Chapter V: Preface (5)

The Collect goes on to pray “Graft in our hearts the love of Thy Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness.” The Name of God means the character of God, and if we are to love character we must see it, and we can see it in Jesus Christ and nowhere else. If you wish to love God, you must learn to love Jesus Christ. To love God is to love righteousness, truth, and goodness, and in Jesus Christ we see them in life and in human reality. Righteousness, goodness, truth, purity, grace, may be loved, indeed, in the abstract; but the love for them must be infinitely deepened if we see them concentrated in a living person, so that the love of them is identified with the love of Him. If, in fact, we would keep the love of these great things alive in our hearts, if we would continually deepen it, if we would have the eyes of our minds and hearts opened more and more, the supreme necessity is that we should learn more and more of Jesus Christ, live with Him by constant study of His deeds and words, and so open our souls to the impress of His grace and truth. The history of the world since He lived and died is the sufficient proof of this fact. The Christian Church, which is charged with the duty and the privilege of living in His spirit and working in His name, has, notwithstanding many failures and faults, held up before the world the highest standard of goodness and truth. There is no more conspicuous illustration of this influence of Christ and His Church than the fact that the noble Societies which, by their devoted care of the wounded, now mitigate the horrors of war, are called “Red Cross” Societies, and were founded and maintained in obedience to the spirit of Christ. Since Christ came, it is through Him that all these good things do come, and if we would enjoy them we must live and work in His light.

But this is far from being the sole means by which Christ is the source of all good things. He promised His disciples before He died, that He would send the Holy Spirit into the world Who should bring to their remembrance all things that He had told them, and should be to them and to their followers an adviser and comforter, such as He had Himself been while He was with them--Who should convince them of sin, of righteousness and judgment--teach them, that is, what sin is, and what righteousness is, and bring home to them the nature of the judgment of God. He formed them into a Society, to be a perpetual witness of Him to the world; and He established two ceremonies (which we call Sacraments) to be a perpetual pledge to His followers of His love and of His grace, and to be a special means by which that grace should be bestowed on them; so that the source of this Divine illumination and bounty is not merely Christ in the past, in His life on earth, as we read of Him in the words of the New Testament, but Christ living and working in His Church by means of those words, and by means of the Sacraments which testify of them and bring them home to every individual soul. The words of Christ and the Sacraments of Christ are means which can be seen and handled, by which the grace of God is manifested and conveyed to us.

Moreover, He has told us, as I have mentioned, that the Old Testament throughout, the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms, speak of Him, reveal His character and His Will. To the Jews, who had only the Old Testament, He said, “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me.” Combined, these are the visible, tangible, and audible instruments by which the “Lord of all power and might, the Author and Giver of all good things,” shines into our hearts and speaks to our inmost souls. There are, indeed, and always have been, other influences in the world by which goodness and truth are impressed upon us; and there are, and always have been, many gracious human influences by which they are upheld in our hearts and in the world at large; but these are all imperfect, and liable to perversion, in comparison with the influence of Jesus Christ and His Church and the Holy Scriptures; and we can never be sure of their being kept true and unperverted, except so far as they are brought to the test, and subjected to the influences, through the Person of Jesus Christ and of His words in the Holy Scriptures, of that Lord of all power and might from whom all good things do come.

These considerations may help to explain to us the source of the evils which have plunged Europe into its present convulsions and they will be the best guide to ourselves for our own action in the present and the future. It is, unhappily, an unquestionable matter of fact that a great part of Europe, and especially of Germany, has lost sight for a generation or two of that Sun of Righteousness, Who is the Author and Giver of all good things. They have rejected the authority of Christ, and denied the Divine reality of the revelation of God’s will in the Old Testament. The consequence is that they have deprived themselves of the influences of that Divine light, and have been setting up standards of right and wrong in national and individual life, which are inconsistent with it. Some of the best instincts of a strong and manly nation have consequently been perverted. National ideals have been pursued which are inconsistent with Christian civilization, and men have been driven by these perverted instincts and passions into the hell of war. We may be sure that Europe will not again enjoy permanent peace until, by the merciful correction of that Lord from Whom all good things do come, the love of His Name has again been grafted in their hearts, and the true religion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ revived and increased.

