The Unity of Western Civilization Part 15

There are those who hold that sheer exhaustion, nervous and economic, will compel the nations to seek concerted action against the recurrence of so shattering an experience, that some sheer instinct of self-preservation will find expression in adequate political arrangements. I should be the last to deny the reality of the collective instinct. But remember that, as an instinct, it works blindly, and is liable to be diverted and frustrated in a thousand ways by the conflicting streams of narrow pa.s.sion amongst which it moves. Mere exhaustion and a general feeling of insecurity cannot yield a sufficient motive and directing force for the work of international construction. It is necessary to rationalize this instinct of self-preservation and co-operation, in order to make it of effective service. Here lies the heart of our difficulty. War is the most intensely derationalizing process, and the long steeping of European civilization in the boiling cauldron will have twisted and blunted the very instruments of thought. As Professor Murray points out in a powerful essay, war rapidly undoes the slow secular process by which liberty and capacity for individual thought have grown up, and plunges the personal judgement into the common trough of the herd-mind. It is, I take it, the recognition of this peril to the human mind, this necessity of safeguarding the powers of individual thought and personal responsibility, that brings us here. We seek to fortify the separate centres of personal judgement, to inform the individual mind, because the work of making a positive contribution to the unity of civilization depends upon the vigorous independent functioning of many minds.

This consideration brings me directly to confront the enemy, that is to say, those who contend that a world-state or any real international government is now and must always remain an impossibility, an unrealizable Utopian dream. The process of social evolution on its political side ends with the national state. It is a final product.

National states cannot, will not, and ought not, to abate one jot or t.i.ttle of their inherent sovereignty and independence, and the experience of history shows that all attempts at international federation or union are pre-doomed to failure.

It is evidently quite impossible for me to present here a full formal refutation of these positions. I will therefore content myself with brief demurrers. To the argument from social evolution I would reply that evolution knows no finality of type, and that the presumption lies in favour of those who hold that the centripetal or co-operative powers, which have forged the national state out of the smaller social unities, are not exhausted, but are capable of carrying the organizing process further. To those who rely upon the authority of history, citing the collapse of the experiments in federation which followed the Congress of Vienna as proof that similar experiments will similarly fail to-day or to-morrow, I reply that this view is based on a false interpretation of the statement that 'history repeats itself'. A psychological or sociological experiment is not the same when fundamental changes have taken place in the psychical and social conditions. We have already recognized that the nineteenth century has seen a series of vital changes in the economic and spiritual structure of civilization. The evidence of 1815 cannot, therefore, be conclusive as regards the possibilities of 1915. To those who insist on the sovereignty and independence of the national state as an eternal verity, I will make no further reply than to say that such language has for me no more meaning than talk of 'the divine right of kings', 'the natural rights of man', or any other phrase of the abracadabra of metaphysical politics. The actual world in which we live knows no such absolutes. Sovereignty and independence, like all other legal claims, are subject to modification and compromise. Every bargain made by treaty or agreement with another state, every acceptance of international law or custom, involves some real diminution of sovereign independence, unless indeed the liberty to break all treaties and to violate all laws is expressly reserved as an inalienable right of nations. Moreover, within the limits of a single nation, sovereignty is itself divided and distributed. Alike in the United States of America, the Swiss Republic, and the German Empire, the const.i.tuent states as well as the nations are recognized as sovereign, possessing certain rights or powers safeguarded by the const.i.tution against all encroachments of the central or federal government. So again within the state itself, the sovereignty is often no longer concentrated in a single person or a single body of persons, but is exercised by the joint action of several organs, as in Great Britain, where the king and the Houses of Parliament are the joint administrators of the sovereignty of the state. Sovereignty thus becomes more and more a question of degree and of adjustment. International lawyers will doubtless insist that neither treaties nor international laws involve any derogation of sovereign powers. But when the substantial liberties of action are curtailed by any binding agreement, the unimpaired sovereignty is an idle abstraction.

