LIBRARY OF THK UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. THE KEEPER OF THE KEYS BY THE SAME AUTHOR CHRIST AND WOMAN. Crown 8vo. 6d. net. THI PROBLEM OP PERSONALITY. Crown 8vo. 6d. net. London: FRANCIS GRIFFITHS THE KEEPER OF THE KEYS Being Essays on Christian Thought in the Twentieth Century BY THE KEY. F. W. OKDE WAED, B.A., OXFORD A (Author of MATIN BELLS, NEW CENTURY HYMNS, PRISONER OF LOVE, etc.) LONDON FKANCIS GBIFFITHS 34 MAIDEN LANE, STRAND, W.C. 1906. w " I am He that Liveth and was dead; and behold I am alive for evermore and have the Keys of Hades and o/ Death." Rev. i. 18. 11 He that is Holy, He that is True, He that hath the Key of David, He that openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth." Rev. iii. 7. NOTE. For permission to republish the first section, the author desires to thank the Editor of the Hibbert Journal, to whose sympathy any good in this book is due. 175548 " Strong Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we that have not seen Thy Face By faith and faith alone embrace, Believing where we cannot prove. Our little systems have their day, They have their day and cease to be ; They are but broken lights of Thee, And Thou, Lord, art more than they." In Memoriam. :>F THE UNIVERSITY OF THE JUDGMENT OF THE CROSS. " God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." Gal. vi. 14. Howe'er I live, Thou judgest me, Dear Saviour, with Thy blessed Eood, Whereto I turn when most I flee ; Though, at my wildest wayward mood, I cannot hide except in Thee. The lightest word, the lowliest thought I feel is carried to that Bar, Before which we are hourly brought And standeth the remotest star. Thereat is, with each hidden care, The heart of everything laid bare. Man as he is and Nature's core Are thus unriddled, and the Truth Outshines of all the bane we bore ; Redeemed earth repairs its youth, vii viii THE JUDGMENT OF THE CROSS And touches now the Eternal Shore. Matter is only veiled Mind And just the Spirit's spacious dress, That with Thy Wounds is countersigned Shadow of their great Loveliness. I see, in hallowed earth and sky, Homely the Court of Calvary. This body (Plato's prison) is thus A holy Temple for Thy sake, The sanctuaried soul in us Just what Thy Passion would re-make, But with its Glory tremulous. Each Spring comes as the piercing push Of Thy sweet Thorns in travail's maze, And every plant a Burning Bush With all Thy Mystery ablaze. Dear Lord, had not those Sufferings been The lands could wear no virgin green. Thine Incarnation and Thy Cross Lie round, beneath, and o'er us bent; Purge us and Nature from our dross By their Eternal Sacrament I find young life within each loss ; And hence, because Thy sacred Flesh Hath in our weakness once assumed These wants, the world is born afresh Daily and with Thy Light illumed. No sunrise now but, with its dew, Proclaimeth earth baptized anew. THE JUDGMENT OF THE CROSS ix Therefore I know Thou jndgest me In everything I do or say, Salvation could no moment be But for the Sentence on my way Wherein I walk, whereby I see. The resurrection of the flower Condemneth me or doth acquit, And but for Calvary's secret Power This heart were not so infinite. The Cross, that saves, pronounces doom, And in its death all things rebloom. CONTENTS I THE LORD is A MAN OF W\R PAGB I II ANTAGONISMS OF LIFE . 16 Ill THE SWORD OF THE GOSPEL . 29 IV COSMOS AND GOSPEL . 42 V THE GOOD FIGHT OF FAITH . 57 VI DYNAMIC RELIGION AND HYPER-DOGMATISM . . 70 VII OXFORD v. CAMBRIDGE . 85 VIII VICARIOUS SUFFERING AND SELF-PRESERVATION . 97 IX THE GREAT RECONCILIATION . 115 CONTENTS X 1, . 128 XI 143 XII 158 XIII . 171 Xll CHURCH AND WORLD. UNION OF OPPOSITES GOSPEL ANTINOMIES. CHILD AND MAX XIV "Hfi THAT SITTETH IN THE HEAVENS SHALL LAUGH" . 184 The Keeper of the Keys THE LORD IS A MAN OF WAR ULTIMATE perfection seems suggested by the union of opposites in their very antagonism, emerging from the everlasting clash of atoms and ions, unfolding throughout the dynasties of nature and departments of Thought and restated predicates, and expressing itself behind and beyond the fundamental principle of subject plus object. We posit one (self), and immediately the other (not self) arises to confront and complete the synthesis by apparent contradic- tion. The perpetual interaction of these two fac- tors appears the law of the Cosmos. And the syn- thesis is antithesis. Indeed, the unit of knowledge might be better denned (not as subject plus object but) as subject contra object. Life, according to both science and philosophy, appears to be a cease- less conflict, a condition of unstable equilibrium, the 2 1 2 THE KEEPER OF THE KEYS product of rival forces contending for the mastery, in which Evil the Eternal Minus is being gradually eliminated and will perhaps go on being eliminated for ever and ever. The world, yet in its giant in- fancy, is simply realising itself in God, or we may say, on the other hand, that God is surely realising Himself in us, and will continue so to do when all the relics of all the civilisations of Greece and Rome and the Modern Age have been swept away like BO many toys or idle epi phenomena. Man now is like a sleeper darkly awakening from a