'I Believe' and other essays Part 1

'I Believe' and other essays.

by Cyril Arthur Edward Ranger Gull and Guy Thorne.

DEDICATION

To F. V. WHITE, ESQUIRE.

MY DEAR WHITE,

The publication of this book is a business arrangement between you and me. Its dedication however has nothing to do with the relations of author and publisher in those capacities, but is merely an expression of friendship and esteem. This then is to remind you of pleasant hours we have spent together on the other side of the channel, in your house at London, and my house in Kent.

Yours ever sincerely,

GUY THORNE.

"I BELIEVE"

I

"I BELIEVE"

"_Mult.i.tudes, mult.i.tudes in the valley of decision_."

When I was a boy I made an occasional invasion of my father's study, and in the absence of more congenial matter tried to extract some amus.e.m.e.nt from the shelves devoted to Christian apologetics. At any rate the pictures of the portly divines, which sometimes prefaced their polemics, interested me, and I was sometimes allured to read a few pages of their scripture. I remember that I enjoyed the sub-acid flavour of Bishop Butler's advertis.e.m.e.nt, prefixed to the First Edition of his _a.n.a.logy_, at an early age, and I have thought lately that in certain circles one hundred and seventy years have not greatly modified the mental att.i.tude.

Hear what the Rector of Stanhope who, as Horace Walpole said, was shortly to be "Wafted to the see of Durham in a cloud of metaphysics,"

says about his literary contemporaries--

"It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted, by many persons that Christianity is not so much as a subject for inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fict.i.tious, and accordingly they treat it as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people of discernment, and nothing remained but to set it up as a princ.i.p.al subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were, by way of reprisals for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world."

Perhaps the difference between the times of George the Second and Edward the Seventh may be best discerned in the status and calibre of the popular penmen who in either age have found, or furnished amus.e.m.e.nt in a tilt against the Catholic Faith.

The man in the street, as we know him, did not exist in the eighteenth century. He is the predominant person to-day, and he requires the services of able authors to a.s.sure him of immunity, when he is inclined to frolic away from chast.i.ty or integrity, much as did the county members who pocketed the bribes of Sir Robert Walpole and prated of patriotism.

Fortunately for society the man in the street is a very decent fellow, and generally finds out before long that Wisdom's ways are ways of pleasantness. A man may enjoy posing as an agnostic when he wants an excuse for--as the negro said--"doing what he dam please," but when he takes to himself a wife, and children are born to him, a certain anxiety as to the continuity and perpetuation of these relationships begins to show itself. A man who has lost a little child, or waited in agonizing suspense to hear the physician's verdict, when sickness overshadows his home, discovers that he needs something beyond negations, something that will bring life and immortality to light again within his soul.

Moreover, the man in the street finds it necessary to come to some decision on other problems of existence. He is a citizen and must needs exercise his enfranchis.e.m.e.nt and give his vote at an election now and again. He must help to decide whether the State shall ignore religion and establish a system of ethical education, of which the ultimate sanction is social convenience, or maintain the thesis that Creed and Character are mutually inter-dependent.

As he pays his poor rate wrathfully, or with resignation, its annual increase reminds him of the necessity of curing or eliminating the unfit. When he reads of Belgian and Prussian colonial enterprise, or ponders on the perplexing problem of the Black Belt which the Southern States must solve, he is compelled to consider whether it is true that "G.o.d has made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth," or whether this shall be accounted as another of the delusions of Saul of Tarsus whom Governor Festus found to be mad.

Indeed, our friend, the man in the street, when he becomes a family man, without any pretensions to be a man of family, very often finds himself face to face with other problems. Shall he simply sing with the Psalmist "Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so are the young children. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them," or shall he be guided by the gloss of a modern interpreter who maintains that the oriental quiver was designed to hold but two or three arrows at most?

Even when the plain man confines his interests to his business and seeks relaxations in "sport" alone, endeavouring to evade the puzzles of politics and avoid all theologized inquiry, he cannot escape from ethical consideration. Professionalism in athletics and questions of betting and bribery contend with his conviction that there is something which enn.o.bles man in running and striving for mastery, and it is futile to curse the bookmaker when his clients are so many, his occupation so lucrative.

The average man gets little guidance from pulpit or press. It is dull work reading sermons, even if sermons came in his way. From time to time some eloquent bishop or canon is reported in the Monday morning papers, but journalists know that the publication of a summary with, in the case of a few of the preachers, some epigrams or denunciations, is all that can be permitted or expected. These may arouse the attention to the existence of evils, but give no guiding principle for their cure.