When, therefore, we ask whether it is not possible to extend and consolidate the agreements between so-called sovereign states into some form of effective international government, we broach a proposition less revolutionary in substance than in sound. If all the separate treaties, conventions, and other agreements, existing now between pairs of nations for the performance of specific acts and the settlement of differences, were modified and gathered into the forms of general treaties signed by all the treaty-making states; if all international laws and usages were codified and brought under the surveillance of some single representative court or council,--we should discover that there existed already the substance of an international government, not indeed adequate to our needs, but far ampler than we had suspected. In the Hague conventions and courts, again, and in certain other intergovernmental instruments, such as the Postal and Telegraphic Bureaux at Berne, we already possess the nucleus of the general forms required. We possess already the beginnings alike of the legislative, judicial, and administrative apparatus of international government. But it is slight in substance, fragmentary in its application, and exceedingly imperfect in its sanctions. Moreover, it has just shown itself quite inadequate to perform the first function of a government, viz. to keep the public peace.

The task of converting so feeble a structure of government into an effective instrument of international peace and progress is evidently one of great magnitude and difficulty. But it is the task which lies persistently before us, and upon its performance the safety of civilization itself depends. It is, therefore, well not to exaggerate its difficulties, but to measure them as closely as we can. This can best be done by means of a brief survey of the princ.i.p.al lines of advance which have been proposed. In this country, in America, in Holland, and elsewhere, the air is thickening with schemes for obtaining better international relations after the war. All of them have this, I think, in common, that they concern themselves primarily not with ideal or practical plans for the general co-operation of nations in advancing the welfare of the world, but with methods of preventing future wars and securing relief against the burden of armaments. All agree that some general formal arrangements between nations must be subst.i.tuted for 'the clash of competing ambitions, of groupings and alliances and a precarious equipoise', and that only by such stable agreement can disarmament be got and peace rendered secure. All agree that the instrument of this international government must be a general treaty to which a number of states must be parties and that the terms of this treaty must require them to submit all forms of disputes to some pacific mode of settlement. Nearly all, moreover, accept the distinction drawn between justiciable issues, relating to the application or interpretation of laws or to the ascertainment of facts by means of legal evidence, which are suitable for settlement by a judicial or arbitral process, and those which, not being capable of such settlement, are better suited for a looser process of inquiry and conciliation.

But the proposals differ widely, both as regards the scope they a.s.sign to the work of preventing war, and as regards the measures they advocate for securing the fulfilment of international agreement. They may be grouped, I think, in three cla.s.ses on an ascending scale of rigour. The first cla.s.s envisages a general treaty, by which the signatory states shall undertake to submit all differences between them to processes of arbitration or conciliation conducted by impartial courts or commissions, and to abstain from all acts of hostility during the progress of such investigation. This principle has recently found an important expression in the treaties signed last year by the United States with Great Britain and France, and other nations. The first article of these treaties reads as follows: 'The High Contracting Parties agree that all disputes between them, of every nature whatsoever, other than disputes the settlement of which is provided for, and in fact achieved, under existing agreements between the High Contracting Parties, shall, when diplomatic methods of adjustment have failed, be referred for investigation and report to a Permanent International Commission to be const.i.tuted in the manner prescribed in the next succeeding article; and they agree not to declare war or begin hostilities during such investigation and before the report is submitted.' The objects of this method of pacific settlement are three: first, to provide impartial and responsible bodies for a reasonable inquiry into all disputes; secondly, to secure a 'cooling off' time for the heated feelings of the contestants; thirdly, to inform the public opinion of the world and to make effective its moral pressure for a sound pacific settlement.

