The Project Gutenberg eBook ofChurch and Nation

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofChurch and NationThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Church and NationCreator: William TempleRelease date: October 5, 2013 [eBook #43896]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Al Haines*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHURCH AND NATION ***CHURCH ANDNATIONTHE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES FOR 1914-15DELIVERED AT THE GENERAL THEOLOGICALSEMINARY, NEW YORKBYWILLIAM TEMPLEHON. CHAPLAIN TO H.M. THE KINGRector of St. James's, Piccadilly,Chaplain to the Archbishop of CanterburyFormerly Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, andHeadmaster of ReptonMACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITEDST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON1915COPYRIGHTTOMY MOTHERWHO FELL ASLEEP AS GOOD FRIDAY DAWNEDAPRIL 2, 1915PREFACEWhen I received and accepted the invitation to deliver the Paddock Lectures for the season 1914-1915, no one imagined that these years were destined to have the historical significance which they must now possess for all time. I was myself one of those who had allowed concern for social reform, and internal problems generally, to occupy my mind almost to the exclusion of foreign questions. I was prepared to stake a good deal upon what seemed to me the improbability of any outbreak of European war. For all who took this view the events of recent months have involved perhaps a greater re-shaping of fundamental notions than was required by people who had thought probable such a catastrophe as that in which we are now involved. I found it impossible to concentrate my mind upon any subject wholly unconnected with the war, while at the same time it would have been in the last degree unsuitable that in my lectures to American Theological Students I should deliver myself of such views as I had formed concerning the rights and wrongs of the war itself, or the questions at stake in it.These lectures, therefore, represent an attempt to think out afresh the underlying problems which for a Christian are fundamental in regard not only to this war but to war in general—the place of Nationality in the scheme of Divine Providence and the duty of the Church in regard to the growth of nations.But in a preface it may be permissible to say what would be inappropriate in the Lectures themselves, and first I would take this opportunity of reiterating certain convictions which have formed the basis of a series of pamphlets issued under the auspices of a Committee drawn from various Christian bodies and political parties, of which I have had the honour to be Editor:1. That Great Britain was in August morally bound to declare war and is no less bound to carry the war to a decisive issue;2. That the war is none the less an outcome and a revelation of the un-Christian principles which have dominated the life of Western Christendom and of which both the Church and the nations have need to repent;3. That followers of Christ, as members of the Church, are linked to one another in a fellowship which transcends all divisions of nationality or race;4. That the Christian duties of love and forgiveness are as binding in time of war as in time of peace;5. That Christians are bound to recognise the insufficiency of mere compulsion for overcoming evil, and to place supreme reliance upon spiritual forces and in particular upon the power and method of the Cross;6. That only in proportion as Christian principles dictate the terms of settlement will a real and lasting peace be secured;7. That it is the duty of the Church to make an altogether new effort to realise and apply to all the relations of life its own positive ideal of brotherhood and fellowship;That with God all things are possible.These propositions were very carefully drafted by the Committee referred to above and entirely represent my own beliefs; but there is something more which I would add. The new Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Turkey is no accident; it is the combination of just those three Powers which openly and avowedly believe in oppression—that is, in the imposition by force of the standards accepted by one race upon people of another race. All nations have at one time or another practised oppression; certainly Great Britain is not free from the charge, and the history of Russia has many dark pages in this respect. But we can all claim that when we have been guilty of oppression it has been under the influence of fear, whether of revolution, anarchism, or some other force thought to be disruptive of the State. With our enemies this is not so. We all know about Turkey; it is the essentially Mohammedan power, and Mohammedanism is the religion of oppression; it believes in imposing its faith by means of the sword. The Austrian Empire consists of three divisions in each of which one race is imposing its manner of life upon another. In Austria-proper the Germans oppress the Czechs; in Galicia the Poles have, in some degree at least, oppressed the Ruthenes; in Hungary the Magyars have systematically and avowedly oppressed the Roumanians in the east, and the Croats in the south and west. Germany has shown her political faith by her conduct in Alsace-Lorraine, and still more in Poland. Nothing has yet appeared so illuminating with regard to what is at stake in this war, as Prince Bülow's chapter on Poland in his book,Imperial Germany; he describes what seems to us the most grinding oppression with obvious self-contentment and without a question of its righteousness; and there have been abundant signs that, at least, many people in Germany are willing to impose German Kultur by the sword as Mohammedans impose belief in their prophet.If this is true, and if the analysis in my lectures of the Christian function of the State and of the principles of the Kingdom of God is sound, then it becomes clear that this war is being fought to determine whether in the next period the Christian or the directly anti-Christian method shall have an increase of influence. The three most democratic of the great Western Powers—Great Britain, France, and Italy—in conjunction with Russia, which is after all profoundly democratic in its local life though imperially it is a military autocracy, are linked together in a natural union on behalf of freedom as they understand it, against an idea embodied and embattled which is in exact opposition to all they live for. It was therefore no surprise to find that all the citizens of the United States with whom I came in contact were quite definitely upon the side of the Allies in sympathy. To advocate war in the name of Christ is to adopt a position which looks self-contradictory and which certainly involves immense responsibility, and yet if our people can maintain the attitude of mind in which they entered on the war and can secure at the end a settlement harmonious with that frame of mind, I believe they will have served the Kingdom of God through fighting, better than it was possible to do at this moment in human history by any other means.W.T.Lecture II. in this series is almost identical with the pamphletOur Need of a Catholic Church—No. 19 ofPapers for War Time. In Lectures I. and III. I am under great obligation to Professor A. G. Hogg, though my position is not at all identical with his.CONTENTSLECTURE ITHE KINGDOM OF FREEDOMLECTURE IICHURCH AND STATELECTURE IIIJUSTICE AND LIBERTY IN THE STATELECTURE IVHOLINESS AND CATHOLICITY IN THE CHURCHLECTURE VTHE CITIZENSHIP OF HEAVENLECTURE VIGOD IN HISTORYAPPENDIX ION THE APOCALYPTIC CONSCIOUSNESSAPPENDIX IION MORAL AND SPIRITUAL AUTHORITYAPPENDIX IIION JUSTICE AND EDUCATIONAPPENDIX IVON ORDERS AND CATHOLICITYAPPENDIX VON PROVIDENCE IN HISTORYCHURCH AND NATIONLECTURE ITHE KINGDOM OF FREEDOM"And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness during forty days, being tempted of the Devil."