But it becomes us to apply to ourselves, very seriously, the same considerations. Must we not admit that among ourselves also a similar disregard of the only source from Whom all good things do come has been sadly and increasingly prevalent of late years, and perhaps for a generation or two past? What is the meaning of the acknowledged falling off in attendance at Divine Worship, of the increasing disuse of family Prayers, and of the daily reading of Scripture in the family, and of the less distinctively Christian tone of much of our literature and of our stage? Let us put it to our own consciences whether we live, as we ought, in the constant sense that it is only in the word of God and of Christ, as contained in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, in constant subjection to His word and to the influences of His Spirit, that we can be sure of finding the true light to our paths, and a rod and a staff to comfort us amidst the temptations and perplexities of the world? Do we live under the constant influences of the Scriptures, and of the ordinances and Sacraments of Christ? If not, it can only be because we do not believe the blessed assurances of this text, and of our Church’s Collect. Unless men and women are blinded for the time by the influence of some strong passions, or of some perverted teaching, could they fail to submit themselves day by day to the Lord, from Whom all good things do come, so that those good and gracious things may sink more and more deeply into their souls, mould their characters, and guide them more and more into the way that leadeth to everlasting life? Men will travel far to sunny lands for the healing influences of this world’s sun upon their bodily health. Can they fail, if they realize the blessing offered them day by day, to seek the companionship of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Father, for the sake of their spiritual health in this world and in the next?

Let us then, in the first place, be led back by these present trials and agonies to the only source of all truth and light for this world and the next, to the words which God spake “in sundry times and in divers manners,” in ages past, and above all, to those which He spake by His Son, the brightness of His glory and the express image of His Person; and if we feel their supreme preciousness for ourselves, let us do everything in our power to promote and spread those sacred words and that divine light throughout the world, as you are asked to help in doing this morning. Here lies the only hope for ourselves, the only hope for our people at large, for our nation and empire. Let us henceforth join with a new earnestness in the prayer of the Collect: “Graft in our hearts the love of Thy Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of Thy great mercy keep us in the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

THE NATIONAL IDEAL.

PREACHED IN CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, JANUARY 3rd, 1915.

“_Ye shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God hath commanded you, that ye may live, and that it may be well with you, and that ye may prolong your days in the land which ye shall possess._”--Deut. v. 33.

We have been summoned this evening by our King and by the Chief Pastor of our Church, to a Service of humble prayer and intercession to Almighty God on behalf of our Nation and Empire now engaged in war; and in the Form of Humble Prayer in which we have just joined there is an exhortation explaining and urging upon us the spirit in which that intercession should be made. In addressing you this evening I would draw special attention to one point in that exhortation. Before all else, we are told, we must remember that those who would receive good at the hands of God must go to Him in humility, with a due sense of their many faults and continual short-comings in His sight. In other words, a humble prayer must be before all else a prayer of humiliation. It is a principle which is impressed upon us every day in the Exhortation at the beginning of our prayers. “The Scripture,” we are told, “moveth us in sundry places to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickednesses; and that we should not dissemble nor cloke them before the face of Almighty God our Heavenly Father; but confess them with a humble, lowly, penitent and obedient heart; to the end that we may obtain forgiveness of the same, by his infinite goodness and mercy,” and we are surely bound, on an occasion like this, to take to heart the words which follow, viz., that “although we ought at all times humbly to acknowledge our sins before God: yet ought we most chiefly so to do, when we assemble and meet together” as we do to-day, to implore His special mercy in the greatest crisis which our nation and Empire has ever had to encounter. If every morning and evening ought to waken in us a humble, lowly, and penitent confession of our sins, surely an hour when, as a whole Nation, we are seeking God’s merciful and gracious help calls for still deeper and humbler confession of our sins.

