[#] 1 Cor. xii, 3[#] S. John xv, 16.The Church, then, is not a "voluntary organisation," but the creation of God in Christ. In fact it is the one immediate result of our Lord's earthly ministry. When His physical presence was withdrawn, there remained in the world, as fruit of His sojourn here, no volume of writings, no elaborated organisation with codified aims and methods, but a group of people who were united to one another because His Spirit lived and worked in each. And the great marvel lay in this: whereas all men realise that fellowship is better than rivalry, and yet fail to pass from one to the other because they are radically selfish both individually and corporately, in Christ men found themselves to be a real community in spite of their as yet unpurged selfishness. By the invasion of the Divine Life in Christ, the ideal itself, the life of fellowship, is given, and is made into the means of destroying just those qualities which had hitherto prevented its own realisation. The ecclesiastical organisations of to-day are not fellowships of this sort, but if the members of the Church lose their hold on this central principle of fellowship, as they have largely done, we are thrown back upon the futile effort to build up fellowship on the foundation of unredeemed selfishness.As it is not true to say that the Church is a "voluntary" organisation, so also it is not true to say that it exists "for the maintenance of public worship," at least in the sense that most Englishmen would give to the words. Certainly the Church, consisting of men and women whom God of His sheer goodness has delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of His dear Son, will find its first duty, as also its first impulse, in an abandonment of adoration. But if the God who is worshipped is not only some Jewish Jehovah or Mohammedan Allah, but the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, this love and adoration of God will immediately express itself in the love and service of men, and especially in the passionate desire to share with others the supreme treasure of the knowledge of God. The Church, like its Master, will be chiefly concerned to seek and to save that which is lost, calling men everywhere to repent because the Kingdom of God is at hand. Worship is indeed the very breath of its life, but service of the world is the business of its life. It is the Body of Christ, that is to say, the instrument of His will, and His will is to save the world.The spiritual life of men is not limited to this planet, and the fulfilment of the Church's task can never be here alone. The Church must call men from temporal to eternal hopes. But in this way it will do more than is possible in any other way to purify the temporal life itself. For most temporal goods are such that the more one person has the less there is for others, so that absorption in them leads inevitably to strife and war. But the eternal goods—love, joy, peace, loyalty, beauty, knowledge—are such that the fuller fruition of them by one leads of itself to fuller fruition by others also, and absorption in them leads without fail to brotherhood and fellowship.It is not of worship, the breath of the church's life, but of service, the business of its life, that I wish to speak. But this can only be misleading if the other has not first been given prominence. The Church serves because it first worships. Only because it has in itself a foretaste of eternal life, the realised Kingdom of God, can it prepare the way of the Lord, so that His Kingdom may come on earth as it is in heaven.One question which demands attention concerns the nature of the Church which is to perform this function. Is it enough that there should be vast numbers of Christian individuals gathering together in whatever way is proved by experience to be the most effective for edification, pursuing their profession as Christians, and so gradually leavening life? Or is there need for a quite definite society, with a coherent constitution and a known basis of membership? The former has much to recommend it; it avoids the deadening influence of a rigid machinery; it ensures freedom of spiritual and intellectual development; it may seem to correspond with that loosely constituted group of disciples, which was, as we have seen, the actual fruit of the earthly ministry of Christ. Yet it is condemned by all analogies, and is inadequate to the essential nature of religion.All relevant analogy suggests that a spirit must take definite and concrete form before it can be effective in the world, even as God Himself must become incarnate in order to establish His Kingdom upon earth. No doubt the form has often fettered the spirit and sometimes even perverted it; the history of the Franciscan movement is an instance of this; but the influence of St. Francis would never have done for Europe what it actually accomplished if the Order had not been founded.One of the clearest illustrations of the principle is before our eyes in our experience to-day. When the spirit of national patriotism makes its appeal, no one has to make any effort to understand its claim; our nation is a definite and concrete society in which we easily realise our membership to the full. We know that there is no escaping from it, and that, when it appeals for our service or our lives, we must either respond or refuse. But the Christian Church, as we know it, is powerless to bring home its appeal in the same way. Largely because of its divisions and endless controversy about the points, secondary though important, which separate the various sections, it has become curiously impotent in the face of any great occasion such as the present, and curiously unsuccessful in persuading either its own members or the world outside of the nature of its mission. We are not conscious, for example, that we are permanently either responding to, or else refusing, the appeal to "preach the Gospel to every creature." That appeal does not hit us personally as does the appeal, "every fit man wanted." Our membership in the Church does not in fact make us feel a personal obligation to assist the cause of the Church. We are content to "belong to it" without admitting that it has any power to dispose of its "belongings"; we think that we "support" it by "going to church" and contributing to "church expenses." But we feel no link with our fellow-Christians in Germany at all comparable to that which binds us to an agnostic but patriotic Englishman, or at all capable of bridging spontaneously the gulf fixed by national antagonism. By a deliberate effort we can realise that we and they are equally precious in the sight of God, and that they are our fellow-members in Christ. But there is no realised bond of corporate unity that binds us to each other, and we rely upon the very feeble resources of our personal good-will and personal faith for any sense of unity with them that we may attain. The Church is less powerful than the nation as an influence in our lives, partly at least because it is in fact less actual. The Church universal, whether as an organisation or as spirit of life, is an ideal, not a reality.Such an argument, however, simply invites refutation. It is pointed out that when the whole of one section of Christendom was organised as a single religious community under the Pope, men did, as a mere matter of historical fact, fight and hate even more bitterly than now. A common membership in one Catholic Church did not prevent Edward III. and Henry V. from making war upon their neighbours across the English Channel. And at this moment Roman Catholic Frenchmen appear to be fighting against Roman Catholic Bavarians with no more signs of fellowship between the opponents than appear in other parts of the field of war. So far as the Church is organised as a unity, this does not, in fact, create unity of spirit in its members sufficient to mitigate national antagonisms.And this, it will be urged, is only to be expected. "The wind bloweth where it listeth," and machinery cannot control the spirit. It is only a personal faith in Christ that will lift men above natural divisions so that they spontaneously recognise as brothers those who have similar faith. To build up again a great ecclesiastical organisation which shall include all Europe, or even all the world, will not of itself create friendship between the members who compose it if otherwise they are antagonistic. Individual conversion, not ecclesiastical statesmanship, is the one thing needful; nothing can take its place.No; of course nothing can take its place. And of course an all-comprehensive lukewarm Church will share the fate of its smaller counterpart at Laodicea. When it is said that the Universal Church is not a reality, it is not only the absence of a world-wide organisation that is deplored; still worse is the total absence of any typical manner of life by which members of the Church may be known from others. Men die for Great Britain, not because Britain is a united kingdom, but because there is a definite British character which is ours and which we love. But there is no specifically Christian type of character actually distinguishing members of the Church from others which may make men ready to die for Christendom. Christians differ from others, as Spinoza bitterly remarked, not in faith or charity or any of the fruits of the Spirit, but only in opinion. Assuredly individual conversion is the primary requisite.But half our troubles come from these absurd dilemmas. Do you believe in faith or in organisation? Well; do I believe in my eyes or my ears? Why not in both? Of course organisation cannot take the place of faith; of course faith without order is better than order without faith. But why cannot we have in the Church what we have got in the nation faith operative through order as loyalty is operative through the State and in service to it?The earlier objection, however, is equally serious. Catholicism has failed in the past and is failing now. One main ground of its failure is to be found, I believe, in its inadequate recognition of nationality, which has avenged itself by almost ousting Catholicism, and with it Christianity itself, where national interests are concerned.[#][#] I am speaking throughout of the Western Church: the Eastern Church has perhaps been, if anything, too national.This failure to give adequate recognition to nationality arises from too exclusive emphasis on the principle which is, quite rightly, the root idea of Catholicism—the idea of transcendence. Here in the last resort is the fundamental distinction between naturalism and religion; naturalism may take a form which stimulates the religious emotions and supports a high ethical ideal; but it confines itself to the limits of secular experience. For naturalism the history of man and of the universe is the starting-point and the goal; this as fact is the datum, this as understood is the solution. The Will of God, on this view, is to be discovered from the empirical course and tendency of history. But religion begins with God; it breaks in upon what we ordinarily call "experience" from outside; in its monotheistic form it regards the world as created by God for His own pleasure, and lasting only during that pleasure; in its pantheistic form it regards the world as a phase or a moment of His Being which is by no means limited to that phase or moment. Its philosophy does not elaborately conceive what God must be like in order to be the solution of our perplexities, but, starting with the assurance of His Being and Nature, shows how this is in fact the answer to all our needs.It is one peculiarity and glory of Christianity that it unites both of those. Its faith is fixed upon One who "for us men and for our salvationcame down from heaven," and who is yet the eternal Word through which all things were made, the indwelling principle of all existence. Transcendence and immanence are here perfectly combined. But because the former is the distinctively religious element, without which the latter would have been in danger of relapsing into naturalism, the deliberate emphasis was all laid on transcendence. We can see, as we look back, that when once the Incarnation has actually taken place upon the plane of history, it makes no jot of difference in logic, provided only that the Life of the Incarnate is taken as the starting-point and centre of thought, whether terms of transcendence or of immanence are used. The life of Christ is at once the irruption of the Divine into the world—(for the previous history of the world certainly does not explain it)—and is also the manifestation of the indwelling power which had all along sustained the world. In other words, the God who redeems is the same God who creates and sustains. But it is still true that the note of transcendence, of something given to man by God as distinct from something emerging out of man in his search of God, is the specifically religious note.And the Church, as the divine creation and instrument, shares and must express this character. It must be so constituted as to keep alive this faith. That is the meaning of hierarchies and sacraments. Whether any given order is the most adequate that can be designed, is of course a perfectly legitimate question. But every order that aspires to be catholic aims, at least, at expressing the truth that religion is a gift of God, and not a discovery of man. And certainly it is only the gift of God that can be truly catholic or universal. Man's discoveries are indefinitely various; the European finds one thing, the Arab another, the Hindu yet another, and none finds satisfaction in the other's discovery, though in all of them God is operative. Only in His own gift of Himself is it reasonable to expect that all men will find what they need; only in a Church which is the vehicle of this gift, and is known to be this, and not a mutual benefit society organised by its own members for their several and collective advantage—only in a Church expressive of Divine transcendence can all nations find a home.Yet just because of a too one-sided emphasis on this truth, the Catholic Church in the West has, as a rule, not tried to be a home for nations at all. "Christianity separated religion from patriotism for every nation which became, and which remained, Christian."