—S. Luke iv. 1.Our Lord, in accepting for Himself the title of the Messiah, or the Christ, claimed that it was His function to inaugurate upon earth the Kingdom of God. Whatever else might at that time be believed about the Messiah, this at least was universally held, that the Messiah, when He came, would inaugurate upon earth the Kingdom of God. That is the task of the Lord's ministry; that is the task to which we, as His followers, are pledged; and at this time when the civilisation, which for nearly two thousand years has been under the Christian influence, has culminated in as great a catastrophe as has ever beset any civilisation, Christian or Pagan, it is well for us to go back and ask, What are the fundamental principles of the Kingdom which Christ founded, what the method by which He founded it, and what are the principles and methods which He rejected?There were various anticipations of the way in which the promised Christ would do His work; but broadly speaking there were two main types of expectation. There were those who supposed that the Messiah when He came, would rule in the manner of an earthly ruler, establishing righteousness by the ordinary methods of law and political authority, and this expectation undoubtedly derived some colour from the way in which Isaiah had envisaged the coming Christ:[#][#] Isaiah ix, 6, 7."For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful-Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no endupon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with judgment and with righteousness from henceforth, even for ever."It is a king ruling upon the throne of David that is suggested; and while it is only the most foolish literalism which will say that the Prophet himself was committed to such a view, it was natural enough for those who read his writings to conceive of the Messiah as acting after that fashion.The people went into captivity; and when they returned, it was not to any realised Kingdom of God upon earth, but rather to difficulties greater than had ever confronted them before, until at last Antiochus Epiphanes initiated the great persecution whose aim was to stamp out altogether the worship of Jehovah, setting up as he did in the very Temple Court at Jerusalem the altar of Zeus, on which swine were sacrificed—"the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not." Out of the fiery furnace of that persecution comes the glowing prophecy of Daniel. What is the answer which he conceives God as giving to the blasphemer Antiochus? It is nothing less than the divine judgment and the mission of the divine Deliverer:[#][#] Daniel vii, 9, 10, 13, 14."I beheld till thrones were placed and one that was ancient of days did sit: his raiment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, and the wheels thereof burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him; thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the judgment was set, and the books were opened.... I saw in the night visions, and, behold, there came with the clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed."This conception of the Messiah, coming in the clouds of Heaven, establishing the Kingdom of God by so manifest an exhibition of the divine authority with which He is endowed, that all doubt and hesitation are quite impossible, is that which took the greatest hold upon the religious imagination of Israel, and particularly of that great body of people, the heirs of the tradition of the Maccabees, inheritors of the heroism which had stood out against the persecution, whom we know as the sect of the Pharisees—men who lived in the strength of a fellowship that had behind it the greatest religious tradition in all the world, but who, because they trusted more to their tradition than to the God who inspired it, were unable to recognise the still further call of God when it came to them. The literature of the period between the Old and the New Testament shows how wide and deep was the influence of Daniel's vision upon their Messianic hopes.At His baptism, the Lord is called to begin His Messianic work; the voice which He heard from Heaven spoke words which were by all interpreters of the time believed to refer to the Messiah:—"Thou art my beloved son; in thee I am well pleased." The Messiah will be endowed with Divine authority and power. How shall He use it? And immediately the Lord goes into the wilderness to face the temptations that arose from precisely the conviction that His Messianic work is even now to begin.The temptation has two sides to it—an inward and an outward. As regards Himself, what does the temptation mean? Let us remind ourselves that there was apparently no one with Him in this crisis; the story, as we have it, must come from Himself. It is His own account (of course in parable form, like so much else in His teaching) of the struggle of those early days. What is meant by the parable concerning the turning of stones into bread? Surely for Himself it is the temptation to use the power, with which us the Christ of Cod He is endowed, for the satisfaction of His own needs, and that in such a way as will do no kind of harm to anybody else. No one will be the worse for his satisfying His hunger in that way. It is a self-concern from which nobody can suffer; it is perfectly innocent and perfectly rational. But no! It is not for any selfish purpose, however harmless, that the power of God is given; selfishness in its most innocent form is set aside.How shall He set about His work? Shall He fulfil that expectation which Isaiah's vision had fostered? He looks out on the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them, and He knows that they can be His, if He will fall down and worship the Prince of the power of this world. Shall He use worldly methods to convert the world to God? No; worldliness in its most attractive form is set aside.Or shall He fulfil the expectation encouraged by the vision of the Son of Man in Daniel, appearing with the clouds of Heaven, descending upon Jerusalem up-borne by angels, giving that sign from Heaven which the Pharisees, who particularly adopted this view of the Messiah, were afterwards going to demand so frequently? From His answer we know that this is a temptation not only to give them a sign, but to secure it for Himself, for the answer is "Thou shalt not tempt,"—that is, Thou shalt not put to the proof—"the Lord thy God." The promise of God is to be trusted, not tested. The test comes as we obey the command and in that sense every act of faith is an experiment, but there must be no test cases to see whether God fulfils His promise. Infidelity in its most insidious form is set aside.But there is an outward aspect also to the temptations. Shall He use His power to satisfy the bodily needs of men? Shall He exert a power parallel with that of political rulers, which will coerce their conduct without first winning their free allegiance? Shall He give such proof of divine authority that any doubt, intellectual or otherwise, becomes impossible? No; not any of these. And as He leaves the temptation vanquished, what He has set aside is precisely every method of controlling men's action without winning their hearts and wills. He has rejected coercion; He has decided to appeal to Freedom.What is left? At first, only the commission to proclaim the Kingdom; and He comes proclaiming it. All through the early part of the ministry He moves from place to place preaching or proclaiming the Kingdom of God. He does not at present announce that He is King of that Kingdom; it is the Kingdom itself on which all attention is concentrated. He has indeed the power to do works of mercy, and when with that power He stands in the face of human need, He must for very love exert the power and satisfy the need; so people come crowding around Him, attracted by His wonder-working. But that is not what He desires. The disciples are excited about it; but He has gone out a long while before dawn, and is alone in prayer; and when St. Peter finds Him, and says "All men are seeking Thee," He does not say, "Then let us go to them," but, on the contrary, "Let us go into the villages that I may preach—that I may make my proclamation—there also."[#] As the deadness, the indifference, and hostility of the people gradually shows itself to be invincible, He gathers about Him those whose hearts have been touched, and from among them chooses twelve, "that they may be with Him."[#] They are to live in His company, catching His Spirit, learning to understand Him. With them He goes on two long journeys—north-west to Tyre and Sidon, and then north-east, to Caesarea Philippi; through all those journeys they are alone with their Master, moving through country outside the boundaries of the Jewish religion, and therefore free from controversy.[#] S. Mark i, 35-38.[#] S. MArk iii, 14.At Caesarea Philippi He feels that the time is ripe, and asks them, "Who do men say that I am?" They mention the various conjectures ... Elijah; John the Baptist; one of the Prophets. "Who say ye that I am?" And St. Peter with a leap of inspired insight answers: "Thou art the Messiah."[#][#] S. Mark viii, 27-30.The Lord recognises that this is the revelation of God to faith: "Blessed art thou, Simon, Son of Jonah; flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven."[#] Immediately that He has been thus spontaneously recognised, He begins to say what He had never said before: "The Son of Man must suffer." The Son of Man is the title of the Messiah in glory, as He was conceived in Daniel's vision and the Apocalyptic writings which drew their inspiration from it. "The Son of Man must suffer;" that is the great Messianic act; that is the way in which the Kingdom of God shall be founded. But it was not what St. Peter meant. "Peter took Him, and began to rebuke Him ... Be it far from Thee, Lord; this shall not be unto Thee." And our Lord recognises the voice of the tempter in the wilderness, who bade Him take thought for self.... "Get thee behind me,Satan, for thou thinkest not God's thoughts, but men's thoughts."