the individual related to the com
munity, and in what order does each stand to God ?

72 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
Does the community exist for the members or the
members for the community ? Are God's gifts received
by the community and ministered to the members, or
received by the members that they may be used as
a gift to others ? If both ways are employed, is there
any distinction between them ?
What are the relations of the spiritual and inteUectual
soul to the world ? If the material hampers, can it
also minister to, the soul ? Is God the Lord of the
spiritual only, or of the material also ? Is God im
manent in nature, that is, are we to find Him in the
normal operation of its known forces ; or is He tran
scendent, a something' acting upon nature from with
out ? Or is He both immanent and transcendent ? Is
He immanent or transcendent in the spiritual life, a
force — or perhaps the force — of natural psychological
movement, or again is He to be traced in the super
natural ?
There are many ways of meeting these questions.
We may assert that life is an essentially simple thing,
and that its so-called problems are the nightmare in
vention of philosophers and theologians. So Tertul
lian once described them as coming from the wretched
Aristotle — turned and twisted by phUosophers and
heretics. We may also, with an easy-going agnosticism,
admit that they exist, and yet scoff at the futility of
discussing what we have no meaiks to answer.
If, however, we realise that tht^'e questions are being
forced upon us in everyday life, then we ought to
welcome anything which will help to make the end and
purpose of that life more clear. The mere formulating
of the questions, the mere statement of our confusions,
is a first and necessary step forward. It is part of a
criticism I have ventured to make elsewhere on the

THE CHURCH SACRAMENTS 73
method of modern theological study that, while wrest
ling not uselessly with documentary sources and histori
cal origins, it has failed to recognise that ' orthodox
doctrine ' and ecclesiastical systems are not concerned
merely with religious phenomena and ideas. They are
offering us a solution of life as a whole. In consequence,
our modern constructive theology shows for the most
part a very superficial appreciation of the depth and
subtlety of the questions involved.

CHAPTER V.
THE HOLY COMMUNION.
I trust that this general account of the sacramental
system of the Church will justify my taking the Holy
Communion and the place it holds in our religious life
as the most central expression of whatever other
differences exist between us. By careful examination
here we can gain the clearest conception of the signifi
cance of our differences, and of what is implied in
them. The examination will be necessarily somewhat com
plicated. I am sure we do not understand one another
very weU ; I am very doubtful if we understand our
selves at aU too clearly. If there is any importance in
what I have said above on the need of close consistency
between faith and religious practice, I would urge then
that it is of the greatest importance that we should
work out our meaning steadily. For reunion mutual
understanding is necessary, and for that understanding
we must both make sure that we have a consistent
position which can be understood. Further, I would
urge that consistency of meaning is no less necessary
for ourselves. In a matter which so much concerns
the truth of Christianity we cannot afford, and we ought
not to be content, to play about between two alterna
tives, using one so long as it suits us and then tacitly

THE HOLY COMMUNION 75
passing over to another whenever the consequences of
the first begin to grip us inconveniently.
In practice we differ very widely, though in faith
many of us at least are stiU deeply at one. If we laid
ourselves out to do it, I dare say we might find paper
phrases to which we could aU give a formal assent,
whUe in fact we remain just where we were. But is
that worth doing ? Is it right ? Would it not be
really wiser to begin by trying to sharpen our differ
ences ? ' We have done that only too often.' Yes,
we have done it in the name of strife and controversy,
should we not be equally bold and frank in the
name of love to one another, because of the faith
we have in God's purpose ? In this spirit, would
there not be then a real hope of knowing where we
stood ?
In discussing our respective positions in the pre
ceding chapters I caUed that for which I was contend
ing the " Church ' position. I was conscious in doing
so that 1 was implying a claim which would not be
altogether admitted, yet since I was explaining an
essentiaUy ' institutional ' view I thought the use of
the term sufficiently clear and for descriptive purposes
not unjustifiable. Now that I am coming to treat of the
personal side, the term would be for several reasons
misleading. To find descriptive names acceptable to
both parties is in aU controversies a difficult task. I
have heard the two main views on this subject classified
as Cathohc and Evangelical. I should have no objec
tion to the term Catholic, but I cannot without protest
consent to let go the term Evangelical. I have no
other motive for maintaining the ' Catholic ' sacra
mental doctrine than that I believe it to be necessary
to the consistency and stabUity of Evangelicalism. If

76 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
I may be allowed a purely personal remark, I say this
as one who began life as an ardent evangelical in the
sense in which that term might be applied to any
Salvation Army Captain, and, however much more I
have learnt since, I would not admit I have ever
abandoned my belief. Possibly then I may be aUowed
to use the term ' Protestant ' as that to which the
fewest objections wUl be made.
What then may be called the ' Catholic ' position, I
may undertake to set out shortly. We believe that in
the Sacrament of the Holy Communion, Christ has
provided for us in the fulfilment of His promise a re
presentation of Himself, a true renewal to us day by
day of the BodUy Presence of His spiritual Humanity,
that which suffered and is now ascended and glorified,
in order that we, partaking of the Humanity thus given,
might enter into that union of the earthly and spiritual
which was the redemption manifested in the Body of
His Resurrection.
It is a much more difficult matter to undertake to
state the position one is about to criticise. The recog
nised scientific method is by quoting and analysing the
statements given in authorised documents and by
authoritative writers. Although this looks the fairest
method, I shrink from it. It is a very wearisome pro
cedure both for the writer and the reader. Since the
quotations can only be extracts, and after aU one has
to put an interpretation on them, the danger of mis
representation is rather increased than diminished by
the appearance of exactitude. The results are also
apt to be misleading. Authoritative writers give us
the more inteUectual view of a system, as it can be
best thought out, sometimes as it can be most easUy
defended, which is often a long way from its actual use.

\

\

THE HOLY COMMUNION 77
Authorised documents, as essentiaUy formal, do not
give us any view of the movement of thought.
These objections are of especial weight in dealing
with Non-Conformity. The leading writers of one body
are not those of another, whUe I believe I am right in
saying that modern Non-Conformity would claim to be
essentiaUy rather a spirit or movement than a formal
position which can be adequately embodied in author
ised documents.
It is therefore a distinctive spirit or motive which
I have to consider. If in this way we try to describe
the character of the two attitudes, it is usual to say
that whUe the " Catholic ' looks especially to what is
common, to the formal action, and ultimately to the
definite doctrine or thought, the ' Protestant ' tendency
is to look primarily to the personal or individual, to
the spiritual, and ultimately to what is felt. It is
admitted on both sides that the distinction lies in a
difference of proportion, or of relative importance. The
CathoUc does not deny the importance of the personal,
nor the Protestant of that which is common. Moderate
men on both sides would admit that these distinctions
imply dangers in their own position as weU as powers.
When we come to an exphcit question like that of
the Holy Communion, we find that our differences are
far more serious, imply matters of much more spiritual
importance, than the somewhat vague admissions given
above would suggest. In trying to state the Protestant
view, I am a Uttle puzzled by finding two answers,
advanced generaUy by different people, but even some
times by the same people at different times, without
any apparent sense that they are not quite consistent.
I do not wish to make controversial point out of this.
We Catholics have enough inconsistencies of our own,

78 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
and Non-Conformists lay less stress on formal con
sistency than we do. But I stUl hold that for either of
us the lack of a clear conception, the readiness to take
first one and then another view, is a real evU. For my
immediate purpose, however, it is rather a convenience.
The two answers move somewhat different issues which
need separate consideration. I wiU take the first here,
and leave the second to my next chapter.
What I might call ' the extreme Protestant view ' —
though it is by no means confined to those who in any
offensive way would be caUed extreme Protestants, —
regards the Holy Communion as ' symbolical ' in the
modern sense of the word. It is a token or reminder
of what is given, but it is only the most effective means
of that gift in so far as by its associations it is the most
solemn act of prayer, meditation and worship. If
there is a difference between communion and other
religious acts, it is of degree and not of kind. The real
key of the view is stated with extraordinary terseness
and suggestiveness in the sentence : ' What a man
brings to the communion, he takes from it.'
If anything I can say is to be of any use, I must
avoid unfair statement of the opposed view. I have
already admitted that this only represents one view,
or perhaps one side. It may weU be that I do not fully
understand what is meant by it, but I want to empha
sise what I hope presently to show more fuUy. I am
not criticising Protestantism, stiU less Non-Conformity,
but only certain elements which in truth seem to me
not essential nor even consistent with the principles of
either, but which are rather, Uke most negations, a
source of weakness.
That the above statement does represent a very real
side of the Protestant position I think I have better

THE HOLY COMMUNION 79
evidence for believing than any string of quotations.
I have explained elsewhere why I take religious usage
as the most significant expression of the religious mind.
Usage grows up in us and moulds our minds uncon
sciously. If we wiU reflect upon it, it thereby reveals
to us how different the real influences in our life may
be from those which our theories are inclined to aUow.
Again, usages are essentiaUy ' common.' They reveal
the outcome and the meaning of a system as it is under
stood by the mass of common people, rather than as
it is explained by the learned.
Whatever simUarity therefore may exist between the
theories of different bodies of Christians, we must find
some explanation or interpretation for this great and
practical difference that, just so far as the Catholic
view has been appreciated, the Holy Communion has
been felt as the centre of its normal religious life, set
forth day by day or week by week ; amongst Non-
Conformists and under the Protestant view, it is very
occasional, and, if I am rightly informed, the modern
tendency is to diminish the insistence on its necessity.
I am not merely anxious for controversial reasons to
do fuU justice to Non-Conformists. I am exceedingly
anxious for the cause of Christianity that we should
gain a strictly accurate view both of the nature of our
differences and of their importance It is quite possible
that they are of smaU moment, but it is also possible
that the differences may be growing out of and reveal
ing very serious defects and inconsistencies on one side
or on both which ought to be faced honestly. A better
understanding of one another is desirable, but a true
understanding of Christianity is vital. In the one case,
to exaggerate our differences is foolish and mischievous ;
in the other, to minimise them may be disastrous.

80 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
I have put the two positions side by side and the
difference between them is obvious. When, however,
in a broad-minded way we look to the spirit or tendency
of the systems, differences of theory or statement seem
to melt away again. When we look at the practical
differences of use, those tendencies begin to acquire a
deeper significance, which is increased and confirmed
by the reasons quite commonly given by Protestants
for dissenting from the Catholic usage. I put these
reasons in my own words, but I put them as strongly as
I can. ' The more we concentrate our attention on the
inward and spiritual life of the soul which is after all
the vital element, and the more we realise the mystery
of that personal devotion or self -surrender which consti
tutes the soul's true relation to God, the less easy it is
to believe that it can be compassed by what is formal
and material, by an act which — without any wish to
be offensive — it is difficult not to caU " quasi-magical."
The act may be helpful. It may stimulate devotion ;
it provides an expression for its realisation, but it is
the devotion which gives the act its whole value. And
for this view there is some psychological justification.
Do we observe, have we any ground for supposing, that
real spiritual results do follow from the mere act ? '
Alongside of this I would set an obvious Catholic
reply. ' It is easy enough to caU the act of communion
formal, quasi-magical and ineffective. We have for it
the scriptural authority of Christ's promise and
command. We cannot teU whence the Spirit cometh
and whither it goeth. It is absurd and profane to
imagine that our psychological thumb can plot off the
mysterious working of the Divine power in the human
soul.'

THE HOLY COMMUNION 81
I have put the Protestant position I hope fairly, and
I think pointedly. For my own part I realise the
extreme importance of its contentions. I ask Non-
Conformists to consider very carefuUy the importance
of what is implied in the particular Catholic argument
just stated. I have the more right to do so, because
putting it also in its most pointed form, I have not
troubled to be fair at ah. It is not a form which
naturaUy appeals to me, nor which I think satisfactory.
In dealing with any religious practice, whether it be
sacraments or prayer or any other, though we cannot
pretend to trace results exactly, we ought not to escape
from the question of actual working by invoking
authority and " the unknowable.' Unquestionably the
Protestant and Catholic arguments in this shape stand
in irreconcUable antagonism. It is utterly useless to
try to make a compromise between their conclusions.
Both arguments and conclusions rest upon entirely
different premisses. If we are to get any further it is
the premisses we must study.
The outstanding feature of the Protestant position is
its assertion of the purity and continuity of the spiritual
life. We may trace this in aU the three forms in which
I have dealt with it. The Protestant view is centred on
the spiritual life ; its doctrine of the Holy Communion
proclaims the dominance of the spiritual over the
material ; its argument insists that the mere act takes
its value from the intention, purpose, feeling, which
motive it, and protests against the inversion of that
order. The outstanding feature of the Catholic position
is very different. It asserts the vital importance of
something done, which it would not admit was un-
spiritual, but which is at least external and independent
of the spiritual state.

S2 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
Certainly these premisses imply a very different view
of the questions or factors to be dealt with, but does it
foUow that they are opposed ? May it not be that
these are two questions, and that we are each thinking
of one when we very much need to think of both ? If
we realised that, might we not find that the arguments
differed because they related to different spheres, and
consequently the conclusions no longer clashed ? Now
is it not evident at this stage that ' the material act '
upon the value of which the discussion turns has a quite
different meaning in the two positions ? The Protes
tant is talking of the value of an act which we perform ;
the Catholic is thinking of the value of something
performed in us or for us.
This may seem a smaU point. I believe it leads
directly to the heart of what is at stake, and that our
confusion over it has involved us in a disastrous con
flict just where we were in need of one another's help.
I ask once more for patience and sympathetic con
sideration whUe urging what I think are the weaknesses
of the Protestant position. I will be as frank as I can
over our own weaknesses in my Second Part.
We are aU to-day trembling on the edge of a humani
tarian naturalism. It is not merely in the study that
this question : ' Does the Name of God mean any
thing ? ' is dogging all our steps, twisting itself about
our feet, staring at us out of the dark, freezing our
heart, paralysing our movements, crushing us with the
sense of an appaUing loneliness, like the snow wraiths
to one lost in a moorland storm. Of old time, when
men were ready to believe anything a miracle, we
imagine — though I doubt if we are altogether justified
— (cf. 2 S. Peter ui. 4) — that the difficulty was far less
acutely felt. In our own time, overwhelmed by the

THE HOLY COMMUNION 83
sense of a uniform natural law, we have been half
forced, haU led, to the belief in God's immanence in all
things, as their life and power, movement and force,
and in the steadfastness of His will as the ground of
their order. We might accept for ourselves the view
of S. Ambrose : the earth stands ' not because it is in
the middle, as suspended on an even balance, but it
continues stable because the majesty of God constrains
it by the law of His will ' (Hex. i. 6) . As we have learnt
to trace law also in our own mind-movements, we have
learnt that there also are His operations. In these
thoughts we try to take refuge.
AU this is so far pure gain. But is this the whole ?
Is there no element in nature other than a closed circle
of mechanical energy ? Supposing we could trace all
the complex workings of our mind, should we find there
nothing but psychological movement and environment ?
Is there no force in nature without or in personality
within, penetrating and moulding, yet not a product of,
nature or personality — something we can caU Divine
grace and act ? If we answer that in the negative, is
God anything more than a name for the bigness and
quantity of things taken generaUy, or, if taken selec
tively, then for the ' nice ' side of things ? Mr.
Blatchford said of an eminent preacher, ' he is caUed
a minister of the Gospel and I am called an atheist,
but the only difference is that he calls nature God,
and I caU nature Nature.'
This is not, so far, a controversial question. Catholics
and Protestants, Churchmen and Non-Conformists, by
whatever name we caU ourselves or one another, here
stand side by side, hand in hand, heart with heart,
conscious of its pressure and alive to the necessity of
meeting it. It would be useless to talk about union

84 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
unless there were a common faith in God and Christ
where we were already imited. I put then three points
as forming that common Christian ground which I
trust I may assume.
(i) WhUe we recognise God as operating in aU things,
we cannot identify God with His operations, neither
severally nor as a whole. Nor can we identify God
with our own psychological experiences. By God we
mean something altogether greater than nature, whether
physical or psychical, material or human. We attach
the Name primarily to this transcendent Reality — not
to -that which nature is, but to Him who is its Lord,
its Author and its Ruler.
(2) While therefore we rejoice to trace God's work in
nature, we recognise how impossible it is for man, by
means of inference from actual experience and within
the limitations of his capacity, to reach to the knowledge
of God Himself. To believe in and to worship a con
ception formed by our own reflection, the product of
our yearnings, needs, experiences, imaginings, would be
an idolatry of nature or an idolatry of man.
(3) From this darkness of heathenism, from what is
purely natural and human, a way of escape which we
could neither find nor make has been given to us through
the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the Only-Begotten Son
of God. It is not that we cease to think of God as
Immanent. Rather we can now do so with some real
meaning, since the objective ' here,' ' this,' ' now ' of
the Manifestation of God in the Incarnation has re
deemed and vitalised the abstract notions inferred from
mere general operations. It is not that we cease to
believe in God within us, for it is through the Incarna
tion, Passion, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ,
through the union between God and man there estab-

THE HOLY COMMUNION 85
lished, that the indweUing Spirit comes to us, not merely
as a name for states and operations of our own, but as
a true gift, supernatural, miraculous, Ufting our minds
in thought and purpose above the self-consideration
and self-choice which are natural to them.
In this setting out of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the
Son of God, can we not see some reconciliation of the
two opposed ideas of the value of an ' external act,'
and the two different senses in which we take it ? Do
we not begin to see that if the act is only something
we do, it is meaningless apart from the internal purpose
which inspired it, and yet that that internal purpose
must be first of all the acceptance of an external act
which is done for us. As an eminent Free Church
leader has expressed it, the New Testament ' is inspired
by the conviction, not simply that something new has
been discovered, but that something new has happened.'
If we are at aU so far agreed in our faith, as a faith
in Christ which can lift us out of mere faith in ourselves,
the only point of difference lies as to the means of its
present realisation or appropriation. But here comes
a question of pressing importance. Is this presentation
of the reaUty of God in Christ more than a past history ?
God a long while ago thus came to men, but what about
ourselves to-day in our own daUy life ? Two obvious
replies suggest themselves.
{a) ' If Christ has gone up on high, we must not
think of heaven as some distant place. If we have
learnt to know Christ after the flesh we must now learn
to see Him in aU around us, to serve Him in the least
of our brethren and His. In every judgment of the
nations, we must behold the Son of Man coming in
the clouds.'
I do not in the least question the truth and value,

86 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
but only the sufficiency, of this reply. If this is aU
that can be said, then our present religious practice
seems to have reverted to the essentially heathen
principle. I do not use that word in an offensive sense.
At its very best heathenism faUs, not in what it does,
but in its attempt to treat man's own doings, his own
acts and his own natural course of thought as sufficient.
In the absence of a Revelation it could not help doing so.
The heathen see God, and we are bidden to see Christ,
in His operations, in the beauty, power, goodness of
that which He works in us or others. But that
operation is not Himself. The test of ' God Himself '
is the test of worship. Here is the beauty of the sun,
and here of the Christ-like life. Rightly we see God and
His Christ in them, but only by abstraction. We may
not identify them. We may not worship the sun, nor
even the best of men.
(b) This Vision of Christ reigning is not however
offered as sufficient. A further answer, more truly
Christian, is that — ' for Christ Himself we must go back
to that Divinely given revelation of Himself in His own
Word. We must hear His voice speaking to Peter,
wrestUng with the Pharisees and doctors ; we must
commune with Him in our heart as He once taught the
people. This indeed is the central difference between
the religious attitude of Catholics and Protestants.
Both look to Christ as the one Name given under heaven
whereby we can be saved, but, where " Catholics " look
to the objective Christ as it were through the mediation
of a rite ministered by a human priesthood, the " Pro
testant " goes back to the Christ directly to find Him
in the Word, in those acts which are essentiaUy and
directly His own.'
As my whole concern is at present with the broad

THE HOLY COMMUNION 87
principles of the Protestant position, I am not in the
least troubled whether this is an entirely fair state
ment of the Catholic position. I am quite wUling
to take it as it stands. It is enough for me that this
is the way in which the Catholic position strikes one
looking at it from the Protestant side.
' The Protestant goes back to find Christ in the word.'
I do not ask how far this position can be justified,
whether or how far it can be maintained in the face of
modern criticism. Those questions are becoming
increasingly urgent, but we must be sure first exactly
what the view itself implies.
Plainly there are very literal, or perhaps literalist,
senses, which Protestants would not mean. They have
been accused of an idolatry of Scripture, and they
would not be wise to resent impatiently a charge which
warned them of a danger. No doubt there are Pro
testants who do treat the Bible as if it was God Himself,
and who imagine that if they read their Bible enough
and quote it enough all is weU with them. Such abuse
of God's gifts comes aU too easUy to the best of us, but
it would be unreasonable to make Protestantism itself
responsible for individual faUings.
Let us put such charges aside. We aU believe that
Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Whatever
Protestants may be led into at times, no Protestant
means to put the Bible in the place of Christ, yet we
beUeve that Book contains the inspired record of what
Christ did and said, of how He showed Himself. We
do not ' find Christ in the word ' in a material or liter
alist sense, but we can come to Him in so far as what is
there written we take up, understand, realise, by our
wUl, mind, imagination, that is in meditation upon the
word with the help of the Holy Spirit.

88 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
This second answer is much more Christian than the
first, because the object of our meditation is so much
higher. In the Gospels we are meditating upon Christ
Himself as the Son of God ; in good people and in
beautiful things we see His operation, we see Himself
only by abstraction from that operation.
Nevertheless, neither of these answers seems to meet
our question quite satisfactorily. Both are speaking of
how we can come to Christ, whereas by all Christian
principle we ought to be asking first how does Christ
come to us. Both answers meet the latter question in
the same way : Christ comes to us as a spiritual pres
ence in meditation. What is the exact meaning of this
word ' Presence ' ? I do not want to make my
analysis more confused and puzzling than I can help,
but I am afraid many people are already confused over
the meaning of a presence and a spiritual presence. It
is very important that we should understand the differ
ence, and I can make it clear by a little analogy which
I think aU wiU recognise.
I am looking over some letters of an absent friend.
As I think over them and recall him, his spirit seems to
be near me. Few of us would care to say that such a
spiritual communion and spiritual presence were unreal,
but at the same time we should all feel that it was very
different to what we should caU the actual presence of
our friend. How should we explain the difference ?
Should we not say that while those who love are
always perhaps in some sense present, the special
spiritual presence was occasioned by our thinking and
recalling, that is, it came through, by means of, a
certain mental state. It wiU hardly be denied that.
experiences of such spiritual intercourse are most
common with those of the strongest emotional and

THE HOLY COMMUNION 89
imaginative capacity, just because they can reach the
necessary mental state most easily. It wiU further
foUow that the experience is qualified and conditioned
by the mental state and activity. For while the
experience arises in or from my consciousness, it is not
the whole of it. I must therefore abstract or select
those thoughts which seem due to a ' presence ' from
amid others which are my own.
What we caU an actual presence is not a presence in
experience only, but to experience. It does not come
up by being recaUed in my mind by attention, rather
it is a presence which recalls my mind when it grows
inattentive. So also it is not qualified by, but qualifies,
my thoughts, for, just as it stimulates and maintains,
so it corrects, them by its independent actuality. And
this actual presence is the ground of possibUity to the
spiritual. We very rarely have this sense of spiritual
nearness to the absent except in regard to those we
have known by a more direct personal intercourse.
In talking of a spiritual presence of the absent, I am
not of course thinking of what is technically called
' spiritualism,' which seems to me a superstitious
trading upon the much simpler, and yet much more
complex, experience common in some degree to aU of
us. I am only trying to emphasise the difference
between the spiritual presence and the actual which
our common experience recognises, however we explain
them. Can we, however, apply those differences to Chris
tianity ? I maintain that the application of them is
its first distinctive principle. It was the essence of
heathenism that it could offer only a subjective
Presence of God, a Presence in thought, in experience,
which might be real, but which it was intensely difficult

90 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
to be sure was more than a psychological or mental
state, for the very same reason that if it was not con
stituted by the state, it was yet dependent upon it.
It was the essence of Christianity that it gave an actual
Presence, — in a boat, in the upper room, and that
actuality did not do away with, but vitalised7aU
spiritual communion with God, defended it against the
inherent defect of its own abstract method. The
question we urged stiU remains : has that actuality for
us now ceased with Olivet ? If what ' happened ' once
is of so much moment to us, is there nothing parallel
to it, maintaining and applying it, which ' happens '
now ? «
Of the answer Protestantism meant to give there can
be no sort of doubt. It asserted above aU the vital
necessity of faith in God. It was Christ who came to
us, not we who attained to Him. His presence and
His favour were the free gift of His mercy. For the
sake of this Gospel it protested no human acts, neither
pUgrimages nor vows nor sacrifices of masses nor any
other, could make men righteous nor bring them to
God. That Gospel and that protest, the doctrine of
the mass as Christ's own act and gift set forth and
emphasised, but since those who in theory maintained
the doctrine were in practice habituaUy treating the
mass as a human act, specially effective in acquiring
merit, we can hardly wonder that the Protestant
Reformers, accepting the confusion as it was offered
them, repudiated the doctrine from which it seemed to
arise. When, however, Protestantism came to organise its
own reUgious system it had no other basis from which
to start than that given above : ' the believer finds and
comes to Christ in the word.' With intentions the

THE HOLY COMMUNION 91
most passionately sincere, nay, just because of its
sincerity, Protestantism failed to see the confusions in
which it was involving itself — the confusion between
faith in God Who is more than man, and faith in faith,
that is, in a feeling of assurance, which is a virtue and a
feeling of man, the confusion between our coming to
Christ and Christ coming to us, between Christ's
Presence in the word and Christ's Presence in devout
meditation upon the word.
The results were none the less serious from not being
reaUsed. An element of inconsistency had been intro
duced into EvangeUcalism itself. Of course none of
us would assert or believe for a moment that anything
of ours, thoughts or feelings or states, could bring us
to Christ or constitute a merit. We depend upon His
grace. That is our faith. Yet so long as — repudiating
the external act — our religious practice regards these
states as the necessary conditions in and through which
that special Presence is made to us, so long we must
seek first to excite or create those states in ourselves,
and so long therefore they become in effect merits.
WhUe these inconsistencies are not realised, a man's
faith may stand firm as a rock, and to multitudes of
Protestants it does so stand, but the pressure of storm
and the infiltration of the rising flood come to test the
foundation of all human structures. If we look more
widely I could point out among two very different
groups of people how things are going. Each has its
own lesson.
(1) We have very much need to consider the case of
the younger generation. I have admitted that Pro
testantism has manifested a very real faith. No one
can faU to see how much that faith was due to its faith
in Holy Scripture; Protestants have constantly

92 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
affirmed that was its root. And for a plain reason.
So long as men accepted the Bible as the unquestioned
word of God, so long there was not merely in the past,
but stiU present, an unfailing witness to something
greater than their thoughts or their feelings. In a
quite simple way it was possible to think of a Presence
given by the word.
Modern criticism has made the old attitude im
possible. I am not referring to the doubts thrown
upon the essence of the narrative itself. We may be
convinced that the conservative views more than hold
their own, but if they triumph, they must triumph as
criticism, and the result is the same. We are aU alike
driven to recognise that the Bible is a book, or a series
of books, of human authorship. Though we maintain
to the fuU its inspiration and its unique authority, w&
can no longer forget that what is written is not itself
a Presence. That old idea never was consistently
possible for reasons I have given ; thus we are hardly
conscious of a change although we are quite definitely
substituting personal ' experience ' as the ground of re
ligion in place of the quasi-sacramental This of the book.
There are, of course, yet multitudes untouched by
new difficulties, and there are many more of the older
generation whose minds were formed in the old faith,
who stiU go on bravely. But the younger generation,
especiaUy the students of our Theological CoUeges,
have been brought up in the new. We have taught
them to look to ' experience,' and they have not looked
in vain, but they are now faced by a question of which
the older generation never thought, and of which we
older men hardly realise the pressure, — ' If I can now
by processes of my own, by meditation and reflection,
by feeUng and imagination, realise and come directly

THE HOLY COMMUNION 93
into the Presence of God, why was an external Incarna
tion ever necessary ? No doubt the Gospel story as
narrated to us provides the most inspiring of all sub
jects of Meditation, but the mere historicity of the facts
does not affect its usefulness for spiritual purposes.'
Once started a multitude of unconsidered considera
tions push us along. Modern criticism must be honestly
met, but if we only knew with what we were dealing we
have no special reason to be afraid of it. The modern
constructive efforts which arise from it are very differ
ent matters, for our Christianity has been so much a
feehng and we have paid so little attention to its real
basis that we have no idea what we are reconstructing.
Anything that sounds nice with an element of admira
tion for the personality of Jesus stands sufficiently well
for Christian. The Old Testament with its magnifi
cent appeal to the reality of God is now uninteUigible to
us, except as a museum of Primitive Religions. Half
the New Testament is passed over as ' Pauline Theo
logy.' That God was made Man, that He died for our
sins, thereby reconciUng us to God, that we are raised
in His Resurrection, we are told that we can afford to
let all that go, for ' the dream of the Evangelist ' still
serves as a basis for religious experience. We do not
recognise that our modern theories are busy saving our
reUgion at the expense of our faith.
We reach the same conclusion by another and hardly
less significant road. I demurred to the argument
that our reUgious differences were merely tempera
mental on the scientific ground that men very rarely
in fact choose their denomination. The difference of
religious character is quite plainly due in most cases
to religious upbringing. But there is another and much
more serious objection to the theory of temperaments.

94 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
Have we forgotten that this is exactly the argument
which an African brings on behalf of fetishism, the
Indian on behalf of Hinduism, and the Arab on behalf
of Mohammedism ?
We have come to base our religion upon personal
experience and have freed ourselves from the dominion
of the fact, and thus from the faith which can be set
forth in Creed or presented in forms. Now we have
learnt that these religious experiences are by no means
confined to Christianity ; they are the common pro
perty of aU mystics. The Hindu says : ' You come to
God through Christ, and that access is valid for you.
I also come to God and have experience of Him not
less real, but I find other means to be more suitable.'
When we began from faith, when by faith we were
looking out of ourselves, when our hope lay not in our
coming to God, but in His coming to us, the facts of
the Incarnation and the Redemption of Christ formed a
gospel common to aU. But since experience is so
largely a matter of temperament, I do not see how we
can meet on this ground the contention of the heathen
that his experience is equally valid.
I am afraid that even so we are not at rest. The
psychologists are still waiting for us with their questions.
'Are these experiences of yours experiences of anything
more than themselves ? Are they not just psychical
states, brought about by appropriate conditions and
imaginative activity ? The rules of the old mystics
for producing the state of ecstasy are very suggestive.
You talk of a supernatural Presence, but we are only
directly conscious of certain states and those semi-
dream states of vague, highly generalised thinking are
very favourable to auto-suggestion from the sub-con
sciousness.' It foUows that when we asked whether

THE HOLY COMMUNION 95
the Name of God stood for anything, we were fretting
ourselves in vain. It is true that in the world as we
live in it there is no real meaning for God, but there
are stiU men capable of beautiful thoughts and at times
of heroic action, which after aU are the things that
reaUy matter.
Many of those for whom I am mainly writing, men
of sincere religiousness and true Christian faith, may
think this last paragraph a mere scare. That is just
why we are where we are. Because we had no idea of
what we were doing, we had made ourselves the centre
of our own religious world. Everything with us must
begin from contemplation, which is our own, instead
of from worship which is a worship of God. Next, the
true substance and end of reUgion is the personal, and
thereby we have made ourselves the judges of God. Of
old men asked, what is His way and what is His wiU.
When we began to ask, ' of what value are they ? ' we
were asking of what value are they to us, and the
question thus fataUy misapprehended we had no ground
left to answer.
Modem criticism has not really moved these issues
at aU, but when we have to adjust ourselves to a new
situation, the faith which survives only as a habit
slips out unperceived. A man-in-the-train — always
much more interesting than the man-in-the-street —
once said to me ' our Lord Himself told us that our
first duty was to love our neighbour.' I intimated
that this must be a new textual reading. In the
version I was famUiar with, it ran that first we were
to love the Lord our God. He looked puzzled, and
replied doubtfuUy, ' Yes, but then we don't know
anything about God, do we ? '
(2) I have spoken of the young, because it is the

96 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
new generation which facing new questions works out
the logic of what was to older habits but a casual
inconsistency. I come now to the common man.
When we spoke of religious difference as tempera
mental, I asked whether we had not forgotten that
this was exactly the argument brought by the heathen.
I ask now whether we have not forgotten that this is
exactly the argument which an immense mass of people
bring for not being religious at aU ? However it has
come about, the majority of English people do regard
' religion ' as a thing possible for only a certain type
of character. We deplore the indifference of this ma
jority. I am convinced that if we knew their mental
history there are few men who would not like to be
religious, and there are few who have not, at least once
in their life, tried to be. If they are indifferent, it is
with a conscious purpose of making the best of a failure,
very much as a man in early life regrets not being
musical and ends in scoffing at music.
The root of this evil lies, I am convinced, with relig
ious people. It is the very earnest people who are not
sufficiently alive to the danger of assuming that the
real substance of the Christian faith lies in just those
parts which to them are most delightful. I can make
my meaning plain if I might back out one paradox by
another. Perhaps both are exaggerations, but there
is only too much reason for saying that education in
England is kiUed by clever people, and Christianity in
England by religious people. In both directions the
experts, the reaUy able exponents, insist on aU going
by their road to the same kind of success. They faU to
realise that the common man's needs, the kind of thing
possible to him, and therefore his way of reaching that
thing, are all widely different to those of the expert.

THE HOLY COMMUNION 97
If we look back at the ideal of Protestant Evangeli
calism as I have tried to express it above, that ' com
muning with God in His word,' by which the realisation
of God's presence and actuaUty are attained, requires
a certain intensity of feeUng and imagination, and such
feeling and imagination are the two most markedly
temperamental things in existence. If we test by
races, the Celtic temperament is emotional and imagin
ative, and it is undeniably religious ; the tempera
ment of the Englishman is stoUd and matter-of-fact,
reUgion comes to him relatively with difficulty. We
may test it by classes and occupations. Religion is
most found among people with a certain amount of
leisure, who are not too hard driven by the pressure of
affairs or exacting duties. Therefore it is more common
among women than among men. Can we suppose,
would anyone contend, that differences of temperament
and business make men either less near or less dear to
God ? We know weU enough that whUe they alter the
form and expression, they do not affect the depth and
reaUty, of love to wife and chUd ? Certainly they do
not diminish the need of faith in God, why should they
alter its possibUity ? If, as we all admit, they do very
much affect the capacity for ' reUgion ' and for religious
' experience,' is not this a proof that our notion of
reUgion has got out of touch with our faith ?
I do not therefore feel at aH assured that this very
personal religious presentment is by itself entirely
healthy or even safe for those to whom it is possible.
It needs with it an element of practice less subjective.
But certainly this religion comes in a form and with
demands which a large number, I think, the majority, of
Englishmen are least able to meet.

CHAPTER VI.
HOLY COMMUNION. II.
In the last chapter I stated an ' obvious argument ' for
Sacramentalism, part of which would consist in deny
ing the possibUity of ' plotting off direct effects of
Grace, definitely and measurably.' While I admitted
that we could not pretend to foUow in this way the
working of God's Spirit, I yet suggested that it was not
wise to fall back entirely on a kind of Agnosticism,
whUe affirming that the results must be there ' because
it is written.' If certain things have that tremendous
influence which is claimed for them, we ought to be
able to show what the influence is and in a general
way how it operates. I think also that this can be
shown. I have fuUy accepted the earnest protestations of
EvangeUcals that they believe in Christ, and that they
have the most sincere horror of making their own
piety, their own states of feeling an efficient merit
or cause of His Presence or of His operation. But to
recognise an evU is not the same thing as to escape it,
and I have tried to show that that very thing of which
Evangelicals have so sincere a horror is involved,
impUed, or suggested by their whole reUgious system.
I have tried to show further that the difficulty which
our chUdren find in retaining, and which common men

THE HOLY COMMUNION. II. 99
find in even reaching, this evangelical faith, is a direct
consequence of the inconsistency.
I must also try to show that the Catholic doctrine,
by the assertion of an actual sacramental Presence
given objectively through certain acts, does not con
tradict any principle in the Protestant position, but
rather supplements it, renders it more consistent.
Here I must point out how much the difficulty of
our discussion is increased by the uncertainty and
variety of our use of terms. I have spoken of an actual
Presence, of objective and subjective, of material and
spiritual. We all can, and mostly do, use aU these
terms in several different senses. Every term I have
used is capable of starting a fresh controversy, by which
we can keep confusion alive for ever. I am only trying
to explain real and very obvious differences in the
spiritual life, by real and very obvious differences in
common life, and I am not without hope that I can
make a meaning clear to those who are sincerely
anxious to reach a meaning.
Thus I have spoken of the actual and material
presence of my friend and how real it is to me ; anyhow
that it is different to the purely spiritual presence I can
call up when he is absent. Whether actual, real,
material, and all the rest are the best terms I cannot
say. I caU the one objective, and the other subjective.
I believe metaphysicians have maintained that this is
incorrect. I could argue about terms myself if I
wanted to. For the very simple purpose for which I
use them, is it worth while ?
The position which I am trying to explain can all be
expressed in the words ' I want Christ,' and I mean that
in just the sense of a chUd crying in the night ' I want
mother.' We grown-ups may learn to believe, and the

ioo THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
chUd may learn, that though mother has gone home,
she is not far off ; but we shall not persuade ourselves,
and we shaU not persuade the chUd's trenchant truthful
ness, that that is the same thing. We may argue
endlessly as to the best way of describing the difference,
but we shall not argue the difference away.
The chUd can only explain itself by saying, ' I want
to put my arms round her, and I want her here to kiss
me.' I cannot explain myself except by saying, ' I
want Christ here to worship Him.' Pictures, memories,
written words of the departed are aU exceedingly
precious, but they are not the very self. I may not
worship my thought and imaginations, and I shrink
from giving direct worship to what is only realised
through those faculties. Is Christ also ' departed ' ; is
there nothing now by which He is ' here ' ?
My phraseology, however, is curiously like that of
the Protestant Evangelicals, but the inference is differ
ent. ' We want Christ, — Christ Himself, — not forms
and ceremonies.' That we should be arguing against
one another with the same words seems very confusing,
but it is really very encouraging. Confusions we may
hope to clear up for we are both passionately seeking
the same reality. This is the Evangelical conviction
common to us.
If the Protestant reply were made controversiaUy,
I should have to point out that it ignores the point.
It is the whole of our contention that Christ Himself
is present in that form. But that, however, in its
turn does not meet the real Protestant objection,
which is very frequently and better expressed in saying
— ' We want to come to Christ directly, not through a
human or material mediation.'
Ought we not to examine more carefuUy what these

THE HOLY COMMUNION. II. iox
words, medium, mediation, mediator, really stand for ?
In the plain general sense to reject mediation is to
repudiate all the fundamental processes of human
nature, in which the universal and the spiritual are
always mediated by the particular and the material.
Gravitation is mediated by apples that faU, weights
that burden, planets that move. The truth that is in
the soul is mediated by words, and love by acts. To
repeat the phrase I used above, the spiritual manifests
its reahty in the ' here,' ' this,' ' now.' In heaven it
may be different where we shaU know as we are known,
but to us, because we were on earth, the Eternal Logos
of God was mediated by a body as truly material as
our own.
Is this changed by the Ascension ? If so, who or
what did S. Paul see on the road to Damascus, and S.
John worship at Patmos ? * Alas, we are not yet
ascended, and our nature remains. For us then two
attitudes are possible. We may reject all mediation,
aU idea of a ' here,' ' this,' ' now,' in one thing more
than another. AU are equaUy divine, and Christ is
equally everywhere. Prayer and mediation and com
munion are then aU equaUy futUe. I have already
considered that possibility, and I do not think any of
us are inclined to take it. The Protestant phrase we
have discussed affirms a mediation in saying that we
come ' through the word.'
Or, secondly, we may, as in fact we do, accept some
form of the mediation of an actual Presence. Catholics
assert that it comes primarily through a Covenant act,
1 If a modern critic disputes the record, at least he cannot dispute
that S. Paul and all early Christians believed that the ascension
had not invalidated the possibility of such a Presence or the
legitimacy of worship so given.

