The New Christianity Part 8

It must be a spiritual task but of a spirituality interwoven inextricably with politics, business, and sport.

Luther cannot help us here with his callousness to the wrongs and miseries of the peasants, nor Knox with his harshness and his militancy, nor Calvin with his hatred of those whom he thought G.o.d's enemies, nor the Puritans nor the Covenanters with their bigotry and their blow for blow and curse for curse.

Another deep lack is in Protestantism. In Isaiah's vision of the seraphim above the throne of G.o.d, "each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly." Two wings for service and four for worship! A Roman Catholic, meeting a friend who had become a Protestant, asked him how he liked his new faith. "I like it well," answered the other, "but one thing I miss, and that is the spirit of adoration."

How strange to us in Roman Catholic pictures are the faces of the saints upturned in adoration to the Mother and the holy Child! Protestantism does not produce faces like those. Shrewd, intelligent, alert, at best reliable, frank, kindly, they often are; humble, not often; reverent, adoring, still more rarely. Yet Goethe has said, "The highest thing in life is the thrill of awe." And Carlyle, too, "Thought without reverence is barren and poisonous."

Protestantism tends to be shallow, with the thinness and hardness and tinniness of mere intellectualism. It needs to tap great fountains of tenderness, humility, adoration, to be deepened, mellowed, enriched. Of the two ultra types of worship--the bright church, comfortable with plush cushions and glittering with bra.s.s work, where the people sit with wide-open eyes and curiously watch the preacher while he prays, and where the preacher with conscious cleverness clears up all the mysteries of life and _coloratura_ quartettes display their technique (an ultra type, confessedly, and not common, but actual), and the dim church with the drooping Christ on the cross and pictured saints gazing in adoration and the congregation on their knees before the divine Presence in the Sacrament, one may be a convinced Protestant and yet believe the latter form of worship the more fruitful of the two.

American Protestantism needs new inspiration. So far as the past can yield this, it would seem that it should look particularly to three great leaders and saints--St. Francis of a.s.sisi, St. John of England (to use W. T. Stead's deserved designation of John Wesley), and General Booth.

Perhaps the most winsome and Christ-like figure that Roman Catholicism presents, the loveliest flower in her rich garden of sainthood, is the poverty-loving, utterly lowly and loving, care-free and joyous Francis of a.s.sisi, and perhaps, too, it may be said that no Christian character better deserves the study of Protestants. St. Francis is not an ideal figure; he lacks the balance and sanity of Jesus. Yet, perhaps, of all who have pa.s.sionately set themselves to reproduce the life of Jesus, St.

Francis in his utter humility, his complete unworldliness, and his overflowing tenderness can best bring home to Protestantism its hardness and shrewdness, its worldly-wisdom and its self-complacency. What a far-distant world is the world of the man who renounced all possessions, went about to preach and serve in coa.r.s.est, meagrest garb, who despised money and loved poverty, whose sympathies went out to birds and fishes, to Brother Fire and Sister Water, who could captivate robbers and even, it was believed, wild creatures of the woods, and at whose coming the Umbrian cities rang their bells and poured out with branches and flags to greet the mean little man with the shabby grey gown and the rapt, pale, worn face.

Let it be granted Protestant countries are more wealthy than Roman Catholic, more progressive, more successful in trade and manufacture, St. Francis gives us a glimpse into the simplicity and childlikeness, humility and romance, that may sometimes find a Roman Catholic atmosphere more genial than a Protestant.

a.s.sociated with the Franciscan order of tonsured monks and cloistered nuns, there grew up a great society of men and women taking a middle path between the world and the cloister--plainer in dress, abstaining from the dance and the theatre, eschewing all quarrels, praying and fasting more regularly, practising a more systematic beneficence than ordinary Christians. And it is noteworthy that, in 1882 on the seven hundredth anniversary of the birth of Francis, Pope Leo XIII. in an encyclical declared that the inst.i.tution of these Franciscan Tertiaries was alone fitted to save humanity from the social and political dangers which threatened it.

Wesley and Francis are not far removed. The Saint of Epworth was almost as ardent a devotee of poverty as the Saint of a.s.sisi. If he did not absolutely strip himself, he gave away immensely more. He, too, had a pa.s.sion for the souls of men, all of St. Francis' pity for the poor, and he won a wealth of reverence and love. He was a far wiser man, living in a more rational age. But he was not only extraordinarily competent.