[#][#] S. Matthew xvi, 17.[#] S. Matthew xvi, 22, 23.Just as, when once He was spontaneously recognised, He began to set forth the new conception of the Messiahship, "The Son of Man must suffer;" so too He immediately starts on that last journey to Jerusalem which culminates with the Cross. Arrived at Jerusalem, He arranges the triumphal entry. He carefully fulfils Zechariah's prophecy—thus claiming the Messiahship, and challenging the religious rulers. But the prophecy which He thus selects for deliberate fulfilment is one which represents the Messiah as a civil, not a military authority (for this is the meaning of the ass as distinguished from the horse), and as one who shall speak Peace to the nations.[#] It is the conception of the Messiah which in all the Old Testament has least suggestion of coercion and is therefore the nearest to His own.[#] Zechariah ix, 9, 10.But the primary purpose of the triumphal entry is no doubt to make His claim and issue His challenge. On the journey and after the entry itself He declares with increasing emphasis that the Kingdom of God is at hand; those who stood there should see it come with power; and as He stands before Caiaphas, He answers the question "Art Thou the Christ? with the words, I am, and from this time[#] there shall be the Son of Man seated on the right hand of power." Daniel's prophecy is here and now fulfilled. In the moment that love completes its sacrifice in death, the glory of God is fully made known and the power of His Kingdom is come; this is the Lord's own Apocalypse.[#][#] Different words in St. Matthew and St. Luke, but agreeing in sense, which sense the authorised version spoils.[#] SeeAppendix I.:The Apocalyptic Consciousness.So He had spoken on that last journey. "Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it is not so among you; but whosoever would become great among you shall be your minister, and whosoever shall be first among you shall be servant of all, for verily the Son of Man came"—(again the title of the Messiah in Glory)—"not to be ministered unto, but to minister; and to give His life a ransom for many."[#][#] S. Mark x, 42-45.So, too, St. John records His saying that in precisely this way he would win His royalty—"I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."[#] The Cross was foreseen by the Lord to be what, as we look back, we know that it has been—the throne of His glory and His power; and the capacity to realise it as such is for St. Paul the touchstone of character, the test of election—"We preach a Messiah on a Cross—to Jews a scandal and to Gentiles an absurdity, but to the very people who are called, whether Jews or Greeks, a Messiah who is God's power and God's wisdom."[#][#] S. John xii, 32.[#] 1 Cor. i, 23, 24.Here then is the mode of God's power, and we know that it can be no other; for if God is truly King, He must be King of our hearts and wills, and not only of our conduct. There is only one way to win men's hearts and wills, that is by showing love; and there is only one way to show love, and that is by sacrifice, by doing or suffering what, apart from our love, we should not choose to do or suffer. Sacrifice is the Divine activity; Calvary is the mode of the Divine omnipotence. It is the actual Divine method and the ideal human method.As we come to consider how far it has become also the actual human method, we are confronted at the outset by the sheer impossibility of our applying this method, just because we have not in ourselves the necessary love.Our perfection, we are told, is to consist in just that quality which shows the Father's perfection, namely, that He is kind to the unthankful and evil, and makes His sun to rise on the evil and good and sends His rain on the just and on the unjust; and we are to be perfect in the way that He is perfect.[#][#] S. Matthew v, 43-48.But until we reach that perfection we cannot imitate His action; for a man's act is not what He intends; nor is it the mere motion of his body; but it is the whole train of circumstances that he initiates. Christ in His perfect purity may stand before the woman taken in her sin and say, "Neither do I condemn thee," because there is no possibility that she will interpret His mercy as condonation of the sin; but if we said it, people would so interpret it, and usually quite rightly so.Our problem then is so to guide our conduct that we come as near as we are capable of coming to the divine ideal that is set forth in Christ, and that we come perpetually closer and closer to it.The Lord in His temptation rejected all use of force and substituted for it the appeal of love expressed in sacrifice, so far as the actual and positive building of His Kingdom is concerned. For us there must always be some use of the lower method, because we are incapable of applying the highest. If any man, when he is confronted with evil which he can prevent by the exercise of force, refrains from doing it, we must immediately put to him the question, "But did you so suffer under that act of evil that there is any hope of your suffering proving to be the redemption of the evil-doer? If so, well and good; but, if not, then you are idle and cowardly, not Christian." No one who is not a Christian in spirit can perform the Christian act; and the Sermon on the Mount is not a code of rules to be mechanically followed; it is the description of the life which any man will spontaneously lead when once the Spirit of Christ has taken complete possession of his heart.And yet there is a perfectly legitimate use of force also, and a use which our Lord Himself makes of it. We may use force in various circumstances in spite of the fact that for the positive work of the building His Kingdom the Lord rejected it. It is legitimate, in the first place, when it is applied to immature characters—characters which are, as all our characters are in early childhood, a chaos of impulses and instincts, as yet unregulated by any governing principle. Here it may be necessary simply to restrain the activity of one set of impulses without converting the heart or will of the person to whom that restraint is applied, merely in order to give the other side of nature its chance of development. So in education it is legitimate to employ force in this restraining way for the sake of the development which is made possible thereby in the other parts of nature.But our Lord's example also shows us that the use of force is permissible in dealing with those who are so case-hardened that the appeal of love can never reach them until their present state of mind is broken up. It is sometimes said that the Lord never made use of physical force; but whether or not that is true[#]—the question is unimportant, because for all moral purposes there is no difference whatever between physical and non-physical force. The appeal to force always means the appeal to pain or inconvenience, for these are the only things that force can inflict upon one. Physical force may break a man's bones; but one may enforce a certain kind of conduct by the threat, for example, of social ostracism, which might break his heart; and there is no difference whatever between the two, except that the second is a more refined form of cruelty. Now in our Lord's denunciation of the Pharisees, in those words which are thrown, burning and smashing, into the self-complacent contentment of those upholders of tradition, there is every moral quality of force and violence. Their aim is to batter down a state of mind, the state of mind which cannot receive the appeal of love, as it shows when it stands beneath the very Cross and only jeers. But this use of force is only negative and preparatory; it is the effort of love to make ready for the rebuilding which only love's own method can really accomplish. Only with characters quite immature and liable to develop in many different directions, can force be used, except in this wholly preparatory way; and even there its work is preparatory, for at that stage everything that is done is still preparatory.[#]e.g., whether or not He employed the scourge of small cords to drive men from the Temple Courts as He certainly did the animals; the Greek words suggest that He did not.It is sometimes said that society rests upon force. Of course it does not, and it could not, because force is a dead thing which can only operate as human wills direct it; and, however much force there may be in the maintenance of society, that force itself must be controlled by the consent of human wills. It is true, however, that society, as we know it, rests simultaneously upon two contradictory principles, upon the principle of antagonism and the principle of fellowship. So far as it is represented by the police force, it rests upon antagonism. Men are selfish; in their selfishness they are brought into conflict with one another. In order that anyone may be able to enjoy, however selfishly, any property or comfort in life, it is necessary to restrain to some degree the selfishness of all the rest; and to secure that restraint placed upon others, a man submits to a similar restraint upon himself. And so we arrive at that contract of which Plato speaks: "the contract neither to commit nor to suffer injury."