102 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
but this is not more a mediating than if it were through
the personal states or experiences which belong to
meditation upon scripture. This word ' mediation '
imphes therefore nothing more than ' means,' the means
through which something — in this case a spiritual
Presence — is given that it may be realised.
It is, however, the essential necessity of our Evan
gehcal faith that we should clearly distinguish the gift
and the realisation as two things. The gift is God's
act. The realisation, appreciation, ' discernment,' is
ours ; it is the first part of the response we make to a
gift, but not the means or cause of it. It was not through
our realisation of God's presence, through the ready
faith of men in Christ, still less through the earnestness
and love men felt, that God was made man and died for
us. If it was through anything of ours, it was through
our sin, — the sin of unbelief, the sins which rejected.
If, then, we accept the Holy Communion, the Bread
and Wine, as the means, the ' symbols ' in the ancient
sense of the word, whereby the Presence is made to us,
the essential principle of Evangelicalism, the essential
distinction of gift and response stands out clearly. We
do not thereby ignore or slight the necessity of realisa
tion or response. Our ignorance may make the gift
ineffective for us, but it does not do even that certainly.
If we are wUfuUy or carelessly ignorant, that which does
not operate to salvation works in judgment.
Nor do we wish to make little, or even question the
reality, of that Personal Presence which is given in
experience, recognised in thought and feeling. Certainly
we ought not to deny the possibility of ' coming to
Christ directly.' We do, however, ask whether it is
quite consistent with Evangelicalism to regard these
methods, dependent as they are on an effort and state

THE HOLY COMMUNION. II. 103
of our own, as the only means of access ? It is not the
Catholic who limits God's operation by denying personal
access ; it is rather the Protestant who denies that
there is anything except the personal, making the
sacramental only one form of the personal. If we
admit diverse ways, ought not that which constitutes
a coming to Christ to be rather dependent on that which
constitutes a coming of Christ ? For this we urge that
all of us, both those who can reach the fulness of such
spiritual communion and those who can reach it very
Uttle and with great difficulty, have the greatest need
of this faith in a Presence we worship and receive, given
according to Christ's promise in ways independent of
our feeling. Those of spiritual power need it lest they
should be found beHeving rather in human capacities
than in Christ, or in Christ only by virtue of their
capacities ; those of spiritual incapacity need it lest
they should despair without some witness that God has
not forgotten them. For in this presentment, in fact,
aU temperaments are at one. ' He who gathers much
has nothing over, and he who gathers little has no lack.'
Before the objective Presence in the Communion, —
as before the Babe of Bethlehem, — Shepherds and
Wise Men worship on the same footing. To Herod, as
after to the Pharisee, there was the same ' Presence '
even though they did not ' receive it.'
' What a man brings to the Communion, that he
takes from it.' We bring to Christ at aU times and in
aU ways our weakness, our vanity, our selfishness, our
sinfulness, for this is aU we have to bring, but is this
all Christ has to give ?
I said above, however, that there were two different
replies given by Protestant Evangelicalism. Some
certainly have very strongly affirmed to me that they

104 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
believed in a Real Presence in the Holy Communion
— ' as much as you do.' I do not say that this answer
and the one we have just considered cannot be recon
cUed, though they appear to me opposed. I am quite
wiUing to give both fuU consideration.
I am aware then that many Protestants do hold this
second view. I believe very many do. Yet I must
reply here what I have said above on the importance
and significance of religious difference, that is, of differ
ence in practice. If Protestants do so hold, how is it
that this supreme gift of Christ's Presence is relatively
so little sought ? Why is it that the sacrament is
coming to be less and less a cardinal factor in the system,
whUe, just as men have grown more catholic, so it holds
a larger place in their habits ? On the other hand,
where the divergence is so marked in practice, why
should there be a certain tendency to assimUate our
language ? Surely there are forces at work in us which
want further analysing.
If we look back at Church history we cannot help
being struck by the large place which the Holy Com
munion has always held in the mind and practice of
Christian men. Long before what are commonly
treated as the ages of superstition, from the beginning
of the second century, that is, as early as we have any
quite clear evidence, the Holy Communion was felt to
be the central expression of Christian worship and faith.
TiU the eleventh century, and then only in the West,
there is little attempt to construct a formal theory.
But whatever meaning men gave to the one, their
idea of the Christian faith or their idea of the Com
munion, they quite naturally applied to the other.
I am not appealing here to Church tradition as a
mechanical authority, but merely as showing the con-

THE HOLY COMMUNION. II. 105
tinuous judgment of the common Christian instinct.
I think we have a right to say, and that we ought to
say, that the Holy Spirit of truth moves in the twen
tieth century not less than in the second century and
in the fourth and in the sixteenth. We cannot, there
fore, be bound by the views of our predecessors. But
just because we believe in an Eternal Spirit, we ought
not with an off-hand assumption to make the ideas of
our times the standard, and ourselves the judges
between truth and superstition.
Broadly speaking, we may say that the early Re
formers were anxious to maintain the early view.
Socinus and Zwingli denied, or were inclined to deny,
that the Sacrament was anything more than a sign or
' symbol,' that there was any special Presence or gift
there more than at any other time. Socinus' view was
largely determined by his unwillingness to aUow any
supernatural element in human Ufe. Luther, however,
asserted an actual Presence in terms from which even
an extreme Catholic would shrink. Calvin, though he
demurred to the idea of a ' Presence,' asserted no less
strongly the reality of the gift of the power and ' virtue '
of Christ.
We may see what they really felt in another way.
How far it was reasonable, how far it was exaggerated,
I shall not attempt to judge, but certainly the Re
formers had a great dislike to the multiplied ' symbolic '
rites and ceremonies in use. They swept away the
Maunday Thursday custom of washing feet, the Good
Friday ' sepulchre,' the Christmas ' crib,' the burning
of candles, the use of images, because they were
' superstitious,' that is, because people had come to
treat mere symbols as if they had a real effectiveness
independent of the mind. If they retained the Holy

106 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
Communion, it was plainly because it stood on a totally
different level. They recognised that the Sacrament
was more than a mere symbol. It may be said that
they retained the Communion because it has Scriptural
warrant, but is it seriously contended that the Re
formers took Scripture as a mere ' law ' to be implicitly
obeyed, rather than as a Gospel to be understood ?
In any case the argument from authority, whatever
authority we use, only carries matters a step back.
Scripture gives to Baptism and Communion an im
portance it gives to no other forms, because no others
were like them.
Even here, therefore, we can find some common
ground, but we have stUl to explain why it is that this
— the original view of the Reformers — held its ground
so uncertainly and with so much difficulty. If we learn
that, then we may find also the reason for the divergence
of our own paths to-day.
In the sixteenth century, and I believe it is equaUy
true now, the point of divergence between CathoUc
and Protestant was the question of consecration. The
Catholic maintained that the Presence of Christ was
given prior to and independent of the communicant by
the priestly act. The Protestant Reformers, whether
they held high or low views of sacramental efficacy, aU
were alike in refusing to attribute that efficacy to the
consecration. I am aware that to many of my readers this wUl be
a mere theological technicality, the discussion of which
seems chUdish and repeUent. Let us, however, consider
for one moment. Here are two bodies of people, who
with much in common and earnestly desiring unity
yet find that as they follow out their own Unes of
thought they are increasingly drawn apart. It is

THE HOLY COMMUNION. II. 107
useless to ask them not to follow out their own thoughts.
Would it not be weU, therefore, to find where the differ
ence lies ? ' It is such a small point.' Of course it is,
but its importance does not lie in itself but in what it
leads to. Let us take a homely iUustration. We are
aU alike at King's Cross under one roof. There is very
little difference between ' platform 5 ' and ' platform
6,' but the trains go to very different places.
I am more anxious lest I may be met by the reply
that ' sacerdotalism ' is the one principle of absolute
and final difference which it is useless to ask Protestants
to accept. I would rather defer the question of the
finahty of our differences tiU I have had an opportunity
of setting out both cases. I am of course aware that
it is the very edge of all difference between us. I have
brought it in for that very reason. I believe it to be
more loving, more honest and more hopeful to set our
differences in the forefront in order that we may under
stand them. Of course, where men really differ, —
and I do not think that any of us admit that our
differences are unreal — if either party or both refuse to
aUow that they may have been mistaken, or that they
can have anything to learn from the other, it is no use
talking about unity. If in some way a union is estab
lished, then the union wiU be unreal.
I have tried to show above that the sacramental
belief is a necessity of any stable Evangelicalism,
because it is necessary to its consistency. I have tried
to show this even in regard to sincere and convinced
Evangelicals. I have also tried to show that it was
necessary if we were to keep those younger members
who were being so hard driven by modern theological
tendencies, and stUl more necessary if we were to bring
to Evangelicalism that large mass who are not of a

108 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
naturaUy religious temperament. I want next to show
that this question of priestly consecration is necessary
to a tme evangelical view of the Communion. After
that I wiU try to show how, at least in my opinion, the
Catholic view of the sacrament and the Non-Conformist
view of a ' free ' ministry could in practice work
hand-in-hand. Supposing, then, that we could agree that in some
real sense the cup which we bless is a communion of
the Blood of Christ, and the bread which we break a
communion of the Body of Christ, the question we must
now ask is whether the difference we discriminate or
' discern ' between this and any other act, whether the
difference which does make this so great a blessing to
the soul, is made by consecration upon the altar before
and apart from our reception of it, or must we dis
tinguish it only as we feed upon it by faith ? Is the
difference made by the priest in consecration or by
ourselves in communion ? And I would consider this
question also, as I did the last, from a purely evangelical
point of view.
The CathoUc view is liable to the two objections of
its materialism and its sacerdotalism. They are ugly
words, but I do not in the least resent them. If our
brothers see, or think they see, evU in what we are
doing, it is a quite loving act for them to warn us. It
would be unloving and unwise for us to resent it
because they speak plainly.
About materialism, and its concomitant formalism,
I have said a great deal already. These charges are
brought by very earnest men, by very competent and
very loving critics. I think the right answer is that
they are fuUy justified. Materialism and formalism
are not merely the dangers of the sacramental system ;

THE HOLY COMMUNION. II. 109
they are dangers into which we have faUen very deeply.
I might express a doubt whether we have faUen quite
as far as our brethren think, for there are sides to our
system for which perhaps they do not sufficiently
allow. But I am not going to press that, for in all
probabUity we have faUen far more deeply than
we are aware. We need our brother's help very
much. I make this confession quite sincerely, but it does not
in the least alter my position. If we try to safeguard
our spiritual life by giving up everything that is danger
ous, we may be safe, but what is there left to guard ?
The business man is in danger by wealth, and the
student by learning, and the minister by succeeding in
his effort to influence his people. In religion we give
up this because it is emotional, and that because it is
mechanical ; this because it is modern, and that
because it is traditional. Spirituality is endangered
by the material ; it is also endangered by unreality.
And it is in this latter respect that our brethren need
as much as we do the help of the clear-cut objective
' This ' of the Sacrament. We could do so much for
one another, we could do so much for others, if only we
could bring these two sides together, and in order to
do so we must each be ready to admit our deficiencies
as well as to maintain our gifts.
I urge the principle, which may be quite weU caUed
' sacerdotalism,' as necessary to the clear-cutness of
the objective. At the beginning of the chapter I
pointed out that ' mediation,' even material mediation,
was a necessity of aU human nature and thought.
I would say the same of human mediation, that is, of
' ministry.' We are made in weakness, made for help ;
we are not made in self-sufficiency. Had it been other-

no THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
wise it would not have been ' necessary that one man
should die for the people.' S. Paul puts the same point
— ' How shaU they believe except they hear, and how
shaU they hear without a preacher ? '
' This however is said of preaching, which is essen
tiaUy a human act. The claim that a mere man, not
necessarUy even a good man, can " make " the bodUy
Presence of Christ is to claim a miracle, to do magic'
But miracle and magic are precisely the words which
describe what we are all doing, every day of our Uves.
Some one spoke to me of the love of God, and what he
said burnt into my very life, altered its whole course.
He spoke because he chose to speak and the Spirit
moved him thereto. You cannot explain it otherwise.
His speaking was no part of any thought-process of my
mind, nor do I for one moment believe it could be
explained by a calculation of the relative tensions in
the cortex-ceUs of his brain. The mechanism of the
organ does not explain the music of Mozart. The
order of the vibrations which reached my ear was not
manifesting a mere atmospheric law. It also was a
miracle of the speaker's doing, and that those material
sounds should have so changed my life was magic, if
any one chooses to caU it so and I have no better
term to offer.
I grant that this speaking was a human operation,
but we shall hardly argue that while we can do miracles
at our wiU, God cannot do them by His. This argu
ment of the human operation bears directly upon the
point I have in mind. Let us compare the human
operation of the preacher and the celebrant. I am
asked to hear a sermon. A sermon is a human act.
Therefore I want to know who is the preacher. Is he
a man of thought ? Has he any ideas worth listening

THE HOLY COMMUNION. II. in
to ? Can he express them well so that I shaU be able
to foUow him ?
I have been told this is wrong. The preacher is the
messenger of God, and it is the Spirit Who speaks
in him. I accept that as true, and yet I do not
admit that my questions are necessarily wrong. The
Spirit of God spoke stiU truly in S. Paul and S.
John, and yet the messages of S. Paul and S. John,
though in no way opposed, are yet different as the
messages of Isaiah and Jeremiah are different. Just
because preaching is a human operation, although the
message is of God, each man receives, not God Himself
in the wholeness of the meaning of self, but so much as
the man's own personal limitation is capable of appre
hending. Perhaps this is saying too much, since the
Divine Inspiration does carry a man in many ways
beyond his personal limitation, nevertheless it is
substantiaUy true. The personal factor always does
act under limitation ; it is never whoUy transcendent.
Even in mere narrative, even in working from one or
two common sources, even where Inspiration is beyond
aU comparison at its highest, each mind sets the story
forth with its own personal differences of apprehension.
This is the Gospel ' according to ' Matthew, and this
' according to ' Mark. If it had not been so, then there
would not have been four Gospels. Only Christ, ' in
Whom dweUeth aU the fulness of the Godhead bodily,'
suffers no limitation, is at once perfect God and perfect
Man, sets forth the very Self-ness of God. In Him
therefore only we can have perfect faith.
The preacher in his sincerity therefore sets before us
so much of the divine truth as he has perceived, and I
do not ask for nothing how much this is. It cannot be
the whole truth ; it is not likely to be even pure truth.

112 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
As it happens, I have been a preacher myself, and I
know only too well how much of one's own ideas
mingles with the message. As a listener I am bidden
to ' try the spirits whether they be of God.'
In the Communion, however, I care nothing who the
celebrant is so long only as he has authority to do this
thing. It is his ministry only to add the Now of time
to the This of the bread and wine. I have only to ask
that he shall do rightly that which he is bidden to do.
It is nothing to me reaUy what his personal character
or even belief may be. It is right that no man should
be appointed to this ministry who is not a good and holy
man. Irreverence, unbelief, unfitness in him jar and
fret me by their disharmony, but while they may hinder
my appreciation, what is set forth and given is the Body
of Christ. To that the celebrant's character neither
adds nor takes away anything whatever.
' Sacerdotalism ! ' Yes, but what is the alternative ?
' The Presence of Christ is not made by the priest upon
the altar but is real only in gift to the communicant.'
Then I would ask, is it given only to the devout and
faithful communicant, or is it given also to the indevout
and thoughtless ? I believe there are some who do
reply that the Presence is given to all alike. A position
closely akin to this I wiU consider in Chapter IX., but
it does not seem to me quite consistent with what —
rightly or wrongly — I took to be the Protestant view
that the significance of an act is dependent upon the
spiritual devotion with which it is performed. Uni
versaUy, however, so far as my experience goes, by
' communicant ' Protestants have always meant that
the Presence was real only to the worthy communicant.
Now I want to press home the significance of these
apparently technical and impertinent questions. If in

THE HOLY COMMUNION. II. 113
the Communion there is no special Presence at all, then
of course, there is nothing to ask about. That view
we considered in the last chapter. We are now con
sidering the view that the Sacrament has a unique and
peculiar sanctity, that in some way Christ is there
reaUy Present, gives Himself to be our food, our
strength, our life, but the actual cause of this tremen
dous gift, the actual thing by which it is distinguished,
is our coming devoutly and worthUy. Apart from these
quahties there is no Presence in the special sense in
which we are using the word, remembering, of course,
that we are not denying that general Presence of God
in operation which is manifested everywhere.
In the preceding chapter it was maintained that this
special ' Presence of Christ ' was being made dependent
on a capacity for spiritual concentration, and I had to
argue that that practicaUy constituted a human merit.
The position now before us makes no secret of the
matter. In the Communion Christ comes to us if we
are worthy — if we are fit, if we deserve it. Is this in
any sort of accord with Christian teaching ? How
much devoutness and worthiness was there to bring
about the Incarnation ? What becomes of our Evan
gehcal beUef of the worthlessness of all human righteous
ness ? What becomes of the teaching of such hymns
as ' Rock of Ages,' or ' Just as I am,' or any others in
which our fathers delighted ? For my own part I
accept the teaching of these hymns utterly. If I may
come to Christ as a sinner, as bhnd, as one sick, I may
find healing, but if His very Presence depends on my
worthiness, what hope is there for me or for any man ?
Of course I do not suppose for one moment that any
Evangelical believes or means that the Presence of
Christ is dependent on his worthiness. I do not think
H

114 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
he would ever have implied it, if he had not confused
himself by playing uncertainly between these two
theories without clearly facing the consequences of
either. Nevertheless, here is the plain significance of
the position which has got rid of ' Sacerdotalism ' —
and thereby of the simple act by which the priest is
bidden to mark for human weakness in human life the
' now ' of Christ's coming — in order to condition every
thing by human merits, spiritual efforts, capacities,
fitnesses, devoutnesses. We wiU not be dependent
upon a priest. No, we are dependent upon ourselves,
or — to insert the saving clause I discussed elsewhere —
upon what we personally have received of God's grace.
The question of Transubstantiation, There are two
further objections to this ' Catholic ' theory. The first
I need not discuss at great length, but it has been said
that it is virtuaUy the Roman Catholic doctrine of
Transubstantiation. I trust I have already shown that
I am solely concerned over principles, their real meaning
and application. I am not at aU inclined to quarrel
about the names by which they should be caUed,
providing those names are not seriously misleading.
For that reason I cannot accept the term Transubstan
tiation, which does not describe any theory of Christ's
Presence, but a theory about bread and wine, the
' substance ' of which is said to be changed into the
substance of Christ's Body and Blood. This theory I
neither hold nor have ever held.
In the first place, I do not hold it because, as our
Church puts it, the theory ' overthroweth the nature
of a sacrament,' and its presentation therefore of the
mystery of the Incarnation. Christ took Manhood,
took our flesh ; in the Resurrection these are spiritual
ised or glorified in that His bodUy Presence was no

THE HOLY COMMUNION. II. 115
longer bound absolutely by the same material con
ditions as belonged to the days of His humiliation. Yet
although there was a change or transformation of
conditions which we have not sufficient experience to
understand further, we do not speak of a change in
the ' substance ' either of the Humanity or of the Flesh,
stiU less would it be right to suppose that either was
changed into the ' substance ' of the Godhead. At
Capernaum and Emmaus, that which was of the flesh
gave to the spiritual Godhead the This-ness necessary
for human realisation, yet the natures remain distinct.
So also we beUeve of the Communion. The Bread does
not cease to be Bread, but it is used as the ' This ' of
the Presence of the Body of Christ.
I would add, secondly, that after much thought I am
convinced that the theory of Transubstantiation is
itself meaningless and uninteUigible. And I say so
partly for the sake of pointing out the primary differ
ence between the inteUigibility or explicabUity of a
theory or statement, and the inteUigibility of a fact.
There is no necessity that facts should be explicable
at aU. I believe that Christ is God and Man, that the
water was made wine, that the Body of the Resurrection
was the same Body which suffered though transformed
and glorified. In the same way I believe that through
the Bread and Wine this glorified Body is spirituaUy
and really present in the Communion. If I were
asked to explain these facts, perhaps I could say a great
deal. If I am challenged to explain, it is much easier
to say at once ' I cannot.' My abUity to explain does not
in the least affect my belief one way or another. I
cannot explain how a thinking mind can have a body,
nor how Ufe, which is not a force, can guide and direct
forces. Huxley, whom some caU a materialist, declared

116 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
that it was fundamentaUy inexplicable how a physical
nerve movement could give rise to anything so entirely
different as sensation, thought, or feeling. A theory,
on the other hand, is itself an explanation. So far as it
goes, it at least must be explicable.
To express my point more shortly, if anyone says
' the water became wine,' or ' the water became steam,'
I may or may not be able to explain scientifically how
it happened. Even when we can explain, the explana
tion wiU not go very far. Some, indeed, maintain that
science never does explain how, but only describes in
detail what happened. However this may be, ' the
water boUs ' is a statement the clearness of which is in
no way affected by scientific knowledge. If anyone
says the ' water became Transcendental Idealism,'
there is nothing to explain, for the words have no mean
ing at aU.
In the eleventh century, then, when men said ' the
substance of the bread was entirely changed, though
the accidents {i.e. appearances) remained,' the words
had a very crude and simple meaning. In a more
thoughtful age, when men admitted that not merely
the appearances, but all the properties of the bread
remained, not even the genius of S. Thomas Aquinas,
though he held himself bound to say that ' the substance
was changed,' could make the phrase bear an inteUi
gible meaning.
The question of Idolatry. I thought it necessary to
reply to the charge of Transubstantiation because I
know it weighs a good deal on some people's minds,
but it is not a very interesting question except for the
hght it throws upon the meaning of inteUigibUity. On
the other hand, the charge of idolatry, which is also
brought against the Catholic, is of profound significance.

THE HOLY COMMUNION. II. 117
To my mind an idol is the most pathetic thing in the
world, the consummation, the last despairing expres
sion, of the futUity of purely human thought. All the
phUosophers have ever done has been to sum up in
barren nakedness the strivings of many centuries ; yet
the idol sums them up much better.
Men have lived and died and their children after
them for centuries, stretching out hands into the
darkness, thinking their thoughts, making their infer
ences, their guesses, their ideas, about God Who was aU,
Who was more than aU and Who yet cared for them.
They struggled because they so little realised, and they
despaired because they did reahse, that their thought
of the Whole they did not know was but a self-made
abstraction of the parts they did know — an abstraction
made infinite by being made more barren and vague of
meaning. From his thought of ' the Infinite ' Anaxi-
mander fled to ' Earth,' as the real ' Element ' on which
aU stood. It was because he despaired that man took
the stone, the post, splashed it with blood, streaked it
with red paint, carved a shape into it, caUed it God.
After aU it was a ' This.' It had an objectivity ; it
was a not-himself ; it was more than a generalised
notion of his own mind. This need of externality
no one could escape. Even the Indian Pantheist, if he
would keep any meaning in the name of God, since he
wiU not materialise God as a thing, must materialise
Him as a succession. If he wiU not say This, he must
say ' This and This and This.'
Yet it was nothing more than the expression of human
despair. Man had not reaUy escaped himself. It was
he who had chosen and made the idol, given it aU the
divinity it could have — the divinity of his own notion
and his own choice. He knew it, and in his more

118 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
solemn moments he confessed that it was not and could
not be God. It was a substitute for God.
In two ways therefore idolatry was a retrograde and
a debasing step.
(i) Just so far as it appeared to satisfy the longing
for a reahty of some kind, it perpetuated, it gave men
a reason for being contented with, that self-worship
which it seemed to evade. The substitute self-pro
vided is only effective as self-deceiving.
(2) It was the true purpose of God that He would
live with men, whom He would then take to Himself.
The idea of the idol was just so far right as it expressed
the conviction that God was not the same as the idea
we formed or the feelings we had about Him, that God
was not ourselves ; it was at least a protest against
the self-worship of the philosopher. Yet it was whoUy
wrong in that it stereotyped the externality of God
from His worshippers as a permanent condition. The
idol therefore witnessed to men's need of a reality,
which was more than a subjective imagining, but it
offered a merely deceitful and fictitious satisfaction.
It offered a very effective witness that God could not
or would not dweU in man.
As we realise all this, the question must come up —
why should God have left men so long in darkness ?
We can answer in three ways — because man wiUed it
so, because it was inevitable, because God loved man,
and these are one answer. Self-choice and self-judg
ment are inwrought in our very nature. Therefore
God waited over man with exceeding patience, for it
was only when the last lesson was learnt, when man had
done all and despaired of aU, that he was even capable of
understanding the new hope that whUe man cannot
come to God, God comes to man. All history and our

THE HOLY COMMUNION. II. 119
own Uves teach us that this is what we are always
forgetting, always needing to have renewed in us.
We have seen above how the Incarnation therefore
met the natural craving which gave rise to idolatry.
Here was a ' This,' that something ' not-himself ' ; it
was genuinely and not imaginatively more than an
imagining, just because it had not been constructed by,
it was something given to, reflection and feeling. In
that difference, Christianity brought men out of the
first great evil of idolatry.
The second evU of idolatry is met by the Ascension.
If Christ had remained on earth, His material Presence,
once so necessary to the manifestation of reality,
would have become the witness that that reality was
permanently external. He must have been in a place,
near some people, far from others, present at one time,
not at another. He must have ' held court ' in some
city. He must have had a curia. ' If I go not away the
Spirit wiU not come unto you, but if I depart I wUl
send Him unto you,' for ' the Spirit dweUeth in
you.' Now let us turn from history to our own present
Uves. The Communion meets our present need with
that which is first external and ' objective,' exactly as
historically the incarnation met the need of man as a
whole, for the Communion is not repeating but apply
ing, re-presenting and renewing. Is this idolatry ? We
wiU begin with my first principle of idolatry, which I
wiU divide up a little more closely, for I have a right
that our belief should be considered, and if necessary
criticised, as we hold it.
[a) Idolatry is a worship of that which is not God,
which is known not to be, but which has to stand for
God. Undoubtedly the worship of Christ in the Holy

120 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
Communion is only permissible if this is Christ Himself,
nor could it be defended on any other grounds.
We admit, therefore, that the Reality of the Presence
is the point at issue. If there is no such Real Presence
to worship, it is idolatry, and the innocence of our
intention does not prove the innocence of the act.
And, although I have asserted that at heart the idolater
knows his idol is only a substitute, certainly with a
large part of his consciousness he actuaUy does confuse
the two. It may therefore be possible that we also
confuse them.
(b) The test, however, of the idolatrous action Ues
in the fact pointed out by the Hebrew prophets that
the idol is self-made and self-chosen. ' Ye have said
unto the stone, " Be thou my God." ' If anyone should
thus choose out materials such as seemed good to him
and a form such as seemed suggestive to him, and
invest them with a divine presence or a divine power,
I admit that would be idolatry. I believe I could
show in Christian life and history many instances of
this being done in many quarters, for ' supeistition ' is
not confined to one set of people. Certainly according
to our behef there is no such choice. We ' do this ' in
re-presentation, renewing, of the Presence of Christ's
death, as a memorial of Himself, because He has so
bidden us, but it is not properly an act of ours at all.
It is not our coming, nor our communion, nor our
fitness, which achieve anything, except that we so
become partakers of that which is achieved. The
priest also has neither skiU nor hohness nor privUege
in this matter. What he does a chUd could do. That
is why we hold so strongly to ' consecration,' and to
the episcopaUy ordained priesthood. The ministering
and that which is ministered are not invested with

THE HOLY COMMUNION. II. 121
power by us. Both aUke are of Christ alone, and of His
Spirit in the fulfilment of Christ's promise.
(c) It ought to be recognised on both sides that by
many who share the ' CathoUc ' belief the charge of
idolatry is strongly resented. However natural, I do
not think resentment is right. In the first place,
because I think the charge is only too true. Idolatry
dehberately chosen would be an act of sin, but it is
also a principle, a temptation or evil, which lies only too
near to us aU. If a man, whether ' Catholic ' or ' Protes
tant,' is quite sure he has never faUen under it, and that
he is in no danger from it, then it must be very near him
indeed. I should begin to fear that it must have taken
real possession of him.
In the second place, I would not resent it because I
am sure it is brought in love. There are people every
where who bring such charges in a bitter and con
temptuous conviction that with fuU understanding they
are competent judges of their brethren. To them I
have nothing whatever to say. There are others really
grieved about it, and to them one ought to explain
oneself. There are yet others to whom ' that there is a
great deal of truth on both sides ' is a conviction, and
not an empty common-place, who are therefore anxious
to learn what truth there is which God may not yet
have shown to them. What others call an * accusation '
is for them rather a question, a real difficulty, put
somewhat pointedly. It is for them primarily that I
am writing.
The difficulty they feel about ' idolatry ' lies in the
worship of the material bread and wine. It is a
difficulty I feel as much as anybody, but it is a difficulty
which besets us as Christians ; it is a difficulty which
besets us as men and women in our everyday

122 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
life. As I have said, the doctrine of the Holy Com
munion is fuU of such difficulties, because it is the most
central expression of Christian principles, and Christian
principles are fuU of difficulties, for they meet at once
all the varied and apparently incongruous sides of
human Ufe.
' The Holy Communion is so very material.' Yes,
and the Christian is so very material, and the reason
is the same, for life is so very material. Love is
spiritual, and the father comes home. Mother brings
him up to see the baby, and stands by, leaning on his
shoulder, while he takes it in his arms, plays with it,
makes meaningless baby talk which means so much.
I who am a ' religious ' and a celibate have the best
right to say that there is nothing on God's earth nearer
to God's heaven, purer, truer, more beautiful, catching
my breath even to write the words. ' But it is so very
material ! ' Would the father be more loving, more
spiritual, a better man, if he refused to do this ? God
forbid. Whatever our theories may be, God's people
and God's earth are neither made that way nor meant
that way.
If then, with the women, we meet Christ in the
garden, what would anyone have us do ? Is this a
time to talk of ' material presences ' and their ' essential
divorce from the spiritual principle ' ? Has not Our
Own come to us as He said He would, though beyond
all our belief, when our belief had faUed, and shall we
not hold Him by the feet and worship Him ? Are we
worshipping flesh and blood ? Are we worshipping
bread and wine ? God forbid, for we worship God and
His Christ. Only that by these things, as then so now,
Our Own has come to us. It was not our faith that
brought Him— thanks be to God, for even now we

THE HOLY COMMUNION. II 123
believe so little. Nay, even if it could be so, must we
not have been found believing in our faith as a power
so mighty that it could summon even Christ back from
the grave where with so much spice we had lately
buried Him ?
Or must we, on pain of being stoned as idolaters,
believe that He has clean gone away into the distant
space that some folks call heaven, understood, indeed,
to be still operating, but never to be seen again save
by those of great and mystic spiritual power ? Yet
we did hear tidings of a place and way where even we
common-place people, driven by hard material labour,
very little capable of spiritual attention, to whose
unimaginative stupidity the joy of spiritual communion
comes so rarely, might yet again behold and worship
Him. Was it after all a lying rumour ?
I admit once more that if this be merely an external
vision, perhaps it had better never have been given.
That we should go on through life in darkness, waiting
for something which God does not see fit to give, may
on cold reflection be better than that we should come
into His Presence at intervals, only to be separated
again, though I admit that it is a very cold reflection
indeed. But then we are speaking of a Communion.
The Presence of Christ is given in order that it may be
received, but before it is ' received ' it must be already
present that it may be received.
To say that the Presence is made by reception is to
use the words in a sense for which it is almost as
difficult to find a meaning as it is for the phrases of
Transubstantiation. The moment, however, the ques
tion goes beyond the verbal point, it reaches a matter
on which I feel far more clear. That any benefits
whatever from that reception are qualified and con-

124 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
ditioned by the state of the recipient I somewhat
sorrowfuUy admit. That the profane receive no
benefit, but only the heavier judgment I know. That
those in whom love burns most strongly, in whom
humUity and self-surrender have grown in depth and
reality, receive richly, I, who barely know the names of
those things, admit fuUy, though, as I have said, sorrow
fully. I let these words stand as I wrote them, and because
I wrote them, but no, I do not mean to sorrow, I rejoice
if others are nearer God than I. It is enough for me
and more than I deserve that I may find my Lord at
all. If, however, I am told that even that initial fact
depends on any effort or capacity of my own, depends
in any degree on my spiritual state or force, this, may
God help me, I wiU not believe, for if I did I should
despair utterly. It is hard for me to make any response
to Christ, to find the energy to worship Him or the faith
to believe in Him, when He does come. If I am also
to find the energy and faith to fetch Him, I must give
it up. For myself and for men like myself, to whom
aU spiritual effort is intensely difficult, the whole
Gospel is a bitter mockery front and back. If this is
Evangelicalism I must leave it to those who can manage
such things. And in my inmost heart I have no wish
to do anything else. I belong to a much simpler,
rougher, less imaginative, more common-place order of
mind, and I cannot bear the thought of being separated
as if one was something special.
In saying this I know that I am only proclaiming
the most burning convictions of aU Evangelicals, even
the most ' Protestant.' By Evangelicalism they do
not mean anything but just this. Beside their love for
simple and common souls, mine is a starveling thing of

THE HOLY COMMUNION. II. 125
words. Yet, just because of the love I know they
bear, why have they made this message so difficult
to us ? Why have they thrown away that tremendous
lever, which, as it would seem to a plain, even if stupid,
reader of Scripture, Christ Himself put into their
hands and the Apostles used, the simplest act witnessing
to the simple fact on which aU spiritual and personal
realisation can be based ?
As having been a ' Protestant,' I might say, I think
that — I prefer to say, is it not true that — many
EvangeUcals do suffer in practice from that religious
self-centredness which would seem to be inevitable
where so much is made to turn upon personal realisation
and experience ? Of those to whom I write I know it is
very little true. But much as I long for it I know they
cannot give me any help at all in the spiritual develop
ment I need unless they are willing to begin with me
just from this simple ground. As a matter of fact, I
did begin just where they are, and learnt in due time
how impossible it was for a character so entirely
common-place to maintain permanently a state so
special. I need not trouble anybody with my own personal
failings or wants. In the ' Catholic party ' there are
many men of a spirituality not less than can be found
anywhere. I can have and have had their help for my
self. But I am not now speaking of or for any party.
I am thinking of the common, average herd, and I have
no desire to speak except as one of them. I know
how many are thrown back from religion because
they have learnt to think of it as a matter
of spiritual experiences, emotions, states, which
they suspect to be psychological, but which they
either know they cannot reach, or which they

126 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
have found by experience they cannot retain. I
know that the Evangelical leaders have protested
against this misapprehension. They are as anxious as
we are to insist that Christianity is first of all faith in
God, in God's manifestation of Himself, in the Atoning
Death of Christ, in the supernatural gift of His Presence
to His own, and not a feeling. Yet the impression
remains, for while protestations reach the few, the
principles involved in the system of religious practice
are felt by all. And so long as that faith in an objective
Presence of actual fact is set aside in favour of a
Presence, which — whether subjective or objective — has
no presentation except subjectively as a Presence
reached ' in the word,' that is, by meditation, in thought
and feeling, so long for the many that impression will
remain. Does the Catholic system succeed any better ? I
could answer both yes and no, for here the consequences
of our divisions come in disastrously, as I think I can
show if we consider two different applications.
(i) Wherever Catholicism, as in Roman Catholic
countries, has been steadUy and consistently applied,
it wiU hardly be denied that its definiteness does
maintain a curiously steady hold upon the roughest,
most ignorant, least naturaUy religious people, just
those whom we find it so hard to retain permanently.
Yet when those very people progress in education,
civUisation and independence, there it is apt to fail
terribly, as in France. Where people do not progress,
as in South America, the religion, even whUe it con
tinues, is often very ineffective and unreal, spirituaUy
and moraUy.
(2) In England there is a more complex situation,
since Catholicism has been applied much less con-

THE HOLY COMMUNION. II. 127
sistently. Certainly many Church people, instead of
using forms as the foundation of a spiritual life, are
afraid to go beyond them, because that would be
' emotionahsm,' in other words because it is the opposi
tion road. Of course there is no need it should be so,
but the sense of opposition always does tend to one-
sidedness. And this opposition produces very marked results in
other ways. I must admit that our Anglican Catholi
cism, of which I shall have more to say hereafter, though
it has tried to combine both sides of the Christian life,
has not been very effective. I do not admit that it is
a faUure. It has been of the greatest help to multi
tudes of people, but its helpfulness depends on their
learning to believe in and to worship a supernatural
gift of Christ's Presence. Why should it be judged a
thing incredible with us that God Who raised the dead
should thus give Himself ? Yet when we find many
good Christians, whom we aU rightly respect, caUing it
Idolatry, Romanism, Sacerdotalism, simple people
readUy turn suspicious and sceptical. They do not
quite know what the words mean and they have not
much power of discrimination, but the Gospel thus
presented looks too hving, too trenchant, and though
not naturaUy inclined to unbelief, they are afraid to
commit themselves to a supernatural which comes so
near, makes itself so real, as that.

PART II.
A SYNTHESIS OF PRINCIPLES.