He knew, too, his own competence. There is a wildflower grace of the childlike in St. Francis that we miss in the far more intelligent and commanding figure of Wesley.

Primitive Methodism had much of the enthusiasm and devotion and joyousness of the Franciscan brotherhood. Francis' friars and Wesley's helpers had a common unworldliness, joyousness, and pa.s.sion for the souls of men. But even as the Franciscan movement diverged from the ideals of St. Francis, so Methodism soon developed on lines of its own.

It has preserved much of the evangelical fervor and the practical helpfulness of its original inspiration. Considered in its direct and indirect effects, its union of evangelicalism, mysticism, and practical kindliness, there has been no other Christian movement which has combined such a measure of purity with such vastness of influence. In genuine Christian influence it has surpa.s.sed even the Reformation.

Modern Christianity (and there is a distinguishable modern Christianity) is of all forms that Christianity has a.s.sumed the nearest to the Christianity of Jesus, and in its fashioning the Methodist Revival has been the chief agency. Yet Methodism has not realized the ideals of its human founder. It did not perpetuate his unworldliness. It failed, as R. W. Dale pointed out, to the great loss of Christendom, to develop the ethical implications of his great doctrine of perfect love. It cherished his memory and his organization, but it refused to inherit his dread and hatred of riches. Its very thrift and industry and morality have been its undoing. It became, in great measure, like Protestantism in general, a _bourgeois_ religion, eminently suited for people who want to get on in the world. Its chief abhorrence has never been of social inequality and injustice but of the wasteful frivolities and vices, dancing, card-playing, theatre-going, and, pre-eminently, intemperance.

The Report already cited shows, however, a new spirit at work in the Methodism of Canada, a spirit in which Wesley would rejoice, and it is not in Canadian Methodism only that it is at work.

A still closer resemblance obtains between the Franciscan order and the Salvation Army than between the former and Methodism. No two movements, perhaps, so widely apart in time and methods are so closely akin.

Poverty, humility, obedience, love are the dominant features of them both.

Francis is a more winsome figure than General Booth but incomparably less intelligent and efficient. Francis awakened a great religious revival but probably wrought little improvement on the face of Europe--on its ferocity, chronic warfare, sensuality, oppression of the poor. The Salvation Army has redeemed countless victims of poverty and vice. It has probably proved itself the most effective agency in all history for the salvation of the down and out.

The Order and the Army have the same limitations.

1. Both are too exclusively inward and individualistic. They do not deal adequately with conditions and causes, the Franciscan movement not at all, the Salvation Army very timidly. The weakest element in the latter is its willingness to accept gifts from even those who have made their wealth out of the degradation of men and women, and its seeming reluctance to engage in any drastic social reforms which might dry up such bounty. It is content with ambulance work, and even the most devoted and heroic ambulance work will never stop the war.

2. Both, too, are sectional; fitted only for the few, the enthusiasts.

Each has cared for the saint; neither has made provision for the ordinary man. Christian perfection, in the thought of Francis and of General Booth, is for the man who withdraws from the ordinary work of the world, turns away from its culture, crucifies a thousand human instincts, breaks all the strings of the human lute but one. Both movements organized by these great saints are eccentric, abnormal.

Neither is workable on a catholic, or universal, scale. Both sectionalize the holy life.

What is needed to-day is another leader, a leader for the ordinary man.

The ordinary man is neither saint nor fanatic, neither preacher nor monk; he would be bored to death if he had to sing or pray or meditate all day; his joy is in building bridges and planning railways and ripping up the matted prairie sod with gasoline engines; he likes his wife and children and does not feel called upon to become a missionary to China or Central Africa. The need is for the leader who can show this ordinary man how to bring the truest love and the deepest piety into the ordinary, commonplace, work-a-day life, revealing the glory of G.o.d, not alone as gilding the cold snows of Alpine peaks or bathing the distant desert with unearthly beauty, but transfiguring the city street, the cozy home, the quiet fields where lovers walk at even.