[#] But, at the same time, as Plato immediately afterwards points out, society would arise quite equally if men were wholly altruistic, because men's natures are different, and they need one another for support, for protection, and for the very instinct of fellowship.[#] Now those principles are both present in all actual societies; and progress has consisted of the steady development of the principle of co-operation and fellowship, at the expense of the principle of competition and antagonism.[#] [Greek: méte adikeîn méte adikîsthai.]Republicii. 359*a*.[#] The whole Ideal State.Republicii, 369*b* to vii end.That has been what we have meant in the last resort by political progress; but the conclusion inevitably follows that society makes progress precisely in that degree in which it realises more and more a relationship of love between its various members, and becomes the Kingdom which Christ came on earth to found. Thus, at the very outset of our enquiry we find that the principles of secular progress and of the Divine revelation in Christ are identical.I shall venture in a subsequent lecture to trace out the way in which, as I think, further progress in accordance with this principle will lead us.But let me close this lecture by recalling our thoughts to that ideal method for men, which is the actual method of God, setting this in the words of a fable which I take from the masterpiece of the most Russian of the Russian novelists—Dostoievsky—merely throwing it into my own language.In the days of the Inquisition, this fable runs, our Lord returned to earth, and visited a city where it was at work. As He moved about, men forgot their cares and sorrows. He healed the sick folk as of old, and meeting with a funeral procession where a mother was mourning the loss of her only son, He stopped the procession, and restored the dead boy to life.That was in the Cathedral Square, and at that moment there came out from the Cathedral doors the Grand Inquisitor, an old man over ninety years of age, clad now, not in the Cardinal's robe in which only the day before he had condemned a score of heretics to the stake, but in a simple cassock, with only two guards in attendance. Seeing what was done he turned to the guards and said, "Arrest Him." They moved forward to obey; and he sent the Prisoner to a cell in the dungeon.That night the Grand Inquisitor visited his Prisoner, and to all that he said the Prisoner made no reply. "I know why Thou art come," said the Inquisitor; "Thou art come to spoil our work, to repeat Thy great mistake in the wilderness, and to give men again Thy fatal gift of freedom. What did the great wise spirit offer Thee there? Just the three things by which men may be controlled—bread and authority and mystery. He bade Thee take bread as the instrument of Thy work; men will follow one who gives them bread. But Thou wouldest not; men were to follow Thee out of love and devotion or not at all. We have had to correct Thy work, or there would be few to follow Thee. He bade Thee assume authority; men will obey one who gives commands, and punishes the disobedient. But Thou wouldest not; men were to obey out of love and devotion or not at all. We have had to correct Thy work, or there would be few to obey Thee. He bade Thee show some marvel that men might be persuaded and believe. But Thou wouldest not; men were to believe from perception of Thy grace and truth or not at all. We have had to correct Thy work and hedge Thee about with mystery, or there would be few to believe. And which of us has served mankind the better? Thy appeal was to the few strong souls. We have cared for the weak. Many who would be disorderly and miserable have been made orderly and happy. And now Thou art come to spoil our work and repeat Thy great mistake in the wilderness by giving to men again Thy fatal gift of freedom, through trust in the power of love. But it shall not be; for to-morrow I shall burn Thee."The Grand Inquisitor ceased; and still the Prisoner made no reply; but He rose from where He sat, and crossed the cell, and kissed the old man on his bloodless lips. Then the Inquisitor too, rose, and opened the door; "Go," he said. The Prisoner passed out into the night and was not seen again.And the old man? That kiss burns in his heart. But he has not altered his opinion or his practice.LECTURE IICHURCH AND STATE"He put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fulness of him that, all in all, is being fulfilled."—Ephesians i, 22, 23.If one of the great saints of the early Church had been told that in the year 1915 the world would still be waiting for the final consummation, and had tried to conceive the life of men and nations as it would be after that long period of Christian influence, what would his conception have been? Surely he would have expected that all nations would be linked together in the Holy Communion, the Fellowship of Saints. Roman, Spaniard, African, Syrian, those strange Germans, and the barbarous Britons who lived in the remotest corner of the earth, might have maintained their own varieties of culture, but each would find his joy and pride in offering his contribution to the life of the whole family of nations. Rooted in knowledge of the love of God, their life would grow luxuriantly and bear fruit in love of one another and service of the common cause. Inspiring each and knitting all together, the Holy Catholic Church, fulfilling itself in service of the world, would gather up all this exuberance of life and love into itself, and present it to the God and Father of mankind in unceasing adoration.But the world in 1915 is not in the least like that. The old man of our selfish nature, selfish himself and therefore supposing that others must be selfish too, so that he relies upon the methods of cajolery and coercion, has indeed received the kiss of Christ; and while that kiss burns in his heart, so that sometimes he is roused to an aspiration after an order of things altogether different, his opinions and his conduct remain fundamentally unchanged. And the contrast between what is and what might have been is due in part, at least, to the failure of the Church to be true to its own commission. It is also because of this that no practical man dreams of turning to the Church to find the way out from the intolerable situation into which the nations have drifted.An eminent politician is reported to have defined the Church on a recent occasion in the following terms: "The Church is, I suppose, a voluntary organisation for the maintenance of public worship in the interest of those who desire to join in it." And it is to be feared that many people regard it in some such way as that. But of course the Church is nothing of the kind; the Church is the Body of Christ.It is not a "voluntary organisation" any more than my body is a voluntary organisation either of limbs or of cells. No one could "voluntarily" join the Church, if by that were meant that the act originated in his own will. "No man can say Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit."[#] A man cannot make himself a Christian. The Apostles were made Christian by Christ Himself—"Ye did not choose Me, but I chose you"[#]; others were made Christian by the Apostles, or (as they always said) by Christ working in and through them; and so successive generations have been made Christian by the Spirit of Christ operative in the fellowship of His disciples—that is to say, in the Church. This is the aspect of truth expressed and preserved in the practice of infant baptism. We are Christians, if at all, not through any act initiated by our own will, but through our being received into the Christian fellowship and subjected to its influence. Just as we are born members of our family, so by our reception into the fellowship of the disciples we are "made members of Christ." In the one case as in the other, we may repudiate our membership or we may disgrace it; we can never abolish it. Let me hasten in parenthesis to add, that this is only one aspect of the truth, and the protest of those who object to infant baptism will be a valuable force in the Church, until we are finally secure against the temptation to regard a sacrament as a piece of magic. For of course it is true that, while no man can make himself a Christian by his own will, no man can be made a Christian against or without his will. It is precisely his will that the Spirit must lay hold of and convert, and the will can refuse conversion.