CHAPTER VII.
FREEDOM.
I have tried now to explain what I take to be the
necessary element of our own Church, Catholic or
EpiscopaUan position, and why it seems to us so
necessary. I am not entirely without hope that some
of those who differ from us may see in it something
worth considering. Further than that I should not
venture to go. I know the Non-Conformists have con
victions of their own not less precious to them than
ours are to us. They have for a long time held that
those convictions required a repudiation of our con
victions. I have tried to suggest that that was not
so. Claims to have ' proved ' this and that are at any
time foohsh and irritating. I do not ask Non-Con
formists to admit that their repudiation was wrong,
but, if I ask them even to admit that it might be, am I
prepared to admit that we may have been equaUy
wrong in repudiating some of their convictions ? Am
I prepared to admit that their convictions are also
' necessary ' ?
In the abstract it wiU be observed that I have already
admitted it. I have urged that if we find two bodies
of men in acute and prolonged difference, there are two
lines open to us. (a) Our first natural assumption is
that one of them is right and the other has been led

132 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
astray. If, however, after three centuries both bodies
are stUl passionately in earnest, fuU of vitality, is it
not wiser to suspect (b) that they have each hold of
something very solid. In the abstract, I think we
should aU come to this conclusion, but the abstractions
are not very helpful.
I am therefore driven to try to state what exactly it
is which, as I conceive, the Non-Conformists have to
give to the Church, what they hold which we need.
I am not going to give that position as I think it ought
to be, but as I have actuaUy learnt it. I shall do it
very badly, for it is a very risky undertaking to state
another man's convictions for him, nevertheless I must
take that risk.
(a) I must see whether I have learnt the Non-Con
formist position rightly, and even if I make mistakes,
it may not be unhelpful to my brethren to see how far
someone, approaching from without, has been able to
understand them. (6) My main object is to ask how
far our principles are reaUy at variance, and, since it is
I who am asking, I can only deal with the two sides so
far as I can understand them.
The questions we have so far discussed have been
questions of faith, questions of spiritual, vital, personal
religion, concerned with the access of the soul to God.
The questions on which we are most obviously divided,
however, are ecclesiastical. They have their spiritual
and personal side, to which we must look, but they are
primarily questions of organisation.
To us, on the Catholic side, the unity of the Church
appeals as a great prior fact. The individual finds a
place in it ; it ministers to him, or rather he Uves in it.
As a unity, it presents itself as a great authoritative
organisation, covering the whole world, including all

FREEDOM 133
mankind in idea and in God's purpose if not in fact.
I want to lay some little stress on this distinction, for
if we are ever to understand other people or ourselves
we must be always ready to consider the ideal first
and by itself, even though we cannot forego the right
and duty of asking also after the significance of its
practical results — how far they are failures incidental
to human weakness, and how far they come from some
defect in the principle.
We Catholics have one common ideal. In practice
it has been broken through over questions of methods.
The Roman regards that organisation as essentially a
centralised authority. This alone, he contends, can
give a practical unity. The Anglican takes what
might be considered an aristocratic view. The Church
is a great repubhc, whose King is Christ, whose repre
sentatives are the bishops in all the world. It is a much
more difficult ideal. It is a very good, though often
painful, disciphne to look at our own position as others
see it. I am quite wUling to admit that we cannot
point to Catholicism as an obviously triumphant
success. Anglicanism in especial has shown a hesita
tion and an uncertainty of principle which have brought
her neither power nor even respect. I think I can
show presently why this was almost inevitable. But
if I thus submit to criticism, perhaps our brethren will
aUow us also to be critical.
To our eyes, the non-episcopalian bodies present a
picture of something like utter confusion, a vast un
numbered mass of sects. Possibly, on second thoughts,
that may be a little exaggerated. We can see three, or
perhaps four, great outstanding bodies — Presbyterian,
Congregational, Wesleyan, and Baptist. They have
different principles and methods. One has a settled

134 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
ministry, and a considerable unity. Another has no
formal unity. The third has, we understand, an
exceUent organisation. These bodies are, however,
rather groups of bodies, and beyond them stiU lies the
great mass of smaUer bodies, ever multiplying. But
the confusion, to our minds, is not merely ecclesiastical.
They differ theologically. They are all open to ' tend
encies,' and they seem to have very little concern
where those tendencies wUl carry them. We no doubt
are subject to the same forces, but, though we may
differ as to what Church doctrine does teach, and
stiU more as to what it ought to teach, we have as
' Catholics ' at least a belief, an ideal, that there is a
Church teaching.
Probably I shaU be told that this statement shows
an entire miscomprehension of the Non-Conformist
position. And I have no doubt it does. It is precisely
my contention that neither of us understands what the
other reaUy means, and that it is just this mutual
understanding which it is so vital we should get.
Let us consider the actual position. We wiU leave
theological questions on one side. For the present we
wiU assume that we are agreed in our evangelical faith.
We have then to consider the practical or ecclesiastical
question. The Non-Conformists claim that they are an
integral part of the Church of Christ, and their unity as
bodies constitutes a valid Church unity. This puts us
in a very difficult position, for if we admit that any
number of divided bodies and of people who do not
belong to a body at aU, are equally in the right way and
in the true unity, we should seem to be admitting that
there was no way and no unity which was of Christ.
It is not that we claim to be right and everybody else
wrong, but that we dread any admission which would

FREEDOM 135
imply that there was no right. Further, if we admit
that the Non-Conformist bodies are valid Churches,
then we should admit that a Church could be con
stituted without those sacraments which we hold to be
necessary, and without that ministry which we hold to
be necessary to the sacraments. Plainly in the face of
my own arguments, I for one could not make that
admission. If, however, I wiU not admit the Non-Conformist
claim, I am also not going to deny it. I am convinced,
and I beheve all our experience proves, that if we
begin arguing ' Which is the Church ? ' we shall argue
for ever. We shall not find anything, and we may lose
our tempers. But are we not all, or at least some of
us, agreed that our present divisions do not represent
the Unity which is according to God's WUl ? We have
stiU a great deal to seek. If we would seek it together,
we must be ready to learn from one another. Our long
controversies, our long habit of protest against this
and that, makes mutual learning very difficult. If we
begin with a new argument about which is most in the
wrong, and whose fault it is that we are separated, I
fear the separation is likely to go on a long time.
We, as CathoUcs, have always believed that unity
must somehow centre round the historic episcopate.
The Non-Conformists in general wiU not accept our
view. I believe that some have confessed, perhaps
more have an undefined feehng, that in the end it may
be found so, though they do not see how and are not
prepared to accept Episcopacy at present or in its
present form. I am not, however, going to press that
point. Presently I may suggest reasons for it, just
now I am more concerned with the reasons for the
rejection. If I have understood them aright, the Non-

136 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
Conformists would say that the criticisms we have
passed on their divisions, and the Episcopal theory we
put forward as a basis for unity, only showed that we
and they were living in two different worlds. It is
just this which makes me hopeful. When men differ
on some narrow technical point, the issue must be
faced as it stands. A world provides room for many
possibUities. Certainly if someone lives in a world, like
Mars, which the rest of us cannot reach, we must and
we can afford to let them alone. If it is another world,
like China, which we can get to, it wiU no doubt be hard
to understand, but it is sure to be fuU of things worth
understanding. I do not approach the question as an expert, but as a
learner. And I seem to myself to have learnt that it
is our very ideal of Church unity, that very conception
of a great organisation, which seems to us so attractive,
but which seems to Non-Conformists so repeUent. It
is not so much that they object to our form of organisa
tion as that they dread the ideal of an organised unity.
They object to our form of organisation just because
it implies that the form is a basis of unity.
I am afraid that our brethren wUl think us very
stupid and very dense not to have understood that long
ago, seeing how often they have explained it. Stupidity
is a very common disease, but I think there are some
excuses, and they are somewhat important.
(i) We have been engaged in a long controversy, and,
as people wiU, we have argued about everything. We
have argued about establishments and ' book prayers,'
the characters of Archbishop Laud and Oliver CromweU,
transubstantiation and the origin of tithes, baptismal
regeneration and the legislation of Henry VIII. It
would be amazing if we knew what we meant ourselves,

FREEDOM 137
and quite impossible we should know what anyone
else meant.
(2) Again, our own position is essentially a definite,
a fixed, a ' static ' position. Perhaps we are not all
agreed about what it is, but disagreement about our
position is much easier to understand than the ideal,
which is not ' a position,' but an ideal of freedom and
movement as such and, so to speak, for their own
sakes. (3) The fact is that both views are much more com
plex, and therefore confusing, than either of us realise.
We Cathohcs believe in order, but we should resent,
even the strongest Roman Catholics resent, the charge
of not believing in freedom. The Protestants believe
in freedom, but they also would resent the charge of not
believing in order. Indeed, many of their bodies
would claim that their organisation was in practice
more orderly and effective than our own. I do not
know enough to admit that it is so, but I do know
enough to make me very chary of denying it.
This adds to our perplexity. The Presbyterians have
a settled ministry, and they would not — we imagine —
feel the same objection to an organised unity which the
Congregationalists might. The Wesleyans, who have an
effective organisation but not the same ideas about a
ministry, would feel the objection in a different way.
There has been a good deal to confuse us, but under
all these difficulties of denominational character there
are four points which have persuaded me that this
question of ' freedom ' is the real matter at issue.
(1) However the various bodies may differ, they are
increasingly ready to recognise one another's systems.
(2) They are equaUy ready to extend that recognition
to aU the smaUer and newer bodies, or even to those

138 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
individuals who do not care to include themselves in a
denominational body at all. This fraternal toleration
extends to anything that can be caUed genuinely
Christian, and there is an increasing tendency to ex
tend it to anything which will call itself Christian in
any sense. Behefs to which Evangehcals of fifty or
even twenty years ago would have refused feUowship
are now readUy admitted.
(3) WhUe ' recognition ' is thus readily accorded even
to beliefs which are not mutually consistent, there is an
inevitable and quite natural disinclination to extend it
to ' Catholics,' whether Anglican or Roman. The new
spirit of union may include almost any doctrine which
a man holds for himself, but by the very nature of that
union it cannot include what is held as necessarily true,
as a truth by which all are bound.
(4) There is one speciaUy theological movement
which throws a deeply interesting light upon the
principle underlying. In many Protestant circles — I
am afraid it must be admitted— there is a growing
uncertainty about the Person and Work of Christ.
There is, on the other hand, a growing conviction of the
reality and work of the Holy Spirit, Whom the Creeds
caU " the Giver of Life.'
From aU these considerations I believe that I shall
be right to infer that the distinctive spirit of modern
Non-Conformity, the spirit or ideal which is gradually
absorbing all others, is the ideal which I caU ' freedom '
purely as such, the ideal which a recent writer caUs
' life.' To do justice to Non-Conformity, I must of course
emphasise the word ' distinctive.' I characterised the
Catholic position as distinctively definite ; I am sure
it would be resented if I said the opposite side

FREEDOM 139
was dehberately indefinite. Most Non-Conformists, or
many, do hold certain convictions very strongly, but
I think they would admit that their tendency is to
indefiniteness, and their dangers would lie on this side.
To the doctrinal questions we wiU return again.
Our immediate concern is with the ecclesiastical
question, in which the need of " the definite ' is repre
sented not by convictions, but by order or system. I
have admitted that the great Non-Conformist bodies
are not inferior to us in the effectiveness of their system ;
I shah not even quarrel if they chose to maintain that
their systems are superior to ours. Nevertheless, they
have in two ways insured that organisation shaU be
subordinated to the spirit of freedom.
(1) The organisation exists necessarily for aU actions
to be taken in common, but that organisation is in
principle democratic. The powers given to the officials
are powers which belong to the body as such.
(2) Although the individual is bound by the decisions
of the body, he is only bound in his capacity as a
member. The modern spirit would not hold that he
was bound to remain in the body. It might not like
a man leaving his own body, but if an individual or
group of individuals consider that the cause is suffi
ciently serious to justify the step, it would not be
denied that they had a right to separate themselves.
So far as my ignorance goes I believe aU Non-Con
formists are unanimous about the ' Principle of Demo
cracy.' I am not quite sure that all would agree so
readUy to what I might caU the ' Right of Schism ' or
of Secession, for I do not mean Schism in an offensive
sense. The Congregationalists, as I suppose, would
admit it readUy. The Presbyterians of the old school
would certainly have demurred to it, but I think I

140 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
am justified in taking it as the second fundamental
of modern Non-Conformity. Personal liberty is an
obvious consequence of voluntary union as opposed to
essential unity. It is also a necessary consequence of
mutual recognition.
Now in both ways this is in marked contrast with the
Cathohc principle of Episcopacy, (i) Even if our
bishops were appointed by the Church body itself —
as in theory they are in all cases, and in most cases
they are in practice — it stiU remains that the bishop
has in principle an authority from God which he does
not receive from the congregation. Even if he holds
it in order as the servant of the congregation, it is still
a power which the body cannot of itself bestow.
This makes a very marked difference. Once the
bishop is established, however he was appointed,
nothing can be done without him. He is the judge of
the spiritual calling.
(2) The grip of the principle is finaUy fixed by the
Church idea of unity. Individuals and minorities must
be content with their share of what is provided for the
whole. They are not free to try other alternatives.
In practice, of course, the system is both better and
worse than its ideal. It is unfair to judge it by the
abuses from which the Non-Conformist systems also
are by no means free. Yet it should be noted that the
concentration of power in official hands provides an
easy mark for the introduction of political influence and
acquired rights of patronage, which are aU the more
fatal because the relief of secession is cut off. On the
other hand, the single pastor is far more amenable to
popular feeling than the legal theory of his office would
suggest, and his personal responsibility offers a more
effective defence against the pressure of ' influential

FREEDOM 141
patrons ' than is often provided by a nominaUy demo
cratic system.
The practical advantages and disadvantages may be
very evenly balanced but we need not discuss them.
Episcopacy is put forward as necessary, that is to say as
a principle and not as a convenience ; it must be so
considered. Non-Conformists repudiate Episcopacy on
the principle that no man has a right by his human judg
ment to fetter the free action of God's Spirit.
For my own part I appreciate very deeply the serious
ness of this contention. In the abrupt form in which I
have stated it, the contention rests upon two assump
tions. It assumes that the individual acts under the
influence of God's Spirit, while the bishop uses only
human judgment. That, of course, would make an end
of aU government whatever. Missionary committees,
synods, Connections, elders, are constantly engaged in
judging what beheves itself to be a ' caU of God.'
Certainly the point wants some consideration both on
the side of the authority and on that of the individual.
We will take the authority first. I admit that the
claim of the bishop is quite different from that of the
other authorities referred to. The latter, in general,
act only on behalf of their own organisation. They do
not profess to have authority otherwise over the free
dom of the individual. He can stiU give his ' message '
in his own way. The idea of the Church makes the
authority of the bishop final, except so far as one
bishop may permit in one diocese what another forbids
in his. It is this absolute and final authority, as of
principle rather than of administrative necessity, against
which Non-Conformity protests.
In what way, however, ought the contention to be
met that the bishop is not using a human judgment ;

142 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
the Holy Spirit is given to him for this very purpose
that he should judge ? I think the Non-Conformist
would reply that he did not deny that the bishop also
received the Holy Spirit, but that his judgment was
none the less human and not infaUible, for he could
only receive the Holy Spirit according to individual
measure. I do not think any other reply can be given.
It is exactly the answer which I have already given, in
one shape or another, to the argument that because God
was in us, therefore our ideas about God could not be
described as human notions ; that because God was in
us therefore the unity we construct was not to be
described as man-made ; that for the same reason, we
could worship Christ as in us. I am not trying merely
to score a controversial point. If we are to save our
souls from an entire disbelief in God as more than a
name for anything we choose to count nice, we must
realise consistently the distinction between God in
Himself, between Christ Incarnate and Ascended,
between the Holy Spirit, Who with the Father and the
Son together is worshipped, One God Blessed for ever
more, and those operations of God which work in
nature as force and in men as inspiration or indwelling.
I have urged that to confuse that distinction was to
make Christ, not our salvation from, but an excuse for,
self-worship and self-wiU. I cannot refuse to admit it
now when it seems to teU against my position. I do
admit therefore that the Non-Conformist is justified in
speaking of the bishops' judgment as a human judg
ment. I have a right to ask him in return to recognise
elsewhere the principle which is to him in this case
so clear.
Of course I do not suppose for a moment that any
Non-Conformist would say that the individual was

FREEDOM 143
necessarily in the right, merely because he is quite
sure that he has the Spirit of God. The belief that
things are true because we think them, and right
because we like them, is only too near all of us. That
is not what the claim for freedom means, but it is what
only too many of us mean by it. I beheve the Non-
Conformist would not deny that the ideal of unfettered
freedom was fuU of danger to human souls in just this
way, but he would reply exactly as I replied about
formaUsm, that we do not find safety merely by escap
ing dangers. We receive God's gifts always with the
responsibUity of using them rightly and the danger of
using them wrongly. It is my ultimate purpose to
show how both dangers can be met by making use of
both elements.
I, on my side, must not hesitate, however, in the
fuUest way to admit that there is a use of freedom. It
is of necessity that each soul should answer for itself
to God, should learn to bear its responsibUity. We
also must learn to trust souls to Him, and if they seem
to go astray, we must yet believe that He Who died for
them wiU guide their footsteps in ways that we know
not. What a man is to learn, he must learn himself.
The attempt to dictate continuaUy is false in principle
and has now broken down in practice.
I have therefore spoken of the Non-Conformist's
position, not with the intimate knowledge of one
brought up in it, nor with that wide and thorough
famUiarity which belongs to the expert student, but
merely as a learner, anxious not to state a theory of his
own, but to be sure that he has rightly apprehended
the central conviction of others. Even if it did not
naturaUy appeal to me, I should be bound to give it the
respect and earnest attention to which such deep con-

144 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
viction is always entitled. As a matter of fact it is a
principle which does appeal to me very much. I
admit, however, it would not have occurred to me
independently that it required its own expression in the
ecclesiastical system. Now that I find others insisting,
not only on its individual, but on its ecclesiastical,
importance, the more I think over it, the more I find
myself forced to admit the claim as a very vital element
which our Church ecclesiastical system gravely lacks.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE.
I have in the last chapter made large admissions. Are
they consistent with my position as an Episcopalian ?
I have already explained what that position is, but I
must take leave to re-emphasise it in that spirit of
loving offensiveness which I have defended above.
To use a classic and authoritative phrase, we on our
side are speaking of an ' historic Episcopate.' If we
were addressing ourselves to the Methodist Epis
copalians, we might plead that we and they were agreed
upon the ' monarchical ' system, could they not bring
themselves to accept the historic principle also for the
sake of unity ? If we consider our agreement with the
Presbyterians upon the principle of an ordained minis
try, could we not somehow come to a working agree
ment upon the method of its ordination ? I have a
suspicion that such proposals would be resented, and I
am quite sure that if accepted they would be useless.
If I have learnt my lesson rightly these bodies are not
separated from us merely by detaUs of a system, but
by a certain spirit, which in substance they share with
Non-Conformists at large. It is with that whole spirit
that we must reckon. I am aware that the Presby
terians do not maintain that spirit at aU so strongly as
the Congregationahsts, for instance, but if we ask them
K

146 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
to come over to our side as against Non-Conformity,
I beheve they would positively refuse.
If we ask others to accept the ' historic ' Episcopate,
we are not standing out, and we are not asking the Non-
Conformist to take so grave a step, merely for the sake
of antiquarian sentiment, merely because it is so much
nicer to foUow a system that is very old rather than a
system which is not so old. By the ' historic ' Episco
pate, we mean a God-given order, something which is
necessarily and unalterably right ; something which is
more than a question of relative efficiency ; something
which we own to be in just this shape indispensable.
We should have no right to insist upon it, and we could
not ask that it should be accepted for any other reason,
or in any other way. I quite see how reasonably the
Non-Conformist holds our belief in a God-given order
to be fatal to his belief in the God-given freedom of the
Holy Spirit. This is the root of our quarrel. I can only
ask others to beheve how intensely painful and un
welcome it is to us to be obliged to put it forward, but
we cannot help it. The Non-Conformists are most
anxious to be tolerant, but plainly they cannot tolerate
this. Which of us is right, and which of us must give
way ? That, I have said, is a hopeless question to
ask. If I may once more go back, I should like to pick up
various hints which the course of this study has sug
gested. I have maintained, and I maintain, that no
Unity worth having can be got by surrender. I am sure
we Catholics do not mean to give up our faith, and I
speak for myself when I express my sincere hope that
the Non-Conformists wiU not give up theirs. I have
maintained, and I maintain stUl, that God is leading
both of us forward and not backward. I repeat, I have

THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE 147
no idea of surrendering, and I do not want anyone else
to surrender, any conviction.
I have also pointed out in the last chapter that a
deadlock always looks final, and may be final, when
you can narrow the issue to a single point. If I and
a friend faU to arguing whether travelling by land or by
sea is better, we may not easily agree. PersonaUy I
loathe the sea. I admit that this is temperamental,
and I know there are people (of depraved temperament)
who like it. If, however, some third party asks where
I want to go, it begins to occur to me that the world is
a biggish place, and, if I am bound for Calcutta, even
the Indian Ocean may be preferable to Thibet and the
passes of the Pamirs.
Let us apply this. Is freedom more vital than order,
or order than freedom ? I perceive a very long argu
ment ahead of us and no very certain goal. Is my
dinner or my digestion the prior necessity ?
Some ha' meat that canna eat,
And some want bread that lack it.
We are talking of human life, and life does not treat
these things as alternatives. It finds a place and an
absolutely necessary place for both. If we ask what is
the place for each, the deadlock may begin to loosen a
little. We may stiU differ as to the size of the two
spheres, but each is so necessary to all of us that we
may begin to recognise that the person who differs
from us in character is not the person we ought to
quarrel with, but the person whose help we shall prob
ably need. He is probably able to do things we cannot.
In the last chapter I studied the Non-Conformist
position with some care. We ' Churchmen ' know a
fair amount about the tenets and the systems of this
body and that body, but I felt sure that there was

148 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
something of a common spirit or ideal which the bodies
share differently, but which they aU share in some
degree, which is being increasingly felt as a bond of
unity among them and as being different from ours. I
want now to study Episcopacy in the same way, for it
also is a principle, as weU as a form.
This is, I think, one root of aU our apparently hope
less difference. It is easy to see other people's forms,
and we know our own. We can see the practical con
fusions in which others are involved, and we rejoice in
their difficulties. We do not like to admit it even to
ourselves, but we have a hope that before long the other
party wiU give way altogether and disappear, and then
we shaU get unity on our own terms.
The fact is that whUe we know our own practices,
we are at most times but dimly conscious of our prin
ciples, and we hardly realise that it is our faith in our
principles which enables us to bear up against the dis
appointments, failures, imperfections, of our results.
It hardly occurs to us at aU that other people have
principles. So we wonder how the opposite side can
go on and on without recognising what a faUure it is.
No doubt it is a very absurd attitude to take up, but
then we do not take it up. More generaUy that is what
we find ourselves doing. If anyone is inclined to resent
this description of his attitude, now that I come to think
of it, it is that which comes most easily to myself.
Certainly if we are to get out of our dead-locks and
so forth, we must begin with principles, that is, with
the real central aims we and others have, and consider
our forms, first, as constituting a guide to the principles
in question by virtue of the fact that forms are the true
expression of principles. Perhaps it was very stupid
of us not to have seen this in the case of Non-Confor-

THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE 149
mity, which has always professed itseH to be a principle.
Where, however, we have to do with a thing like Epis
copacy which is somewhat a form, it is much easier to
forget that it also has a principle. And that is a pity,
for if we forget it, then both Episcopalians and Non-
Episcopalians are apt to assume that the form which it
has at any given moment is that for or against which we
must contend. Anglicanism, however, represents only
one form of Episcopacy, and it is desirable to look at
other forms that we may see what underlies them all,
for it is the principle, and not one particular form, with
which we are concerned. A little historical summary
wiU not be out of place when we are talking of an
historic episcopate.
The ministry of the New Testament times — let us
say of the first century — is a highly controversial
question. For the moment we wiU pass it by. In the
second century, as soon as we get any clear view of what
is going on, we find a number of churches in many
places. Their minds are possessed with two ideas, each
of which is leading to its own developments. On the
one hand, each church has a certain completeness in
itself. Its own spiritual organisation develops to keep
pace with its own needs, and this leads to an elaboration
of the ministry. On the other hand, each church feels
itself to be a part of a greater whole ; the development
in this centralising direction leads to councUs, to
metropolitanates, patriarchates and so forth. It is
with the local church life that we are mainly concerned.
Speaking, therefore, of the beginning of the second
century, perhaps of the last years of the first, we find
each Christian Community has its own pastor. He
might have assistants and deputies of various kinds,
but, on earth, as in heaven, there was one flock and one

150 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
shepherd. There are many changes going on, but this
idea remains fixed. The changes or developments take
place first of all in regard to the idea of the flock. What
constitutes a ' Church,' a ' congregation,' a ' com
munity ' ? When believers were few, their unity was
a simple and obvious matter. They aU knew one
another, and were known to their ' overseer ' {episcopus).
When Christianity began to reach out into the
country districts, so soon as the distance became too
great to allow of people coming in for service, the
villages constituted ' congregations,' and they also
must have a pastor, an overseer, or bishop, even though
there might not be more than a dozen Christian famUies.
To the Roman mind, the local unit was always the
municipium, or borough. The city, therefore, was indi
visible, while the ' village-bishops ' settled on the terri
tory of the city, were subordinate. They were often
men of little culture or outlook, with little sense of the
responsibUities involved in membership of the Church
as a whole, yet as bishops they were difficult to restrain.
From the beginning, bishops were assisted by Presbyters
who acted as their deputies when required. It was a
long time before the old system gave way, but in result
it was found better to send priests to take charge of the
viUage congregations. The old idea stUl remained.
Parish is the ancient name for the bishop's charge, and
his office was an ' oversight.' Parish is still the name
for the unit constituting a single charge. We no
longer call it an episcopatus, or oversight, but a charge,
care, or cura. The man who thus receives ' cure of
souls,' is solemnly ' instituted,' and can only be
deposed, like the bishop himself, by a solemn Church
process. In the city itself, the development was much slower.

THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE 151
The Christian congregations soon outgrew the possibUi-
ties of a single ' pastorate,' a single personal oversight.
But because it had a common life the city was very
difficult to divide. It was only under stress of actual
necessity that it was broken up into divisions which
could not help being somewhat artificial. The Roman
apphed the city idea to the country. It is a peculiarity
of English poUtics from very early Anglo-Saxon times
to treat the boroughs as if they were country districts.
We have made them into counties, and we have split
them up into parishes as if they were groups of viUages.
Outside the Roman Empire, as in Ireland and in
Wales, there were no municipia. The primary com
munity was the tribe ; the divisions were rather of
persons than of areas. The bishops, therefore, were
bishops of tribes, and the whole system was different.
I have thought this historical summary worth noting
because it helps us to see how a system could change
and develop without ever losing its primary idea, for
the changes belong only to the application of that idea
to different kinds of community.
I want, however, to trace two very important
developments within the community itself. The first
affects the clergy. In the earliest stage the life of the
community is very simple, and the bishop's office in
relation to that life is very simple. S. Ignatius can
say, ' let nothing be done apart from the bishop.' In
time the mere increase of numbers makes it first diffi
cult and then impossible for the one pastor to know all
his flock personally. The actual ministry of souls has
to be left to the presbyters. The bishop becomes
rather the bishop of the clergy than the personal
pastor of the people, just as in a very large school the
headmaster is rather the head of the masters than the

152 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
teacher of the boys. He is more concerned with the
body as a whole than with its members.
The second change is among the people. There are
always different classes of minds, characters or tempera
ments to be allowed for besides the different social
classes. There are the cultured and the ignorant, the
leisured and the busy ; there are also the earnest and
the commonplace. In a small Church, such as a
viUage, these are personal differences and easUy allowed
for. In a large Church, where they become differences
between large groups of people capable of acting
together, they may produce serious results. Both
these changes, however, the separation of a clerical or
professional state, and the separation of different
classes, whether temperamental or social, are a quite
inevitable part of that progress from the simple to the
elaborate, from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous,
as Herbert Spencer caUed it, which is the evolution
implied in the growth of aU bodies, biological or
political. The last of those class distinctions to which I have
referred, that between the earnest — whom we may call
the ' devout ' by way of a distinctive title — and the
commonplace, is not peculiar to religion. Every form
of activity, art, learning or sport, has its skiUed enthu
siasts, and its average followers who without attaining
marked success still make use of it. These average
foUowers must not be confused with the indifferent, nor
must we confuse the enthusiasts with the professionals.
As a general rule the professional class is recruited from
the ranks of the skilful and enthusiastic, but it never
includes aU the skUled, and, especiaUy if the professional
class is large, it will include some who are not more than
average. There is often a good deal of difference

THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE 153
between the skiU of a professional and that of a devoted
amateur. Their way of looking at a subject is also
somewhat different. The narrow tendency to regard
music as the only thing worth living for is perhaps more
common among enthusiastic amateurs than among
those who make their living by the art.
As early as S. Ignatius' letters we hear of people who
had consecrated their Uves to religious pursuits, and yet
were not clergy. We hear of them again in TertuUian
at the end of the second century. In the third century
we find sects of earnest people who are anxious to
forbid aU second marriages, flight in persecution, the
restoration of the faUen, anything which seems to come
short of the very highest ideal. Some of them are
ready to leave the Church on this ground. The bishops
resist them, not because the bishops are especiaUy
wise men, but because they are officials and have learnt
that the body is made of common people and exists for
common people. In the second century controversies
the bishops were mainly right, but here, nevertheless,
we may see the coming danger, when the bishops and
the clergy wiU stand for religious worldliness and easy-
goingness. Then ' the devout ' wiU be wanted in their
turn. After the third century there are no new schisms on
this ground. ' The devout ' have found a life for them
selves. Monasticism has begun. The head of the
monastery is not a bishop, nor even a priest, but an
abbot. The monks are not priests. S. Jerome regards
such office as inconsistent with his monastic caUing.
They are laymen or women who have given themselves
up to a purely religious hfe, and to purely religious
pursuits. Monasticism does not, of course, include aU
the devout, but it is the organised expression of the

154 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
devout spirit which others foUow according to their
opportunities. The clergy stand somewhat apart from this move
ment. They do not very weU understand it, and some
times they do not altogether sympathise with it. They
have, however, learnt to realise that there are people
who have needs which others do not feel, and that room
must be left for them. They claim a certain power of
oversight which they do not exercise very efficiently,
and they provide the clergy necessary for the sacra
mental services.
This condition lasts through the Middle Ages. It
may not be a very good way of organising the two sides
of life. It may have been mixed with many abuses,
yet it did enable each to do its own work, and give its
own help. There was hardly any religious revival in
the Middle Ages which was not first a Monastic Reforma
tion. Let us admit that ' the devout ' had separated
themselves too far from common life. Perhaps in the
Dark Ages that may have been necessary if devotion
was not to be altogether overwhelmed. But in the
thirteenth century, the objection was more obvious.
Then came the friar movement. The devout leave
their seclusion. They come into the towns ; they range
the country-side. With their fervour they quicken the
too complacent worldliness which has beset the normal
organisation. In Ireland things took a different course. The bishop
was not backed by the solid weight of the municipium,
whUe the abbot had the support of his monastery, and
the Irish monastery was a much bigger affair than its
continental equivalent. Thus it came to pass that
in Ireland Church authority was taken up by the
abbot, who kept ' episcopal chaplains ' to perform the

THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE 155
necessary episcopal functions — ordination and con
firmation. In this summary I have tried so far as might be to
avoid aU controversial and aU doctrinal questions. I
want only to call attention to two leading points, and to
the relation between them.
(1) From the second century to the Reformation we
find a continuous, official, ministry. In application to
different circumstances, it undergoes a good deal of
modification, but except in Ireland it is always respon
sible for the formal machinery of the Church system.
Always, and this time without any exception, it is
responsible for the continuous sacramental life other
than baptism, and even that is left mostly in its hands.
(2) This official system has, like all systems, a marked
tendency to extend its activities, to absorb aU functions
into itself. In the third century, the agape drops out
because it was not a clerical service. Towards the
close of the fourth, the private ' offices,' the non-
sacramental services of psalms, Scripture reading and
the like, are brought into Church ; they become clerical
sendees, though the clergy never took complete posses
sion of them. Most momentous of all, the clergy drew
in to themselves the right of preaching, but this also
they never completely monopolised.
Always alongside of the official there is another class,
representing, not the normal form of Church life, but
rather its exceptional enthusiasm, intensity, fervour of
devotion. The two systems are in an uncertain rela
tion. Sometimes the one, sometimes the other, gains
a predominance which is unhealthy, for both are, as
sides of Christianity, incomplete in themselves. If the
officials are subject to worldliness, the devout are
subject to fanaticism, to a narrow, exclusive ' religious-

156 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
ness.' Yet, not without a good deal of friction, they
work out a progressive result.
I have so far omitted all reference to the first century.
It is the most important period of all ; perhaps many
of my readers may think it the only important one. I
have left it out, because it is not only a period fuU of
controversy, but of ' critical ' controversy in the techni
cal sense, and of technical criticism any writer must
keep clear, unless, as a fuUy qualified expert, he is
prepared to deal at length with aU the diverse and
unsettled theories. Even if I were qualified, the results
would only be confusing. We are at present looking
for broad principles such as the plain and untechnical
person can appreciate.
There is a further difficulty in treating the first
century. For the earlier part in S. Paul's letters
we have a reasonable quantity of evidence, though
on technical points of ecclesiastical system it is
difficult to interpret. For the last thirty years we
have as nearly as possible no evidence at aU. It is
exceedingly easy to make guess-work reconstructions,
but we cannot reaUy interpret our materials except by
trying how far they do or do not fit in with principles
which we have learnt to recognise elsewhere.
This is aU I shall attempt to do. It is quite evident
that in these early Churches, there were no ' Bishops '
in our sense of the term. That general ' oversight ' of
the community as a whole, which in later develop
ment constituted the central responsibUity of the
bishop, at this time remained with the Apostle. S.
Luke, however, teUs us that there were presbyters,
whom S. Paul in Acts xx. 28 calls ' bishops,' though in
his early letters S. Paul never alludes to them unless
we may assume that they are the ' teachers ' of Gal. v.

THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE 157
6 and elsewhere. The Churches were simmering with
the joyous excitement of their new-found faith. There
is sufficient evidence that the forms of worship were
steadUy maintained, but men were being most swayed
by the exercise of great and sometimes miraculous
gifts or charismata — healings, tongues, prophecy. Of
these, therefore, S. Paul has a great deal to say.
S. Paul's first written reference to ' bishops ' (presby
ters) is in Philippians. In the Pastoral Epistles, now
that the end approaches, it is the permanent ministry,
its qualifications and right functioning which occupy
his mind. The ' charismatic ministry ' was not a
regular order. Its members were not ' ordained.'
They were highly gifted individuals, and the gift in the
man was its own witness, though its exercise caUed for
some regulation.
If now I am to come to Reformation and Post-
Reformation times, I am again involving myself in
perU of further controversy. Theological controversy
is inevitable, for we must find out what we mean, what
we beheve, what we need, and why it is meant, believed,
needed. Critical controversies are a very tangled
business. Historical controversies are fuU of bitter
ness, and of them I feel inclined to say that those
who dig in graveyards find corpses.
For my own part I have entered this business as a
learner. The Non-Conformists taught me to see the
importance of certain principles which are too easUy
taken for granted, taught me to see that those principles
also manifested themselves in forms of very various
kinds. When I looked for them in history, they seemed
to me to throw a great deal of light on events, notably
on the growth and influence of the Religious Life, which
had not otherwise shown much meaning. I want to

158 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
apply it to our own more recent history, and see if it
wiU not explain to us something of the position in which
we stand to-day. The interpretation will of course be
my own ; it wiU be what I seem to myself to have
learnt. Very many people wiU differ from my interpre
tation strongly. I do not ask them not to be critical ;
I do ask them not to be controversial. I ask them
to take my interpretation as a suggestion ; to consider
whether it does not throw some light on what has
happened. I propose then to consider chiefly the Reformation
in England, not because it is more important than any
other, but because in England all the different ideas
met in their most confusing shapes, and because it
was out of that unsettled English confusion that our
present situation has mainly arisen.
We wiU say that the Enghsh Reformation began
under Henry VIII. Its professed intention was to
retain the essential Catholic position, but to get rid of
abuses. In the main this was always its ideal, though
of course men had from time to time very different
ideas of what should be recognised as abuse. Its first
step was to get rid of the papal authority. The
essentiaUy Catholic system was that of the bishop and
parish, and this was retained without material altera
tion ; but the second step was to remove aU the
' voluntary ' part of the system. Monasteries, friaries,
chantries, were aU swept away together. We are not
here concerned with the motives, or with the manner,
but only with some of the consequences, of what was
done. (i) The severing of the papal connection was not so
startling a change as we, with our experience of modern
Romanism, are apt to think. Ever since the Council of

THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE 159
Constance, and even before that, the idea had been
occasionally talked about, but its actual result was to
throw the Church entirely into the hands of the king,
and this was a very serious matter. We know from
history that if the State attacks religion, she does so at
her perU. If, however, the State tries with more
cunning to manipulate religion to its own ends, I have
admitted that the Episcopalian system, just by virtue
of its centralisation, provides an easy mark. The
State fuUy realised its opportunities. AU authority
for the diocese was concentrated in the bishop alone.
AU parish authority was concentrated in the parish
priest. The State recognised nothing but the bishops
taken singly. The law defended the freehold of the
rector as a property. AU common Church activity was
suppressed and in this way paralysed. The laity came
in nowhere save that as individuals their rights were
also made legal. The clergy who lived amongst the
laity and knew their mind had no effective voice in any
matter of common policy. The bishop, oppressed with
legal forms and without any solid Church feeling
behind him, was almost helpless before the independ
ence of the parish. This mingling of autocracies, each
absolute and isolated in its own sphere, and helpless
outside of it, is another form of Episcopacy, the Epis
copacy of legalism. It cannot be caUed a very desirable
form ; it is certainly not the only one, even among
Anghcan Churches, though its root idea has very deeply
coloured the Churches which are not bound by the
restrictions of the English establishment.
The repudiation of the papacy facilitated, though it
was not the sole cause of, this change. The Pope had
been a recognised part of the Church system, but he
was outside the king's reach, and in a number of cases

160 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
the bishops had been able to shelter themselves behind
him. I need not discuss, I do not deny, how much he
abused his office. I only point out that the state
absolutism was never complete so long as that power
existed. (2) The State had therefore brought the official
religious system under its control, and it did so all the
more completely by destroying its rivals. The official
Church had never loved the friars, the chantries, the
monasteries, and it acquiesced in their departure. The
State now went on to put this official system in entire
possession of everything. Here was the Act of Uni
formity. Here was the book it prescribed. Nobody
must use any other. Everybody must go to the official
parish church where it was used on pain of certain
fines, and nobody must go anywhere else under pains
stiU more drastic. No layman might preach. In the
hands of the State, the triumph of the official system
was complete.
Of course such Act-of-Parliament-religion was a fore
doomed failure. The Church officials themselves were
restless and uneasy over it. Especially at a time of
theological unsettlement there were many who objected
to the Prayer Book on theory ; there were sure to be
many to whose spiritual needs it did not correspond.
But it was the working of the system as a whole, its
presentment rather as a policy than a belief or even a
religion which repeUed the most earnest. Those whom
I called ' the devout,' those who sometimes caUed
themselves ' the godly ' or the ' saints,' were drawn off
into other movements.
The situation was the more difficult because the
official Church did not know her own ground. The
principle indeed was clear — the whole Catholic faith as

THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE 161
it had been set forth in Scripture, interpreted and main
tained by the Church in all time, by the early Church,
by the undivided Church, freed from those elements
which had not always been held, which were accretions
or additions. But how in detaU were these to be
distinguished in a time of so much stress and imperfect
knowledge ? Would it not be simpler to let aU idea of
a continuous Church faith go, and to be content with
individual experience and the obviously scriptural ?
The Church varied, she compromised, she said one
thing and she said another. There is a great deal of
justification for saying she had no ground, that she was
nothing but a compromise. Stephen Gardiner, and
many more who began by accepting her principle, con
cluded that if one means to be a Catholic at all, one
must take the whole present condition. He accepted
the papacy. Nevertheless, the. conclusion was unjust.
The Church had chosen a principle, though she had
no clear perception of what it led to. Cranmer, Jewel,
Hooker, Andrewes, represent a steady and continuous
effort to learn its meaning. Even Cranmer, who was
the least consistent, held fast to these elements of
episcopacy, an episcopaUy ordained priesthood and
priestly consecration. Though in the Second Prayer
Book he ' pared it to the quick,' — reduced the Catholic
system to its barest elements, — under the utmost pres
sure of the government he refused to go further.
Certainly the Church was deplorably weak. Her
position was as yet too indefinite to arouse enthusiasm.
If the State protection had not held the doors fast, it
is difficult to see how the system could have kept
together tiU it had got itself formulated, but the Church
had to pay a heavy price for the protection. The State,
of course, did not want a Church ' theological ' position.
L

162 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
To politicians positive theological convictions are ex
ceedingly inconvenient, but they had to acquiesce in
the theological effort. Common sense told them that
the Church could not exist without principles, but
politicians and lawyers have never ceased to scoff at
Church doctrine from that day to this.
The Church therefore suffered from State protection,
not merely from the worldliness and greed of courtiers,
for this was an accident of the times which she has
grown out of ; not merely from the disastrous stifling
of her true life, for that she might have broken through.
She suffered most of all from the fact that in studying
her own faith she was forced to treat it as a policy.
Every casual abuse of the Church courts, every iota of
the system as it stood, must be defended. It was
impossible for her to reconcUe anything, or to ask if
the two systems could not be combined. She meant
to defend Episcopalianism, she was reaUy defending
legalist Episcopalianism, and legalism deals exclusively
in positive right and wrong. It may admit the dis
cussion of when is a thing right, but it thinks very little
of the qualifying how far. It considers qualifying
circumstances, but it is very soon wearied by qualified
principles. I have been quite frank about the failures of Epis
copalianism, perhaps I have won my right to criticise
its opponents who were certainly not very helpful.
The}' had come by a system of their own much earlier,
and a system much more clear-cut than the Church
ever made hers. They meant to have it, and to have
it entire. Anything else was the Scarlet Woman, and
dregs of Rome, and the abomination of idolatry, and
many more things. They defied the government and
all its works. Religion belonged to religious people,

THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE 163
and a government was only tolerable when it would
submit to the teaching of religious people.
The State and its Church seemed to be winning their
way. There was a furious explosion, and the religious
won. Rupert and the Cavaliers were no match for the
deadly earnestness of the psalm-singers. Now was the
time for the kingdom of righteousness to be established
by religious men. It was honestly attempted, but of
the upshot there is no dispute. The nation made up
its mind, almost as. one man, that anything, even
Charles II. , was better than this. What does it mean ?
Professor Gardiner said the nation was not worthy of
it. I venture to offer another reading. I am afraid
my brethren wiU not like it, but I have a good hope
they wUl see its significance.
These intensely devout, earnest, religious men made
the fatal mistake to which the speciaUy able and skilful
exponents of any mystery are always liable. To use
the educational type I have used once before, our
professors of learning and culture imagine that theirs
is the one true way, by which aU, learned and common,
must go. They can very rarely understand that the
common man's use of a thing is quite different to that
of the clever man. In result, the professor builds up
theories, and the common man laughs at them. Once
his last examination is over, the common man turns
with relief to be practical, energetic, and common-sense.
We are partly beginning to realise this.
' The person who has no grip on scholarship is an
inteUectual outsider.' No, he is not. If only he were
shown how to use the powers he has got, he is often a
person of quite reasonable intelligence.
' Religion is for the religious people.' May be it is ;
but well do I know and firmly believe that the love of

164 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
God and faith in God are just one thing, equaUy possible
and equaUy needed for all men alike. ' The man who is
not rehgious is irrehgious and profane.' He is nothing
of the sort, but if you identify the love of God with
' religiousness,' if therefore you try to force the common
man along the paths of the devout, irreligious and
profane he wiU be. The reign of Charles II. was the
inevitable outcome of the Commonwealth.
After the restoration, the Cavalier party triumphed.
It was a party triumph. Episcopalianism was no more
necessarily a belief than ever, but it was the banner of
the victory. Certainly this was not the time for an
examination and reconciliation of principles. There
was another Act of Uniformity, just as there was a
Five Mile Act. From that day to this, the separation
has gone on. The only men who have ever shown a
real theological conception of the necessary relation of
the two sides of Church life were the two Wesleys. They
conceived of an organised band of the sincerely devout,
maintaining their devoutness by use of a common
Method, but using the sacramental Church system.
This had its great possibUities, but it was not possible
at the time on either side. The Church was stiU bound
and tied by her system of legalist officialism, and would
not or could not look beyond it. The members of
Wesley's fraternity did not understand it or care about
it. John Wesley himself was not consistent. The plain
fact is, the Methodist as weU as the Churchmen f aUed to
see that the Church was more than a legal body as
distinct from others which were doubtfuUy legal. No
one adequately appreciated the true force of the sacra
mental question.
In process of time the Church has grown out of a
great many of her defects. By God's mercy there has

THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE 165
been given to it a strong spiritual life, but it is impossible
to deny that many evils remain. Of the present posi
tion of Anglicanism I should like to say something later.
These historical reviews may seem very discouraging.
There were good earnest men on both sides. How is
it that they understood one another so little ? It all
looks so unreasonable. I do not pretend to answer
such questions adequately, but I have a great behef
that the course of history is just the story of God's
way of working out His own purpose. I do not think
this belief should throw us back on ' whatever is, is
right,' but it might imply ' whatever was, was right.'
Here we have two tremendous principles, so different
and yet, as I believe, so necessary to one another. If
we, wilful, thick-headed chUdren of men were ever to
learn what God meant by them, and the relation which
exists between them, may it not have been the wisest
and therefore the most loving thing, to let us develop
each of the two separately tiU we had really learnt
what each could do for us, and also the inherent weak
ness of each without its feUow, till we had learnt how
impossible it was to do justice even to that gift we had
received without other gifts for which we must still
search ? We need not believe that God left Himself
without witness, because He now caUeth men every
where to repent. We need not believe that the six
teenth century, nor the seventeenth, was a world with
out God, nor should we believe that God was a partisan
of one side or the other, Who had yet failed to secure
the triumph of His own views. May it not be for us
He has prepared some better thing, that they without
us should not be made complete ?

