Book: Religious Reality

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The Gospel is concerned with issues that are practical rather than
strictly theoretical: and the really practical problem with regard to
evil is not how it is to be explained but how it is to be overcome. If
we ask how evil first arose, the only honest answer is that we do not
know: though we can see how the possibility, at least, of moral evil
(as distinct from mere physical pain) is implicit of necessity in the
existence of moral freedom. The question is sometimes asked, "If GOD
is omnipotent, why does He permit evil?" But the doctrine of Divine
omnipotence is misconceived when it is interpreted to mean that GOD is
able to accomplish things inherently self-contradictory. GOD is
omnipotent only in the sense that He is supreme over all things, and
able to do all possible things. He is not able to do impossible
things: and to make man free, and yet to prevent him from doing evil
if he so chooses, is a thing impossible even to GOD. Man is left free
to crucify his Maker, and he has availed himself of his freedom by
crucifying both his Maker and his fellow-man.

If we ask, "Why does not GOD prevent war? Why does He permit murder
and cruelty and rapine?" the answer is that He could only prevent
these things by dint of over-riding the will of man by force: and
moreover that it is not the method of GOD to do for man what man is
perfectly well able to do for himself. For wars would cease if men
universally desired not to fight.

We are really raising a much more difficult question if we ask, "Why
does GOD allow cancer?" And to this, it may be, there is no completely
satisfactory answer to be given: though it is possible to see that
cancer and other diseases have a biological function, and also to
recognize that the endurance of pain in some cases (though not in all)
ennobles and deepens character. The writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews does not hesitate to say of Christ Himself that He "learned
obedience by the things which He suffered."

In general it must be said that Christianity does not afford any
complete theoretical solution of the problem of evil: what it does is
to provide a point of view which sets evil in a new light, and which
is adequate for the purposes of practical life. It teaches us that
physical suffering, so far as it is inevitable, is to be endured and
turned to spiritual profit, as a thing which is capable of bearing
fruit in the deepening and discipline of character: and that moral
evil is to be overcome, by the power of the grace of GOD in Christ.

If we ask, "Why should the innocent suffer?" the Christian answer is
contained in the Cross. "Christ also suffered, being guiltless": and
although, if Christ were regarded simply as a man and nothing more,
this fact would merely intensify the problem, the matter assumes a
different complexion if Christ be regarded as the revelation of GOD.
For if so, then suffering enters into the experience of GOD Himself,
and so far from GOD being indifferent to the sorrow and misery of the
world, He shares it, and is victorious through it. "In all their
affliction, He was afflicted." GOD is Himself a Sufferer, the supreme
Sufferer of all, and finds through suffering the instrument of His
triumph. But if this be true, then all suffering everywhere is set in
a new and a transfiguring light, for it assumes the character of a
challenge to become partaker in the sufferings and triumph of the
Christ. "Can ye drink of the Cup that I drink of?"

So interpreted, suffering ceases to be a ground of petulance or of
complaint. It is discovered to have a value. It is judged to be worth
while. And it is possible to find in such a faith the grounds of a
conviction that behind and beneath all suffering is the love which
redeems it and the purpose which shall one day justify it, and that in
very truth no sparrow falls to the ground without the Heavenly
Father's knowledge and care.




CHAPTER VI

SIN AND REDEMPTION


The Gospel affirms that men are called to be sons of GOD; to be
perfect, as the heavenly Father is perfect. The correlative of this
ideal view of man as he is meant to be is a sombre view of man as he
actually is. "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and
the truth is not in us." "All have sinned, and come short of the glory
of GOD."