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Title: Church and NationCreator: William TempleRelease date: October 5, 2013 [eBook #43896]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Al Haines

Title: Church and Nation

Creator: William Temple

Release date: October 5, 2013 [eBook #43896]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHURCH AND NATION ***

CHURCH ANDNATIONTHE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES FOR 1914-15DELIVERED AT THE GENERAL THEOLOGICALSEMINARY, NEW YORKBYWILLIAM TEMPLEHON. CHAPLAIN TO H.M. THE KINGRector of St. James's, Piccadilly,Chaplain to the Archbishop of CanterburyFormerly Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, andHeadmaster of ReptonMACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITEDST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON1915

CHURCH ANDNATION

THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES FOR 1914-15

DELIVERED AT THE GENERAL THEOLOGICALSEMINARY, NEW YORK

WILLIAM TEMPLE

HON. CHAPLAIN TO H.M. THE KING

Rector of St. James's, Piccadilly,Chaplain to the Archbishop of CanterburyFormerly Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, andHeadmaster of Repton

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITEDST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON1915

TOMY MOTHERWHO FELL ASLEEP AS GOOD FRIDAY DAWNEDAPRIL 2, 1915

PREFACE

When I received and accepted the invitation to deliver the Paddock Lectures for the season 1914-1915, no one imagined that these years were destined to have the historical significance which they must now possess for all time. I was myself one of those who had allowed concern for social reform, and internal problems generally, to occupy my mind almost to the exclusion of foreign questions. I was prepared to stake a good deal upon what seemed to me the improbability of any outbreak of European war. For all who took this view the events of recent months have involved perhaps a greater re-shaping of fundamental notions than was required by people who had thought probable such a catastrophe as that in which we are now involved. I found it impossible to concentrate my mind upon any subject wholly unconnected with the war, while at the same time it would have been in the last degree unsuitable that in my lectures to American Theological Students I should deliver myself of such views as I had formed concerning the rights and wrongs of the war itself, or the questions at stake in it.

These lectures, therefore, represent an attempt to think out afresh the underlying problems which for a Christian are fundamental in regard not only to this war but to war in general—the place of Nationality in the scheme of Divine Providence and the duty of the Church in regard to the growth of nations.

But in a preface it may be permissible to say what would be inappropriate in the Lectures themselves, and first I would take this opportunity of reiterating certain convictions which have formed the basis of a series of pamphlets issued under the auspices of a Committee drawn from various Christian bodies and political parties, of which I have had the honour to be Editor:

1. That Great Britain was in August morally bound to declare war and is no less bound to carry the war to a decisive issue;

2. That the war is none the less an outcome and a revelation of the un-Christian principles which have dominated the life of Western Christendom and of which both the Church and the nations have need to repent;

3. That followers of Christ, as members of the Church, are linked to one another in a fellowship which transcends all divisions of nationality or race;

4. That the Christian duties of love and forgiveness are as binding in time of war as in time of peace;

5. That Christians are bound to recognise the insufficiency of mere compulsion for overcoming evil, and to place supreme reliance upon spiritual forces and in particular upon the power and method of the Cross;

6. That only in proportion as Christian principles dictate the terms of settlement will a real and lasting peace be secured;

7. That it is the duty of the Church to make an altogether new effort to realise and apply to all the relations of life its own positive ideal of brotherhood and fellowship;

That with God all things are possible.

These propositions were very carefully drafted by the Committee referred to above and entirely represent my own beliefs; but there is something more which I would add. The new Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Turkey is no accident; it is the combination of just those three Powers which openly and avowedly believe in oppression—that is, in the imposition by force of the standards accepted by one race upon people of another race. All nations have at one time or another practised oppression; certainly Great Britain is not free from the charge, and the history of Russia has many dark pages in this respect. But we can all claim that when we have been guilty of oppression it has been under the influence of fear, whether of revolution, anarchism, or some other force thought to be disruptive of the State. With our enemies this is not so. We all know about Turkey; it is the essentially Mohammedan power, and Mohammedanism is the religion of oppression; it believes in imposing its faith by means of the sword. The Austrian Empire consists of three divisions in each of which one race is imposing its manner of life upon another. In Austria-proper the Germans oppress the Czechs; in Galicia the Poles have, in some degree at least, oppressed the Ruthenes; in Hungary the Magyars have systematically and avowedly oppressed the Roumanians in the east, and the Croats in the south and west. Germany has shown her political faith by her conduct in Alsace-Lorraine, and still more in Poland. Nothing has yet appeared so illuminating with regard to what is at stake in this war, as Prince Bülow's chapter on Poland in his book,Imperial Germany; he describes what seems to us the most grinding oppression with obvious self-contentment and without a question of its righteousness; and there have been abundant signs that, at least, many people in Germany are willing to impose German Kultur by the sword as Mohammedans impose belief in their prophet.

If this is true, and if the analysis in my lectures of the Christian function of the State and of the principles of the Kingdom of God is sound, then it becomes clear that this war is being fought to determine whether in the next period the Christian or the directly anti-Christian method shall have an increase of influence. The three most democratic of the great Western Powers—Great Britain, France, and Italy—in conjunction with Russia, which is after all profoundly democratic in its local life though imperially it is a military autocracy, are linked together in a natural union on behalf of freedom as they understand it, against an idea embodied and embattled which is in exact opposition to all they live for. It was therefore no surprise to find that all the citizens of the United States with whom I came in contact were quite definitely upon the side of the Allies in sympathy. To advocate war in the name of Christ is to adopt a position which looks self-contradictory and which certainly involves immense responsibility, and yet if our people can maintain the attitude of mind in which they entered on the war and can secure at the end a settlement harmonious with that frame of mind, I believe they will have served the Kingdom of God through fighting, better than it was possible to do at this moment in human history by any other means.

W.T.

Lecture II. in this series is almost identical with the pamphletOur Need of a Catholic Church—No. 19 ofPapers for War Time. In Lectures I. and III. I am under great obligation to Professor A. G. Hogg, though my position is not at all identical with his.

CONTENTS

LECTURE I

THE KINGDOM OF FREEDOM

LECTURE II

CHURCH AND STATE

LECTURE III

JUSTICE AND LIBERTY IN THE STATE

LECTURE IV

HOLINESS AND CATHOLICITY IN THE CHURCH

LECTURE V

THE CITIZENSHIP OF HEAVEN

LECTURE VI

GOD IN HISTORY

APPENDIX I

ON THE APOCALYPTIC CONSCIOUSNESS

APPENDIX II

ON MORAL AND SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY

APPENDIX III

ON JUSTICE AND EDUCATION

APPENDIX IV

ON ORDERS AND CATHOLICITY

APPENDIX V

ON PROVIDENCE IN HISTORY

CHURCH AND NATION

LECTURE I

THE KINGDOM OF FREEDOM

"And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness during forty days, being tempted of the Devil."—S. Luke iv. 1.

Our Lord, in accepting for Himself the title of the Messiah, or the Christ, claimed that it was His function to inaugurate upon earth the Kingdom of God. Whatever else might at that time be believed about the Messiah, this at least was universally held, that the Messiah, when He came, would inaugurate upon earth the Kingdom of God. That is the task of the Lord's ministry; that is the task to which we, as His followers, are pledged; and at this time when the civilisation, which for nearly two thousand years has been under the Christian influence, has culminated in as great a catastrophe as has ever beset any civilisation, Christian or Pagan, it is well for us to go back and ask, What are the fundamental principles of the Kingdom which Christ founded, what the method by which He founded it, and what are the principles and methods which He rejected?