CHAPTER IX.
THE RELATION OF PRINCIPLES.
So far I have professed to deal with different sides of
our subject — in the first part with the religious, and
in this second part with the ecclesiastical, life. In the
last two chapters, I have dealt with different views of
those sides — in Chapter VII. with the necessity of Free
dom and in Chapter VIII. with the idea of Episcopacy.
What is, however, a difference has under modern con
ditions become a separation, so wide that I felt sure I
should not be able to get those who were normally
in opposition to realise the importance of that part on
which I wanted to insist unless I showed it in relation
to their own part. I have therefore already anticipated
much of what I want to say here. This relation of
principles is, however, so entirely the substance of aU
that is worth saying that I must try to present it by
itself, although it may involve some repetition which
to the abler among my readers may be needless.
(i) I have tried to show that it was the sacramental
system, rather than episcopal government, which con
stituted the most central and positive difference
between us. I tried also to explain why the apparent
formalism of the sacraments seemed to us so necessary
to the maintenance of the evangelic faith in Christ.
(2) In deahng next with the ecclesiastical system, in

THE RELATION OF PRINCIPLES 167
the Ught of what I took to be the central principle of
Non-Conformity, I explained what I believed myself
to have found in history — that there always had been
from the beginning a formal, permanent, official system,
and it was this system which appealed most to the
common man, on which he could rest. The system
itself recognised that and protected his rights. There
had almost always been in addition a voluntary or free
system, which was the spontaneous creation of men of
the highest devotional temperament. From its very
nature it was not a permanent system ; it had a great
variety of forms. The two systems, though very
necessary to one another, were apt to develop a certain
friction. Sometimes the free system claimed to rule
everything. When it succeeded, it fell into sancti
moniousness, and the common man was driven into
irreligiousness. Sometimes the official system gained
an exclusive control. When it succeeded it fell into
worldliness, and the devout man was very often driven
into schism.
We have then before us three pairs of factors, which
I wiU tabulate :
In human temperament : the common — the de
vout.
In the Church system : the official— the free.
In religious practice : the sacramental — the non-
sacramental.
If now we are to make any synthesis between the
two principles, we might begin with any one of
the three pairs of applications. The last two, how
ever, both lead to our deadlock. Episcopalians are
not wUUng to admit the existence of a " free "
ministry : Non-Conformists refuse to admit the need

168 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
of " sacramentalism," or the sacramental powers of
an official ministry.
I wUl begin therefore with the first, and here also
are serious difficulties or confusions to be met.
{a) In the first place we have to recognise that the
proposed distinctions, so far as they relate to men, are
comparative only ; so far as they relate to systems they
are tendencies only. Considering men, there is no
such thing as an exclusively " common man," and there
is no such thing as an exclusively " devout man."
Temperament — so far as it goes — divides us, but for
tunately it does not go half so far as we think. The
devoutness of the most devout rests upon the essen
tiaUy common basis. The formalism of the common
man, if it is not to be the formalism of death, has its
expression, its expansion, in devoutness. A positive
division between the two is sheer ruin both for the
individual and for the Church.
(b) My identification of the official with the sacra
mental will, I think, be admitted by Non-Conformists.
They wiU entirely deny my claim to identify it with that
which belongs especiaUy to the common man. They
feel as strongly as I do that Christianity is a faith for
common men, yes for sinners. If they believed that
Episcopalianism was the simple man's belief, they
would be Episcopalians too. I welcome that denial.
I could not have caUed them my brothers, save in the
conviction that we here are at one. I would remind
them, however, that they wiU not resent my contention
one whit more strongly than my Catholic and Episco
palian brethren wiU resent my suggestion that the
" free " system of Non-Conformity is that of the de
vout. Nevertheless I maintain my ground under the
reservation given — I am speaking of tendencies, of the

THE RELATION OF PRINCIPLES 169
distinctive idea, rather than of an exclusive character.
So far as the Non-Conformist contention is concerned,
I have already shown my reasons, but I think they will
be easier to foUow if I take the two together.
The second confusion with which I must deal is of a
much more subtle kind than the first. It lies at the
root of the resentment felt by Non-Conformists and
Churchmen alike. We are aU so conscious of the mis
chief and foUy of splitting up our Christianity that no
one wiU admit he does it. No Churchman wUl admit
that he is a formalist or unspiritual or indevout, or that
his system gives any encouragement to such defects.
No Non-Conformist will admit that he thinks himself
above the common man, or that his system is not made
for the common man.
I accept these repudiations on both sides as per
fectly genuine, but after all we can only repudiate what
we are not conscious of doing, and what we are conscious
that we do not mean to do. We are conscious of a
common aim, ideal, or purpose, but it stiU remains for
us to ask very earnestly and criticaUy whether our
system does imply what we recognise it ought to imply.
I have made frank confession of the defects which I
think lie on our side. I trust I have been neither bitter
nor contemptuous in charging defects upon others. It
is the difference between the kinds of defects in each
case which seem to me so significant.
I want to start from that temperamental difference
of the devout and common man. Are we so entirely
free from the evU of dividing or splitting them asunder ?
Professor Harnack approaches the history of Chris
tianity from the side of modern German Protestantism
without betraying any consciousness of those difficulties
which the more evangelistic of his feUow-countrymen

170 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
feel so acutely. In his History of Dogma (vol. iv. c. iv.
Eng. Trans.) he reminds us that we must not only study
the development of Christian thought, we must also
watch the growth of Christianity of the second rank,
that of the common and ignorant men, who brought
with them so large a leaven of their heathen ideas and
superstitions. I only suggest that we must not merely
watch, we must understand, this growth.
In the first place, Professor Harnack's summary
sounds a little too hke, " This people which knoweth
not the law is accursed," to be quite satisfying. In our
Lord's day there was a Judaism of the multitude, which
probably contained much superstition, and there was a
Judaism of the thoroughly religious, — Scribes and
Pharisees, — as well as the broad and enlightened
Judaism of the Sadducees. " The reUgion of the com
mon man, — of the ignorant, — the religion of the car
penter," were the taunts all enUghtened heathen threw
at Christianity itself from the beginning.
I am not denying that the common Christianity was
superstitious, but if the modern mind has learnt any
thing from the study of Comparative Religions, has it
not learnt that the superstitions of the heathen are the
expressions of human cravings and needs which have
not yet found their proper satisfaction ? If, for
instance, sacramental belief seems very like the idolatry
and magic of heathenism, may it not be that it is so just
because the sacrament is the God-given answer thereto ?
If not, then we may be admitting that the very human
feelings which led to those pathetic results were not
merely wrong in the gratification they found, but
absolutely wrong and abortive in themselves.
I may admit that there were superstitious uses and
ideas, but even here the balance is not aU on one side.

THE RELATION OF PRINCIPLES 171
There were among the heathen a mass of ignorant
idolaters, but God did mean something to them. The
philosophers had many profound ideas, but it was not
clear that the Unknowable Infinite meant anything.
The ChiUasm of the early Christians was a crude behef ;
was it altogether a false belief ? Christ was at least so
much of a reality that men became martyrs gladly.
And this reality was not always a prominent feature
of inteUectualism, Gnostic or other. When we have
taken out of our Christianity all its crudeness, its
miracles, its magic, its super-naturalism, is there any
thing real left except the moralist conclusion that it is
nice to be nice ? The " niceness " of the spirituaUy
nice person is, I admit, very nice, but the niceness of
the common person is as crude as ever. The common
person sought", we believed Christianity offered us,
something real which could hft us out of ourselves.
This very enlightened Christianity represents the
enlightenment of the enlightened.
The instincts which are purely human cannot be so
lightly set aside without grave perU, not only to the
common man, but to those who are most tempted to
think themselves superior. Christianity presents itself
in formal, material facts, — the Birth, Passion, Death,
Resurrection and Ascension of Christ. A man may
grow out of, or faU out of these, by faUing — or growing —
into self-satisfaction or self-sufficiency, but there is
nothing else beyond or above to which he can grow.
Search the universe from end to end, in nature, or in
history, God you wiU not find ; but, if you keep a mind
at all, two things only you wiU find to live by — Christ
and yourself.
With Christ, all life through, you may grow into the
joy, the understanding, the trust of Christ's life and

172 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
suffering, victory and triumph ; but only if conscious of
weakness and nothingness, you can believe that just
that weakness is in Christ exalted and just that nothing
ness has by Him been filled. And it is the historic Jesus
Christ, Who is the same yesterday and to-day and for
ever, — the same to men of aU capacities, not less my
Saviour because I understand so little than of the saint
who can understand so much.
A spiritual life, rightly growing in humility and trust,
is therefore possible for us just because it rests upon the
coming of Christ, not as some natural result of our
human effort, thought, feeling, but as the super
natural gift of God Himself. We can make so much of
it just because we can make so little of it. It lifts us
above ourselves, just because it has a reality indepen
dent of our making. But if we realise that, my ques
tion still remains. Is this whole idea now gone from
our daily life ? If thought and feeling — helped by
imaginative memory — reign as the sole road of spiritual
attainment, whatever may have been the case once, it
is woe to the dull and feeble, woe to the common man,
woe to all those who are weak in these mighty and
redeeming powers.
The Church has maintained and still maintains that
there is for us to-day equally a super-natural Presence
of Christ, which is a gift and super-natural in so far
that it is not a result consequent upon any state of ours.
Our faith and our spiritual effort are conditions of the
appreciation, assimilation, use, of what is given ; they
are not conditions of the Presence itself.
Whatever is given to human experience, bound in
time and place, must, however, imply some human
agency. That is true even of the incarnation and the
atonement, for Jesus Christ is " born of the Virgin

THE RELATION OF PRINCIPLES 173
Mary," and " suffers under Pontius Pilate " at the
hands of these particular soldiers. But the human act
supplies only the occasion ; it qualifies or determines
the time or place ; it does not condition the nature of
what is done. The Virgin Mary does not add her holi
ness to that of the Only Begotten Son of God ; nor does
PUate add anything to the saving virtue of the Cross.
So also it is of the priest. As he brings nothing of
his own, it is necessary only that he should have been
appointed as God's agent of time and place. To this
the form of appointment bears witness. The bishop
in ordaining him is merely an agent in handing to the
priest that one power which he is to exercise, and the
power of giving that power is one which the bishop in
his turn received. From first to last, the agency not
less than the result, everything witnesses to the act and
gift of God. There may be other things which make
the priest too great a power in the Christian life, but
this by itself makes him a very small thing, almost
without personahty or independence.
Here then is a single uniform idea. We can escape
from it in three ways.
(1) We can deny that, since the Ascension, there is
any Presence of Christ other than we are capable of
making for ourselves when we wiU. If, however, men
have so great a capacity of reaching to God, it does not
appear why they should at any time have needed any
thing else.
(2) We may allow there is a Presence here, but that
it is made by each communicant for himself. That,
however, is contrary to the idea of a " gift," which
must come to us as God's act and not ours. Further,
it implies almost inevitably that the gift is conditioned
by degrees of worthiness or capacity to attain. But

174 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
Presence, in all ordinary use of the term, is not of
degree. (3) There are, I believe, some who accept the prin
ciple of a Real Presence as we do, but contend that the
power to consecrate is given by the congregation to one
whom it chooses as its representatives. But this view
has the same inconsistency as the last. We are speak
ing of a certain Presence of God, which is the gift of
His tenderness alike to the individual and to the
Church. It cannot therefore be made by our act
either individuaUy or collectively.
In effect, even where men have for a time separated
the two, the belief in a real sacramental Presence and
gift and the belief in a sacramental Episcopacy have
by an inexorable human logic always gone together.
Wherever the Episcopal ministry has been rejected, the
sacramental belief has failed. Wherever belief in a
sacramental gift has been weakened, Episcopacy has
been defended as a convenience or compromised as a
question of minor importance.
On our side then the question of sacraments is the
primary question at issue. The question of Episcopacy
is merely a necessary factor of the sacramental position.
Why we hold sacraments to be so necessary I explained
in more detail in my first part, but I thought it worth
while to review the argument that we might have its
real meaning before our minds now that we were con
sidering the ecclesiastical side. Strongly as Non-
Conformists may differ from us on the sacramental
question, I believe the question of Episcopal rule is
that with which their minds are more concerned. I
must try therefore to explain what I take to be the
relation between the Episcopacy of grace and the
Episcopacy of rule, how far each goes and how far

THE RELATION OF PRINCIPLES 175
either can be limited. That wiU depend on our idea
of the position of the sacramental sphere in the general
Ufe of the Church. I wUl try to discuss the main prin
ciples of the relation in this chapter, leaving the prac
tical working out for the next. It wiU perhaps help to
clear away some confusions, if I take certain much
discussed points first.
(1) The Church distinguishes very clearly between
the method of appointing or selecting her clergy, and
the gift of the powers they are to exercise. Appoint
ment belongs to the Church " order," the general life
of the Church. Since the clergy are to minister to the
Church, they are selected by her or by someone who
acts on her behalf. The methods employed are almost
infinitely varied.
OriginaUy the bishop was chosen by the whole
Church of which he was the pastor. When the diocese
increased, he was chosen by the clergy of whom he was
the leader. In England the formal election is made by
the Cathedral clergy, who represent the original body
of the clergy of the diocese, not assigned to parishes.
In aU the more modern Churches he is appointed by
the representative diocesan synod. In some cases the
bishops of the province or district claimed a right to
appoint, since the province formed one whole Church.
In England and many other countries, the king " nomi
nates," though he does not appoint, acting as the
representative layman of the National Church.
In general it is left to the bishop to choose the
clergy, but of old, at least in some cases, they were
chosen by the people. The superior of a Roman
Order has, I believe, a recognised right to put forward
members of his community for ordination within the
Community.

176 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
WhUe appointment is so varied in its methods, there
has never at any time of which we have real knowledge
been any change in the rule that a bishop becomes a
bishop by being consecrated by bishops, and a priest
becomes a priest by being ordained by a bishop. On
a weU-known occasion a certain person was appointed
bishop by what was afterwards held to be an invalid
procedure, and he was consecrated. The diocese re
fused to accept him, and he never in fact entered his
diocese. Having been consecrated, however, no one
questioned that he was a bishop, and on some occasions
elsewhere he so acted. SimUarly, ' assistant-bishops '
are bishops in the fuU sense of the word, but they have
no ruling authority at aU. In all ways, therefore, the
sacramental power, the right to exercise it, and the
authority of rule must be kept as separate questions.
Episcopacy of necessity only requires the first.
(2) One of the most difficult questions we have to
meet is in the recognition of the ' validity ' of one
another's ministry. The main subject I want to work
out in this second part is the way in which such a recog
nition could come about. It is naturaUy a very painful
subject, and, unless we are clear about the points
involved, it may end in a mere wrangle. Unfortun
ately, through our not having recognised that the
spiritual question of the sacrament was different from
the question of rule and order, and that the former was
the reaUy fundamental, the question has become very
tangled indeed. In studying Non-Conformity from
without, I ventured to suggest that Non-Conformists
seem to us not quite clear as to which of two positions
they did mean to take up. Here I think the blame of
the confusion lies with us. Though, to my mind at
least, the Church position is clear enough, we have

THE RELATION OF PRINCIPLES 177
certainly not been clear about it, nor made ourselves
understood. One very real difficulty to an open-minded com
prehension of one another's position, I should be very
glad if we could clear away at the start. Suppose an
Episcopahan holds that Episcopacy was constituted as
a divinely ordered centre of authority for the Church,
it wiU foUow that whUe the Non-Episcopalians can
recognise an Episcopalian ministry as good for those
whom it suits, the Episcopalian could only regard the
Non-Episcopalian ministry as a breach of God's order.
Whether there is such a divine order, is a matter of fair
discussion. The Episcopalian may be quite wrong, but
what is gained by caUing him ' narrow-minded ' ?
Many, or aU, doctors hold that the infection of malaria
is communicated only by the bite of an anopheles
mosquito. I have heard colonists assert their con
viction that there are other ways of infection. That
also is a question for fair discussion, but I never heard
anyone try to settle it by saying that the doctors were
narrow-minded. May I not ask that a reasoned posi
tion shaU be met by reason and not by epithets ? I
ask this with the better claim, because that position,
which many Episcopalians do take up, does not repre
sent a line which I mean to press.
It seems to me that, for want of a clear distinction
between sacraments and order, the question has become
involved through a further confusion between the words
' vahd,' ' right ' and ' effective.' Now, if at a private
meeting a man insists on speaking against the will of
the chairman, he has no ' right ' to do so, but his
remarks may be very ' effective ' all the same. There
would be no sense in saying that his remarks were
' invalid,' though a resolution he proposed very weU
M

178 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
might be. Valid is a legal word to be used with exacti
tude. A vote, a wiU, a deed, an Act of ParUament,
may be ineffective, because nobody carries them out,
and they may be wrong because nobody ought to carry
them out, and yet they are valid, nor is their validity
affected by questions of Tightness and effectiveness.
These distinctions are of importance. Episcopalians,
even if they are not always conscious of it, are thinking
primarily of sacraments. The Non-Conformists are
thinking primarily of preaching. In what sense then
are we asked to recognise the Non-Conformist ministry ?
I certainly do not deny, and I have never met any
Episcopalian who denied, that their preaching was
effective in bringing souls to the love of God. Whether
it is as effective as ours I do not know and I have no
desire to judge. I hope it is much more effective,
though I still think it loses a certain amount of effective
ness through the absence of sacramental presentment.
But if I am to admit that the Non-Conformist
ministry is as valid as our own, I must assign to it a
power which its own members disclaim. So far as this
goes, therefore, Episcopalians admit the effectiveness
which Non-Conformists claim for their ministry. The
Non-Conformists do not admit the validity speciaUy
claimed by the Episcopalian ministry.
(3) The question whether bishops are necessary to
the esse or to the bene esse of a church is sometimes
discussed among Episcopalians. I do not think Non-
Conformists feel much concerned, yet I think it is
worth discussing here because it throws a good deal of
light on that distinction between the two sides of sacra
ment and government which Episcopalians as weU as
Non-Conformists are so apt to confuse.
In regard to the sacraments, aU " Catholics ' would

THE RELATION OF PRINCIPLES 179
maintain unhesitatingly that Episcopal ordination for
priests was a necessity of any valid consecration of the
Presence of Christ, and valid sacraments are necessary
to the being of a Church.
Many would say that Episcopal government was also
a necessity of the Church. I do not, however, think
this can be consistently maintained. Thus, we might
feel that the old Irish Church where the abbot ruled
the bishop, or some unhappy parish where the squire
ruled the rector, was in a very wrong state, but so long
as the sacraments were ' duly ministered in all things
that are of necessity requisite to the same,' we should
not deny that it was a Church.
The words esse and bene esse describe very weU the
difference between validity and effectiveness. Esse, —
the thing is so or it is not. The ordinations of a bishop
are quite clear acts ; they are valid. They do give a
priest power to do this thing. And the consecration
is valid ; it does create this presence. Bene,— it is more
or less well. Episcopal government has certain advan
tages ; it is more or less effective. In any case, effec
tiveness has nothing to do with the ' historic ' nature
of the episcopate, for the advantages of such rule will
not be very different from those of a Lutheran ' superin-
tendency,' or a Methodist episcopacy.
As a matter of fact the Church has dealt with these
two sides very differently. The rule of the bishop has
been qualified in a multitude of ways. First, it has
been qualified from above. The bishop must keep the
canons or rules of the synod of his province. Very
often it has been qualified in various degrees by the
authority of superior bishops — of the Bishop of Rome,
of the patriarchs, archbishops and so forth. Secondly,
it has been qualified, also in various degrees, from

180 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
below, by the rights of the people and the clergy. The
Church never regarded the bishop as a sole unquestioned
autocrat in his own right. So far as that idea has
obtained amongst us, it is a result of our peculiar
' legalism.' As regards the sacramental side of the office, the
Church has never varied one particle. A valid sacra
mental Presence in communion can be consecrated only
by one ordained thereto, and he can be ordained only by
one — or several — who have received that special power
of ordination by those who had received it before them.
This rule, I might say, is recognised by — very nearly —
everybody, for Non-Episcopalians, rejecting the rule,
have always in the end, if not at first, rejected also the
idea of ' validity ' in the sacrament.
(4) In a paragraph above we considered validity
and effectiveness, but I left the term right for further
consideration, because it was not merely the most
important, but the most complex. I do not think
one can give it a simple answer. With it I will take
the difficult words, Church and schism, which are much
simpler. Certainly I, with all Episcopalians, hold valid sacra
ments to be a necessity of the Church. Nothing can be
a Church without them, and I hold this for two reasons.
First, I hold this reality to be an indispensable spiritual
need of the Christian faith. I have given my grounds
for that very fuUy. But there is a second reason. If
we look at our mental processes, theories, observations,
inferences, on any subject, we may say : ' aU this mental
activity imphes a reality, which is beyond itself, prior
to itself. Our thinking implies something thought
about.' We might say with the witty man, that
reahty is so necessary to us that " if it did not exist we

THE RELATION OF PRINCIPLES 181
should have to invent it.' That, of course, is only a
joke, for we have to recognise that it is of the very
essence of reality that we cannot invent it. We must
seek it, and learn it. This, which is the truth of all
science, is the truth likewise of the Incarnation and of
the Sacrament. Human need is the ground of their
preciousness, but human need is not the ground of
their being. They are, only because God makes them
so. Holding this view of their necessity, I could not
consistently admit that Non-Conformist bodies were
Churches. Further, to admit that the Non-Conformist bodies
were Churches would be to admit there could be
several Churches of Christ in one place, and this would
be to give up the hope of unity.
I do not think that I need be misunderstood here. I
think my brethren will recognise that my view of
sacraments is at least reasonable, I have given many
reasons for it. I think they wiU admit that from my
reasons I could not reasonably come to any other con
clusion. Similarly, I could not caU any Non-Confor
mist body ' a Church,' since I hold that the Church is
one — except in the sense of local divisions, as the
Church in London is different from the Church in New
York. It would be different if I were asked to say they were
' part of the Church.' That brings me to the question
of the term schism, and here also I will be perfectly
frank. I hope I can trust my brethren too well to be
afraid to say what I honestly think for fear I should
hurt their feelings. It does not seem to me that anyone
can caU the Non-Conformists schismatics. They have
not ' left the Church.' They are, for the most part,
what they have always been.

182 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
Is a Non-Conformity schismatical ? ' That is a dif
ferent question. If we take schism in its strict meaning,
then I think we must say at least that our separation
constitutes a schism. The word, however, in our
mind implies an act of fault, and all Churchmen recog
nise that if men are driven out of the Church by
unreasonable demands, the sin or act of schism is
committed by those who drove them out. The driving
out of the Non- Jurors constituted an act of schism, but
the fault lay with the State, and with those who
exercised authority on behalf of the Church. The
separation of the Non-Conformists from the Church
therefore formed a schism, but who was guilty of com
mitting that act I am not competent, and I have no
desire, to judge. No doubt there are people who do
not see any disadvantage in our present condition of
separation. The larger number, who realise it as an
evil, might express themselves differently, but I believe
they and I are here substantiaUy agreed.
So far then as ' right ' implies a judgment on the past,
we can leave it on one side. We are only concerned
with it as it affects our next steps. The common man
would sum us up by saying that we were both right and
both wrong. I believe, once more, that most of us
agree. But our agreement is no use to us till we can
find which is the right we ought to learn, and which is
the wrong that we must give up.
If, now, we look back at aU the questions we have
discussed, we shall see that in every case, there is the
same distinction constantly recurring. I urged first
that we must distinguish between the gift of God and
our appreciation of it or response to it. If our faith in
God is to have any meaning, we must not imagine that
our response makes the gift. We can apply to this a

THE RELATION OF PRINCIPLES 183
phrase we have just discussed. The gift is the prior
reahty, the thing which is. The response is bene, more
or less weU, made. Christ by His death made for us one
perfect propitiation, atonement, reconciliation with the
Father. We enter into it by faith, or we reject it by
unbelief ; but we are not doing something, we are
appropriating or rejecting a reconciliation made, which
already is.
Turning to rehgious practice, I pointed out that this
distinction of the gift was what we claimed for the
sacraments, and that to them we applied the word
' valid,' as denoting the actuality or reality in itself of
what was given, independently of our use. There is also
an activity of the soul which proceeds from God's gifts,
for whUe faith is a reception of something, faith also
goes forth in action. In our common religion these
two sides correspond to worship and preaching. Wor
ship is the true inward act of receptive faith, the
acknowledgment of and looking to what is. Sacra
mental worship is, of course, not the only kind of
worship, but on our view of the sacrament it is much the
highest and most perfect form, since the object of
worship is presented to us, and not merely found in our
selves. There is a good deal of experience to show that
the habit of worship — as distinct from intercession — is
always weaker where the sacramental belief is not held.
StiU less could we take preaching as the only form
of the external activity of faith, but if we take preach
ing in its widest sense, it is a very important, perhaps
the most important, form of that activity, and in a
peculiar sense it voices the activity of faith, reflects,
inspires, guides, explains, all its forms. I wUl take the
sacraments and preaching as types of the two sides of
ecclesiastical life which we have to consider.

184 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
There are then in the Christian life two different
ideas, gift and response, which have in religion two
different presentments, and in the Church two different
ministries. Here is the ministry of consecration,
whereby men are duly authorised to do that which God
has commanded to be done on behalf of His people.
Here is the ministry of preaching, wherein men by the
inspiration of God's Spirit are enabled to stir up the
thoughts and feelings of their brethren. Though differ
ent, it is not necessary that these should be separated.
Is it, however, desirable ?
In the first place, I think for many reasons that it is
not desirable they should be altogether sundered. A
sacramental ministry entirely confined to formal duties
would soon become very unspiritual. Sacraments and
preaching are part of one life, and we must not let
people get an idea that there is an opposition between
the two. Certainly the official or sacramental ministry
must be also a preaching ministry.
On the other hand, it seems even more undesirable
that the sacramental and preaching ministry should be
simply identified. If anyone does so, he knows little of
their true nature, or of their innate difference. The
official act is essentiaUy simple. ' Take, eat, this is
my body.' In one sense, like the death of Christ, it
holds all the mystery of life. You may ponder it for
years and find new meanings ; you may worship for
five minutes and It lies before you complete in one act.
One celebration of what the old Fathers used to caU
' the Divine Mysteries ' is just the same as another.
Preaching, however, is infinitely varied with aU the
variety, not of the presentment of the mystery, but of
our pondering upon the mystery presented, varied with
aU the variety of application and meaning any of us

THE RELATION OF PRINCIPLES 185
can learn there to see. Fifty men may each preach
fifty times from the same text and never have one
sentence in common. The presentment to our worship
of God's own gift, the gift of His Presence, is of God's
own agent, but as the appreciation, the understanding
that comes of reverent pondering, is the response God
looks for in aU, so it is for all to speak of that which God
has given them. There is no least and shyest school
boy who ought not to be ready, deeply blushing, to
speak of Jesus Christ when the time is.
That, of course, is not the same as public speaking,
but there is no real line of division between the two. If
every man speaks of God as opportunity offers— and
no one wiU deny that he ought to do so — the oppor
tunities will depend very much on his abUity. One
man speaks to his friends and companions. If he has
things to say worth listening to, his friends' friends will
come to hear them. If they are very much worth
listening to, he will speak in the market square or the
town-haU or any other place.
I am much more concerned with another argument
that this speaking or preaching — there is no funda
mental difference between them — is not the same as
official preaching. I maintained that the sacramental
ministry must for its own sake also be a preaching
ministry. The priest is always and above all an
official, and I am going to maintain that there must
be an official preaching. The arguments which to my
mind prove that it has a real place in the Church, to
my mind also prove that it is a limited place.
The clergy constitute a separate official caste. When
I am speaking of my own cause, I am quite wUling to
let offensive terms like ' caste ' stand. We ought not
to haggle over words, nor to let ourselves be scared by

186 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
their ugliness. Let us consider what a separated caste-
priesthood reaUy means, and can do. We shall find all
its essential features reproduced even in the most
Protestant missions. The English missionaries,
amongst their Indian and African converts, are a caste
and professionals and officials. They think differently,
live differently, are paid differently, from their people.
We can see that this has its disadvantages, but it has
also its effectiveness. It is a gain that the growing
Church should have in its midst a number of men who
can suggest to it other and quite different ways of look
ing at things. It is even a necessity, for in that growing
hfe there is a very real danger lest our converts should
aUow their Christianity to slide back into a mere phase
of Hinduism or Fetichism. It probably would do
so if it were not for the stubbornness of the English
difference. The missionaries keep clear the line of the
Christian distinction.
This does not arise entirely from the incomplete
grasp of newly won faith. It is a universal law. The
parson is narrow, professional. Religion dominated by
clericalism becomes irrational and unreal, full of dog
matisms hard to be understood and of rules grievous to
be borne. Be it so. The layman's religion is broad,
practical, genial. Yes, but there is a reservation. It
is natural and right that the religion which a man has
to use in a practical world should have in it a vein of
utilitarianism, yet that utUitarianism, which is so
healthy and genial, is always in danger of losing that
very character which none the less gives it aU its Ufe
and meaning. The harvest of the apple tree grows on
the branches in the sight of the sun and of all men.
The root is a very wooden affair — twisted, tough,
without commercial value ; but in the winter storms,

THE RELATION OF PRINCIPLES 187
when blossom, fruit and leaves are all gone, it holds on,
or you will have no apples at aU. AU officials and all
professionals, and we parsons among the number, are
trying people. They look at things so differently, but
that is what they are for. The reaUy unfortunate part
is that things want looking at differently ; geniality is
a charming virtue, but sometimes we must be business
like. The clergy is also appointed to preach. Its
preaching is likely to be of a kind less inspiring than that
of the enthusiasts, but it will have qualities not less
necessary.

CHAPTER X.
THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF MINISTRY.
Merely that the length of the chapter may not be
tedious, I have thought it better to divide my subject
at this point. We can start on the examination of the
work of the ministry with a fresh mind.
The official ministry has first to re-present Christ to
us in the renewing of His Presence as the basis of our
religious hfe, but we look to it also for an official preach
ing, which shaU explain what has been done, which shall
set before us in words those fundamental principles
which the sacraments effect by act, but which in life
lose the sharp edge of their distinction aU too easily.
Fundamentals are very precious things, but we live
from them, we must not cramp our life in them. The
official preaching may be necessary, but it is not all we
require. Official preaching is not an entirely easy
thing. It must be lucid, or we shaU not understand it ;
it must be interesting, or we shaU be bored ; practical,
or we shaU not be able to use it ; earnest, or we shall
grow indifferent. But, above all, it must be correct,
orthodox. Beyond this efficient exposition of fundamentals lies
another sphere which we might describe as that of
originahty and inspiration. We are first of aU Chris
tians, and the essential nature of Christianity remains

THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF MINISTRY 189
a fixed constant in aU ages, yet Christianity is a life.
It must be therefore a progress ; its form is fuU of
meanings and applications which are waiting to be
realised. This is the place of originality, of develop
ment, of what I caUed ' freedom.' We are not,
however, aU original thinkers. Many of us, to be quite
frank, are rather stupid and indeed rather lazy. Those
to whom God has given the gift of ' vision ' must — I
wiU not say, do our thinking for us— but teach us how
to think, stir us up to the joy of learning new things.
This is the work of inspiration.
May not the official preaching be original and inspir
ing ? Perhaps it may, and there are pretty sure to be
officials who wUl be ; nevertheless this is not what we
ought to look for. There are reasons why it wiU be
difficult and even undesirable that the official preaching
should excel in those qualities.
Originality is in all cases individual ; it belongs to
individual abilities. But official preaching must be
first of aU official, and we ask of the official primarily
that he should let us know, not what he himself thinks,
but what is the message which has been committed to
him. We ask our statesmen to devise new ways of
meeting new situations. But we ask lawyers and
judges only to teU us how the old legal principles apply
to tangled circumstances. An official who is brilliant
and original is a rather confusing person, for it is hard
to tell how much is his own and how much is really of
authority. An official may be inspiring, but it is
rather his business to be critical of inspirations. He is
not there to lead us up the road, but rather to warn us
when a road which looks tempting is leading us away
from our true direction. We are not bound to take his
voice as infallible, nor is his authority absolute, yet it is

190 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
always of authority, it is always of the necessary prin
ciples, that he ought primarily to be speaking and
reminding us.
It is really curious to notice how httle consciousness
we have of the principles on which we are all acting.
I am going to examine two cases, (i) The bishop is
the supreme official, the supreme representative of the
official system. Churchmen deplore amongst them
selves that the bishops do not lead. They are cautious
and timid ; they are always the last to move ; they are
a drag on the wheels. Non-Conformists may be
excused for scoffing — 'And this is the authority to
which we are asked to submit our freedom ! ' Though
Church historians teU another tale, it must be admitted
that modern historians give the bishops and their
councils a very bad record.
I am going to take a very daring course. I contend
that that is all just as it should be, that in any case it
is inevitable, and, in spite of our grumbling, that it is
just as we want it to be. In the first place, the bishop
ought not to be a leader. New ventures and new ideas
imply a risk. They cannot be more than an experi
ment. The risks ought to be taken and the experi
ments made by little people who have nothing to lose
except themselves. The big people, with big responsi
bilities, must watch from a distance. They must come
and reap the benefits only of assured successes. This
is good Trustee Law. It is part of the price paid for
high office that you must leave the joy of adventure
to others.
Again, it is inevitable. The bishop is not only the
official head of the whole, he is the representative of
the whole. Now the people with original ideas are few,
but the whole consists mostly of a number of very

THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF MINISTRY 191
conservative people, who are not very quick at thinking,
and who are too busy to have much time for it. It is
this mass whom the bishop represents and for whom he
acts. If he is ready to jump at new proposals, he wiU
not represent them. And it is no use his taking up
ideas tUl people are ready to move.
Of course bishops will make mistakes, like anybody
else, and put the brake on the wrong things. Does this
do any real harm ? If a new idea is really worth any
thing, it wiU generally win through without being much
the worse for a little discouragement. At least it is a
very effective reminder to the clever and original
people that they are not the lords of God's heritage, but
the servants of God's people. There is no need that
bishops should be unsympathetic.
Of course bishops do make mistakes, and they are
often unsympathetic, but one result of official responsi
bility is that they are much more sympathetic than
the popular opinion. We grumble at officials because
they do not lead, and because they dislike and dis
courage anything that is new. But they do not dislike
it half so much as we do, so we grumble at them a
great deal more because they wiU not ' stamp it out '
as energeticaUy as we want them to.
Lastly, therefore, the inconsistency of our complaints
shows how little we reaUy mean by them. If anyone
will consider, to make anything of a new idea or plan
absorbs the labour of a life-time. If the bishop is to
undertake that labour, what is to become of all the
other new ideas and plans ? Plainly, no one man can
lead them all at once. And what is to become of all
the plain common work of administration ? A clever
bishop with theories of his own is rather a nuisance.
AU our complaints reaUy come to this. We want

192 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
authority to make everybody faU in with the ideas we
like, and to drop those we don't like. Whereas the true
business of authority is to keep us together, to make the
very able wait for the slow, and to try to keep the slow
from going to sleep. Of course we object equaUy to
being kept back or pushed on, but I think we know
such operations are necessary.
(2) What I have said about bishops applies in many
ways to the clergy generally. We can see the immense
difference in the idea of the official and the free minis
tries, if we consider the significance of our systems in
regard to irremovabUity. The Non-Conformists take
great pains to ensure that the men they choose for their
ministry shall be really capable men. If a man proves
incapable, it is always possible, and generaUy it is not
very difficult, to get rid of him. In the Church we take
amazingly little trouble to ensure capacity. And when
a man has once been ordained, we think it absolutely
wrong that he should take any other work except what
can be counted as truly ' clerical.' Once a priest, he
must always foUow the life of a priest. If he receives a
strictly ecclesiastical charge, — bishop or rector, — it is
practicaUy impossible to get rid of him without his own
consent, except for grave fault.
To most Non-Conformists I suppose this wUl look like
an inexplicable stupidity on our part. I do not say
that there are no stupidities. We on our side would
confess a great many, but I am sure if our critics will
consider the matter they will see that a stupidity so
uniform and continuous is inexplicable only because
they have not got the key. Non-Conformists are think
ing of spiritual development, which does require able
leadership. We are thinking of something quite differ
ent. The ordained priest is not ordained as the able

THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF MINISTRY rg3
leader, but as a man who has received a certain power,
and that being once received he must spend his life
under a responsibUity, in regard to which personal
abUities and efficiencies have no place.
The administration of the sacraments is not aU we
look for in our clergy. But then the normal official ad
ministration of parish work and the official preaching —
for I am taking preaching as the type — being concerned
rather with the fundamental ground-work of Christian
ity than with the developments of life, are relatively
simple things. The first business of the parish clergy
man is to feed the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath
made him overseer, and it is mostly a very common
place flock with commonplace needs. Yet the priest
is handling tremendous mysteries, and they are the
flock Jesus Christ bought with His own blood. The
very beauty and vision of Christianity is the glory
hovering so simply over what is so commonplace.
No doubt there are many situations and opportunities
which call for high abUity, but for my own part I
shrink from the aspiration, which possesses some of us,
that the clergy should be ah men of an ideal. I forget
the census, but there are perhaps 20,000 clergy in
England. If the Church turned up ideals on this scale,
we average folk would hardly find room to breathe.
I think there are few thoughtful Christians who wiU
deny that we are aU at the present day a world too fond
of hankering after big men — which is perhaps one
reason why we don't get them — and we have not half
enough faith in the bigness of God's grace. We Angli
can parsons are a very average lot, but it is for the
average flock that we have to take thought. Some
may say we are a very poor average. I daresay. I
was a parish priest myself once and I know I was a

194 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
poor average, so I had better not deny it and I shaU not
resent it. We do our best.
I began by saying that to show there was a real
place for an official system would also be to show that
it was a limited place. I have just said that we
' Church ' folk aU readily admitted defects and stupid
ities in our system. Unfortunately we cannot agree
which are the defects and what they come from. I can
therefore only give my own view for what it is worth.
To my mind, then, our defects arise from our not under
standing our own system, and consequently not recog
nising its limitations. We have an official system,
concerned with the fundamentals, and we use it as such.
It needs to be supplemented by a free unofficial system,
concerned with expansion, and this we have not got.
We try therefore to make the official system do work
for which it is not fitted, thereby greatly hampering its
proper work, as weU as confusing our own minds. I
can make this clear by foUowing up two applications
to which I have already referred.
(i) Taking preaching as the type of activity, I in
sisted that we could not reasonably distinguish between
pubhc and private speaking. Everybody ought to
' preach.' I learnt to see the importance of this as I
considered how the ' freedom ' of everyone to speak
lay at the root of that Non-Conformist idea which is
common to aU bodies.
I was the more ready to learn, for I had just learnt
the same lesson from the missionaries. The English
missionary goes to India, China, Africa, as a foreigner.
He takes with him English Christianity. The funda
mentals are the same, but the development and mean
ing put upon them are different. The missionaries are
a caste. They have an important work to do by

THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF MINISTRY 195
ensuring that the Indian or Chinese Church shall not
drift away from the fundamental basis. They are the
critics of its growth. But after the first beginning has
been made, the work of expansion lies with the Church
itself. We do not want the heathen without to become
English Christians, but Indian Christians, Chinese or
African Christians, as the case may be. Therefore I
contend that the true work of evangelisation, the
making of converts, should be carried on by the
Christians hving there, and not by the missionaries.
Only an Indian can really preach Indian Christianity
to Indians, only a Chinaman to the Chinese, only an
African to the Africans. The Christians will under
stand even an English missionary, for Christianity is a
bond between them, but the English missionary preach
ing to heathens is not in his right place.
England is not a heathen country, and the difficulties
are not quite the same ; yet the same general principle
holds. Ministers of any denomination are a people
apart. The reUgion of a man to whom religion is the
main business of life, and the religion of a man who
uses it to consecrate other business are bound to be
different. Our own people feel the difference, though,
since there is a common bond between us, they know
how to get from ' the parson ' the help they want. To
the unconverted the parson is a puzzle and often an
absurdity. We want to make them lay Christians, and
lay Christianity can only be rightly presented to them
by lay men. The priest is the priest, and the minister
is the minister, of God's Church. The lay Christian is
the priest of God's universe, and it is mainly his business
to preach to them that are without.
(2) In speaking of ' expansion ' so far, I am referring
to an expansion outwards. There is also an internal

