Religious Reality Part 2

There was Jesus Christ. Who was He? What did He mean? What was His relation to man, and to G.o.d? Certainly He had shed light upon G.o.d, and upon G.o.d'S nature. Through His teaching, His character, His life and death, the conception of G.o.d was filled with a new meaning. In Him G.o.d was revealed with a fulness that had never been before. He disclosed more of G.o.d'S inmost character, and more of the relation which He bears to men. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father"--the disciples felt that this witness was true. By admitting to their thought of G.o.d all that the life of Jesus brought, they filled with fresh glory Christ's favourite word for G.o.d--"your Father which is in Heaven."

In Jesus, they felt, G.o.d was expressed: His relationship to G.o.d was unique. They found the Divine in Him as in no other. They knew that G.o.d was in that life because He had spoken and acted there. "Through the eyes of Jesus" G.o.d looked out upon the world, and in Jesus' love and purity and yearning for the sinful and the heavy-laden, G.o.d Himself became visible. They knew now what G.o.d was like. G.o.d was like Christ. It was His glory that shone in Jesus' face. It was a new vision of Him when "Jesus of Nazareth pa.s.sed by." In the grace--that is, the beauty, the glory and attractiveness--of the Lord Jesus Christ they saw a revelation of the love of G.o.d, a love that yearned over the fallen and the sorrowful, a love that suffered, and through suffering brought redemption.

But there was something more. It was not simply that in Jesus Christ G.o.d had been brought near, so that they felt they knew G.o.d as never before. There was in the experience which had come to them more than simply a Revealer and a Revealed. There was the Spirit which took possession of them, a transforming inward Power: a Power able to reproduce in them, by a process of growth from more to more, that character of Christ in whose lineaments they had discerned the nature of the eternal G.o.d Himself. There was a Presence abiding in their midst, dwelling within them, a Breath of the Divine Life which every Christian knew: a Presence which brought strength and comfort, power and love and discipline, and bore fruits of love and joy and peace.

Who or what was it? An influence from on high? Yes: but it seemed more intimate, more personal than any mere "influence," more indissolubly one with them, knitting them into a fellowship in which they were united with the Father and the Son. "Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ." The Spirit which bore such fruits in them, which brought them into so intimate a fellowship with G.o.d in Christ, they recognized as the Spirit of G.o.d, as the Presence in them of very G.o.d Himself. G.o.d, they felt, was not a Being far off, an Influence telling upon men from a distance. He was the very secret of life, "closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet," so that each soul was meant to be a sacred "temple of G.o.d," "G.o.d abiding in him and he in G.o.d." G.o.d came in the Son, G.o.d had come also and equally in the Spirit. The Eternal Source of all things, who was known and worshipped as the Living One even before Christ came, was made more fully known in Christ, and now He was still more intimately made known in the inmost spiritual life of every day.

That was Christian experience. That was the experience out of which the doctrine of the Trinity arose. It arose out of an attempt to think the thing out. If we to-day find the doctrine difficult, at least the experience was and is both simple and profound. And we cannot help thinking about it.

It may be that sometimes we think we would rather be content to say simply with S. John that "G.o.d is Love." And that is truly the simplest of Christian creeds. If we were able fully to understand it, it would be sufficient. "Holy Trinity, whatever else it may signify, is a mode of saying 'Holy Love.'" But as a matter of fact it is only through the revelation of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit that we can ever come to understand the love of G.o.d.

In the Christian Gospel G.o.d is revealed first as Father, secondly as Sufferer, thirdly as the Spirit of eternally victorious Life: and it takes the whole threefold revelation to express with any fulness the rich wonder of what is meant by saying that G.o.d is Love. Our minds cannot help pa.s.sing from the contemplation of the threefold character of G.o.d'S self-revelation to the thought of a certain threefoldness in G.o.d Himself. We have to find room and place for such a thought--the thought that G.o.d is _eternally_ Love, that He is _eternally_ Father, Son, and Spirit--and yet at the same time not depart from the fundamental Christian conviction that G.o.d is One.

It is to be feared that many Christian people do sometimes come dangerously near to believing in three separate G.o.ds, and what we call Unitarianism is a one-sided protest against such a tendency. G.o.d is indeed a unity: and so far Unitarianism is right. But Unitarianism is less than the full Christian faith in G.o.d, because it fails to do justice to the full riches of Christian experience, the many-sided wonder of G.o.d revealed in Christ, and made real to us here and now by the operation of the Spirit in our hearts. We are driven to say that G.o.d is not only One, but Three in One.

Nevertheless, if any one finds the _theory_ of the Holy Trinity difficult let him not be overmuch dismayed. Let him learn to know G.o.d as Father and Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour: let him learn to know the Holy Spirit as an energy of eternal life and inspiration in his heart. He will then be _in effect_ a Trinitarian believer, even though the theologians seem to him to talk a language which he does not understand: even though--to tell the truth--he is not greatly interested by what they say.

At the same time, there is need that people should think out the meaning of the Christian revelation of G.o.d: perhaps that they should think it out afresh. It is possible to be technically orthodox and correct in doctrine and yet to miss the true reality of what G.o.d means. The conception of G.o.d as Father implies that G.o.d has eternally a Son: the life of Jesus Christ as Son of G.o.d reveals to us the quality of that Divine Fatherhood to which His Sonship corresponds.