There has been, I fear, some reluctance among us to yield ourselves to this penitent humiliation, and it will be well therefore to remind ourselves a little of the reasons there are for it. Now the first and most patent of all the reasons why we should recognize our sins and wickedness is the bare and ghastly fact of this war in itself. We are all distressed and grieved by it, and are all saying what a horrible thing it is that war--and such a war--should be possible in a Christian Europe. But what we should first of all realize is that it is a horrible exhibition of the sin and wickedness of human nature. Just contrast what Europe was a few months ago with the scenes that are now exhibited in Belgium, France, and Poland. A few months ago, Europe was a prosperous country, full of wealth, comfort, and enjoyment of all kinds. Its many millions were engaged in quiet occupations which employed their energies happily. “They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded.” Fathers and mothers and children, families young and old, cities and villages were in the enjoyment of plenty, and full of hope for the future. God had prospered them, and there was much hope that the wants and sufferings which were still the lot of too many among them might be gradually removed by benevolent legislation and mutual help; but, on a sudden, at a few days’ notice, this scene of happiness, and hope, and well-being is overthrown as if by an earthquake. Some parts of it are overwhelmed by “blood and fire and vapour of smoke,” and the whole of it, from the extreme west of our Isles to the East of Russia, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean is transformed into a vast Barracks, in which sons and fathers are torn from their families, leaving behind them too often the lamentation and mourning of wives and mothers, weeping for those who are not. The language of the prophet is not too strong for the occasion “The land was a Garden of Eden and is become a desolate wilderness.” I ask you, is not such a sudden and disastrous transformation the most clear proof we could have of some deadly evil being at work in human nature? What else, but some deadly, inherent evil could in a few weeks or days blot out all peace in Europe and let loose a sort of hell in human society and human life. We were proud of the growth of civilization, and were constructing all sorts of schemes of social and political development, when, on a sudden, our civilization explodes, and we find ourselves surrounded by its wrecks in fire, and ruin, and carnage, and hatred, and violence of all kinds. All this explosive force of evil must have been there. There must have been corruptions, and sins, and vices at work which we did not surmise; and fair as the life of Europe seemed outside, it must really have been in some respects rotten to the core. This war has not been imposed upon Europe from without, as it was when the great barbarian invaders poured over it fourteen hundred years ago. All this horror, and misery, and bloodshed, and ruin has sprung out of the materials--out of the civilized materials--provided by Europe itself, and it must be some internal disease, some original vice and corruption which is revealed to us in the ghastly spectacle which is now presented by so large a part of the most favoured lands of the world.

Some one perhaps may be tempted to say that this indictment applies to the countries which have provoked this war, but not to Europe at large; but that, I am sure, would be, if not unjust to those countries, at least not candid with respect to ourselves. Is it not the case that, to an increasing extent of late years, the civilization of Europe has been united, and marked in the main by similar characteristics? Have not the literature and many of the ideas of Germany penetrated the literature and the thought of France and England? Has there been conspicuous among us any protest against the habits of thought, the tendencies of religious belief or unbelief, the luxuries if not the waste of living, which have prevailed elsewhere? If the life and civilization of Europe has ended in this great catastrophe, can we honestly stand aside and claim to be free of all blame, and to have had no share in the tendencies and evils which have produced so horrible a result? We shrink from them in their full development, we denounce them, we resolve to fight against them to the last, and to re-establish sounder and more Christian principles of public and social life, but dare we say that we have not dallied with them? Can we honestly claim to have repudiated them at their source, so as to be free from any part or lot in sins and errors which have led to so hideous a result? I will not try to drive such painful questions further home. I will only say that if we are honest with ourselves, we shall not venture to adopt the Pharisee’s attitude and exclaim, on a day like this, “God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are, or even as this German.” In a word, we have had some share, at all events, in the tone of thought and life which has prevailed in Europe for the last two generations, and we shall be more true to God and to ourselves if we are content, on this day of humble confession and intercession, simply to exclaim “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

But confession of sin should be but the first step to amendment of life, and for the purpose of that amendment we must endeavour to realize more particularly what the sins are, which in God’s righteous judgment have brought this misery upon us. Many of them we have acknowledged in the Litany in which we have joined. We have prayed for deliverance from those sins wherein as a nation we have grieved God. We have confessed to pride, boasting, and self-sufficiency, to covetousness, worldliness, and indifference to the needs of others, to drunkenness, impurity, and all manner of self-indulgence, to trusting in our own strength and forgetting God, to want of faith in God, to want of love to Him and to one another, to a want of charity towards all men. These are the sins charged upon us by the chief pastors of our Church, and they constitute surely a grievous catalogue of vices, sufficient in themselves to account for the failure of the civilization of which we form a part, and to require us to humiliate ourselves very deeply before God. We are called upon by the Archbishops not merely to pray, as we do in our daily Litany, against those evils, but to acknowledge that they are sins wherein, as a nation, we have grieved God. Now it must be left to our individual consciences to apply those grievous confessions to our own hearts and lives. Of some of them, perhaps, we shall all acknowledge ourselves to have been guilty; and we are bound to put it earnestly to our hearts and consciences how far we have individually been guilty of them. But it is not for the preacher, who is deeply sensible of his own sins, to press such charges upon others. I would rather adopt this evening the more gracious, and, I hope, more helpful course of reminding you of the one supreme and sufficient method by which all such sins, whatever they may have been, may be overcome, and may be averted for the future.