196 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
expansion in the development of Christianity itself, but
aU development is a matter of degree. Whether a man
is trying to lead a Christian life is a relatively simple
question. Certainly if a man is a Christian at all there
must be some growth and some progress, but the capa
city for growth or for one kind of growth rather than
another is temperamental and therefore varies enor
mously. I am trying just now to work out the relation of
these different principles in a purely scientific way
without regard to any conclusions which may be drawn
from them. I ask my readers earnestly to consider
them first from this point of view, and not to be in a
hurry to reject them because the conclusions may be
unpleasant. We shall come to them in the next chapter.
Yet I am not studying merely abstract principles. I
am comparing them with our experience, or rather I
am trying to find the principles which underlie our
experience. In our practical systems we are instinc
tively following certain principles. Our practice gets
into confusion and develops defects, because we have
no clear idea what its principles are, consequently,
either we do not follow them out consistently, or we try
to apply them where they do not apply. Thus, I urge
as a scientific principle that Indian Christianity should
be presented to Indians by Indians, and lay Christianity
should be presented to lay-men by lay-men. I urge on
scientific grounds, that there is, aU the same, a real
sphere to be filled by the English missionary in the one
case, and the parson in the other.
Coming now to the question of spiritual development,
I urge that if we are to get the best results, that develop
ment certainly needs helping, certainly needs a ministry.
It is an essentiaUy personal development, therefore it

THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF MINISTRY 197
does not belong to the essentiaUy official sphere.
Plainly, also, it is not the kind of thing which, hke the
primary work of ' preaching Christianity,' belongs to
every Christian. It is addressed speciaUy to those
speciaUy capable of it. It requires, therefore, special
capacity, and it requires trained capacity.
I think then we can mark off three distinct spheres
of Christian activity, aU of which should be represented
in the Church, and are necessary to the fulfilment of its
proper life, (a) It is not the business of any one class
more than another, it is the business of every Christian,
to preach Christ daUy and always by deed and word
wheresoever opportunity occurs. In this, a professional
ministry of any kind will be necessarUy less effective
than unprofessional people.
(b) The development of the Christian life requires
the preaching, guidance and inspiration of men having
a special capacity for it. Since this implies special
knowledge and training, it wiU imply a professional
class. As, however, the possibility of development, the
need and kind of guidance required, vary so much, the
system must be * free ' or voluntary, even although it
may be organised.
(c) The. more intense, enthusiastic, whole-hearted,
this varied activity may be, the more necessary it is
that it should be kept true to the Christian ground
work from which it proceeds. The maintenance of the
Christian ' form,' which constitutes that ground-work,
belongs to the official ministry, whose first business is to
present it in the formal sacraments Christ has provided.
Our ' Episcopalian ' Church provides an official
ministry. It certainly is not true that she discourages
her people from ' preaching Christ.' Our clergy con
stantly press this duty upon aU. Here once more I

198 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
want to point out the working of a double-edged argu
ment. In the first part of the book I pointed out that
the Protestant system, having got rid of the positive
sacramental Presence, had laid itself open to emotion
alism, for emotion or feeling was the only witness of a
Presence left. Protestant Evangelicals have frequently
denied to me that their system was emotional, and have
pointed to the constant warnings against emotionalism
issued by their leaders. My reply was — warning or
none, experience shows that this is its danger. The
warning shows that the danger is plainly not an acci
dent due to false leadership. It is an inherent defect
in the system. I must in all honest consistency apply
the same argument here. Our clergy do urge on people
the importance of bearing their own witness. But
experience shows that our people do it very little — less
I should think than any body of Christians. Therefore,
it is the system itself which is at fault. The whole idea
of a free, spontaneous activity on the part of the body
has, not of course altogether but to a deplorable
extent, passed from us. All action has to be planned,
pushed, and very often carried through by the officials.
The attempt to make the official system cover the
whole ground has landed us aU in utter confusion.
The official, clerical, system has abundant opening and
use for personal ability of aU kinds, but, for the reasons
I have given, we recognise quite well that it would be
false to our principle to make personal ability the
dominant factor. We cannot bring ourselves to employ
the methods which the Non-Conformists employ to
measure that abUity. ' Preaching on approbation,' for
instance, which to them seems natural and obvious,
anyhow inevitable, is to us intensely repeUent. Yet,
the work thrown upon the clergy is such that it has

THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF MINISTRY 199
almost ceased to be an official system at aU. The
success of a parish depends on the personal ability,
energy, attractiveness of its clergy.
In the same way, whUe we are most anxious to get
more spontaneous activity out of our people, whenever
it does show itself, we are aU nervous over it unless it
wiU work along the official parochial lines and under
official direction. I cannot weU justify myself without
giving instances, and I cannot give instances without
involving myself in particular controversies. Yet, if
I must, I will refer shortly to three without discussing
them at any length, {a) The Church of England Men's
Society is our nearest approximation in England to a
spontaneous unofficial activity. How far it wiU be
able to develop its power remains to be seen, (b) The
feebleness of our Church efforts in the missionary field
seems plainly due to our over-absorption in official
parochialism, (c) The most genuinely Church form of
an organised ' free ' activity has always been in the
direction of Community Life in one shape or another.
Our Church has never shaken off her suspicion of its
devotion, nor found, even under the most favourable
circumstances, the energy and enthusiasm necessary
to make it a real factor in her Ufe.
The results are too obvious to be denied ; and no one
does deny them. Our system provides and safeguards
what is necessary to Christianity. To any new caU our
people — speaking only too generaUy — offer an un
interested ' Is it necessary ? ' Devotion, love which is
self-sacrifice, the joy of giving, the enthusiasm which
does great things, are all very necessary indeed, but
anybody who asks for them under that name knows
neither what they are nor where they live. For the
whole most of us, I am afraid it is only too tme that

200 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
we have lost the habit, lost the power, lost even the
ideal of doing more than the minimum required, and
that on due cause shown. It is easier to leave every
thing to be done by the clergy. The clergy regret
but accept it, and at heart they rather prefer to do
things themselves and in their own way. Does not
that result seem to justify the Non-Conformist com
plaint that official control stifles spontaneous energy ?
The confusion reaches its height in our training of the
ministry, and I think I can show here that our deficien
cies are due to confusion of mind and not to mere
stupidity. The essential business of our official ministry
is to maintain the essential Christian basis. It is not,
of course, sufficient that the priest should know which
are correct and orthodox phrases, and which are in
correct and heretical. People who have heretical
theories, though they may argue with a parson, are not
likely to listen to him. But any one of us or any one
of his own people may be taking up ideas which tend to
heresy or work out to heresy. The priest does need to
know what is the meaning of the Christian basis, what
are the relations of its parts to one another and to life,
why the correct is correct, why it is important, how it
can be applied to life and thought. There is ample
room here for abUity; a clear, level-headed, intelli
gent grasp of Christian meaning is sufficient, but that
is indispensable.
The practical necessity of the parish system as it is
being worked, however, has taken such hold of our
minds that we can hardly think of anything for our
clergy except of securing that ' wide general culture,'
which is reaUy needed for what I called the ' ministry
of development.' We do take some, just the minimum
of, pains to ensure that our clergy shaU know the

THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF MINISTRY 201
correct form of Church teaching, but we take no pains
at aU to ensure that they have reaUy thought out its
meaning. The narrowness, only too common in our
official preaching, is just the narrowness of men who
do not know enough to trust themselves off set
phrases. Our real difficulty, therefore, has been and is that we
realise the principles of our official system far too clearly
to aUow us to foUow the methods which belong to a
different set of ideals or aims, but we do not realise our
principles weU enough to foUow what does belong to
them. And for that difficulty there is just one cause.
We have not got a Church system, but half a Church
system, and we are therefore driven to force that half
into attempting two incompatible functions — maintain
ing the single Christian ground-work which is common
to everyone, and also pressing on that development of
the Christian life which is of necessity so varied, and
which moreover since it must be a spontaneous growth
cannot be ' pressed on.'
I am not blaming our clergy nor our leaders. I am
not suggesting that, as things stand, they ought to be
doing or could be doing anything else ; I am rather
urging that what is lacking is not a thing which the
clergy can supply. The origin of our position I have
already explained. At the Reformation the other,
voluntary, side of the Church system was swept away.
When a new voluntary system grew up, it grew up, not
as complementary, but in opposition. The example of
Non-Conformity has been some help to the Church, but
its division from us has also made it a terrible hindrance,
first by drawing off just those whose enthusiasm was
wanted, and partly because the sense of opposition
inevitably stiffens the opposed principle.

202 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
I want my method to be quite clear. I deny that I
have on my own account brought one single charge
against the Anglican system. The charges are in every
body's mouth. We may say some of them are exagger
ated, and I have said so. But we all confess them, and
I confess them. ' The Anglicans have all the starch.'
I never said that. We deny, I deny, that there is no fire
in us ; but we admit and I admit that our system is very
stiff and inelastic. I have only tried to show that the
faults are not faults of the individuals, but that there
is a common reason underlying them all. Stiffness is a
necessity in anything, but the same system cannot
provide both the stiffening and the elasticity.
If my thesis is correct, — that the two sides of basis
and development, the two systems official and volun
tary, are necessary to one another, — having shown how
deficient the official is without the voluntary I ought
to be able to show paraUel defects in the voluntary
system apart from the official. This, however, I can
not do adequately. I have been a ' Protestant,' and
I can speak of the difficulties of Protestantism with
some confidence, but I have never been a Non-Con
formist, and I only know its practical result and working
from outside. But it is not necessary that I should
speak adequately. If Non-Conformists are not wUling
to give my argument sympathetic and serious con
sideration, I shall only excite useless ill-feeling by trying
to justify myself by accusations which they will not
admit. If they are wUling to meet me, I can — in the end
I must — leave it to them to judge how far the real diffi
culties in their system correspond to the causes I have
assigned. I think, however, I can suggest three difficulties
in the Non-Conformist system which are generaUy

THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF MINISTRY 203
acknowledged, and which have some special interest
from the light they throw on the principles of the
system itself.
The first is the lack of independence in the ministry.
It is the essence of Christianity that it rests on a basis,
not of human thought and action, but of something God-
given. If there should be a ministry primarily con
cerned with the maintenance and presentment of that
common basis, it would be quite natural that it should
be a ministry which — even if it were appointed by the
Christian people — does not receive its power from them.
The development of Christian life and thought, however,
would be a human development and varied. For
reasons I have explained elsewhere, I stiU call it human,
even though it may be guided by the Holy Spirit. It
is natural, therefore, that the ministry of that develop
ment should be appointed and controlled by the group
or body of Christians ministered to. A minister out of
sympathy with those special developments which appeal
to his people wiU not be able to help them. This
difference between the two ministerial systems is that
which we find, and it is thus explicable.
Is the position of the Non-Conformist ministry right ?
I do not think anyone wiU deny that it is fuU of danger.
Except where the minister is a man of such acknow
ledged power that he can stand above criticism, the
control which ensures that he shall give what his people
need often becomes a power which ensures he shaU say
only what they like. Now, of course, whether it be of
wealthy patrons, or of an influential group, or of a
majority, or of general feeling, power will always make
itself felt. Our own ministry is not free from its
influence, but at least the Church system not only rests
upon the ideal that the minister may and must speak

204 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
truth, popular or unpopular, but, if it cannot secure for
him the courage to speak, at least it does secure for him
the necessary independence of position. The Non-
Conformist system does not. A number of ministers
have called their position an intolerable servitude.
I believe the majority of Non-Conformists would
reply that they did not deny that there are defects or
disadvantages in this direction, but that the servitude
of the minister to the people was a less evil than the
servitude of the people to the minister, which occurs
under our system. Exactly ! Each system secures
something ; each has its disadvantages. Those dis
advantages have grown into very serious evils. We
cannot even start combating those evils effectively,
because that would be giving points to the other side.
In a real unity the weaknesses of one system are
redeemed by the strength of the other ; in disunion, the
weakness of each protects itself, and grows by the weak
ness of the other. I believe that the popular control of
the Non-Conformist ministry is the natural, inevitable,
right and consistent result of a sound principle. It is
only a serious evil, and I believe it is a serious evil,
because it stands by itself. I make exactly the same
admission of the principle of our ministry.
(2) The second defect of Non-Conformity, I should
say, was its emotionalism. It appears, of course, in
very different degrees in different bodies. The Presby
terians hardly show it at all in the form commonly so
described. But this point raises a very curiously significant
question. AU the most thoughtful Evangelicals are
fuUy alive to the danger of emotionalism, so much so
indeed that in controversial moments they wUl even
deny that it exists as a danger.

THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF MINISTRY 205
Evidently ' emotionalism ' has a very bad name.
Many prefer to speak of ' feeling,' though for my own
part I cannot see the difference. Neither can I see why
emotionalism should be thought badly of. Something
is done, or something happens. It excites us to a three
fold response, of thought, action, feeling. To act with
out thinking is foolish, and the instinct of mere activity
is so far a danger. But to think without doing anything
is feeble, and mere thought is also a danger. The same
is true of mere emotion or feeling, but it is not more true
than of the others.
The real danger of the Non-Conformist system is that
of substituting the human activity for the divine gift,
the response for the thing which is responded to. It
may not always take the form of emotion, though
emotion is for divers psychological reasons much the
easiest as it is also the pleasantest to come by. I do
not want to say much on this subject here, because I
have said so much elsewhere.
(3) My third suggestion lies in a doctrinal direction,
and of this also I wiU not say much, because I want to
give it some consideration presently. I said that the
first business of official teaching was to be correct or
orthodox, and I was fuUy conscious that I should raise a
smUe, and in many cases a smUe of contempt. But
why ?
If I wanted to find an absolutely conclusive argument
and instance of the mischief being done to our whole
life through these miserable divisions and the essentially
' party ' mind which they create and maintain in us,
I could not do better than offer these two words —
emotion and orthodox. Emotion is one of the most
glorious things in the world, one of the best of God's
gifts. Then somebody must go and oppose it to what he

206 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
caUs ' the cold and hard logic of reason.' Then, of
course, the logically minded people take their revenge
by talking of ' the emptiness of emotionalism.' Surely
the truth of Ufe is quite plain. Emotion suggests to us
the significance of a question. The cold hard logic of
reason is only another term for cool dispassionate judg
ment concerning the significance. When the judgment
has been made, the emotion of enthusiasm is necessary
for whole-hearted and resolute action. Reason is just
the one thing which justifies us in letting emotion have
fuU play. The only result of our empty quarrel is that
we are aU afraid of emotion, look the other way, caU it
' feeling,' as if emotion was something to be ashamed
of ! And we are no less afraid to think steadily for fear
we should be ' logical,' which is not our most besetting
sin. This is equaUy true of orthodoxy, for I do not suppose
that anyone likely to listen to me would seriously
contend that there was no place for orthodoxy. Never
theless, most of us would be as much ashamed at being
thought orthodox, old-fashioned or traditional, as at
being thought emotional. Once more, why ? Is the
superstitious idolatry of mere orthodoxy one whit more
unreasonable than the superstitious idolatry of the
modern and the novel ? ' We want progress and evolu
tion.' I do not think any the worse of that inspiring
statement because there is a fine old Victorian ring about
it. Yet we are in a hurry to clear away the past, ner
vously patronising, anxious to prove that we have
nothing reaUy to learn, for we are bent on having an
entirely new thing of our own. ' The Zeit-geist breathes
upon it and it is gone.' We need not wait for the next
generation. Our new thing is all forgotten in a few
years, because there is another thing still newer. ' They

THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF MINISTRY 207
that take the sword shall perish with the sword.' A
perpetual succession of fresh starts is neither progress
nor evolution. A great deal of our very newest Chris
tianity bears a suspicious resemblance to our very
oldest pre-Christian heathenism.
' Christianity has a message to modern thought, to
the new age.' That is far nearer the truth. Let us
only be sure that the message is Christian, for a Chris
tianity reconstituted by the new age has for the age no
message and no gospel. It can bring to it only what it
took from it.
What has aU this to do with the Non-Conformist
ministry ? I think it has a great deal. ' The dominant
factor of Non-Conformity is the body, of which the
ministry is only the expression. Why should it be
contended that the ministry alone should maintain
the conservative element of Christian faith ? ' It can
be contended that it is for the body — ministers and
people together — to maintain the unity of Christian
faith. I have tried to show that there is a certain Christian
truth or message which is fixed and in Christ God-given ;
there is also an expansion or growth, by the Spirit God
inspired. It had not occurred to me, I learnt from the
Non-Conformists to realise, that this growth could not
be amorphous — merely in the body as a whole. It
wanted its own organisation, its own professionalism,
its own ministry. If this is true, then it is equaUy true
that some form or organisation is necessary to keep
before the Church what is fixed and given. But the
ministry which acts as the expression of the body
cannot be simply identified with the ministry which is
concerned with the presentation of what is given to
the body.

208 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
It may of course be pointed out that the existence
of a ' fixed ' ministry has not defended us from having
the same hankering after what shaU be purely modern.
Nothing but the eternal Spirit of God wUl ever deliver
men from temptation, but the forms the Spirit has
provided may be a great help in combating it. I think
experience shows that relatively speaking we are less
troubled in this direction. Indeed I thought myself
justified in assuming that our temptation lay in the
opposite direction.
I maintain, therefore, that there are two sides of
Church life, just as there are two sides of the life of
every one of us. They appeal to different types of
mind in different ways and degrees, but they cannot
rightly be treated as merely alternative or merely
temperamental, for just this reason, that all individual
powers are given for common use. Turned to personal
indulgence and self-choice they are but a swift means
of ruin. Let a man have the character of a saint and
the insight of a seraph, yet that man shall perish etern-
aUy and cannot be saved unless he is content to enter
the Kingdom of heaven on that common Christian
ground where the child and the ignorant and the fool
may stand with him side by side.
Nevertheless, every man, for what he is, must have
his proper development and must be provided with
the means of that development. I have not tried
merely to accumulate disputed facts, but I have tried
to show by analysis of common forms, of the criticisms
we bring one against another, and of the arguments we
aUege for our own position, that all our difficulties
spring from an attempt to make one side do duty for
both, and that any religious condition which does so
involves itself in heresies, schisms, confusions without

THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF MINISTRY 209
end, evU sheltering itself behind the opposite evil,
unreason defending itself because it is not more un
reasonable than the opposite unreason. ' Wilt Thou
not turn again and quicken us, 0 Lord, that Thy people
may rejoice in Thee ? '

CHAPTER XI.
IS A SYNTHESIS POSSIBLE?
Let me summarise my idea of the position before us,
once more beginning from an analogy. As a nation
we aU recognise we must have an official class concerned
with that which is fundamental, necessary to the main
tenance of a national fabric. We must all pay taxes
and keep the law, therefore we must have tax coUectors
and police. There may be other things, such as posts
and perhaps raUways, which are so necessary to us that
we had better make them into public services. Inside
the shelter of this fabric, however, we are carrying on a
Ufe of expansion and development and movement, which
must be free. It may be an organised development,
and its organisations wUl produce other professional
classes, but they wUl not be official in the same sense,
since they wiU be concerned with voluntary and not
with necessary activities, with things which are or may
be worth doing, but which are either not necessary or
not necessary in one particular way.
Of course the conclusion to which I am tending wiU
be quite evident. The Church, if she is to reach the
fulness of her hfe must have — and when she has reached
it she wiU have — both an official sacramental ministry
and a ' free ' ministry, organised and unorganised,
such as that which Non-Conformity supplies to-day

IS A SYNTHESIS POSSIBLE? 211
and the Friars supplied of old. I only state that as a
principle, but I mean to imply what I seem to imply —
a mutual recognition, for the true way to reach that
fulness of life is by the re-union of those who have
possessed themselves of the two severed factors. After
three centuries of dominant officialism, for the Anglican
Church to develop an effective free system would be an
enormously slow business. I do not say that it would
be impossible. To God anything is possible, and if our
brothers refused to join us I believe in the end it would
be done, but to try to provide for ourselves what God
has already given to others does not seem to be the
right way.
This suggestion of mine wiU, I expect, meet with a
rather diverse reception. There is a crowd of onlookers
who wiU eagerly accept the apparently simple con
clusion to a troublesome question. Mutual recognition
— is not that what they have always urged upon us ?
And reaUy, after aU, the difficulty has always been on
the Church side. Now that we have this startling
admission from one who speaks as a Catholic, they hope
it wUl be listened to.
After what I have said above, it should not be neces
sary for me to say anything in reply to this view, yet
even earnest people often find it hard to get their minds
clear as to the meaning of accepted phrases. I must,
therefore, point out that though it talks of ' mutual
recognition,' this easy popular view does not mean
recognition at aU. Is that what either of us want ?
Are we both to be tolerant ? Very weU, but do either
of us want to be tolerated ? We want love, unity,
help. Is it the same thing if in disunion and disaccord
we are both bound over to keep the peace ?
Are we not concerned with spiritual reality and

212 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
therefore with spiritual truth ? If so, we cannot discuss
the question as if it could be settled by a give-and-take
arrangement. We are not commercial men making a
bargain, nor politicians framing a policy. Each of
these no doubt must be ready to forego much he would
like, and to accept things he does not like, as the reason
able price of the advantages which others wiU give
him. It is, however, impossible for us to approach one
another by saying : ' We wiU agree to treat that as true
— though we don't think it is, — if you wiU agree to treat
this as true — though we know you don't believe it ? '
Frankly, our old antagonism and strife, ruinous as it
was and is, seems to me far better than the peace of
acquiescence. We quarrelled because we were sure
that our division was not right, and we wanted to make
an end of it somehow. A quarrel over difference is
regrettable, but at least hopeful ; an amiable indiffer
ence to difference is ruinous because hopeless.
It is for this reason that I dread so much those
premature efforts, not so much to close as to hide our
differences by occasional services of ' inter-Communion '
or ' interchange of pulpits.' I do not believe Non-
Conformists care about these things any more than
we do. It is almost an insult to their forefathers as to
ours to believe that we can by our superior wisdom
simply drop all for which they believed themselves to
be contending.
There are real differences, full of real lessons and real
significances, and there is a real division over which we
cannot too deeply grieve. If we would heal that
division, we must carefuUy face and study the differ
ences. To ignore them is not only to perpetuate the
division indefinitely, it is to repudiate on both sides
aU that real and living faith with which the difference

IS A SYNTHESIS POSSIBLE? 213
is concerned. We are declaring that the mere human
feeling of good-feUowship constitutes aU the unity we
care about. To anyone who reahses the sacramental
meaning, kneeling before one altar in the fuU sense of
its meaning is not a way of reaching unity, but its
whole attainment. However much we long to draw
nearer, where that meaning is not accepted, where any
one feels he cannot yet accept it, I am sure neither of us
ought to, I am sure none of us would wish to, degrade the
true unity of faith and soul into a similarity of physical
postures. I turn therefore to the genuinely religious question.
In urging this fuU acceptance by both sides I am afraid
I shaU damage my reputation for consistency, and my
reputation for seriousness by a proposal which both
sides, though for opposite reasons, regard as utterly
impossible. I wiU try first to consider the Episcopalian
objections, not so much in the hope of answering them,
but rather because they wiU give me an opportunity of
considering what the admission of free preaching would
really involve. Then we wiU consider the Non-Confor
mist objections in the same way. Though I cannot
prove, and it is not my place to say whether, unity is
possible on these lines, at least we shaU get some idea
of what is implied in their rejection.
The first protest then comes from the Episcopalian
side. Do I reaUy contemplate the Church aUowing all
and sundry, wise and foolish, weU-taught and ill-
taught, to preach as much as they like and anything
they like, heresies and orthodoxies, without control ?
And yet that is what my notion of pure freedom comes
to. I do not want this question to get more tangled than
I can help, therefore let me note that I did not begin

214 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
by making any proposal at aU. I found certain con
victions which I held very strongly, and in apparent
opposition other convictions which were somewhat new
to me. When I began to ask what there was in human
nature or in the nature of societies to explain these
different convictions, they seemed to correspond to the
difference of fact and appreciation, sight and under
standing, law and freedom, form and development. In
theology they seemed to correspond to the work of
Christ and the fulfilment of that work by the Holy
Spirit. In religion we found them again, repeated in
the distinctive ideas of Sacraments and preaching.
Certainly these differences must be confusing, since
we find people constantly confused about them. Those
who love understanding things, philosophising about
them, are apt to be impatient and careless over their
facts ; those who love development are apt to forget
that there must be something to develop. Similarly,
the people who love facts are apt to forget that they
want understanding ; those who love law are apt to
forget life. Yet, one way or another, we know that
we have got to lay our count with both sides. I am not
so far, therefore, inventing difficulties in this question ;
I am merely pointing out that the difficulties which do
exist are of a certain common type. Nor, finaUy, can
I be held responsible for the possibUity or impossibUity
of a reconciliation, merely because I insist that we need
in religion the same reconcUiation which we have to
make elsewhere.
Let us not theorise about the matter, but examine it.
Our starting point is not a proposal that everybody
ought to be allowed to preach as much as he likes (or
can), but the fact that at the present day everybody
does, whether he knows what he is talking about or not.

IS A SYNTHESIS POSSIBLE? 215
The workman talks to his mates and the club-member
talks in the smoking-room. Sometimes they both
write to the papers, and sometimes the sub-editor of
the Daily Rattletrap writes it for them, and they only
say what a deep and original thinker he is. Can
we stop it ? Do we want to ? In the Middle Ages it
could be stopped, and perhaps it may not have been aU
evU, since there is a time for everything. To-day it
cannot be stopped, and personaUy I have no doubt at
aU that it is better it cannot. If people read their
Bibles or anything else, and think or even imagine they
are thinking, many of them wiU think amazing foolish
ness, but it wiU not be half so foolish as it would be to
try and stop their reading their Bibles or to stop their
thinking. If people think foolishly, the true remedy is
first to rejoice that at least they are trying to think,
and next — as S. Dominic saw long ago, would he had
stuck to it ! — to set to work to help them to think
straight. When you see a man drowning, all right
instinct forbids that you should stop to inquire as to
his economic value to the community. Life has possi-
bUities, which make it always precious even when it is
the meanest, and inteUectual life is precious for the
same reason, even when it is siUy.
Our Lord's teaching lays down the theological prin
ciples, and emphasises no less the practical applications,
on which this view of our duty rests. ' I am come that
they might have life,' and this life is in the gift of His
Spirit. Growth, development, spontaneous activity,
are His operation. Again, it is spoken : ' Ye shall
know them by their fruits.' By that we may see how
much is not the work of God's Spirit, but of human
levity and self-wiU. Yes, that also is tme. 'An
enemy went and sowed tares.' The test is a right one,

216 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
but let both grow together tUl the harvest. It must
needs be that causes of stumbling come. They are
part of the discipline of life, of its training in wariness
and seriousness.
We have then to admit that these activities and
' preachings ' of one sort or another do go on and we
have to allow for them, but the Episcopalian challenge
really means, is the Church to give them her recogni
tion ? Here I think we are getting involved in another
and very troublesome ambiguity. What is the Church ?
I pointed out that the community must undertake
certain duties which were necessary to her existence,
but that she left our private undertakings free. The
town coUects its own rates, and it runs its own tram
lines, but I run my own boiler factory.
Yet, in another way of speaking, my factory is one
of the industries ' of the town.' Certainly the town
makes it possible, maintains streets for my lorries,
workmen for my machines. From this point of view
also, the town does not really run the tram-line nor
even coUect its rates. Both are done for it by official
committees or departments of the governing body,
over whose doings so much of the community as is
interested may or may not be able to exert control. It
would therefore be more accurate if, instead of speak
ing of community activities and free activities, we
spoke of the free activities and the official activities of
the community.
We have not, therefore, to ask whether the Church
should recognise free preaching, but whether it should
be recognised officiaUy. There seems no reason why
the Church should recognise it in this sense. I do
not ask the town council to give ' recognition ' to
my boUer factory, but I might if there was some

IS A SYNTHESIS POSSIBLE? 217
very special reason for it. The State recognises the
raUways, and used to recognise the telephone com
panies, because these things had become in some ways
necessities. The word • recognition ' may evidently be used in
many senses. I have pointed out already that the
Church must and ought to maintain her own official
preaching. There wUl be and ought to be a great deal
of free preaching, or free talking, which neither asks
nor expects recognition, and for which the Church is
in no way responsible. Some of this preaching may
organise itself. If it organises a false teaching, we
Churchmen should regret it, but so far as organisation
itself goes, we are always regretting that the Church
shows relatively so little capacity for organised spon
taneous development. Even when developments are
organised for her, she cares so little for them — perhaps
for the very reason that having been made for her, they
are not spontaneous.
How far could we take such bodies as the Wesleyans
or Congregationalists to represent a genuine Church
development ? How far could the Church ' recognise '
them ? What would such ' recognition ' involve ?
Let us consider these questions carefuUy. We are
starting from our own assumption that there is a founda
tion of divine sacramental gift, ' generaUy ' necessary,
that is normaUy necessary for aU, and that the adminis
tration of this gift is the first work of an official system,
that is, of those to whom the power of consecration has
been duly given. We are next assuming that there
might be a free and varied outgrowth from that foun
dation, which had developed also an organisation.
Obviously, an organisation which denied that there
was any such sacramental gift, and which did not

218 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
accept that gift as a foundation, could not ask for
recognition from the system, the principles of which it
was repudiating. Nor could the system grant such
recognition. It would be, as I have also pointed out,
impossible to recognise the organisation as doing
effectively what its own members do not beheve ought
to be or can be done.
Suppose, however, that the free organisation did
accept the principles of the official sacramental system,
the organisation would then develop its own life out
from the sacramental system, in harmony with it and
not apart from it, whether the organisation was formaUy
recognised or not. If, however, it were recognised, a
great deal of useful co-operation would ensue. Some
of the ministers of the organisation might be ordained.
If so, they become a supplementary part of the official
system, both in its sacramental and teaching activity.
On the other hand, it might be better they should not
be formaUy recognised.
Arrangements of this kind already exist to some
extent in the Church. An institution stands in a
parish — a large boys' home, a boarding school, barracks,
in some cases a large work with its employees. It is
too large and too specialised to be dealt with by the
parish clergy. Those responsible provide a room where
prayers can be said, addresses given, and they take a
certain spiritual oversight of their own people. If
circumstances call for it, they may provide a chaplain
and a chapel for the administration of the sacraments.
Now recourse must be had to the bishop. Official
license must be obtained, and such arrangements as
seem necessary must be made to avoid clashing with
the parish Church.
To apply this method to the Non-Conformist bodies

IS A SYNTHESIS POSSIBLE? 219
would be of course a much bigger business. The
effects would be much more serious. Extra-parochial
services — cathedral services, collegiate services, found
lings' hospital services — are rivals to the parish, and
we should increase the rivalry indefinitely. Yet there
is nothing new. So far as the principle goes we have
it already. So far as the question of scale goes, we
have not a friendly rivalry within the Church, but some
thing like an active antagonism from without. Have
not our attempts yet proved to us that one single
official system cannot be made to satisfy aU the develop
ments of the Christian life ? If we admit that, is there
any reason why the official system and the official
preaching should not continue for the very many whom
it suits, and that those whom it does not suit should be
otherwise provided for ?
' Friction ? ' Of course there would be friction. One
feels inclined to say that the double system would hardly
be doing its work if there were none, but anyone can see
in any sensibly worked town parish how little real need
there is for it. ' These are my parish boundaries and
my parishioners,' says the vicar. These are the people
who have a certain canonical right to his services.
There is a large mass to whom he must personaUy
devote himself, for they have so little rehgious sense
that if he does not there is no one else to reach them.
Amongst the more religiously minded, he knows equaUy
weU that a large number prefer to go to the next parish
for their services ; some from the next parish come to
his. These are mostly people who are quite capable of
taking care of themselves, and we clergy, being also
reasonably sensible, let them. We do not quarrel with
one another about it. Why should we quarrel with
the ' free ' ministries ? We do quarrel now, because

220 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
we cannot agree about the place and value of different
principles. Once we have realised that the different
principles have each their own value in different places,
and have realised what those places are and how the
principles are related, there wiU be no need that we
should quarrel.
I only say no ' need,' for as long as men are human,
so long wiU they always find some excuse for being a
little jealous. It is natural to resent anybody else
having a try at what we think we can do quite weU.
Yet we aU know quite weU that there is never just one
way and no more of doing things and looking at them.
The want of spontaneous energy, which we all deplore
among our people, is a proof that our official system is
not by itself enough if we are to get the best results.
Is not our dread of another system also a proof that a
system too exclusively official has led a little too much
to officialism ? The parish is made for man, and not
man for the parish.
There are many things spiritual and practical which
want doing, many ways of doing things and many ways
of looking at them. This is the place of variety, and
it is disastrous to make it the place of uniformity.
There is one thing done for us, one thing given to us,
and there is but One to Whom we have to look for help
and strength. There is the ground of unity. Once we
have found unity I believe we can safely trust our own
and other folk's common sense, as we do in our parishes
to-day. The difference of the voluntary system wUl
do a good deal to deliver us from the stiffness of our
officialism. We clergy shaU always be officials ; we
shaU always have an official way of looking at things,
and that is good. But we want to get out of our
bondage to it, for that is evil.

IS A SYNTHESIS POSSIBLE? 221
So far, in the last few pages, I have been speaking
mainly to Episcopalians, and I have tried to show that
there is no real reason why we should not, and that
there are a great many reasons why we should, admit
the right of free preaching, free organisation, free
activities, alongside of those which are official. It is
true that we have never formally excluded such things,
we have indeed professed to desire them and to welcome
them. I am afraid we must confess that in practice
we always discourage them. We only welcome them
when they wUl submit to the dominance of the official
system ; that is, when the free system wiU consent to
give up its freedom. I do not suppose that I shaU have
persuaded aU Episcopalians of the necessity of another
line of action. We have grown so accustomed to that
ideal of the necessity of official governance that it is
exceedingly difficult for many of us to contemplate
anything else. I am even afraid that many wiU find
it difficult to be patient with an Episcopalian who pro
poses anything else. They will think that I am sur
rendering the whole Church position if I say — as I do
say — that to my mind this is where we have been in
error. Yet so far I am speaking to my friends — more or
less about a position I understand. I also maintained
that there could be no unity and no recognition, unless
it was mutual. The Church, as a sacramental body,
could only recognise and accept the principle of freedom
so maintained and practised by Non-Conformists, where
they recognised and accepted the Church principle and
practice, that is, our doctrine and system of Church
sacraments. Here, where I have so much less claim to
understand, I am afraid I shall be met with a much
more emphatic answer. ' We cannot possibly accept

222 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
your sacramental doctrine and system, and it is utterly
useless to ask it.'
Perhaps it is, but at least let us be sure what this
answer means, and what is involved in it. What exactly
is impossible and what our future position is to be.
A clear understanding wiU be a great gain, even if
there is no other to be had.
A thing may be impossible in three ways, {a) It
may be impossible because we wiU not do it. We might
caU that a Conditional Impossibility. It is only im
possible so long as our minds remain in this state.
Again, (6) a thing may be impossible because we cannot
do it. We might caU that a casual or Accidental
ImpossibUity. When we get wiser or stronger, or get
a few more helpers, perhaps we may succeed. Lastly,
(c) a thing may be impossible because it reaUy cannot
be done. We might call that the Fundamental or
Absolute Impossibility. It is not always quite easy to
be sure to which class any given difficulty belongs, and
untU we know we need not quite give up hope.
At present we wiU not attempt to classify this im
possibility. Let us go on to ask what is involved in it.
How will it affect the question of unity which so many of
us on both sides desire so earnestly ? How would Non-
Conformists wish that we should join them ? Do they
want us to surrender our convictions ? I am not
without hope that many wiU feel with me that surrender
ing convictions is a dangerous course to start on, and
one which can hardly reasonably be asked. Many I
know are quite prepared to say that they are quite
wUling we should foUow our convictions, only that they
are not wUling we should force our convictions on them.
What they ask is mutual toleration of differences.
This seems ever so simple, yet I am prepared to show

IS A SYNTHESIS POSSIBLE? 223
that it is in fact an Absolute or Fundamental Impossi-
bUity. Let us consider. A thing is Absolutely Im
possible which is so entirely inconsistent with itself
that it could not exist, and that nobody could seriously
think of it. If a man thinks of a triangle, he cannot
think of it as having four sides, for if it had four sides it
would not be a triangle.
Contradictions of this kind are only possible when
men do not quite realise their meaning. The old-
fashioned Non-Conformists held the Catholic view of
the Sacrament to be idolatry, a dishonouring of God,
against which they were bound to protest. That was in
teUigible and it is stUl perhaps a very common attitude,
but the proposal I am now considering does not seem
to me self-consistent. If it be true that God gave
Himself in the way we believe, then the Non-Confor
mists and we must accept that truth as a factor in
our daUy religious life and worship, just as we accept
the Incarnation and the Atonement in our Christian
faith. If it is not true, then Non-Conformists ought
not to tolerate it. We must ask them to deUver us
from vain beUef. It can hardly be contended that a
means of God's actual Presence, which in fact does so
profoundly affect our lives, is of no importance. Of
course, if we have not made up our minds which way
the truth lies, toleration is perfectly right because
hesitation is perfectly reasonable, but hesitation cannot
be the basis of a permanent re-union.
When we look closely, therefore, it does not seem
to me that the proposal for mutual toleration has any
serious meaning just in the shape in which it is put.
If, however, we look more sympathetically at the
causes which have led to it, we may see some very
serious meanings indeed.

224 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
A long and sad history of controversy, a growing
consciousness of our own faUures and needs had called
up in many of us a doubt whether we could, whether
God meant to let us, win that decisive triumph over
the other of which at one time we were so confident,
and for which some still hope. With an increased
humUity and self-distrust, and with the increased
knowledge of fuUer intercourse, we have not only
learnt to feel personal admiration and respect, we
have begun to see that there was good also in the
systems which were different to our own, begun to
see that those systems were strong where ours were
weak. We have begun to recognise that we had a
great deal to learn.
I take that last sentence to be the key of the position.
It is a sentence very commonly on our lips. Some
times it is honestly meant. At other times it and
simUar remarks are only empty platitudes, the formal
comphments of religious etiquette, which a man must
use who wishes to be thought broad-minded, but which
express only his clear perception that admiration is
cheap and politeness easy, though he has no intention
of doing anything, for that would be very troublesome
indeed. Insincerity is just the sin that doth so easily
beset us. It is morally soothing to admit that we are
worthless sinners, and it is inteUectually elevating to
admit we have indeed much to learn, but resentment
in the one case, controversy in the other, are as open
as ever the moment we descend from the general to
the particular.
The foolishness, the mischievousness, of platitudes
does not lie in themselves but in us, and in our misuse
of them. They are a confession and a reminder, even
if we make them an excuse for forgetting, what we

IS A SYNTHESIS POSSIBLE? 225
ought to mean. The man signs himself ' your humble
servant,' because it is a form, and it is a form because
we know that is the relation in which we should stand
to one another. These remarks about our having much
to learn and so on may be mere platitudes to many, but
I do not like to take them so. I had much rather
believe that on so serious a question they were seriously
meant. In any case, they imply a recognition of the
way up which unity ought to come.
Without wishing to bind anyone to my view, suppose
we admit that the Churchman excels in reverence and
the Non-Conformist in energy. Then each will need to
learn from the other to strengthen himself on the
weaker side. But how is he to learn ? What is it he
has to learn ? Of course it might be that we had both
failed in different ways to appreciate the whole Chris
tian ideal, but I hardly think anybody would so contend.
Certainly I have never found Churchmen lacking in
their admiration for energy, nor do I suppose that Non-
Conformists need to be instructed in the beauty of
reverence. It would be absurd to imagine that among
so many miUions aU the reverent people had been born
on one side, and aU the energetic people on the other,
and we know further that people do not sort themselves
out into reUgious bodies according to character. If
then the difference of results is not in ideals but in
attainments, and the cause is neither chance nor choice,
but up-bringing, the answer to our question is plain.
The difference lies not in the individuals, but in the
system. Each system has something which is worth
learning whereby it has made the common ideal effec
tive, and each has something it needs to learn and to
acquire, for therein its attainment is defective. That is
the only meaning we can put upon the phrase.