Sin is essentially a falling short, a missing of the mark, a failure
to correspond with the purpose and the will of GOD. It need not
necessarily involve--though of course it does in many instances
involve--the deliberate transgression of a moral law which the
conscience of the individual sinner recognizes as such. There are sins
of omission as well as of commission, sins of ignorance as well as of
deliberate intent. The fact that the conscience of a given individual
does not accuse him, that he is not aware of himself as a sinner
before GOD, is no evidence of his moral perfection, but rather the
reverse. Jesus Christ, who possessed the surest as well as the sanest
moral judgment the world has ever known, held deliberately that the
open and acknowledged sinner, just because he was aware of his
condition, was in a more hopeful spiritual state than the man who
through ignorance of his own shortcomings believed himself to be
righteous. The Pharisee, who compared himself with others to his own
advantage, was condemned in the sight of GOD. The Publican, who would
not so much as lift up his eyes unto heaven, but judging himself and
his deeds by the standard of GOD'S holiness acknowledged himself a
sinner, went away justified rather than the other. It is probably true
that the ordinary man to-day is not worrying about his sins: but if
so, the fact proves nothing except the secularity of his ideals and
the shallowness of his sense of spiritual issues. It means, in short,
that he has not taken seriously the standard of Christ. For the
measure of a man's sin is simply the measure of the contrast between
his character and the character of Christ.

It is likely enough that many of us will never discover that we are
sinners until we have deliberately tried and failed to follow Christ.
The moment we do try seriously to follow Him, we become conscious of
the presence within ourselves of "that horrid impediment which the
Churches call sin." We discover that we are spiritually impotent: that
there is that in us which is both selfish and self-complacent: that
there is a "law of sin in our members" which is in conflict with the
"law of the Spirit of life": and that "we have no power of ourselves
to help ourselves." We are at the mercy of our own character, which
has been wrongly moulded and formed amiss by the sins and follies, the
self-indulgences and the moral slackness of our own past behaviour. We
are, indeed, "tied and bound by the chain of our sins."

To have realized so much is to have reached the necessary starting-
point of any fruitful consideration of the Christian Gospel of
redemption. The appeal of the Cross of Christ is to the human
consciousness of sin; and the first effect of a true appreciation of
the meaning of the Cross is to deepen in us the realization of what
sin really is. The crucifixion of Christ was not the result of any
peculiarly unexampled wickedness on the part of individuals. It was
simply the natural and inevitable result of the moral collision
between His ideals and those of society at large. The chief actors in
the drama were men of like passions with ourselves, who were actuated
by very ordinary human motives. It is indeed easy for men to say, "If
we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been
partakers with them in the blood of the prophets": but in so saying
they are merely being witnesses unto themselves that they are the
children of them which killed the prophets. Are we indeed so far
removed beyond the reach of the moral weakness which yields against
its own better judgment to the clamorous demands of public opinion, as
to be in a position to cast stones at Pilate? Are we so exempt from
the temptation to turn a dishonest penny, or to throw over a friend
who has disappointed us, as to recognize no echo of ourselves in
Judas? Have we never with the Sanhedrin allowed vested interests to
warp our judgment, or resented a too searching criticism of our own
character and proceedings, or sophisticated our consciences into a
belief that we were offering GOD service when as a matter of fact we
were merely giving expression to the religious and social prejudices
of our class? Have we never, like the crowds who joined in the hue-
and-cry, followed a multitude to do evil? There appears in the midst
of a society of ordinary, average men--men such as ourselves--a Man
ideally good: and He is put to death as a blasphemer. That is the
awful tragedy of the Crucifixion. What does it mean? It means that a
new and lurid light is thrown upon the ordinary impulses of our mind.
It means that we see sin to be exceeding sinful. That is the first
salutary fruit of a resolute contemplation of the Cross.

The Cross shows us, in a word, what we are doing when we sin:
consciously or unconsciously, we are crucifying that which is good. If
we are able to go further, and by faith to discover in the character
and bearing of the Son, crucified upon the Cross, the revelation of
the heart of the Eternal Father, there dawns upon our minds a still
more startling truth: consciously or unconsciously, we are crucifying
GOD. Assuming, that is to say, that GOD is such as Christianity
declares Him to be, holy, righteous, ideal and perfect Love, caring
intensely for every one of His creatures and having a plan and a
purpose for each one, then every failure of ours to correspond with
the purpose of His love, every falling short of His ideal for us,
every acknowledged slackness and moral failure in our lives, much more
every wilful and deliberate transgression of the moral law, is simply
the addition of yet a further stab to the wounds wherewith Love is
wounded in the house of His friends. "Father, forgive them; they know
not what they do"--the words of the Crucified are the revelation of
what is in fact the eternal attitude of GOD: they are the expression
of a love that is wounded, cut to the heart and crucified, by the
lovelessness, the ingratitude, the tragedy of human sin, but which
nevertheless, in spite of the pain, is willing to forgive.