It is the method and the obligation impressed upon us in the text by the great Law Giver of Israel when he was laying the foundation of the Jewish nation. It is instructive to remember that the discourses of Moses recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy are described as having for their first and immediate object to lay down the principles on which the Jewish people could realize the great purpose which God had in view for them, and could become a strong and prosperous nation. “These,” said Moses, in the verses following the text, “are the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it: that thou mightest fear the Lord Thy God, to keep all His Statutes and His Commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. Hear, therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily.” And then he proceeds to sum up those statutes and judgments in the momentous words which Our Lord Himself selected as the first and great commandment of the Law, “Hear O Israel,” said Moses, “The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” That, in the words of the book in which our Saviour sought the great principles of His own life, and which He quoted again and again as laying down eternal truths--that is the great principle on which a sound moral, religious, and secure national life must be founded--the principle of loving the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our might. The God Whom the people of Israel were thus called on to love with all their heart, soul, and might, was the God Who had delivered them out of Egypt and its bondage, and Who was about to establish them in the land of Canaan by wonders and signs which could only have been wrought by His supreme power, and Who, in the most solemn and awful circumstances, had declared at Mount Sinai the cardinal laws of social and national life. The God to whom our Saviour applies the principle was His Own Father, the God Who is seen in His Own words and in His ministry, Whose will is so graciously explained to us in the records of His life and in the words of His Apostles, and Whose character, therefore, and will are clearly and distinctly revealed. Our Lord, when He adopted these words of Moses, declared to the whole world that in order that they may live, and that it may be well with them, and that they may prolong their days in the peace and happiness He designed for them, the one supreme condition is that they should love the God Who is His Father, with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. If they do that, if the whole of their lives is submitted to His will as revealed by His Son Jesus Christ, then they will have a supreme authority, a secure guide in their personal, their family, and their social life; and He adds to the assurance of Moses the promise of His Holy Spirit to interpret His will to them and to assist them in their struggles. That is the one and the sufficient condition for realizing here on earth the blessing of the peace which God designs for us. Life animated by that love would secure it--and that alone.

Now the one question it would be well for us to put to ourselves on this day of confession and self amendment is whether it has not been the chief wickedness, and the growing wickedness, of Europe at large, and of ourselves in particular, to fail to make this love of God, this submission to God and to Christ, the one supreme principle and inspiration of our whole life, private, social, and public. I would ask whether religion, as people generally understand it, has not been allowed to become of late years, in an increasing degree, too much of a private and personal matter--a matter of individual preference, a part of a man’s character which could hardly be treated as an absolute duty, so that a man who did not live a religious life was, as it were, within his rights, and that he could not be treated as neglecting a supreme obligation? Has it not been our temptation, as a nation, to legislate without a supreme regard to this first duty, so as even to allow our children and the children of the nation to be educated without supreme regard to it? Has not attendance at Divine Worship been grievously neglected of late years as a consequence of this growing decay of the love of God? Have not the words of our Lord and His Apostles been losing the authority which they used to possess among us, and which they must possess with all who believe them to be a revelation of the supreme Will of Almighty God? As a consequence of all this, has there not been a grievous loss among us of the sense that we are all under the judgment of God, that we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, to give account of all that we have done in the body, good or bad? And has not the most momentous of all controlling influences been thus grievously weakened in our own lives? It is enough for one like myself to suggest the question. It needs a prophet with a Divine Mission to drive it home.

But the concluding considerations I would urge from such a review of the condition of the Christian world, and of our own world at this moment, is that if we would overcome the sins which have undermined the peace of Europe and brought about the present awful convulsion, if we would restore and re-establish among ourselves those principles of Christian Faith which alone can make the nation great and happy, and keep it so, the one effectual means which includes all others, the one means which would at once enable us to know what we ought to do and would provide us with the grace and power to fulfil it, is to deepen in our own souls, and to revive all around us and among our people at large, that love of God in Jesus Christ which reveals to us “whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report,” which gives us a supreme and eternal motive for following it, and which ensures us the power to overcome the terrible temptations which beset us. Let us go home from these prayers, not merely resolved to amend one particular fault, or to combat one particular evil of our day, but surrendering ourselves more absolutely than we have yet done to the will and love of God our Saviour, in all things bringing the revelation of His will, in our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Scriptures, to bear more than ever on our private, social and public duties. In short, in the words of the text, let us resolve, as the supreme law of our life, to walk in the ways which the Lord our God and our Saviour Jesus Christ have commanded us, that it may be well with us, and that we may prolong our days in the country and the Empire in which His providence and His mercy have placed and supported us.

RELIGION AND THE WAR.