The efficacy of any such arrangement evidently depends upon two conditions, first, the confidence of the signatory states that each and all will abide by their undertaking, and, secondly, the uncovenanted condition that they will accept and carry into effect the awards or recommendations of the arbitral and conciliation commissions. These proposals, however, furnish no sanctions or guarantees other than those of conscience and public opinion for the due performance of the treaty obligations, and make no attempt to bind the parties to an acceptance of the decision of the commissions. Moreover, regarded as a means of securing world-peace and disarmament, all such proposals appear defective in that they make no provision for disputes between one or more of the signatory states and outside states which are no parties to the arrangement.

Such considerations have moved many to seek to strengthen the bond of the alliance, and to make it available for mutual support against outside aggression. The vital issue here is one of sanctions or the use of joint force, diplomatic, economic, or military, to compel the fulfilment of treaty obligations and the execution of the awards. Many hold that, while most civilized states might be relied upon to carry out their undertakings, some powerful state--Germany, or Russia, or j.a.pan--could not be trusted, and that this want of confidence would oblige all nations to maintain large armaments with all their attendant risks and burdens. To obviate this difficulty, it is proposed by some that the signatories shall pledge themselves to take joint action, diplomatic, economic, or forcible, against any of their members who, in defiance of the treaty obligations, makes or proposes an armed attack upon another member. This is the measure of stiffening added by Mr.

Lowes d.i.c.kinson in his constructive pamphlet _After the War_: 'The Powers entering into the arrangement' are to 'pledge themselves to a.s.sist, if necessary, by their national forces, any member of the League who should be attacked before the dispute provoking the attack has been submitted to arbitration or conciliation.' A state, however, by Mr.

d.i.c.kinson's scheme, is still to remain at liberty to refuse an award, and after the prescribed period, even to make war for the enforcement of its demands. Other peace-leaguers go somewhat further, a.s.signing to the league an obligation to use economic or forcible pressure for securing the acceptance of the award of the Court of Arbitration, though leaving the acceptance of the recommendations of the Conciliation Court to the free option of the parties. This is the proposal made by Mr. Raymond Unwin, and by the League of Peace.

Now a definite halt at this position is intelligible and defensible.

While binding by strict sanctions the States to submit all disputes to the pacific machinery that is provided, to await the conclusion of the arbitral and conciliatory processes, and even to accept the legal awards of arbitration, it leaves a complete formal freedom to refuse the recommendations of the Commission of Conciliation. Yet it must be borne in mind that most of the really dangerous disputes, involving likelihood of war, are not arbitrable in their nature, and will come before the Commission of Conciliation. If no provision is made for enforcing the acceptance of the recommendations of this body, what measure of real security for peace has been attained? An incendiary torch, like that kindled last year in the Balkans, may once again put Europe in flames.

The defenders of the position we are now considering have three replies.

They admit that their proposal still leaves open the possibility of war, but they contend that if a sufficient cooling-off time or 'moratorium'

is secured, the likelihood of an ultimate recourse to war by rejection of the award will be reduced to a minimum. They urge that no scheme which can be devised will preclude the possibility of a strong criminal or reckless State violating its treaty obligations and seeking to enforce its will by force. Finally they urge that many self-respecting States would refuse to abandon the ultimate right of declaring war, in cases where they deemed their vital interests were affected, and that any invitation to take this step might wreck the possibility of a less complete but very valuable arrangement.

Now it would be a considerable advance towards world government, if all or most powerful States would consent to abandon separate alliances, or subordinate them to a general alliance binding them to submit all disputes to a process of impartial inquiry before attempting to enforce their national will by arms. It may be that this is as far as it is possible to go in the direction of securing world-peace and international co-operation in the early future. If States will not carry their co-operation so far as to agree upon united action to put down all wars between their members, and to take a united stand against all attacks from outside, it would be necessary to respect their scruples, and to rely upon the softening influence of the moratorium and informed public opinion to render a final recourse to arms unlikely among civilized States. But, in considering the measure of security thus achieved, we must remember that we must look to the weakest link in the chain of the alliance, and ask ourselves how far the plan of conciliation represented in the recent treaties between the United States and several friendly European nations can be considered equally secure in dealing with Germany, Russia, or j.a.pan. If our international arrangement is to dispense with all forcible pressure in the last resort, and to rely upon purely moral pressure, it seems evident that the validity of the arrangement depends upon the degree of confidence which other States will entertain as to the bona fides and pacific disposition of the least scrupulous of the powerful signatory States.