[#] Patriotism is particular; religion ought to be universal. The nation is a natural growth; the Church is a divine creation. And so the primitive Church was organised in complete independence of national life, except in so far as its diocesan divisions followed national or provincial boundaries. No doubt the conditions of its existence made this almost necessary, for the organised secular life of the Roman Empire refused to tolerate it. But it was its own principle, true indeed but not the whole truth, which led to this line of development. The same principle is apparent in the Middle Ages, when there was no external pressure. The Church, as it was conceived in the sublime ideal of Hildebrand, was to belong to no nation, because supreme over them all, binding them together in the obedience and love of Christ, and imposing upon them His holy will.[#] "War and Religion" inThe Times Literary Supplement, Dec. 31, 1914.The inevitable result of this was that the instinct of nationality was never christened at all. It remained a brute instinct, without either the sanction or the restraint of religion. But it could not be crushed, and so the Church let it alone; with the result that, though murder was regarded as a sin, a war of dynastic or national ambition was not by people generally considered sinful. No doubt theologians condemned such war in general terms; St. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, seems to regard as fully justified only such wars as are undertaken to protect others from oppression, and some of the greatest Popes made heroic efforts to govern national policy according to righteousness. But in the general judgment of the Church, international action was not subjected to Christian standards of judgment at all. This way of regarding the Church sometimes leads people to speak of "alternative" loyalties so that they ask, "Ought I to be loyal to my Church or to my nation?" And while faith and reason will combine to answer "To my Church," an imperious instinct will lead most men in actual fact to answer "To my nation." The attempt to exalt the Church to an unconditional supremacy has the actual result of making men ignore it when its guidance is most needed.Whatever truth there may be in the statement that the Reformation was in part due to the growing sentiment of nationality, is evidence of the failure of the old Catholic Church in this matter. In England at any rate one main source of the popular Protestantism was the objection to anything like a foreign domination. No doubt the political ambitions of the Papacy were largely responsible for the feeling that the Catholic Church brought with it a foreign yoke. But the whole principle of the Church as non-national necessarily meant that the Church was regarded as "imposing" Christian standards rather than permeating national life with them. The Church tended to ignore the spiritual function of the State altogether, claiming all spiritual activity for itself alone; and thus it tended to make the State in actual fact unspiritual, and involved itself in the necessity of attempting what only the State can do. It thus not only tended to weaken the moral power of the State, but also forsook its own supernatural function to exercise those of the magistrate or judge, so that faith in the power of God was never put to a full test. The Reformation was not only a moral and spiritual reform of the Church, but the uprising of the nations, now growing fully conscious of their national life, against the cosmopolitan rule of Rome. But the Reformation did not fully realise its task. It expressed itself indeed in national Churches, but in actual doctrine tended to individualism; whereas Catholicism laid emphasis on religion as the gift of God, Protestantism, at least in its later development, laid stress on the individual's apprehension of the gift. But not only the individual—everything that is human, family, school, guild, trade union, nation, needs to apprehend and appropriate the gift of God. The nation, too, must be christened and submit to transforming grace.The uprising of the national spirit has had the deplorable result of contributing to the break-up of Christendom, but it is not in itself deplorable at all. All civilisation has in fact progressed by the development of different nationalities, each with its own type. If we believe in a Divine Providence, if we believe that the life of Christ is not only the irruption of the Divine into human history but is also and therein the manifestation of the governing principle of all history, we shall confess that the nation as well as the Church is a divine Creation. The Church is here to witness to the ideal and to guide the world towards it, but the world is by divine appointment a world of nations, and it is such a world that is to become the Kingdom of God. Moreover, if it is by God's appointment that nations exist, their existence must itself be an instrument of that divine purpose which the Church also serves.The whole course of Biblical revelation supports this view. It is quite true that if we were to read the New Testament for the first time, knowing nothing whatever about the Old, we should come to the conclusion that it almost entirely ignored nationality and everything which goes with it. But then the Church has always maintained that the New Testament grows by an organic life out of the Old, and presupposes it; and when we go back to that, there can be no doubt whatever about its view of nationality. The whole of the early books of the Old Testament are concerned with this, and almost nothing else. The task of Moses in the wilderness, of Joshua, of the Judges and the early Kings, is precisely to fashion Israel into a nation. So much is all attention concentrated upon this that we find a contentment with that contraction of the moral outlook which presents to many modern readers the chief stumbling block about the Old Testament. Almost everything that was serviceable to Israel is approved. Rahab is guilty of sheer treason to her own city of Jericho, but it is serviceable to Israel, and there is no word of condemnation. Jael is guilty of a very treacherous murder, but it was serviceable to Israel, so "Blessed shall she be above women in the tent."Everything is concentrated upon this primary object of fashioning Israel into a nation and persuading individual Israelites to put the welfare of the whole before the interest and ambition of their own clique or faction; and when the time came for an advance to a wider view, it came precisely not by way of saying that national divisions do not matter and that national life itself is unimportant, but by insisting that nationality is equally precious in these other nations all around Israel as it is within Israel itself.The turning point here as in so much else in the Old Testament is the Book of Amos, the first of the written prophecies. It is worth while to try to imagine the effect of those opening clauses. The prophet begins by securing a willing hearing from those to whom he writes: in other words he begins by abusing their neighbours."Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Damascus, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof....""Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Gaza, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Tyre, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Edom, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of the children of Ammon, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Moab, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."And then, without a change of phrase, without even the compliment of a heightened denunciation—"Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Judah, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Israel, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."[#][#] Amos i, 3-ii, 6.It would be impossible more emphatically to insist that all nations, Israel and the rest, stand on an equal footing before the Judgment Seat of God, and are to be regarded as real entities, and real moral agents; but that is not enough for the prophet."Are ye not as Children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel?—saith the Lord."I have no more care for you than the Ethiopians—who then, as now, were black folk."Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt,andthe Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?"[#][#] Amos ix, 7.It is the God who had guided the history of Israel who has equally guided the history of the despised Philistine and the hated Syrian. And this line of thought reaches its culmination where we should expect to find it, in the works of the statesman-prophet Isaiah. His little country of Judah was likely to be destroyed by the hostilities of Assyria and Egypt, and in the middle of that peril, when these nations were at each other's throats, he looks forward and says:—"In that day there shall be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian to Assyria; and the Egyptians shall worship with the Assyrians."There shall be free intercourse between them, and worship of the one God shall be the link between them."In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, for that the Lord of hosts hath blessed them, saying, 'Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance?'"[#][#] Isaiah xix, 23-25.Just picture the pallid frenzy of the orthodox Jew at the words—"Egypt my people."The teaching of the Bible is plain enough; and as we come to the New Testament, with all this in our minds, knowing the emphasis that has already been laid upon nationality, we find that there, too, is the note of patriotism.No man has ever loved his nation more than the Lord loved Israel, and in the bitterness of disappointment in the lament over Jerusalem we have the measure of His patriotic love for the holy places of His people.St. Paul, the author of those great ejaculations—"That there can be neither Jew nor Gentile, Greek nor Scythian, bond nor free, but one man in Christ Jesus"[#]—is also the author of the most ardent expression of patriotism in all literature.[#] Gal. iii, 28; Col. iii, 11."I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Ghost, that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren's sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh; who are Israelites, whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the patriarchs, and of whom is Christ as concerning the flesh."[#][#] Rom. ix, 1-5.One can almost hear him panting as he dictates the words.The Bible, then, strongly insists upon the nation as existing by divine appointment, and it looks forward, not to the abolition of national distinctions, but to the inclusion of all nations in the family of nations. So it was well that nationality should insist upon itself within the sphere of religion in the movement that we call the Reformation. But it left us with a broken Christendom, and with what are called national Churches. The old Church endeavoured to tyrannise over the State; under the influence of the Reformation the State tended to tyrannise over the Church. Then comes a movement towards a free Church in a free State; but we shall only find satisfaction when we have a free State in a free Church.The nation is a natural growth with a spiritual significance. It emerges as a product of various elementary needs of man; but having emerged it is found to possess a value far beyond the satisfaction of these needs. The Church is a spiritual creation working through a natural medium. Its informing principle is the Holy Spirit of God in Christ, but its members are men and women who are partly animal in nature as well as children of God. The nation as organised for action is the State; and the State, being "natural," appeals to men on that side of their nature which is lower but is not in itself bad. Justice is its highest aim and force its typical instrument, though force is progressively less employed as the moral sense of the community develops: mercy can find an entrance only on strict conditions. The Church, on the other hand, is primarily spiritual; holiness is its primary quality; mercy will be the chief characteristic of its judgments, but it may fall back on justice and even, in the last resort, on force.