FROM “THE RECORD,” SEPTEMBER 23, 1916

The way in which this war is stirring the deepest thoughts of our people has received a striking illustration during the last three weeks in a discussion in the pages of the _Westminster Gazette_. In that able journal religious questions have not ordinarily so congenial a home as in the _Spectator_, and it is the more illustrative of the tone of the public mind that, since August 28th last, hardly a day has passed without the appearance in its columns of letters of great earnestness on the subject of “Religion and the War.” The discussion was opened on that day by an anonymous article under that title, which opened with these words: “‘Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.’ The words of the Prophet come back to me when I hear the preachers trying to reconcile the terrors and horrors of this war with the idea of an all-powerful and all-beneficent Creator”; and around the difficulty thus started the whole discussion has turned. The writer says he has listened, during the last few months, to many sermons, and read many of the articles and pamphlets and books “in which Divines and Philosophers have endeavoured to plumb these deep waters,” and he states briefly the principal arguments that he has found in them. It is not necessary for the present purpose to quote them all, especially as I think the writer has been unfortunate in his pulpits and his books. Several of the pleas he quotes are mere platitudes, such as “that the ways of God are unfathomable, and that one must walk in faith and believe that things are somehow good.” The point to which he reduces the question is that under the strain of our present experience “people see suddenly that the doctrine of an omnipotent and all-loving Creator, as commonly expounded in pulpits, is at war with the plain facts of the visible world.” To this problem all the subsequent letters are directed, and they afford impressive and painful evidence of the distress with which many men and women seem to be groping in perplexity. There are many striking and touching observations in them, and sometimes, as by Lord Halifax, the central principles of the Christian Faith are applied to the problem. But it is disappointing to find that it is not in the Bible or in the Christian Faith that most of the writers seek for a solution of their difficulties. Too many of them seek refuge in philosophical discussions of matters like the Divine omnipotence and the abstract problem of evil. The first writer comes to the conclusion that “theology remains tangled up in its own conception of omnipotence--which brings us at best to the conclusion that God has so limited His own power as to permit the existence of evil, and at worst invests Him with attributes which are the reverse of benevolent,” and to this philosophical question writer after writer returns. The consequence is that the light which is thrown upon the whole problem by the Scriptures and by our Lord Himself is obscured in a maze of philosophy and words.

What, then, has revelation to say upon the subject? The first thing, and the most important, which it has to say is almost ignored in the discussion. As has been said, the problem propounded by the opening writer is to reconcile the terrors and horrors of this war with the idea of an “all-powerful and all-beneficent Creator.” From the point of view of the Bible, of the Psalms in particular, and of our Lord, that description of the Creator leaves out His most important attribute. If we add as the Psalms invariably imply, “an all-righteous Creator,” an element is introduced into the problem which raises entirely fresh considerations. If you merely ask the question how the pain and misery of the war are compatible with perfect beneficence and perfect omnipotence, the answer is obscure. But if you introduce the question of the compatibility of the permission of such suffering with perfect righteousness combined with benevolence, the problem is radically altered. God is dealing with a creature who is not merely capable of pain and happiness, but of a righteousness and a truth like His own; and to bestow upon this creature happiness without righteousness would be inconsistent with the main object for which he was created, and such an idea would, in fact, involve a contradiction in terms. Once recognize that there is no happiness possible for man except in the harmony of his nature with the Divine righteousness, and it is evident that the main object of an all-benevolent Creator must be to produce this righteousness in man, and to repress and extirpate, by whatever means may be requisite, the evil which is incompatible with his happiness.

Now the Scriptures, from the third chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation, exhibit God as employing suffering as a remedy for unrighteousness or sin. It is a punishment, but it is also a cure. It may be such suffering as is involved in the condemnation of man to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow, instead of being able to “put forth his hand” and seize whatever he craved without effort. It may be the severer remedy of the punishment of death, or the bitter surgery of war. But what the Scriptures reveal is that all the suffering of life, slight or severe, is instituted by God, and employed by Him, to promote and uphold that righteousness in man which can alone qualify him for that harmony with God, which is the happiness for which he was intended. The free will, whatever its degree, with which man has been endowed, must be educated by the suffering which follows its misuse, as well as by the satisfaction which is conferred by its right use. Accordingly it appears to be the cardinal fact of man’s constitution that unrighteousness throws his nature into disorder, and brings a similar disorder into his whole social condition. Families, societies, and nations can only realize their true purposes, they can only exhibit a true order, when the individuals of whom they are composed are righteous, and are thus qualified for their true functions. Let the individuals or component parts become disordered, and the whole society must be disordered, and involved in confusion and perhaps ruin. I have sometimes imagined the case of a visitor introduced to some vast machine, working under immense pressure, and being told by his guide that unfortunately every part of the machine was more or less imperfect, and some of the parts almost rotten. Would the visitor care to expose himself long to the risks of the inevitable explosion? But that is exactly the case of every human society, small or great. All the individuals of which it is composed are grievously imperfect, and some of them are positively vicious. Is it any wonder that it develops antagonistic forces within itself, and that sooner or later it bursts into a great conflagration--the conflagration of a revolution or a war? God, in fact, by this constitution of mankind, has provided that unrighteousness shall punish itself. He does not intervene, as a rule, to inflict a special punishment. He leaves men to work out their own punishment, and to realize from it that there was some corruption at work in their lives.