Francis, Wesley, Booth--the time has come for each section of the Christian Church to remember that "all things are hers: whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas." We Protestants may think the Roman Catholic Church less likely to appropriate our saints than we theirs. This judgment of ours may be right or wrong, but we have no right to pa.s.s it until we ourselves have recognized the limitations of Protestantism and set ourselves heartily to appropriate the great elements of the Christian life that are the distinctive glories of Latin Christianity.

Protestantism, too, has its own peculiar glories. Neither great division of Christendom is adequate to meet the religious needs of to-day. The hour has struck for the great Christianity.

The future belongs neither to Roman Catholicism nor to Protestantism.

Roman Catholicism is too aristocratic and distrustful of freedom. The modern man will no more go back to medieval Christianity than to medieval feudalism. There is a drift from Protestantism to-day, but the drift from Roman Catholicism has been far greater. To fulfil its destiny, Roman Catholicism must accept freedom of thought; magnificently democratic as it has been from the beginning in some respects--the chair of St. Peter being accessible to the humblest peasant's son--it must accept a deeper and wider democracy.

Protestantism, on the other hand, must become heart-broken over its divisions, religious and social. It must become more brotherly, more lowly, more worshipful, in a word, more childlike.

It is unthinkable that either of these great forms of Christianity will pa.s.s away. They will change. They are already changing, and each, as it changes, moves toward the other.

Thought and life move through conflict to unity.

Thesis--ant.i.thesis--synthesis--that is the great law. The great and, perhaps, inevitable stage of ant.i.thesis that has divided Christendom for four centuries is drawing to a close. Latin Christianity needed Protestantism. It was the Protestant Reformation that inspired the counter-reformation. Roman Catholicism owes to Luther and Calvin a purer faith and a new lease of life. To-day the n.o.blest and most energetic types of Roman Catholicism are found in Protestant lands, and the service of Protestantism to Roman Catholicism is not yet finished.

Just as certainly, Protestantism needs Roman Catholicism. Some exposition of this has already been attempted. It is hard to see how any one who believes Roman Catholicism to be a tissue of errors can account for its extraordinary tenacity of life. Why should G.o.d preserve it unless because its mission is not yet accomplished?

Far apart and deeply antagonistic these two great forms of Christianity may seem, but, after all, it is an inescapable law on this earth that two people who try to get as far away from each other as possible must meet at last; and hatred is nearer love than is indifference. Human nature wearies of antagonism, and the longer it lasts the warmer the welcome for its pa.s.sing.

Like denominationalism, this four hundred year old antagonism seems a mighty tree but, like denominationalism, it is hollow within. Some day the great winds of G.o.d will arise, and when they begin to blow, this tree, too, will fall.

The thirteenth century was one of the great centuries of Christian history. In it feudalism reached its height, and chivalry its fullest flower. In it Gothic architecture and medieval philosophy reared their n.o.blest monuments. It was the century of the greatest of medieval, or, perhaps, of distinctively Christian, poets, Dante, the greatest of Christian theologians, Aquinas, the greatest of Popes, Innocent III., the two most winsome of saints, St. Francis and St. Louis of France. In all its greatness, the thirteenth century is distinctively Roman Catholic. The nineteenth century, also, is another of the less than half a dozen of the greatest of Christian centuries, and it is distinctively a Protestant century. Its great achievements in geographical and astronomical discovery, scientific investigation, increase of human comfort and wealth, and above all its unparalleled extension of liberty--bear all of them the Protestant stamp.

These two centuries have thus established beyond dispute the right of those two great historic forms of Christianity to the lasting reverence and grat.i.tude of mankind.

Roman Catholicism has cherished the divine principle of unity. At great cost it has preserved unity. It has not been equally careful of the divine principle of liberty.

Protestantism has gloriously fought and suffered and died for liberty.

It has never highly valued unity. It has even gloried in division. But unity is a diviner thing than even liberty. Liberty is precious only as the indispensable condition and pre-requisite of true unity.

It is a lovely and thrilling hope that the twentieth century may prove to be the century of the Great Christianity, the Christianity which will extinguish neither Latin nor Teutonic Christianity but comprehend and blend them, the simple, yet free and varied, democratic, pa.s.sionate Christianity of all who love the Lord Jesus Christ and seek His Kingdom on the earth, the Christianity which was the first and will be the last.