For if the opinion held of any one or two powerful States is that under the stimulus of greed or ambition they would be likely, in defiance of an award or of the public opinion of other States, to enforce their will upon some weaker neighbour, such an opinion will keep alive so strong a feeling of insecurity that no considerable reduction of military preparations will be possible.

In a.s.sessing the early value of all proposals for better international relations, the best practical test is afforded by the question, 'Will the proposal lead nations to reduce their armaments?' For it will be admitted that any settlement or international agreement, which leaves the claims of militarism and navalism upon the vital and financial resources of the several nations unimpaired, affords little hope of a pacific future. A return to the era of competing armaments will destroy the moral strength of any formal international agreements, however specious. The importance of this consideration has led many to insist that an explicit agreement for proportional disarmament should take a prominent place in any settlement. This proposal, however, seems to me defective in that it presumes in all or some of the nations a persistence of the motives which have hitherto led them to strengthen their fighting forces. Now the primary object of such international arrangements as we are discussing, is to bring about a state of things in which the past motives to arm will weaken and tend to disappear. If nations, actuated either by arrogance or greed or fear, continue to desire to increase their fighting strength, no arrangements for proportionate disarmament are likely to be effective. On the other hand, if the basis of a really valid league or federation can be laid, precluding the most ambitious State from any reasonable hope of indulging dreams of successful conquest, while relieving timid States from the apprehensions under which they have lived hitherto, the natural play of political forces within each State will favour disarmament. An international arrangement that meets our requirements must be strong enough to reverse the motives, aggressive and defensive, which in the past have caused nations to arm. Nations will not pile up armaments if they believe that they will have no need or opportunity to use them. To produce this belief in the uselessness of national armies and navies is therefore a prime object of international policy. The successful establishment of this belief involves, however, a change of disposition among national governments amounting to the process known in religious circles as conversion. They must be induced to forgo that right of war which according to past statecraft has been the brightest jewel in the crown of sovereignty.

Thus we are again brought round to our vital issue, that of the amount and kind of cession of sovereignty required for an effective International Government. It may be the case that it will be impossible to induce a sufficient number of the great States to transfer the ultimate right of waging war to a representative International Government, or to cede to such a Government the right to legislate on international relations with power to enforce obedience to these laws.

There are, however, many of us who hold that these powers are essential to an international arrangement which shall effectively guarantee the peace of the world. The abandonment of the sovereign right to make war is essential for the future security of peace. Legislative and executive powers for an International Government are essential to obtain by pacific means those changes in the political and economic relations of peoples which hitherto have only been attainable by war. No merely statical settlement will suffice. Great new issues of national controversy or of economic needs will certainly come up afresh for settlement, and until some stable method of government is established with power to determine and enforce the equities and the utilities they represent, recourse to the arbitrament of war will still be likely.

But granting that national government does not represent a final form of political structure, and that some federal internationalism is now practicable, is it possible to hope or to expect that by a single stride, or by a series of rapid strides, the sovereignty of national states will submit to so much diminution as is involved in the more advanced scheme of international government? Most historians, statesmen, and political philosophers will, I think, hold that so large and rapid a process of development is impracticable, however desirable in theory it might be. It will be necessary, they insist, to take one step at a time, to preserve as closely as possible the principle of continuity, and not to attempt to move further and faster than circ.u.mstances and the necessities of the time compel.