There were various anticipations of the way in which the promised Christ would do His work; but broadly speaking there were two main types of expectation. There were those who supposed that the Messiah when He came, would rule in the manner of an earthly ruler, establishing righteousness by the ordinary methods of law and political authority, and this expectation undoubtedly derived some colour from the way in which Isaiah had envisaged the coming Christ:[#]

[#] Isaiah ix, 6, 7.

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful-Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no endupon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with judgment and with righteousness from henceforth, even for ever."

It is a king ruling upon the throne of David that is suggested; and while it is only the most foolish literalism which will say that the Prophet himself was committed to such a view, it was natural enough for those who read his writings to conceive of the Messiah as acting after that fashion.

The people went into captivity; and when they returned, it was not to any realised Kingdom of God upon earth, but rather to difficulties greater than had ever confronted them before, until at last Antiochus Epiphanes initiated the great persecution whose aim was to stamp out altogether the worship of Jehovah, setting up as he did in the very Temple Court at Jerusalem the altar of Zeus, on which swine were sacrificed—"the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not." Out of the fiery furnace of that persecution comes the glowing prophecy of Daniel. What is the answer which he conceives God as giving to the blasphemer Antiochus? It is nothing less than the divine judgment and the mission of the divine Deliverer:[#]

[#] Daniel vii, 9, 10, 13, 14.

"I beheld till thrones were placed and one that was ancient of days did sit: his raiment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, and the wheels thereof burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him; thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the judgment was set, and the books were opened.... I saw in the night visions, and, behold, there came with the clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed."

This conception of the Messiah, coming in the clouds of Heaven, establishing the Kingdom of God by so manifest an exhibition of the divine authority with which He is endowed, that all doubt and hesitation are quite impossible, is that which took the greatest hold upon the religious imagination of Israel, and particularly of that great body of people, the heirs of the tradition of the Maccabees, inheritors of the heroism which had stood out against the persecution, whom we know as the sect of the Pharisees—men who lived in the strength of a fellowship that had behind it the greatest religious tradition in all the world, but who, because they trusted more to their tradition than to the God who inspired it, were unable to recognise the still further call of God when it came to them. The literature of the period between the Old and the New Testament shows how wide and deep was the influence of Daniel's vision upon their Messianic hopes.

At His baptism, the Lord is called to begin His Messianic work; the voice which He heard from Heaven spoke words which were by all interpreters of the time believed to refer to the Messiah:—"Thou art my beloved son; in thee I am well pleased." The Messiah will be endowed with Divine authority and power. How shall He use it? And immediately the Lord goes into the wilderness to face the temptations that arose from precisely the conviction that His Messianic work is even now to begin.

The temptation has two sides to it—an inward and an outward. As regards Himself, what does the temptation mean? Let us remind ourselves that there was apparently no one with Him in this crisis; the story, as we have it, must come from Himself. It is His own account (of course in parable form, like so much else in His teaching) of the struggle of those early days. What is meant by the parable concerning the turning of stones into bread? Surely for Himself it is the temptation to use the power, with which us the Christ of Cod He is endowed, for the satisfaction of His own needs, and that in such a way as will do no kind of harm to anybody else. No one will be the worse for his satisfying His hunger in that way. It is a self-concern from which nobody can suffer; it is perfectly innocent and perfectly rational. But no! It is not for any selfish purpose, however harmless, that the power of God is given; selfishness in its most innocent form is set aside.

How shall He set about His work? Shall He fulfil that expectation which Isaiah's vision had fostered? He looks out on the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them, and He knows that they can be His, if He will fall down and worship the Prince of the power of this world. Shall He use worldly methods to convert the world to God? No; worldliness in its most attractive form is set aside.

Or shall He fulfil the expectation encouraged by the vision of the Son of Man in Daniel, appearing with the clouds of Heaven, descending upon Jerusalem up-borne by angels, giving that sign from Heaven which the Pharisees, who particularly adopted this view of the Messiah, were afterwards going to demand so frequently? From His answer we know that this is a temptation not only to give them a sign, but to secure it for Himself, for the answer is "Thou shalt not tempt,"—that is, Thou shalt not put to the proof—"the Lord thy God." The promise of God is to be trusted, not tested. The test comes as we obey the command and in that sense every act of faith is an experiment, but there must be no test cases to see whether God fulfils His promise. Infidelity in its most insidious form is set aside.

But there is an outward aspect also to the temptations. Shall He use His power to satisfy the bodily needs of men? Shall He exert a power parallel with that of political rulers, which will coerce their conduct without first winning their free allegiance? Shall He give such proof of divine authority that any doubt, intellectual or otherwise, becomes impossible? No; not any of these. And as He leaves the temptation vanquished, what He has set aside is precisely every method of controlling men's action without winning their hearts and wills. He has rejected coercion; He has decided to appeal to Freedom.

What is left? At first, only the commission to proclaim the Kingdom; and He comes proclaiming it. All through the early part of the ministry He moves from place to place preaching or proclaiming the Kingdom of God. He does not at present announce that He is King of that Kingdom; it is the Kingdom itself on which all attention is concentrated. He has indeed the power to do works of mercy, and when with that power He stands in the face of human need, He must for very love exert the power and satisfy the need; so people come crowding around Him, attracted by His wonder-working. But that is not what He desires. The disciples are excited about it; but He has gone out a long while before dawn, and is alone in prayer; and when St. Peter finds Him, and says "All men are seeking Thee," He does not say, "Then let us go to them," but, on the contrary, "Let us go into the villages that I may preach—that I may make my proclamation—there also."[#] As the deadness, the indifference, and hostility of the people gradually shows itself to be invincible, He gathers about Him those whose hearts have been touched, and from among them chooses twelve, "that they may be with Him."[#] They are to live in His company, catching His Spirit, learning to understand Him. With them He goes on two long journeys—north-west to Tyre and Sidon, and then north-east, to Caesarea Philippi; through all those journeys they are alone with their Master, moving through country outside the boundaries of the Jewish religion, and therefore free from controversy.

[#] S. Mark i, 35-38.

[#] S. MArk iii, 14.

At Caesarea Philippi He feels that the time is ripe, and asks them, "Who do men say that I am?" They mention the various conjectures ... Elijah; John the Baptist; one of the Prophets. "Who say ye that I am?" And St. Peter with a leap of inspired insight answers: "Thou art the Messiah."[#]

[#] S. Mark viii, 27-30.

The Lord recognises that this is the revelation of God to faith: "Blessed art thou, Simon, Son of Jonah; flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven."[#] Immediately that He has been thus spontaneously recognised, He begins to say what He had never said before: "The Son of Man must suffer." The Son of Man is the title of the Messiah in glory, as He was conceived in Daniel's vision and the Apocalyptic writings which drew their inspiration from it. "The Son of Man must suffer;" that is the great Messianic act; that is the way in which the Kingdom of God shall be founded. But it was not what St. Peter meant. "Peter took Him, and began to rebuke Him ... Be it far from Thee, Lord; this shall not be unto Thee." And our Lord recognises the voice of the tempter in the wilderness, who bade Him take thought for self.... "Get thee behind me,Satan, for thou thinkest not God's thoughts, but men's thoughts."[#]

[#] S. Matthew xvi, 17.