This, at least, can be said, that the unparalleled problems of social and political reconstruction facing the world to-day can be rightly solved only by a great religious devotion, and it is difficult to see how that devotion can be secured except by a unification of the great Churches of Christendom and their common baptism into the spirit of primitive Christianity.

And let no one say the Great Christianity is only a beautiful dream.

Already, in that forever holy strip of land where towns were reduced to heaps of dust and trees to splintered trunks, where earth was gashed and torn as men never gashed and tore the kindly bosom of mother earth before, and where beautiful human bodies were mutilated and destroyed with a fury unknown in history, there the Great Christianity has disclosed itself. There at the mouth of h.e.l.l unfolded the sweetest flowers that ever bloomed on earth. There in the brotherhood of the trenches became visible the Great Christianity. There Anglicans, Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Salvationists, and every other kind of Protestants, aye, and Roman Catholics, kneeled together to commemorate the suffering and love of their Common Redeemer, the Soldier-King.

"Father," wrote a Manitoba boy to his father from the trenches, in the spring of 1917, "we have a religion here but, father, it is not the same as yours. You don't like the Catholics or the Church of England, but, father, we love everybody here. We are all one. And, father," the boy went on, "when we come back, our religion is going to blow yours sky-high."

A prophecy not as yet fulfilled but not, perhaps, beyond fulfillment.

Certain it is that our soldier boys will never crowd into our churches as they crowded to the colors till those churches are the home of a Christianity that has the breadth and the brotherliness and something, at least, of the heroism of the Christianity of the trenches.

But something more must be said about the Great Christianity.

It may be that Latin Christianity and Teutonic combined do not represent the full splendor and power of Christianity, and that the drastic social changes which must be carried out in the next quarter of a century, or even in a briefer period, call for the re-inforcement of another race and another sort of Christianity.

The distinctive Greek Christianity of the first five or six centuries made its contribution and pa.s.sed away with the vanishing of the original and pure h.e.l.lenic race. But there is a Greek Christianity which has found a new lease of life and a new home in that race which has largely replaced the Greek in his own home and has diffused itself over most of eastern Europe, the Slavonic. There is a great Christianity which is still called Greek, but which is rather Slavonic Christianity, and which might more narrowly and specifically be called Russian Christianity, after that people who const.i.tute the largest section of Greek Christianity and promise to be the most influential.

It may well be that the Great Christianity which the world so desperately needs will be neither Latin nor Teutonic Christianity nor both in combination, but a blend of Latin and Teutonic and American and Russian Christianity, and it does not seem unlikely that the contribution of the last of the four may be the most precious and vital of them all. Perhaps in the part Russia is destined to play in the next fifty years will be found the most striking example in all history of how it is G.o.d's way to choose the foolish things of the world that He may put to shame them that are wise; and the weak things of the world that He may put to shame the things that are strong; and the base things of the world and the things that are despised that He may bring to nought the things that are.

The Slav has been the Cinderella of the European sisterhood. Perhaps we might say, the ugly duckling. From a military point of view he has been no match for the Teuton. In the long struggle of the last thousand years between the Teuton and the Slav, the Teuton has nearly always showed himself the stronger. For centuries he has ruled over the Slav.

In the industrial arts, in all that pertains to the utilization of natural resources for the material well-being of men, in agriculture and mining and manufacturing and trading, the Slav has been immeasurably more backward.

Mastered and oppressed by the Teuton on the West, subjugated for centuries by the Tartar on the East, the Slav has remained until yesterday a people forgotten and despised, shrouded in poverty, ignorance, mystery. And now out of that twilight he has stepped, ignorant, fanatical, and in his ignorance or superst.i.tion capable of ferocity, yet essentially the most child-like, the most religious, the most brotherly, the most idealistic of European peoples. What other people call their country, what the Russian calls his--_holy_ Russia?

The peoples of the West, especially the Teutonic or the Anglo-Saxon, are weak where they are strong. It is their practicalness that has given them their high place; it is their practicalness which keeps them from the highest. It is hard for them to believe in a Holy City. If they do believe in it, they do not care to seek it till they are sure of a practicable road. But the Slav instinctively believes in a Holy City, and only needs to be told where it is to be found to set out forthwith over rivers, bogs, and rugged mountain ranges.