But the Cross is no mere passivity. It is more than simply a
revelation of Divine suffering, of the eternal patience of the love of
GOD. It is the expression of GOD in action: a deed of Divine self-
sacrifice: a voluntary taking upon Himself by man's Eternal Lover of
the burden of man's misery and sin. There is a profound truth in the
saying of S. Paul, that the Son of GOD "loved me, and gave Himself for
me": as also in S. Peter's words about the Christ "who His own self
bare our sins in His own body on the Tree, that we, being dead to
sins, should live unto righteousness." There is no need to import into
the phrases of the New Testament writers the crude transactional
notions of later theology, no need to drag in ideas about penalties
and punishments. The sole and sufficient penalty of sin is simply the
state of being a sinner [Footnote: Sin, of course, may involve
consequences, and the consequences may be both irrevocable and bitter;
nor is it denied that fear of consequences may operate as a deterrent
from certain kinds of sin. What is denied is that such consequences
are rightly to be described as "punishment."]: and the conception of
_vicarious_ "punishment" is not merely immoral, but unintelligible.
Vicarious _suffering_, indeed, there is: an enormous proportion of the
sufferings of mankind--and the sufferings of Christ are a conspicuous
case in point--arise directly as the result of others' sin and may be
willingly borne for others' sake. And Christ died because of His love
for men, and as the expression of the love of GOD for men. He who
"wholly like to us was made" sounded the ultimate depths of the
bitterest experience to which sin can lead, even the experience of
being forsaken of GOD. "So GOD loved the world."

Regarded thus, the Cross is at once a potent instrument for bringing
men to repentance, and also the proclamation of the free and royal
forgiveness of men's sins by the heavenly Father. "What the law could
not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, GOD sending His own
Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in
the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us,
who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."

Forgiveness must be received on the basis of repentance and confession
as the free and unmerited gift of GOD in Christ: but the redemption
which Christ came to bring to men does not stop short at the bare gift
of initial forgiveness. The Cross cannot rightly be separated from the
Resurrection, nor the Resurrection from the bestowal of the Spirit.
The forgiveness of past transgressions carries with it also the gift
of a new life in Christ and the power of the indwelling Spirit to
transform and purify the heart. And this is a life-long process--a
process, indeed, which extends beyond the limits of this present life.
The old Adam dies hard, and the victory of the spirit over the flesh
is not lightly won. In the life-story of every Christian there are
repeated falls: there is need of a fresh gift of forgiveness ever
renewed. It is only over stepping-stones of their dead selves that men
are enabled to rise to higher things. But already in principle the
victory is won. "In all these things we are more than conquerors
through Him that loved us." We see in Christ the first-fruits of
redeemed humanity, the one perfect response on the side of man to the
love of GOD. And through Christ, our Representative, self-offered to
the Father on our behalf, we are bold to have access with confidence
unto the throne of GOD and in Him to offer ourselves, that so we may
obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.




CHAPTER VII

THE CHURCH AND HER MISSION IN THE WORLD


The GOD and Father of Jesus Christ loves every human being
individually, cares for each and has a specific vocation for each one
to fulfil. This doctrine of the equal preciousness in the sight of GOD
of all human souls is for Christianity fundamental. But the
correlative of Divine fatherhood is human brotherhood: just because
GOD is love, and fellowship is life and heaven, and the lack of it is
hell, GOD does not redeem men individually, but as members of a
brotherhood, a Church.

The Church is simply the people of GOD. It is the fellowship of
redeemed mankind, the community of all faithful people throughout this
present world and in the sphere of the world beyond--one, holy,
apostolic (i.e. missionary), and catholic, that is, universal. Death
is no interruption in that Society, race is no barrier, and rank
conveys no privilege. "There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision
nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is
all, and in all": over the Church the gates of Death prevail not: and
"ye are all one Man in Christ Jesus."

Furthermore, the Church is described as the Body, that is, the
embodiment, of Christ: the instrument or organ whereby the Spirit of
Christ works in the world. Her several members are individually limbs
or members in that Body, and their individual gifts and capacities,
whatever they may be, are to be dedicated and directed to the service
of the Body as a whole, and not to any sectional or selfish ends or
purposes. In practical churchmanship, rightly understood, is to be
discovered the clue to the meaning and purpose of human life.