226 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
On this conviction I have been working throughout.
I have tried to find what was the vital element and the
true strength of each system, what was the nature, and
thence to infer what was the cause, of its weakness.
In result it seemed to me that the central convictions
of both sides were justified. It is perhaps over twenty-
five years ago that I began to see how much our daily
religious life needs to rest upon the solid foundation of
the sacramental gift, the objectivity of which is main
tained by the sacramental order of its administration.
The importance of the Non-Conformist side, of the
organisation of a voluntary and spontaneous life, I
have learnt more slowly and more recently. It was
only possible to maintain both these as one reahsed
that the two were necessary to one another. The
formal and sacramental by inadequate development
remains formalist and ineffective. The free hfe apart
from the sacramental is unstable, emotional, indi
vidualistic. If then where an opposition exists, I yet show that
both are right, I must thereby show that both are
wrong. But with this difference, that while the justifi
cation was of our convictions, the condemnation — if I
must caU it one — was of our negations. The Non-
Conformist was wrong in protesting against sacra
mentalism, and the Episcopalian was wrong in protest
ing against voluntaryism. We both knew the value of
what we held and of what God had given us. Neither
of us was sufficiently conscious of what he lacked, of
what God was wUling to give. I have only gone beyond
the platitude that ' both are right and both are wrong '
by trying to make quite explicit to myself, and if I
could to others, what was right and why, and what was
wrong and why.

IS A SYNTHESIS POSSIBLE? 227
I am not of course pretending that I have done my
part with unfailing accuracy. There may be more than
this that we need to learn from the Non-Conformists ;
there may be more than this that they need to learn
from us. I think for my own part that these are at
least the two central principles, but supposing that
when we have thought about it a little more fuUy we
find a result something of this kind, taking my state
ment for want of a better, how shall we face it ? I
fuUy admit that it would be very difficult for Non-
Conformists to accept a system against which they have
always protested as idolatrous, just as it would be very
difficult for EpiscopaUans to accept a system they have
always protested as schismatical, but are we to say it
would be impossible ?
If so, then our enquiry, though it has not ended as
we should have wished in bringing re-union any nearer,
wiU at least have done some service ; it wiU have helped
to clear away some needless confusions. We get rid
of the idea, and of the misleading phrase, about both
having a great deal to learn. Unless we are prepared
to confess that we have not the wiU nor the capacity to
learn, we must take the only alternative. There may
be in others something to admire, but one of us, except
perhaps in detaUs of system, has nothing, the other
has everything to learn. Protestants and Catholics,
Catholics and Protestants — one is whoUy right and the
other whoUy wrong. We must again betake ourselves
to our arguments till one body is whoUy converted and
disappears. There always have been those on both
sides who took this view, which is now justified.
Obvious as the conclusion may be, and in some
circles popular, it yet provides no answer for the
scientific question — how is it that both systems have

228 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
gone on side by side, both developing so much effective
power, for so long a time, though one was wholly wrong ?
Is human perversity a sufficient explanation of such a
phenomenon ?
The scientific question we might perhaps ignore. It
is more difficult to ignore that large mass of simple
people who are pleading with us — ' If one body is
whoUy in the right, and yet you, who are so deeply
interested and often so highly trained, cannot convince
one another, who are we to decide between you ? '
Surely there must be some better answer for them than
that somewhat hopeless prospect of our old differences.
I must repeat my point. Either the sacramental
gift is a fact, and the necessary basis of religious hfe, or
it is not. Either some free development is necessary
to the fulness of Christian life in the Church or it is not.
In this shape the question must be answered one way or
another. If we cannot agree, we must differ, for
questions about necessity cannot be waived aside.
That each, holding fast its own convictions, should
unlearn its repudiations — before we call that impossible
— at least let us see what possibUity is claimed for it,
what limitations of possibility must be admitted.
Is this proposal ' practical pohtics ? ' Certainly not.
It is not a matter of politics at aU. If anyone supposes
that we might bring the suggestion forward at our
congresses, conferences, synods, with a view to an
early settlement, so that perhaps when the Lambeth
Conference meets in 1918, our bishops may agree to
recognise the freedom of Non-Conformist preaching,
while the Non-Conformists accept our sacramental
doctrine, of course such an idea is whoUy impossible,
preposterous, absurd — I should say FundamentaUy
Impossible.

IS A SYNTHESIS POSSIBLE? 229
It is not a question of politics, for it must be in the
first place a question of temper, that is, of mental
outlook. Unity of the kind I am hoping for is
impossible — with a Conditional ImpossibUity — so long
as we are thinking of something we may have to give
up. Would it not be different if we began by trying
to be sure what we had to give, for, starting thence,
should we not be led to think also of what we had to
gain or to learn ?
In the second place it is not a question of politics
because any final action can be a result only of
convictions. PoUtics are of man, concerned with the
devices of his making. Convictions are of God, for
the vision of truth is the gift of His Spirit. I have
reasoned out my points to the best of my ability. I
have tried to understand and express what God seemed
to be teaching me, but whatever my hopes may be,
I hardly expect that I shaU persuade anybody. I do
not offer this last statement as a becoming tribute to a
belated modesty, but because I have very httle belief
in human persuasion at all. We are looking, even in
our quarrels we have been looking, for God's way, God's
wUl, God's truth. For many of us new truths, new
ideas, new habits have become very difficult. It wiU
take us the long patience, not of years but perhaps of
Ufe-times, before we come to the vision of a fuUer, more
perfect, more many-sided Christianity, fixed in those
firm roots which drink of the living waters, diverse in its
branches, whose leaves wiU be for the healing of the
nations. I cannot bear to admit that word ' impossible ' in
any final sense, for that is to doubt God's power. Yet,
to contemplate unity as something immediately attain
able is very like an assertion of man's self-will. ' It is

230 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
not for you to know the times and the seasons which the
Father hath put in His own power.' We have begun to
see that there reaUy are deep principles on both sides
waiting to be reconciled. We have hardly begun to see
what they are. Greatly daring, perhaps out of sheer
vanity, I have tried to define and set them out. It may
weU be of this generation that it is written : ' Thou
shalt see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not enter
therein, because ye rebeUed against my word at the
waters of Strife.' Or, as it is written upon another
occasion, ' But your little ones, that ye said should be
a prey, they shaU go in and possess it.' And yet again,
it may be for us that God has kept this great thing.

PART III.
DOCTRINE.

CHAPTER XII.
CREEDS AND FAITH.
So far I have dealt with the question in dispute as
being primarily concerned, first with religious observ
ance, and then with ecclesiastical system. I have
assumed that the old-fashioned evangelical faith in
the Incarnation and in the Atoning Death of Christ was
a common ground between us. I have in general not
done more than ask what place certain forms had, and
how far they might be necessary for the consistent
presentation and maintenance of that faith, although
incidentaUy I have given some explanation of what we
took to be its force and meaning.
I made the assumption because it would be con
fusing if I tried to argue two questions, the religious and
the doctrinal,' at the same time. I thought I was
justified in making the assumption because that evan
gelical faith was not very long ago regarded as the
centre and core of Non-Conformist teaching. Even
now I believe it is passionately held by much the
larger number, and that very few would definitely or
formaUy repudiate it. I believe I could say that many,
even of those who feel it to be slipping away from them,
would gladly get back to it if they could.
I am weU aware, however, that this assumption
cannot permanently be maintained, and herein we may

234 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
see something of the depth and sublety of the questions
which divide us, the difficulty and at the same time the
importance of understanding their true nature. We
have discussed the rival claims of our ministries and of
our systems for a very long time. We have hardly
recognised — I personaUy have only just come to recog
nise—that we on the Church side were contending for a
ministry and system which was primarUy and distinc
tively intended to present and maintain the essential
ground-work of the Christian faith, while the Non-
Conformists were contending for a ministry which
should buUd up and express the Christian activity and
development. Each of us was so wrapped up in his
own point of view that he could only judge the other
from it. The Churchman regarded the Non-Conformist
ministry as a rival sacramental order. The Non-Con
formist could not understand why the efficiency of his
own ministry should not be recognised.
So far there did not seem to be finaUy conclusive
reason why the two systems should not be united, and
there was every reason why they should. The Church
system grievously needs spontaneity, freedom, develop
ment ; the Non-Conformist system seems to us in
imminent perU of drifting away from Christian faith to
a belief in personal energy and feelings, activities and
experiences. If, however, the time for so simple a
solution is not passed, that solution is becoming more
and more difficult as the two courses lead further to
their logical conclusions. Formerly, Non-Conformists
could not see that the fixed ground-work given in
Christian doctrine or teaching needed a religious or
sacramental presentation ; but by many of the younger
generation the question is being asked whether there is
a fixed ground-work which can be so presented. To

CREEDS AND FAITH 235
their minds the so-caUed ground-work is wholly a life.
The controversy about forms perhaps was from the
beginning, it is certainly now becoming a controversy
as to the nature of faith. The question of sacraments
is secondary to that of Creeds.
I think this view of things is correct, and yet it was
hardly possible for us to do other than we have done.
We may argue over Creeds and Articles a long time
without ever getting within range of one another's
meaning. Beginning from rehgious usages, which are
after all the truest expression of religious ideas, the
problem of the sacramental gift brought us to the point
almost at once. Is the Divine Presence, is God, a
Something we know only by personal experience, only
recognise within the modes of our being, or is it a
Something altogether greater than ourselves, which
we acknowledge, not first in feehng, but first in
worship ?
Certainly the strong objection which most Non-
Conformists feel to the use of the Creeds are to us very
puzzling. We are so accustomed to accept those
Creeds as a short minimum statement of the essential
points of Christian behef that we can hardly realise the
position of men, apparently holding the same beliefs,
who yet object to the statements, and stiU more when
we find that on being pressed they are objecting to the
existence of such statements. We cannot help feeling
that there is some misunderstanding, either about the
meaning of the Creeds, or about the use we want to
make of them. With every motive for wishing to
understand, I am still far from sure that I do understand
rightly. After much perplexity I fancy I can see some
thing of what is meant, and I will do my best, as before,
if only for the sake of being corrected.

236 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
On a superficial view the objection to Creeds seems to
us to proceed from two quite different motives, held by
two very different sets of people, (a) Some, I think
most, Non-Conformists hold the same behef as our
selves, as fuUy and as strongly as we do, but they
dislike giving it a formal expression, partly because
they quite rightly regard faith as a matter of life rather
than of intellectual assent. In consequence, they are
inclined to be critical over the exact expressions pro
vided, critical over both their insufficiency upon the
really vital or living issues and their over-sufficiency
on the inteUectual issues, (b) There are, however,
others who seem to us to have definitely thrown off that
ground-work of belief which the Creeds were meant to
express. If we could take these as two clearly distinct positions,
and if we could mark off those who belonged to the one
or to the other, things would be much simpler. For my
own part I could say at once I did not propose to write a
book on Christian Apologetics, I had only to consider
the real place of a statement of beliefs. But the position
is not simple. The puzzling part is that the positions
which seem to us so different, do not seem very different
to those concerned. When we looked at the Non-
Conformist system from without, we found one body
with an ' Episcopalian ' system, another with a rigidly
ordained ministry, and we might imagine both were
nearer to us than the Quakers, the Salvation Army,
or some independent chapel which has no regular
ministry and no sacraments. Yet we find in fact that
aU seem to share in a common spirit — a spirit of ' free
dom,' by which in spite of what is more obvious they
seem drawn rather to one another than to us. So,
even those who avow our beliefs most strenuously

CREEDS AND FAITH 237
seem to feel themselves more in sympathy with
those who disavow them than with us who formulate
them. Again, we find those who definitely deny
our beliefs are after aU relatively few, but there is
a very large and growing number, who altogether
deny that the beliefs are fundamental, and who are
attaching less and less importance to them. The
spirit of freedom in the system is a spirit of freedom
also in belief.
When we saw how deep-seated were our differences,
it seemed to me almost foolish to imagine that we could
patch up real union merely by placing separate or
ganisations side by side. We ought rather to begin
by asking what are the principles concerned, and in
what relation do they stand to one another. It is
the principles we have to recognise first. We are stUl
more bound to that method now that we find the same
difference recurring in regard to our faith. I propose
first to examine what we mean by faith. In what
sense can we call it a Ufe ? In what way, if any, is
the inteUect concerned ? Next, we may ask what can
be meant by essential beliefs, whether there are such
things, and what part they play in our life. How far
the Creeds meet any of our requirements we can leave
to another chapter.
In the two questions I propose to consider here, I
used two different words. I spoke first of a faith, then
of a belief. The distinction between them is of great
importance. We wiU take beUef first because it is the
simpler, and in examining its meaning I wiU try to
keep to the simplest and most common-place usages.
If we have a difficult term to deal with, it is always
better to avoid as long as we can the complexities of
its religious associations.

238 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
BeUef is certainly a common enough word. We use
' I believe ' as synonymous with ' I think,' or ' I have
an opinion ' in somewhat marked contrast to ' I saw ' or
' I know.' In general the first set of terms expresses
a doubt ; the second set implies a certainty. This
distinction, however, is secondary or accidental ; the
root difference lies in the process. Knowledge belongs
to sight and the axiomatic — or what we take as such —
and to what can be proved from these by a deductive
or mathematical reasoning. Opinions or beliefs are
always a matter of inductive reasoning from experience,
and uncertain because the results of that process gener
aUy are somewhat uncertain. Thus the past is in
principle a matter of knowledge, for we assume some
body must know and have seen what happened. In
practice, they do not always tell us truthfuUy what
they saw ; therefore in practice we have to go largely
on inference, and past history is often a doubtful
opinion. The future is always an inference, and there
fore always of opinion, except the future eclipses of
astronomy which are known, because we now take the
principles of astronomy as axioms and can calculate
with deductive certainty.
It is curious and not unimportant to note therefore
that belief is always associated in our mind with reason.
If I say that ' I believe A. B. is going to commit bur
glary,' I shall be immediately asked why. I may find
it difficult to explain why, but if I admitted I had no
reasons I should be set down as a lunatic. Knowledge,
on the other hand, does not necessarily require reasons,
and indeed always rests finaUy on something which
cannot be reasoned. If I say I know two and two are
four, no one caUs me a lunatic because I can only repeat
that I do know it.

CREEDS AND FAITH 239
The greatest distinction between the two is in the
object of the verbs. The object of the belief is always
a statement or proposition. I believe that ' the train
wiU go to London.' The object of knowledge may be
a statement, for I might say I knew it would. More
distinctively the object is a thing or a person. I know
a tree or I know Tom. I can only say I believe Tom,
when I mean I believe that he is teUing the truth.
Belief, therefore, is entirely intellectual. The pro
position or statement is inteUectual ; my beUef is its
acceptance by my inteUect, for reasons which my
inteUect finds sufficient. This holds of religions as weU
of trains. I beUeve there is a God, or that the train wiU
start, partly because I have been told so by credible
persons, whether Popes, or Apostles, or my friends, or
Bradshaw, and partly for a multitude of other reasons
which I can or cannot work out. It is a very difficult
business to know what has brought one's mind to a
belief. When we come to faith, or trust, or behef in,
taking these as synonymous, we have a much more
complex idea. In the first place, the object of our faith
is always a real thing or person, or what can be con
ceived as such. It is never a statement. I beheve that
the train wiU start, but I can only say that I beheve in
the train. In the second place, in order to be an object
of faith, this thing {i.e. the train, in which I include aU,
the driver, the raUs and so on, as one complex object)
must be capable of producing results which I proceed
to attain by its means.
There are here three points to note. (1) Faith goes
beyond behef, beyond mere inteUectual assent, because
it is looking to practical results. I have faith in the
train, because I am letting it carry me to my destination.

240 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
When I arrive there, I stiU believe that the train wiU
go on to the terminus and wUl also return, but it
would be straining language to say I had any further
faith in it. Since I have no intention of going on, nor
of returning by it, I do not use the train.
(2) Faith therefore implies an activity on the part of
its object. It generaUy also involves a good deal of
activity on my part, for to fulfil my faith I must go to
catch the train. It may lead up to activity, for I travel
by the train in order to do several useful things. But
faith itself is not so much an activity as a passivity. It
actually consists in an attitude of wiU by which I throw
myself upon something not myself that it may do some
thing for me. The central act of my faith lies in my
sitting stiU and allowing myself to be carried instead of
walking. (3) Although belief is not the whole of faith, it is an
essential element in it. It is the essential element,
basis or ground-work which makes faith possible. The
faith by which I aUow the train to carry me somewhere
rests upon my belief that the train goes there. If I do
not take the trouble to see that my belief is reasonable,
I may find myself at the wrong place. Faith is by no
means always a virtue.
If now we have got a clear meaning for our word, let
us ask what place faith has in our life. We have a
vague, and yet a strong, feeling that even if it is not
always a virtue, it is yet a very glorious thing. We wiU
begin with faith in our feUowmen. Certainly without
faith we could not be men at all, or even animals. We
could only be vegetables, and sterile vegetables, for
propagation involves an act of faith. We are accus
tomed to say that civUisation makes us sceptical, and
this is very true, for civUisation is a development of the

CREEDS AND FAITH 241
self-conscious personal Ufe which, breaking through the
chain of mere routine habit, looks at everything with
the conscious judging intelligence, acts accordingly with
the free and conscious choice that make foresight. This
bringing of everything to judgment is what we mean by
scepticism. But it is no less true that civUisation is essentially a
life of faith. The nearer one goes to savagery the more
self-dependent each man is. The huntsman makes his
own weapons, catches his own game, dresses his own
skins, puts up his own shelter. He must trust his
feUow-tribesman, or he would not be human, but there
is not much except the sacredness of the family to wit
ness to the need of help. Commerce and industrialism
seem to us fuU of suspicion and strife. They are really
a vast structure built upon, and made possible by, faith
and mutual help. A bank is a temple of faith, for the
banker never dreams of seeing nor wishes to touch with
his fingers a hundredth part of the wealth he enters with
his pen. He trusts you and you trust him ; he credits
you and you credit him. Taken as individuals, we are
all very helpless, but because we trust one another and
help one another we can do almost anything. Faith is
the result of our weakness, and it is the glory of our
weakness because it is its redemption.
I seem to have been singing the glories of modern
civUisation, and I do not think we ought to forget its
wonder and spirituality, even though we are mainly
conscious of other sides which are horrible and evU.
How can the same fountain bring forth sweet water and
bitter, as it palpably seems to do ? The power and
glory of civUisation come from the accord between
opposites ; the evU and misery come from their dis
accord. We began by being sceptical, and bringing all
Q

242 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
things to judgment. When we judged ourselves, we
judged our insufficiency. Thus, when we had learnt
our own weakness, in our need of help we found power.
Out of doubt and questioning we found the answer in
faith. But in this process there are two fatal flaws, (i)
Our faith is the great underlying fact of life, its perpetual
assumption, and because we take our assumptions for
granted we do not think much about them. Our
scepticisms, our judgings, our doubts, on the other hand,
are very hard work and take up aU our attention. Our
life is buUt out of weakness and helpfulness, but our
consciousness is occupied by the sense of power and the
desire for success. We live by faith, for we are parts of
a community, yet we think of ourselves as individuals,
and even the good we would do for another must be a
choice of the self.
Of course, reflexion shows us this is all wrong, but it
shows us also that it is a wrong we cannot escape. We
belong to the great common humanity, but what is the
value of the ignorance of our judgment as to its good ?
When we were young, we had a serene confidence in our
fitness to put things straight and to say how they ought
to go. Our earnestness found it fine fun to have a
try at putting them straight and fiUed us with an intense
ambition to be grown up, so that we might try on an
adequate scale. As we get older, if we do not learn
faith in God, at least we learn unbelief in ourselves.
The world of youth is a very simple place with a clear-
cut right and wrong no one can ever mistake. The
world of middle age is a horribly complex affair in which
with the best intentions it is much easier to do mischief
than to do any real good. Ideals remain as a dream,
but what can a man effect ? Of what avaU are his

CREEDS AND FAITH 243
judgments and efforts ? This much, that if we stick
pretty close to our own business, it will be reasonably
possible to keep ourselves afloat. Is not this what the
actual order of things has designed for us ? What do
we know about the good of humanity ? Is humanity
anything more than a large number of individuals
simUarly engaged in looking after their own selves ?
Somehow the actual order works out fairly weU, for
incidentaUy also we help one another. Why should we
not let it go its own way, putting in such little helpful
nesses as come within our reach though with no great
idea of their serviceableness ?
Is not this the epitome of human life ? The faith by
which we work we can only take for granted, for we
cannot make it continuously possible. As mere frag
ments of a whole we can only have a fragmentary con
ception of the whole. Real as our faith may be in it —
the most real thing about us — we cannot realise it in a
fragmentary consciousness already occupied by the
activities and beliefs of the self. Humanity, therefore,
has the unreality of an abstract notion, and coUective
humanity is the sum of all weakness. The Superman
of Nietzsche was the ideal of power, and every attempt
to realise the type has shown its vileness and its folly.
The true and permanent redemption of human weak
ness can lie only in faith in God, since the principles
which to us are separate and inconsistent are in Him
reconciled. All human knowledge is derivative, for
it is the knowledge of the observer. As things are, so
by experience and reflection we may learn to think of
them. Knowledge in God is causative, like the know
ledge of a designer. So things are as He thinks them.
We therefore and the things we know stand apart,
and the gap is only bridged by a partial knowledge ;

244 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
the knowledge of God is complete, holding in Himself,
reconciling and perfecting, the imperfect and partial.
Without this faith in God, faith in man is impossible,
and faith in ourselves is a mere vain boasting, avaUable
at best for purposes of self-seeking. With faith in
God all things are possible. We can believe in men,
for if humanity means little for us but an abstraction,
assuredly it means a great deal for God. We may
know little of what God wants for man, but we can
have patience and learn, and learning, since it is essen
tially of humUity, is essentially of faith. Nor need
we be afraid to act, even if it involves big issues. We
have only our judgments and our own theories to go
upon, and these may be wrong. God Who has made
us thus, knows our weakness and our self-will. But
if we have done our best to learn, and to keep to
what we have been given to see, what then ? Our
confidence and our rejoicing are not in ourselves, but
in God. Every human instinct shrinks from faUure,
and to have made a fool of yourself is the greatest
terror in life. Yet if we fear failure, we shall do nothing.
With the love of God, though the shrinking and pain
are stUl there, there is something very beautiful in
failure, something one would not have missed for the
world in learning one's own weakness. With faith in
God, one knows weU enough that failure is no great
matter. I do not know if I have done it very weU, or made my
meaning inteUigible, but I thought it worth whUe to
try to show that for aU human life there is one tme
basis. Life can grow rightly and consistently so long
as a man is prepared to start everything by saying ' I
believe in God.' Was this worth explaining ? ' Surely
in writing for professedly religious people, we might

CREEDS AND FAITH 245
take that for granted.' Alas, this is just where our
reUgion has foUowed the way of our civUisation. Pre
occupied with our activities we have forgotten all about
our faith. We talk fine things about God, as we do
about our feUow-men and about what we should like
to do for them. We hardly consider what they do
for us, and it is amazing how little comes of our talk
and our ideals.
In the religious world to-day we are aU full of devout
feelings, experiences, enthusiasms, noble aspirations,
constructive ideals, moral energies, character-buildings.
Of course there is another side, but we do not want
to be too critical about it. ' God is doing His best.'
We admit that it is a very poor best, but ' God has
never had a fair chance with the world.' Evidently
now we are getting to work in earnest, things will look
up a bit. If this is not believing in God, anyhow God
wiU have good reason to believe in us, so there wiU
be faith somewhere.
As it is with the means of our religion so it is with the
end or aim for its attainment. ' The concern of re
ligion is to regard the world as a means by which the
highest value of the devout man is realised.' ' The
kingdom of God is that in which alone man finds his
blessedness.' Or, that we may not miss the point
of what might be ambiguous, ' Man has the sense of
his own dignity, and makes himself the centre round
which the world closes as a circle.'
I have taken these Ulustrative passages somewhat
hurriedly from different sources. Some are from writers
of the highest reUgious influence ; some are sayings
picked up from platform addresses. Their authorship
is of no moment. Let the reader open any of the vast
multitude of modern books on the subject, and he wUl

246 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
find plenty more quotations. Religion is a feeUng of
our own, or, when we get a little sceptical of feehngs,
then it is the activity of our practical devotion to moral
and social problems. The end of reUgion is the de
velopment of the aforesaid feelings, or it is character-
buUding, or again, it is the seeking of solutions to the
moral and social problems.
I do not hesitate to repeat that it is this very thing
which makes our religion and our activities alike in
effective. ' We make ourselves the centre of a world.'
Yes, that is just what we do, and it is of course an
utterly unreal world, a patent fancy world of our own
imagining. It so happens that the real world was
made a longish time ago. Some of us believe that
it was made by God, and that God, and not man, is
its centre.
If the modern world could accept that belief, we
should find a basis for reverence, and reverence is the
basis for patience, humUity, careful study. But why
should we study, learn, enquire, about God's world and
God's way when we can make, not one but so many,
much better worlds and ways, each for ourselves accord
ing to our own theories of what a world ought to be ?
Meanwhile the practical business man says with equal
justice that he has to deal with the world as it is, and
has neither interest nor use for fancy worlds. Both of
us then have lost the reverent fear of God's judgment
upon what the practical man does or we religious folk
think. ' We take the thought of God for granted,' and we
do not at aU reahse that it is the most difficult of aU
thoughts. Even now when the doubt is meeting us
on every side, being hurled at us by the van-load from
aU the publishers, we hardly reahse the difficulty of the

CREEDS AND FAITH 247
thought, or the difficulty of making it real, just because
it is so easy to make it a sentiment, and we think so
little of the real world. In aU the back ages of history
men have sought for God as a refuge from the world,
because He was its maker and its ruler, and they
could not find Him. We stand where they stand, and
their means are ours. The heavens are telUng the glory
of God. We turn to them, and we learn — Astronomy.
Let us go to the chUdren, peer into the child-mind, and
we return with our hands fuU of the observations of
Experimental Psychology.
In this perplexity the scientist comes upon us.
' What do you expect to find ? Please remember that
in this area of the fact, of the true order of the world,
there is no room for dreams, fancies, preferences. If
you search with honest patience, you can learn some
what of just how things are and of the order in which
they stand. Whether they are nice — according to your
standard of what is nice — does not in the least affect
the matter or alter the truth.' Science closes the reign
of heathen rehgion, that is, of the religion of human
notion and aspiration. The best philosophy could do
was to assert an Ultimate as unknown as Kant's
' thing-in-itself.' Only one real attempt at an answer has been made.
Mohammedanism at least laid hold on the primary
truth that reahty is not what we reach, but what
reaches to us. It presented God not as the abstraction
drawn from our experience, but as One Who had at
least spoken by ' the Prophet,' who had sent a message.
Apart however from what was thus given, Moham
medanism leaves the whole order in which we have to
hve just what it was before. We are told God rules
over it, but as He stands clear away from it, the mere

248 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
fact of rule rather adds to its uninteUigibUity than
otherwise. Only one real answer has been given. Christianity
begins from the same point — God reached to us, but
not merely by a message. God Himself took our
nature, accepted our limitations, lived our life, died
as we must die. Let us take three of the main diffi
culties of life, and see whether and in what way this
answer meets them.
(i) WiU it enable us to answer the scientist ? Can
we by its means find our way through life any better ?
WiU it help us to know what we ought to do ? Plainly
no. We can no more solve the problems of economics
or sociology by New Testament quotations than we
can solve the problems of geology from Gen. i. I
maintain that the scientist is broadly right, and we
can only learn God's wUl bit by bit in a proper scientific
way. We do not expect to know the Prime Minister's
policy because we are old friends. Indeed a man de
serves to lose a friendship which he uses as a claim for
official confidence. In the miracle of love God gave
to us, not the knowledge of what He is doing or going
to do, but the Presence, the vision, the knowledge of
Himself. (2) What is implied in this wiU be better understood
when we consider the problem of evU, which some
think the gravest of all our problems. ' God is doing
His best ' — and a shocking poor best it is. Is this
irreverent ? So far as the first statement goes, I am
not so much struck by its irreverence as by the extra
ordinary conception it betrays of the meaning of the
Name of God. The second statement, however, is a
perfectly honest statement of how things seem to us.
God has accepted it and answered us. The evU we aU

CREEDS AND FAITH 249
feel is just the evil of our weakness, the defect of our
limitation. We have so much, we can do so much,
but there is so much more that we have not got and
cannot do. Thus the evU is intensified into wretched
ness ; through our resentment sorrow becomes misery
and desire becomes greed, for greed is nothing more
than the impatience of our weakness. Here is for
life a whole nest of contradictions. God meant us to be
weak, for the evU of weakness is not an evU at all,
but a beautiful thing, being the whole basis of love. We
cannot help thinking it intolerable and trying to over
come it, for imperfection is the soU also of sin. True,
it wiU serve for either, but it is not intolerable since God
Himself was made man that He might bear it, and that
He might bear the sin also.
(3) To my mind, the problem of evil, though more
pressing is less central than the problem of humanity.
Man as an individual is but a part, a fragment, of a
whole. His good, his being, his powers, come from the
whole and are designed for it. Man, unlike the animals,
acts for a conscious end. But of this end for which he
should act he knows nothing. His conception of the
whole humanity is merely an abstraction from the
individuals he knows or has heard of. That is not
the worst. The despair of it all is that to aU seeming
there neither is nor can be a. real whole, a real
humanity, to live for or to know.
Water is water and rock is rock and force is force —
equivalently interchangeable — to the end of aU time.
But just as we learn more, grow older, wiser, just as we
grow more fuUy to be men, so we grow more individual.
For this growth is a development of a consciousness
which is a self-consciousness. As we learn to think, our
ideas are different, ' independent ' even when simUar ;

250 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
as we grow in feeling so we separate, since our feeUng is
more essentially our own than our thoughts. Even if
we seek the common good, we have first of all separated
ourselves to make ourselves the judges and agents of
what mankind ought to like and have.
Our life then steadUy leads us away from what is
common to what is personal, because our attention is
necessarUy concentrated upon what we are doing, and
that starts us from the wrong point. To man the one
thing necessary — in the full sense of necessary — is not
action but passion, not doing but suffering. What we
do is accidental, in that we need not have done it. It
was our act because it was voluntary. What happens
to a man is that which must be, by this he ' is made.'
To man doing is a joy, fulfilment of power, life, what
all choose and seek. Strictly speaking, the word
' suffering ' means only ' that which happens to you,'
but in common use we always take suffering to mean
pain, because what happens is that which is not chosen.
We aU aspire to do great things, but we shaU hardly do
as many miracles as Christ did. We long for eloquence,
but no man spake as this Man. Yet neither by act nor
speech did Christ redeem the world, but in sUence and
helplessness because He suffered. It was suffering
which needed to be redeemed, for suffering is the one
common human stuff. Activity is so far necessary to
us, since he who wiU not work cannot suffer. If you
wiU not try to do big things, glorious things, you
wiU have no disappointment, no faUure, no shame,
no Cross, and therefore no Resurrection. And Christ
alone could redeem suffering, for Christ alone could
make the renunciation of wiU in suffering — which by
itself is merely a negative acquiescence — into union
with God.

CREEDS AND FAITH 251
There is then a real Humanity for which men were
made, in which they become men, and that Humanity
is Christ, Who has re-created it in reconcUiation to
God by His sacrifice. ' Apart from Christ, there is no
Humanity, so there are no men, nothing but broken
wreckage of what might and should have been men, bat
tered upon the rocks of their own logic, tossed up on
the shifting sands of their disconnected notions, feehngs,
desires, patheticaUy struggling to weave out of these
same notions and desires a continuity of some kind
which would hold together what might be saved.'
The Atonement is so much the centre of all life that
anyone who tries to explain it must of necessity involve
himself in any number of important and difficult
controversies. On the other hand, once we have
realised its gospel, we have no alternative but either
to believe in it, or to believe in ourselves. Here also
I have probably explained myself very badly, but I
do not think this is a disadvantage. I wanted to show
the force and nature of the gospel of the Atonement.
I have put down what occurred to me as the essential
points, somewhat hurriedly, perhaps confusedly, quite
inadequately. Many of those who may read these lines
could have done it much better for themselves, and I
had far rather they did. The one central point wiU
stand out aU the more clearly, just because no one
wUl be tempted to criticise the statement as if it were
a finished attempt to solve difficulties or to answer
objections. I am not trying to maintain or justify a
position, but only to show in what it consists. I doubt
if I can justify it satisfactorUy ; I do know it justifies
itself. To a vast mass of our modern thinking, or instinct, or
writing, the doctrine of Christ's Person, of His Divinity

252 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
— or Deity — is ' theology,' is ' a dogma,' is plainly some
thing added on to the simplicity of the gospel. Even
those who personaUy accept traditional doctrine regard
it as secondary and unimportant, for ' personal life
cannot be appropriated by judgments about the Person.'
' The Gospel is love, and not opinions.' Love ! Did
anybody ever doubt that love was a beautiful ideal ?
The setting forth of an ideal is not a gospel but a law.
What men have doubted was whether it was attainable.
If they ever disputed the ideal it was because they
despaired of its attainment. A gospel is not an ideal,
but a news of something which has made an ideal
possible. This modern thinking, which makes the dogma of
fact ' secondary ' to personal appropriation or experi
ence, suggests a very curious theory of knowledge. The
use of a fact may be more vital than the merely specula
tive knowledge of its existence, nevertheless the use is
secondary since it springs from the knowledge. I eat
my dinner, because I know that it is ready and that it
is edible. Is the order different in religious matters ?
He that would come to God (in faith) , must first believe
that — He is, and that — He is a rewarder of them that
dUigently seek Him.
We need not here discuss the ultimate refinements of
epistemological theories. In religion we are concerned
with the simple and practical point of view, the broad
principles which appeal to simple and practical people.
On this side what we have said is so obvious that the
cause of confusion must lie deeper. The modern
rehgious mind regards ' appropriation ' as primary and
vital, the doctrinal fact as secondary and unimportant,
just because it has accustomed itself to think of its own
states as primary and it has pretty weU forgotten how

CREEDS AND FAITH 253
to think of God. We are so fascinated by the joy of
appropriation that we do not care to ask what there is
to be appropriated. Such an attitude is an inversion
of Christianity and of all Scripture together.
Christianity, the preaching of the gospel of the Incar
nation and the Atonement, is concerned whoUy with
God. It was God Who dwelt among us, Whom we saw
and came to know ; it was God Who shared our weak
ness, chose the evU we shrink from, bore the sin we
loathe ; it was God Who constituted a Humanity, as
only God could do, bringing us out of ourselves into
union with Himself. How then can the doctrine of the
Divinity — or Deity — of Christ be a secondary or un
important question of opinions ? That it was God Who
has done these things for us is the primary and essential
core and substance of the gospel, apart from which
there is no gospel for us anywhere at aU in heaven or
earth. The teaching of the prophets, the teaching of our
Lord as given in the Gospels, the teaching of S. Paul
and S. John, S. Peter and S. James, and S. Jude — all
alike are concerned primarily with God. The moral
teaching and ideals, whether they speak of the righteous
ness of conduct or the love and joy and communion that
are of feeling and experience, are aU secondary. They
are the results which follow, which by this relation to
God have been made possible. S. Paul says that man
in heathenism, in the religion without Christ, had been
immoral, but he was immoral just because he was god
less, because he did not like to retain God in his know
ledge. If I caU our modern religion heathen, it wiU be re
sented. Only vulgar and violent controversialists like
using terms because they are resented, yet that is the

254 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
very reason why I feel bound to bring this charge,
though I do not like doing it. I am trying to be as
httle violent and vulgar as my character permits, but
this resentment bhnds us to our real danger and to the
real meaning of heathenism. In order to be a heathen
it is not necessary to worship a mumbo- jumbo with
mother-of-pearl eyes, or to offer flowers to Kali. It is
only necessary to take our own judgments and our own
actions as the centre of our own world, to worship and
offer our flowers — flowers of rhetoric wiU do quite weU
— before the beauty of our own conceptions and ex
periences. And this is the most natural thing in the world.
Our attention is of necessity so absorbed over the ideas
we are trying to form and the personal activities which
are their proper outgrowth that far the larger part of
our conscious life is passed in a heathen — or to use
another word, a ' Pelagian ' — atmosphere. If we
realised that, though natural and inevitable, this was
nevertheless the illusion of self-consciousness, and that
it was God's purposes and God's activity working
through us, sometimes in spite of us, which constituted
the real meaning of events, determined their true
results, the iUusion would not greatly matter. When,
however, we are so conscious of what is our own, and
know so httle of what is His, it is ever so easy to assume
that God is what we think and His wiU what we choose.
And that matters a great deal. Instead of that con
sciousness of our foolishness and ignorance which is
the ground of faith, we are committed to a self-satis
faction and self-wiU which are the substance of unbelief.
A very popular and influential religious leader of the
day has expressed with singular felicity the ideas
running in so many minds by distinguishing ' the Deity,'

CREEDS AND FAITH 255
which it was of course impossible to ascribe to Christ,
with " the Divinity ' which, though His in a very special
way, He yet shares with other good men. The dis
tinction was very famUiar to classical Greek paganism,
and it is worth whUe to note the idea underlying its
different forms. Fate was the ultimate impersonal
power of events. There were also divinities, greater
or less — gods, strong but far from omnipotent, as weU
as local powers of the forest or stream. When in
HeUenic days men tried to think more seriously, Fate
became ' Deity,' the Absolute One of aU ideas, the Un
knowable, the Unattainable, the sum of aU negations.
It was Nothing, for if it was Reality it was hardly real.
Again it was Everything, aU things taken together, the
Cosmos. ' The Divine ' had stood for whatever could
help men or of which men were afraid. It now meant
httle more than a quality — power, or goodness if good
ness were a power. There were poets and clever men
and heroes who could do what plain men could not, and
they were divine. Then Caligula and Domitian,
emperors bad as well as good, were also divine ; cer
tainly they were a big part of the government of the
world. The results I have summarised elsewhere, — Deity
becomes a name for the bigness of aU things taken
together, and Divinity is a name for the niceness of
some things taken selectively. But since everything
reaUy depends on the energy of our activity and the
nature of our judgment as to what we count ' nice ' —
upon which there is very little check, for what one man
counts nice does not appeal to another — it makes httle
difference whether we call it God or not. The idea of
God is a result of certain forms of our activity ; it does
not stand for a cause. In this way the old thinkers

256 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
levered faith in God clean out of the world. They
believed they had levered God out too, but the
apostle — and the historians — suggest that this con
clusion was premature.
The teaching of Christianity, the ground of that
teaching and the result of that teaching, can hardly
be disputed. Christianity never suggested that it had
found a new way by which men could come to God.
It proclaimed that God had Himself come to men.
Now that the separation between God and man had
been broken through it was able to do away with the
remoteness of God, the horrible impersonality and
abstractness of the conception of mere ' Deity.' If,
however, God was to be a reality in man's life, it was
no less necessary to do away with the confusion of
' Divinities.' God was revealed as a Self, God only
in Himself was to be worshipped, and aU else was the
work of His hands. The times of this ignorance God
had winked at, but now He caUed men everywhere
to repent.
On this subject I may be narrow-minded, though I
have no desire to be (if I had I should know better than
to confess it), but I would summarise my view in three
statements, (i) I cannot imagine anyone of sincere
Christian feeling to whom the practical godlessness of
the self-consideration I have described is not abhorrent,
and I have tried to suggest why it ought to be. (2) I
can hardly imagine anyone who is aware of the habitual
working of his own mind who is not conscious how
easUy he faUs into that state. I have tried to show
that it is quite the natural state for us to be in. (3) I
can hardly imagine anyone at aU conversant with what
is going on in the religious world to-day who would
not recognise how strong was the tendency to accept

CREEDS AND FAITH 257
and justify this state as normal and proper, as the line
on which ' a constructive theology ' should be built.
' I should have been weU content with a Christianity
without God.' It remains for me to show how I believe
this state has come about.
I am afraid I must say that I beUeve it to be the
direct, though unintentional, result of certain features
in the old-fashioned Protestant Evangelicalism. I am
afraid to say it, because I am afraid it wiU give offence,
and also I am afraid it wiU be misunderstood. I must,
therefore, not only give my reasons ; I must safeguard
my meaning. In the first place, let me repeat that I
am not here speaking as an outsider. At one time of
my life I was a devoted and whole-hearted Protestant
Evangehcal, with no eyes for anything beyond its views.
I beUeve I have learnt to see a great many things which
once I did not see ; wherefore, though I have not ceased
to be a Protestant, I should no longer describe myself
as simply a Protestant. On the other hand, except
rather doubtfuUy for a year or two, I have never ceased
to be a whole-hearted Evangelical.
Next, I do not in the least suggest that the old-
fashioned Evangelicals were either weak or confused
in their belief in God. They did believe in God, and
their whole lives were moulded by that belief, yet their
dominant consciousness was rather of what some by
way of distinction have caUed ' Jesus-worship.' Cer
tainly all their convictions were based on the belief
that Jesus was God, that union with Him, love for Him,
was love for God, yet the two thoughts had a tendency
to drift apart. A doctrine of the Atonement, widely
held in evangelical circles, was hardly other than Di-
theistic. The Father and the Son represented different
qualities ; they were not merely distinguishable in

258 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
operation, they performed different actions. The
Evangelicals were not inclined to inteUectual reflection ;
they rather dreaded it as leading away from depth of
feeling. Through this weakness they lost control of
feeling, the power of watching and criticising its direc
tion. Feeling is primarily one's own, at most it is
personal. Those who gave themselves up to it lost the
breadth of their interest in the manifold working of
God's doings, especiaUy in directions many of them
were apt to caU ' worldly.'
There are many modern Evangelicals who stand just
where their fathers stood, for, though there are defects
in the position, where the position is not developed, the
defects are not realised. But there are multitudes
more in the younger generation with whom it is very
different. In them the inteUect begins to assert itself
and it finds no satisfaction. Interests widen, and there
with come new problems to which there seems to be no
answer. The old love for Christ remains, but, since aU
emphasis was laid on feeling, it is now a feeling only,
comparable to aesthetic or musical feeling, and feeling
is sufficiently met by the enthusiasm of admiration for
a personality, an inspiring example, a moral teaching.
' I could have been weU content with a Christianity
without God.'