[#] S. Matthew xvi, 22, 23.

Just as, when once He was spontaneously recognised, He began to set forth the new conception of the Messiahship, "The Son of Man must suffer;" so too He immediately starts on that last journey to Jerusalem which culminates with the Cross. Arrived at Jerusalem, He arranges the triumphal entry. He carefully fulfils Zechariah's prophecy—thus claiming the Messiahship, and challenging the religious rulers. But the prophecy which He thus selects for deliberate fulfilment is one which represents the Messiah as a civil, not a military authority (for this is the meaning of the ass as distinguished from the horse), and as one who shall speak Peace to the nations.[#] It is the conception of the Messiah which in all the Old Testament has least suggestion of coercion and is therefore the nearest to His own.

[#] Zechariah ix, 9, 10.

But the primary purpose of the triumphal entry is no doubt to make His claim and issue His challenge. On the journey and after the entry itself He declares with increasing emphasis that the Kingdom of God is at hand; those who stood there should see it come with power; and as He stands before Caiaphas, He answers the question "Art Thou the Christ? with the words, I am, and from this time[#] there shall be the Son of Man seated on the right hand of power." Daniel's prophecy is here and now fulfilled. In the moment that love completes its sacrifice in death, the glory of God is fully made known and the power of His Kingdom is come; this is the Lord's own Apocalypse.[#]

[#] Different words in St. Matthew and St. Luke, but agreeing in sense, which sense the authorised version spoils.

[#] SeeAppendix I.:The Apocalyptic Consciousness.

So He had spoken on that last journey. "Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it is not so among you; but whosoever would become great among you shall be your minister, and whosoever shall be first among you shall be servant of all, for verily the Son of Man came"—(again the title of the Messiah in Glory)—"not to be ministered unto, but to minister; and to give His life a ransom for many."[#]

[#] S. Mark x, 42-45.

So, too, St. John records His saying that in precisely this way he would win His royalty—"I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."[#] The Cross was foreseen by the Lord to be what, as we look back, we know that it has been—the throne of His glory and His power; and the capacity to realise it as such is for St. Paul the touchstone of character, the test of election—"We preach a Messiah on a Cross—to Jews a scandal and to Gentiles an absurdity, but to the very people who are called, whether Jews or Greeks, a Messiah who is God's power and God's wisdom."[#]

[#] S. John xii, 32.

[#] 1 Cor. i, 23, 24.

Here then is the mode of God's power, and we know that it can be no other; for if God is truly King, He must be King of our hearts and wills, and not only of our conduct. There is only one way to win men's hearts and wills, that is by showing love; and there is only one way to show love, and that is by sacrifice, by doing or suffering what, apart from our love, we should not choose to do or suffer. Sacrifice is the Divine activity; Calvary is the mode of the Divine omnipotence. It is the actual Divine method and the ideal human method.

As we come to consider how far it has become also the actual human method, we are confronted at the outset by the sheer impossibility of our applying this method, just because we have not in ourselves the necessary love.

Our perfection, we are told, is to consist in just that quality which shows the Father's perfection, namely, that He is kind to the unthankful and evil, and makes His sun to rise on the evil and good and sends His rain on the just and on the unjust; and we are to be perfect in the way that He is perfect.[#]

[#] S. Matthew v, 43-48.

But until we reach that perfection we cannot imitate His action; for a man's act is not what He intends; nor is it the mere motion of his body; but it is the whole train of circumstances that he initiates. Christ in His perfect purity may stand before the woman taken in her sin and say, "Neither do I condemn thee," because there is no possibility that she will interpret His mercy as condonation of the sin; but if we said it, people would so interpret it, and usually quite rightly so.

Our problem then is so to guide our conduct that we come as near as we are capable of coming to the divine ideal that is set forth in Christ, and that we come perpetually closer and closer to it.

The Lord in His temptation rejected all use of force and substituted for it the appeal of love expressed in sacrifice, so far as the actual and positive building of His Kingdom is concerned. For us there must always be some use of the lower method, because we are incapable of applying the highest. If any man, when he is confronted with evil which he can prevent by the exercise of force, refrains from doing it, we must immediately put to him the question, "But did you so suffer under that act of evil that there is any hope of your suffering proving to be the redemption of the evil-doer? If so, well and good; but, if not, then you are idle and cowardly, not Christian." No one who is not a Christian in spirit can perform the Christian act; and the Sermon on the Mount is not a code of rules to be mechanically followed; it is the description of the life which any man will spontaneously lead when once the Spirit of Christ has taken complete possession of his heart.

And yet there is a perfectly legitimate use of force also, and a use which our Lord Himself makes of it. We may use force in various circumstances in spite of the fact that for the positive work of the building His Kingdom the Lord rejected it. It is legitimate, in the first place, when it is applied to immature characters—characters which are, as all our characters are in early childhood, a chaos of impulses and instincts, as yet unregulated by any governing principle. Here it may be necessary simply to restrain the activity of one set of impulses without converting the heart or will of the person to whom that restraint is applied, merely in order to give the other side of nature its chance of development. So in education it is legitimate to employ force in this restraining way for the sake of the development which is made possible thereby in the other parts of nature.

But our Lord's example also shows us that the use of force is permissible in dealing with those who are so case-hardened that the appeal of love can never reach them until their present state of mind is broken up. It is sometimes said that the Lord never made use of physical force; but whether or not that is true[#]—the question is unimportant, because for all moral purposes there is no difference whatever between physical and non-physical force. The appeal to force always means the appeal to pain or inconvenience, for these are the only things that force can inflict upon one. Physical force may break a man's bones; but one may enforce a certain kind of conduct by the threat, for example, of social ostracism, which might break his heart; and there is no difference whatever between the two, except that the second is a more refined form of cruelty. Now in our Lord's denunciation of the Pharisees, in those words which are thrown, burning and smashing, into the self-complacent contentment of those upholders of tradition, there is every moral quality of force and violence. Their aim is to batter down a state of mind, the state of mind which cannot receive the appeal of love, as it shows when it stands beneath the very Cross and only jeers. But this use of force is only negative and preparatory; it is the effort of love to make ready for the rebuilding which only love's own method can really accomplish. Only with characters quite immature and liable to develop in many different directions, can force be used, except in this wholly preparatory way; and even there its work is preparatory, for at that stage everything that is done is still preparatory.

[#]e.g., whether or not He employed the scourge of small cords to drive men from the Temple Courts as He certainly did the animals; the Greek words suggest that He did not.