Again, the Church is by definition international. The several races
and nationalities of mankind have each their specific and individual
contribution to make to the Church's common life, in accordance with
their specific national temperaments and genius. All of them together
are needed to give adequate expression in human life to the many-sided
riches of GOD in Christ. The Church is incomplete so long as a single
one remains outside. The idea, therefore, of a so-called "National"
Church, as a thing isolated and self-contained, is intrinsically
absurd.

Therefore also the Church is missionary. She exists in order to
proclaim to all the world the Good News of the love of GOD. She exists
to bring all men everywhere under the scope of Christ's redemption,
and to claim for the Spirit of Christ the effectual lordship over all
human thought and life and activity. It is her threefold task at once
to develop and make real within her own borders the life of
brotherhood in Christ, to evangelize the heathen by declaring to them
the satisfaction of their instinctive search for GOD in the answering
search of GOD for them, and to labour for the discovery and
application of Christian solutions to the problems of industry and
commerce, of politics and social life and international affairs.

In so far as the Church has been true to the Spirit of Christ she has
succeeded; in so far as she has made compromises with the world, and
in every generation has in greater or less degree been disloyal to the
standards of her Master, she has failed. In every generation there has
been partial and obvious failure, side by side with real, if partial
and in some ways less immediately obvious, success. But the Church can
never wholly fail and must one day wholly succeed, for the reason that
behind her is the omnipotence of the love of GOD.




CHAPTER VIII

PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC


The last chapter sketched the ideal of the Church and her essential
mission. The realization of that ideal in the existing Church, visibly
embodied here in earth is extremely fragmentary and imperfect. The
Church that is one, and holy, and apostolic, and catholic, the
brotherhood in Christ of all mankind, knit into unity by the
fellowship of the Holy Spirit, remains a vision of the future, though
a vision which, once seen, mankind will never relinquish until it be
accomplished. "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," it has been
said, "but I regret that she does not as yet exist."

What does exist is a bewildering multiplicity of competing
"denominations," whose points of difference are to the plain man
obscure, but whose mutual separation is in his eyes an obvious scandal
and an offence both against charity and against common sense. Why
cannot they agree to sink their differences, and to unite upon the
broad basis of a common loyalty to Christ? To what purpose is this
overlapping and conflict? The reluctant tribute of the ancient
sceptic--"See how these Christians love one another"--has become the
modern worldling's cynical and familiar jibe; and when to the
spectacle of Christian disunion is added the observation that
professing Christians of all denominations appear to differ from other
men, for the most part, "solely in their opinions" and not in their
lives, the impulse to cry "A plague upon all your Churches" may seem
all but irresistible.

Yet the problem is not susceptible of any cheap or hasty solution.
Unity is the Church's goal; but the Church cannot arrive at unity by
mere elimination of differences. Agreement to differ is not unity: an
agreement to pretend that the differences were not there would not
even be honest. What is needed is a sympathetic study of the divergent
traditions and principles which lie behind existing differences, with
a view to discovering which are really differences of principle, and
which rest merely upon prejudice. Unity, when it comes, can only be
based upon mutual understanding and synthesis. The task will not be
easy, and the time is not yet.

Meanwhile the individual's first duty is to be loyal in the first
instance [Footnote: Of course in the last resort no loyalty is due to
any lesser authority than that of truth, wheresoever it is found and
whatsoever it turns out to be.] to the spiritual tradition and
discipline of the "denomination" to which he in fact belongs, unless
and until he is led to conclude that some other embodies a fuller and
more synthetic presentation of religious truth. It is a mistake for a
man to be content either to remain in ignorance of his own immediate
spiritual heritage or to refuse to try to understand what is
distinctive and vital in the religious heritage of others. Most fatal
of all is the attempt to combine personal loyalty to Christ with the
repudiation of organized Christianity as a whole. True loyalty to
Christ most certainly involves common religious fellowship upon the
basis of common membership in the people of GOD.