CHAPTER XIII.
CREEDS AND AUTHORITY.
In the last chapter I did not mean to suggest that any
considerable number of Non-Conformists failed to reaUse
the necessity of faith in God ; I do think, however, that
very many fail to reaUse the difficulty of that faith,
the ease with which it is lost unconsciously, and in
consequence the need of keeping it before men's minds.
To be more precise, I think the very intensity of their
devotion to the Person of Jesus Christ has thrown
the meaning of that devotion -omewhat out of focus,
and thereby obscured its most essential value for life
purposes. Certainly it was for just such practical purposes that
the Creeds were drawn up and that we value them. I
propose to examine their suitabihty and possible
effectiveness from this side. I ought also to consider
the objections and misunderstandings, the disadvan
tages and abuses to which they are liable. I can only
deal with their general structure and idea, for ob
viously if I were to attempt to treat the particular
phrases one by one I ought to be starting not a new
chapter but a new book.
So far as I can foUow, there are three main objections
brought against the Creeds :
(i) They are too exclusively inteUectual, demanding

260 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
the assent of our minds to formal statements rather
than the devotion of our hves to religious principles.
(2) The statements thus put forward are obscure
and difficult, the expression of a metaphysical reflection
which invites, and is not above, criticism.
(3) There is further a very strong resentment against
the use of ecclesiastical authority to impose conditions
of communion which are in effect a fetter on freedom
of thought.
These three objections wiU serve to divide what I
want to say on the idea of the Creeds, on their language,
on their origin and use.
(1) We wiU begin then by asking whether or how far
the Creeds can be described as inteUectual statements
inviting assent. I am afraid I must admit that some
unhappy confusion in the common ecclesiastical termin
ology lends a certain justification to this view, neverthe
less it is nothing more than a confusion. The Enghsh
Church speaks of three Creeds, '' that which is commonly
caUed the Apostles' Creed," " the Nicene Creed," and
" that which is commonly caUed the Creed of S.
Athanasius." It is, of course, weU known that aU
these titles are wrong. The Apostles' Creed is the
Baptismal Creed of the west, which grew more or less
to its present shape in the course of the second and
third centuries. The ' Nicene ' Creed was the creed
perhaps of Jerusalem with the addition of some phrases
from the true Creed of Nicea. The Athanasian Creed
was drawn up in the fifth century.
The point of immediate significance is that the
Athanasian Creed is not reaUy a Creed at all, but a
statement, simUar to our Thirty-nine Articles, the Scotch
Catechisms, the Free Church Catechism, and many
other documents which at and since the Reformation

CREEDS AND AUTHORITY 261
have been put out by almost every theological body in
turn. The Athanasian ' Creed ' begins : ' Whosoever
wUls to be saved it is necessary. . . .' The Thirty-nine
Articles begin : ' There is but one living and true God.'
The Scotch Catechism begins : ' The chief end of man
is to. . . .' The Free Church Catechism (1898) begins :
' The Christian religion is the religion founded by our
Lord.' As they begin, so they continue with state
ments which ask our assent. The Creeds proper do not
begin with a statement, or at least not with a statement
of fact or theory, but with a personal statement. The
Apostles' and the Nicene Creed begin in nearly identical
words : ' I believe in (one) God.' The Greek forms
begin : ' We believe in. . . .' Creeds are then the
assertion of a personal and living relation or attitude.
The difference is that which I tried to explain in the last
chapter between faith and belief. Belief, I admit, is
purely intellectual ; faith, or belief in, is much more.
As the form is different, so the use is different. Our
Articles, for instance, are merely appended to the
Prayer Book as a standard which our official teachers
are required to accept, somewhat like the statements of
a trust deed. Catechisms are used for the instruction
of the young. The Athanasian Creed is sung as an
occasional psalm or hymn with a gloria at the end.
The Creeds are a normal part of our worship ; they are
professed at Baptism, and constantly used in private
prayer for a confession of that faith from which worship
and Christian life proceed. Their recitation is part of
an attempt to keep this ever before men's minds — ' I
believe in God.'
I am not in the least depreciating the value of Articles
or statements. I have a very high regard for the
Thirty-nine Articles, and stiU more for the Athanasian

262 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
Creed. If we are to have faith we must from time to
time take stock also of our behef, but I have undertaken
to speak of Creeds and I have not undertaken to speak
of formulae in general. I shaU confine myself to the
two very ancient Creeds before us, first because Creeds
and statements require to be considered in different
ways. Secondly, I am glad to confine myself thus,
because the Athanasian ' Creed ' is the object of a
controversy so bitter that it is difficult to say anything
without the risk of misunderstanding and possible
recrimination. I am very sorry it should be so, for if
we could consider it coolly I doubt if there is any
document which could give us so much help in un-
raveUing our perplexities.
The Creeds then begin from this point : ' I believe
in God.' If they went no further, I suppose no objec
tion would have been made to them. Do we not all
reaUse the importance of keeping that before our
consciousness ? But the Creeds do go a great deal
further in three successive waves of expansion.
First, we have the core of the Creed itself in a three
fold sentence. ' I beheve in God the Father, and in
Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit.'
Secondly, to each of these Names certain explanatory
words are added to show the meaning they have for us.
I believe in God the Father, (as being) the Almighty,
the Maker of Heaven and earth ; and in Jesus Christ
(as) His Only Begotten Son, our Lord ; and in the
Holy Spirit, (from Whom is) the Holy Catholic Church,
(through Whom is) the Communion of Saints and the
Forgiveness of Sins, (by Whom is) Eternal life.
Thirdly, we have a statement of the historic means by
which we have been brought to this faith. We believe
in Jesus Christ — Who for us men and for our salvation

CREEDS AND AUTHORITY 263
came down from heaven, and was Incarnate, suffered,
died, rose again from the dead, ascended into Heaven,
sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and shaU come
again to judge.
I am not just now defending these expansions, stiU
less the particular phrases employed, some of which we
wUl consider presently. I am only pointing out their
object. Of old, men seem to have said : ' As Christians
the name of God means something to us ; let us declare
what that is, and how we come by it.'
If we ask why the Christian should have gone
further than that simple phrase ' I believe in God ? '
the answer is in Church history, but it is a very long
answer, and it is read in very different ways. It seems
to me, however, that it is quite the wrong question to
ask. In one sense, and in a very true sense, the Chris
tian never did go further, never wanted to go further.
The reaUy pressing question is — How did the Christians
get so far ? how did they escape from those old heathen
confusions about deities and divinities ? How did they
come to find in God, not the expression of natural
inference, but a reality so intense that it would bear
the weight of human faith and human life, so assured
that a man could give up to it that most precious of all
things, his own self ? How did the Christians reach a
belief about God such that they could believe in Him ?
The Christians had no wish to go beyond this, but they
were very anxious not to stop short of it. They were
very anxious also to mark off the road to its attainment,
such that the wayfaring men, though fools, should not
err therein. I trast we aU admit that so far these were
very exceUent objects.
However, possibly the Church form is unnecessarily
lengthy and I fuUy admit that anything unnecessary

264 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
is fatal, for it diverts attention from the issues which it
ought to make plain. Let us try whether we cannot
find a short cut to what we want. I have already given
reasons why I do not think ' I believe in God ' would be
sufficient. It represents admirably the final object,
and our Creeds put it in the forefront of their statement,
but by itself it is a most difficult conception.
There are, however, two others with which I happen
to be familiar. A certain well-known Unitarian writer,
stiU very popular, remarks that he is content with a
Creed much shorter and simpler — ¦' My Creed is " the
Fatherhood of God, and the Brotherhood of men." ' A
Creed is a common form for the use of common and
simple people. I wiU consider this from the purely
practical side.
In the first place, I find it a little hard to foUow.
As it stands it is not quite grammar, and I am not sure
how I am meant to take it. Since it is called a Creed,
and since we are looking for something to believe in,
am I meant to understand the words ' I believe in,' as
prefixed ? If this is its obvious intention, even then I
must say the sentence does not appeal to me. My father
and my brother have a very real meaning, and I can
believe in them. Fatherhood and brotherhood are too
abstract, too metaphysical, too un-solid for me. I have
an uncomfortable feeling that abstract terms stand for
notions, and that professing belief in my own notions
is a very popular but not very healthy way of believing
in myself. When I get into a difficulty in climbing, I
like to be sure I have a leader who knows what he is
doing and a good rope — Alpine Club pattern preferred.
These I can trust. Leadership and the use of ropes we
can talk about on the way home.
I do not want to cavU at expressions, and perhaps

CREEDS AND AUTHORITY 265
' I beheve in God the Father ' was what the writer reaUy
meant. I am quite wUling to take it so, but then what
shaU we make of the second clause ? Should that run
' I believe in men as my brothers ? ' 'I believe in men '
hardly seems in place in a religious creed. Another
religious writer once said — ' Put not your trust in
princes nor in any chUd of man for there is no help in
them ' ; and yet another — ' Cursed be the man that
trusteth in men.'
Perhaps after aU the original phrase was right, and
it was not men, but the latent brotherhood in them in
which we should trust. If it means the brotherhood
they have in themselves, I am afraid I cannot believe
in it, and in face of aU our nationalisms and imperialisms,
poUtical and reUgious oppositions, trade competitions
and combines, I do not see how anyone else can. Truly
advertisements of all sorts, commercial, political and
reUgious, are urging me to faith, but as each also warns
me against faith in anything except its own goods, the
demand is not convincing. If, on the other hand, our
phrase really means us to profess our beUef in that
brotherhood of man which God Himself made by taking
our nature, redeeming it from sin, placing it on the
right hand of God, I gladly consent. The redeemed
brotherhood of man in Christ is a reality weU worth
believing in, and brings the second clause into unity
with the first clause. But if this is what the phrase
means then it ought to be expressed, and I do not
know any better way of expressing it than the Church
Creed. Certainly it is what the Church Creed meant
to express.
The second form referred to was put before me by a
young friend who thought ' I believe in Jesus Christ '
was sufficient. In very early days apparently it was,

266 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
but I do not think it is now. Did my friend not believe
in God, or did he think that too unimportant or too
obvious to need mentioning ? I have tried to point
out how this looking at Christ apart from God has
robbed belief in Christ of aU its force. Numbers stiU
use the phrase as meaning, not that Jesus Christ is
their help, but that thinking about His life is helpful.
Some mean only that thinking about a beautiful but
imaginary life as drawn by an early unknown writer
is helpful. Further, except in regard to the first
person singular, this form has no reference to man, a
subject on which the Unitarian form, not unreasonably,
lays so much stress.
From the beginning the separation between God and
man has been the difficulty of human life. No adequate
bridge could be thrown across the gulf which divides a
fragmentary and limited life from its infinite and perfect
whole, the actual from the ideal, the practice of Ufe
from its end. We believe in Jesus Christ because we
believe that in Him and by Him these things have been
brought together. Surely aU experience shows that this
faith needs stating. The statement itself is not faith,
but it does help us to keep it before our minds, and for
this purpose what the faith reaUy is, that the statement
must express. Of the two forms I have examined, one
states the two factors of difficulty without a hint of how
they are to be reconcUed ; the other gives the factor of
reconcUiation without even an allusion to what it is
reconcUing. Even if we add the two forms together
there would be nothing to show whether we meant
these terms — God, Jesus Christ and Man — for three
separate objects of behef or to show whether we meant
them as one, to show how they were brought together
or what they had to do with one another.

CREEDS AND AUTHORITY 267
Forms are not simple because they are short but
because they are clear ; we do not get rid of difficulties
by hiding their omission under sonorous ambiguity.
We have learnt a good deal from experience, and we
have learnt this, that ' God made man upright, but they
have sought out many inventions.' The worst of these
short statements is that they are so intolerably com
plex — involved in such a maze of implications, sup
pressed intentions, unresolved ambiguities, meanings
taken for granted but not expressed, understandings
which are not understood.
(2) So far, however, as I can understand, the real
objection against the Creeds does not lie in regard to
the facts asserted, but in regard to what some have
caUed ' the dogmatic superstructure of interpretations —
cosmological and metaphysical, — by which the facts
are encumbered.'
This is to us somewhat perplexing. Few things in
Church history are more remarkable than (1) the
intense, to my mind almost exaggerated, dislike and
resentment shown by early Church writers at the
intrusion of ' phUosophy and dialectics ' into Christian
behef ; (2) the absolute conviction of aU that what
they were laying down were the simple fundamental
facts. EquaUy certainly, it is in this sense that we
have taken the Creeds and that we should wish them
to be taken now.
It would seem that there must be some misunder
standing about the use of the word fact, which certainly
is an ambiguous word enough. I should like then to
ask what cosmology and metaphysics stand for, what
they have or have had to do with religion and theology.
After all a dogma only means an assertion of something
held to be necessary. We wiU ask whether the dogmas

268 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
imphed in the Creed can be rightly caUed facts or
interpretations. Man's earUest problem is the problem of the world
or cosmos. He claims to be above the world, yet the
world is so much greater than himself, for his life is
made out of it and lived in it. The world seems to
be inteUigible, but how can a fragment understand the
whole of which it is but a part. Would not this be
for the part to ' comprehend ' the whole ? We should
understand the world, — or if we could not do that, at
least we should understand our faith that it had an
inteUigible purpose, if we knew Him Who ruled it.
AU primitive religion begins therefore from cosmology.
If anyone objects to our bringing cosmology into
religion he quite misapprehends the nature of the
difficulty. We would ever so gladly leave cosmology
alone and the cosmos too, if it would only leave us
alone. Men did not make a theory of the world and
then subject their religion to it. They turned to religion
in the hope of finding a tolerable cosmology, that is, of
finding some interpretation or meaning of the world
which would enable them to face it with a good heart.
When however men learnt to think, there were many
to whom the natural world of outer experience, im
personal and insensate, seemed rather beneath than
above understanding. The true order of things lay in
the inteUigence. God was the Supreme InteUigence.
There were then two different bases to start from.
Every thought of God that could be framed must be a
reflex of, or an abstraction from, is conditioned by, one
of these two — either experience of the world and its
happenings, or experience of man and his thinkings.
It was not what he meant to do, but man did after aU
make a cosmological and a metaphysical religion because

CREEDS AND AUTHORITY 269
he could not help it. I admit that such religion must be
useless. If we take cosmology to include natural
science, and metaphysics to include the ideas and
methods of human thought, they have many difficulties
strictly their own for which we may trust them to find
a solution. If, however, we consider them more deeply
in relation to human life, obviously they cannot them
selves provide an answer to the perplexities which are
found and expressed in them. Else would not cos--
mology and metaphysics have ceased to be written
about, for their worshippers once purged would have
had no more consciousness of perplexity ?
When, therefore, men fled to religion, fled to the
thought of God, as a refuge from the world and as the
ultimate of their own ideas, that thought of God was
their own thought, full of the difficulties and contra
dictions they had brought with them. They were but
fleeing to- themselves, and the world foUowing hard
after took their rehgion captive. Whatever was to be
a dehverance of the human mind could not be merely
a mind-product ; it must be a message. The con
tradictions which were made in human thought could
only be solved by a Gospel, by something from
without. ' Must not that Gospel be simple ? ' The term is mis
leading. Certainly, the Gospel itself must be and is
simple. But just because it is simple, if we insist on a
simple application in a world fuU of complexities and
contradictions, we shaU only get confusion. Love and
justice are so obviously and reaUy simple that we all
agree about their desirabUity, but in most of our
practical questions, social and political, the only obvious
thing is that the partizans on both sides differ so strongly
about their obvious justice that they have forgotten love

270 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
altogether. I called a bank a ' temple of faith,' and
faith is simple, but I never supposed we could run a
bank ' simply ' on faith.
I fuUy admit therefore that cosmology and meta
physics, which are human ways of thinking, cannot
supply an answer to the questions of human life, nor
perhaps even supply the form of the answer, though of
this I am less sure. But are they not providing the
form of the questions ? Are they not stating the diffi
culties ? If the reader does not like these technical
polysyllabic words, neither do I. In plain English, if
there is a Gospel at aU, there are two problems it must
face — the meaning of the world men have to live in,
and the meaning of the thoughts men form about its
truth and purpose.
What sort of gospel must this be, and what sort of a
religion will it require ? The modern distinction
between the religious and the cosmological seems to me
entirely false. We may start in two ways. We may
have a humanitarian religion, based on our notion of
human needs and conditions, or we may have a cosmo
logical religion, based on our notion of what the world is
really like. Either of these two may be primitive or
may be metaphysical according to the amount of think
ing men put into them, but since they spring from
human thought, neither can be a gospel. When God
revealed Himself to men according to the Gospel, then
we might have a theological religion, based on what
we had learnt of God.
The message that should be a gospel of deliverance
must then be, first, of a God Absolute, in Whom we
live and move and have our being, Who is above aU
and before aU, Self-contained and Self-perfect. The
God Who could help us in face of the world could not

CREEDS AND AUTHORITY 271
be dependent on us nor on the world for the fulness and
activity of His existence. But, secondly, He must be
Self-expressed in Creation and in converse with men.
Could any doctrine meet these diverse requirements ?
Christianity certainly believed that they were met by
the doctrine of the Trinity. Mind, thought and will
are the three elements of our own self-hood and person
ality, each involved in every act, and each taking its
proper place in that act, distinct yet whoUy insever
able, a Trinity, three and yet one. For if I think, there
is implied a mind which thinks, a thought which the
mind is thinking, a wiU which acts in thinking. If I
act, the act which is of my wiU is the expression of
the thought which my mind has. Of these the man
constitutes a living person, a centre of movement, not
a mere part of the general drift of things. Here is the
type of the Trinity of God — the Father and the Son,
Word or Thought, and the Holy Spirit, Who is Power
or Love, the Activity of the Will.
Our personaUty is imperfect because we are depen
dent on what is outside of us for the material of our
thought, and our thought is made up of different
thoughts ; it is never the whole realisation of our minds,
stUl less is it the whole truth of things. Think as we
may, we can only know what seems true to us, and we
can only desire what seems good to us, and these must
be different from, at best part of, the truth which God
knows and the plan He purposes. If God be what we
have taken Him to be, His Thought is perfect and single,
not dependent upon what things are but the cause
thereof. In God only is Personality complete.
' This doctrine of the Trinity is a human way of
thinking.' Doubtless, for if men think there is no other
way. ' But if we apply human analogies to God, we

272 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
are making God in our own image.' May be, but let us
consider. AU theories must come from our minds, for
there is nowhere else they can be formed. We are
subject to space and time, and we apply the ideas to
nature. It happens that they are applicable, for to
space and time nature also is subject. We- find in
ourselves thought and feehng. Children apply these
ideas to stones and flowers as weU as to animals and
people. Presently we find that there are limits to
their applicability. We apply to God the thought of
personality as we find it in ourselves. Perhaps it is aU
wrong, for certainly we are making God in our image.
Quite so, but perhaps it is not aU wrong, because we
are made in His.
If this doctrine of God as Trinity had been constructed
by human thinking purely in order to meet the obvious
difficulties of human thought, I quite admit that the
most which could be said for it would be that it was the
most plausible, possibly the only plausible and con
sistent, hypothesis, and one does not buUd the faith of
a life on a hypothesis which is not verified. But then
the doctrine of the Trinity never was constructed in this
way, although some philosophic thinkers came astonish
ingly near it. The Christians reached it, not by abstract
thinking, but by thinking over the revelation of God in
Jesus Christ. Who was this Who caUed God His own
Father, Who showed Himself as the Ruler of aU natural
powers, Who acted as the judge of men, assumed the
right to lay down all moral law, Who declared faith in
Himself to be the way of life and salvation, Who by His
death had triumphed over death and sin ? It is true
that Jesus Christ had stated no theory nor explanation
of the exact nature, He very rarely made any claim, of
Lordship ; He continuously assumed and exercised it.

CREEDS AND AUTHORITY 273
We are not left to agree or differ according as we judge
of Him ; we can only submit or rebel, for we are being
judged by Him. Yet the question remained. Men
could not weU help asking, what was the relation of
Christ to God, which, without being fuUy stated, was
yet being so manifestly assumed and exercised ?
Primitive Christianity began from simple faith in
Jesus Christ, but plainly that was to them faith in God,
Who had thus revealed Himself, taken our nature and
redeemed us from sin. ' Can we not go back to this
simple faith ? ' By all means. Our whole business is
to find and make sure we keep the road thither.
The early Christians to whom I referred were not in
the least interested in speculations about the world, for
they were convinced it was soon to pass away — which
was more or less true, though not in the fashion they
expected. When the new world did come, it was also
not quite of the kind they expected ; but God evidently
meant that most of them should live in it, which they
seem to have found as troublesome and unsatisfactory
a business as we do. One result of living in a world
was that Christianity had got to face a world, and to
find an answer to various world-questions hinted at
above, which before no one had thought over.
Some of us have an idea that in the third and fourth
century Christians developed a sudden passion for
metaphysics and speculative theories. That is false
to history and even a httle absurd. Of course there
were men who loved being clever ; and they were a
great nuisance as they always are. Also there were
some men with a real power of steady thinking and
reasoning, and they could be very useful, as they some
times are. EquaUy of course most people were rather
bored by their efforts, suspicious of them, unable to see

274 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
any difference between steady thinking and mere clever
ness, rather apt to prefer the cleverness, very much as
we do. But there do come times when men, however
reluctantly, must find out what they are doing and what
they mean. Some of the answers men began to offer
were helpful ; some were confused and inconsistent,
leading to the most impossible consequences, but the
Church for the most part let men find their own way
without being greatly put out.
In the fourth century a certain Arius advanced a very
definite position, and stuck to it, consequences or none.
To use the singularly lucid modern terms I quoted
above, he affirmed that above all was the abstract
Deity, the Unknown. Jesus Christ, Who came to us,
was a Divinity, greater than aU angels or men, begotten
before the world, but still very far from God Himself,
only a created being. Then the Church began to wake
up to the necessity of making up her mind what she
believed in, and at least she was clear so far that it was
not this. She believed in God. A man might beheve
that an Ultimate existed, Unknown, and Unattainable.
But that was not something a man could believe in.
Men should worship God, but for this same reason to
worship anything less than God is pure heathenism.
It is God for whom man is athirst. The Gospel, if it
was a Gospel, was and could be a Gospel only about
God, not about ' Divinities,' nor about super-Arch
angels. This, therefore, was the decision of Nicaea.
Jesus Christ, He Who was made known to us and
redeemed us, was God, ' of the Essence of God,' ' of
one Substance with the Father.'
These words might seem simple and clear enough.
If people had not found so many entanglements in
them, I should certainly have thought they were. Even

CREEDS AND AUTHORITY 275
in that day, however, there were men — whom the
historians call semi- Arians — who objected that the
phrases were philosophy, that they ' were not in
Scripture,' and so forth. It was very soon evident that
they were not in fact objecting to theories, for they had
theories of their own. They objected to saying that
Jesus Christ was one with the Father, because they
would not say more than that He was like the Father.
Did this reaUy make any difference ? The semi-
Arians said that it was quite sufficient ; it was indeed
better than the Nicene phrase. It presented Christ in
His own proper work, without unnecessary ' judgments
about a Person.' We had been ignorant of God's true
nature. ' Christ came that He might show it to us,
not in words but in deed.' God was loving — like this ;
and powerful — like this ; and in the habit of doing this
and this kind of good. What more could we want ?
What indeed ? Only those troublesome orthodox
would go on insisting that it was not even the beginning
of Christianity. ' What more could they want ? ' Oh,
nothing except God, and without Him nothing else was
of any use at aU. To know God's qualities — which a
man can get out of a dictionary if he wants to — is not
to know God, and it does not bring us any nearer to
Him ; it is but an explanation of the depth of what
sunders us.
This semi- Arian theory was absurd on its own show
ing. God was revealed as love ; yet He loved us so
little that He would not do the one thing that we
longed for, He would not come to us — unless indeed
where He had been revealed in power, He nevertheless
had so little power that He could not. ' But He had
sent someone Like Himself ? ' Like God ? What can
the words mean ? There is nothing on earth, neither

276 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
in the heavens above nor in the depths beneath, who is
in the least like God in this sense. And if there were,
who cares ? Do we propose to say that such wUl do
equaUy weU ? What heathen idolatry is this which
starts finding substitutes for God ? If anyone dis
agrees with me here, I shaU not appeal to any theologi
cal treatise. Let him search out the first orphan chUd,
and try whether he can explain that there are many
other good women as weU as mother who has gone
home, and that some of them are hke her. If he can
do it, if the words do not stick in his throat, I wiU
promise to argue with him no further.
' There was somebody very like God, astonishingly
Uke, and He gave us the knowledge of God.' Yes ?
And Who was it Who bore for us the curse of sin, broke
down the separation between us and God, brought us
light and immortality and life by bringing us into union
with Himself ? Was that also this most exceUent sub
stitute ? Then here is the gospel, that we have clean
missed God and God does not care. Yet we did love
Him. ' Somebody like God ' !
' This is a mere travesty of what was meant or of
what anybody means to-day.' I would to God it were,
but of course it is a travesty of what anybody intends
to mean or ever goes on meaning. Out of such absur
dities one must come in one direction or another, and
sooner or later one does ; I am only urging the immense
importance of finding out what we do mean and saying
it distinctly that we and others may keep it before us.
We argue against theories and theoretical statements,
but we do not thereby succeed in keeping theory out of
anything whatever. We only succeed in blinding our
selves to the theories, that is, the principles and ideas,
which we are unconsciously accepting and on which we

CREEDS AND AUTHORITY 277
are acting. There is no one so much at the mercy of
theories as those who scoff at them, and have lost there
fore the power of testing and criticising them.
The meaning of Athanasius and ' the Orthodox ' was
as simple, as deep and wonderful, as that of the child
who " wants mother.' Those who would not face the
simphcity of it were just those who brought in all these
confusing ideas about likeness and attributes, and who
had gained nothing when they had done it for the reason
stated. They could not seriously mean or go on
meaning it. They shpped into it ; they said and did
not mean it ; they played with it and dechned to con
sider its consequences. In the end there was nothing
to mean at all, except that God was a Name for nothing
in particular, and that Christ was a very nice person
(about whom historicaUy we know very little except
that He seems to have known very httle about Himself),
and that we also are very nice, or that some of us are
if we take the trouble. ' If Christ be not God in the
true sense of the word, then God is darkness and in
Him is no light at aU.'
I thought it worth whUe to follow the main line of
this controversy in order to Ulustrate my point that the
Church certainly thought that in the Creeds she was
stating facts, and that she was not giving phUosophical
or metaphysical interpretations of them. ' Can it,
however, be denied that this word Essence or Substance
belongs to metaphysical language ? '
The whole idea is an entire misunderstanding of the
very meaning of metaphysics. Hegel — and there is
hardly any higher authority to quote on this subject —
said that metaphysics neither had nor wanted a language
or terminology of its own. It was entirely concerned
with the meaning and implication of the commonest

278 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
words and ideas. I said above that the Godhead of
Christ ' was the very core and substance of the Gospel.'
MetaphysicaUy I am very much interested in the theory
of Substances or Essences. I rather fancy my opinions
on this important topic are somewhat different from
those held by many modern students in philosophy.
Are my readers anxious to hear my views ? No ? I
was afraid they wouldn't be, and I am afraid they are
right. Do my theories matter a farthing rushlight to
the inteUigibility of the sentence ? WiU the physics'
professor contend that the farmer's wife does not know
what boiling water means because she does not know the
mysteries of its physical metabolism ? Nay, but does
the professor know ? I grant that he can go a few steps
further. Anyhow the old lady knows enough to make
very good tea and do the potatoes decently, in regard
to which she is probably two holes up over some physical
professors. Common words mean what common words do mean.
Professors of physics and metaphysics try to find out as
much as they can of aU the wonders which underlie
them and which underlie our belief. I have a great
respect for professors ; I may be one myself some day ;
but in the cramped atmosphere of the lecture room it is
much too easy to forget that we are studying a meaning,
and that having a meaning or knowing what one means,
and having adequate ideas or theories as to what is
implied in our meaning, are very different things.
' What did the Fathers mean by substance ' ? They
meant just what everybody means, just what I meant
in the sentence quoted — that which makes a thing what
it is. This was the substance of the Gospel, because
without this it would not have been a Gospel, or it
would have a quite different Gospel. ' But what is this

CREEDS AND AUTHORITY 279
mysterious "substance" which makes a "thing" what it
is?' Ah, now that is metaphysics. There are plenty of
reasons why that is a question worth thinking over, but
it is not so important that anyone need be bothered
over it unless he wants to, and I fancy the majority
would prefer not.
' But the Fathers had a theory of substance.' With
out wishing to be disrespectful, I should suppose the
Holy Fathers of the fourth century were uncommonly
like our very reverend Fathers in the twentieth cen
tury. Some of them ' did not go in for metaphysics '
and had no theory at aU. The rest had no theory
because they had a great many theories. Some of their
theories were very suggestive, and some perhaps rather
absurd. They are of great interest to the student of
historical philosophy, but there is no need to consider
them as undergraduate essays.
' The fourth century interpreted the Trinity in cate
gories of Substance.' This is the final stricture of
modern criticism. For once I shaU not contradict, for
I wiU be frank even when I am put to shame. Certainly
because of my ignorance, probably by reason of my
density, I never could make out what the phrase meant.
(3) FinaUy, I promised to deal with the use and origin
of the Creeds, and the kind of authority which belongs
to the statements imphed in them. I hope indeed that
what I have said above wiU explain a good deal of their
use and origin, but I want now to consider these in
regard to authority. Why after aU should we accept
these words in preference to any other ?
The Creeds, or at least the Nicene Creed, comes to us
with the authority of Church CouncUs. What is a
CouncU, and what authority can it claim ? These are
strangely important questions because of the light

280 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
thrown by their answers on the idea of Church action,
but in some ways they are difficult questions.
Our minds are naturaUy taken up with the idea of a
parliament which is a meeting of representatives elected
to decide what is for our convenience. The majority
outvotes the minority, for the convenience of the
majority is the most we can hope to reach. But a
CouncU was not in the least like a Parliament. It was
not a meeting of elected representatives. Except when
drawing up rules or ' canons,' it was not concerned with
convenience but with truth. Consequently, as I wiU
show presently, it did not decide by majorities. The
CouncUs of which we hear are a mere fraction of the
CouncUs which were always being held. They met
several times a year, partly for business, partly to talk
things over, and rather to make a common mind on
questions than to ' decide ' them.
In this way CouncUs were more like a conference of
learned men, but the bishops did not meet as learned
men, but as bishops, that is, as men responsible for the
care and teaching of common and simple people. In
those days, as now, there were many theories, theories
that were clever and theories that were ingenious.
Then as now, there were some bishops — for bishops are
amazingly hke other people — who were pleased with
new ideas, and many who were suspicious of them.
The Church as a Church was not concerned with clever
nesses and ingenuities. It was very much concerned
to find what real sohd meaning lay at the back of them,
and that trenchant determination to face out the con
sequences and imphcations contained in a theory was
the great distinction of early ages.
As we begin to reach a sohd meaning, two questions
wiU come up. First, is there any real usefulness about

CREEDS AND AUTHORITY 281
this meaning, helpful to common people ? That is
not a question we shall expect to "' decide ' off-hand,
for that only is proved useful which in practice we can
use. But, secondly, though a theory may look ever so
plausible and ever so simple, is it Christian ? That is
a very solemn question. Those who cannot see that
Christianity has any meaning of its own, or is other than
a label which one may attach to anything one chooses,
will of course see no meaning in the question. For
those to whom Christianity is a real gospel, it is a
question which must always be faced. It is, however,
not a question to which any one should be in a hurry
to force an answer, nor which can be answered, untU he
is quite sure he has got to the bottom of what is meant.
Again, on the one hand, a theory or view unchristian
in its consequences may be held or put forward only
because its inconsistency is not realised. That is a
thing we aU do often enough ; it wiU be a weakness or
a danger, but it is not more than that. On the other
hand, an unchristian view may be held definitely and
with a fuU consciousness of its consequences, because
those who hold it have committed themselves to another
gospel. If, for instance, one group of men believes that
Christianity is a Gospel of how God became man and
redeemed us, and another group seriously and con
tinuously insists that this neither did nor could happen,
and that the true Gospel is only an ethical teaching
about love or about what God is like, plainly the first
group must hold that the second group has ceased to
be Christian. Some time or other a decision must be
come to. I am pointing out that when that decision
has to be made, which of the two groups is the
majority and which is the minority wiU make no differ
ence at aU.

282 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
I quite admit that CouncUs, even very big CouncUs,
often went wrong, for they were Councils of men.
Sometimes they were too impatient to get to the bottom
of a theory ; sometimes they had too many theories
of their own, or were overpersuaded by those who had,
but their decisions were not final ; they were steps in
the working out of a question. The doctrine of the
Trinity had been discussed for a century ; at Nicea
it was ' decided.' Whereupon the discussion went on
again for fifty-six years. Only after working the matter
through from end to end, trying every possible hypo
thesis and every possible phrase, men were forced back
to the conclusion and to the phraseology from which
they had so long shrunk. The (Ecumenical authority
of a CouncU is not, like the authority of parliament,
inherent in its constitution ; it depends on the accept
ance of its results by the Christian consciousness of
the Church.
The authority of the Creeds, therefore, rests on ex
perience. The modern religious mind is fuU of ' ex
perience,' but the word is being used in two different
ways. I have urged that the modem use was fuU of
dangers which were not realised, but I have no desire to
reject experience. I maintain that no religion built out
of experience can be a gospel, but I contend also that
whatever is a gospel must meet experience. If we com
pare the Church's use of experience with the modern
use, we shah find points of profound significance for
which I would ask the most earnest attention.
In aU our material life and science we assume that
our experience is an experience of real things and forces,
which it is most important that we should observe
correctly, for aU our fancies of what is around us wiU
be judged by the tmth, and any error may bring on

CREEDS AND AUTHORITY 283
us the most unwelcome results. The tendency of our
modern religious thinking is to treat religious ex
perience as if it were itself the reality, its own standard
and its own judge. Then experience ceases to be an
experience of something ; it becomes just an experience
of an experience. Religious experience is unquestion
ably a nice state, therefore anything that makes us
feel nice is religion.
The material things of life act round us externaUy,
but spiritual things are spirituaUy discerned. In
reUgion, we are not looking at something in a test-tube,
but at something within us. Even in material affairs,
experience or observation is a very difficult matter
to handle. If a man has no theories, he wiU not know
what he is looking at ; but if a man has theories, he is
apt to imagine he sees, anyhow he is apt to see only, the
things he expected or wanted to see. If this is true
even of things outside ourselves, it is much more true
when the object of experience or observation is our
own feelings.
Again, religion is of necessity selective. Some
heathen have taken all experience as the ground of
reUgion, and much of their religion was very horrible,
because a good deal of experience is very horrible.
But if we make up our minds that religion is good,
then we shall only include good experiences as re
Ugious experiences, but we are our own judges of which
experiences we count good and therefore religious.
When we appeal to our experience as a proof, we
ourselves select the evidence.
The Church appeals to experience and personal
experience, bidding us ' Taste and see that the Lord is
gracious,' but with a full sense and many warnings of
the limitations of personal experience, of how easUy and

284 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
in how many ways it may fail us, of how long we may
have to wait for the fulness of its coming. Experience,
if it is ultimately of things, is directly and in itself only
of effects. In itself, therefore, it is individual, but the
Gospel is one and common to all, a bond of unity, not
accommodated to perpetuate our separation. It was
not formed, it cannot be judged, it cannot even be
apprehended as a whole, by individual experience.
For this reason the Church has a profound, sometimes
it looks like an exaggerated, suspicion of personal
abUity, for exceptional power makes a man a very
bad witness to the common and simple truth. The
professors of ethics have much to say about love weU
worth hstening to, but we shall draw our evidence
and facts best from mothers and httle children who do
love, but who do not attend ethical lectures. Un
doubtedly there is a great deal which abUity and only
ability could do, but abUity is not the true judge of
its own usefulness. The work it does is useful if it
can be used. The work of the clever men was liable
to be judged, first, by bishops who as pastors would
have to use it. It must in the end be judged by
common people to whom it must be useful.
' But we want to have the Nicene theology re-
expressed in modern terms, accordant with the forms
and categories of modern thought.' I am not sure
what this means. Taking it simply, it is a most
reasonable and proper desire. AU set forms are
apt to lose force through famUiarity, and require
de-polarising. But I have been under the impression
that our theology and history tutors already spend
a certain proportion of their time in this very work
of exposition, and I assume they do so in reasonably
modern English. I have imagined that our students

CREEDS AND AUTHORITY 285
also may have tried to express the Nicene theology in
essays. The demand then is somewhat puzzling. What is
the precise object of asking for a re-statement of Nicene
theology, when such re-statements can notoriously be
heard in a multitude of lecture rooms or bought for a
few shiUings — or even sixpence — at any theological
book-shop, unless after all it is a demand for a re-state
ment, not of the Nicene, but of another and different,
theology. To that also there are no objections worth
making, since, with or without objection, statements
of new and different theologies, aU different, are being
put out about once a week aU through the publishing
season. But if inteUectual honesty and clearness of
mind are worth anything, there are very grave ob
jections indeed to putting out a different theology and
caUing it a ' re-expression ' of the Nicene. The phrase
' re-expressing ' in this sense is very modern, but the
thing itself is very old indeed, and a new coat of paint
and a new nameplate do not make it a bit less unlovely.
If, however, the proposal is quite honest, but it is
desired that we should have a new formula in more
modern phUosophical forms, — wondering if this is seri
ously proposed — I can only ask which modern forms ?
Shall we go to Oxford or Cambridge, Scotland, America
or Germany ? Are we to use the categories of Idealism
or Neo-Reahsm, of the Pragmatists or Naturalists or
Psychologists ? Or shaU we call a central congress,
representative of aU schools ? When we get our new
phraseology, how long wiU it stop modern ? I fancy
we shaU need a new congress every five years, and I
doubt if we shaU get one to agree before the next is
due. And what, finally, becomes of our modern ob
jection to importing metaphysics ?

286 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
If this is too palpably absurd, does the proposal mean
that we shaU drop our common Creeds altogether ?
' We do not want Nicaea ; we have the Scriptures, and
from that each man draws his faith.' In some ways
this is quite obvious. If any man is asked, or asks
himself, ' What is it that you believe ? ' he wiU reply
by a summary statement of the principal points. But
that statement wiU be, first, confined to the points
believed to be in the questioner's mind ; secondly, to
what was at the moment present to the mind of him
who answered. Point is met by point, and one mind
by another. This is as it should be, but it is not aU.
Not every question turns on Christianity as a whole,
nor is the whole at every moment present to every
answerer's mind, yet Christianity is a whole gospel,
and that we may keep its wholeness before our minds,
here is a statement drawn up very deliberately, after
long experience of many questions, ratified by ages
of the most diverse experiences.
A writer writes a book, trying to grapple with the
whole of a complex question. Everybody, who thinks
the book worth talking about or writing about, will
give their summary statements of what they take to
be its main proposals. If the book was worth it, the
author might draw up his own authorised summary.
That would not take the place of the book itself. He
would be saying — ' These are the main points. Read
the Great Book itself that you may see their signi
ficance.' Of course authors do not do this, first,
because they have no right to suppose their books are
worth making into a Creed ; but then Scripture is.
Secondly, however, they do not do it, because they
cannot. Supposing that the book had a wonderful
and deep significance that would make it worth while,

CREEDS AND AUTHORITY 287
it would require long pondering, long controversies,
long experience, before that significance would begin
to crystaUise itself and stand out clear. Possibly, if
the book is worth anything, the writer may know some
thing of what he meant by it — in ten or twenty years —
when everybody else has forgotten it, and if he hasn't
forgotten it himself. But Scripture is not a book
which has been forgotten.
Once upon a time the Church began with a teaching,
with the Scriptures, with a very simple belief. Pre
sently she found what a multitude of questions life,
experience, the world, were demanding that that belief
should answer. After many years of thought, by much
effort, through many blunders, the Church worked her
way to clear issues and finaUy to a clear answer. Are
we now to go back to the simple and primitive ? Is it
necessary to remind the twentieth century of a process
caUed Evolution, and that, even if it were possible for
men to go back to the primitive, it would only mean
that they would have to work through much the same
process again ? ShaU we go back also to primitive law,
to primitive poUtics ? Have we not yet unlearned the
faUacy of Rousseau and his ' primitive savage ' ? The
primitive developed because it had to develop, and
going back is not progress.
After all, the history of the Church may be, as a dis
tinguished writer holds, little better than a history of
human error. But what of ourselves ? We have an
immense belief that the Holy Spirit is guiding us.
Exactly, and the early Church had exactly the
same belief. If they were wrong, what ground have
we for our own confidence ? Is the twenty-first
century to sweep out our efforts also with the same
contempt ?