But do circ.u.mstances and necessities always compel us to move slowly and to take one step at a time? Though normal growth is slow and continuous, modern science tends to lay increasing stress upon discontinuous and sudden larger variations in the production of organic changes. Biology distinguishes these mutations by which new species arise from the normal process of evolution by insensible gradations. There is, as I understand it, no real breach of continuity, no miraculous creation, but a sudden removal from a structural position which by slow acc.u.mulation of prior changes had become unstable, or to a new position of stability, involving a swift readjustment of organic parts. May not similarly important mutations occur in the evolution of political inst.i.tutions, when a similar stress of circ.u.mstances makes itself felt? Nay, we may further ask, whether the special function of man's reasonable will is not to bring about these changes in the direction of individual and collective conduct. The power of making new quick and complex adaptations to new environments is the essential economy of the human brain. Freedom of thought and of will are continually producing new judgements and new determinations for action which contain this quality of sudden mutation. Quick conversions of thought and will are of the essence of our conscious life. When they carry important consequences to our conduct they appear to be, and in fact are, breaches of the normal conduct of our life which proceeds by custom, repet.i.tion, and insensible modifications.

In politics, as in religion, sudden conversions under the stress of circ.u.mstances are not unknown, and they may be genuine and lasting. And what holds of individual wills and judgements holds also of the collective mind. That human nature in its fundaments of thought and feeling, its primary needs, desires and emotions, will not be appreciably changed even by this shattering experience of war must be conceded. But what we may call the general state of mind, or the moral and intellectual atmosphere, will be profoundly affected. This will be in part the result of the great economic and political disturbances which are occurring, and which will have undermined and loosened the old ideas and valuations in relation to such important inst.i.tutions as property, the control of industry, the activities of woman, the party system, the State itself. But more profound still will be the direct reaction of sorrow and suffering of war, the revelation of the power of the organized destructiveness and cruelty, and of the inadequacy of reason, justice, and goodwill as defences of civilization. The very foundations of organized religion in the hearts of men will be shaken.

The patent failure of the State to perform its primary function of safeguarding life and property is likely to feed currents of revolutionism in every country. The sudden changes produced in the balance of age and of s.e.x by the destruction of so large a proportion of the young and energetic men of every nation, will affect all processes of thought and policy. Some of these changes will seem favourable to conservatism, timidity, and reaction. Everywhere, at the close of the war, military and official autocracy will be enthroned in the seats of power, and the spirit of political authority will be stoking the fires of fevered nationalism which war evokes. But other forces will be making for bold political experiments. Not only the fear of restive and impoverished workmen, who have recently acquired the use of arms and perhaps the taste for risks, but the havoc wrought upon industry and commerce, and above all the crushing burden of taxation, will dispose the controlling and possessing cla.s.ses to seek alternatives to a return to the era of competing alliances and armaments. Mild and conservative measures will be obviously unavailing. During the years of exhaustion following the war, resolute leaders of public opinion will be setting themselves everywhere to frame schemes of international relations which shall yield adequate guarantees of peace. For the first time in history great reading and thinking communities will give their chief attention to international politics. They will recognize the urgency of the work of building the society of nations upon a basis of genuinely representative government. Behind this reasonable process of constructive thinking, carried on in every country by politically convinced individuals and groups, will be the powerful support of the unthinking, suffering ma.s.ses, motived by no clear conception of causes or remedies, but by that collective instinct of self-preservation which impels the herd to avoid destruction and to follow leaders who point the way to safety.

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

_The International Crisis in its Ethical and Psychological Aspects_.

Humphrey Milford.

G. Lowes d.i.c.kinson, _After the War_. Fifield.

C.E. Hooper, _The Wider Outlook beyond the World-War_. Watts & Co.

F.N. Keen, _The World in Alliance_. Southwood.

Norman Angell, _Prussianism and its Destruction_. Heinemann.

Allison Phillips, _The Confederation of Europe_. Longmans.

_The New Statesman_. Special Supplement. Suggestions for the Prevention of War.

J.A. Hobson, _Towards International Government_. Allen & Unwin.