If it be asked whether an all-powerful and all-beneficent Being could not have provided some less distressing method of education, the first reply may be that of Bishop Butler--that it is foolish for such creatures as we are to try to devise schemes for the construction of better worlds than the one we live in. But the Gospel has provided an answer which removes all temptation to such folly. It reveals the momentous fact that “God, of His tender mercy, did give His Only Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption.” There is no need to enter upon theories of the Atonement in order to appreciate the bearing of that solemn truth upon this problem. Christ, Who lived and died for our redemption, found it necessary for that purpose to submit to the sufferings of the Cross--sufferings at least as bitter as any that are inflicted in war--and He said He submitted to them because it was the will of His Father--of the God Whom He called “His Father and our Father, His God and our God”--that He should do so. It is one satisfactory feature in this discussion that the moral authority of Christ is generally recognized; but it is very little noticed, if at all, that that authority declares, both by repeated assurances, and by the most touching personal experience, that the infliction and endurance of death and agony are compatible with the most perfect relations of love and tenderness between God and the Sufferer.

Our Lord has thus given His blessed personal sanction to what, after all, has been the instinctive belief of human nature, even before He lived and died. Cicero, for instance, in his _De Officiis_, states it more than once as a cardinal principle of human life and duty that it is more contrary to nature to do or allow unjust acts than to endure any suffering, loss, or even death. But the Cross of Christ elevates this inspiring and consoling conviction to the height of a Divine revelation and consolation; and to those who realize it, the main practical problem of the sufferings of war is solved. All such suffering is God’s remedy for moral evil, and is allowed because it is the only means by which man’s nature can be purified and renovated. From this point of view it becomes quite unnecessary to perplex ourselves with philosophical questions respecting omnipotence. When God has once established a constitution, either for nature or for human nature, He has limited His Own action by the laws of that constitution so long as it lasts. He can, indeed, interfere with it for good cause; and He has done so, both in nature and human nature, by miracle. But to interpose by miracle to avert all distressing consequences of those laws would be to abolish the constitution altogether, and this He will not do until the present dispensation is brought to an end. For the present, God is governing and educating men by means of the laws which He has established, both physical and moral, and He leaves men to take the consequences of their moral violations of those laws, no less than of their physical.

The example of Christ, in His submission, should be enough to prevent any man “replying against God” for this constitution of things. The reflection which should be aroused in our minds by such “terrors and horrors” as those of this war is, on these principles, that there must have been something terribly false and vicious in the condition of the nations of Europe to produce so awful a manifestation of the consequences of evil. They are the consequences which, under the laws of human nature established by God, inevitably follow the prevalence of unrighteousness; and for that reason they are justly described in Scripture as the manifestation of “the wrath of God” against evil. On the principles of the Christian Faith, in short, there is one certainty amidst all our perplexities in this matter. The war and all its miseries reveal to us the fact that great injustices and moral evils were prevalent in Europe, and the greatness of the misery may be taken as a measure of the greatness of the evil. We think we see these moral and religious evils in the state of our enemies, and particularly in the state of German life and religion. But we shall make a fatal mistake if we allow ourselves to think that all the evil and unrighteousness has been on their side. If we are candid with ourselves, we shall recognize that a disregard of God and Christ, a grievous disbelief in the revelation and the guidance they have given us, and a consequent decay of religion, and looseness of moral obligations of all kinds, have been making way among us, and have affected not only our private life, but our standards of public action. We are discovering more clearly, day by day, that if we are to meet the terrible dangers by which we are threatened, we must revive, both in public and in private, the standards of Christian principle which we formally acknowledge--self-denial, self-control, truth in word and deed, the fear of God, and the love of Christ; and in proportion as we succeed in these efforts shall we find that the problems of “religion and the war” are much simpler, better understood by our fathers, and more easily grasped by ourselves, than is supposed in the discussion from which we started.