288 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
We do then appeal to the authority of the past, of
ancient Councils and ancient Creeds, but with no
assumption that a particular group of clever men a long
time ago possessed some peculiar gift of infaUible
inspiration. If there is no real basis in Christianity at
aU, then no doubt there is no object in retaining old
statements thereof, nor apparently in constructing new
ones. If, however, Christianity has a real basis and
substance, then we are suspicious of those proposals of
modernised statements just on that very ground, that it
seems to imply a peculiar gift of infaUible inspiration
possessed by clever men now, who understand what no
one before them understood. We are suspicious of
clever men just because we think so much of common
men. It is against this notion of infallible inspirations
and ' experiences ' of one age or of another that we,
Anglicans in particular, appeal to the common inspira
tion and experience of aU. The Holy Spirit is not the
Spirit of the twentieth century, but the Eternal Spirit.
We vindicate His work in the past, that we may have
faith in Him for the present ; we protest against ' going
back ' because we have through Him a hope of going
forward. But the meaning of the authority of common experi
ence, of the experience of the past, can only be under
stood if we realise the kind of questions to which it was
applied. Undoubtedly there are many questions bear
ing upon new problems, practical and inteUectual, of
politics or social organisation, of natural sciences or new
phases of thought, which to the common man seem mere
subtleties, any of which may nevertheless be important ;
some may be of great importance. To them also the
Gospel has its message, its help, its applications ; but
since they are modern and difficult, since these applica-

CREEDS AND AUTHORITY 289
tions and inferences require much dehcate thinking over,
it is equaUy useless and mischievous to fetter the efforts
of thinkers by ' authority ' which could only be the
authority of other thinkers.
When, however, we come to the simple question, what
is the Christianity which is being applied, which is to
provide an answer, it is the Christianity by which we all
live, simple and common as weU as clever and learned.
Then the Church forced her way — not without much
trouble — to a simple answer. I have given that
worked out in the fourth century. As Christians we
beheve in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven
and earth, of all things visible and invisible. If we
beheve in Jesus Christ, this is not an alternative or
additional belief. We believe in Him as our Lord,
because He is the Only Begotten Son of God, Begotten
of the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from
Light, Begotten not Created, being of one Substance
with the Father, through Whom aU things were made.
A simUar simpUcity forced its way through the con
troversies of the fifth century. ' What God assumed
that He redeemed.' If God took to Himself only the
limited and exclusive personality of one, Jesus of
Nazareth, what is this Super-man of Nestorius to us
common people ? What is the good of admiration ?
Or, have we also caught an ambition to be Super-men ?
What are the beauty of teaching and the wonder of a
Ufe to those who know only too bitterly how little they
can foUow the one or imitate the other ? Some of us
can manage an aeroplane, but who are we to scale moral
heavens, any more than the physical ? If Christianity
can teU us how God took to Himself that common
human nature which we aU share, but which is whole
to none of us, as only God could take ; can teU us how
T

290 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
God made out of that a redeemed humanity, as only
God could make, into which we can enter, this is a
Gospel, and it is the Christian Gospel. There is no
other. ' But the fifth century CouncUs did lay down decisions
about Nature and Personality, which are fuU, the one
of metaphysical, and the other of psychological, en
tanglements.' Certainly they are, but concerning both,
the Council knew and meant exactly what the collier's
wife knows and means, viz. that the natures of bread
and cheese and of the human body are different, that
her own personality, that of her old man, and those of
the kiddies are separate personalities, demanding,
hungrily demanding, separate apportionments of bread
and cheese. If I have been unduly sarcastic over pro
fessors and the learned, let me here apologise and with
draw. There are professors who have helped me
mightily to understand coUiers and mothers and little
chUdren, what they were and what they actually did
mean. To them I am unspeakably grateful. It is only
when professors cease to be interested in such people,
want to explain to me some new kind of world and
meaning which common people do not live in or have,
that the professors cease to interest me.
The Council said and meant that God was and re
mained God, in His own nature, and that man was and
remains man in his. They said that this human nature
had been brought into union with God, not in the frag
mentary form which constitutes the peculiarity of a
human person, but in the inclusive personality of the
Divine Logos.
But if even this is too difficult, let us be cheered.
Though the Council asserted it, they refused to put it
or anything else into the Creed. They said it was there

CREEDS AND AUTHORITY 291
already. They had said no more than that it was the
One Lord, the Only Begotten Son of God, Who for us
men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and
took flesh by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and
was made man, and was crucified also for us under
Pontius PUate. He suffered, and was buried, and the
third day He arose again according to the Scriptures,
and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand
of the Father. And He shaU come again with glory to
judge both the living and the dead, Whose kingdom
shall have no end.
Yet even if we have thus learnt that there is in God
salvation, which by God has been made a salvation for
us, plain is it that by no effort of our own can we come
to it, since it is impossible for the self by itself to escape
from self. We individuals can be drawn into a re
deemed humanity in God only by the operation, the
sending forth of the power, of God Who is the Holy
Spirit, the Lord and Life-giver, Who proceedeth from
the Father and the Son, Who with the Father and the
Son together is worshipped and glorified, — one God,
blessed for ever. Here is a gospel. Here is hope for
men, and hope caUeth to faith, and faith is the stay of
love, wherein aU are perfected.
Is this the faith in God we hold to and this the road
to it ? Do we thus believe in God Who made us,
because the Son of God hath redeemed us and the Spirit
of God giveth us life ? If not, let us say so frankly and
let us say what new gospel — if any — the twentieth
century has produced. But the rejection of the gospel
we have been taught, the substitution of another, the
reasons which justify that procedure, open a different
issue ; they should not be carried through under cover
of objections to a form of statement.

292 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
MeanwhUe aU down the centuries the music of
these words has rung. The long road is httered with
the broken remnants of Modernisms, abandoned, for
gotten, earth-buried, moulded, dust-covered. They
served their day, strutting in the sun ; ' the zeit-geist
breathed upon them and they are gone,' for there is
nothing so very old-fashioned as the desire to be up-to-
date. If these words have survived them aU, is it not
that they never were part of a temporary system of
technical thinking, but merely the trenchant ex
pression of a common fact in the simplest and most
common language, chosen for that very reason, ratified
by the common sense of common people of the most
varied ways of thinking ? For what was being stated
was not a form of thinking, but a fact to be thought
about. Thus we believe of Him in Whom we believe
that faith and worship may be one.

CHAPTER XIV.
ANGLICANISM.
If we were dealing with a question primarily of abstract
theology, my case would be now complete. So far
as my power to put it is concerned, — here is the Catholic,
and here is the Protestant, principle. Here are the
places which each would seem to occupy in the com
pleteness of religious life. This and this would seem to
be the result of trying to frame a religious life upon
either one of them taken more or less independently
— I say ' more or less ', because it is absolutely
impossible to get a rehgious life out of either without
some help from the other. Just these are actually the
results we do find, more or less according to the degree
in which they have been independently foUowed.
As an observer I have done my best to get at the
facts, and as a thinker I have tried to understand and
explain them. In the practical reUgious world I have
neither status nor influence ; it would be, therefore,
absurd for me to put forward proposals of the kind
which belong to practical ecclesiastical politics. If we
can get any clear comprehension of what we want to
reach, really able men, our chosen leaders, wUl soon
make up the road there.
Some aspects of practical politics even the most
theoreticaUy minded person must face. I have

294 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
maintained that we cannot make up any real unity
between Catholics and Protestants until we have found
what is the true meaning, and thence what reconcilia
tion there can be, of the Catholic and Protestant prin
ciples. When we have found a reconcUiation of these
sitting in our study, realised it on our knees in prayer,
tested it on our feet at work, we shah still have to
make it an actuaUty in the uniting of men and systems.
Seeking an actual unity, we cannot altogether shirk
considering the actual condition of the systems we are
to bring together. Of the Protestant or Non-Con
formist bodies I shaU say nothing whatever. I speak
to them ; it would iU become me to speak of them,
otherwise than I am forced to do in the course of my
analysis. It would be presumptuous for me as an
outsider either to criticise or praise that of which I
have no thorough knowledge. What then are the
Cathohc men, bodies, or systems, to be actuaUy con
sidered ? In the first place, and in the last place, we
shaU have to think of the great and wonderful organisa
tions of the Roman and Greek Churches, the former of
which is in especial the largest, the most widely spread,
the most closely knit, in many ways the most effective,
of aU religious bodies. I say we must, and we ought to,
think of them first. It is necessary to say it because
we are so particularly apt to forget them — f orgetfulness
being a comfortable refuge from hopelessness. Yet
it wUl be a poor reunion which leaves two-thirds of
professed Christians out of count.
Our inabUity to solve a problem is not a sound reason
for forgetting it, but it may be quite a sound reason for
passing on to something more manageable. I may
hope that my effort wUl suggest something to those
Cathohcs who are not of our communion, but I have no

ANGLICANISM 295
justification for expecting so much. I leave this side
to men of greater ability, weight, insight. Reunion
must deal ultimately with the Roman difficulty, but,
although we must have that in mind from the first, it
does not seem to me we can deal with it first.
Catholicism, therefore, so far as I am concerned,
must mean Anglicanism, and here I am in a great
difficulty. If I confess the weakness of Anglicanism,
the need of help in which it stands, I may be preparing
the way for surrender, but obviously I ought to be
speaking to my own people. There is no use asking
others for an assistance to the rendering of which our
own obstinacy is the only barrier. If I speak primarily
to Non-Conformists, I do so primarily because of the
help I believe the Church has to give to them. I confess
our weaknesses, first, because I know and I want to
make plain that the help is not aU on one side, but,
secondly, because I think I can show that those weak
nesses, while they seem to make our helpfulness
doubtful, do in fact make it really possible, a helpful
ness which reaUy can be used.
There are, however, certain points on which I do not
think it worth whUe to say anything at length. It may
be observed that I have nowhere made any aUusion to
the difficulty of Establishment, which many think the
most burning topic of aU. I have dehberately omitted
it, in the first place, because aU experience shows that
its influence at least upon the question of reunion,
is very much less than is supposed. Disestablishment
might effect the machinery for solving our differences —
though it is very doubtful if it would — it wiU not affect
the differences themselves by one iota. In England the
' Church ' is established, and this fact weighs heavily
upon our mind. In Ireland, America, Scotland and

296 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
the Colonies, the ' Church ' is not established, and the
relations between the different bodies are exactly what
they are here. In the second place, I am not anxious
to discuss the question because, though no doubt it has
its rehgious side, it is primarily a political question.
At present we are in the position of rival sects. Our
rivalry is the direct cause of the anomalous form of
establishment. No doubt it makes any form of esta
blishment of one body an anomaly. But then the
rivalry itself is an anomaly. While we are in this
position, the practical question can only appear as a
quarrel, in which one rival by various political com
binations forces the other to submit or to accept its
own view of what is just, what is right, what is for
the good of religion or of the nation. If we were
agreed on the religious question, we could solve the
practical question together very easUy. But with aU
the multitude of side issues involved, I do not see
how we can expect to get a reasonable solution, one
which wiU not leave us fuU of the anger and bitterness
in which it was wrought, tiU we have learnt more of
one another's aims, ideals, motives, in other directions.
I shall not, therefore, discuss it further.
I also do not think it worth while to do more than
to aUude to the extraordinary idea that it is somehow
the ' gentlemanly thing ' to be an Episcopalian, and
that a moderate — generaUy very moderate — Church
observance is connected with one's title to social
superiority. Nor need I discuss that view of Epis
copacy which is sometimes described as ' Prelacy.'
However irritating these side issues may be, and
seriously as the Church has suffered from them, I
ought not to assume or even suggest that serious and
thoughtful men, seeking what is of rehgious truth and

ANGLICANISM 297
spiritual need, would allow themselves to be affected
by what were so palpably adventitious abuses and
corruptions, the fruits of the position in which we find
ourselves. The weaknesses we do need to face seriously are
those belonging to our spiritual and religious efficiency.
I am afraid our weaknesses here are aU the more a
stumbling-block because they occur in just those
directions which Non-Conformists most appreciate.
Let us see what others can say about us, how we may
look to them at our worst. ' The Presbyterians have
a very effective system of government. A great leader
among them once described the Church of England as
" the worst governed body in Christendom." They
have a marveUous system of ministerial training. I
suppose it would be generally agreed that the Anglican
clergy are less taught, and make less serious study of,
their business, not merely than any other ministry, but
than any professional class in existence. The Non
conformist body is fuU of energy, zeal, readiness to
organise activity of aU kinds ; to them we seem in
credibly wooden and lifeless. Only our fund of quiet
self-satisfaction prevents our knowing that the Non-
Conformists have far outstripped us in almost every
field where new work was wanted. Some bodies have
learning, some have fire, some have organisation ;
the only distinctive gift of Anglicanism is its
" starch." '
' This is not the worst. Certainly we cannot lay
claim in these directions. If we have anything to give,
it is doctrinal, sacramental, " Catholic." But this last
descriptive word — which sums the other two— is in all
common usage given only to the Romans, and that
common usage is very significant. Practical men can

298 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
only deal with practical forces, and in practice the
Church is not Catholic. The larger mass of the clergy,
and a considerable band of laity, important rather by
their energy than by mere numbers, are " High Church "
in a somewhat narrow and negative sense. They have
a very strong conviction that Episcopacy alone is
right and of divine foundation ; everybody else is in
schism. But many clergy and vast numbers of the
laity are openly or at heart Undenominational. They
prefer the Church from habit, or for reasons political
or social, but they have no belief in it otherwise.'
" Cathohcism in the sense in which I have used the
term — that is, as a primarily sacramental faith in a
real and objective gift of a Divine Presence to worship
— is not the belief of the Church. It is the belief of
a small section within it, which has only just won its
way to a bare toleration. It has been and is flatly
repudiated by the majority of the Church's leaders ; it
is bitterly disliked and suspected by the larger mass of
the laity, to whom its very meaning and aims are
scarcely known. " Church worship " is not in practice
distinguished from Non-Conformist worship by its
essentiaUy sacramental character, but by its use of
"book prayers," short sermons, and the rigidly exclusive
use of an ordained ministry. Where the Church of
England has gone abroad into America and into the
Colonies, these have continued to be her haU-mark.
No doubt the Church endeavours to provide administra
tions of the sacrament for those who desire it, but
wherever in a Bush township you enquire for the Roman
Church, you wiU be told at once when there wiU be a
" mass." If you enquire for the " Church of England,"
you wUl be told the time of Matins, or perhaps Even
song.'

ANGLICANISM 299
Here tlien are the charges against us — charges which
many bring openly and contemptuously, which many
who have no desire to be contemptuous yet believe to
be true. What are we Churchmen to say to them ?
We might very reasonably say that they were ex
aggerated, and that things were not as bad with us as
aU that. We might also say that, if it comes to making
criticisms, we in our turn  . But then what is the
good ? The charges are only too true, why should
we cavU over the exact measure of their truth ? We
confess our failures before God ; we lament over them
among ourselves ; shall we begin extenuating them
before other men ? We are asked if we can give Non-
Conformity any help. It is plain our critics think we
have none to give. Is not that the simple truth, and
yet is it not the very nature of the help which we believe
exists for them that it is a help which it is not of us
nor of men, but of God, to give ?
Suppose, however, we change the form of our ques
tion. Has the Church of England any help to give ?
That is a very different question, for the Church is a
very different thing from Churchmen. The difference
wants some consideration. Some of my readers may
be aware that in India or China it is not unknown
for a heathen father, who fears his son may turn
Christian, to send the boy to study in Europe. Pro
bably he wiU lose any religious belief he has got — I
believe we have known this kind of thing among our
selves, but at least he wiU not be a Christian. This
ought to cause us great searchings of heart. On the
one hand Christianity ought not to be judged purely
from Christians, least of aU from nominal Christians.
On the other hand Christianity cannot entirely disown
responsibUity for the results which have grown up under

300 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
it. I have a right to plead that the Church is not the
same as Churchmen, but I have no right to speak as if
they had nothing to do with one another.
These criticisms therefore want very serious con
sideration if we are to realise how far they do or do not
invalidate our belief in the Church's usefulness. Ap
proaching the matter from this side I can put forward
explanations and extenuations of our actual state which
would be worthless if I were merely replying to charges.
The criticisms fall into two groups. Of those which
concern our practical failings I need say nothing
further than I have already said. They are just those
which follow from a system too exclusively formal and
official. The second group of criticisms asserts that
what I have caUed the Catholic position is not in fact
held by the mass of Churchmen. The word hold is here
somewhat ambiguous. Certainly I must admit that
the mass of Church people have not realised the Catholic
position. If we compare the case of the Church with that of
Christianity itself we may see how different a man's
realisation is from what he holds, or at least from that
by which he is held. There are multitudes of people
who have the very vaguest idea what the essential
principles of Christianity are ; there are some who, if
pressed, wiU maintain that there is no essential differ
ence between Christianity and heathenism. But we
should aU refuse to allow that Christianity had no prin
ciples merely because so many Christians do not know
what they are. Again, a man may not only be holding
principles and living by them without being able to
explain them ; they may be holding him, influencing,
actuaUy helping to mould, his life without his
having much consciousness of them. The power of

ANGLICANISM 301
Christianity goes far deeper into the life even of a
' nominal ' Christian than his expressed opinions would
suggest. The same distinction must be recognised among
Churchmen. If we are pressed in argument as to the
difference between ourselves and Non-Conformists,
many of us would find our minds in a most confused
state. We have lived our Churchmanship, and we
hardly know or have ever thought which is really the
centre on which the system hinges. Yet I pointed out
that if we analysed any one of the whole list of peculiari
ties which distinguished our practice, it was always the
sacramental question which furnished the explanation.
We contended for Bishops to rule the Church, because
with us they do rule, but when we consider the varied
forms, we find that we do not reaUy care how much they
rule so long as they only ordain. We like to have an
ordained minister, but on second thoughts we do not
very much care who ministers so long as a priest cele
brates. We are too careless about training our clergy,
very largely because in the end we realise this formal
sacramental presentation as their central duty. The
Church system then is primarUy formal and sacramental
in every thread of it. We do know that, and at
critical times our minds go back to it, in spite of the
fact that very few continuously think of it that way,
and that many of us are altogether unconscious of it.
The confused state of our minds I have confessed by
the mere fact of writing this book. If we had known
what we meant ourselves, it would have been quite
unnecessary to disentangle it for other people. If we
had known what was its living value, other people
would have known it also. For my part I believe the
controversy would long ago have been at an end. AU

302 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
controversies take on an air of dealing with opposed
views. Except in political controversies— and I am
not sure that I ought to except them — the discussions
are so wearisome, go on so indefinitely, because it is so
hard to find out what the views are, what they rest upon
and mean. Whenever we do get our views clear, we
begin to learn ; when we begin to learn we cease to
quarrel. I hope the Non-Conformists wiU not be cross
if I say that we are not the only people who are con
fused about our own meaning, though I admit they are
in nothing hke so dense a fog as we are. The Romans
are much clearer than either of us. Here then I am in
a paradox, for I have set myself this to maintain, that
those who are most confused are to be guides and
helpers of those who are relatively much more clear
and consistent. Nevertheless, to a theological mind
that is not so very impossible. If God chooses the
things that are not to bring to naught them that are, per
haps He may have a use even for our muddled selves.
Why is it that the Church of England is in a state so
confused ? From my point of view that is a question
of central importance. For those who do not share my
views it is stiU a question of considerable scientific
interest — psychologically, theologically, phUosophically.
At the Reformation the Church of England began
with an intention to be Catholic, to maintain and to
perpetuate her ancient sacramental system, but she
meant to have a reformation also. Protestant ideas
were aU about her ; she had absorbed them ; she meant
to keep them, though she did not mean to give up what
she had. She tried to graft the one upon the other.
Non-Conformists and Romans each laid their hands on
one factor and made a clear system. The Roman
system was a little the more clear of the two, because it

ANGLICANISM 303
is always easier to be clear over the definite and posi
tive than over the relative and moving. The Church
believed the two could be reconcUed ; she wanted,
tried, to reconcUe them, and reached a very poor result.
Of course it is always difficult to reconcUe such different
principles, and for at least three well-defined reasons
the Church never has reconciled them, never has got
further than a compromise.
In the first place, the split with the Non-Con
formists carried off aU the men who could have helped
the Church to realise a life of free development. On
the other hand, the split with the Romans carried off
those most devoted to Sacramentalism. To this I have
referred before, but it is the least important of our
reasons. In the second place, the Church was forced into de
veloping a free life of her own. Partly for political
reasons that also had to take fixed forms, but this
' free ' hfe — which springs from our human activity,
whether the special religious activity of prayers or the
general activity of our occupations — necessarily ab
sorbs the human attention. Preparing a sermon takes
more time and thought than preparing for a celebration.
The sermon also produces the more immediately ob
vious results. Saying prayers, making a meditation,
are an effort ; receiving is merely passive. God is
the thing we take for granted, as we take for granted
our breathing, sleep, food ; the things we have to do
and our manner of doing them, our work and our
morals, are always before us. The things we take for
granted are the bigger and the more important, but
they are the less interesting, part of our Uves.
Thus it has come about in aU our parishes that
running about after people, attracting them, swaying

304 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
them, visiting, guUds, clubs, services, occupy the
minds both of priests and people. The meaning of
sacramental worship is overlaid by ' prayers ' and
preaching. Even the Communion becomes an occa
sional extra.
(3) By the withdrawing to one side or other of
those who were most in earnest over them, the Church
would have been in any case greatly hampered in her
attempt to do justice to the two principles she was
pledged to bring together. But the double schism,
or split, produced a far worse result. It created a
rivalry, produced a spirit of antagonism and party
loyalty, which rendered it impossible to make a serious
attempt at reconcUing, or even understanding and
realising, any principles at aU.
Those who were most zealous for the sacramental
system joined the Roman communion, and their in
fluence was lost. But Rome was the determined
enemy of the Church, and since Rome was sacramental,
in order to be a ' loyal Churchman ' it was necessary
to be unsacramental. We aU know the absurd lengths
to which this nervous anxiety to be un-Roman has
carried people. The Romans have learnt the instinct
of worship. Not so long ago reverence and devoutness
in Church were regarded with suspicion as being too
' like them Romans.' We are rather pleased with
ourselves for having got rid of a few palpable absurdi
ties, but the spirit prevails almost as much as ever.
It prevaUs also in regard to Protestantism. The
Church began from formal worship, of which sacra
mental worship is the true expression ; but as the
Church shrank from that, she applied the formal
principle to prayer, where it is least in place. Person
aUy I have a tremendous love for Matins and Evensong,

ANGLICANISM 305
but I admit that they are very difficult to f oUow. The
Church meant them as ' daUy services.' Of course
if, modern-wise, we are in a tremendous hurry to
explain everything ' in terms of ' last week's thought
before next week's system demands an entirely new set
of explanations, the ' offices ' wiU be only annoying.
But these demands remind me somewhat of the amateur
carpenter. His first lesson is not to lean on his saw,
but to let it do its own work by its own weight. If a
man wiU say his Psalms and read his lections through
day by day for about two years, without troubling to
ask exactly how much he can ' explain,' their magni
ficent presentation of God's reality in the immense
variety of His operations, in sorrow as weU as in joy,
in the darkness of spiritual dryness, loneliness, failure,
as weU as in the sunshine of experience, in natural
judgment upon the natural as weU as in the comfort
of religious relation, wiU begin to grip his mind, to
mould in it the habit of a constant faith.
The Church's idea of ' daUy service ' is truly a magni
ficent thing. If, however, we take up our Matins and
Evensong at rare intervals, say once a week, it is
hardly possible to think of anything less suited to
common use. Of course the Church never meant them
to be used that way ; she meant the Psalms to be read
through every month, and the whole Bible every year—
the New Testament twice. But whatever the Church
meant — a matter about which we never enquire —
Matins and Evensong are the Sunday services of the
Church by habit. We are partisans of the Church ;
Matins and Evensong we must have. If the Psalms
are difficult to foUow, let us sing them — to Anglican
chants. This is commonly supposed to add the some
what indefinite quality of ' brightness ' ; it does not

306 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
add inteUigibUity, and it does make the service so
much longer that any serious preaching is impossible.
The laity in increasing numbers call the service
tedious and the preaching poor, but they wUl not have
anything else. Sacramental worship is inteUigible
to the youngest chUd, if he only beheves, but that is
' Roman.' Extempore prayers, properly handled, care
fuUy adapted, would be really helpful, and would leave
opportunity for serious preaching which would call out
power, but that would be ' too like them Dissenters.'
To combine all these, worship, free prayer, fuU
preaching, at different times would be a fulfiUing of
the Church's aim, but it would be against our habits.
In other words we cannot do that, simply because we
do not do it.
I admit, therefore, that our practice is in utter con
fusion, but not because the Church has no principles.
The Church has principles, and we have very true and
sound instincts as to their nature and requirements,
but we have never thought them out. Consequently
we do not understand the meaning of the Church's
system ; we do not know what the different parts
stand for, what are their relations or the place of each.
In default of an understood meaning we are at the
mercy of the customs which have grown up under the
most diverse influences and circumstances, but which
are now aU hedged in safely by hatred of ' innovations '
and threats of ' disloyalty.'
One might say therefore that the Church failed
because she grasped two principles at once and that
always does make a difficult situation, instead of taking
one principle only which makes an easy situation.
Unfortunately the Church did not recognise the diffi
culty of her task. Not having understood her principles

ANGLICANISM 307
or their relation, she never reaUy set about reconciling,
or combining them ; she only compromised between
them. She foUowed each too feebly and inconsistently
to get its best out of it, and yet sufficiently far to prevent
her getting the best out of its feUow.
Certainly I agree with the Non-Conformists that it
is utterly useless for us to ask them to come into
our actual Anglican system as it is practised. They
on their side wiU not listen to such a proposal for
a moment. What presentable reasons have we for
urging that they should ? Why should they change
their ' free ' services for our morning and evening
prayer — with a sermon ? For the purpose for which
both are used, theirs seems to me far the more suit
able. If we mean no more by our sacraments than
they do by theirs, why should they upset their usage to
put the same thing in its place ? Of course we should
thus gain a unity of some sort, but the Non-Conformists
would have to pay a heavy price for what can be
equaUy well gained by toleration.
That unity of toleration, not the few but the large
mass of Church people, earnestly, obstinately, rejects.
Why ? I admit that most of us talk somewhat lamely
of a Divine foundation, the claim to which can only be
made good in a warfare of historical criticism as dubious
in result as it is futile. Whole libraries of controversial
books have been written without our getting one
step nearer a conclusion. The stakes are too high to
allow either party to acknowledge defeat. Charges of
obstinacy and perversity are mere brickbats, which,
if they do us any damage, also supply ammunition for
a return fire. If this large mass of Church people are
obstinate, is it not plain that there are at the back of
their minds, or in their instincts, those very principles

308 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
of a sacramental reality which it must be admitted our
habitual system very feebly sets forth ? We shaU be
doing something to clear the issue if we make it plain
that it is Church principles, not the actual Church
practice, which we are urging Non-Conformists to
accept. I am going to involve myself here in a small
contradiction. I wiU set out its two sides.
(i) I ask the Non-Conformists to accept from us what
we have to give. It is a most unpleasant way of
opening, but I ask them to be patient whUe I put the
whole before them. For this purpose I wiU try to
summarise here what I have urged more at length
elsewhere. If this proposal is to be met by a quasi-papal
non possumus, by some such assertion as this : ' Our
Non-Conformist system is fully complete, defective on
no side,' then there is no unity possible except by sur
render. We Churchmen could only enter it by giving
up our belief in the necessity, nay even in the existence
of the gift of a sacramental Presence, for if that Presence
can be given in the way we believe, plainly a system
which does not recognise that gift must be incomplete.
I am not, however, asking Non-Conformists merely
to ' come in ' in the sense of surrendering one set of
principles for another, freedom for sacramentalism.
I have urged that the two were rather correlatives,
necessary to one another.
I have not asked Non-Conformity to abandon any
principle or belief it possesses, except indeed the belief
that it was altogether rich and in need of nothing. I
know the Non-Conformists believe, as we do, in the
objective reality of God, in objective and real grace.
I think they are conscious, however, that this is some
what their weaker side, which has to be maintained

ANGLICANISM 309
with some effort. I have tried to show that the
present constitution of Non-Conformity does not aUow
of an adequate presentation of objective religion.
Of course I am not for a moment supposing that
Non-Conformists are ready to admit that. I have
discussed the point at great length in my first part. I
am only holding out my hands, pleading with them
that this long severance cannot have been on our side
over nothing, any more than on theirs, pleading that
it should be thought over prayerfully, criticaUy,
earnestly, pleading that it should not be merely swept
away with a set ' We are not going to look at
anything.' I ask for sympathy, because I feel it. AU this is
intensely difficult and painful for me to say, because
I know how difficult and painful it is for others to listen
to, how natural it wiU be for them to resent it, but I
am coming now to the hardest point of all, which yet
I cannot shirk. If there is any truth at aU in the
essential position — if, without admitting that there is,
others wiU at least consider whether there may not be
- — something, this something, this sacramental basis,
which Non-Conformity needs in order to make its own
system reaUy safe, reaUy strong, really capable of de
veloping its whole power— as I earnestly desire it
should — then this basis only can be accepted.
The Non-Conformists can no more make a sacra
mental system for themselves than we can. Once
more, it is the essence of a sacrament that it is a gift,
and it is the essence of a gift that you must first receive
it ; you cannot take it. In Communion the Body of
Christ is given. At ordination the power to consecrate
is received. A sacramental system cannot be ' de
veloped,' cannot be created by merely saying — that

310 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
is what we wiU have or do. Our doctrine of ordination,
of Apostolical succession, of a historic episcopate, has
neither meaning nor value save in this respect that it
is the essential witness that that which is done is of
God. My hope is then that at last, if we wiU be patient,
if we wait, seeking the truth till God shows it to us, Non-
Conformists and we may be found kneeling together to
receive the same gift.
So far I have only been summarising, and what ?
' A futUe dream ' ? It may be ; at present I know it
seems so, yet I would ask my brothers to consider this.
Is not that dream at least on the hne — as nothing else
is on the line — of what on general principles we find
as the basis of aU unity ? As scientists men differ in
opinions or in theories about things ; as practical, men
differ in their uses of things. But much as we differ
in aU that is our own, in the sameness of the fact, there
at least is the ground of unity ; in reverence for fact as
such there is already some beginning of the attainment
of unity.
I have personaUy an immense belief in the Church
of England, not in spite of my damaging admissions
nor in spite of her defects. ' Anglicanism is a failure.'
If anybody cares to say so, I shaU not dissent ; at
best she is a very poor success. She is a failure — or a
very poor success — because she has held on steadily
to two principles. I do not claim that we have shown
any special wisdom in doing so. It would be absurd
to suppose that a few miUions odd had a higher average
level of inteUigence or spirituality than any other body
of men, though it would be gratuitous to suppose that
they were more stupid.
I do not believe, nor ask anyone to believe, in our
bishops, nor in our parish clergy, nor in our laity, nor

ANGLICANISM 3* 1
in the E.C.U., nor for the matter of that have I any
special disbehef in them. We Churchmen, leaders
and people, have in times past as up to this present,
done every foohsh thing we could find to do, punctuated
by an occasional wise thing to give variety — same as
other folk. We talked of broadmindedness, toleration
and the reconcUing of principles. As a matter of fact
we just had our own notions, and did our best to drive
out everything we didn't agree with, which is also
amazingly like other folk. If Anglicanism were a
more thorough-going exponent and consistent exponent
of Catholicism, she would be less useful. If she has
stiU kept those vast possibUities unimpaired, it is
because God meant she should, and over-ruled our
stupidities. The machinery of our self-wUl faUed us.
I have no mind left to believe in men by whatever
names they are caUed. I believe in God.
(2) Now I come to my second point very solemnly.
I said I beUeved in the Church of England, so that I
only could ask Non-Conformists to accept from her that
which she holds— meaning thereby not our opinions,
but her sacramental grace. A sufficiently preposterous
request ! I said that my second point would seem a
contradiction. I do not ask them to accept a Church
system but to make one ; it exists in the Church as a
possibUity, as a principle ; I am caUing to them to
accept it in order that they may make it a reality for
us as weU as for themselves. My sentences may be
obscure and confused, but they are not half so obscure
and confused as the condition into which we have all
drifted. I can straighten out my sentences ; who is
going to unravel the tangle of our Christianity ?
At least I can do my part. I believe then that the
whole future of Christianity lies in the reconciling, lies

312 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
in the combining, of these two elements. Because I
believe in God, I am not going to say that anything
is impossible, but so far as human sight can go it does
seem impossible that the English Church should carry
out her system, reconcile her principles, by herself.
We are all fenced in by the thorns of Church customs
— which are not really Church customs at all. But—
may I say it in aU love? — it is Non-Conformity and
Roman Catholicism which have made our system im
possible to us. We live like men in a beleagured city
under martial law. The necessity of keeping watch
and ward, the perpetual anticipation of more bomb
shells, the continual firing of big guns, has created a
nervous tension which finds expression in the continual
dread of summary court-martials for ' spies ' and
' traitors,' until the very power to go about our business
like reasonable beings has passed from us. When you
may be put against a waU and shot any moment — as
has happened to this writer several times — even if the
shooting is amazingly bad, and a foreseeing pro
vidence has only provided blank ammunition so that
it would do equally weU for a salute, the firing party
is so dreadfuUy solemn that everybody is afraid to laugh
and commonsense goes out of life.
Enemy dear, I have not been spying, but I have
talked to some of you under a flag of truce ; is it so
very different on your side of the waU ? Do we not
aU — in private — know our weakness, yet when we get
on a platform or write books — as I am doing — drums
beating, bugles sounding, officers waving their swords
in front, sergeants shouting ' no use,' ' impossible,'
' not to be thought of,' at the laggards behind, dust
rising in clouds — it is very exhUarating, but a little
more like Hyde Park than the real thing on the veldt.

ANGLICANISM 313
Does it get things on ? Is it business ? Would not
a httle quiet thinking be more helpful ? If we could
get peace that we might buy and seU, there are pearls
of exceeding price on both sides, the value of which
we must learn carefuUy that we may increase in eternal
riches by mutual commerce.
I did not urge that Non-Conformists should come
into our actual system, because my whole hope is that
they wiU see, as an outsider may see, what the real
strength of the Church system is better than we our
selves do ; that thus coming in with fresh minds they
wUl break down those hedges which I am afraid they
provided us with our lamentably poor excuse for
buUding up. Their separation — whosever fault it
was— has brought to us something like ossification
and death. Their reconcUing would be to us life from
the dead.
I am not prepared to endorse or admit the whole of
those drastic criticisms I coUected in the earlier part of
this chapter. I do not know that my judgment would
have any weight, yet for thirty years I have watched
with a wondering and sorrowing attention the efforts
of reformers of all kinds to induce the Anglican Com
munion to pay some serious heed to the possibUities
around her. But the Church — abroad as weU as at
home, free or established — is so soaked in those twin
ideals of the ' weU organised diocese ' and the ' well
worked parish,' that, while in these directions there has
been considerable progress, the width of outlook neces
sary for anything which cannot be brought under those
ideals has nigh ceased to exist. In general, the un-
wiUingness to use or even consider what might suggest
a doubt as to the all-sufficiency of the official routine,
the inabiUty to face results which everybody knows

314 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
wiU not bear talking about, the readiness to gloss them
over rather than admit that there are things to which
the customary procedure is not adequate, the blank
indifference to the most obvious opportunities which
cannot be reduced to parochial or, at best, diocesan
terms, the jealous suspicion of the devoted enthusiasm
of her own chUdren if it seems to move — as it must
move — somewhat outside those official lines, the con
sequent inabUity to produce such enthusiasm on an
adequately effective scale ; all these — which any on
looker could iUustrate with a score of instances one way
or another within his own experience — are as incredible
as, to one who loves the Church, they are heart-break
ing. I am in this paragraph giving only my own
personal opinion when I say that I have learnt to doubt
whether any great measure of church reform can be
carried through tiU we can bring to it from somewhere
a new mind, in earnest over principles and ends, less
absorbed over narrow personal and local sections, less
nervously jealous over formahties.
' Herein I am getting more preposterous. I ask Non-
Conformists to submit, and now it turns out I propose
it because it would be helpful to us ! ' I have said,
however, and I say it again, that it is quite impossible
for either of us to accept anything or to submit to any
thing, except because it is true, and because through
earnest and reverent consideration God has brought us
to see it thus. If the Non-Conformists do accept
something, it can only be because they have learnt to
see in the Church elements which are not inconsistent
with, but necessary to, what God has already given
them. If I have urged any other reasons, it is only as prima
facie grounds for making such consideration. Notably

ANGLICANISM 315
just here I have emphasised (1) that I did not want our
confused state to bhnd them, as it has so largely blinded
us, to the real essence of the Church position ; (2) that
I fuUy realise, as I believe most Churchmen realise, that
Non-Conformists could not join the Church by mere
submission or acceptance, and neither I nor we in the
least wish they should. We are looking to them in the
hope that they will not only add to us what we have
not got, but help us to enter into the meaning of what
we have.
Certainly I think that what I propose would be an
advantage to Non-Conformists — more, it would be an
unspeakable gain to Non-Conformity, not only to the
individuals, but to the spirit and power of the system —
as weU as to the Church and to her system, but I am
not reaUy thinking about either of them in this sense.
I am thinking of Christianity ; I am thinking of God's
honour ; I am thinking of that huge mass of the world
for whom Christ died. I am wondering how it is to be
won, what is the whole single Gospel of Jesus Christ by
which it can be redeemed, what is the religious presen
tation of that Gospel as whole and single which can be
set forth effectively. ' Alas,' said S. Augustine to the
Donatists, ' here is our flock and here is yours, but
where is the flock of Jesus Christ ? ' Can that be
brought together by halves ? Is it not abundantly
plain that it never wiU be nor can be brought back save
by a Gospel whole, intact, harmonious, the simple act
witnessing to the simple fact, what happens and is done
bringing before us now and here the actual truth of
what did happen and was done once for all, and yet
the gift received in submission passing outwards in
fulness of individual life, ever so varied, spontaneous,
free ?

316 THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS UNITY
When we get up on a platform every fibre in us
resents, of course it resents, the suggestion that this
Gospel we have held, preached and duly argued about,
is not complete. We cannot accept this, and we
cannot accept that, but the world wiU not be redeemed
by negations. When we drop our arguments and look
broadly at the world, what are the facts ? What is
the voice of God saying in them ? Is it not evident
that there must be something on each side which we
have not yet understood ? When we look at God's
Gospel, is it not evident that this something in the way,
over which we are incessantly stumbling, must be at
least somewhat of the kind I have put out, somewhat
in rough measure similar to the difference of basis and
development, fact and apprehension, objective and sub
jective, creed and thought, sacrament and prayer ?
Is it not something hidden in the mystery of the
Trinity, in the double sending forth, first, of the Son,
given once for all in the Incarnation, offering once for
aU the one fuU, perfect and sufficient Sacrifice, and,
secondly, of the Spirit working continually among aU,
which we have to realise as the Unity of the Godhead,
Manifest and Operative ?
Is not this just the pattern of the unity we have
missed, and of which Christianity is still in travail ?
What matter our words and our arguments — mine or
another's ? Oh ! that God would show Himself, that
He would take the matter into His own hands, that He
would take us into His hands, that He would fulfil in us
His WiU, that we might be one as He is !
O Lord Jesus Christ, Only Begotten Son of the Father,
Who rulest over all things from the Creation of the
World, with Whom it is to guide the hearts of men, to

ANGLICANISM 317
Whom all judgement hath been committed because
Thou art the Son of Man ; judge us not according to our
self-wiU, but as Thou didst pray, ' As Thou, Father, art
in Me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us,'
even so according to Thy WiU be it done unto us.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

GLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY 1'KESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 08844 2075

¦ . ¦ . ".¦'.'. ¦¦..¦¦¦.¦,-¦ V.. ¦:¦.¦. ¦.,!¦.