[#] Both State and Church are instruments of God for establishing His Kingdom; both have the same goal; but they have different functions in relation to that goal.[#] SeeAppendix II.:On Moral Authority.The State's action for the most part takes the form of restraint; the Church's mainly that of appeal. The State is concerned to maintain the highest standard of life that can be generally realised by its citizens; the Church is concerned with upholding an ideal to which not even the best will fully attain. When a man reaches a certain pitch of development, he scarcely realises the pressure of the State, though he is still unconsciously upheld by the moral judgment of society; but he can never outgrow the demand of the Church. On the other hand, if a man is below a certain standard, the appeal of the Church will not hold him and he needs the support of the State's coercion.Neither State nor Church is itself the Kingdom of God, though the specific life of the Church is the very spirit and power of that Kingdom. Each plays its part in building the Kingdom, in which, when it comes, force will have disappeared, while justice and mercy will coalesce in the perfect love which will treat every individual according to his need.The Church which, officially at least, ignored nationality has failed. The Church which allowed itself to become little more than the organ of national religion has failed. The hope of the future lies in a truly international Church, which shall fully respect the rights of nations and recognise the spiritual function of the State, thereby obtaining the right to direct the national States along the path which leads to the Kingdom of God. We are all clear by now that the Christian Church cannot be made the servant of one nation; we must become equally clear that it cannot be regarded as standing apart from them, so that in becoming a Churchman a man is withdrawn in some degree from national loyalty. We must get rid of the idea of "alternative" loyalties. The Church is indeed the herald and the earnest of that Kingdom of God which includes all mankind; but unless all history is a mere aberration, that Kingdom will have nations for its provinces, and nations like individuals will realise their destiny by becoming members of it.We shall, then, conceive the relation of the nation to the Church on the analogy of that between the family and the nation. There is in principle no conflict of interest or loyalty here. The family is a part of the nation, owing allegiance to it; but the nation consists of families and can reach its welfare only through theirs. So the nation (in proportion as it is Christian) must learn to regard itself as a member of the family of nations in the Catholic Church. No doubt in this imperfect world there is often a conflict of supposed interests, and sometimes even of real interests. Moreover, there is often room for doubt as to where the true interest lies. But the family finds its own true welfare in the service of the nation, and the nation finds its own welfare in the service of the Kingdom of God.The Catholic Church, which is itself not yet a society of just men made perfect, while upholding the ideal of brotherhood and the love which kills hate by suffering at its hands, and while calling both men and nations to penitence and renewed aspiration in so far as they fail to reach that ideal, will none the less recognise the divinity of the nation in spite of all its failures. It will not call upon men to come out from their nation or separate themselves from its action, unless it believes that then and there the nation itself is capable of something better, or unless the nation requires of them a repudiation of the very spirit of Christ, or an action intrinsically immoral. If it is doing the best that at the moment it is capable of doing, the Church will bid its citizens support it in that act, lest the nation be weakened in its defence of the right or its control handed over to those who have no care for the right.The Church then must recognise the nation having a certain function in the divine providence with reference to man's spiritual life. It must not try to usurp the State's functions, for if it does it will perform them badly, and it will also—which is far more serious—be deserting the work for which it alone is competent; and the State must, in its turn, recognise the Church as the Society of Nations, of which it with all others is a member.Nothing but such a spiritual society can secure fellowship among nations. Schemes of arbitration, conciliation, international police and the like, presuppose, if they are to be effective, an admitted community of interest between the nations. But this must be not only admitted but believed in sufficiently to prompt a nation which has no interest in a particular dispute to make sacrifices for the general good, by spending blood and treasure in upholding the authority of the international court or council. What will secure this, except the realisation of common membership in the Kingdom of God, and in the Christian Church, its herald and earnest?And yet the Church we know is not only divided but at war within itself. This, the Creation of God in Christ, is not more free from strife and faction than the nations, which are natural growths. If grace fails, how can nature succeed? Why should we expect the nations of the world to be at peace, when the sections of the Church are at war?Because the Church is so far from what we hope it may become, we can only sketch that future Church in outline. Its building will be the work of years, perhaps of centuries. And probably enough our attempt will fail as Hildebrand's failed; probably enough there will be scores of failures; but each time we must begin again in order that for Christ and His Spirit a Body may be prepared, through which His purpose may in the end of the ages find its accomplishment, and the nations of the earth bring their glory—each its own—into His Holy City.There is the goal; dimly enough seen; but the method is perfectly plain. "Thomas saith unto Him, Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; how know we the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way." And when that way led to the Cross, beside the innocent Sufferer there were two others. One cried to Him, "Save Thyself and us"; the other recognised His royalty in that utmost humiliation and prayed, "Jesus, remember me when Thou comest in Thy Kingdom." He, and he alone in the four Gospels, is recorded to have addressed the Lord by His personal name. Penitence creates intimacy, whether it be offered to God or to man.We have been made very conscious of the burden of the world's pain and sin, though perhaps that burden, as God bears it, is no heavier now than in our selfish and worldly peace. Will the Church pray to Him, "Save Thyself and us"? or will it willingly suffer with Him, united with Him in the intimacy of penitence, seeing His royalty in His crown of thorns? Will it, while bidding men bravely do their duty as they see it, still say that the real treasures are not of this world though they may in part be possessed here, suffering whatever may be the penalty for this unpopular testimony? For the kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ only when the citizens of those kingdoms lay up their treasure in heaven and not upon the earth, only when, being risen with Christ, they set their affection on things above—love, joy, peace, loyalty, beauty, knowledge—only when they realise their fellowship in His Body so that their fellowship also in His Holy Spirit may purge their selfishness away.Here is field enough for heroism and the moral equivalent of war. The Church is to be transformed and become a band of people united in their indifference to personal success or national expansion, and caring only that the individual is pure in heart and the nation honourable. In her zeal for that purity and honour, and in her contempt for all else, she may have to suffer crucifixion. It is a big risk that the Church must run; for if she does not save the world she will have ruined it, besides sacrificing herself. If there is no God nor Holy City of God, the Church will have just spoilt life for all her faithful members, and in some degree for every one else as well. But if her vision is true, then everything is worth while—rather the greatness of the sacrifice is an addition to the joy when the prize is so unimaginably great. Can we bring this spirit into the Church? On our answer depends the course of history in the next century, and a new stage in the Coming of the Lord.The Spirit and the Bride say, Come.And he that heareth, let him say, Come.Yea: I come quickly.Amen: come, Lord Jesus.LECTURE IIIJUSTICE AND LIBERTY IN THE STATE"Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy but to fulfil."—S. Matthew v., 17.I.—In the last lecture I said that justice would seem to be the typical virtue of the State, as holiness of the Church. Let us, then, first consider this virtue of justice in the light of our Lord's teaching concerning one of the most familiar aspects of justice—its penal aspect.Those sayings that have of late given rise to so many searchings of heart among Christians—the sayings about turning the other cheek and the rest—are given by our Lord as explanations of the saying that He came "not to destroy the law but to fulfil it." The words "to fulfil" of course mean not only to obey and carry out, but to complete.In what sense is this teaching of our Lord the completion of the law? For the law of Moses, like every other law, was concerned with regulating the relations of men to one another, as well as their duties towards God; and it enforced what it enjoined by penalties.At first sight no doubt it looks as if He were directly contradicting what had been said to them of old time—"Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, That ye resist not him that is evil; but whosoever smites thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also, and if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also."How is this the fulfilment or completion of the Mosaic or any other law? At this distance of time, it is hard to remember what was the original significance of the law of retaliation. We are inclined to think that the words "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" are intended to give a licence to that degree of vindictiveness; but on the contrary, in the primitive stage in which that enactment was given, it was not a licence given to man's instinct for vengeance, but a limitation set upon that primitive and animal instinct, whose natural tendency, if unchecked, is to take two eyes for an eye and a set of teeth for a tooth. Thelex talionissaid—Only an eye for an eye, and only a tooth for a tooth.Our Lord carries the same principle further; not even that degree of vindictiveness is allowed. The first necessity was to put bounds upon man's natural and almost insatiable lust for vengeance. The next was to tell him that the whole method of vengeance could never succeed in what is its only really justifiable aim. For what is the true function of the law, whether that of Moses or any other? It is always two-fold; it must always aim not merely at checking the evil act, but at converting, if possible, the evil will.There has never, I suppose, been any legal system which was not justified by its upholders on this ground. No one is really content, to think that the punishment which he inflicts, or may imagine himself as inflicting through the agency of the State, or in any other way, is purely deterrent; he always thinks it will also be reformative. But, how are you as a matter of fact to attack the evil will? The mere infliction of penalty will not of any necessity achieve this goal at all. We know that it is very seriously debated whether our whole system of punishment in the civilised States of to-day has any really moral effect, at least upon those who fall under its most severe penalties. Probably