The habit of attendance at some place of worship is easily abandoned in the days of bachelor freedom, and rarely regained in maturer years.

Men for the most part find the preacher unconvincing. The usual audience does not desire discussion of difficulties. When the honest instinct of devotional worship is gratified by common praise and prayer, the people who regularly go to church, elderly, and orthodox in their own way, resent a demand upon their intellectual exertion, and the Northern farmer of Tennyson hardly misrepresents them, "I thought he said what he ought to ha' said and I comed away." The great Nonconformist societies may, in some congregations, give a larger lat.i.tude to the preacher, but his freedom is rather in the direction of divinity than of ethics. Mr. Rockefeller is a prominent pillar of Protestantism in the States, and Mr. Jabez Balfour, in another congregation at Croydon, apparently knew no qualms of conscience before his actual conviction, which was public, of sin.

There is an old proverb which tells us that "A man is either a fool or a philosopher at forty"--and, though proverbs are often only venerable prejudices in disguise, it is true that a man, who has attained his eighth l.u.s.trum and is of average ability, generally has come to certain definite conclusions as to the rudimentary laws of health. He knows enough about his body to avoid fatal errors in diet, and has learned the necessity of exercise and fresh air. But when he is called upon, as a member of the body politic, to decide questions of ethics on which the sanitation of society must depend, he feels himself at a loss. To many people it will seem a hard saying that a man must be either a fool or a philosopher at forty, but long ere he has reached that age he will have encountered problems of philosophy which it is impossible to shirk if he is to do his duty as a free man.

St. Paul, it is true, when writing to a Christian Community in Asia Minor, bids them "beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy."

And the unfortunate habit of Bible Christians, of tearing a text from a treatise and making it into a precept, has thrown a sort of discredit upon philosophic thinking, while the ma.s.s of mankind will always prefer rules to principles of conduct. But in vain do we clamour against intellectual complications which are the inevitable endowment of these days. Life is necessarily intricate, subtle and anxious, and Democracy has made of each man a ruler and governor in his degree. Is it possible to point to a single principle which shall be a motive and a standard of duty, which shall establish a synthetic method after the ruthless a.n.a.lysis of the later Victorian days?

How searching that a.n.a.lysis has been! Fifty years ago the man in the street might rarely read the Bible, but he had a tolerably a.s.sured conviction that the Bible was infallible, however resolutely he might refuse its interpretation by an infallible church.

Then

"...the Essays and Reviews debate Begins to tell on the public mind, and Colenso's views have weight."

Plain people were taught to look on the Old Testament as a library of Hebrew literature containing not only poetry and history, but romance.

When Colenso's book first appeared, Matthew Arnold deprecated its publication since it brought criticisms familiar to men of culture before the notice of the public, without considering how the beliefs of "the vulgar" might be upset.

The supercilious apostle of "sweetness and light," himself contributed largely in later years to the general confusion in men's minds, and the New Testament criticism has been introduced to the general public by Mr. Arnold's accomplished niece.

Our friend, the man in the street, was all unprepared!

What had he ever been taught of theology, the Divine word to man? In his school-days, if his father was an income tax payer he probably had a weekly lesson in "Divinity," when he construed a few verses of the Gospels in the Greek Testament, and showed up to his master, now and then, a map of the journeying of the Apostle Paul in Asia Minor and Eastern Europe. If his father expected him to be confirmed, in due course, some lessons in the catechism were added for his benefit, but prudent pedagogues took care not to endanger the popularity of a school, whether public or private, by any definite teaching which might be accused of being dogmatic. The head-master was probably a person of unsuspected orthodoxy, with a possible deanery or bishopric in view for his days of superannuation. His sermons in chapel used to set a fine standard of conduct before the boys, and were gracefully free from all mention of controversial questions. In due course they were published with the t.i.tle _Sermons at Yarrow_, and enterprising parents turning over their pages would find little to criticize and much to admire. The Cross, if presented at all in these publications, was so bespangled with rhetorical jewellery that "Jews might kiss and Infidels adore." And the children of Israel as public-school boys were never painfully conscious of any great difference between themselves and their baptized companions. But unfortunately only a few of the boys came under the civilizing instruction of the Chief. Bright young athletes from Oxford and Cambridge, lured into the ranks of pedagogy by their love of football and cricket, were the a.s.sistant-masters. A regular salary with holiday for a fourth of the year, the prospect of early marriage, and a remunerative boarding-house, attracted them to a pleasant position, and they had no wish to rebel against the time-table which made them teachers of "Divinity" for at least one hour in the week. All educated people should be tolerably familiar with a book so largely used in quotation as the Bible, and the succession of the Kings of Israel and Judah could be used in strengthening the memory, whilst the stories of "Jehu and those other Johnnies you know" were by no means devoid of picturesque incident.