It is sometimes said that society rests upon force. Of course it does not, and it could not, because force is a dead thing which can only operate as human wills direct it; and, however much force there may be in the maintenance of society, that force itself must be controlled by the consent of human wills. It is true, however, that society, as we know it, rests simultaneously upon two contradictory principles, upon the principle of antagonism and the principle of fellowship. So far as it is represented by the police force, it rests upon antagonism. Men are selfish; in their selfishness they are brought into conflict with one another. In order that anyone may be able to enjoy, however selfishly, any property or comfort in life, it is necessary to restrain to some degree the selfishness of all the rest; and to secure that restraint placed upon others, a man submits to a similar restraint upon himself. And so we arrive at that contract of which Plato speaks: "the contract neither to commit nor to suffer injury."[#] But, at the same time, as Plato immediately afterwards points out, society would arise quite equally if men were wholly altruistic, because men's natures are different, and they need one another for support, for protection, and for the very instinct of fellowship.[#] Now those principles are both present in all actual societies; and progress has consisted of the steady development of the principle of co-operation and fellowship, at the expense of the principle of competition and antagonism.

[#] [Greek: méte adikeîn méte adikîsthai.]Republicii. 359*a*.

[#] The whole Ideal State.Republicii, 369*b* to vii end.

That has been what we have meant in the last resort by political progress; but the conclusion inevitably follows that society makes progress precisely in that degree in which it realises more and more a relationship of love between its various members, and becomes the Kingdom which Christ came on earth to found. Thus, at the very outset of our enquiry we find that the principles of secular progress and of the Divine revelation in Christ are identical.

I shall venture in a subsequent lecture to trace out the way in which, as I think, further progress in accordance with this principle will lead us.

But let me close this lecture by recalling our thoughts to that ideal method for men, which is the actual method of God, setting this in the words of a fable which I take from the masterpiece of the most Russian of the Russian novelists—Dostoievsky—merely throwing it into my own language.

In the days of the Inquisition, this fable runs, our Lord returned to earth, and visited a city where it was at work. As He moved about, men forgot their cares and sorrows. He healed the sick folk as of old, and meeting with a funeral procession where a mother was mourning the loss of her only son, He stopped the procession, and restored the dead boy to life.

That was in the Cathedral Square, and at that moment there came out from the Cathedral doors the Grand Inquisitor, an old man over ninety years of age, clad now, not in the Cardinal's robe in which only the day before he had condemned a score of heretics to the stake, but in a simple cassock, with only two guards in attendance. Seeing what was done he turned to the guards and said, "Arrest Him." They moved forward to obey; and he sent the Prisoner to a cell in the dungeon.

That night the Grand Inquisitor visited his Prisoner, and to all that he said the Prisoner made no reply. "I know why Thou art come," said the Inquisitor; "Thou art come to spoil our work, to repeat Thy great mistake in the wilderness, and to give men again Thy fatal gift of freedom. What did the great wise spirit offer Thee there? Just the three things by which men may be controlled—bread and authority and mystery. He bade Thee take bread as the instrument of Thy work; men will follow one who gives them bread. But Thou wouldest not; men were to follow Thee out of love and devotion or not at all. We have had to correct Thy work, or there would be few to follow Thee. He bade Thee assume authority; men will obey one who gives commands, and punishes the disobedient. But Thou wouldest not; men were to obey out of love and devotion or not at all. We have had to correct Thy work, or there would be few to obey Thee. He bade Thee show some marvel that men might be persuaded and believe. But Thou wouldest not; men were to believe from perception of Thy grace and truth or not at all. We have had to correct Thy work and hedge Thee about with mystery, or there would be few to believe. And which of us has served mankind the better? Thy appeal was to the few strong souls. We have cared for the weak. Many who would be disorderly and miserable have been made orderly and happy. And now Thou art come to spoil our work and repeat Thy great mistake in the wilderness by giving to men again Thy fatal gift of freedom, through trust in the power of love. But it shall not be; for to-morrow I shall burn Thee."

The Grand Inquisitor ceased; and still the Prisoner made no reply; but He rose from where He sat, and crossed the cell, and kissed the old man on his bloodless lips. Then the Inquisitor too, rose, and opened the door; "Go," he said. The Prisoner passed out into the night and was not seen again.

And the old man? That kiss burns in his heart. But he has not altered his opinion or his practice.

LECTURE II

CHURCH AND STATE

"He put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fulness of him that, all in all, is being fulfilled."—Ephesians i, 22, 23.

If one of the great saints of the early Church had been told that in the year 1915 the world would still be waiting for the final consummation, and had tried to conceive the life of men and nations as it would be after that long period of Christian influence, what would his conception have been? Surely he would have expected that all nations would be linked together in the Holy Communion, the Fellowship of Saints. Roman, Spaniard, African, Syrian, those strange Germans, and the barbarous Britons who lived in the remotest corner of the earth, might have maintained their own varieties of culture, but each would find his joy and pride in offering his contribution to the life of the whole family of nations. Rooted in knowledge of the love of God, their life would grow luxuriantly and bear fruit in love of one another and service of the common cause. Inspiring each and knitting all together, the Holy Catholic Church, fulfilling itself in service of the world, would gather up all this exuberance of life and love into itself, and present it to the God and Father of mankind in unceasing adoration.

But the world in 1915 is not in the least like that. The old man of our selfish nature, selfish himself and therefore supposing that others must be selfish too, so that he relies upon the methods of cajolery and coercion, has indeed received the kiss of Christ; and while that kiss burns in his heart, so that sometimes he is roused to an aspiration after an order of things altogether different, his opinions and his conduct remain fundamentally unchanged. And the contrast between what is and what might have been is due in part, at least, to the failure of the Church to be true to its own commission. It is also because of this that no practical man dreams of turning to the Church to find the way out from the intolerable situation into which the nations have drifted.

An eminent politician is reported to have defined the Church on a recent occasion in the following terms: "The Church is, I suppose, a voluntary organisation for the maintenance of public worship in the interest of those who desire to join in it." And it is to be feared that many people regard it in some such way as that. But of course the Church is nothing of the kind; the Church is the Body of Christ.

It is not a "voluntary organisation" any more than my body is a voluntary organisation either of limbs or of cells. No one could "voluntarily" join the Church, if by that were meant that the act originated in his own will. "No man can say Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit."[#] A man cannot make himself a Christian. The Apostles were made Christian by Christ Himself—"Ye did not choose Me, but I chose you"[#]; others were made Christian by the Apostles, or (as they always said) by Christ working in and through them; and so successive generations have been made Christian by the Spirit of Christ operative in the fellowship of His disciples—that is to say, in the Church. This is the aspect of truth expressed and preserved in the practice of infant baptism. We are Christians, if at all, not through any act initiated by our own will, but through our being received into the Christian fellowship and subjected to its influence. Just as we are born members of our family, so by our reception into the fellowship of the disciples we are "made members of Christ." In the one case as in the other, we may repudiate our membership or we may disgrace it; we can never abolish it. Let me hasten in parenthesis to add, that this is only one aspect of the truth, and the protest of those who object to infant baptism will be a valuable force in the Church, until we are finally secure against the temptation to regard a sacrament as a piece of magic. For of course it is true that, while no man can make himself a Christian by his own will, no man can be made a Christian against or without his will. It is precisely his will that the Spirit must lay hold of and convert, and the will can refuse conversion.

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