most convicts leave prison worse men than when they entered. For if a man is below a certain level in moral attainment, pain, far from purifying, only brutalises and coarsens. It is only those who are already far in the path of spiritual growth who are purified by suffering, even as the Captain of our Salvation was thus made perfect. But it is still true that the aim of all penal law is twofold; to check the evil act and, if possible, to convert the evil will.Now, as I suggested previously, mere restraint may have indirectly a positive moral value; as for example in the case of a child, who is potentially of very diverse characters. He has the capacity to grow in many different directions, and it will depend very much upon his surroundings, and the influences which play upon his character, whether this set of instincts or that receives development; and here merely to keep forcibly within bounds the development of certain impulses, which tend to grow out of proportion to the proper harmony and economy of nature, may indirectly have the effect of preserving that harmony and thus develop genuine virtue in the soul. And again, with those whose characters are relatively formed, the direct restraint, for example, of State action may have positive moral value, inasmuch as it is the expression of the moral judgment of Society. What most of us would shrink from, if we were in danger of imprisonment, would not be the physical inconvenience, which is not very great, but the fact that we should have brought ourselves under the censure of Society, and acted in such a way as to put ourselves below the level which Society generally considers itself justified in enforcing. And so the purely restraining influence of the State, even operating through force, may have a positive moral value, because it represents, and is the only way at present devised of representing, the judgment of Society, and to shrink from the judgment of Society is, so far as it goes, a really moral fear. It is not indeed the highest ground for the avoidance of evil, but it is a moral ground, for it arises from our recognition of our fellow-membership in Society with those whose censure we fear.But the State in all its actions is of necessity mechanical, and cannot take account of the individual, and all that makes him what he is. The State officer cannot know the prisoner in such a way as really to determine the treatment allotted to him in the light of what is best for his spiritual welfare; and therefore he has to fall back upon rough and ready rules which will never be perhaps very far from the right treatment, though they may fail to allot the ideal treatment in any single case. And here, in parenthesis, let me just mention that this is the chief reason why metaphors and comparisons drawn from the law-courts are so sadly misleading when used to illustrate the relation between the human soul and God; our only fear of the judge is concerned with what he will do to us; but what we fear with our father, on earth or in Heaven, is not so much what he will do to us, as the pain we have caused—"There is mercy with Thee; therefore shalt Thou be feared."Our Lord's method is the only one that aims straight at the evil will; it is the only method which has in it any real hope of converting the individual. It may fail time and again; but it is the only one that has a chance of real and absolute success.Let us look for a moment at the instances which He chooses to illustrate the principle, and we shall see at once that they are carefully chosen. All the acts chosen are such as are particularly vexatious to the ordinary natural and selfish man—being struck in the face; having a vexatious suit brought against one; being pestered by a beggar; being compelled to do something for the public service when we are busy. Those are just the things which the natural man resents and which the real Christian will not mind at all. For, after all, there is no real injury in being struck in the face, or having one's coat taken away. What one minds is the insult to one's precious dignity; and the Christian who, by definition, has forgotten all about himself will not mind such injuries at all. Therefore if the acts commanded are spontaneously done and not done with a laborious conscientiousness—that is to say if they are done in the spirit of Christianity, and not in the spirit of Pharisaism—they will express a complete conversion in the will of him who does them; they will express absolute conquest of self, and a concern solely for the welfare of him with whom we are dealing; and there is no heart yet made that can resist the appeal of love which is constant in spite of every betrayal, the appeal of trust which is renewed in spite of endless disappointments."He that loveth his brother"—says St. John—"walketh in the light." He is the man who knows where he is going, because he is the man who understands people and sees into their hearts. They will reveal to him secrets of their nature, which they will hide from the contemptuous and indifferent; and even if at first he is from time to time disappointed and betrayed, in the end his method will succeed, because love and trust create what they believe in.The justice then, which we find at work in the State, is always a provisional thing pointing us to something more, something which the State itself by its very constitution is unable to provide, but which God provides in Christ, and will enable us in our measure to provide, if we are faithful, at least in the circle of our immediate activities, so far, that is, as the range of our sympathy will carry us.II.—The value of the justice which the State is able to secure actually resides for the most part in the liberty which it makes possible. Justice, as the State interprets it, is of itself, as far as I can see, almost totally valueless. I can see no kind of advantage in merely allotting so much pain to so much evil. There is moral evil in a man and you put physical evil into him as well. I do not see how you have made him or anyone else the better. Only in so far as the punishment is either deterrent or reformative, has it any moral value at all; and only in the latter case, where it reforms the character, can the value be called in the strict sense moral. So far as it only deters men from evil acts which they would desire to commit, it may add to the convenience of the other members of Society, but it is not doing any direct moral good.Indirectly, however, it has moral results; for when we enquire in what sense we can say that such justice as the State secures produces liberty, the first answer is to be found in the obvious and elementary fact that the liberty of every one of us depends upon our knowledge that certain impulses and instincts in other people, should they arise, will be checked and not allowed to receive full expression. Our liberty is increased by that check put upon predatory or homicidal impulses in other people, and their liberty depends upon the suppression of such impulses in us.So far it would seem that there must be in the most obvious sense of the words a certain curtailment of everybody's liberty in order that anybody may have liberty at all. If we are all to be free to indulge our passions of anger and hatred, should such arise within us, then it is quite clear that there will be very little freedom of action in the Society which rests on that principle. Everyone will go about in fear of everyone else.But that is a very small part of the business. The chief contribution of such justice to human liberty is that it supplies the necessary conditions of discipline without which there can be no liberty. We think of liberty as meaning freedom from external constraint. We think that an act of ours is free when we can say, "I did it, and no one made me do it"; but very little reflection is sufficient to convince us that a man whose life is actually governed by one or several over-developed passions which he will, as a matter of fact, always gratify when opportunity offers, in spite of the damage that is done to his whole life and to his permanent and deliberate purpose, is not really a free man. To be tied and bound with the chain of our sins is just as much slavery as to be in the ownership of another man; and we can acquire the real liberty which is worth having, the liberty, that is, to shape our lives, to live according to our own purpose, following out our own ideal, only in so far as our natures have been welded by discipline into unity, so that we are no longer a chaos of impulses and instincts, any of which may be set in motion by the appropriate environment, but are self-governing persons controlling our own lives.Liberty, in so far as it is of any value, always means self-control in both the senses of that term: in the sense that we are only controlled by ourselves, and also in the sense that by ourselves we are controlled, and that every part of our nature is subservient to the purpose to which our whole nature is given. Legislation is really an instrument of self-discipline. The people who write books about political philosophy are mainly members of the respectable classes. They naturally find it rather difficult to envisage themselves as liable to commit murder and the like; and they are therefore very liable to represent the criminal law of the State as being enacted against a few undisciplined or recalcitrant members. But when we look at the thing more closely, we see that what a community does, especially a democratic community, when it passes a law, is to invoke, every member upon his own head, the penalties enacted by that law, if he should do the act which the law forbids.Let us consider, for example, an international convention. What is the use of nations agreeing with one another not to do something, for instance not to poison wells, unless there is some chance that in a moment of strong temptation they may desire to do it? They therefore strengthen their deliberate purpose to avoid such acts by entering into an agreement with one another always to avoid them. There would be no object in doing this unless they needed help, or thought that they might at some time need help, in living up to their own purposes.And we have to remember that in this way the law of the State is, as a matter of fact, perpetually operating upon every one of us. We are often liable to suppose that it is only active in relation to those people against whom it is definitely set in motion; but it does operate in the life of every one of the citizens of a community; because the fact that certain actions would involve us in State-penalty most undoubtedly does keep all of us from indulging in those actions at certain times, even though at calm moments we recognise that it would be wrong to do so. Trivial instances are nearly always the clearest. Most of us, I suppose, are sufficiently honest to desire in general terms to pay for what we buy; and we should perhaps usually pay for our places in the train, even if there were no ticket-inspector; still, the existence of the inspector just clinches the matter.[#] The possibility of the penalty as a matter of fact helps to maintain our general, permanent, and deliberate purpose of honesty against a momentary temptation to be dishonest; and so far it is helping us to live up to our purpose, or, in other words, is increasing our real freedom. In fact, one main test of good legislation is precisely whether it does or does not in this way develop real freedom by increasing people's power to live by their own deliberate purpose.
[#] 1 Cor. xii, 3
[#] S. John xv, 16.
The Church, then, is not a "voluntary organisation," but the creation of God in Christ. In fact it is the one immediate result of our Lord's earthly ministry. When His physical presence was withdrawn, there remained in the world, as fruit of His sojourn here, no volume of writings, no elaborated organisation with codified aims and methods, but a group of people who were united to one another because His Spirit lived and worked in each. And the great marvel lay in this: whereas all men realise that fellowship is better than rivalry, and yet fail to pass from one to the other because they are radically selfish both individually and corporately, in Christ men found themselves to be a real community in spite of their as yet unpurged selfishness. By the invasion of the Divine Life in Christ, the ideal itself, the life of fellowship, is given, and is made into the means of destroying just those qualities which had hitherto prevented its own realisation. The ecclesiastical organisations of to-day are not fellowships of this sort, but if the members of the Church lose their hold on this central principle of fellowship, as they have largely done, we are thrown back upon the futile effort to build up fellowship on the foundation of unredeemed selfishness.