Greek Testament could also be made useful in the acquisition of a vocabulary, or in a lesson showing the difference between cla.s.sical and vernacular Greek. "Of course we must leave the application of these studies to conduct to _Home influence_," the headmasters would blandly observe, and between parent and pedagogue the teaching of the Christian Faith fell neglected to the ground.

What chance had the boys so brought up, of forming any conception of the essential truths of Religion? A superficial acquaintance with the stories of Hebrew history, a perfunctory attendance at chapel, some well-meant exhortations on the subject of temperance and chast.i.ty, as the catechism was revived in their memories before they were brought to be confirmed by the Bishop, and some ability "to translate and give the context" of a few phrases from the Greek texts of the Gospels, these were their intellectual religious equipment for a life of fierce temptation from within and without. And when they encountered the storm and stress of modern social life they found that the critics had taken from them the old reverence of nursery days for "G.o.d's Book,"

their school training had taught them only a rough code of honour, and their chief restraint from any ign.o.ble impulse was a feeling that to do certain deeds was not "good form."

A little lower down the social ladder the man in the street has fared no better in his boyhood. In the public elementary schools he has had a half-hour's lesson in Scripture and catechism five days of the week, and annually the Diocesan, or the School Board, Inspector came round to ascertain whether the Syllabus of religious teaching had been duly followed. But only when devout parish priests had a talent for teaching and a love for boys and girls was any attempt made to give children a _religion_, and even in this case not very much could be done for those who left school for ever when they were twelve years old.

A generation ago Lord Sherbrooke, on the extension of the franchise, told his contemporaries that it was time to begin "to educate our masters"--but we have not gone very far in our instruction of Christian Sociology, though as yet we have not adopted the Utilitarian basis of morals accepted by the French Republic, and endeavoured to establish principles of duty towards man without any reference whatever to a duty towards G.o.d.

Can any one be surprised if the plain man be perplexed when he is called upon to decide questions of economy and morality without any guiding principle? As a matter of fact he makes no such effort.

"Mult.i.tudes, mult.i.tudes in the valley of decision, for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decisions," but the sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining. The puzzled popular vote is but as the swing of the pendulum, first to this side, then to the other. "These fellows have been no good, let us give the others a show."

Yet a.s.suredly there is a principle which is guidance and strength if only men could discern it. There are Teachers who can tell men of its beneficent power, but they are as yet few in number, and their voices are not sufficiently strong. When once these can get a hearing, men welcome their evangel and find in it a guide of life.

I am persuaded that just as Bishop Butler, when he perused the preface of his _a.n.a.logy_, had no prescience of the young fellow of Lincoln, who was in a few years to give the Christian faith a fresh hold in the hearts of the common people, who gladly heard him, so in our time many of our Bishops seem unable to perceive the dawn of another "day of the Lord."

Indeed, it is our misfortune in England that Bishops are almost necessarily bad leaders. We are told when an election to the Papacy is imminent that this or that Cardinal is in the list of "Papabili"--a possible Pope--so in like manner we may almost select amongst the undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge our future diocesans. These are men clever, shrewd, and hard-working, of estimable private character, and not without some modest patrimony. Early entered in the race for preferment, ambitious, and yet, _mirabile dictu_, devout, they are endowed first of all with the true qualification for episcopacy, a capacity for compromise and a pliant political mind. _Sic itur ad astra_ the excellent curate or tutor, the courteous and accomplished chaplain to the Bishop, the eloquent canon and ecclesiastical courtier is consecrated and enthroned. Henceforward for the rest of his days he must hurry from his study table, crowded with correspondence, to his confirmations, his diocesan society meetings, and his weary, humiliating attendance at the House of Lords. What wonder if Bishops discourage new ventures of faith, who have no time for thinking, no time for reading, and perhaps, sometimes, too little opportunity for prayer!

And so we find them not unwilling to accommodate the Catholic Faith to the popular prejudice of the moment, acquiescing in an undogmatic, undenominational, more or less Christian creed. Popularity becomes the very breath of their nostrils, and they proceed to hide in an appendix to the Prayer-book, the hymn _Quicunque vult_.