XIII

RELIGION AS A UNIFYING INFLUENCE IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION

The argument of these essays has been to prove that even now, in the greatest armed conflict of the world, the term 'Christendom' is not inapplicable to Europe. There is a real unity in Western civilization--a unity due in large measure to the influence of religious faith and organization. The mediaeval Church gave the Teutonic peoples of Northern Europe, and the barbarians who overran the Roman Empire, their first momentous introduction into the great inheritance formed by the uneasy blending of Christian faith and literature with Greco-Roman civilization. The spiritual achievements of Greek and Roman, Jew and Christian have remained the common possessions of the West, the foundation of what is still Christendom. In so far as it exists Christendom witnesses to the formative power of a religious faith: in so far as it remains a dream, we may suspect it demands the renewed impulse of a faith enlightened and chastened by all the experience of the past.

If, however, we ask, Is there any likelihood that a common religious faith and life will contribute to raise Western civilization to a yet higher unity? modern as contrasted with mediaeval history seems at first sight to demonstrate the futility of any such inquiry.

Since the Reformation, religion has made for division rather than co-operation. The modern period of European history begins in disruption. Not only was Europe rent by the conflict of Catholic and Protestant, but the dream of an international reformed Church which at one time floated before the mind of Cranmer was dissipated by the strength of nationalism and the cleavage in the ranks of the reformers themselves. In our own country, what is euphemistically termed the Elizabethan Settlement proved to be the source of further dissension, and reform appeared as the prolific mother of sects and schisms. The Protestant Churches were organized on national and state lines. They ceased to retain any international character in their const.i.tution, while international intercourse became a diminishing influence. The Church of Rome in the conflict with Gallicanism found herself at grips with the spirit of nationalism, and to-day the strength of national feeling within Roman Catholicism hinders the Pope from exerting a moral authority over sovereign states that would parallel the judicial functions successfully a.s.serted by Innocent III. No Christian Church to-day so rises above the national states of Europe, as to control or even adequately to criticize the claims of those states. The Churches no longer serve to embody and express an European conscience.

The break-up of a common ecclesiastical organization was not perhaps the most serious loss of unifying power which religion in the West suffered at the time of the Reformation. If it be true that the Bible and the Greek spirit are the great common factors of Western civilization, then we must recognize that these two great influences tended to fall apart and even to oppose each other in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The humanist element in the Reform-movement grew less and less, while humanism itself became more definitely secular. The European mind has ever since been conscious of a disturbing division between religion and culture. A development of religion which should render to Western civilization services comparable to those rendered by the mediaeval Church demands not only a heightened international consciousness among Christians, which shall be able to find organized expression, but also some fresh synthesis of religion and culture, some reunion of the spirit of h.e.l.las, the Greek delight in beauty and faith in reason, with the moral strength and religious insight of Hebrew prophecy.

Those who are concerned for the future of our civilization will look eagerly for signs of any such development in the religious life and thought of our time. Do recent history and present experience discover any influences at work which may yet restore a unifying power to religion? Naturally any answer to such a question will be of a subjective character. The personal equation cannot easily be eliminated; we may be duped by our hopes or deceived by our fears. In the last a.n.a.lysis we cannot safely predict the future of religion. We may, however, take stock of our present situation, and survey its significant elements, even if our value-judgements as to their relative importance will inevitably vary.

While religious divisions have not vanished from the West, and indeed show no prospect of immediate reconciliation, and while the formation of new sects, of which the Christian Science Movement offers an example, has not altogether ceased, there has been an admitted decline of the dogmatic and sectarian tempers, and this decline has opened the way for knitting up severed friendships. The revolt against the dogmatic att.i.tude of mind and even against religious dogma itself is widespread.