As it is not true to say that the Church is a "voluntary" organisation, so also it is not true to say that it exists "for the maintenance of public worship," at least in the sense that most Englishmen would give to the words. Certainly the Church, consisting of men and women whom God of His sheer goodness has delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of His dear Son, will find its first duty, as also its first impulse, in an abandonment of adoration. But if the God who is worshipped is not only some Jewish Jehovah or Mohammedan Allah, but the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, this love and adoration of God will immediately express itself in the love and service of men, and especially in the passionate desire to share with others the supreme treasure of the knowledge of God. The Church, like its Master, will be chiefly concerned to seek and to save that which is lost, calling men everywhere to repent because the Kingdom of God is at hand. Worship is indeed the very breath of its life, but service of the world is the business of its life. It is the Body of Christ, that is to say, the instrument of His will, and His will is to save the world.
The spiritual life of men is not limited to this planet, and the fulfilment of the Church's task can never be here alone. The Church must call men from temporal to eternal hopes. But in this way it will do more than is possible in any other way to purify the temporal life itself. For most temporal goods are such that the more one person has the less there is for others, so that absorption in them leads inevitably to strife and war. But the eternal goods—love, joy, peace, loyalty, beauty, knowledge—are such that the fuller fruition of them by one leads of itself to fuller fruition by others also, and absorption in them leads without fail to brotherhood and fellowship.
It is not of worship, the breath of the church's life, but of service, the business of its life, that I wish to speak. But this can only be misleading if the other has not first been given prominence. The Church serves because it first worships. Only because it has in itself a foretaste of eternal life, the realised Kingdom of God, can it prepare the way of the Lord, so that His Kingdom may come on earth as it is in heaven.
One question which demands attention concerns the nature of the Church which is to perform this function. Is it enough that there should be vast numbers of Christian individuals gathering together in whatever way is proved by experience to be the most effective for edification, pursuing their profession as Christians, and so gradually leavening life? Or is there need for a quite definite society, with a coherent constitution and a known basis of membership? The former has much to recommend it; it avoids the deadening influence of a rigid machinery; it ensures freedom of spiritual and intellectual development; it may seem to correspond with that loosely constituted group of disciples, which was, as we have seen, the actual fruit of the earthly ministry of Christ. Yet it is condemned by all analogies, and is inadequate to the essential nature of religion.
All relevant analogy suggests that a spirit must take definite and concrete form before it can be effective in the world, even as God Himself must become incarnate in order to establish His Kingdom upon earth. No doubt the form has often fettered the spirit and sometimes even perverted it; the history of the Franciscan movement is an instance of this; but the influence of St. Francis would never have done for Europe what it actually accomplished if the Order had not been founded.
One of the clearest illustrations of the principle is before our eyes in our experience to-day. When the spirit of national patriotism makes its appeal, no one has to make any effort to understand its claim; our nation is a definite and concrete society in which we easily realise our membership to the full. We know that there is no escaping from it, and that, when it appeals for our service or our lives, we must either respond or refuse. But the Christian Church, as we know it, is powerless to bring home its appeal in the same way. Largely because of its divisions and endless controversy about the points, secondary though important, which separate the various sections, it has become curiously impotent in the face of any great occasion such as the present, and curiously unsuccessful in persuading either its own members or the world outside of the nature of its mission. We are not conscious, for example, that we are permanently either responding to, or else refusing, the appeal to "preach the Gospel to every creature." That appeal does not hit us personally as does the appeal, "every fit man wanted." Our membership in the Church does not in fact make us feel a personal obligation to assist the cause of the Church. We are content to "belong to it" without admitting that it has any power to dispose of its "belongings"; we think that we "support" it by "going to church" and contributing to "church expenses." But we feel no link with our fellow-Christians in Germany at all comparable to that which binds us to an agnostic but patriotic Englishman, or at all capable of bridging spontaneously the gulf fixed by national antagonism. By a deliberate effort we can realise that we and they are equally precious in the sight of God, and that they are our fellow-members in Christ. But there is no realised bond of corporate unity that binds us to each other, and we rely upon the very feeble resources of our personal good-will and personal faith for any sense of unity with them that we may attain. The Church is less powerful than the nation as an influence in our lives, partly at least because it is in fact less actual. The Church universal, whether as an organisation or as spirit of life, is an ideal, not a reality.
Such an argument, however, simply invites refutation. It is pointed out that when the whole of one section of Christendom was organised as a single religious community under the Pope, men did, as a mere matter of historical fact, fight and hate even more bitterly than now. A common membership in one Catholic Church did not prevent Edward III. and Henry V. from making war upon their neighbours across the English Channel. And at this moment Roman Catholic Frenchmen appear to be fighting against Roman Catholic Bavarians with no more signs of fellowship between the opponents than appear in other parts of the field of war. So far as the Church is organised as a unity, this does not, in fact, create unity of spirit in its members sufficient to mitigate national antagonisms.
And this, it will be urged, is only to be expected. "The wind bloweth where it listeth," and machinery cannot control the spirit. It is only a personal faith in Christ that will lift men above natural divisions so that they spontaneously recognise as brothers those who have similar faith. To build up again a great ecclesiastical organisation which shall include all Europe, or even all the world, will not of itself create friendship between the members who compose it if otherwise they are antagonistic. Individual conversion, not ecclesiastical statesmanship, is the one thing needful; nothing can take its place.
No; of course nothing can take its place. And of course an all-comprehensive lukewarm Church will share the fate of its smaller counterpart at Laodicea. When it is said that the Universal Church is not a reality, it is not only the absence of a world-wide organisation that is deplored; still worse is the total absence of any typical manner of life by which members of the Church may be known from others. Men die for Great Britain, not because Britain is a united kingdom, but because there is a definite British character which is ours and which we love. But there is no specifically Christian type of character actually distinguishing members of the Church from others which may make men ready to die for Christendom. Christians differ from others, as Spinoza bitterly remarked, not in faith or charity or any of the fruits of the Spirit, but only in opinion. Assuredly individual conversion is the primary requisite.
But half our troubles come from these absurd dilemmas. Do you believe in faith or in organisation? Well; do I believe in my eyes or my ears? Why not in both? Of course organisation cannot take the place of faith; of course faith without order is better than order without faith. But why cannot we have in the Church what we have got in the nation faith operative through order as loyalty is operative through the State and in service to it?
The earlier objection, however, is equally serious. Catholicism has failed in the past and is failing now. One main ground of its failure is to be found, I believe, in its inadequate recognition of nationality, which has avenged itself by almost ousting Catholicism, and with it Christianity itself, where national interests are concerned.[#]
[#] I am speaking throughout of the Western Church: the Eastern Church has perhaps been, if anything, too national.
This failure to give adequate recognition to nationality arises from too exclusive emphasis on the principle which is, quite rightly, the root idea of Catholicism—the idea of transcendence. Here in the last resort is the fundamental distinction between naturalism and religion; naturalism may take a form which stimulates the religious emotions and supports a high ethical ideal; but it confines itself to the limits of secular experience. For naturalism the history of man and of the universe is the starting-point and the goal; this as fact is the datum, this as understood is the solution. The Will of God, on this view, is to be discovered from the empirical course and tendency of history. But religion begins with God; it breaks in upon what we ordinarily call "experience" from outside; in its monotheistic form it regards the world as created by God for His own pleasure, and lasting only during that pleasure; in its pantheistic form it regards the world as a phase or a moment of His Being which is by no means limited to that phase or moment. Its philosophy does not elaborately conceive what God must be like in order to be the solution of our perplexities, but, starting with the assurance of His Being and Nature, shows how this is in fact the answer to all our needs.
It is one peculiarity and glory of Christianity that it unites both of those. Its faith is fixed upon One who "for us men and for our salvationcame down from heaven," and who is yet the eternal Word through which all things were made, the indwelling principle of all existence. Transcendence and immanence are here perfectly combined. But because the former is the distinctively religious element, without which the latter would have been in danger of relapsing into naturalism, the deliberate emphasis was all laid on transcendence. We can see, as we look back, that when once the Incarnation has actually taken place upon the plane of history, it makes no jot of difference in logic, provided only that the Life of the Incarnate is taken as the starting-point and centre of thought, whether terms of transcendence or of immanence are used. The life of Christ is at once the irruption of the Divine into the world—(for the previous history of the world certainly does not explain it)—and is also the manifestation of the indwelling power which had all along sustained the world. In other words, the God who redeems is the same God who creates and sustains. But it is still true that the note of transcendence, of something given to man by God as distinct from something emerging out of man in his search of God, is the specifically religious note.