dream. And now and then and here and there he gets glimpses of blue sky, and begins to understand some simple truths, though at present he only can touch their uttermost fringe. Attraction is repulsion, and again and even more so repulsion is attraction. The mysterious battle, physical, moral, mental, spiritual, proceeds and must proceed for ever. Time is cheap, and we have all eternity before us. Deus patiens quia aternus. Every day, in some moral crisis, souls are infinitely attracted by the very temptations that repel them most. And love, while it solicits, yet at the same time bids us recoil in unspeakable de- spair. The final free volition, the turning of the balance, depends on the individual temperament, taken in connection with the education and the environment. The Lord is a Man of War, the Lord is His Name. Progress by antagonism, life by antagonism, issues in our consciousness as His fundamental law, to which He submits Himself and by which He limits Himself if indeed it be a THE LOED IS A MAN OF WAE 3 limit at all [and not the metaphysical content of infinity] . The end here is the pursuit and the pur- suit is the end, fighting for an attainable and yet unattainable perfection. This unity in division seems embedded in the mind as an integral and organic part of the Cosmos. We are born both Platonists and Aristotelians, both Realists arid Idealists, both Materialists and Spiritualists. No doubt one factor must be the predominating partner or combatant, but still (the truth remains) we possess by an inexorable psychological necessity the two constituents and two competitors, if one only exists to be always negated. Light and shade, joy and sorrow, right and wrong, good and evil, hope and fear, life and death, are the opposed and yet united ways in which we think and feel and suffer and know and live. Like the two pillars Jachin and Boaz, stand before the porch of the Temple of Truth the Everlasting Yea and the Ever- lasting Nay. It seems almost superfluous to add that we experience, we find, nothing quite pure and separate and unmingled. Our emotions are mixed, love is never far from hatred, nor smiles from tears. No error seems to be all error, and no truth all truth. Love and truth for ever keep purging themselves of the contradictory alloy, and in the process become love and truth. There can be no rest, no truce for either antagonist. Peace would be fatal to the good, and this solution would merely be its dissolution. God fulfils Himself in many ways, but emphatically and pre-eminently by conflict. To stand still for a moment is to go backward or fall. Probably the 4 THE KEEPER OF THE KEYS explanation of this tremendous problem lies rooted in the very Nature of God, who is at once Him- self male and female, One and AH, limited and un- limited, and still essentially a Personal God. Meta- physically, indeed, how could He express Himself otherwise than by this fundamental law of the Uni- verse? Is subject without object a thinkable fact? And as soon as we have subject and object as the principium principiorum for any practical thought, or useful conduct, we see it must inevitably be not simply subject with object, but subject against object, in an antagonism which alone makes life possible and fruitful. There is true teaching and profound philosophy in the third chapter of Eccle- siastes. And again, " God hath set the one over against the other." Amid the fog and cloud of combatants who strive for they know not what, appear to emerge a few principles which no one disputes, that may be re- ceived as certain as any facts. Man is a religious being, and man is a sociable being, and sociable be- cause religious. He fears, he loves, he worships a Power or Powers beyond and above him, and yet around and even within him. This awe, this wonder, which is a kind of broken knowledge, draws man to man not merely for purposes of mutual defence, but also for purposes of a common cult. For the Power or Powers outside man, and yet somehow mysteriously associated with him, must be reverenced and propitiated by rites and ceremonies and offerings. Primitive man seeks protection against his very God, whom he admires, THE LORD IS A MAN OF WAK 5 hates, dreads, and yet always adores, and finds it in the gregarious life of the family and tribe, through all the predatory stages and pastoral stages, down to the colossal and glorified egotism of hostile nationalities and ethnic enmities. But from the very outset he believes and disbelieves, he accepts and he rejects, according as the factor of faith or reason predominates. For at the beginning of things the religious feeling, religiousness, embraces two different and opposed and yet congruous factors, the sense of and the appeal to authority or tradition, and the sense of and the appeal to inquiry. And these two factors are one in the light of a higher unity which transcends and includes them both. They are absorbed and harmonised in its grasp. And here we reach the bedrock of the human mind, which in its constitution is compelled to work by and through contraries, and can only achieve any fruitful or satisfactory results by the collision of opposites. It seems futile to quarrel with the machinery of the given