The sense of loss involved in the isolation of any sect, and the wish to pa.s.s beyond the limits of any denominational tradition, are both appreciably affecting the religious situation. In England Matthew Arnold's somewhat unhappy criticism of Dissent expressed a dislike both of dogma and sectarian narrowness. His profounder contribution to the better understanding of St. Paul derives its worth precisely from his elevation of the mystic and the saint in Paul at the expense of the doctrinal theologian of Calvinist tradition. The wish to be rid of dogma continues to find vigorous intellectual expression, of which Mr. Lowes d.i.c.kinson's _Religion, a Criticism and a Forecast_, may be taken as an example. In another direction the Brotherhood Movement and the Adult School Movement represent the search, if not for an altogether undogmatic faith, yet at least for a broader basis of a.s.sociation than is compatible with the insistence on definite statements of belief. Both would unite in the prayer

G.o.d send us men whose aim will be Not to defend some outworn creed,

and some members of both entertain the suspicion that all creeds are outworn.

This dislike of dogma may cloak an unwarranted scepticism as to the possibility of reaching truth in religion, but it is symptomatic of the longing for larger sympathy and broader fellowship. It is but the extreme expression of a temper which has reduced the angularity of those who are very far from surrendering or belittling definite beliefs and doctrines. The denominationalist who used to have no hesitation in claiming a monopoly of the truth for his particular Church, now falters where he firmly stood. We are more ready to recognize our limitations. A growing number of thoughtful minds appreciate Lord Acton's position when he wrote to Mary Gladstone: 'I scarcely venture to make points against the religion of other people, from a curious experience that they have more to say than I know, and from a sense that it is safer to reserve censure for one's own which one understands more intimately, having a share in responsibility and action.' This more chastened mood opens the way to fresh understandings in the religious world. Whence does this change in atmosphere originate?

In tracing out the causes of this new temper in religion, a first place may legitimately be a.s.signed to the growth of the scientific spirit. In considering science as a source of unity, it is a mistake to dwell exclusively on the creation of a body of common knowledge. To know the same thing may do little to unite men. To attack problems in the same way, and to share the same spirit of free inquiry, the same reverence for fact, the same resolute endeavour to surmount prejudice, issue in a far closer bond of union. Science unites men even more closely by its spirit than by its achievement. The application of scientific method to the literary and historical study of the Bible, as well as in the psychological a.n.a.lysis of religious experience, has called into being in every Church and every land, groups of people who approach the subject-matter of their faith from the same angle and under the guidance of the same mental discipline. As a result of the critical movement a man finds his foes in his own and his friends in his neighbours'

ecclesiastical household. The study of religion renews international contact and requires international co-operation as much as any other branch of science. It is possible to detect differing characteristics in the scholarship of the leading nations, though it may be doubted whether these are fundamental differences. The volume of critical work published in Germany is so considerable as to foster the illusion that it const.i.tutes a self-sufficing world. Thus it is possible for Dr.

Schweitzer in his brilliant survey of research into the life of Jesus, to represent the whole inquiry as the work of German genius and as the endeavour of German liberalism to picture Jesus in accordance with its own half-unconscious bias. Yet even so the cloven-hoof of international interdependence makes its appearance, for he has to devote one unsympathetic chapter to Renan, even if he contrives to ignore Seeley's _Ecce h.o.m.o_. But the debt of English scholarship to Germany is undeniable, and must not be repudiated in war-time. Nor is the debt entirely on one side. It is worth recalling that Adolph Harnack, perhaps the greatest living German scholar in the realm of New Testament criticism and Church History, derived no little inspiration from the work of Edwin Hatch. At any rate the acceptance of the critical method a.s.sociates scholars in all lands, produces International Congresses for the study of Religions, and fosters personal friendships which even war will not destroy.

Beyond the internationalism of scholarship, we must remember the reaction of criticism on popular religious thought. Slowly but surely the judgements of believers, lay and clerical, are being permeated with some sense of historical perspective. The mere attempt to recognize the literary character of the various books of the Bible has effected a liberation. The variation of the different parts of the Bible in literary quality, in evidential value for history and in spiritual significance, are at last being freely recognized outside the study and the lecture-room. Men are ceasing to regard the Bible as a series of legal enactments or common-law precedents of equal authority. This is leading to a revision of inherited traditions, that were based on a view of the Bible which is no longer tenable. In general this development favours a more modest a.s.sertion of one's own beliefs and a more charitable consideration of other people's. When we continue to differ, we differ with a more sympathetic understanding of those from whom we differ.