And the Church, as the divine creation and instrument, shares and must express this character. It must be so constituted as to keep alive this faith. That is the meaning of hierarchies and sacraments. Whether any given order is the most adequate that can be designed, is of course a perfectly legitimate question. But every order that aspires to be catholic aims, at least, at expressing the truth that religion is a gift of God, and not a discovery of man. And certainly it is only the gift of God that can be truly catholic or universal. Man's discoveries are indefinitely various; the European finds one thing, the Arab another, the Hindu yet another, and none finds satisfaction in the other's discovery, though in all of them God is operative. Only in His own gift of Himself is it reasonable to expect that all men will find what they need; only in a Church which is the vehicle of this gift, and is known to be this, and not a mutual benefit society organised by its own members for their several and collective advantage—only in a Church expressive of Divine transcendence can all nations find a home.
Yet just because of a too one-sided emphasis on this truth, the Catholic Church in the West has, as a rule, not tried to be a home for nations at all. "Christianity separated religion from patriotism for every nation which became, and which remained, Christian."[#] Patriotism is particular; religion ought to be universal. The nation is a natural growth; the Church is a divine creation. And so the primitive Church was organised in complete independence of national life, except in so far as its diocesan divisions followed national or provincial boundaries. No doubt the conditions of its existence made this almost necessary, for the organised secular life of the Roman Empire refused to tolerate it. But it was its own principle, true indeed but not the whole truth, which led to this line of development. The same principle is apparent in the Middle Ages, when there was no external pressure. The Church, as it was conceived in the sublime ideal of Hildebrand, was to belong to no nation, because supreme over them all, binding them together in the obedience and love of Christ, and imposing upon them His holy will.
[#] "War and Religion" inThe Times Literary Supplement, Dec. 31, 1914.
The inevitable result of this was that the instinct of nationality was never christened at all. It remained a brute instinct, without either the sanction or the restraint of religion. But it could not be crushed, and so the Church let it alone; with the result that, though murder was regarded as a sin, a war of dynastic or national ambition was not by people generally considered sinful. No doubt theologians condemned such war in general terms; St. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, seems to regard as fully justified only such wars as are undertaken to protect others from oppression, and some of the greatest Popes made heroic efforts to govern national policy according to righteousness. But in the general judgment of the Church, international action was not subjected to Christian standards of judgment at all. This way of regarding the Church sometimes leads people to speak of "alternative" loyalties so that they ask, "Ought I to be loyal to my Church or to my nation?" And while faith and reason will combine to answer "To my Church," an imperious instinct will lead most men in actual fact to answer "To my nation." The attempt to exalt the Church to an unconditional supremacy has the actual result of making men ignore it when its guidance is most needed.
Whatever truth there may be in the statement that the Reformation was in part due to the growing sentiment of nationality, is evidence of the failure of the old Catholic Church in this matter. In England at any rate one main source of the popular Protestantism was the objection to anything like a foreign domination. No doubt the political ambitions of the Papacy were largely responsible for the feeling that the Catholic Church brought with it a foreign yoke. But the whole principle of the Church as non-national necessarily meant that the Church was regarded as "imposing" Christian standards rather than permeating national life with them. The Church tended to ignore the spiritual function of the State altogether, claiming all spiritual activity for itself alone; and thus it tended to make the State in actual fact unspiritual, and involved itself in the necessity of attempting what only the State can do. It thus not only tended to weaken the moral power of the State, but also forsook its own supernatural function to exercise those of the magistrate or judge, so that faith in the power of God was never put to a full test. The Reformation was not only a moral and spiritual reform of the Church, but the uprising of the nations, now growing fully conscious of their national life, against the cosmopolitan rule of Rome. But the Reformation did not fully realise its task. It expressed itself indeed in national Churches, but in actual doctrine tended to individualism; whereas Catholicism laid emphasis on religion as the gift of God, Protestantism, at least in its later development, laid stress on the individual's apprehension of the gift. But not only the individual—everything that is human, family, school, guild, trade union, nation, needs to apprehend and appropriate the gift of God. The nation, too, must be christened and submit to transforming grace.
The uprising of the national spirit has had the deplorable result of contributing to the break-up of Christendom, but it is not in itself deplorable at all. All civilisation has in fact progressed by the development of different nationalities, each with its own type. If we believe in a Divine Providence, if we believe that the life of Christ is not only the irruption of the Divine into human history but is also and therein the manifestation of the governing principle of all history, we shall confess that the nation as well as the Church is a divine Creation. The Church is here to witness to the ideal and to guide the world towards it, but the world is by divine appointment a world of nations, and it is such a world that is to become the Kingdom of God. Moreover, if it is by God's appointment that nations exist, their existence must itself be an instrument of that divine purpose which the Church also serves.
The whole course of Biblical revelation supports this view. It is quite true that if we were to read the New Testament for the first time, knowing nothing whatever about the Old, we should come to the conclusion that it almost entirely ignored nationality and everything which goes with it. But then the Church has always maintained that the New Testament grows by an organic life out of the Old, and presupposes it; and when we go back to that, there can be no doubt whatever about its view of nationality. The whole of the early books of the Old Testament are concerned with this, and almost nothing else. The task of Moses in the wilderness, of Joshua, of the Judges and the early Kings, is precisely to fashion Israel into a nation. So much is all attention concentrated upon this that we find a contentment with that contraction of the moral outlook which presents to many modern readers the chief stumbling block about the Old Testament. Almost everything that was serviceable to Israel is approved. Rahab is guilty of sheer treason to her own city of Jericho, but it is serviceable to Israel, and there is no word of condemnation. Jael is guilty of a very treacherous murder, but it was serviceable to Israel, so "Blessed shall she be above women in the tent."
Everything is concentrated upon this primary object of fashioning Israel into a nation and persuading individual Israelites to put the welfare of the whole before the interest and ambition of their own clique or faction; and when the time came for an advance to a wider view, it came precisely not by way of saying that national divisions do not matter and that national life itself is unimportant, but by insisting that nationality is equally precious in these other nations all around Israel as it is within Israel itself.
The turning point here as in so much else in the Old Testament is the Book of Amos, the first of the written prophecies. It is worth while to try to imagine the effect of those opening clauses. The prophet begins by securing a willing hearing from those to whom he writes: in other words he begins by abusing their neighbours.
"Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Damascus, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof....""Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Gaza, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Tyre, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Edom, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of the children of Ammon, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Moab, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."
"Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Damascus, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."
"Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Gaza, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof....
"Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Tyre, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof....
"Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Edom, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof....
"Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of the children of Ammon, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof....
"Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Moab, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."
And then, without a change of phrase, without even the compliment of a heightened denunciation—
"Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Judah, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Israel, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."[#]
"Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Judah, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof....
"Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Israel, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."[#]
[#] Amos i, 3-ii, 6.
It would be impossible more emphatically to insist that all nations, Israel and the rest, stand on an equal footing before the Judgment Seat of God, and are to be regarded as real entities, and real moral agents; but that is not enough for the prophet.
"Are ye not as Children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel?—saith the Lord."
"Are ye not as Children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel?—saith the Lord."
I have no more care for you than the Ethiopians—who then, as now, were black folk.
"Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt,andthe Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?"[#]
"Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt,andthe Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?"[#]
[#] Amos ix, 7.
It is the God who had guided the history of Israel who has equally guided the history of the despised Philistine and the hated Syrian. And this line of thought reaches its culmination where we should expect to find it, in the works of the statesman-prophet Isaiah. His little country of Judah was likely to be destroyed by the hostilities of Assyria and Egypt, and in the middle of that peril, when these nations were at each other's throats, he looks forward and says:—
"In that day there shall be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian to Assyria; and the Egyptians shall worship with the Assyrians."
"In that day there shall be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian to Assyria; and the Egyptians shall worship with the Assyrians."
There shall be free intercourse between them, and worship of the one God shall be the link between them.
"In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, for that the Lord of hosts hath blessed them, saying, 'Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance?'"[#]
"In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, for that the Lord of hosts hath blessed them, saying, 'Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance?'"[#]
[#] Isaiah xix, 23-25.
Just picture the pallid frenzy of the orthodox Jew at the words—"Egypt my people."
The teaching of the Bible is plain enough; and as we come to the New Testament, with all this in our minds, knowing the emphasis that has already been laid upon nationality, we find that there, too, is the note of patriotism.
No man has ever loved his nation more than the Lord loved Israel, and in the bitterness of disappointment in the lament over Jerusalem we have the measure of His patriotic love for the holy places of His people.
St. Paul, the author of those great ejaculations—"That there can be neither Jew nor Gentile, Greek nor Scythian, bond nor free, but one man in Christ Jesus"[#]—is also the author of the most ardent expression of patriotism in all literature.
[#] Gal. iii, 28; Col. iii, 11.
"I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Ghost, that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren's sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh; who are Israelites, whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the patriarchs, and of whom is Christ as concerning the flesh."[#]
"I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Ghost, that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren's sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh; who are Israelites, whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the patriarchs, and of whom is Christ as concerning the flesh."[#]
[#] Rom. ix, 1-5.
One can almost hear him panting as he dictates the words.
The Bible, then, strongly insists upon the nation as existing by divine appointment, and it looks forward, not to the abolition of national distinctions, but to the inclusion of all nations in the family of nations. So it was well that nationality should insist upon itself within the sphere of religion in the movement that we call the Reformation. But it left us with a broken Christendom, and with what are called national Churches. The old Church endeavoured to tyrannise over the State; under the influence of the Reformation the State tended to tyrannise over the Church. Then comes a movement towards a free Church in a free State; but we shall only find satisfaction when we have a free State in a free Church.