PRAYER FOR THE DEAD.

FROM “THE RECORD,” NOVEMBER 20, 1914

The question of Prayers for the Dead, and particularly of the adoption of such prayers in the public services of the Church, has for some time been pressed forward among us, and under the strain of the distressing bereavements of the present war it is likely to become urgent. An attempt has more than once been made at St. Paul’s to celebrate what would have been a formal _Requiem_ for those who have fallen; and though it has not yet been fully successful, it may very likely be renewed. In the forms issued by authority, both at the time of the Boer War and during the present war, supplications on behalf of the dead have been introduced, which provoked a gentle remonstrance from even so moderate and tolerant an Evangelical as the Bishop of Durham. Other forms will no doubt be prepared by authority for use at the national intercession on the first Sunday of next year; and in many quarters much anxiety is felt lest the introduction of such supplications should be further extended.

This anxiety will not be lessened by the deliberate observations on the subject which were made by the Primate, in a sermon he preached at All Hallows, Barking, on All Souls’ Day, which is fully reported in the _Guardian_ of November 5. He said that “we are not forgetful of the long and mischievous abuse of the devotion” of praying for the dead “in the later mediæval days, until,” as Dr. Mason said “it might almost be said that the main object of religion in the fifteenth century had been to deliver souls out of the ever-heightening horrors of Purgatory, and to ensure the living against incurring them.” “We understand,” said the Archbishop, “why repression of these mischiefs, prevention of these perils, took in our formularies and our Prayer Books so stern, so drastic, a character that no explicit Prayers for the departed at all were admitted into the public language of the Church, and people were taught to rely, in those public offices, upon that alone which can be definitely proved by Holy Scripture. I have no word of censure for those men--Laud and Andrewes, remember, were among them--who thus handled the difficulties which they had to face. But,” the Archbishop significantly proceeded, “surely now there is place for a gentler recognition of the instinctive, the natural, the loyal craving of the bereaved; and the abuses of the chantry system and the extravagances of Tetzel need not now, nearly four centuries afterwards, thwart or hinder the reverent, the absolutely trustful, prayer of a wounded spirit, who feels it natural and helpful to pray for him whom we shall not greet on earth again, but who, in his Father’s loving keeping, still lives, and, as we may surely believe, still grows from strength to strength in truer purity and in deeper reverence and love. I must not dwell on that to-day, but in our thought of what our College of Clergy can do, and has already done, ‘for the perfecting of the Saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,’ I do not like to pass unmentioned a task of wise teaching and of careful guidance, which at a time of such special opportunity and need may appropriately be ours.”

These, I think it must be felt, are very significant words. They indicate clearly that, in the mind of the Archbishop’s advisers, the present time of bereavement and distress affords an opportunity for authorizing the use of Prayers for the Departed, which go beyond “that alone which can be definitely proved by Holy Scripture.” Now, I hope that, without any lack of respect, I may say at once that, while there are, as I believe, many members of the Evangelical School to whom some modification in the language of our Prayer Book in reference to the departed would not be unwelcome, we should be unanimous in deprecating in the strongest manner the introduction of anything beyond “that which can be definitely proved by Holy Scripture”--meaning, as no doubt the Archbishop does, that which can be proved to be conformable to Holy Scripture. Supplications which are not strictly conformable to Holy Scripture may be “natural”--too natural--“instinctive,” and prompted by a “loyal craving.” But the very place and function of Holy Scripture is to direct and control our natural and instinctive cravings; and to allow such natural and instinctive cravings to carry us beyond the limits which a strict adherence to Holy Scripture would prescribe, is to abandon an essential principle of the Church of England, and to forsake the sure guidance which the revelation of the Gospel affords us.

This, in fact, is the very source of the superstitions by which the worship of God has been corrupted in the Church of Rome. There is no better illustration of this danger than is afforded by those abuses in connection with the belief in Purgatory, which the Archbishop so severely denounces. The Roman system of Prayers for the Dead did not originally rise from the doctrine of Purgatory, though in their extreme form they were based on that doctrine. But, historically, the doctrine of Purgatory was developed out of an undue and unscriptural indulgence of Prayers for the Dead; and in so far as natural instincts are allowed at the present day to dictate any such unscriptural indulgence, a tendency will again be encouraged towards a belief in some form of Purgatory. The Archbishop asks whether we need be afraid of the abuses of four centuries ago. But it is not a question of the circumstances of four centuries ago; it is a question of the dangers of human nature in every century, and not least in a century like the present, when there prevails in the Church an avowed drift towards the errors against which, as the Archbishop says, even Laud and Andrewes thought it necessary to be on their guard. The condition of the departed is a matter on which nature can tell us nothing. Our whole knowledge respecting it, all our hopes respecting it, are derived from the revelations of our Lord and His Apostles in the New Testament; and if we wish our prayers in relation to the dead to be in accordance with truth, and to be acceptable to God, we have more reason on this subject than on any other “to rely in our public offices upon that alone which can be proved by Holy Scripture.”