As a matter of fact, so soon as the various sects and denominations
into which modern Western Christianity is divided are seriously
examined, they are seen to fall into three main types or groups.
Standing by herself is the Church of Rome, venerable, august,
impressive in virtue of her unanimity, her coherence, her ordered
discipline, and her international position, representing exclusively
the ancient Catholic tradition, and making for herself exclusive
claims. At the opposite end of the scale there are the multitudinous
sects of Protestantism, differing mutually among themselves but
tending (as some observers think) to set less and less store by their
divergences and to develop towards some kind of loosely-knit
federation--a more or less united Evangelical Church upon an
exclusively Protestant basis. Between the two stands the Church of
England, reaching out a hand in both directions, presenting to the
superficial observer the appearance of a house divided against itself;
representing nevertheless, according to her true ideal, a real attempt
to synthesize the essentials of Catholicism with what is both true and
positive in the Protestant tradition.

Protestantism stands for the liberty of the individual, for freedom of
thought and of inquiry, for emphasis upon the importance of vital
personal religion, for the warning that "forms and ceremonies" are of
no value in themselves, but only in so far as they are the expression
and vehicle of the spirit. Protestantism proclaims the liberty of
Christian prophesying, the free and unimpeded access of every human
soul to the heavenly Father, the spiritual equality of all men in the
sight of GOD. The Protestant tradition is jealous for the evangelical
simplicity of the Gospel, and in general may be said to represent the
principle of democracy in religion.

Catholicism, on the other hand, bears witness to the glory of
Churchmanship, to the importance of corporate loyalty to the Christian
Society, to the value of sacramentalism, and the rich heritage of
ancient devotional traditions, of liturgical worship and ordered
ecclesiastical life. For Catholicism rites and sacraments are not
anomalies, strange "material" excrescences upon a religion otherwise
"spiritual." They are themselves channels and media of the Spirit's
operation, vehicles of life and power.

Catholicism is more inclusive than Protestantism, including, indeed,
some things which Protestants are apt to insist should be excluded.
The future would seem to lie neither with the negations of pure
Protestantism nor with a Catholicism wholly unreformed; but rather
with a liberalized Catholicism which shall do justice to the truth of
the Protestant witness. For the present the best opportunity for the
working out of such a liberalized Catholicism is to be found within
the Church of England: and it is from the point of view of an English
Churchman that the remainder of this book will be written.




CHAPTER IX

SACRAMENTS


It is sometimes asked whether the sacraments of the Christian Church
are two or more than two in number. The answer depends in part upon
how the term "sacrament" is defined. But the wisest teaching is that
which recognizes in particular sacraments--such as Baptism and the
Supper of the Lord--the operation of a general principle which runs
throughout all human experience, in things both sacred and profane. "I
have no soul," remarked a well-known preacher on a famous occasion, "I
have no soul, because I _am_ a soul: I _have_ a body." It would be
difficult to express more aptly the principle of sacraments, or--what
comes to the same thing--the true relationship of the material to the
spiritual order.

We are accustomed, in the world as we know it, to distinguish "spirit"
from "matter": and we are tempted, by the mere fact that we draw a
distinction between them, to think and speak at times as though spirit
and matter were necessarily opposed. This is a great mistake. Matter,
so far from being the opposite or the contradiction of spirit, is the
medium of its expression, the vehicle of its manifestation. Spirit and
matter are correlatives, but the ultimate reality of the world is
spiritual. It is the whole purpose and function of matter to express,
to embody, to incarnate, the Spirit. The preacher, therefore, was
quite right. "I _am_ a soul": that is, I am a personality, a spirit:
and to say that is to give expression to the fundamental truth of my
existence: I _am_ a soul, and I am _not_ a body. But "I _have_ a
body": that is, my personality is embodied or incarnate: I have a body
which serves as the vehicle or instrument of my life as a man here
upon earth: a body which is the organ of my spirit's self-expression
and the medium both of my life's experience and of my intercourse with
other men. I think, and my thoughts are mediated by movements of the
brain. I speak, and the movements of my vocal chords set up vibrations
and sound-waves which, impinging upon the nerves of another's ear,
affect in turn another's brain: and the process, regarded from the
point of view of the physiologist or the scientific observer, is a
physical process through and through: yet it mediates from my _mind_
to the mind of him who hears me a meaning which is wholly spiritual.

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