The nation is a natural growth with a spiritual significance. It emerges as a product of various elementary needs of man; but having emerged it is found to possess a value far beyond the satisfaction of these needs. The Church is a spiritual creation working through a natural medium. Its informing principle is the Holy Spirit of God in Christ, but its members are men and women who are partly animal in nature as well as children of God. The nation as organised for action is the State; and the State, being "natural," appeals to men on that side of their nature which is lower but is not in itself bad. Justice is its highest aim and force its typical instrument, though force is progressively less employed as the moral sense of the community develops: mercy can find an entrance only on strict conditions. The Church, on the other hand, is primarily spiritual; holiness is its primary quality; mercy will be the chief characteristic of its judgments, but it may fall back on justice and even, in the last resort, on force.[#] Both State and Church are instruments of God for establishing His Kingdom; both have the same goal; but they have different functions in relation to that goal.
[#] SeeAppendix II.:On Moral Authority.
The State's action for the most part takes the form of restraint; the Church's mainly that of appeal. The State is concerned to maintain the highest standard of life that can be generally realised by its citizens; the Church is concerned with upholding an ideal to which not even the best will fully attain. When a man reaches a certain pitch of development, he scarcely realises the pressure of the State, though he is still unconsciously upheld by the moral judgment of society; but he can never outgrow the demand of the Church. On the other hand, if a man is below a certain standard, the appeal of the Church will not hold him and he needs the support of the State's coercion.
Neither State nor Church is itself the Kingdom of God, though the specific life of the Church is the very spirit and power of that Kingdom. Each plays its part in building the Kingdom, in which, when it comes, force will have disappeared, while justice and mercy will coalesce in the perfect love which will treat every individual according to his need.
The Church which, officially at least, ignored nationality has failed. The Church which allowed itself to become little more than the organ of national religion has failed. The hope of the future lies in a truly international Church, which shall fully respect the rights of nations and recognise the spiritual function of the State, thereby obtaining the right to direct the national States along the path which leads to the Kingdom of God. We are all clear by now that the Christian Church cannot be made the servant of one nation; we must become equally clear that it cannot be regarded as standing apart from them, so that in becoming a Churchman a man is withdrawn in some degree from national loyalty. We must get rid of the idea of "alternative" loyalties. The Church is indeed the herald and the earnest of that Kingdom of God which includes all mankind; but unless all history is a mere aberration, that Kingdom will have nations for its provinces, and nations like individuals will realise their destiny by becoming members of it.
We shall, then, conceive the relation of the nation to the Church on the analogy of that between the family and the nation. There is in principle no conflict of interest or loyalty here. The family is a part of the nation, owing allegiance to it; but the nation consists of families and can reach its welfare only through theirs. So the nation (in proportion as it is Christian) must learn to regard itself as a member of the family of nations in the Catholic Church. No doubt in this imperfect world there is often a conflict of supposed interests, and sometimes even of real interests. Moreover, there is often room for doubt as to where the true interest lies. But the family finds its own true welfare in the service of the nation, and the nation finds its own welfare in the service of the Kingdom of God.
The Catholic Church, which is itself not yet a society of just men made perfect, while upholding the ideal of brotherhood and the love which kills hate by suffering at its hands, and while calling both men and nations to penitence and renewed aspiration in so far as they fail to reach that ideal, will none the less recognise the divinity of the nation in spite of all its failures. It will not call upon men to come out from their nation or separate themselves from its action, unless it believes that then and there the nation itself is capable of something better, or unless the nation requires of them a repudiation of the very spirit of Christ, or an action intrinsically immoral. If it is doing the best that at the moment it is capable of doing, the Church will bid its citizens support it in that act, lest the nation be weakened in its defence of the right or its control handed over to those who have no care for the right.
The Church then must recognise the nation having a certain function in the divine providence with reference to man's spiritual life. It must not try to usurp the State's functions, for if it does it will perform them badly, and it will also—which is far more serious—be deserting the work for which it alone is competent; and the State must, in its turn, recognise the Church as the Society of Nations, of which it with all others is a member.
Nothing but such a spiritual society can secure fellowship among nations. Schemes of arbitration, conciliation, international police and the like, presuppose, if they are to be effective, an admitted community of interest between the nations. But this must be not only admitted but believed in sufficiently to prompt a nation which has no interest in a particular dispute to make sacrifices for the general good, by spending blood and treasure in upholding the authority of the international court or council. What will secure this, except the realisation of common membership in the Kingdom of God, and in the Christian Church, its herald and earnest?
And yet the Church we know is not only divided but at war within itself. This, the Creation of God in Christ, is not more free from strife and faction than the nations, which are natural growths. If grace fails, how can nature succeed? Why should we expect the nations of the world to be at peace, when the sections of the Church are at war?
Because the Church is so far from what we hope it may become, we can only sketch that future Church in outline. Its building will be the work of years, perhaps of centuries. And probably enough our attempt will fail as Hildebrand's failed; probably enough there will be scores of failures; but each time we must begin again in order that for Christ and His Spirit a Body may be prepared, through which His purpose may in the end of the ages find its accomplishment, and the nations of the earth bring their glory—each its own—into His Holy City.
There is the goal; dimly enough seen; but the method is perfectly plain. "Thomas saith unto Him, Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; how know we the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way." And when that way led to the Cross, beside the innocent Sufferer there were two others. One cried to Him, "Save Thyself and us"; the other recognised His royalty in that utmost humiliation and prayed, "Jesus, remember me when Thou comest in Thy Kingdom." He, and he alone in the four Gospels, is recorded to have addressed the Lord by His personal name. Penitence creates intimacy, whether it be offered to God or to man.
We have been made very conscious of the burden of the world's pain and sin, though perhaps that burden, as God bears it, is no heavier now than in our selfish and worldly peace. Will the Church pray to Him, "Save Thyself and us"? or will it willingly suffer with Him, united with Him in the intimacy of penitence, seeing His royalty in His crown of thorns? Will it, while bidding men bravely do their duty as they see it, still say that the real treasures are not of this world though they may in part be possessed here, suffering whatever may be the penalty for this unpopular testimony? For the kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ only when the citizens of those kingdoms lay up their treasure in heaven and not upon the earth, only when, being risen with Christ, they set their affection on things above—love, joy, peace, loyalty, beauty, knowledge—only when they realise their fellowship in His Body so that their fellowship also in His Holy Spirit may purge their selfishness away.
Here is field enough for heroism and the moral equivalent of war. The Church is to be transformed and become a band of people united in their indifference to personal success or national expansion, and caring only that the individual is pure in heart and the nation honourable. In her zeal for that purity and honour, and in her contempt for all else, she may have to suffer crucifixion. It is a big risk that the Church must run; for if she does not save the world she will have ruined it, besides sacrificing herself. If there is no God nor Holy City of God, the Church will have just spoilt life for all her faithful members, and in some degree for every one else as well. But if her vision is true, then everything is worth while—rather the greatness of the sacrifice is an addition to the joy when the prize is so unimaginably great. Can we bring this spirit into the Church? On our answer depends the course of history in the next century, and a new stage in the Coming of the Lord.
The Spirit and the Bride say, Come.And he that heareth, let him say, Come.Yea: I come quickly.Amen: come, Lord Jesus.
The Spirit and the Bride say, Come.And he that heareth, let him say, Come.Yea: I come quickly.Amen: come, Lord Jesus.
The Spirit and the Bride say, Come.
And he that heareth, let him say, Come.
Yea: I come quickly.Amen: come, Lord Jesus.
Yea: I come quickly.
Yea: I come quickly.
Amen: come, Lord Jesus.
LECTURE III
JUSTICE AND LIBERTY IN THE STATE
"Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy but to fulfil."—S. Matthew v., 17.
I.—In the last lecture I said that justice would seem to be the typical virtue of the State, as holiness of the Church. Let us, then, first consider this virtue of justice in the light of our Lord's teaching concerning one of the most familiar aspects of justice—its penal aspect.
Those sayings that have of late given rise to so many searchings of heart among Christians—the sayings about turning the other cheek and the rest—are given by our Lord as explanations of the saying that He came "not to destroy the law but to fulfil it." The words "to fulfil" of course mean not only to obey and carry out, but to complete.
In what sense is this teaching of our Lord the completion of the law? For the law of Moses, like every other law, was concerned with regulating the relations of men to one another, as well as their duties towards God; and it enforced what it enjoined by penalties.
At first sight no doubt it looks as if He were directly contradicting what had been said to them of old time—
"Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, That ye resist not him that is evil; but whosoever smites thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also, and if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also."
"Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, That ye resist not him that is evil; but whosoever smites thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also, and if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also."
How is this the fulfilment or completion of the Mosaic or any other law? At this distance of time, it is hard to remember what was the original significance of the law of retaliation. We are inclined to think that the words "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" are intended to give a licence to that degree of vindictiveness; but on the contrary, in the primitive stage in which that enactment was given, it was not a licence given to man's instinct for vengeance, but a limitation set upon that primitive and animal instinct, whose natural tendency, if unchecked, is to take two eyes for an eye and a set of teeth for a tooth. Thelex talionissaid—Only an eye for an eye, and only a tooth for a tooth.