This is so cardinal a principle of our Church that I cannot but feel confident that it is by an inadvertence, if language is used by any persons in authority which seems to imply a disregard of it. I apprehend that what it really means is that our Reformers excluded from our Prayer Book forms of Prayer for the Dead which were in use in the primitive Church; and that an appeal is being made to that primitive example as an authority for their reintroduction. Now, I fully admit that primitive practice has a _prima-facie_ claim to favourable consideration; and, as I have urged for years, if that principle were only acted upon, the Romish practices which are being forced upon our Church by the ritualistic party would be at once condemned. What, then, let us ask, were the Prayers for the Dead which were in use in the primitive Church? The description of them given by Bingham in his account of the ceremonies at the interment of Christians in the ancient Church (vol. viii., Oxford edition, p. 151) is in perfect harmony with that of Field and Ussher, and will not, I think, be questioned. At the interment, as at the Communion Service, “a solemn commemoration was made of the dead in general, and prayers offered to God for them--some Eucharistical, by way of thanksgiving for their deliverance out of this world’s afflictions, and others by way of intercession that God would receive their souls to the place of rest and happiness, that He would pardon their human failures, and not impute to them the sins of daily incursion, which in the best men are remainders of natural frailty and corruption; that He would increase their happiness, and finally bring them to a perfect consummation with all His Saints by a glorious resurrection.” The spirit and purpose of these prayers is illuminated by an observation of Archbishop Ussher (_Answer to a Jesuit_, chapter vii): “In these and other prayers of the like kind we may descry evident footsteps of the primary intention of the Church in such supplications for the dead, which was, that the whole man, not the soul separated only, might receive public remission of sins and a solemn acquittal in the judgment of that Great Day, and so obtain a full escape from all the consequences of sin, _the last enemy being now destroyed, and death swallowed up in victory_, and a perfect consummation of bliss and happiness. All which are comprised in that short prayer of St. Paul for Onesiphorus, though made for him while he was alive: _The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day_.”

In other words, all these prayers are for those mercies and blessings which are revealed and promised in Holy Scripture, and for them alone. They are not prayers for any alteration in the condition of the Christian soul during the mysterious period between death and the Resurrection, respecting which very various opinions have been held by the Fathers of the Church. They are simply prayers for the fulfilment, especially at the Day of the Resurrection, of those promises of justification or acquittal, and of final glory in body and soul, which are definitely given us in the New Testament. The objection has been raised that of the fulfilment of these promises we have certain assurance, and that therefore we need not pray for them. But, as Ussher and Field abundantly show, this objection is based upon a serious misconception of the nature of prayer. The ancient Church, in accordance with the whole spirit of the Scriptures, realized the privilege of receiving everything from God in the nature of a gift, and therefore prayed to Him for the very things He had most surely promised. It is in that gracious childlike spirit that these supplications for the Christian dead were made in primitive Christian times; and though that spirit has become, unhappily, somewhat obscured among us, yet no one can use the petition “Thy Kingdom come” without being sensible that he is praying for a blessing which is most certain. For these prayers of the early Church, therefore, there was a full warrant in Holy Scripture, and there is no occasion to appeal to any other authority for them.

Why, then, it will be asked, should they not be used in the Church of England? The first and chief answer is that, in substance, they are used. In the Burial Service we pray “that it may please Thee shortly to accomplish the number of Thine elect and to hasten Thy kingdom that we, with all those that are departed in the true faith of Thy Holy Name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss in Thy eternal and everlasting glory.” That is a prayer in the very spirit described by Bingham and Ussher as that of the primitive Church. Nor can I interpret in any less comprehensive sense the prayer in our Communion Service, “that we and all Thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of His passion.” Field’s statement (vol. ii., Cambridge edition, p. 97) is fully justified by these prayers. “Touching Prayer for the Dead, it is well known that Protestants do not simply condemn all prayer in this kind; for they pray for the Resurrection, public acquittal in the Day of Judgment, and the perfect consummation and bliss of them that rest in the Lord, and the perfecting of whatsoever is yet wanting in them.”