The Spirit, as the Divine Energy proceeding from the Father and the Son, is the a.s.surance that the life of G.o.d can never be self-contained or aloof, but is for ever going forth from Himself, so as to be eternally operative and active, alike in the processes of Nature and in the lives of men. For "the Spirit of the Lord filleth the world,"

and the Divine Wisdom "reacheth from one end to the other mightily, and sweetly ordereth all things."

It follows that Christianity, the religion of the Spirit, can never stand still. Not stagnation, but life, is its characteristic note, even "that Eternal Life which was with the Father, and hath been manifested unto us." The Church which is truly alive unto G.o.d, and aflame with the spirit of allegiance to Him who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, the Church which is truly quickened and inspired by the Spirit of Truth and Love and Power, will always be ready to "live dangerously" in the world, not shrinking timorously from needed change or experiment, not holding aloof from conflict and adventure and movement, but facing courageously all new situations and new phases whether of life or of thought as they arise, shirking no issues, welcoming all new-found truth, bringing things both new and old out of her treasure-house, so that she may both "prove all things"

and also "hold fast that which is good."

There are conceptions of G.o.d proclaimed from Christian pulpits which are less than the full Christian conception of G.o.d. The G.o.d who is eternal Energy and Life and Love, the G.o.d who is revealed in Christ, and whose Spirit is the Spirit of Freedom and Brotherhood and Truth, is neither the tyrant G.o.d of the Calvinist, nor the dead-alive G.o.d of the traditionalist, nor the obscurantist G.o.d of those who would decry knowledge and quench the Spirit. Neither, again, is G.o.d the G.o.d of militarists, a G.o.d who delights in carnage--even though it should be the carnage of Germans; or the G.o.d who is thought of by His worshippers as being mainly the G.o.d of the sacristy, a kind of "supreme Guardian of the clerical interest in Europe." Least of all is G.o.d the commonplace deity of commonplace people, a sort of placid personification of respectability, the G.o.d whose religion is the religion of "the Conservative Party at prayer."

He is a consuming Energy of Life and Fire. His eyes are "eyes of Flame," and His inmost essence a white-hot pa.s.sion of sacrifice and of self-giving. At the heart of His self-revelation there is a Cross, the eternal symbol of the almightiness of Love: the Cross which is the source and the secret of all true victory, and newness of life, and peace.

This, and none other, is the G.o.d whom truly to know is everlasting life, and whom to serve is liberty. For He it is who has made us unto Himself, with hearts that are restless until they rest in Him. To do His will is to realize the object of our existence as human beings: for it is to fulfil the purpose for which we have our being, the end for which we were created; even to glorify G.o.d, and to enjoy Him for ever.

CHAPTER V

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

But are not the evil and misery of the world, is not all that which we know as "sin" and pain, in manifest contradiction to this Christian conception of a G.o.d of Love? Most certainly they are: and it has been the strength of Christianity from the beginning that--unlike many rival systems and philosophies, including the "Christian Science"

movement of modern times--it has always faced facts, and in particular has never regarded pain and sin, disease and sorrow and death, as anything but the stubborn realities which in point of fact they are.

If we ask, indeed, how and why it was that evil, whether physical or moral, originally came into the world, the Gospel returns no answer, or an answer which, at best, merely echoes the ancient mythology of Jewish traditional belief--"By the envy of the Devil sin entered into the world, and death by sin": an answer which indeed denies emphatically that evil had its origin in G.o.d, and declares its essential root to lie in opposition to His will, but without attempting any explanation of the difficulty of conceiving how opposition to the will of G.o.d is possible.

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 G.o.d is omnipotent, why does He permit evil?" But the doctrine of Divine omnipotence is misconceived when it is interpreted to mean that G.o.d is able to accomplish things inherently self-contradictory. G.o.d 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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) enn.o.bles 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sumes a different complexion if Christ be regarded as the revelation of G.o.d.

For if so, then suffering enters into the experience of G.o.d Himself, and so far from G.o.d 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." G.o.d 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 a.s.sumes 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 G.o.d; 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 G.o.d."

Sin is essentially a falling short, a missing of the mark, a failure to correspond with the purpose and the will of G.o.d. 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d. The Publican, who would not so much as lift up his eyes unto heaven, but judging himself and his deeds by the standard of G.o.d'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 pa.s.sions 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 G.o.d service when as a matter of fact we were merely giving expression to the religious and social prejudices of our cla.s.s? Have we never, like the crowds who joined in the hue- and-cry, followed a mult.i.tude 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 G.o.d. a.s.suming, that is to say, that G.o.d 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 att.i.tude of G.o.d: they are the expression of a love that is wounded, cut to the heart and crucified, by the lovelessness, the ingrat.i.tude, the tragedy of human sin, but which nevertheless, in spite of the pain, is willing to forgive.

But the Cross is no mere pa.s.sivity. It is more than simply a revelation of Divine suffering, of the eternal patience of the love of G.o.d. It is the expression of G.o.d 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 G.o.d "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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d. "So G.o.d 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, G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d of all human souls is for Christianity fundamental. But the correlative of Divine fatherhood is human brotherhood: just because G.o.d is love, and fellowship is life and heaven, and the lack of it is h.e.l.l, G.o.d does not redeem men individually, but as members of a brotherhood, a Church.

The Church is simply the people of G.o.d. 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, circ.u.mcision nor uncirc.u.mcision, 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 G.o.d 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.