Our Lord carries the same principle further; not even that degree of vindictiveness is allowed. The first necessity was to put bounds upon man's natural and almost insatiable lust for vengeance. The next was to tell him that the whole method of vengeance could never succeed in what is its only really justifiable aim. For what is the true function of the law, whether that of Moses or any other? It is always two-fold; it must always aim not merely at checking the evil act, but at converting, if possible, the evil will.
There has never, I suppose, been any legal system which was not justified by its upholders on this ground. No one is really content, to think that the punishment which he inflicts, or may imagine himself as inflicting through the agency of the State, or in any other way, is purely deterrent; he always thinks it will also be reformative. But, how are you as a matter of fact to attack the evil will? The mere infliction of penalty will not of any necessity achieve this goal at all. We know that it is very seriously debated whether our whole system of punishment in the civilised States of to-day has any really moral effect, at least upon those who fall under its most severe penalties. Probably most convicts leave prison worse men than when they entered. For if a man is below a certain level in moral attainment, pain, far from purifying, only brutalises and coarsens. It is only those who are already far in the path of spiritual growth who are purified by suffering, even as the Captain of our Salvation was thus made perfect. But it is still true that the aim of all penal law is twofold; to check the evil act and, if possible, to convert the evil will.
Now, as I suggested previously, mere restraint may have indirectly a positive moral value; as for example in the case of a child, who is potentially of very diverse characters. He has the capacity to grow in many different directions, and it will depend very much upon his surroundings, and the influences which play upon his character, whether this set of instincts or that receives development; and here merely to keep forcibly within bounds the development of certain impulses, which tend to grow out of proportion to the proper harmony and economy of nature, may indirectly have the effect of preserving that harmony and thus develop genuine virtue in the soul. And again, with those whose characters are relatively formed, the direct restraint, for example, of State action may have positive moral value, inasmuch as it is the expression of the moral judgment of Society. What most of us would shrink from, if we were in danger of imprisonment, would not be the physical inconvenience, which is not very great, but the fact that we should have brought ourselves under the censure of Society, and acted in such a way as to put ourselves below the level which Society generally considers itself justified in enforcing. And so the purely restraining influence of the State, even operating through force, may have a positive moral value, because it represents, and is the only way at present devised of representing, the judgment of Society, and to shrink from the judgment of Society is, so far as it goes, a really moral fear. It is not indeed the highest ground for the avoidance of evil, but it is a moral ground, for it arises from our recognition of our fellow-membership in Society with those whose censure we fear.
But the State in all its actions is of necessity mechanical, and cannot take account of the individual, and all that makes him what he is. The State officer cannot know the prisoner in such a way as really to determine the treatment allotted to him in the light of what is best for his spiritual welfare; and therefore he has to fall back upon rough and ready rules which will never be perhaps very far from the right treatment, though they may fail to allot the ideal treatment in any single case. And here, in parenthesis, let me just mention that this is the chief reason why metaphors and comparisons drawn from the law-courts are so sadly misleading when used to illustrate the relation between the human soul and God; our only fear of the judge is concerned with what he will do to us; but what we fear with our father, on earth or in Heaven, is not so much what he will do to us, as the pain we have caused—"There is mercy with Thee; therefore shalt Thou be feared."
Our Lord's method is the only one that aims straight at the evil will; it is the only method which has in it any real hope of converting the individual. It may fail time and again; but it is the only one that has a chance of real and absolute success.
Let us look for a moment at the instances which He chooses to illustrate the principle, and we shall see at once that they are carefully chosen. All the acts chosen are such as are particularly vexatious to the ordinary natural and selfish man—being struck in the face; having a vexatious suit brought against one; being pestered by a beggar; being compelled to do something for the public service when we are busy. Those are just the things which the natural man resents and which the real Christian will not mind at all. For, after all, there is no real injury in being struck in the face, or having one's coat taken away. What one minds is the insult to one's precious dignity; and the Christian who, by definition, has forgotten all about himself will not mind such injuries at all. Therefore if the acts commanded are spontaneously done and not done with a laborious conscientiousness—that is to say if they are done in the spirit of Christianity, and not in the spirit of Pharisaism—they will express a complete conversion in the will of him who does them; they will express absolute conquest of self, and a concern solely for the welfare of him with whom we are dealing; and there is no heart yet made that can resist the appeal of love which is constant in spite of every betrayal, the appeal of trust which is renewed in spite of endless disappointments.
"He that loveth his brother"—says St. John—"walketh in the light." He is the man who knows where he is going, because he is the man who understands people and sees into their hearts. They will reveal to him secrets of their nature, which they will hide from the contemptuous and indifferent; and even if at first he is from time to time disappointed and betrayed, in the end his method will succeed, because love and trust create what they believe in.
The justice then, which we find at work in the State, is always a provisional thing pointing us to something more, something which the State itself by its very constitution is unable to provide, but which God provides in Christ, and will enable us in our measure to provide, if we are faithful, at least in the circle of our immediate activities, so far, that is, as the range of our sympathy will carry us.
II.—The value of the justice which the State is able to secure actually resides for the most part in the liberty which it makes possible. Justice, as the State interprets it, is of itself, as far as I can see, almost totally valueless. I can see no kind of advantage in merely allotting so much pain to so much evil. There is moral evil in a man and you put physical evil into him as well. I do not see how you have made him or anyone else the better. Only in so far as the punishment is either deterrent or reformative, has it any moral value at all; and only in the latter case, where it reforms the character, can the value be called in the strict sense moral. So far as it only deters men from evil acts which they would desire to commit, it may add to the convenience of the other members of Society, but it is not doing any direct moral good.
Indirectly, however, it has moral results; for when we enquire in what sense we can say that such justice as the State secures produces liberty, the first answer is to be found in the obvious and elementary fact that the liberty of every one of us depends upon our knowledge that certain impulses and instincts in other people, should they arise, will be checked and not allowed to receive full expression. Our liberty is increased by that check put upon predatory or homicidal impulses in other people, and their liberty depends upon the suppression of such impulses in us.
So far it would seem that there must be in the most obvious sense of the words a certain curtailment of everybody's liberty in order that anybody may have liberty at all. If we are all to be free to indulge our passions of anger and hatred, should such arise within us, then it is quite clear that there will be very little freedom of action in the Society which rests on that principle. Everyone will go about in fear of everyone else.
But that is a very small part of the business. The chief contribution of such justice to human liberty is that it supplies the necessary conditions of discipline without which there can be no liberty. We think of liberty as meaning freedom from external constraint. We think that an act of ours is free when we can say, "I did it, and no one made me do it"; but very little reflection is sufficient to convince us that a man whose life is actually governed by one or several over-developed passions which he will, as a matter of fact, always gratify when opportunity offers, in spite of the damage that is done to his whole life and to his permanent and deliberate purpose, is not really a free man. To be tied and bound with the chain of our sins is just as much slavery as to be in the ownership of another man; and we can acquire the real liberty which is worth having, the liberty, that is, to shape our lives, to live according to our own purpose, following out our own ideal, only in so far as our natures have been welded by discipline into unity, so that we are no longer a chaos of impulses and instincts, any of which may be set in motion by the appropriate environment, but are self-governing persons controlling our own lives.
Liberty, in so far as it is of any value, always means self-control in both the senses of that term: in the sense that we are only controlled by ourselves, and also in the sense that by ourselves we are controlled, and that every part of our nature is subservient to the purpose to which our whole nature is given. Legislation is really an instrument of self-discipline. The people who write books about political philosophy are mainly members of the respectable classes. They naturally find it rather difficult to envisage themselves as liable to commit murder and the like; and they are therefore very liable to represent the criminal law of the State as being enacted against a few undisciplined or recalcitrant members. But when we look at the thing more closely, we see that what a community does, especially a democratic community, when it passes a law, is to invoke, every member upon his own head, the penalties enacted by that law, if he should do the act which the law forbids.
Let us consider, for example, an international convention. What is the use of nations agreeing with one another not to do something, for instance not to poison wells, unless there is some chance that in a moment of strong temptation they may desire to do it? They therefore strengthen their deliberate purpose to avoid such acts by entering into an agreement with one another always to avoid them. There would be no object in doing this unless they needed help, or thought that they might at some time need help, in living up to their own purposes.
And we have to remember that in this way the law of the State is, as a matter of fact, perpetually operating upon every one of us. We are often liable to suppose that it is only active in relation to those people against whom it is definitely set in motion; but it does operate in the life of every one of the citizens of a community; because the fact that certain actions would involve us in State-penalty most undoubtedly does keep all of us from indulging in those actions at certain times, even though at calm moments we recognise that it would be wrong to do so. Trivial instances are nearly always the clearest. Most of us, I suppose, are sufficiently honest to desire in general terms to pay for what we buy; and we should perhaps usually pay for our places in the train, even if there were no ticket-inspector; still, the existence of the inspector just clinches the matter.[#] The possibility of the penalty as a matter of fact helps to maintain our general, permanent, and deliberate purpose of honesty against a momentary temptation to be dishonest; and so far it is helping us to live up to our purpose, or, in other words, is increasing our real freedom. In fact, one main test of good legislation is precisely whether it does or does not in this way develop real freedom by increasing people's power to live by their own deliberate purpose.