It is impossible to trace here in any detail the influence of the critical movement on traditional beliefs or even on the conception of authority in religion. It may, however, be worth while to point out that the psychological study of religion has tended to broaden sympathy by promoting the frank recognition of the varieties of religious experience. More allowance is made for temperament, and there is less anxiety to force all spiritual life into the same mould or scheme. The sacramentalist and the non-sacramentalist, the mystic and the intellectualist, the man of feeling and the man of action, those who experience sudden changes and those who are the subjects of more gradual growth--each receives his due, and neither need despise the other. There are dangers a.s.sociated with our constant reference to temperament. It is really a condemnation of a Church to say that its position appeals to a particular temperament, while it is often no real kindness to an individual to be excused from attempting to enter into a particular phase of religious life on the ground that he is temperamentally disqualified. But it is clearly a gain to challenge an over-rigid standardization of religious life. It is pathetic to hear people protest that they have no religious experience, when they are simply blinded by too narrow an interpretation of the term. In so far as the psychology of religion throws into relief the manifold appeal of religious ideas to different minds, it helps to create a new sense of unity in difference.

Accompanying the growth of the scientific spirit and in part stimulated by it, more distinctly religious and philosophical influences are at work quickening the desire for wider and deeper fellowship. Considering first the problem within the borders of the Christian Church, I think we may claim that there is a growing willingness to co-operate and a revival of the hope of reunion. We may further claim that certain advances in thought, in the understanding of Christianity itself, have already been made, and render co-operation if not reunion less Utopian than before. Of these I would put first the acceptance of the principle of toleration as an essential element of Christian faith. It has been suggested by Mr. Norman Angell that the religious wars of the seventeenth century came to an end through economic exhaustion and through rationalism. Toleration was accepted as a state-principle on the strength of a common-sense calculation as to the uselessness of repression. I am not disposed to ignore the forcefulness of the argument, 'You will starve or go bankrupt, if you do not cease to persecute heretics or fight Protestants,' nor would I underestimate the influence of common-sense in closing the era of religious wars, but I cannot help thinking that an intense religious conviction of the duty of toleration and a kind of philosophic liberalism, though entertained by few, contributed to the triumph of the principle. For the Christian, the duty has become clearer through the influence of the gospels. Some of the Churches have begun to take to heart the rebuke of Jesus to the disciples who wished to call down fire on the Samaritans. Nor is it a question of a particular incident. A deep respect for individuality is found to lie at the centre of the gospel. For the Christian, the att.i.tude of toleration, the reliance on persuasion, on the appeal to every man's conscience, has become more and more clearly the indispensable qualification of the amba.s.sador for Christ. As the acceptance of the principle of toleration is by no means universal in the Church, its fuller recognition in some quarters may serve at first to intensify division. It may emphasize, e.g. the continued necessity for Protestantism, by bringing into clearer light the moral obstacle to reunion in the Inquisition and disciplinary methods of the Church of Rome. But in the long run, this development of thought must make for better understanding and wider fellowship.

Still confining our survey to the Christian Church, there has been a significant fastening of attention on those parts of the New Testament in which the idea of Catholicity is fully developed. The epistle to the Ephesians and the seventeenth chapter of John are beginning to haunt the Christian consciousness as never before since the days of the Reformation. It is clear that the present position of the Church, in which divisions have crystallized into separate organizations, does not reflect and envisage the ideal that 'they all may be one'. The unity of the Church appears to be a condition precedent to the success of its testimony. The scandal and the impotence of division are more acutely felt. Unless the Church of Christ can heal herself or find healing for herself, it is little enough which she will be able to contribute to the healing of the nations.